Reflections

By Silas Woods

From murderous crowd-sourcing apps to nefarious faeries, Reflections is a collection of short stories posing a single question: where does goodness end, and evil begin? 

 

In "Scales", Jason and Akira find friendship in the aftermath of a cataclysmic pandemic, but the closer they become, the greater Jason's secret grows. "Crowns" centers around Larry, who must pay a terrible price to save his comatose girlfriend. In "Veritas", two detectives are gifted with a new and revolutionary truth serum that will reveal far more than they bargained for, and in "Mech", the moral dilemmas deepen as a forbidden, unrequited love simmers amidst the turmoil of an alien invasion. 

 

Ten soaring stories, each exploring original and thought-provoking perspectives of love, secrecy, loyalty, and destruction. Tangling future and fantasy, Reflections is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the frailties, foibles, and dreams of humanity. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silas Woods
• Release date: Mar 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393768258

Silas Woods

Silas Woods is proud to play General Cornwall in a local bi-monthly reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. Okay, that’s a lie. But now that you’re reading, here’s the truth. Silas grew up as an Air Force brat. Moving around as a kid isn’t easy, but it does build character. He’s a storyteller by nature and has so many great ideas locked away in his head that he could potentially write forever and never run out of material. His biggest hope is to find his tribe of readers that’ll love his work.  Married to the love of his life, Rebecca, the pair love to game with their cat, Konami, ever giving their gameplay judgmental glares. Silas’ stories are inspired by the world around him, so his characters, scenarios, and even their fictional reactions are all true to life, making his books dangerously realistic and easy to get lost in. He hopes to inspire adults to remember their love of reading, encourage others to read more, and to bring a hint of magic to the mundane.   

Book preview

I.  Is the Loneliest Number

JASON WAKES UP TO FIND that he is laying on his side and has his right leg pulled up to his chest.  As consciousness comes to him completely he looks down and sees that while he slept he has been incessantly scratching at his right calf, continuing the task even as his fingernails had drawn blood.  He stops scratching and lifts his hand up to look at it.  The tips of his middle, ring and pointer fingers are stained a dark maroon and shiny with his blood.  Jason springs out of bed, swiping his fingertips frantically against the palm of his left hand, doing no more than putting thin lines of blood all over his clean hand.  He looks back at his bed and sees that there’s blood on his sheets as well; it doesn’t look like anyone slaughtered a pig on his bed or anything, but there’s just enough blood to cause little beads of nervous sweat to form on his forehead. He pauses for a moment, staring at the little red droplets, and then gathers his courage and looks down at his leg.  There’s a spot on his right leg about 3 inches wide and 3 inches long where the skin is flayed into little fragments and soaked in blood.  Jason can only look at this for less than a second before his stomach takes a nervous swing, and he slams his eyelids closed, taking heavy breaths. 

Clean it.  I gotta clean it off,  he says out loud and then hurries into the bathroom. 

He walks through his small apartment to his kitchen to grab a bottle of antimicrobial soap from the sink.  Once he has it he comes back to the bathroom, turns on the shower and sits on the toilet while he waits for it to heat up, ignoring the morbid desire he has to look down at his leg again.  When the bathroom fills with steam, he strips and climbs into the shower, squirting a liberal amount from the bottle he’s holding into his palm.  The wound in his leg stings as he bends over and applies the soap, but he ignores the slight pain and works the chemicals into his leg roughly and quickly, still not looking directly at it.  When he feels the skin soften, he reaches up to grab a loofah that hangs on the shower wall and scrubs at the wound.  Jason repeats this process an additional two times and then cleans the rest of himself off while he’s at it. 

When he’s out of the shower he uses lotion from his bathroom sink, slathers it onto the now close to normal feeling skin and covers it with a large square bandage from his medicine cabinet.  After dressing in a fresh pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, he returns to the bedroom and yanks all the sheets off of his bed and throws them to the floor.  He takes the pillowcases from his pillows and gathers up the lot, stuffing them into the washing machine in his closet and setting the machine to cold.  Jason sits on the floor with his back to the gently vibrating machine, looking down at the bandage on his leg. 

