PostApoc (5 page)

- 9 -
COMEDOWN

W
atching dregs of web in the tub, waiting for the grayline comedown to kick in. Cam didn't mention this shit would last so long.

The spiders work over the taps, all the way up to the dank angle where the walls turn into ceiling. Pretend the wet crawl of spider spit isn't what it is. Pretend it's a frail line of bubble bath. Channel decadence. Bathe in collected rainwater. Hope that body heat will be enough to warm it up. Pretend the soap didn't come from a care package, something cheap and practical and unscented. Ignore the tightening skin, the flakes it leaves in your hair.

Think back to when Aimee was living on Manning, the clawfoot bathtub on the day I got evicted. Spent an hour in pink heat, perfumed water bubbling with the scent of roses while Aimee sliced watermelon in the kitchen, left it waiting for me until I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in the cool silk of her robe. Channel decadence.

Aimee's got her period. While I'm in the tub she's washing out her homemade pads in the sink beside me. The only girl here who still gets a period. The rest of us are simply too emaciated. Aimee's just as underfed but somehow her body hangs on.

A guy showed up here after the White Doom show, wasted and saying he'd “eat out any girl on her rag,” convinced women pass on their proteins through menstrual blood. “All I want to do is lick at girls who've got blood coming out of their crotches,” he said, adding that he'd trade it for a mickey of rye. Aimee was the only one who took advantage of the offer, but the others tried: Brandy offered a bony ass, Carrie the light brush of the wide space between her thighs.

Me and Aimee didn't talk about it after because we knew this water could never get you clean enough. No point in spreading the mess around.

Channel decadence.

Don't hesitate, just go.

Anticipating the dread but it doesn't come. There's too much dampness for it to cut through. There are no more days where you leave your jacket open at the end of winter to feel the freedom of a warmer spring wind snaking down the arms, up the back. There are no more days when your legs ache from struggling against newly packed snow. Now, when it's not sticky hot there's a biting dampness, something that comes in too close.

Trevor's heard about a coffee shop open on the west side of Queen Street that sells coffee in exchange for whatever you could offer: a cup of rice, a roll of gauze, a needle and thread.

“I heard the guy running it will take a hug and a kiss as payment, if you're a girl,” Trevor says.

Me and Aimee decide to check it out. Aside from a barter system we don't know how they're holding it together and don't really want to. In seconds we go from being curious to needy, hungering to taste something real, to ease through the comedown we knew would be on us at any moment.

We ask Trevor if he wants to come but he shakes his head, no. “Me and Cam are patrolling again today,” he says.

Me and Aimee roll our eyes at the word “patrolling,” which is what Cam calls walking around, looking to see what's still out there. They map out dead landmarks and squats on the living room wall, write down the addresses of houses they've broken into. They've yet to come back emptyhanded. A couple days ago it was a case of cat food. Another, two pearl necklaces, which Trevor gave to me and Aimee when Cam wasn't looking.

Aimee moves to a row of sharpened sticks lined up in the mudroom and chooses two, holds one out to me. I slide it into my backpack.
We all help make spears, to keep the dogs away. I haven't had to use one yet and I don't know if I could drive it in hard enough if I had to. We bring a pocket comb and a bar of soap and hope it will be enough to buy us something warm and wakening at the coffee shop.

On bikes, we coast around stalled cars and pump our legs up every incline. Our bodies are getting hard. We are turning to stone, though, not strength. Our thighs fight with us to preserve nutrients, to hang onto every calorie just to stay awake. Since the fires and the suck of sound, since the disappearances and the dead weather, the city seemed to expand, its streets lengthened for miles with blanks inserted where structure and density used to be.

We pass the park where Hunter and I once fell asleep under a tree on a summer night, drunk and giving in easily to circumstance, spontaneity. Today there's a dead body, right where we'd drifted off, clothes and limbs torn near clean. Death by dog, it seems.

The coffee shop has no sign, but it's marked by the heavy condensation in the front window, beads of water streaking down. Something clawing its way out. Two feet from the door is a fecal smear, watery and voluminous. We're starting to recognize the angles and shapes of shit, can tell whether it's human or animal. This one is definitely human. Inside, the place is packed, but there are only twenty seats. The tables are small, chairs so close together everyone is almost touching. Everyone's looking at each other, wondering where we all came from. There's no sense of relief at seeing others, no effort to come together. There is a table between four men. Aimee tells me to hold it while she orders. To my left a man snorts inwards, hard, sucking back snot. I can hear him swallow it. I swallow too, fighting a lump of rising nausea. I can't tell if this is part of the grayline comedown or just everyday disgust.

