I lifted Claire and slipped into Mike’s vacated seat. He was gone, even if the others didn’t know it. If the animals out there didn’t get him, the fog would. Before I pressed my foot down, I glanced over at Claire. It was in her eyes, silent tears, and a concession. We moved forward, the back window was gone and the fog was coming, we needed to move. I pressed hard and I couldn’t see the ground moving by outside, we could have been going 50 miles or 5 miles and I wouldn’t know. Bright light. Crunch. The screams poured from every mouth, except mine.
It was a hard stop and everything threw itself forward. The kids were all in the front now still screaming. We had crashed through the diner window.
“Quick, get inside, hold your breath.” We all moved. The kids screams turned to sobs stifled by sealed lips. Claire took up both her kids and the cook took Janey in his arms. I had the card box.
We were through the doors and the fog was spreading like high tide into the diner, it had spread throughout but not as thick as outside, we could still see.
We found ourselves panting in the back room with the door closed. The cook put Janey down then ran back out.
“Sarah is out there still.” He said, with a shaky voice. He never returned.
It was the kids me and Claire and the fog. A gap in the bottom of the door let it seep slowly filtering into the small room. It was over. I could barely hold myself up. Janey’s big teary eyes centred on mine, helplessly searching me for an answer. I had nothing. I had a box of knives an empty flare gun and some sheets of paper.
I took her in my arms and kissed her. I pulled her in, and I could feel her joints moving, the buttons of her spine as I squeezed tighter. I kissed her and set her down.
I thought again about the dream. The boat swinging side to side against the weight of my steps as I move to her. The panic and the rage, the confusion it all came. I thought about Sabre. I thought about Mike Fisken now dead or now an animal; I couldn’t think which was worse. And his kids, perhaps too young to understand. The only place, the only haven was the chiller. The chiller.
The door swung open. It was Mike. The fog swirled behind him. His eyes were hell red and blood steeped from his crown. His white tank top was now maroon and his fingers contorted. He moved slowly and Claire Gasped.
“Mike?” she began.
He stepped toward her. After all the hell and beating he was standing. But no longer him. A version of him that knew no love for his wife or his kids. An animal in the shell of a man. He stepped slowly eyeing me like a chimp. I snatched the biggest knife from the box and pulled Janey behind me. He turned to Claire and moved his face close to hers. He was looking at her through eyes clouded red, and under a heavy brow, thicker and lower than before. She was the only one who didn’t look weary and old. She still looked young, made up and pretty.
I moved slowly behind him, carefully tiptoeing out of his sight. His back was wide but he was shorter than me. I wasn’t going to beat him in a fistfight, but if I got it right, all I would need is the knife. I forced it into him, putting all my weight through the handle through his back. He slammed back and let out a cry. He pressed me hard up against the wall, his short wet hair pressing against my lips. Warm blood was spilling out over my hand.
“Daddy,” the young girl called. She ran to her father. I still can’t exactly describe what happen. It was as though he recognised her, somewhere deep down. He took her up and held her. I let the blades handle slip and he stumbled with her still in his arms, falling through the door. She hit the ground with him. Then he stood again, blood came from everywhere, he was an ugly man at that stage, like a bull after the bandileros blades. Stumbling, he fell with her and like that, he was gone, outside of the door. I quickly stood, followed them out and took up the little girl. She had a good grip on him but with a decent yank she came. I took her back into the room and slammed the door.
Claire’s tears came on again. She patted them away and held her children who wept with her. I remembered where my thoughts were going before. The Chiller. The Chiller is the key.
“The Chiller, Claire. The chiller is the last place.”
She watched me talk and nodded but her eyes revealed her confusion.
“Not us Claire, we will sap up the food and oxygen to quick.”
“No Daddy,” Janey began, suddenly understanding.
Claire’s face washed with realisation. She looked to the door, the gap in the bottom. Even if we blocked it, it would seep through and it wouldn’t be long. She looked back to me, nodded and like that, it was decided. We picked up the children and I covered out mouths with our shirts.
“Hold your breath kids,” she said and for the first time she really looked like a mother. Her eyes weary and the first traces of a wrinkle started at the corners of her eyes. It was a sober austere look, but goddamn did she finally look like a mother.
We carried them. Janey in my arms and her two little ones in hers. As we pushed through the door toward the chiller, stepping over Mike’s shell, I kissed Janey and told her I loved her. I had never meant it more. I wanted to hold her forever. I pressed my flooding eyes against her shoulder. Then pulled the handle. The chiller opened with a gasp and then, right there we put them inside. Good-bye and the door slammed, like a gavel. It felt like velvet was rubbing against my eyes but I kept them open and turned the temperature on the chiller door until it was at its highest, ten degrees.
We held hands on our way back to the room. I could hear whimpering in the dark, it was the cook; or rather, an outline of the cook clutching his knees and trembling alone. The fog had got him.
I cried. It wasn’t the velvet against my eyes but the quiet acceptance that I would never see my daughter again. I shook. I want to tell you how much I hurt but I can’t, I won’t relive it on these pages. I thought again about emotions, about how we are supposed to control them, acknowledge them. But sometimes we are so desperate, so beat that no matter what we force into our mind, no matter what we do, where we are, who we are, we will return to the state we were born in. That’s the most natural you will ever see someone, when the desperation tears down the façade like a cold claw through a projector screen. So I won’t go there, I can’t put it down on these pages. Just believe me when I say, no matter what the fog did to my mind, I died when that chiller door closed.
And the dream. It still didn’t make sense, it was still haunting and dark and I hated it. I want to say it was all a metaphor or some bullshit prediction, but the truth is it didn’t mean a goddamn thing. Not here, not before I die. All I can say is imagination is a sonofabitch, call it inspiration or motivation. We are animals and imagination does nothing for the lions darting across the plains or the birds diving into the sea. They forever move about in a fog. All it has brought me is the demons. Under a blazing sky or a bitter storm, anything my mind wants I can have it and god or anyone else won’t take that from me, not yet.
It might have been hours or perhaps days. Claire and I held each other and sometimes we kissed, telling each other it would all be okay. Telling each other the fog would one day disappear in a breath drawn by God’s mouth. Our kids would be happy. Sometimes I thought about Janey, I imagined her happy again, at her high school prom. I saw her husband; he was handsome and worked as a pilot like me. But he stayed with her. He got back when he could. He took breaks to be with her and still told her he loved her and would do anything to spend time with her. She was happy in my mind, a painter with a kid of own. My god was she beautiful. So beautiful. I smiled a bigger happier smile than ever before and it may have been the strangest thing Claire had ever seen.
The fog still slowly seeped and I could feel it changing me. I felt stronger urges towards her. I could feel my memories slipping. Sometimes it took a few seconds to place together a sentence before I spoke. We decided to leave the lights off; Claire suggested it’s better to let the fog take us then the soulless bodies lingering outside. My Harley Davidson held a still flame as we lay in each other’s arms. Her arm slumped across her face cast a band of shadow over her cheeks.
I watched her and that’s when the urge overwhelmed us. I was inside of her and when we moved, we gasped, sucking in the poison that would leave us as animals, again. I found some solace in her, a good-bye kiss to my world.When it was over we held each other and in her last sane thought, it came.
“If this is it, if this is how it ends, if we forget each other. I don’t want it to be in vain. I don’t want to die, disappear without a trace. I loved Mike, and as I slowly lose my grip on civility, as I became like you said ‘an animal.’ I might never love again. Right now, I love you and I don’t know why, in an hour I might not know what love is at all. It’s taking me so long to order these words so I know I am slipping. But listen. You have a pad and you have a pen, and you have all the time in the world.”
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