Todd screams.
“I’ve got you, baby,” the girl says, hugging him from behind.
Todd sits naked on the floor of his shack, arms wrapped around his knees, screaming.
“It was just a dream,” Erin tells him. “Just a dream. You’re okay. See? Everything is fine.”
He stops, panting for breath. Tears and snot stream down his face. His skin is slick with sweat and Erin’s body feels like fire against his back. Sunlight streams through cracks in the walls, illuminating the dust. The small shack feels like an oven.
“What was your dream about?” she asks him.
“I was being saved,” he says hoarsely, barely recognizing his voice as his own. He wipes his face with the back of his hand.
“That sounds like a good dream.”
His face twitches. He notes the symptom.
“Not for the guy who saved me.”
Todd tries to stand and sits back down with a grimace. Every muscle in his body is stiff and sore. His lungs seize from the smoke he inhaled during the fighting on the bridge, and he coughs loud and hard into his fist, just trying to breathe. His throat feels like it has been burned raw from smoke and screaming.
“I’m glad I’m not alone,” he rasps, pulling on his glasses. The left lens is cracked.
“Oh baby, I’m right here,” Erin tells him, squeezing hard.
He did not mean her, but says nothing.
“I have to go see Anne.”
“Who’s that?”
“One of my friends who made it.”
Erin kisses the back of his neck. “Let’s stay in bed all day.”
“No, I have to go.”
“Come on, baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“Erin, please.”
She pushes away from him and pulls on her jeans. “Fuck it. I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you,” he says, watching her nudity disappear with longing.
If he had more energy, he would try to please her in some way, but he has none to spare. He stands, pulls on a clean pair of boxers, and buckles the gun belt around his waist.
“You’re going out like that?”
He drapes the blanket over his shoulders. “My clothes are contaminated with Infected blood. They shouldn’t even be in the camp. Put the ribbon on for me, okay?”
“I’ll wait for you,” she says, pinning it over his chest. “I’ll get us some lunch, okay?”
Todd smiles.
He steps outside and enters the mundane chaos of FEMAville. The air is so humid it is difficult to breathe. The smell of wood smoke sets off another coughing jag. Water glistens on the ground, evaporating in the sunlight. Hard rain came last night; he fell asleep to the sound of it drumming on the roof. His bare feet sink into soft, warm mud.
First stop, latrine, then the showers.
Todd gasps, his heart racing. The dream, so vivid.
He cannot figure one thing out. Why was Paul smiling?
“Coffee?” says a voice.
Todd is aware of everything. Dogs bark and military vehicles groan on the other side of the camp. A few boys play horseshoes, wagering cigarettes on the outcome, while a woman shouts at her children to be careful running. Someone chops firewood while someone else practices the harmonica. Two grinning men carry a large painting that Todd recognizes from the Andy Warhol Museum.
“You want some coffee, buddy?”
Todd focuses on the bearded man sitting on a plastic cooler, brewing a pot of coffee on a Coleman stove. His wife kneels on a tarp, filling plastic bottles from a rain collector.
“Sure, thanks.”
The man glances at his wife, who nods. “Want some sugar in it?”
“That’d be great.”
Todd accepts the mug of coffee and blows on it, savoring its aroma.
“You look like you’re going somewhere,” the man tells him. “You can bring the mug back later, all right?”
“Thank you,” he says again. The sweetened coffee is an incredible gift and this act of basic human kindness brings him close to tears.
The bearded man nods to Todd’s ribbon. “No need to thank me.”
“God bless you, boy,” the man’s wife says.
Todd takes a deep breath, gritting his teeth. His heart gallops in his chest. Is this what PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—is like? The older survivors of the epidemic always talked about its symptoms, but he was never able to relate.
Lying in the jaws of the beast, Paul stared into Todd’s eyes and smiled sadly.
Even in death, he smiled. Why?
Clouds drift in front of the sun, turning the world gray.
¦
At the market, the traders give him new clothes and boots, rainproof poncho, handful of bullets, toothbrush, two packs of sugarless gum, three condoms and a plastic baggie filled with coffee.
He remembers something Erin told him last night:
Paul knew he was going to die. The monster’s long, revolting tongue, studded with slimy suckers, had already gripped the Reverend’s ankle.
And yet he smiled. In the air too. In the mouth of the beast.
Paul: the man who loved God but feared death. Who loved his enemies as he killed them. Who tried to reconcile the forgiving, loving God of the New Testament with the apparent return of the judgmental, violent God of the Old. Who could not live without his wife even though Sara would have wanted more than anything for him to go on living.
A fellow traveler of the thin line of survival, that limbo between living and dying. Torn between forces larger than himself, he gave himself to others, ultimately giving his life, and in doing so, welcomed death. With his wife now at last, either in heaven or oblivion; it did not matter which to him. Was this the peace the Reverend found? Could this be why he smiled? He had given up worrying whether he would ever see her again. All that mattered was they were together one way or the other. In the end, Paul welcomed his death.
Todd wonders if he will ever love anyone as strongly as that. He wonders if he could ever love Erin so much. Before the bridge, he would have said he already did. After the bridge, he does not know. He doesn’t know much of anything. All he can think about is the road.
He limps past dozens of shacks, each leaning on the next for support in the endless shantytown. People sit on lawn chairs watching over their children, cook, tend gardens, stack wood, stoke fires, hang laundry, gossip, trade.
