The Road | {Yani / Vasco : Zombie Apocalypse}

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Yani Izar

★

He would have stayed and died.

She thinks of it when she sees the sun rise over the ridge.

She curls up in her layers. A jacket with a zipper that sticks in the middle; a shirt she’d been wearing the day he’d uttered the word to go; long johns underneath; overalls, because they could never go out of style. All of this to keep her warm because she’d never set foot outside of eleven, where snow had been rare enough that she remembered as a small child being woken up late at night to catch sight of the first few flakes from the porch. So she didn’t miss the miracle, when they’d all melt by morning.

Yani thinks of his staying every day now.

She wants to tell him that it would never have been his fault – any of this – but he would always believe that there was something else he could’ve done. As though the days that led up to the plague could’ve been avoided; that history hadn’t already written for them to die, just not then.

Not when the bodies had started to be burned, and the capitol had told them to stay in their homes.

Not when her cousins grew sick and died and came back again – when her uncle had needed to stab his own son through the eye to stop him from gnawing off his arm.

They had prayed and they had planned; they had written to the rest of the district, had spoken over the radio, had tried to coordinate supplies but –

The world screamed back at them, had told them that they were foolish, had demanded their help and their aid and their solutions, had raged and burned, had seen the fear that led to riots, and then, far worse than any of that, the silence.

Her mother and father and she sat in a big empty house with the doors bolted and barred but with winter peeling away every ounce of food and grain in their cupboards.

When it grew cold and dark and the lightbulbs lost their glow, her mother Emma had said that was enough. They could not see the end of the world by candlelight.

Her father had begged for a few more days. He’d wept like a child when they walked through the kitchen one last time to be sure they hadn’t forgotten to take anything.

“I hope it warms up today,” She said softly over her father’s shoulder. As they trotted along together on horseback. “Maybe around lunch time we might find a place to camp?”

elegant

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o 


Take the parts of me you thought were pure
Tear 'em up, then tear 'em even more
Drown 'em till they all disintegrate
Do you see the point I'm tryna make?

He didn’t answer his daughter. Not at first, anyway.

He’s too focused on the way ahead, on listening to the way the hoofbeats echo across the asphalt. He pays no mind to the burned-out vehicles on the road. Stolen military grade from the looks of them, with broken windows and slashed tires to boot. What couldn’t be stolen or salvaged had been left to rot in the sun.

Vasco saw it as a warning. That they shouldn’t expect anything to stay or to save them from what had befallen Panem. Nothing gold could stay; they were better offer with a tried and true horse that lived and breathed just as well as they did.

“Keep your eyes open for any scar-skins,” Vasco spoke softly, a warning he didn’t have to say but felt compelled to. Anyone with so much as a bruise was a danger. And he would protect his last daughter with his life when the time came for it.

Eleven had been one of the few districts to hold out when the plague spread. When it first started, he’d brought his council together and set out the warnings to his district. He wore a mask at all times and set up quarantines for those who grew sick. But the virus spread faster than he could fight, and even after the forty-eight hours he’d stayed awake at the start, their hospitals and quarantines were quickly overwhelmed.

The message from the capitol stopped and the lines to the districts fell quiet. When he couldn’t get anyone from eight on the phone he told the last of his council to go home.

He made one last announcement. He had to turn on the camera himself and those who were still watching the television would have seen him fiddling around his office.

‘We have seen dark days. This virus threatens us all, even after death. Tonight I must tell you that we have lost all contact with fellow districts. For those still watching: I urge you to stay indoors as long as you can. Take refuge with your loved ones. Do what you can for as long as you can. Help will not be coming.'

Help will not be coming.

He’d failed to arm against the people who rose up from their hospital beds after they’d expired. Food couldn’t be delivered out across the district to those who needed it, not with the number sick and dying. He couldn’t ask them to do that, not for the cost.

“Where did you go?” Yani’s voice filled his ear. “You did it again.”

Vasco blinked at the road in front of him. How long had he disappeared into the past.

“Yes. I did.” His voice was flat and he turned his hands in the reins. “Just imagining. Still have to try to do that now and again.”

elegant

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Yani Izar

★

“Tell me about your motorcycle again.” Yani reached a hand onto her father’s shoulder and gave a squeeze.

When he disappeared in his head, he could be gone for days. Not that he wouldn’t answer if she asked him a question or as though he couldn’t return in fits and bursts. But the weight that came down over him swallowed his body and mind together. He was at the mercy of these daydreams, strung up like a man on a cross. Fit to be crucified again and again for not being able to see what a calamity it had been, and worse, for not having the power to stop it.

She’d learned to ask him questions about the past so that he could find a tether to hold onto. If she could guide him back to her, to get him to grasp onto something he loved, then he could be freed.

“It was a noisy thing. They didn’t really want us to have them, but for a while, people could still drive on the roads. And they made deliveries easy, better than on horseback. Cheaper, too. I used to drive my mother crazy when I would shoot across the fields after dark.” He turned his head and Yani saw the beginnings of a smile.

“I always found it hard to believe that you’d ever break any rule ever.” Yani poked him in the ribs. He was too frail now. Not that he hadn’t been more than a wisp of a thing, but the days eating scraps or not at all did him no favors.

“No one ever thought I was a real troublemaker. Not as much as my brothers. But I guess I just – ” He struggled to find the words he wanted. They bounced forward and back as the horse trudged along. “… I didn’t care so much about how things were as how they ought to have been.”

