Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (5 page)

Eight grabbed Seven, afraid that her mind might drag her back into the past, and she walked alongside him in the dark. Panting for air, Seven nevertheless remained still as the building shook from the force of their attacker’s presence outside. Eight’s senses fixed themselves on the trembling. With each step the monster took outside, it jostled free a rain of dust and dirt from the windows and bannisters.

Eight silently begged for the monster to lose interest, to decide that they were too much work for too little reward, and when the trembling lessened she expelled a breath of terror. As the monster gave up and wandered away, stability returned. Thanks in part to the dust jostled loose from the windows, the light grew and revealed the interior of the room to the newcomers.

Sloping rows of colorless chairs led to an old wooden stage, draped in dusty gray sheets. Chairs, tables, fallen chandeliers, and broken desks were gathered on the stage, probably looted from the lower levels and secluded rooms of the building.

The ransacked items were shoved aside to clear room for a lone, round table etched from white granite. Bright and clean and new, the granite table was unlike the ancient essence of the building in every imaginable way.

“What is this place?” Eight asked.

“The Befrir Opera House,” Seven answered. Eight marveled at his knowledge, her mouth agape. “I read it in on a sign in the hallway,” he gave her a wry smile. She smirked.

Eight took the lead and wandered up to the stage using the stairs to its left. There she examined the white table critically.

“Look,” she hissed.

Twelve notches in the surface of the table were indented at equal spaces. Of the twelve spaces, eight held roses. Of those eight roses, seven were dead and wilted. One was still alive. Eight laid the roses belonging to her and Seven in empty indents, so that ten roses occupied their spaces on the table. Two were left empty.

“Strange,” Seven muttered.

“Well,” Eight sighed, unable to discern the meaning. “At least the monster is gone.”

“It doesn’t like this place,” a third voice announced. Sitting amongst the old furniture was a man who appeared to be in the same age range as Seven and Eight. His hair was long and dark, his skin was pale, and he lay stretched across a dusty sofa. “It chased me in here a few hours ago.”

This was the owner of the other living rose, Eight deduced. “Why did you stay in here?” she asked him.

“Because a few minutes later I heard music. I thought if I stayed, I might hear it again,” he said bitterly.

“Music?” wondered Seven.

“What music?” Eight pressed, walking towards the man on the couch.

“A stupid tune I can’t remember and words that don’t make any sense,” his bitter voice recounted. “I’m an artist! Not a songwriter! But I feel obsessed with it. Like I need to know the music to know myself.” When he hummed the tune it was like being hypnotized, and before Eight knew what was happening Seven was speaking:

“Day of wrath! Oh day of mourning!”

“See fulfilled the Founders’ warning,” continued Eight.

“Haven and Earth in ashes burning!” the other man chanted, snapping his fingers victoriously.

“The song. We each know a piece of it,” Eight observed, assembling the clues. “We had roses. Each of us.”

“Why would we know parts of the same song?” Seven demanded. “And what do roses have anything to do with it?”

“We’re meant to find each other,” the man said. “The song. The roses. They’re the only things tying together the people still alive in this city.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Eight, her mathematical mind spinning to work, “is that I assume you had a rose?” The other man nodded diligently, pointing to the third, living, rose. “Ours are alive. The seven others are dead. Unless I’m looking too much into the symbolism, seven others came but don’t seem to be around. Two are unaccounted for.”

Bothered by something, Seven spoke up.

“What’s your name?” he snapped at the other.

“Two-Five-Two-Zero,” he replied automatically.

“Can we call you Twenty?” Seven asked. The tall and wiry man shrugged indifferently at the designation. “What was the first thing you remember?”

“Throwing up near what looked like the city’s power center. Northwest of here. That monster came tromping around and chased me to this area. I’ve been here a few hours,” Twenty recalled, gesturing dramatically at their old surroundings. “I wanted to draw something,” he picked up a blank canvas leaning against the couch he rested on, “But there aren’t any supplies.”

“Tragic,” Seven remarked.

Twenty reverently set the canvas down before he spoke. “Something happened to this city that either killed everyone inside of it or drove the citizenry away,” he said, objecting to Seven’s condescending tone. Twenty paced around the granite table, passing behind Eight and Seven. “By the looks of it, whatever happened took place a long time ago. Which I find strange because none of us recall our lives before dawn today.”

Eight found herself at odds with Twenty. Unlike Seven, Twenty projected an awkward and aloof attitude, as if he was acting out a persona. The more Twenty spoke, the less Eight listened. A disappointment, given that Twenty was one of the city’s three survivors. She wondered if that fact bothered him and decided that his behavior came from insecurity, not malice.

“Maybe it was that monster,” Eight suggested. She pushed her hair behind her head and sighed, unwilling to let the creature become an obstacle. How could they get the information they needed when nobody lived to share it with them? Where could they begin in a city this size?

The idea came to her in a flash; energized, Eight’s eyes lit up.

“What is it?” Seven growled, seeing the expression she wore.

“I know how to find out what happened!”

“How?” Twenty demanded, suddenly ablaze with curiosity.

“Every city has some type of record center: a library, a city hall, a repository of information. I think if we explore outside a bit, we should be able to find a directory or a map to give us a heading.”

Seven smiled. “And once we get to a hall of records, we find out what happened,” he said, appreciating the plan. His positivity brought a hint of pride to Eight’s posture.

“You want to go back outside where the bloodthirsty monster is roaming about?” Twenty scoffed with exaggerated volume, piecing the plan together. His expression, angry and nauseated, reflected the bad taste his words left in his mouth. “That’s insane,” he concluded. “Why go anywhere when it’s clear that the monster ate everybody?”