You’re fine,  he tells himself.  Give it a day, when you take that bandage off tomorrow morning, it’ll be fine,  Not quite believing it, he hauls himself up to his feet and walks into the living room. 

He sits on the couch and powers on his iPad, navigating quickly to the web browser and performing the search Pandora Virus Skin Rash.  As always, there are lots of results, but not what he’s looking for.  Instead, he navigates to the official Pandora Virus website and looks at the list of symptoms, a list that he (and every other survivor)  has viewed more than a hundred times and has virtually committed to memory but supposedly the powers that be are gathering information and making updates all the time.  He looks at the bullet points slowly, nervously.  He makes it through all twenty of them, seeing nothing about abnormal skin conditions. The list looks unaltered.  When Pandora had you, it didn’t really feel any different from a common cold.  Until you were on your hands and knees puking up your blood and innards three days later, that is.

Somewhat relieved, he turns off the iPad and goes to the kitchen, opening the fridge to see about breakfast.  On the top shelf, there’s a carton of eggs that’s unused.  You never can tell what you’re going to get in your bi-weekly food box, with two exceptions.  They included eggs and milk in every box.  Two 18 packs of eggs.  Jason can see why, there must be plenty of them and more on the way somewhere, they’re a good source of protein... But that doesn’t change the fact that a person can only eat so much of one thing before the mere thought of eating that thing makes him want to retch. 

Consequently, and not without a pre-wired stab of guilt, Jason usually ends up tossing twenty of his egg ration into the garbage disposal.  The guilt because his mother, having been one of the first victims to succumb to Pandora 2.0 had always warned him against the evils of wasting food.  He continues staring up at the eggs, now stored in a plain white packaging unmarred by any brand name or advertising.  A small smile forms on his lips as his mind excavates a long buried memory of holding up a dirty bowl to his mother as she stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes. 

She had turned around and looked down into his bowl.  No, Jason, you’re not finished yet.  You’ve got to eat all of your macaroni, there are starving children in...  What had she said?  China?  Africa?  The starving country may have been a variable. She had smacked him with this specific euphemism a lot.  There aren’t any starving children now, Jason thinks, and a slight chill runs through him.  Some razor-wit online had coined the phrase well fed or dead a completely accurate, if extremely insensitive description of the remaining population.  He shoves the thought and his memory of his deceased mother (always accompanied by the last moments of her life which he had witnessed firsthand) and grabs the eggs off of the top shelf, placing them on the counter. 

Of course, now that everyone was eating more eggs than they wanted, the world had all come forth in the online community to share their best egg recipes, along with drawn out video tutorials on how to do it right.  Jason has so far tried 37 of them.  Poached eggs.  Egg In The Hole.  Egg Scrambles.  Egg Salad Sandwiches.  He’s still waiting to try making a quiche, but has yet to receive the necessary frozen pie crust in his supplies. 

Unfortunately, the illusion of mingled methods of preparation after a year has become so thin it’s transparent.  Eggs are eggs.  Today he finds himself in the mood for them and moves forward without thinking about it, to make his hands busy with a menial task for a few minutes so he can avoid (blood on the sheets)  thinking about how he had woken up that morning. 

He opens the cabinet where he stores his canned goods, and after groaning at what he sees there weighs out which he hates more.  Plain eggs with no side dish to break up the texture or Vienna Sausages.  It’s a close match but plain eggs lose the debate and he grabs the little can from the cupboard too.  While he’s waiting for his skillet to warm up, he turns on the TV in the living room and starts an episode of a TV show called Taxi (It rose to fame way before his time but he’d discovered it after searching Danny DeVito’s body of work and found it enjoyable after learning to look past the goofy 70s attire) to provide background noise while he cooks. 