She leaned into another hug against his back.

“It’s what I love about you most.”

elegant

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o 


Take the parts of me you thought were pure
Tear 'em up, then tear 'em even more
Drown 'em till they all disintegrate
Do you see the point I'm tryna make?

“I love you too, Yani.” They didn’t say much more to one another, not that he’d write along the pages of his moleskin that afternoon. He liked it more than the silence that would follow.

Vasco clicked his tongue and the horse skipped into a trot. They’d travel another mile before dismounting along the gravel shoulder at an overlook with few trees and a wide view. He tied up the horse to the guardrail and Yani set about laying down pads for the tent and gathering rocks for a fire pit.

It’d been thirty-six days since the last time they’d seen another living person, and thirty-two since they’d seen a scar-skin. Some people called them zombies, some people called them undead. They preferred scar-skin because I wasn’t as though these people couldn’t think – they knew that they wanted to attack and kill, at least – and somehow were very much alive, even if that state was nothing close to what they had been.

Each of them had a machete ready at their shoulders for protection. Vasco had a pistol that he’d used only once since they had left Eleven, but was ‘for emergencies’, should the need have arisen.

No one in their travels had been unfriendly enough for him to draw it, but then, he imagined he’d been exceedingly lucky.

“When we’ve set up the tent, let’s head down the hill and see if we can gather anything to eat.” He said as he tossed a stack of branches on the firepit.

elegant

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Yani Izar

★

She’d watch her father scrunch together his face and whisper out curses before turning a piece the opposite direction to secure it in place. They’d spend the better part of the hour putting the tent together.

Yani couldn’t help but grin watching him curse and growl at the pieces of metal and plastic in his hands. It wasn’t that she was any better at putting their place of refuge together, either. But it felt like a small comfort to know that at the end of the world, they hadn't gotten any better at this.

“Do you think it’s the whole world?” Yani said.

She lay flat on the sleeping back in the tent, head on a pillow at the lip of the entrance so that the two could see anyone coming from either side of the road. The guardrail was at their back like a gate behind protecting their tiny fortress. Vasco turned to face her and prop his elbow on the ground and head in hand.

“No. I don’t.” He was sure enough that Yani believed him. It was long enough since the start that he had stopped humoring her. “I think… there’s people like us, trying to find one another. To set things back to where they could be.”

He turned back onto his stomach and put his head in the palms of his hands.

“I always wondered what might be outside of panem. We never talked about people outside of us but…” Yani stared up at the ceiling of the tent as though she could catch a glimpse of the sky. “… we don’t even speak the language of Panem. They couldn’t all just have disappeared one day…”

There’d be a whole continent that’d been untouched by war, genocide, and plagues. A place that had never wanted to speak with Panem for fear of what that would bring. Somewhere her father could grow old and gray and rest. Where she’d sail to the stars.

She closed her eyes. She did take after her father, that much was certain.

elegant

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o 


Take the parts of me you thought were pure
Tear 'em up, then tear 'em even more
Drown 'em till they all disintegrate
Do you see the point I'm tryna make?

Vasco sat up while Yani napped. He watched the rise and fall of her chest and how her right hand curled at the edge of her sleeping bag. He moved to draw up a knitted quilt around her. It was an old gift from Marisol, back from when she’d been born.

She used to fall asleep in his arms when she was small. She’d fuss and cry about how she hadn’t been tired, but by the time he reached the top of the steps of their house, she’d have her head rested against his shoulder, curls of her hair tumbling down across her face. And when she’d wake the next morning in her bed, she’d wonder what magic had brought her from the kitchen up to her bed safe and sound.

“We’re still here,” He whispered with his hands on his knees. There was that heaviness again, the same that weighed him down and made him feel as though he’d have to crawl on his hands and knees to get anywhere.

But staring at his daughter and watching the rise and fall of his chest, he wouldn’t let the sadness win. Not today.

Instead, he closed his eyes and drifted.

Yani wanted to know where he’d disappear off to?

Sometimes, he’d be holding hands with Raquel to take her to the petting zoo. He’d hoist her on his shoulders and they’d both cheer when the horses made their way out of the stalls toward the wire fence.

He’d be out on a boat with Emmanuel, sun overhead, the two waiting for the moment when Manu’s reel would start to spin and it would take both of them to pull in his catch.

Sofia would click her tongue while she cut his hair, so proud of her salon. Even prouder that her father had pushed her to do what she loved. To take a risk that made her happy.

Or he’d curl under the sheets of his bed with his wife, an ordinary afternoon full of rain and the two of them lazy, naked, and full. His fingers would trace each curve of her body while she kissed at his neck.

How could he believe the world was good or just or even fair? He’d burned his sons body after he’d gotten the sickness. Had sent his daughter away to never hear if she even made it out. And his wife?

The one he’d loved more than anyone in the world.

“Papa…” Yani’s voice called out soft, swallowed up by the distance.

“Go back to sleep, Cielo…” Vasco used his jacket sleeve to wipe across his eyes.
Sheets ruffled and Vasco felt her hands on his knees.

She stared at him then for a moment, and he had to look out the front of the tent toward the road. He couldn’t look her in the eyes, not then.

“Hey,” She whispered in a hug. She held him there, her warmth with his. An embrace that echoed across the memories. Not enough to take away the weight, but enough to shoulder it, for now. “You want to go down to the creek and see if we can’t find something better than another can of corn to eat?”

elegant