The Dead Circle (18 page)

A relentless rumbling noise radiates from the lot. It’s the sound of a million feet hitting pavement over and over. Each foot hitting the ground by itself is almost silent, but combined with the cacophony of two hundred thousand other footfalls in that exact instant, the sound is audible for almost two blocks. It’s not a crisp disciplined marching noise. Instead the steps are random and chaotic, causing the sound to congeal into a low-frequency thunder.

Over the weeks, a new sound joined the footfalls and gradually increased in volume until it was as loud as a rock concert. It rose to such a frantic pitch that long-term exposure would have caused hearing damage. The sound is not coming from anything human, or even ex-human. The decaying flesh at the bottom of the circle has provided a breeding ground for hundreds of millions of flies. Great dense clouds of large black house flies buzz over the heads of the Fred and Gingers. They climb all over the bodies. They walk all over their arms and legs and faces. At times they are so thickly packed in the air that they literally block out the sun, throwing sections of the circle into shadow. The deafening buzzing noise roars on endlessly, raising and lowering in pitch and intensity at random intervals. The flies are not bothered by the end of humanity. They’re feeding, breeding and thriving.

***

November first goes by without anybody noticing. Nobody stresses about paying their rent, the Lions are not worried about dropping out of playoff contention… again. The days are growing shorter and the air is growing colder.

Chris and Sarah have still not been able to leave the library. They got close one morning, but in the time it took them to get their weather gear on, clouds rolled over the lake threatening death-bringing precipitation. Sarah wanted to risk it, but Chris talked her out of it. They are growing increasingly frustrated, increasingly nervous and increasingly bored.

“You know what they forget to warn you about in all of the apocalypse movies? Boredom.” Chris deals another hand of blackjack to his wife.

It’s late morning. The sun is shining, but a couple of clouds to the northwest keep them trapped indoors. Chris and Sarah sit at a table with a bowl of chips and a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. 

“Boredom? Every time it rains, we’re in mortal peril of being Gingerized!” Sarah folds.

“I think I’d be Fredized.”

“Indeed. Who says English doesn’t have masculine and feminine verbs?”

“Ok, so there’s the occasional mortal peril thing, but what about the rest of the time? No TV, no internet. No contact with anybody but each other. And we can’t go out because it’s too dangerous to leave the library.”

Sarah stares sadly at all of the empty bookshelves surrounding them. “And let’s face it, we keep calling this a library, but there are barely any books to read.”

Chris smiles. “You
had
to get a Kindle.”

Sarah doesn’t respond. Instead, she bites her lip for a second scrunching up her face.

“You’re either deciding something or you’ve got gas. What gives?”

She laughs. “Well, I was going to save it for your birthday…”

“Save what?”

“I have a surprise for you.”

Chris sets down his cards, intrigued. “Really? Awesome! What is it?”

“We would have to go outside for a second.” Chris starts to protest, but she interrupts him before he can speak. “Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere far. We’re literally just going next door.”

Chris thinks for a second, weighing the risk. “I don’t know. There are clouds.”

“Oh come on! The clouds aren’t over us. We’re going thirty feet tops. If it will make you feel better, we can put on our weather gear.”

Chris hesitates. “Just next door? Nowhere else?” Sarah nods. “OK. Fine. Let’s do it.”

Ten minutes later, they stand at their front door, staring out the window.

“Looks clear to me. Clouds over there, but they don’t look that threatening.”

Chris shakes his head. “Boy, if you get us killed for something stupid, I’m going to come back to life just so I can strangle you.”

“Come on husband! It’s totally awesome. You’re going to love it.”

“What is it?!”

“I told you it’s a surprise! Come on.”

Sarah opens the door and they step onto the deserted street. She takes him by the hand and walks him to the entrance of the office building that sits next to the library.

“What are we going to do here? I’ve been trying to avoid cubicle farms my whole life.”

“Trust me. It will be worth it.”

They walk through the main entrance and step into the lobby. A large desk dominates the open room that is strewn with random bits of clothing. Most of the clothes look like they were owned by the security guard and the receptionist who normally would be sitting sentry at this hour. Behind the desk, two elevators lead up to the office floors above.

“We’re going up to four.”