Eight didn’t understand the nature of the argument. To her, they either stayed in the opera house and died of starvation or took their chances outside. “I’ll go with you,” Seven volunteered.

Exhaling a tiny breath, Eight realized that she feared Seven being swayed by Twenty more than going outside. “If the monster killed everyone, it seems to have miraculously botched killing the three of us. Besides, whatever occurred here took place a really long time ago,” Seven said to Twenty, and Eight realized that her friend was turning the tables on the malcontent.

Seven was trying to convince Twenty to come with them. “How is it that we woke up so long afterwards? What happened to our memories? These are questions we have in common,” Seven pointed out, trading his condescension for diplomacy.

For the loyalty Seven showed Eight, she decided to mend his injuries more often. She tried to hide the admiration she stared at him with and turned her gaze to Twenty. “Are you staying or will you come with us?” Eight asked testily.

Twenty was undecided.

“When in doubt, bet on the scientist,” Seven advised Twenty.

Looking like he might be sick again, Twenty shrugged.

“Whatever. Can’t remember enough of my life to value it anyways,” and he moved to close the space between them. “I wonder if those dead roses belonged to fools like us. People who didn’t realize that monsters are typically responsible for empty cities and broken stuff.”

“There’s really only one way to find out for sure,” Eight replied. She turned and jumped down from the stage with Seven following at a close distance. Twenty’s irritated grunting and shuffling to catch up indicated that he was in tow as well.

“Everyone else being dead is no reason to stop making dumb decisions,” Twenty complained, unhappy to be cooperating, but pleased to remind them of it.

After returning to the city’s streets an awkward silence overcame them. Seven and Eight, having become comfortable with one another only recently, were forced to contend with Twenty’s unpleasant personality. For as big as it was, the city became surprisingly claustrophobic when it was being traversed with stiff companions. As she debated it in her head, Eight concluded that the staggering vacancy of a city designed for millions bothered her the most.

Not just hundreds or thousands but millions. Each unoccupied apartment tower, villa, and shop implied that once upon a time an unthinkable hive of millions had occupied the city. It was a number that resonated in her mind and tugged at her heart.

Men, women, and children had lived and died in this city, victims of an invisible catastrophe that wiped them out. Could the monster have been responsible? Too much of the city was intact for it to have personally exterminated the citizens. Perhaps it had besieged them and the residents had fled into the surrounding land?

“I have some theories,” Seven declared, speaking directly to Eight but making his voice loud enough for Twenty to hear. Since leaving through the opera house’s back door Seven’s silence had been infectious and his deference to Eight essentially qualified her as the leader. While she appreciated his support, she suspected that Seven did so to keep her in his protective sights.

Twenty, on the other hand, lazed several dozen feet behind them. He stopped to admire every empty window and towering building that caught his attention. His tactile senses controlled his every impulse. Twenty would drag his finger over grimy surfaces just to leave a streak, he wrote his number into the dead soil of tree boxes beside apartment entrances.

He was testing his senses, smelling and touching and listening to everything that landed within his short attention span. He refused to keep up, refused to assign the urgency to their journey that he conversely accused them of lacking.

Eight’s solution was to ignore Twenty while Seven pretended not to care. She could feel Seven’s attention fixated on her, watching as she read what few street signs remained. That Seven alone maintained a vigilant watch for the monster’s return made Eight feel safe, it enabled her to lead them onward. She wanted to tell him of her gratitude but when she thought of speaking to Seven beyond what was necessary, her voice disappeared.

Talking about the next steps in her journey prevented her from asking more serious and personal questions. Could he remember anything? If so, what? Did he find her anywhere near as annoying as she found Twenty? Seven cleared his throat and Eight realized that she hadn’t acknowledged his previous statement. Her face burning with humiliation, she said, “I want to hear them.”

“Me too,” Twenty chirped, arriving at their sides once more. “Can’t wait for some more good news,” he added, his voice layered with sarcasm.

“Shut up,” Eight snapped. “Continue,” she said to Seven.

“Millions of people lived here. That’s my best guess until I see a map of this place. If you look around you’ll see that each building is still standing. There are no broken windows, no blast marks, nothing to indicate a struggle.” Eight’s head moved up and down slowly as she listened. “We haven’t seen any bodies or graveyards. Nothing to indicate the inhabitants knew their end was coming.”

“Then what do you think happened?” Twenty pushed, impatient for the revelation.

“They were taken by surprise. Utter and absolute surprise. Something in their city, possibly something they knew about, killed every living thing, disposed of the bodies, and did almost no damage in the process. If there were any signs of a struggle it did a damn good job cleaning up after itself.”

“So…” Twenty began, strolling around Seven and Eight. “You’re saying that something tore through the city and gobbled up its victims, then left no traces of itself?” he tapped his head theatrically. “Sound like anything you know?” he asked patronizingly.

“We saw that monster ripping up four blocks,” Eight countered. “It leaves a very noticeable trail.”

“Spare me! That monster killed those people. It probably snuck up on them in the middle of the night, while they were all sleeping, and ate them as a midnight snack. Simple as that,” Twenty said, dismissing their opinions.

“Then where’s the damage?” Seven debated with Twenty. “It chased us and destroyed everything around it. If that monster went into homes, apartments, office buildings, sewers, every place survivors might hide…then why is this city still here?”

“How should I know? Maybe the citizens were dumb like us and came outside as soon as things got quiet. Your theory doesn’t account for how this city is still standing, either,” Twenty barked back at him. When he saw the looks of disapproval he countered by asking, “If it wasn’t the monster then what emptied out a place this big?”

“A dozen possibilities. Biological warfare, radioactive fallout, viral outbreak,” Eight replied, summoning the scientific knowledge that lay embedded in her brain.