Others claim that the depleted ozone layer—already a peeling scab—ripped open, leaving us vulnerable to heat and radiation.
Basically, we know as much about the Flash as medieval quacks knew about the black death. Will the answer turn out to be something as simple as disease-carrying fleas spread by rats?
“I really don’t know what to think,” Evie says. “I try not to dwell on things I can’t control.”
Smart girl.
“What’s your theory, Arthur?”
“I’m in your camp. Best not to obsess over it,” I say, though I obsess over it continually, fixated with how perfectly organic matter was destroyed, while at least some homes and buildings were spared. My theory would only frighten her; and I’m not ready to put her on edge. Yet. “Did any of your friends survive? Your boyfriend?”
Her eyes mist with tears. “None of them lived. Mel . . . she never made it home.” Evie glances down, beginning to rock in the chair again. I’ve noticed that she rocks more whenever she feels particularly unsettled. “She died alone, without her family nearby, out on a lonesome highway.”
“How do you know?”
“Her car was in a ditch. The door was open, and inside there was . . . ash.”
“I see.” Piles of ash had become the gravestones for much of the world’s population—until the winds had come, dispersing the remains into the air, for all the rest of us to breathe. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, though I’m not.
My lack of empathy is a boon for a scientist like myself. It allows me to experiment without hesitation. I experience only
Somehow Evie stems her tears. What a brave little girl. It will be all the more rewarding when I bring her to sobs.
“Did you lose all of your family to the Flash?” she asks, again surprising me with her interest.
“Yes, in the Flash.” I muster a grieving look.
She offers me one of compassion. “This was your childhood home?”
I nod, though this is my sixth home since the apocalypse. I’ve moved like a hermit crab, from shell to shell. In the past, I would exhaust all the resources in a given place, then abandon it.
But I like this crossroads town, like that resources come directly to me.
I plan to stay for some time.
Another knock sounds in the basement. Evie tenses, cocks her head. My hands clench.
I reach for the recorder, turning off the tape. Barely containing my rage, I rise, saying, “I’ll go check my mousetraps really quick.” I’m so incensed that I fear I’ll do murder and get blood on my corduroys. “You stay put.” As if she could possibly escape. “I’ll be right back.”
I pull out my key ring on the way to the cellar door, quietly unlocking it. As I descend the darkened stairwell, I hear the hushed voices of my test subjects. They know they’re supposed to be silent unless I address them.
When I enter my dimly lit lab, the familiar scent calms me to a degree. All along the workbenches are bubbling vials and distilleries, flasks simmering on Bunsen burners. Myriad body parts are preserved in jars of formaldehyde.
The loose eyeballs in one jar always seem to follow my movements, which amuses me.
In one crystal vial, I’ve distilled a new potion that will spike my adrenaline, giving me a concentration of strength and speed. Another flask holds the key to accelerated healing.
I’ve weaponized other formulations. Bagmen—rumored to be allergic to salt—will stand no chance against my sodium chloride spray.
If any of the numerous militias roll through this town, they’ll be in for a surprise when I launch my stoppered vials of acid at them. . . .
The other half of the cellar is screened by heavy plastic curtains. I call it the dungeon. This is where the dirty work gets done. There’s an oversize butcher block, a stainless-steel operating table, drain fields, and anatomical tools.
I keep my stable of girls shackled in there as well. I currently own three of them, each between the ages of fourteen and twenty, each collared and chained to a wall.
Healthy young females like Evie have become rarities,
It makes no difference that I’d begun doing this before the apocalypse. I
Some might say I torture simply because I myself was tortured by my father, a tyrant who’d tried to “beat the evil” out of me. I’d been a mass of healing fractures and repeated contusions for all of my childhood—up until the day I chloroformed him, chained him in a storage tub, then leisurely dissolved him in hydrochloric acid.
He’d awakened in time to meet the evil up close.
And my mother, the woman who’d done nothing to stop him, even blaming me for triggering his ire?
She fared worse.
But my past experience is irrelevant. I use these girls only to further my research. This is my life’s work. I don’t set out to harm them, per se. The fact that I enjoy inflicting pain on them is incidental.
No, the research is all that matters.
When I head toward the dungeon, the trio falls silent behind the plastic curtain, their chains rattling as they scurry back toward the wall.
I push past the plastic, turning up the battery-powered lantern on the wall. As they shield their eyes from the light, I stare down at them one by one.
Clad in soiled garments, they cower on the packed earthen floor, their hands caked with dirt. They’ve been digging into the ground, making little nests in which to keep warm when they sleep.
A maggot-ridden corpse lies curled up in one nest, still attached to her chain. That one succumbed to my last experiment: a potion I’d designed to lessen the body’s need for fluids.
For weeks, it’d worked faultlessly. Then it . . . didn’t.
I view her remains dispassionately. The congealing blood, tissue, and organs used to be a
Now it’s just a collection of elements.
Evie will take the scholar’s place. Perhaps she’ll live longer than a month. Perhaps my newest elixir— immortality in a bottle—will finally cheat death.
It must.
Why does everyone assume we’ve seen the worst of the apocalypse? I will be ready.
I clench the chain of the oldest girl, yanking her to her feet. “Why has there been noise?” I demand, spittle spraying.
The ring of blisters circling her neck runs with watery blood. All of them get neck wounds from the rusty iron collars. This one needs more of my salve. I won’t give it to her now.
She considers answering, then thinks better of it. She’d been rebellious at first,
“If I hear another sound, I’ll make you drink the gold elixir.” It’s a pain potion that rips through their intestines. I relish their stricken looks. “Understood?”
They mumble, “Yes, Arthur. . . .”
When I return upstairs to Evie, I find her relaxed in her chair, staring at the fire. Her heavy-lidded gaze follows the flames.
The last fire she’ll ever see.
“Sorry about that,” I tell her. “A pack of rats seems to have moved in over the winter.” I hope that my statement doesn’t sound conceited. A rat infestation these days is a bounty. “If only they’d stop knocking over empty paint buckets. Now, where were we?” I turn the recorder back on, taking a seat. “Tell me what those first few weeks were like.”