Chris starts walking in the direction of the elevators. Sarah watches him for a second and laughs.

“Where are you going? There’s no power dummy.”

Chris shakes his head. “Oh right. Of course. Man, you spend years taking stuff for granted. It looks almost normal in here. My subconscious forgot that the world ended. I almost signed in at security.”

“The stairs are over here.”

“Wait, so you’ve been here before?”

Sarah ignores him and pulls him into the stairwell. They climb up four flights of stairs and Chris reaches to open the door.

“Hold on. You need to close your eyes.”

“What for?”

“It’s a surprise. Just do it!”

Chris closes his eyes and she guides him into the large open room. There is a field of almost identical cubicles buttressed by small offices on the east and west sides of the building. There are no lights on, but the cloud-spotted sun shines through the floor-to-ceiling windows and illuminates the room. At this hour it should have been jam-packed with miserable office workers and temps making and receiving phone calls. Today it is silent.

“Keep your eyes closed. Take three more steps forward… Good. Now, listen to me closely and follow my instructions. OK?”

“OK. Tell me what to do.”

“Keeping your eyes shut, count to fifty, then open them.”

Chris laughs. “This is ridiculous wife. Alright. Fifty…forty-nine…”

When he finishes counting and opens his eyes, Sarah is gone. On the desk in front of him sits a laser-tag gun and a vest with a sensor on it. A note reads: “Put on the sensor. Pick up the gun. You are already being hunted.”

Chris cackles with glee as he puts the vest on, grabs the gun and ducks down. He runs down the aisle and dives under a cubicle. 

A half hour later, after crashing her way over the top of the Assistant to the Executive VP of Marketing’s desk, Sarah shoots Chris for the final point. His vest flashes and makes a sad beeping noise.

Laughing, Chris picks up a foam stress-ball from the debris she knocked off the desk and tosses it at her. “You cheated!”

“You’re dead bucko! Dead people can’t talk.”

“Fine. Fine. You win.”

“Well I win the first event.”

“First?”

“This is your birthday triathlon! Duh!”

“Wait. When on earth did you set this up?”

Sarah laughs. “I have lots of time while you sleep in until eleven every morning like a teenager.”

“I’m a musician! I don’t work on a nine to five schedule.” He stops. “Wait a minute-”

“Don’t worry! I was careful! We should keep moving. We have much more to do!”

Chris kisses her on the mouth. “You are amazing wife. Well, what’s up next?”

“Follow me up to the fifth floor!”

They take the stairs up another flight and find another floor filled with more identical rows of cubicles. A series of arrows have been drawn on the carpet with green duct tape that map out a twisting track through the workstations. At their feet there are two children’s tricycles.

“Oh, this is awesome. Where did you get these?”

“Never you mind that. Three laps around. Follow the arrows.”

They sit down on the tricycles looking somewhat ridiculous. Chris teeters on his seat like a circus bear.

“This isn’t fair! I can barely get my knees under the handlebars.” 

“What’s that? Oh, sorry, I can’t hear excuses.”

Sarah tears off, headed down the carpet leaving Chris laughing and desperately trying to get his bike in motion. He feels a bit like Danny Torrance riding his big wheels through the Overlook Hotel. Feeling the illusion of speed because he is so close to the ground, he takes tight turns down corridors of desks. He almost topples over taking a sharp left turn, but eventually is able to catch up with Sarah. Giggling, she has acquired a ruler and tries to stick it into the spokes of his tricycle. Chris responds by squirting her with a huge bottle of hand cream he swiped from one of the desks.

It was a close race, but Chris manages to squeak out a victory by knocking a stack of files off a shelf and into Sarah’s path.

Out of breath from the pedaling, Sarah throws a couple of folders at him. “You cheated husband!”

“What’s that? Oh, sorry, I can’t hear excuses!”

Another stack of papers gets tossed at him. He just grins. “So, we’re tied. What’s the final event?”

“Bowling!”

“Bowling? How do we bowl??”

“Sixth floor. Let’s go!”

When they reach the sixth floor, Chris sees that Sarah has set up two bowling lanes in the aisles between the cubicles. At the end of the aisles, in front of the windows, there are two sets of ‘pins’ made up of glass vases, computer monitors, lamps and other things she knows the little boy in him would love to smash with a bowling ball.

