The Remaining Read online

  Suddenly the body is sucked back up and out and away from the window and the church.

  Everybody darts toward the back of the sanctuary, getting away from the glass and the monsters that hover outside it. Tommy wishes he could assure them that they’re safe, but he doesn’t feel safe in any way. He’s cursing in his mind and wondering how in the world they can get out of here now.

  They know we’re in here. They’ve heard us and probably seen us or felt us.

  Now what?

  That’s the question.

  Will we each be picked off one by one like the poor, unfortunate screaming soul outside? Ripped and tossed about like they did to Skylar?

  That’s not going to happen to us. We’re going to fight back.

  Tommy looks around. He just sees a bunch of frightened and unfamiliar faces. Even Jack looks defeated and weary.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Tommy says to any of them.

  But he’s not sure any of them are listening.

  31

  UNDERTOW

  “Mommy?”

  “What, Sky?”

  “Why didn’t I have any sisters?”

  “’Cause God decided that you were enough.”

  “Did you and Dad want more kids?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you sad that you didn’t have any more?”

  “No. You’re like having three girls.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “We were blessed with you, Skylar. You were an answer to many prayers. You still are.”

  Memories and conversations drift by like eyelids closing over her heart and soul. Skylar continues to feel the slow and steady dropping of everything: her energy, her emotions, her breathing, her resistance to the pain. With each breath, some little bit of her hurts more. Her body is so cold and continues to shake even though she’s damp with sweat. Her bones throb as if the flesh is being flayed off them. She’ll close her eyes and remember something random, like this conversation she had with her mother when she was just a little girl. Strange things that she hasn’t thought about for years.

  That’s because I’m dying and this is what happens when your body declines.

  Dan has been at her side the whole time. She’s been moved to another room without any other patients. She lies on a cot while Dan places a fresh, cold rag on her burning forehead.

  The nurse comes in to check on her. “How do you feel?”

  She wants to laugh and ask, “How do you think I feel?”

  The world decided to end on her wedding day. Not just start to come apart, but end.

  Her parents and one of her best friends are dead. Not sick but gone. Bye-bye.

  Some demon thing grabbed her and stuck her in the back and now she’s dying because of it.

  So yeah, I’m doing great, how are you doing?

  “I’ve been better,” she tells Rachel through teeth that can’t stop chattering.

  The room occasionally spins and Dan alternately looks close and then far away. She knows she’s seeing things and feeling things and this is all part of the bad thing that happens to dying people.

  She opens her eyes again and sees Dan’s sweet, innocent gaze, the kind that made her fall in love with him. The kind that looks like it’s about to break into a hundred million pieces right now.

  A fresh wave of pain crashes into her.

  “Please, Dan,” she gets out. “Please.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t take this. The pain. I’m burning. Please. Make it stop.”

  He squeezes her hand. “No. Just—hold on. Breathe.”

  Her stomach feels like a car is driving over it. Very slowly riding over it. Back and forth. This pressure that makes her feel like she can’t breathe. This crazy, awful aching.

  “I want you to do something for me,” she tells Dan. “Kill me. Please.”

  “Stop,” Dan tells her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Skylar can see the somber look on the nurse’s face. Her eyes close again for a brief moment.

  She can picture herself riding down the street on her old bike. So light, so carefree, the sky up above endless and warm and so inviting.

  Nothing terrible could ever come from those beautiful heavens above, right?

  Where are You, God? Why are You doing this?

  “I’ve given her the last dose of Vicodin we have,” Nurse Rachel tells Dan. Then she turns to talk to her. “Your pain should come down a little bit soon, sweetie.”

  “It’s burning. I feel like I’m in the middle of a forest fire and I still can’t stop this shaking. Please—I can’t—it’s just too much. Please . . .”

  As she closes her eyes again, this time she pictures something else. Something awful. A black, breathing specter in the shadows, smiling with bloodstained teeth, piercing her and shaking her and ready to kill her.

  Dan looks at her and says softly, “I’m sorry.”

  Skylar reaches for something and finds the lantern. In a blind, delirious fury, she imagines grabbing it and slamming it against Dan’s head. Instead she can barely keep the lantern steady in her grasp. Dan reaches out and takes it from her.

  “Kill me,” she screams out.

  Nobody is listening to her, so maybe that’ll get their attention.

  She’s suffocating and roasting and losing her mind here.

  Please just spare me get me out of here take this all of this away please Dan please God please.

  But they just stand there, over her, like she’s some kind of rat, some kind of anonymous patient, some kind of stranger.

  “It’s getting infected,” the nurse tells Dan. “We don’t have antibiotics.”

  “Dan,” Skylar almost spits out as she fights to keep her teeth from chipping away at each other. “Please, Dan, help me.”

  Her eyes close but she fights, hanging on, still hearing them talk, still thinking she’s alive even though she doesn’t want to be anymore.

  “Where can I get the medicine she needs?” her husband asks.

  My man my husband my main squeeze the love of my life the life that is only moments from ending.

  “My minivan,” the nurse says. “I have sample packets of penicillin. But it’s too dangerous to go out there.”

