Tabula Rasa (2 page)

“Do you know what a solar flare is?”

“Yes.” I didn’t know how I knew what a solar flare was, but it
was in the box of scattered random awareness like pirate ships, theme
parks, and ATMs.

“Okay, there was an enormous solar flare. The last time the world
had solar flares this extreme was before such widespread reliance on
electricity. This time it knocked out power grids nearly everywhere.
Most technology halted. Just-in-time delivery failed.”

“What’s just-in-time delivery?”

“Almost everything was running in a way where everything that
needed to be delivered to various places from fuel to food was
shipped and delivered at close to the last minute, so nothing had to
be stored long term. Supplies arrived just as the old ones were
running out. With trucks and trains and planes, long term storage of
staples and essentials seemed unnecessary to people, and it wasn’t
cost effective. And with cities so large, it gets less and less
practical anyway. The point is... stores started running out of
things... Hospitals ran out of things. People started panicking and
looting, and then people started dying. The economy collapsed
practically overnight. It was so fast. You can’t believe how fast
it was.”

I just stared at him, trying to process everything he was telling me.
Hadn’t I immediately thought something terrible must have happened
when I’d woken in a rusted-out pirate ship ride? I mean, that
couldn’t be a good sign.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

“No.” What good would it do to keep things from me?

“Most of the nuclear plants were safely shut down, but a few
weren’t. So there are some dangerous radiation zones out there. The
ones that melted down near coasts and fault lines set off huge
earthquakes, followed by tsunamis. The whole world was affected, so
there was no one to send aid because everyone was struggling to
survive. But with world economies collapsing, money wouldn’t have
meant much anyway. There are pockets of survivors. We’ll be safer
if we can find a bigger group, but for right now, we have supplies
for a while. The park was well stocked with non-perishables, and even
when we get through that, there’s enough wildlife around here to
eat. The important part is that we have access to plenty of clean
water here. That’s the trouble with moving on—what to do about
water.”

“How long ago... when... when did this all happen?”

“A couple of years. Elodie, we’re going to be okay. We could stay
here for another year or longer, and I’m already making plans on
how we’ll get out and try to find another group of survivors. Don’t
worry.”

“How did you know all this was here?”

“I didn’t. We stumbled on it. We were lucky. There are some
chickens that have gone wild living here. I made a make-shift coop
for them in one of the kiddie rides. So we have some eggs and meat I
don’t have to hunt.”

No wonder I couldn’t remember anything. My brain had probably been
waiting for any opportunity to fall and blank out everything, just
scrub the slate clean and forget such a nightmare ever could have
happened. This couldn’t possibly be my life.

“I really need a shower.” I felt gross and covered in grime from
the humidity outside.

“There’s no running water.”

Of course there wasn’t. The electricity was fooling me into
believing I was in some dingy but workable version of civilization.

“But, there’s a wide creek that runs under the park; it’s where
the water from the moat comes from. We don’t drink that water. We
use a well for drinking, but the creek water is clean enough to bathe
in.”

The panic began to ease in, graying out the edges of my vision. “I
can’t do this. I can’t live like this!”

“Elodie, you’ve lived like this for two years. And this is a step
up from how it was in the beginning. You were so excited when we
found this place. I wish you could remember. It’s hard to see you
like this again. You were so despondent when we first had to learn
how to survive without the convenience and safety we were used to.
But things were getting better. You were adjusting. And now...”

He leaned closer, and I flinched to escape as he brushed the side of
my cheek in a gesture that was meant to be comforting.

“I-I don’t know you.”

He sighed and rose from the bed. “I’m all you’ve got.” Before
I could determine if there were nefarious undertones or some veiled
threat in his words, he said, “I’m going down to the restaurant
to make us something to eat.”

“Which one?”

“The big one in the middle... The Banquet Hall. It’s got the most
working equipment. Come down in a few, okay?”

“Okay.”