I hold my breath, waiting for his cough to come but it doesn't. I have to breathe. The relief in a held breath is not in new oxygen but in letting go of the pain of what's trapped inside.

Behind the counter is a man whose muscles have gone soft but still show the bulk his body once held. His eyes are half-hidden with heavy brows, grey cats' tails to match that of the feline now prowling between people's legs under the shop's tables.

Aimee makes her order and smiles, but the man just nods, says nothing as he turns to fill our cups. He nods again as he takes the comb and soap, wordlessly sliding them under the counter. His left arm is pitted with a dog bite, two perfect rows of scabbed red holes. It reminds me of something I heard once: that if a dog's tasted blood, he can never be the same again, that the hot copper touch on his tongue takes away the taste for anything else.We should have brought him one of our spears.

Aimee sets down our drinks, black coffee in black mugs dark enough to hide the dirt, old imprints of other people's lips.
We don't ask how anything is washed, or where the water for the coffee came from. Don't care anyway. Caffeine is a buzz that's been missing from our bloodstreams for so long that we just want to get it into us.

A film of phlegm breaks from someone's throat in the back corner. Aimee turns, instinctively. Personal space is always shifting in the old Victorian, never knowing who's going to show up, but we are never this close together, never nearly shoulder to shoulder with so many strangers. The crowd, it's more than we expected. Hadn't thought this far ahead about how we would handle the claustrophobia. My throat digs up a tickle already, hint of a sting. Despite the charcoal weather outside it's too hot in here. Aimee's hair is curling at her temples. She holds it off her neck with one hand. I keep my sweater on, feel safer in its husk even though it could drown me right now.

The coffee is hot. We blow the steam from its surface. I imagine the top of my mug is already skating with viruses, germs in the air. I imagine them being lifted off with every puff, or killed by the heat of the water. The man beside me finally lets a cough loose, holds a handkerchief to his mouth to spit. I keep the mug to my lips, breathe in the steam instead of the impurity from the table next to me.

A table shifts upwards. People are getting ready to leave. Someone bumps into Aimee's chair. She turns, glares, but they're already on their way out and don't say anything.

I notice then that we're the only women in here. The other girls in our house, for all their hardened edges, won't leave without one of the guys with them, not even in a group. We still don't know all that's out there yet, but we do know there's more empty space than ever, the least amount of witnesses around.

I wonder if Aimee's noticed that we're only among men. Neither of us is saying much, senses too aware of every sound and smell. Setting us on edge. Talk and we could be under threat if we give in to distraction, give in to relaxation. I feel dizzy by the time I'm halfway through my coffee. Aimee, too, light-headed and almost done.
We chug. The hot water burns, reverse acid reflux. It brings on another lump of nausea and I don't want to regret that last hard swallow. It might be the last coffee of my life. Standing, my head fades from grey to black to grey again in a head rush as I push my way out from behind the table, following Aimee back outside. With shaking hands, we do up our jackets for the ride back to the house.

Halfway there it starts to snow, frenetic temperature dropping all around us, cold pressing through, clawing beneath our t-shirts. The light's dropping, too, sun fading fast even though it feels like it's only been up for a few hours.

Or maybe
we've
only been up for a few hours.

Aimee pulls out ahead of me and wipes out seconds later, tires slipping in the snow. We decide to walk the bikes the rest of the way. Over the Bloor Street bridge the streetlights are rolling on and off, waves of malfunction and shadow as the daylight fades. The snow that lands now dries in heaps like piles of salt, crunches under our steps. With the orange lights dipping us in and out of the dark it's hard tell what's puke and what's snow, everything showing up like pale chunks in the night. I'm not clear-headed enough to see where I'm stepping anyway.

Aimee tells me a story. “My friend contacted a ghost through a Ouija board once. The ghost told her if she ever wanted to see him, all she had to do was look at the streetlights. After that, every light she'd walk under would flicker. He was always there.”

The snow has stopped by the time we get to the top of our street, but the night's still damp. Traces of grayline are still sending small shocks through me, lightning residuals bruising me from the inside. The comedown overrides the caffeine, and the exhaustion I feel coming on is deadening. We get inside and I crawl up the stairs and onto my mattress, so tired that for the first time since we got here I am something close to comfortable.

