28

She watched from under the remains of a rust burnt semi as her mother and father held hands and carefully walked through the deserted, destitute fissure of streets. They balanced along collapsed traffic lights and strided overturned benches inside smashed glass bus stops. Their direction was toward the shimmering door of the high rise. When they stopped in front and looked back and then upon the shimmer, her father reached out his fist and knocked. Made known to the inhabitants. He knocked and knocked and waited and her mother knocked like a nervous morse code. They held each other in protective hugs. No sign of what might've been other than the hollow ruins of the past of such steps. The remains of old battles against the hordes. Caved in walls of buildings beside impact hollows. Scorched street fire damage at both left and right and at a distance from the high rise. There were streets poked with old potholes, filled with a sickly liquid, as if they were frozen, leaden martian craters on the face of a drawn planet.

The dark glass door shimmered and swung open. People stepped out holding a sundry display of arms. Men and women dressed in denim and windbreakers. T-shirts and flip flops like high rise surfer dudes and dudettes. Her parents were pointed at by the tips of guns and taken inside.

Hours passed. It seemed like hours. Eventually her parents came out through the shimmering door with smiles and tears. Gave the signal that all was well. Thumbs up from both. No need to hide anymore.

When they motioned for her and her brother and her best friend to join them, she spit and sighed. Crawled out from underneath the semi. Dirty. Scrawny. But all was indeed safe. They had found their apparent sanctuary. A place they had watched for a long time and wondered about. No perfidy in that beginning. But her world had not yet truly felt the terrible ends of fiefdoms and the madness hoisting treachery above its head like another newborn monster.

The people who gave her water and food and fresher clothes wanted to know how she and her family survived in the wilderness for so long. They were relentless with such questions about tactics for survival and how she found food and water but they never really asked anything truly personal. Nothing like "did you lose anyone?" Of course everyone had lost someone. The people of the high rise seemed numb to such emotions and only wanted to find more resources. Hardened. Traumatized. Something time's fed could certainly understand.

She was the hunter and trapper and fisher. Explorer of their jungle family. Building a fire was nothing in the landscape of her skill set. She knew of plants like "dragons's blood" and "the charm of the vulture."

She also knew how to make bullets, which was a skill highly sought. Her long dead military uncle taught her such trade as a child. Weapons and the countdowns of explosives. She enjoyed blowing up the sides of lonely dead trees and ancient wasp infested shacks on her uncle's acreage property. Her parents would've never approved of an eight year old playing with dynamite and clocks. He told her to never tell. She never did until the end times of her mid twenties. Her uncle had long since disappeared by then. Guerillas? Government? Who knows.

The leader and the people treated her like someone important when they realized what she could do for them. She was good for the community as she taught them as best she could about her way in the wild. Though, she didn't let them know everything she knew. She was clever, but only the clever were left in the world.

She was still aloof. The only one without a fake smile for such sweet cooperation. A mistrust that her best friend would attempt to sooth with positive words and righteous plans for the future.

When her family voted on going to the high rise, she was the only vote against knocking on that shimmering door. She thought about that day and that door a lot. The day that ended their way of things. Her special place was the wilderness of the jungle; a freedom and hazard she could find her true self within. And she could already see the cracks in the kind of new false starting civilization, like the heat of a fire burning down an Antarctic camp. Won't last long. But they wouldn't listen. They wanted community beyond their five. She said, "they're too good to be true" and, "their leader seems strange with his religious proclivities," and, "it's a fucking cult," and finally, "are you sure?" In the end, she followed them because she loved them. Her family was intact and that's what mattered.

Her best friend was like a sister in her family. Complimented her way of things. She was her oldest friend, inseparable since elementary school. A kind of whetstone for her kind of sword. The two found places in the jungle bush for fishing and solitudes of their own pleasures. Secret lovers who would explore each other and bathe each other and love each other. She had to follow her after the vote. She loved her beyond herself.

Her best friend had lived across the street from her family house; garrulous sleepovers since they were ten. They remained close as the teenage years switched from monkey bars and dress up to boys and kisses and unbuttoned clothes. They'd compare and laugh at each other and each other's relationship situations. She often wondered why she was trying to be in any relationship except one with her best friend.

Time's fed had a pair of underwear that her best friend called Genghis Thong, due to the tightness and the bad mood which inevitably came of such feminine torture.

"Take those off you idiot. Go commando instead of letting Genghis Thong ruin our night." "But I love how they look, don't you?" "Oh fuck, get over them. It's not healthy. Genghis be killing you down there." "But I like that he likes them." "Fuck him. I bet he'd prefer you without Genghis Thong anyway." "No. I need the tightness down there. I just do. It feels so good when I finally rip them off and everything throbs."  "You're such a fucking masochist. I hope you lose circulation." "Would you heal me if I got hurt?" "I hope you get hurt, just so I can heal you."

As they grew up, her best friend was to be a nurse and time's fed was curious about such techniques of healing and helping. She was an eager guinea pig to practice bandages and syringes. They were both gym rats as well, pushing each other into the sweat of weights and exercise bikes. Chin-ups and push-ups. Dripping. Slick. Time's fed would watch her best friend shower beside her when the shampoo was upon her friend's closed eyes. She began an attraction for her that seemed more like a continuation. The curve of her body and breasts made her witness the stars in her head. And then it happened one day. From the corner of her eye, she caught her best friend watching her try on clothes in a mall change room. Time's fed was completely naked when she noticed who was looking through the crack of the door. They didn't break eye contact. Time's fed unlocked the flimsy opening and pulled her in by the hand. She refastened the lock and grabbed her best friend by the blouse. Tugged her into a hard body hug. They tasted each other's lips and breathed each other's heartbeats for the first time. Her friend was already gooey through her clothes. Time's fed became dizzy with stars in her mind at the cool touch of fingers between her heated legs. Her friend went down on her and time's fed loved every second of it. Moaning. Moaning. Moaning. They were banned from that mall when they were caught.

