Sunday, August 29, 2010

Hope

I got inspired by all the driving we did recently, so my entry is both long and has some driving in it. I hope you enjoy this little piece of fiction, which I wrote and rewrote in my head before finally getting it typed out.
I would probably change it even more if I had more time.


The Longest Drive

The steering wheel shudders and the gas pedal vibrates as we hurtle down the empty, dark highway.

My sister flicks her lighter and touches the flame to the end of her cigarette, her face pale in the reflected light of the high beams.

There are no stars, no light to be seen, no movement except our car.

We continue driving into the black, silent night.

The end of my sister's cigarette glows red as she sucks carcinogen-laden air through the filter. She blows out a stream of smoke, which fills the front of the car due to the fact that she has not bothered to open the window.

“Mind not killing me while you kill yourself?” I ask, swiveling a loose fist around in the air in her general direction. I look at her sideways, watching the gray pavement slipping beneath the Ford through my peripheral vision.

She sucks her teeth as a thin line of smoke climbs from the end of the loosely held cancer-stick, but reaches for the handle and begins the fight to roll down her window.

“Fucking manual windows,” she bitches, popping open the ashtray to set the cigarette down. She needs both hands to wind the window, one to operate the handle and the other to hold the window in alignment. “Why are we still driving this piece of shit?”

I crack my own window a few inches. “Because it's my piece of shit, that's why.” I can tell she is rolling her eyes, but she doesn't mean it anyway. She's just as attached to this little piece of history as I am. It is one of few things we have left.

There is silence as she sucks on her cigarette and we continue into the darkness. This is the worst time of night – when there is nothing to see except the gray pavement, when you can become hypnotized by the flash of the dotted lines fading on the roadway. Time passes so slowly. There is little to talk about.

In the distance there is a glint of light of metal. I press the brake, and the brakes shake back at me with rage that I want to slow. The engine whines, then chokes, then sputters, and I slide my left foot onto the brake pedal so I can lay on a gentle bit of gas. The delicate balancing act of slowing the car without stalling takes my concentration, but I can see the glint of light manifesting into a bumper, then a car, the headlights revealing the building behind it.

“Super. A gas station. I need more cigs.” My sister would unbuckle her seatbelt now if she had buckled it in the first place.

“It's a stupid habit. You're gonna kill yourself.”

“I wish.” The car rolls to a stop with the engine complaining, but it doesn't stall out. I reach for the lever on the side of the steering wheel and shift it into park, which takes a certain level of force and finesse. She is out of the car before I even reach.

I turn the ignition off but leave the key turned to keep the headlights on, stamping on the floor button to turn the high beams off. My sister crosses the beams just as they shift to normal, and she looks like a ghost gliding past, stalking her way to the gas station doors. The station itself is covered in dust and dirt, like a tchotchki on a shelf in my grandmother's house. There are no lights, no indication that this was ever a functional station except for the numbers on the pumps.

I open the door with a loud creak. It is the only sound in the darkness outside of our breath and steps. Leaning down, I pull the release for the hood and the trunk, then slam the door shut. The mint green paint on the car looks nothing like mint or green in the meager light of the headlights. It looks gray, like the rest of the world.

My sister is pulling fruitlessly on the doors to the station. “It's fucking locked,” she says, minor irritation in her voice. She is not surprised.

“Come get a light,” I call, my voice dampened by the darkness and nothing. There is no breeze, just stale air, like a room left alone too long. I quickly open the hood. My finger spins in a little circle around the wing nut holding the cover over the air filter. I have done this a thousand times, and it is almost a game to see how smoothly and swiftly I can get the wing nut and cover off, shake out the filter, and place everything for when I will start the car again.

My sister crosses my left and stalks to the trunk, swinging it open so firmly it bounces back down and nearly closes. She shoves it open again, keeping her hand on the edge as if to tell it there is no choice. I circle around to stand next to her, and reach around the various containers and equipment to pull out a wind-up flashlight, which I hand to her.

“Here. You want me to help?” I pull out the catch basin, a towel, a funnel, a gas can, and some tools, piling them neatly next to the car.

She nods.

I pull a small sledge hammer from the trunk and leave my pile, following her to the front doors of the gas station. With the side of my fist I rub a circle in the dirt on the window, making a space enough to see as she winds the flashlight. I peer into the darkness and she angles the flashlight toward the sides where she thinks the counter might be.

“It looks like there are some, don't know if they're your brand,” I say. She shrugs. “Check if there's any canned goods or anything useful too.” I motion her back and start working with the hammer, hitting hard against the center top of the glass. The glass spiderwebs and bends inwards, the two light sources oddly accenting the cracks. I continue to bash away at the glass until it hangs from the frame about waist high, then push it down with my boot until she can safely step over.

