. . . H A N N A H | P R I T C H A R D . . .
With the window rolled down, the truck engine growling as loud as it could, the wind tousling what strands of her blonde hair were long enough to dance in the uproar – it felt nostalgic, reminiscent of earlier days when Hannah Pritchard would drive around to watch the city lights whip by in neon blurs and the many strangers living lives she would never know about. Down every street there would have been the thumping beat of far-off music, the mechanical squeal of streetcars and the hundreds of voices all tangled into one sure-fire sign humanity was alive and well. She could stand at a busy intersection and smell the many different perfumes and colognes and natural odors wafting into one overpowering scent; she would feel their body heat and shoulders brush into her as nameless faces walked by. On a good day, she would flash a kind smile to someone she never met before and see it in the way their own mouth twitched upward – that mutual understanding that no harm came from acknowledging another and letting them know, in even a very minimal way, that it was okay to care for one another.
“Oh, a Blockbuster,” Charles sighed from the backseat of the truck. Glancing at him through the rearview mirror, Hannah watched Charles look back longingly at the abandoned movie rental store. One of his hands was hanging out of the window, and he gracefully moved it up and down like a dolphin swimming through the water. “We should go, get something good. Bring some cheap, fruity wine. Girl’s night in my apartment,” Charles added monotonously, in his deep, grumbly voice. Hannah and Elliot laughed at the younger boy’s joke, which in turn caused Charles to grin and shrug it off.
Even if Charles Okeke was nineteen and well on his way to adulthood, Hannah still viewed him as a younger brother in need of constant supervision. Though he was more than capable of taking care of himself, Hannah watched over him more than what was required of her. After having lost everyone at once, Charles was the first person Hannah immediately came across. In some way, she knew the emotional bond she formed with him was what left her feeling responsible and protective over the boy. They had become each other’s best friend, crutch, diary and cheerleader. Hannah liked to tell herself he needed her just as much as she needed him, just to add balance to her smothering nature.
Taking a gentle left turn and intentionally ignoring the two bony leftovers of bodies slumped against the brown brick wall of a liquor store, Hannah brought the truck down a narrower road with small shops on either side. A yellowish building with a bright pink awning displayed moldy, unrecognizable heaps of things in the window that had once been freshly-baked croissants and pastries, and next to it was a pet store, the front window smashed and the innards of the store dark, unmoving. It took a lot for Hannah to think about something other than what became of the animals that had once lived there.
In the distance over a bridge with cars pushed haphazardly to either side, the multi-storey mall came into view, the massive brown structure sticking out amongst the vast emptiness of parking lots and construction sites once aiming to build condominiums on those vacant lots. As they drove by a fenced-in lot, Hannah spied a sign hanging off the chain link fence reading, “Coming Soon”. She never knew what was planned to go there, what higher-up city official had conceived. Now, no one would know, and it made Hannah frown a little. It was small reminders like that, little stabs in the heart, that made it clear all the things humanity ever said it would do may never come to fruition. Humankind may never make it to outer space, may never accomplish worldwide peace, may never find out what existed in the other 90% of the oceans. All the hard word humankind had ever put into bettering or furthering itself had either been halted or ground into fine powder to toss to the wind. It was tough to swallow, those pessimistic thoughts that all the remaining humans could do was just try to regain balance and survive. And it wasn’t as easy as Hannah thought it could have been.
“You alright?” Elliot asked in a low voice from the seat next to Hannah. They were almost at the mall by the time he spoke. The sun was beating off the roofs of what few cars were in the above-ground parking lots surrounding it.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Hannah replied, forcing a soft smile she hoped could pass as something natural.
“It’ll be okay,” Elliot softly reminded her. Beneath the ragged, scraggly beard he grew, Hannah could see the yellowish-white of his teeth bared in a grin. He was a tall, thick-bodied man with a warm, friendly quality to his weathered face. He grabbed her hand resting on the steering wheel and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Hannah nodded in response and chuckled lightly at herself. The rest of the drive up the concrete ramp to the mall’s parking lot was quiet with everyone staring out the windows at whatever passed by them.
The truck came to a slow halt near the front strip of glass doors, one of which had been shattered and reduced to shards of glistening glass on the black mats inside. Hannah killed the engine and safely tucked the keys into her pocket, next to the piece of paper containing a list of medical supplies they were instructed to find. Heading to an actual hospital did not sit well with them just yet. There was something about wandering down damp, dim corridors smelling of chemicals and rot that didn’t appeal to anyone. There were far more bodies in the hospital than anywhere else, and more of a chance those medicine stashes had been ransacked first.