After he’d gone, I closed my eyes, desperately trying to remember
something—anything that could help me make any sense of all this.
Or wake up. That would be a welcome option as well. I went to the
bathroom to turn on the faucet, already having forgotten there was no
running water. I stared at my reflection over the sink.

She’s pretty.

I was the woman in his wallet, but I wasn’t feeling nearly as
generous with myself now that I was seeing it live and in person. My
clothes were grimy and worn. I brushed back my hair and noticed a
dark scar on my temple and wondered what had happened to produce it.
I seemed to have a few other scars and wondered if they were injuries
I’d sustained while here and how they’d managed to not get
infected and kill me.

I looked down at my hand. No wedding band. But why would anyone in
some post-apocalyptic wasteland still have a wedding band? We’d
probably bartered or sold it early on when we were just getting our
bearings, when people still cared about things like that. Or maybe
some marauders stole it. I felt like if something apocalyptic had
happened that suddenly marauders must have popped up everywhere, and
we would actually start using that word to describe them.

Did I have surviving family? Friends? Maybe it was better that I
didn’t remember anything—I mean, if they hadn’t made it. Trevor
had said a lot of people died. Why wouldn’t my family and friends
be with us? Or his family and friends? Wouldn’t we have done better
in a larger group instead of just the two of us so isolated like
this? I had a feeling I was getting the warm-and-fuzzy edited version
of events, which was terrifying in itself.

The bathroom had once been luxurious with a giant tub with jets, a
walk-in shower built for two on the other end, and an enormous
counter with a sink large enough to bathe a fat baby in. Everything
had been meant to look as if it were made of gold, but the plating
was flecking off, and the whole place smelled like it had been packed
up in someone’s grandmother’s attic for several winters.

The main tower suite was a large open circle with some seating areas,
a TV and DVD player, one king-sized bed, and a few windows. It was
full dark now, so I couldn’t see anything out of the windows. Back
when the park was running, it would have no doubt been beautiful all
lit up at night. I wondered if any celebrities had stayed in this
tower in the middle of the park with their entourage just below in
the smaller rooms.

I clicked the button on the TV, not expecting it to work, but a snowy
buzz lit up the screen. Of course TV itself wouldn’t work. Who
would be broadcasting? I looked through the cabinet and found several
rows of DVDs. I turned on the DVD player and popped in a romantic
comedy. I couldn’t believe it worked.

After a few minutes, I clicked it off and left the tower. I looked
through the office and the hotel rooms on the floor below. Nothing of
interest. Though I don’t think I was looking to be entertained. I
was looking for comfort, and absent that, distraction.

The gift shop on the second floor unbelievably had some T-shirts. One
was in my size. I peeled off the hot, sweaty top I’d been wearing
and exchanged it for a gift shop T-shirt. I took one that had been
wrapped in plastic. After sitting there exposed to the elements for
so long, the ones on the rack weren’t much better than what I’d
had on.

Trevor was in the main restaurant’s kitchen, as promised, heating
up food. Something from a can and something from a deep freezer the
sun must have kept operational all this time.

I spotted a small handgun lying on the counter near him.

“W-why do you have that?”

Trevor glanced over at the gun and then back at me. “Why wouldn’t
I have it? We’re lucky I have it and that I haven’t had to use
it. This is a very different world, Elodie. You know that. I have to
protect us.”

It wasn’t as if he’d waved the gun at me like a lunatic. He’d
probably had it concealed on him earlier. And it wasn’t as if
someone as strong as Trevor needed a weapon to harm me, particularly
in such isolation, but it still scared me that he had it.

“How come this whole place isn’t looted?” I asked, trying to
shift the subject away to something safer.

He looked up from a bag of frozen chicken nuggets. “Several of the
stores on the main strip were looted. The castle may have been harder
to get to when they came through. And the park is a bit off the
beaten path. It wasn’t a well-known park. So not too many groups
would have come through.”

