He was looking at the body that was lying around the collapsing building we found ourselves within. It was perhaps the first time any of us had noticed its presence (the smell of corpse had permeated the air long ago), and yet, seeing it now, it was so obviously there. Like a black cat sitting in front of a Jackson Pollack painting. The body was dead for about a month or so. It had decayed a bit, though one of his eyes was perfectly preserved. Must’ve been a fake, I thought to myself. The ruined man stalked towards the body with great effort. He was dragging his left leg as if it was a bag that weighed 500 pounds.
All we could do was stare at the man as he collected the body. Even in his state, he could still lift the corpse all by himself. He walked so much easier as he carried the body away from this broken building. As if a weight had been lifted from him. Indeed, it felt that way for all of us in that ruined building. As he walked past us, not caring who we were, I looked at him. He had a face I thought I saw before in a dream once. I was running from some bastards who thought I was someone else, someone who owed them money. He was one of them. I never got his name.
When the man left, Sean broke into tears. Maybe he knew the broken man. Maybe he’d been holding himself together in the wake of what happened to Patrick. Maybe he’d been holding it for much longer. Whatever the cause, he broke in that moment. I don’t know. Regardless, we all went to comfort him in his moment of need. He cried in the arms of friend and stranger alike. They were ugly tears not once seen at a funeral. They were the tears you cry when you’re alone and hope to god no one can see you, even as you beg for them to. As we held him, the sun began to rise from outside the cruel, grey clouds.
--
The next day, we learned the war was over. We weren’t told this had happened. We just knew. It was like the air had come out of the bubble not with a pop, but with a fizzle. Buildings were destroyed, the ISSP was leaving, and people were left wandering in the dark. We survived. Not through ingenuity or strength or even the power of friendship. But because we were lucky enough to survive. That was the case for so many of us in the city. High and low had been discarded in the aftermath. All we had was each other. I hoped, at least.
I saw the man again. He was at a graveyard with a shovel in-between two graves. I couldn’t make out the names, I was so transfixed on the man. I said nothing to him as I approached my own grave. Sean was with me, still not talking. I was told by another member of the crowd that he hadn’t been talking for a good long while. I liked his soft baritone. Their apartment was empty when we traversed the ruin of a city. Not a splot of blood or remain of person. It was a mess, but I remembered it always being a mess. When I asked him what happened to Sam and Lucas, he turned away from me. I thought taking him to my brother’s grave would make him feel better. At least get some reaction out of him. He broke down again and I held him like he was my own husband. I never married, though I thought about it. I’m not much of a person yet to be in a relationship. Maybe someday when I’ve grown up a little.
Patrick was always more capable of being in a relationship. He had his shit together, while I was too busy going from one therapist to the next. I tried to kill myself once. There was this abandoned theme park a few miles from Tharsis. We used to go there as kids. I had planned on letting myself wander the park before something inevitably killed me. Such things were common at that park. That’s why it was closed down. Too much death. When I got there, all the attractions were shut down. Someone, it seemed, beat me to the punch. I could see his remains splorched on the pavement like a cockroach on the side of the road. He wasn’t a person, not anymore. He was more symbolic art project than corpse. Whenever I relayed this story to my therapist, I’d joke by saying he looked like a sailboat. He actually looked like a wound on the pavement. Nowadays, there were so many other wounds, we were practically swimming in them. The sky was burnt orange as we returned to Sean’s home.
--
I found Sam three months later. They were trapped for months in a building three blocks away from the apartment. He survived, barely. There were three other people in that building, two men and one woman. Their names were Jonathan Jacobs, Lucy Tafoya, and Roberto Rogan. They survived too, so their stories are not mine to tell. When I heard the news, I told Sean. His face lit up for the first time in forever. He was eating, that was a relief for most days. He was capable of communication, though until that day, only written communication, and brief, terse messages at that. “Ryan,” he said, perhaps the first thing he said in a long while, “are you ok?” I was crying. I was happy for him, for them. He still had someone to live for. I barely had that.
When we arrived at the hospital, it was less hectic than it once was. Before, when Patrick died, the bodies were practically piling up by the hundreds. You could barely walk into the hospital without tripping over a broken person. Even back in the beginning, when my apartment was attacked, the bodies were still numerous. Sam was lying in a hospital bed. They were missing an eye and their lower body was completely covered in bandages. They cried when they saw Sean, confused and saddened by what he had seen. He held their hand as the winter sky began to transition into spring.