“Oh no way!” Chris says with glee.

“I found the ball in one of the executive offices. It was kind of obvious what we had to do.”

“Of course.”

“OK. Me first.”

Sarah rears back and rolls the ball down the carpet as fast as she can. It doesn’t go straight at the ‘headpin’ that was actually a glass trophy won by the original owner of the ball, but it does crash into an old CRT monitor and a ceramic bowl making a tremendously satisfying shattering noise. Glass flies everywhere and Chris and Sarah cheer.

Picking the ball up and inspecting the wreckage, Chris counts the ‘pins.’ I’d say you got four, but I’ll give you a bonus one for smashing the monitor.”

“OK. Five is the number to beat. Let’s see what you got hotshot.”

They walk down to Chris’s lane and he takes aim at a tacky crystal sculpture of a dolphin and a large glass bowl of jelly beans at the head of the pyramid of pins.

“Oh I’ve got this.”

He pulls the ball back and throws it with every ounce of strength he has. The little voice that tells fortyish-year-old men to over-exert themselves to impress women is very a loud one. Two things happen in that moment. One, Chris pulls every muscle in his back. And two, the ball doesn’t roll down the carpet, instead it catches on his finger for just long enough to send it flying high into the air, and grazing the dusty ceiling tiles. It drops down with a tremendous bang five feet in front of the pins. Then it bounces over them and slams into the floor-to-ceiling windows.  They explode with a thundering crash raining glass down six stories to the street. There is a terrific cracking noise when the ball hits the sidewalk and splits into two spinning pieces.

Chris and Sarah freeze for a second, processing what just happened. Then they burst into hysterical laughter. Tears stream down their faces as Sarah falls to the ground clutching her stomach. Chris tries to reach down to her, but is stopped by the clenching pain in his back. This causes them to laugh even more hysterically. It takes three minutes for them to collect themselves enough to speak again.

“I’m too old to have fun.” Chris clutches his back and tries to stretch.

“You would have done the same thing when you were twenty.”

“Of course, but I wouldn’t have thrown my back out!”

“Let’s get you home and give you some Advil He-Man.”

“Yeah.” They walk towards the stairwell for a moment. Chris grabs her shoulder and stops her. “Hey. Do you know how amazing it is to be your husband?”

“Almost as amazing as it is to be your wife. Now kiss me for real you doofus.”

*

The next day, the boredom returns with the grey and cloudy weather. Chris noodles on the piano while Sarah re-reads a paperback novel she found under the bed.

Chris sighs. “I tell you what I’d give my right arm for: a cold beer and a Redwings game.”

“Then we need to get serious about finding a generator.”

“How’s that going to help me watch the Redwings?”

“For the cold beer dumbass.”

Chris sighs. This is a conversation they’ve been rolling over and over for two weeks.

“We’d have to keep it fueled. Where are we going to get enough gasoline? Plus it’s going to be noisy. We don’t want to attract the Fred and Gingers.”

“The dance party doesn’t seem to have much interest in us. Or in anything.”

“Look, I know that I didn’t take this seriously right away. But you were right the first time. We can’t take any unnecessary risks. We’ve all seen this movie. People make mistakes. People die. We can’t take chances.”

“The mistake would be not preparing for winter. How do you expect us to stay warm? With a generator we could get electric heaters, refrigeration, lights, power.”

Chris pushes his chair back from the table. Annoyed.

“You think I don’t know that? Every day, all I think about is how to keep you safe. Fed. Warm. I
know
we need it. But last time we went out, we almost died. I’m not in a hurry to go back out there. You step in a puddle you die. A drop of rain hits you in the head, you die. There’s fucking zombies out there! And who knows what else?! I can’t keep us safe outside of the library!” Chris’ face is red, he’s on the verge of tears. He stops to catch his breath.

“Are you finished?”

Chris sits back down and puts his head in his hands.

“First off, you’re being sexist. Why is it your job to keep us safe? To keep
me
safe? That’s bullshit. We keep each other safe. Our survival depends on both of us, not just you. You’re being an idiot.”