  Skylar wants to interject.

  I’ll go. Just give me the car keys and I’ll go. I can’t even feel my legs and my stomach feels like one giant bee keeps stinging it over and over again but it’s okay I’ll go.

  “Give me the keys,” Dan says.

  Skylar doesn’t know if she’s imagining this. Maybe all of this. Maybe she bumped her head during the bridal dance. Yeah, maybe that’s what happened and this is all some long, drawn-out bridal nightmare.

  “It’s not safe out there,” Rachel says.

  “You want to go out there with those things?” another voice says.

  This one sounds like Tommy.

  Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.

  Please film this, Tommy. Get a close-up of my chattering teeth and sweating face and dying eyes. Please. It’ll go great with your documentary on the end of the world.

  More voices come, but it doesn’t matter. She’s slowly fading away, either to sleep or a coma or death.

  Something soft brushes against her feet. Actually, she’s sinking in wet sand. The ocean waves glide over her. She can feel herself drifting in the waters, the tug of the undertow starting to pull her farther and farther out.

  It’s called death the black boogeyman the grim reaper and he’s finally come to get me.

  Voices in the distance mumble away.

  “I’ll show you,” someone says.

  “Don’t do this,” another one says.

  “We got this,” another voice calls out.

  “Let’s go.”

  She feels a kiss on her forehead and Skylar finally disappears.

  32

  MINIVAN COFFIN

  “I’m going to head out there with Dan to find Skylar some medicine.”


  Tommy’s words are directed to Jack and Allison, but really he’s just talking to Allie. He wanted to show her something, anything. To be the hero. To be able to do something. To maybe cause some kind of reaction. But instead, his two friends just tell him to be careful.

  A minute later, standing in the front of the church by the locked door that’s been barricaded, Tommy can feel his adrenaline flowing. He might be outside two minutes before one of those things takes him. He has no idea. He wishes he could see Allison’s face one more time but she stayed back there with Skylar. Dan is next to him, fired up and ready to go as well.

  This might be completely foolish.

  Yet this isn’t some kind of swimming-in-the-lake-when-a-serial-killer-is-near sort of moment. Skylar is dying and they have to do something.

  It’s obvious why Dan is going. For Tommy, he can’t stay still any longer. Just like videoing the wedding, Tommy has to be doing something. Otherwise he’ll just be going crazy feeling like he’s worthless.

  He stares at the nurse, who looks more calm than anybody else Tommy has seen. She’s giving Dan and him instructions. Nearby, Sam and Jack stand listening, wanting to know if they can do anything as well.

  “It’s a green Dodge minivan and it got blocked in on Sixth Street, just out of the parking lot. There was an SUV near me, I think—”

  “You think?” Tommy asks.

  The nurse just gives him a stern, pipe-down-son sort of look. “I was jammed in.”

  Her tone tells Tommy all he needs to know. He just nods, apologizing for his snarky comment.

  “We’ll find it.”

  “Keys?” Dan asks, holding out his hand to Rachel.

  The tension between Rachel and Tommy goes away when she hands Dan the keys. Tommy knows she’s just like everybody else—confused and going out of her mind. It’s just, he and Dan are about to go out there and possibly get killed. He doesn’t need to state the obvious, of course. But he also needs a little help in here. From everybody he can get it from.

  Jack puts his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t want me to go?”

  “We’re good,” Dan says.

  Tommy wants to object.

  Yeah, actually, you go and I’ll stay back here and watch over Allison. I mean Skylar.

  But Tommy only nods in agreement.

  His heart is pounding. It’s racing so hard it’s almost pushing him out this church door.

  “The sample packets of amoxicillin are in a duffel bag in the back of the van.”

  They nod at her, then look at each other.

  “Man, I really don’t want to die in the back of a minivan with you,” Tommy says, trying to add some humor.

  Dan gives a faint smile, looking as nervous as Tommy feels. Then they open up the door and head outside to God knows what.

  The night feels raw. Like something’s been torn off it and it’s sitting there all bloody and infected. It’s colder and the sky is darker and the air feels like a blank screen of static. Tommy glances at the closed and locked door of the church and immediately wants to go back inside.

  We are really doing this. We’re really being the brave ones and going on a night journey for medicine.

  The sidewalk feels exceptionally hard under his feet. For a moment, he stands next to Dan, both of them staying put as they survey the silent night around them. A lone streetlamp casts an eerie glow around them.

  “You sure about this?” he asks Dan.

  The question seems to snap Dan out of his fearful stance. He gives a stern nod.

  We’re out here for Skylar.

  Tommy wonders if those things out there are long-winged beasts like the kind out of the Lord of the Rings saga. Perhaps they’ll show up and grab both of them with long, piercing claws. Maybe they’ll get sucked up into the night sky and never be seen again.

  “Let’s go,” Dan tells him.

  They start down the sidewalk to the edge of the street. Tommy sees the endless line of parked cars stuck in the gloomy shadows like coffins lined up in rows of death.

  I’m not looking inside those cars.

  But Tommy can’t help seeing some of them. There’s broken glass everywhere and a spattering of something dark covers the sides of a few of the cars.