“While we’re here,” Charles started to say as he unbuckled his seatbelt and picked up his backpack from the seat next to him. “I’m going to find deodorant. For all of us. Some of us need it – and I won’t say who, but…” With a lifted eyebrow Charles nodded his head towards Elliot.
“Do you want your face broken? ‘Cause that’s how you get your face broken,” Elliot playfully retorted. He craned around the seat and punched Charles on the thigh, who gasped and shouted a profanity loud enough for the entire deceased neighborhood to hear.
“Okay, you guys,” Hannah chuckled, shaking her head with a smile as she opened the door and stepped outside. The other two took a few seconds longer as they exchanged friendly insults and other comments Hannah pretended she didn’t hear. Where Hannah was Charles’s older sister, ready to confide in and offer advice, Elliot was Charles’s irresponsible older brother who preferred to teach Charles how to make improvised explosives. Hannah thought it was a good thing, for Charles to have someone he could call an actual friend – someone who shared his interests pre-apocalypse, and not just someone he had no other choice but to latch onto.
With a stretch and a grumbling yawn, Hannah turned around to face Elliot and Charles just as Elliot, with an aluminum baseball bat gripped in both hands, took a batter’s stance and saw off the imaginary baseball he rocketed into the distance.
“Why do you have that?” Hannah asked with a small laugh of disbelief.
“You know… in case,” Elliot shrugged. “People we once lived with stole all our food, so who knows what someone we don’t even know will try to do, right?”
“You sound like Naz,” Hannah teased as the three began slowly walking towards the front doors. The only sounds were of their feet tapping off
the cracked pavement. Sometimes Hannah still looked to the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of a plane or jet flying overhead. No one ever found out what happened to the other half of the world; the power had gone out before Europe or Asia or anywhere else could say if they were affected. She hoped they were doing well, completely untouched by the virus and already putting effort into helping. For all Hannah knew, South and Central America were already saved, and rescue efforts to bring them all back to regular society were only a few days away.
“Hey, how come we haven’t seen many other people? Like, how many people do you think actually… you know?” Charles asked.
“Probably because people see The Towers and think we’ll shoot them on sight. And the people who are brave enough, well, they live with us now,” Elliot explained.
“So then… not a lot of people survived, huh?” Charles assumed. They came up to the doors, and Elliot went first as he ducked under the jagged glass maw of the shattered door. Charles and Hannah followed him, careful to tip-toe around the shards of the door scattered around the doorway.
In the total stillness of the mall’s front entrance, Hannah pressed forward, a black flashlight held in one hand; she turned it on, and a cone of blinding light suddenly illuminated the expansive darkness ahead of her. She heard the crunch of boots pressing down on glass over her shoulder as Elliot and Charles followed, their own flashlight beams probing every shadowy corner of the wide hallway. On either side were store entrances, most with metal gates closed – or else half-closed – and debris, boxes and random trash scattered across the beige linoleum floor. Where the hallway opened up wider into a semi-large plaza with escalators leading up to the second floor, a kiosk promoting “the world’s best cookies and cakes” displayed the skeletal remains of something once considered human. The snow had somewhat preserved a majority of the bodies, making some of them still recognizable, but ever since the cold weather had dissipated, those bodies resumed decomposition. Hannah hadn’t prepared herself for it, but somehow it made it easier to look into a skull rather than a face.
“I used to come here a lot,” Elliot mumbled, though his voice ricocheted off every wall and was amplified to something unsettling loud. “They’ve got a movie theater upstairs. I had my last date there.”
“Was it nice?” Hannah asked him. They walked across the plaza and around the kiosk, cringing at the smell of mold and decay. The hall ahead curved, and according to a map placed in the very center of the plaza, there was a pharmacy down that end and up on the second floor.
“It was,” Elliot answered. He stopped to look at the mannequins displaying last year’s style in the storefront of a well-known upper-class clothing store. He shone the flashlight in their blank faces, ran the light down their bodies. “Yeah, he was pretty great, but…” He took in a sharp breath of air and let out a whistle. With his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, Elliot rocked on his feet and shrugged.
“… but then you met me and now we’re happily-ever-after,” Charles added.
