Page 52 of Them

“You sure? There’s plenty of fresh bandages if you want to redress them. Should be a first aid kit in your room.”

“After sunset. First thing.” The man knew Lane was stalling, but why? Loneliness? He could understand that. Whatever it was, the old man was building up to something.

A patient, almost patronizing smile spread across Lane’s face. “All right, if you say so. Let’s just get some sleep, okay? Tomorrow’s a big day.”

“Thanks again… for everything.” Not knowing what else to say, the man turned around and walked down the hall. After such an emotional introduction, it felt lacking, but his tongue was as weary as the rest of him.

He heard Lane’s door close behind him. After glancing over his shoulder, he selected a room near the far end of the hallway. The interior was as mundane as he’d expected. A plain bedspread, sink, mirror, cabinet, toilet, mirror, shower, and a bare desk.

The man held his flashlight between his teeth as he carefully engaged each of the locks on the door. There were three in total: one sliding, one dead bolt, and one chain. Once he was satisfied, he began poking around.

There were a few surprises waiting for him. Beneath the bed were several changes of clothes, plain but in multiple sizes and totally untouched by moths. In the cabinet beneath the sink, he found a supply of water and canned food. His stomach felt stony and obstinate, but he grabbed a plastic water bottle anyway.

He stood over the sink and uncapped the water, sniffing at it. Probing. Then he held the flashlight to the bottle and examined the liquid within. Nothing seemed unusual, so he took a sip. Then another. The man was thirstier than he’d thought. Hell, he was downright parched.

He took another swig, the plastic crinkling in his hand as he sucked the water down. When the bottle was empty, he let it fall to the floor and looked back at the mirror…

And the man in the mirror was staring at him. A nameless stranger.

Startled, the man staggered backward.

Who are you?

He stepped closer, studying the stranger in his reflection, shining the flashlight at his doppelgänger. The LEDs bounced off the glass, scattering photons about the room.

The mirror-man was almost identical to the real him, to every other reflection he’d seen in every other mirror amid this apocalypse. They wore the same pants, and when the man took his off, the mirror-man followed suit. Their wounds were identical, their gauze the same shade of burgundy. When they faced one another shirtless and unwrapped the bandages on their torsos, the texture of their bloodied brown skin held the same grooves and gouges. Their opposite elbows had swollen into the same disjointed shape. The man and the mirror-man were near the same, but when the man looked up…

He saw someone else’s face staring back at him. The wild nest of tangled curls was there, but it sat atop the countenance of another man. A mirror-man with the same gaunt, oblong cheekbones. The same wide butt-chin and blocky jaw.

“Who in the hell are you?” asked the real man in a sour and accusatory tone.

“Who in the hell are you?” the mirror-man retorted, the voice softening as it bounced off the drywall. Each echoing iteration seemed to drop the question’s original animosity, something more kind and curious rising in its place. Something genuine.

The difference was in the eyes. The dull, listless orbs that had appeared in every single mirror—all the way back to the Floridian bunker—were gone now, replaced by dark ivy fervor. The mirror-man’s hazel eyes seemed to shine amid the swallowing LED light, unlike anything the man had imagined possible in his apocalyptic life. They weren’t the man’s eyes. They couldn’t be.

They were someone else’s.

They belonged to the boy the man used to be.

“You’re Tim,” said the man.

“You’re Tim,” echoed the mirror.

The man’s shaky fingers clicked the flashlight off. The unlit device clattered to the floor and rolled away somewhere unseen. He couldn’t see anything, actually, not even his hand held mere inches from his face, much less the man in the mirror. But that was the point, wasn’t it?

In the total dark, he felt his way to the bed against the opposite wall. His fingers found the mattress, and he climbed aboard. Nestled himself beneath the soft blankets. Relishing the warmth.

The man rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, and then a slideshow of memories began to flash on the backs of his eyelids. Visions of the Nightwalker wandering deserted neighborhoods. Roaring waterfalls. Blue searchlights peeking through the blinds at high noon. Burned-out buildings and traffic jams and “friendly towns” like Broad Park. Crossing moonlit bridges on his hands and knees. Ever sifting through the relics of his peers. Passing bathrooms and lobbies and parlors, each cracked mirror reciting the same story of the same haggard traveler. A listless creature wandering from one decaying home to the next in eternal search. The self-proclaimed final man.

Time swirled backward, like liquid rushing up a drain and flooding the basin. The past six seasons blurred together, watercolors mingling. Everything he’d lived through since the bunker bleeding into one liquid picture. Mossy Carolina forests encroaching on wide Georgia fields. Florida swamps painted between the rolling forests of Virginia. The only constant was the moon high above, a shifting time lapse of shapes and phases.

And then time ran out, and the man was back in the bunker. Tucked away beneath twenty feet of gritty soil. An obscure passage of years in opaque darkness. How long had it been? He first stole away the week they dropped bombs on New York. That was Halloween 2024. How could he forget? It was a fact, yet he could scarcely picture it, could not even fathom what had come before. Pre-Scorpion society was like a fairy tale in a story or a chapter from a history text, not something he’d actually experienced. That was someone else. That was Tim. The man saw only the dank void that conceived him. The circumstances that birthed him.

By 2025, the monsters had made it down to Florida. All connection to the outside world was lost. Internet. Cell service. Landlines. Everything. Tim was terrified. Tim didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want his mother to die either. Tim didn’t want anyone to die, yet the world’s willpower seemed utterly against him. The earth had deemed humanity unworthy, flooding the land with locusts. How was Tim to resist? To make a difference? What agency could a twenty-year-old kid claim over the world if he couldn’t save just one person?

How much fragile hope did he hide away before he lost himself? When did Tim dissolve, only for this hollow outline to take hold? What year was it now? 2028? 2030? The man couldn’t ask Lane, but maybe Tim could. The man could endure the solitude and walk the long miles, yet only Tim remembered how to speak. To mourn and be merry. To be kind. Merciful. To feel something beyond anger and resolve. The man could only move forward. Such was his destiny. Such was his curse.

And his purpose? The man was no longer sure. Once upon a time, it was to protect Her, a woman that wouldn’t even recognize him anymore. Changed so much, but is it my fault? Running as fast as I can and I still can’t keep up.