  As they weave their way through the two rows of cars, Tommy begins to hear the sound of millions of crickets and bugs. They seem to be stuck in every hole and corner in this otherwise abandoned city. It’s a hellish sort of humming, vibrating from the pit of somewhere dark and disturbing.

  His heart beats.

  Just keep going don’t think about it.

  The moon can be seen but even it looks different, the cold light not so bright. It looks like it’s more reddish-gray than white.

  They cross an intersection, making sure nobody and nothing is in sight before proceeding. They hide for a moment in an enclosed doorway, then keep making it down the sidewalk. Then they’re back on the street, on Sixth Street going between more coffin-cars.

  The crash of broken glass sounds behind them. They stop and look. Tommy feels smothered by the cars, their jammed-in positions making him claustrophobic.

  The sound came from a figure in the night, a man breaking into a car to get something. They see him pulling out a water bottle and then placing it in a shopping cart on the sidewalk. Tommy shakes his head and looks at Dan, who’s staring down the street in the opposite direction.

  “You hear that?” Dan asks.

  Tommy nods, looking at the survivor who is now pushing his cart toward the shadows and emptiness of the night.

  “He broke the car window,” Tommy says.

  “No, no, over there,” Dan says. “There’s something there.”

  The moonlight and few streetlights play tricks with his eyes. It feels like the ruby glow is shaking, quivering almost.

  Tommy looks back at the stranger with the shopping cart.

  “You need to get inside where it’s safe,” he tells the man. “It’s safer in the church.”

  Blank eyes look back at him. They don’t act like they’ve heard him. If they did, they sure don’t care.

  “I see the van,” Dan tells him.

  They begin to head toward the van when a howling, sick sound cries out behind them. For a minute, Tommy thinks it’s the stranger they passed.

  Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s the thing that—GO!

  Tommy breathes in. He doesn’t just walk now. They’re rushing through the cars trying to get to the van as fast as possible.

  Another sound. A screeching, breaking, tearing sound piercing the darkness behind them.

  They approach the van.

  “Unlock it,” Tommy shouts at his friend.

  Dan’s hand is moving but nothing is happening.

  “It’s not opening.”

  No.

  This is how they die.

  This is how the end snatches them from behind.

  The stupid minivan door opener doesn’t work.

  A car alarm a few cars behind them goes off like a siren with the lights barking on and off. Dan is still trying to unlock the van.

  The keys in Dan’s hand give Tommy an idea. He grabs them and holds them up, pressing the unlock button.

  A chirping sound and the lights of a van several cars over blink once.

  They both look at each other.

  This was the wrong van.

  Tommy smiles at Dan in disbelief as they both break off and dash toward the van.

  The sound behind them roars like a demented animal that’s been set free from its cage. It’s like nothing Tommy has ever heard and he knows it’s something he never wants to hear again.

  He just wants to get off these streets and out of this city.

  He misses the church more than ever now.

  33

  ATTACKED

  “I want to explore the world.”

  “Don’t you want to find someone special? Settle down. Buy a dog.”

  “I’ll let Skylar and you do that.”


  “I’m telling you, Tommy, you gotta think about the future.”

  “What for? I’ll wait till tomorrow. I just want to enjoy today. You know?”

  “You can enjoy today and still plan ahead.”

  “I don’t want a spreadsheet on my goals for the next ten years. I want things to just happen. I want to figure it out when I get there.”

  “And you’ll film it all along the way?”

  “I’ll try. There’s a lot of beautiful things to capture. I just can’t wait.”

  “For what?”

  “To see what’s round the corner. To go to far-off places and come back and visit Skylar and you and all the babies you’re going to have.”

  “Will you babysit?”

  “Absolutely . . . not.”

  The late-night conversation over some beers outside on a summer night feels like a universe away. The ease of the evening and the naiveté behind his statements seem to mock Tommy now.

  The memory is a little flicker of a spark inside this dark place. He recalls it and then wonders what in the world he was thinking. Not a care in life and a full belief that he’d go out into the world and see it and find someone and find a place and his part in it.

  Meaningless.

  Meaningless because he’s now racing down a street full of abandoned cars, trying to stay clear of . . . something. Some horrific thing out there.

  They reach the minivan and climb inside and shut the doors.

  Okay, good. We’re inside. We’re safe for the moment.

  Along with the blaring car alarm outside, Tommy hears Dan’s heavy breathing and stares at him, seeing his friend sitting there in his tuxedo. The end of the world comes and they’re still in their formal attire. Tommy’s already tired of the dress shoes he’s wearing. He makes a note to find some different clothes fast.

  The alarm suddenly goes silent. Everything seems to just stop. Like someone putting a finger over the lips of this city. A gigantic hush smothers over them. The kind that suffocates. The kind you don’t wake up from.

  Dan doesn’t wait. He moves to the back of the van and starts rummaging through the clutter. Tommy looks and sees the items Dan tosses behind him—a bag of tennis racquets, a duffel bag full of workout attire, some wrapped presents. The car’s interior is dark, and Dan tries to turn on the dome light above him, but no light comes on.