The kitchen looked modern, but the main dining room was like a
banquet hall in some old castle right out of a fairy tale. There were
long banquet tables, which were positioned in a big square, leaving a
wide-open space where there must have been some form of entertainment
for the diners.

“Those are some big fireplaces out in the dining hall,” I said.

Trevor smiled. “Yeah. It’s great for when it gets cold out.”

We ate in the big, empty banquet hall on two throne-like chairs that
I imagined had been set aside for actors playing the king and queen
of the castle. Sitting there like royalty dining on food that was
anything but royal fare was depressing as hell.

As if I didn’t already feel like I was one of the last two
remaining humans on the planet.

For some reason it made me think of the story of Adam and Eve in the
garden. I couldn’t pull out a single personal detail about my life,
but somehow an old religious myth was right there perched on the
surface of my brain.

The garden was supposed to be some utopian paradise, but I couldn’t
imagine anything as a paradise that only contained two people. It
seemed lonely. No wonder Eve began forming questionable friendships
with reptiles.

I picked at the chicken nuggets on my plate.

“Something wrong with it?” Trevor asked.

“Just not very hungry.”

He looked concerned as if trying to remember if loss of appetite was
related to concussion.

I stared down at the baked beans and chicken on my plate and wondered
if I’d ever get my memory back. I wasn’t sure I wanted to
remember a time that was happier when the world ran like clockwork
and no one thought it could ever end. I had a sense of what things
had once been like in general, though I couldn’t seem to project
myself into any of the stories. Maybe that was for the best.

“When are we going to look for more survivors?” I asked, trying
to stop thinking about my troubling loss of memory.

“Am I such poor company?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I’d seen proof positive that I at least knew him. We had at least,
at some point in our history, sat together in a photo booth like we
liked each other and gotten photos made. But the number of things he
wasn’t telling me could no doubt fill libraries. Had we had a rocky
relationship? Was there some awful shared trauma he’d been trying
not to burden me with? A tragic loss?

Maybe I was the burden. Would it have been easier for him to survive
this without me? Did he want to? It didn’t seem like this was a
fantastic quality of life to aspire to. I wondered if anybody else
out there had a life any better. The Amish were probably doing okay.
If they hadn’t had to fight off hordes of previously comfortable
people now without an internet connection.

So many questions. I thought back to the first moments after I’d
woken. Trevor hadn’t seemed as surprised as I’d expected when I
said I’d lost my memory.

It had all happened in a rush, but that part hadn’t seemed to
ruffle him like it should have. He hadn’t even dwelt on it very
long. The only part I was sure about was that when he tore through
those woods after me, he’d been panicked.

Finally, he answered my earlier question about looking for others.
“Let’s just give it a little while. We don’t know what we’ll
encounter out there. I don’t think we should leave until we
absolutely have to.”

“But, you said we’d be safer in a group. Shouldn’t we at
least...”

“Elodie, that’s enough!” I flinched, and he quickly softened
his tone as if trying to reason with a small child set on ice cream
for dinner. “It’s not safe. And I don’t want you wandering
outside the park on your own. We know the park is safe because I test
it occasionally with the Geiger counter. I don’t want you wandering
outside the guaranteed safe zone into a possible radiation pocket. We
need to go together.”

“O-okay.” I didn’t even know if that was how radiation worked,
but Trevor seemed sure of himself, so I let it go.

I finished my dinner, even though I didn’t really want it. But I
might get hungry later, and the last thing I wanted to do was annoy
this man I didn’t remember knowing. I also didn’t relish the idea
of coming down here alone in the middle of the night foraging for
canned goods like an insomniac squirrel. However unsure I might be of
Trevor, I liked the idea of being by myself in this big artificial
castle even less.

Trevor took the plates and cups back to the kitchen and washed them
with some water he must have drawn from the mysterious well. There
were several medieval-looking pitchers of it in the industrial-sized
fridge, pitchers which waiters and waitresses no doubt had used to
refill iced tea. I stayed off to the side out of his way, trying to
pick out a memory of anything I had ever personally experienced
before today.