"Worth it. I want to be with you everywhere," she said.

All five were on a river trail hike through the jungle when the city went into apocalyptic chaos. They could smell the fires and hear the explosions from the depths of the jungle. And it was a family outing that her brother almost didn't attend due to work, but his job was postponed due to the customer changing the design of their new driveway.

Her brother was a cement labourer by trade, always working long hours, but he somehow managed to find the time to be an avid marathon runner. Time's fed was teaching him how to track before they entered the high rise. They stopped spending that specific time together when the safety of walls became reintroduced into their lives. Her brother found others he could situate himself with. New friends to laugh with and exchange bodily fluids.

Her father was a calloused hand furniture carpenter and her mother was a paper cut tax accountant. They did well in their lives in the world before the new diluvian flood of flesh and blood. Workaholics and bills and the annual vacation to a country of their curiosity. They met hiking and fell in love on the trail as they kept bumping into each other over time. Both secular. Marriage. A house. Two kids. No pension but healthy savings and retirement accounts. Good enough.

One day, while listening to a minion of the leader, time's fed heard about the past way of things in the high rise. A group of warrior women who had total control on the roof before the time of the leader, killing and eating the remaining men who had become brutally vicious. Not the little boys. Only the men; their insane husbands and flings and brothers who had been destroying the middle floors in a power struggle. And then the new leader emerged from a glorious Ark, so the leader's minion claimed. Time's fed thought they meant the young earth Ark museum. She asked where it was located. The minion shrugged and eyeballed her and continued with his creation tale. And the leader came with many. He killed off the high rise rulers by feeding them to what might've been. He called them the Deuteronomy witches. Satan's darlings. He wanted to set them ablaze at the stake but what might've been was a form of sanitization as well. An ironic end for a group of cannibals.

A year passed and she was a leader in her own right. In charge of a group of scavengers who would go into the city and jungle and bring back game and seeds and medicine and news of the periphery.

They learned more and more about what might've been and their lack of senses. She noticed that those they studied tended to group into such disabilities. And she became used to the way of them eating the same piece of flesh again and again. Sometimes she wanted to touch herself when she watched them grasp elbow deep into their own anuses. She found her body's arousal toward what might've been unsettling but somehow satisfying.

Eventually, more and more people knocked on the shimmering door. People from the south and people from the mountains. As well, people whom they would come across on their jungle excursions. There were no invitations. People just showed up. And when the high rise was full, the leader proclaimed that their home was like the Ark. What kinds were filthy, like time's fed, were needed for the future, to multiply and be fruitful. There were too many of the clean kind and they could be culled. Her parents and brother and best friend. The impression was given that another high rise would be cleared of what might've been and set up for habitation.

The treacherous vote happened while she was away, scavenging in the city. Her new rummage friends knew what was to happen and made sure time's fed was occupied on the excursion.

She barely survived a horde on that trip. What might've been were growing in number somehow, like the city was a candle in the dark for the surrounding country. She thought they were simply migrating. But maybe something was calling them, something she couldn't hear or recognize. Too many roaming with eyes and ears and nose. They had to be very careful around those kind of hordes. On that trip, she came across the museum Ark. It was decorated with the rotted bodies of crucifixions. What might've been as psychotic art displays? No. The dead people had never been what might've been. She wanted to go inside the belly of the structure, but no one else did, so she left it alone. The others were terrified. She was only curious.

Who would do that to people? Is this really where David Cain came from?

She was told of the sermon of the leader when she returned to find all whom she loved eaten alive.

David Cain spoke of his beliefs that day.

"The earth is young. Make no mistake about this blessing. It's written in the crease of every tree. The weight of every feather. The uniqueness of each snowflake. The mudstone around every fossil. The line within every palm like a map from God. The pregnancy of each woman. The proof is in the King James."

Apparently, her best friend retorted. "Even the mistranslations from Hebrew are proof?"

The leader made sure that she was thrown first into the basement pit of what might've been. She was torn apart and chewed into morsels within seconds. Her parents were thrown down next, pleading and screaming as they suffered the same fate. Her brother was with a different group that tried to fight back. He was shot in the head and thrown into the carnage. It was noticed that what might've been didn't touch his body. Those that smelt left him alone. When he stood and looked directly at the leader and smiled in a conscious-less stare, he was shot in the head again. He got up again, almost headless, and began acting like what might've been; half a face gurgling and chewing the remains of the clean kind. He hadn't been bit.

A hundred people were murdered that day. The leader watched with a conscious-less gaze as if he were a Man. A god. Yet God and Man are undead.

Time's fed played along in the aftermath. The leader smiled at her and told her it was for the best, God's will. She hid her grief and smiled back. Plotted the destruction of the high rise. She had a satchel of explosives that no one knew about; a cache she found months ago on a city scavenging excursion.

Time's fed smiled back at David Cain when he took her to see the pit. She pretended to smile, even when she witnessed her brother grasping flesh out of his own anus.