- 10 -
PATTERNS

O
ne of the girls has gone missing. “She was right there/I just saw her/she was right there/I just saw her.” This is what I hear before even get up. Brandy and Carrie take it up as a chant. This is how I know what happened before seeing the vacant space where Camille used to sleep.

Gone. Disappeared like so many others already have. We didn't know this was still happening to people, that it could still happen to people. We still don't know where people disappear to.

I didn't really know her, other than the incongruity of her lilies-and-lace name against her brown dreads, stained wife beater, bare feet, black cargo shorts. Not that any of us could be so delicate now, even if we wanted to. She'd kept away from us, hiding from whatever ghosts she'd seen upstairs. “She just wants to be alone,” Brandy had told us whenever we'd asked. I wonder if she's alone where she is now.

Question: How do you adjust to a near-empty city?

1
. You don't. Your thought patterns are too routed. You find, surprisingly, that your relationships with the streets are defined by your relationships with the people you shared those streets with, even if only in passing. You step out onto what used to be the city's busiest sidewalks and you catch yourself thinking, “It's so quiet this morning,” and then you remember why, as if any day now this will all go back to normal.

2
. You don't know who is still around and who isn't.
You don't know whether houses are empty or occupied. You watch for a twitch of a curtain, a face at the window. You listen for hysteria calling out from behind closed doors.

3
. You don't know if you want people to still be around or not. You don't know if you're better off being one of the last, because you can't gauge the alternative. Whoever's still around could be dangerous. But they could also be someone you want, or need.

4
. You don't know if the people who've disappeared are happy or dead, or happier dead. You don't know if maybe they knew something you didn't. Can't help but wonder if everyone escaped, all went somewhere safe, somewhere better, and you somehow missed out.

Maybe you're not a survivor at all, but just another one of the dead who doesn't know it's time to stop breathing.

Trevor pins me up against the wall and breathes into my nose.

“Can you smell anything?” he asks.

I turn my head to breathe out the shit-stink of dry mouth and decaying food he's just plastered across my face.

“Smell what?” I ask.

“Dick. Do I smell like dick? I sucked some guy for this.” Trevor holds up a one-litre bottle of wine, an animal proud to bring home its kill.

“No, you're fine,” I tell him.

“Good,” he says. “Don't tell Cam, k? I'm going to say I traded for it, if he asks.”

“Why?”

“I want him to think I'm something else,” Trevor says. “Something tougher. Cam says it's weak, to give away sex for something you want.”

“Okay,” I say. “I won't tell him.”

Later, we sit in a circle on the floor and pass the bottle around. The wine burns an empty stomach, digestion contracting around its crimson acidity.

Aimee: You want to know about my parents? No, sorry. I don't talk about that.

Cam: The first time my dad went to jail he was twenty-one. He went in for burglary and assault. Later he went back for possession, burglary again, and grand theft. He always told me he regretted it—especially the assault—but also said that what he'd done had made sense at the time.
When I was little—this was way before I went to a foster home—I remember he'd said a couple times, “You won't do what I've done, will you?” And I'd shake my head, no, and he'd say, “No, I know you won't, because you're better than me.”

After I went to jail nothing was really the same between us. Because for one, I was five years younger than he was when he first got arrested, and two, I think he really believed I was a different person than I ended up becoming.

Brandy: What happened to him?

Cam: Heart attack. Last year. He was out at a bar with his girlfriend and some guy tried to hit on her or something and they got into it. The fight got broken up pretty quick but I guess my dad was really wound up about it. They went home a couple hours later and that's when he started having chest pain. Apparently he collapsed just as the ambulance was called—boom! Dead, just like that.

I don't know where my mom got to. She didn't even come to the funeral, so . . .

Carrie: Wow, shitty.

Trevor: My dad hated me because he thought I was—and I quote—“a fag.” I never wanted to be home so I started staying out all the time. I even lived at Kohl for a while. They had these great booths you could fit right under and hide while they locked up for the night. I also slept in the coat check room for four weeks before I got caught.

I thought they were gonna call the cops, or at least kick me out for sure, but I got lucky. They asked me what I was doing and when I told them, the bartender said she'd gone through the same thing with her parents and invited me to stay on her couch until I could figure something out.

Brandy: I'm from up north. I came here on a bus when I was eighteen. I didn't hate my parents, just the place I grew up in.

