Safe: Love After the Apocalypse by Imogen Keeper

Author:Imogen Keeper [Keeper, Imogen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mindless Muse, LLC
Published: 2023-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

11| Hope you found your Mars

FRANKIE

AS THE SUN SLIDES behind the mountains, I slip my hand into Yorke’s massive callus-scratchy warm one. His fingers thread through mine. Now that the sun has set, it’s cold, and wind whips at my hair and sweater, at the hoodie he pulled on.

Auden stands between us.

When Yorke and Wendell got back this afternoon, they told us about people in living in town who’re claiming all its things. We held another vote. We’re staying at Thornewood, come what may.

Ruby lights the match.

I see it all in slow motion, like someone turned down the dial of time, stretching seconds out two, three, four times their normal length.

A flare in the night, rosy red against her cupped palm, dropping then to land on the gas-drenched wooden step of the pro shop and the bodies therein. The flame crawls, a violet whisper, along the edges, then hits the doorway of the pro shop. Creamsicle tongues climb their way steadily skyward, catching the frame, stretching inside, blazing brighter.

If the people who claimed the town are watching across the valley, there’s no way they’ll miss this.

We stay back, as the roof catches. A window bursts on a smash and rain shower tinkle of broken glass, and inside, sheet-wrapped bodies burn. A steady column of smoke stretches from the ground to the black skies and the starry endlessness beyond.

After he got back from returning Fernando’s body, Yorke carried Carl here himself, sheet-wrapped and just beginning to smell.

There’s no polite lily-scented funeral parlor, no suited somber-faced mortician speaking in grave tones, no discussion of coffin or burial plot. No speech or organ music. No church. No bells.

I look up at Yorke, squeeze his hand. His flame-bathed face tilts my way as he squeezes back.

Lyle breaks the silence with the strum of a guitar, the cord riff of Amazing Grace instantly recognizable.

Shasta and May, and Cain join him.

Me too. And Wendell and Gus.

And then all of us, our voices rising up.

My skin puckers in goosebumps, and, just for a second, I can feel Jimmy, solid and warm and real. The Barcelona beach, a fluttering scarf, saffron, saltwater and smoke. I close my eyes. I can sketch the shape of his face, black lines evaporating into the darkness of my eyelids, the sharp jut of his brow bones, the silky hairs there. His silvering, wind-swept hair, his lean build. You know I love you, right? He said it right before I found out he was sick. I never doubted it, Jimmy. Not even once.

The song ends.

The silence stretches.

“Rest in peace,” Colleen says.

“Rest in peace,” we echo all around the semi-circle, we strangers who won’t be strangers much longer.

There’s something religious about twenty-odd voices raised in unison, speaking a chorus of sorrow, rhythmic, tones murmured in voices deep and voices high, under a barren darkling sky.

Colleen clears her throat. “A grief book I’ve been reading says that our goal is to find a way to remember them with love and gratitude for the time we had, rather than anger and sorrow at the futures they didn’t get.

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