From there, I began to piece together what had happened. Sam had been scavenging the wasteland looking for something, anything that could help them survive. They had found, in The High City, an untouched mall waiting for someone to steal from it. Though, I suppose it’s not stealing when property has been abandoned. The ISSP certainly didn’t arrest any of the people looking for food. They didn’t even arrest the majority of the bandits. Other people saw the mall and had the same idea. Only three of them were bandits, which meant the other five had to fight them off. In the commotion, someone threw a bomb, collapsing the exit. The only survivors were the bandits and Sam. They made peace rather quickly. They weren’t bad people, Sam would tell us. They were just desperate people who thought fighting was the only way to survive. I wish I could believe him.
Sean went looking for them. He looked in The High City and the low. But he never found them. When he returned to the apartment, Lucas was gone. Sean never found Lucas. He tried to sleep in that apartment, but he couldn’t sleep. There were too many bad memories and bad dreams emanating from the apartment. (It took me two months to get him back into the apartment.) And so, he wandered the city that called itself Tharsis. And then, we found each other. Broken, dazed, and confused looking for something, anything that could make sense of the world around us. Of the apocalypse, the time where people always lost everything and barely gained a damn thing.
--
On April 16th, 2072, we found Lucas. Sam had just gotten out of the hospital. The wounds, while not fully healed, were healed enough to make them able to walk, which was enough for the hospital to clear his bed for another patient. We were able to walk him back to the apartment. As we walked, I noticed that the city was starting to look like a place rather than a ruin. You could see the wounds in the landscape, but they were starting to heal. Some things were irrevocably broken. I was happy to see the division between High and low city destroyed like a sandcastle at the end of low tide.
Sean was talking again, telling Sam all these memories he had of their relationship. Sam just listened to his husband’s dumb, amazing stories. I listened too, but I kept my mouth shut. I thought about Patrick and how he would have loved to hear these stupid, amazing stories. I was thinking about how much I missed my brother and how much they must miss him as well. It feels like a dream sometimes, like we’re all gonna wake up, and Patrick’s going to be in the shower, confused that we thought he was ever dead.
While Sam was in the hospital, they decided that they were going to leave Tharsis, leave Mars entirely. Too many bad memories, they said. Too many good ones, I thought to myself. They had given up on finding Lucas. He was either dead or gone. They loved him and missed him, but sometimes you have to learn to let go. I thought about Patrick and how he would have reacted to losing Lucas. Would he have broken down like Sean did? Would he not bring it up unless asked like Sam? Or would he be like me: relatively fine, if a bit disheartened? No, I don’t think he’d be like me. Truth is, prior to the war’s end, I barely knew the people Patrick married. I’ve been drifting for a while before my apartment got destroyed. I was truthfully only in there to sleep.
I actually returned to it a few days before Sam was let go from the hospital. It was a ghost town. I heard from Wilma, who spoke in a mechanized voice, that John was still off planet. She didn’t know where he was now, but he sent her a message from Ganymede. She didn’t talk about Luna. She didn’t talk about anyone else aside from John. Even in the emotionless affect of the voice she was forced to use couldn’t hide her anger at him. He abandoned her. He abandoned everyone. Wilma was living three doors down from Sam and Sean’s apartment. She had found a nice woman in the hospital and they were quite happy together.
While we walked back the apartment, I made a rash decision. “Guys,” I said, my voice subtlety trembling. They turned towards me. “I think I’m going to leave Mars too. There’s just… a lot that hurts about being on… on…” I broke down. Was it because my brother was dead? Because I was alone? Because it would hurt less to be with them and the memories they inspired than alone on Mars? I don’t know. Maybe I never will. What matter in that moment, in that instant, was that they held me. They held me like they would Patrick. And I cried for what seemed like forever.
When we finally returned to the apartment, there was Lucas, covered in dried blood. His curly black hair covering a scar across his forehead. He smiled and said, “hey.” And then he collapsed onto the floor.
Long Ago in an American Spring.
9/2/2019-11/15/19
No comments:
Post a Comment