Trevor: Do you think your parents are still alive?

Brandy: Yeah, I do actually. I can't explain it, but I think of them and I can feel them there. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to get up there. I don't know how yet. Maybe I'll just start walking one day.

Cam: Or you could take a bike. How long would walking take?

Brandy: Days. But I've got the time.

Carrie: I'm from B.C. I'll never get home from here. It's weird, though. I'd wanted to leave for so long and when I finally did, I never thought I'd want to go back.

Ang: My parents treated me differently. After I tried to kill myself, you know? I lived with them for a while, after it happened, and they only ever talked to me in questions: “How are you today? Would you like this? Is it okay if we do this? Is it okay if I move this here? Is the volume of the TV bothering you? Is it too sunny for you to sit outside?”

I thought it would be different when I moved out again, but it wasn't. “When can we see you?” I felt like they always wanted me to come over just to make sure I was alive. They didn't actually want to talk to me, or know me anymore, because they didn't know what to do with someone who'd come back from the dead.

A groan rises from the basement, its tone sharpening to a point. It feels too early to hear so much phantom agony. Something about the shouting makes me think: Dad. Which makes me think: Mom. Which makes me think: Go, today.

Today? I'm not ready to know the answers to the questions I'm afraid to even fully form yet but tell myself, yes, today.

But only after a little more sleep. It will take at least an hour to ride to my old house, and how fast I'll need to move all depends on what I run into when I'm out there.

Her palm is a blunt slam into my cheekbone. It lands more like a shove than a slap, probably because there's no meat left in my face.

Above me, she's a flash of blue hair and orange lipstick, knees on either side of me in an expert straddle that didn't even wake me up.

“You!” she says. “I. Know.
You.” She digs a finger deep into my sternum when she says the second
you
, like it's an accusation.

There's a sweetheart bruise on the inside of her thigh, like she's been rubbing against a pole for the last six months.

“I know you, too,” I say.

Tara. I remember her being to the left of the stage, at any Valium show within a five-hour radius of her hometown. She'd followed us to a few after-parties but never said much, just that she worked as a dancer. Instead of talking she mostly smoked furiously and stared, as if she was waiting for someone to see her.

Tara's from a time when the Valium fans in her town used to go down to the graveyard. They had their own sect, their own rites, one of which was built out of an annual Devil's night summoning. It had once just meant getting drunk and stoned and a little scared, but that particular night it would be sacred.

At least they'd hoped, never really expected what actually happened: the graves opening up, swallowing them whole. The rest of the town thought it was a mass suicide, another sign that The End was upon us.

“I don't know where I was during that time, or how long I was gone,” she says, still hovering over me. “I just know that in a dream I was told that, to be reborn, I'd have to become hard enough to claw through a door that gaped like a mouth.”

Tara's spent the last three weeks sleeping in a backyard shed.

“There were still bodies in the house,” she says. “You could smell them from the back steps.”

She was walking by and saw Cam and Trevor outside, sharpening knives. “They said you just had a bed free up,” Tara says. “I didn't know
you'd
be here, though.”

My hair's grown out, long dark roots even darker against the flash of peroxide. I wonder if anyone else from my past life will still be around to recognize me.

“Have you ever forgotten what you were before?” she asks. “Have you ever lost your history?”

I want to tell her yes, that there've been times when all I had left were the bags under my eyes. But her eyes are oceans, and it's through those waters I know she's lost her original voice. I hear it through the undertow.

“Have you ever tried to find yourself in someone's lap, Ang? Or gotten so wasted that all you could do was wait for the floor to fall away?”

Something like seeing the future in her face, her posture. The way the light falls over the gouges where her eyes have started to sink in. You can tell what she'd look like if she could get older: body hard with old pride, everything lined and heavily used.

Tara punches the mattress, grazes my ear. “
What
are you doing here, Ang?” she asks, a rush of blood daring to fill her cheeks. “Do you know how much I believed you? Do you know what you've made me question?”

I don't, no, but I can't bring myself to tell her this. I should be at my parents' house. I shouldn't have stayed in bed.

“You promised to die, Ang,” Tara says. “You were part of something that you couldn't honour. And even now, when everything has turned to shit, you stay.”

She climbs off me and I barely feel a shift from her weight. She slings her bag over her shoulder but she only takes two steps towards the door before whipping around.

“You owe me, Ang. You owe me an answer, at least.”