Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(87)

Maxim has no clue how long he was ill or how long he convalesced. By the time he fully regained awareness, his parents were no longer looking after him, and he had clearly not been tended to in quite some time.

He found his mother and father in their bed, both deceased, under the sheets as if asleep. From the smell and look of them, he assumed they’d been dead for several days. Not that he’d even been around a corpse before, but he couldn’t imagine that only a few hours could result in such decomposition. Now that he was aware of it, he could no longer ignore the smell. He could not stay here.

Maxim, having been bedridden for an unspecified long time, was aware of his own filthy state. He forced himself to take a shower – a quick one; there was no hot water, and he shivered under the ice-cold blast. In the kitchen, where he hurried to pack supplies, he confirmed that there was no power. Nothing from the fridge was salvageable but there were plenty of canned goods, nuts, and crackers. Hunger assailed him suddenly, and he devoured an entire box of flaxseed crackers. He tossed the rest of what was still edible, along with several changes of clothes, into a large wheeled suitcase.

One last thing before he left the family condo behind forever: he tried turning on his tablet but it had no juice left. It was most likely a futile effort; already, Maxim suspected there would be neither Wi-Fi nor mobile connections available, but only dead air.

? ?

The morning after the altercation with the two white men in business suits, Maxim finds the building guardian dead, sprawled on the floor inside near the main door. Maxim kneels to inspect the body. There is no blood and no obvious clue as to how the man died.

The three Latinas emerge from the stairwell and step into the lobby. Maxim hears their gasps. He turns his head toward them, his hand still resting against the old man’s chest. For the first time since his departure from his parents’ home, Maxim speaks. “I found him like this.”

Maxim’s voice breaks before he hits the end of the sentence. With no warning, he weeps – his bereavement at waking up orphaned in this fractured world finally breaking through. He tries to contain it, but he can’t. His entire body shakes and sobs. He doesn’t have the strength to get up or even to stay in kneeling position. He plops down, sitting on the floor; his will to do anything but give in to the tears flows away. The youngest of the women crouches down and hugs him to her.

? ?

Maxim is fluent in three languages: English, French, and Japanese. He does not need to understand Spanish to grasp that the women are arguing about him and that they are all three of them scared. Probably not scared of him, though, or they wouldn’t have let the youngest one lead him into their floor of the building or leave him unsupervised as they argued among themselves.

Their living space is different from his. Maxim has not moved any of the furniture or in any way altered the neutral decor and layout. If Maxim were to vacate, he could do so immediately and there would scarcely be any evidence that he ever inhabited the condo. The women, on the other hand, have clearly made the space their own. Their place is bursting with colour and knick-knacks. No wall or surface is left blank. The effect is busy and alive but not cluttered. It feels like a home, in a way his own space does not.

The women have stopped talking, and the silence grows thicker with each passing second – until the oldest woman utters a terse sentence to the one who was kind to him, which is followed by another silence, this one volatile and pregnant with conflict. But it’s short-lived. The youngest woman says one word in response to the eldest, then turns back toward Maxim.

To sit next to him on the couch, she has to displace a handful of large, colourful cushions. Maxim is holding on to another of these cushions, clutching it to his chest. It smells like flowers, and the aroma soothes him.

She puts a hand on his forearm: “I’m sorry. I want to take you with us, but…”

“Take me where?”

Her grip on him tightens. “I… We don’t know yet, but it’s not safe here. Not anymore. Anyway, you can’t come. My aunt says family only. Will you be okay? Are you alone? Is there anyone left that you can…?”

Maxim looks at her hand on him as her words trail off. Then he looks at her carefully, and he notices that she’s younger than he’d previously believed. She’s no more than two or three years older than he is. Maxim is short at only 165 centimetres, but she’s a few centimetres shorter, with long hair that looks well maintained, despite the lack of, well, just about everything. Looking straight into her big bright eyes, Maxim says: “My name is Maxim Fujiyama.”

That makes her laugh, and Maxim knows that he has never seen anything so beautiful as this girl laughing.

“My name is Perla, Maxim,” she says brightly, but then her face darkens. “You don’t have anyone left, do you?”

Maxim’s heart is beating so hard, it almost overwhelms her voice; the sound of her voice makes it beat even harder. He says, “I have you, Perla. You’re my friend.”

Perla looks away from him, takes her hand away, and wipes her face with her forearm. She turns her head back toward Maxim and shakes her head, her eyes moist. She leans in and brushes her lips against his ear as she whispers, “Yes, I am your friend, but I’m not a good friend.” She lets her lips linger on his cheek for a split second before she gets up and says, in a loud, cold voice, “You have to go. Right now.”