The inside of the store is spotless, like the store owner had just locked up hours ago. My sister steps in and stalks straight for the counter, rummaging around with the flashlight in one hand. I look at the shelves illuminated by the headlights and see what looks like cans of soup.

“Grab the cans and anything else that hasn't rotted. There should be a bag in the backseat if there's a lot.” My sister grunts acknowledgment and I leave her to her ransacking. I go back to my pile and carry it over to the car we saw on the approach.

By the time I finish draining what gas remains in the tank and filtering it into a container, my sister has loaded up the backseat with her spoils – soups, Chef Boyardee, bottled drinks, some packages of freeze-dried vacuum-sealed something-or-other, and several packs of cigarettes.

“Shit! Lighters!” She hurries back into the store and comes out with the entire display that sits next to the register.

“I think you're set,” I say dryly as I finish packing the trunk. There is enough space for several dead bodies in this thing, a fact which I am grateful for, as it allows us to carry plenty of supplies, fuel, and tools to make survival that much easier.

My sister balances her lighter display on top of the cans on the floor of the back seat, rips the cellophane off a pack of cigarettes, and uses one of the new lighters to light one up.

I roll my eyes, but she can't see it. Carefully I close the trunk and circle back around to the front.

“Ready?” I query, and she nods. I point at the cig. “Wanna blow us up?”

“It won't,” she snaps, but she stabs the red end at the side of the car anyway, putting it out on the gray-mint-green paint, leaving a dark smudge. She places it between her lips and climbs in the passenger side, scooting over so she can operate the ignition and gas.

“Go ahead.” She turns the key and the engine turns over with a half-hearted growl. She manages to get the gas right on the first try and the engine flares to life, roaring as she revs it a few times. I put the filter cover back in place and swirl the wing nut back on, then climb inside the car.

We pull out of the gas station and back onto the endless gray highway.

This scene has played out so many times I wonder if we're on some sort of loop.

It wasn't always like this. We used to have a normal life, before. But then, suddenly, it was like the rest of the world left. Went on vacation. One day, we're getting ready for bed, brushing our teeth, planning for tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, everyone is gone.

At first we thought there had been some sort of evacuation and they had missed us, somehow. It was preposterous, really, to think that we could have slept through some emergency where everyone else in our town had left, that no one would have wondered where we were. But that was what we thought, at first.

There was no power. The phones were dead. Not a single living soul was to be found. No people. No animals. No bugs. Nothing.

The sky was gray all the time, until it was black. We couldn't see the sun, or the stars.

We packed up the car with everything we could think of for an emergency. We still thought some disaster had struck, that maybe we would find an explanation.

We drove out of town, and to the next. There were still no people.

Everything was as if the people there had simply locked up and left. We thought maybe they had the same evacuation as we did. So we drove on.

It wasn't until we crossed the state line that the panic really set in.

There were no people. No animals. No bugs. Nothing. The air didn't move, the sun didn't shine. There was no sound but those which we made.

We ran out of gas.

I walked back to the closest gas station. The doors were locked, but there was a stand with plastic gas cans between two pumps. I tried to pump gas. The pumps were dead.

I would've broken down then if my sister hadn't been back at the car, waiting.

I figured out how to get the gas out of one of the cars parked in the lot. When I got back, my sister was huddled in the back seat in a blanket, her sobs drifting to nothing in the still air outside.

I put the gas in the car and drove.

We got better at finding supplies, keeping gas in the car. We learned how to open a can without a can opener, then made sure to grab several at the next shop we could break into. I got really good at breaking into stores.

My sister began to smoke, more to pass the time than out of any real need. I think it made her feel more alive, to feel the burn of the smoke in her lungs. Pain was real. Pain meant this wasn't a dream.

We continued to drive, to hunt, even as the fear that we were truly alone began to eat away at our hearts.

Now, I watch the broken lines as they flash on the roadway. My sister's cigarette flares as she takes a long drag. We drive into the darkness.

The darkness.

The never ending, silent, madness-inducing darkness.

The darkness...

...in which there is a light.

I see the light. My sister sees the light. I stop the car, slowing too quickly and stalling us out. I throw it into park, and we look at each other.

The light is moving in the distance, in the darkness. A noise which is not our car filters in the open windows. It grows slowly louder, by almost imperceptible amounts...

I open up the door. My sister opens her door. In tandem, we rise, leaving our doors ajar, to move in front of the car, into the light of the beams. My sister does not stalk, her cigarette lies forgotten on the pavement.

We stand, two figures outlined by the light. Two figures in the darkness. I reach out to take my sister's hand, and our shadows join.

The light approaches.

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