“Nah, I’ve got standards,” Elliot shot back. From further down the hallway Charles let out a boisterous laugh and clapped his hands. Elliot himself chuckled and continued moving along. He made eye contact with Hannah and cast her a goofy smile to lighten the situation.
“Shall we?” he asked, indicating they continue their walk through the mall. Hannah nodded and jogged to his side, looking at the stores with him as they passed each, listening to the far-off water dripping rhythmically into a puddle and the multiple coos of pigeons nesting somewhere above. Charles was ahead of them, shining his light into the many stores he passed, occasionally stopping to peer inside as if debating whether looting yet another pair of shoes was worth it or not. He took a large step over a puddle occupied by a crushed paper cup and an abandoned purse left open to expose its untouched possessions. There was a bench near it where a bundle of blue blankets had been left in a messy heap. The potted plant next to it had long since died, reduced to nothing but the decrepit twig bent over itself, draping lifelessly onto the floor.
The hallway curved to the right, and the closer Hannah got to it, the more she saw natural light filtering in through the skylight high above and how it leaked across the floor, trying to spread into the darkest reaches of the empty mall. She skirted around a few chairs nestled around a table outside of a café and saw the escalators leading upward. There was a large, circular fountain in the very middle of the small opening.
People used to sit there and watch the streams of water shoot high into the air; or they would toss in pennies that still glinted in the sunlight at the bottom of the dried-up basin. Dust motes danced in the large rays of light, and Hannah found comfort in how easily the claustrophobia of the dark hall transitioned into airiness, big and open and silently inviting.
“The drug store’s up there,” Elliot pointed out. Charles had ran ahead, tackling the escalator with stamina and speed Hannah had not felt herself since long before the world ended. Most of the time it was a major accomplishment to simply get out of bed as gravity warred with her. Charles was something else.
Elliot and Hannah followed after their younger friend, Elliot stepping aside at the base of the escalator and slightly bowing, letting Hannah go first. With a smile and reddening cheeks she had hoped he hadn’t seen, Hannah began trekking up the powerless luxury-turned-regular staircase. There was never any romantic affection between Hannah and Elliot – she had every belief there never would be, either. Her deceased boyfriend, Marcus, was still a fresh wound constantly in the forefront of her mind anyway. But the flattery of being made to feel appreciated still put a positive spin on the otherwise bleak atmosphere Hannah found herself in.
At the very top of the escalator Hannah happened to glance to the left, and the familiar pink name printed boldly above its wide open store caught her eye – Victoria’s Secret. It had been a while since Hannah felt the comfort of a new, clean bra; wearing someone else’s she found in one of The Towers’ apartments felt wrong to her. It was a selfish thing to divert her attention toward, one that she found was degrading herself when they had more important things to attend to. Even having fresh underwear that didn’t have holes in them – unlike her current two pairs – was a guilty thought she sheepishly entertained.
“Go,” Elliot suddenly said, causing Hannah to jump a little. She felt both confused and embarrassed and failed miserably at masking either. With an amused smirk, Elliot added, “I get it, and I won’t question it. Just go, get what you need, and come find us.”
“I’ll only be a minute,” Hannah insisted.
“Women. That’s what they all say,” Elliot mumbled. The sexism in his joke wasn’t genuinely meant; he knew it bothered Hannah, and so it was one of his favorite things to joke about. He began to walk off in the direction Charles ran off to, swinging the baseball carelessly around in half-circles at his side.
“Hey, you know, the store is for girls. You’re allowed to shop there, too,” Hannah rapidly replied with, and she felt a sense of pride in how quick that comeback came to her.
“Hoho, Pritchard! Getting with the insults,” Elliot laughed. By the time he had finished that sentence he was already around and off to the other side of the escalators, and she had made her way closer to the store. At the entrance she turned on her flashlight again, unable to see anything past the first ten or-so feet. She waved the flashlight around the room, trying to spot the display that carried her size. It had been a while since she had last been measured, and with the high amount of weight she had lost, she wondered if she would still –
Her foot kicked something soft, something Hannah would have paid little attention to if only what she kicked hadn’t moved and shouted something incoherent at her. Hannah herself gasped and stepped back, swiping the flashlight downward to reveal the face of a younger boy scramble backward, and suddenly something cracked over the back of her head and the floor smacked her square in the jaw as she collapsed onto it.
And everything went quiet.
Festive