Jason finishes cooking his food and dumps the eggs and sausages on a plate to bring to the living room to sit cross-legged at the coffee table while he eats.  The credits on the Taxi episode roll and the next one begins.  He picks at his food.  Most people do these days.  In fact, most activities are carried out in a slow and methodical manner.  It makes them all last longer.  As he’s finishing the last scraps of his scrambled eggs, he hears the familiar sound of a heavy truck pulling up outside and the loud hiss and pop of compression brakes as it stops in the parking lot outside his apartment.  Jason takes his phone out and looks at the date, letting out a quiet curse as he confirms what he already knows. 

In the morning’s shenanigans, he had completely forgotten that it was supply day.  It’s not a guarantee, but there is a distinct possibility that something better than the nasty sausages he just ate is contained within the box that’s about to be dropped off at his front step.  He drinks more water to neutralize the aftertaste of said sausages.  Then he turns down the volume on the television until a digital 0 is displayed back at him and then sets the remote control back down and tries his best not to move.  Jason is more than a little afraid of the Skulls (as the soldiers have are known universally because of the black hoods and white protective masks that are part of the standard uniforms)  that perform the bi-weekly deliveries.  These men have approval to kill anyone on sight after all, and if it’s all the same to them, Jason prefers they think he’s asleep every time they come. 

A silhouette passes in front of the blinds at his only window, and then Jason hears a box being set down outside.  The silhouette passes by the window again and stops as a voice yells from the parking lot.  The sound of it makes Jason jump.  Holy shit, how long has it been since he’s heard a human voice in person and not through the headset he uses to chat online? 

Lewis!  You imbecile, we’ve got one more at this complex I thought you checked the list! The silhouette stops.  After a moment, it yells back.  Sarge, I’m pretty sure it’s just the one here, are you sure?  he yells back in response. 

Yes, I’m sure I’m looking right at it.  Get your ass back in that truck and find the box marked ‘Hane’, double time.  Jason assumes the word Hane is a last name, as his own delivery box has his own last name Blaylock scribbled on the top of it in sharpie marker every week. 

Yes sir, right away sir! says the silhouette and then moves out of Jason’s window at a faster pace than it had originally passed in.  Jason sits stunned at this nugget of eavesdropped information.  Could there possibly be another living person in this complex?  Of course there could, answers his brain immediately.  He doesn’t leave his apartment, this Hane person doesn’t leave their apartment...  When would they have seen each other coming or going?  They both could have easily lived here this whole time, what, two years, and never knew that the other existed.  Except now, because of a clerical error by the Skulls, Jason knows he’s not alone here.  There is another living person within walking distance of him. 

It’s a thought he’s unable to shake off completely through the rest of the day.  He thinks about it as he boils Oriental flavored Ramen noodles for lunch, as he unenthusiastically plays three hours worth of Call Of Duty to pass the time, as he’s laying down for his nap afterwards and it’s the first thought that occurs to him as he wakes up from that nap.  There’s someone else here.  Someone to talk to, someone to eat with, someone.... What if it’s a lady?  Could he be that lucky?  What if there was a cute lady just as lonely as he is, holed up in one of the other apartments here?

Jason mentally slaps himself for his amended thought.  Would the prospect of another human being be any less exciting if it was an ugly lady here? Even if it was an ugly man?  A mental image is projected through his mind of a man, so fat that his doughy breasts are spilling out of the side of his stained white tank top, dingy sweatpants and a personal pet peeve of his, flip-flops and makes a startling discovery.  He still wants to be that guy’s friend, hell he’s dying to be that guy’s friend.

Jason has a sudden urge to get up right now and go knocking on all the apartment doors until he finds his new friend Earl.  He knows the rules, just like everyone else.  Leave your house, get shot on sight.  Zero tolerance because maximum tolerance had put them all in this situation to begin with, the new policy being the oldest American tradition there is, the Cultural Overcorrection.  Of course, the risk of doing some exploring in his almost deserted complex could be minimal. 

Then why haven’t you already done it?  he asks himself out loud.  Okay, so there was still a risk.  Was it worth it?  It takes until lunch the next day to give himself an answer to that question.  Yes.  He’s eating a grilled cheese sandwich made with the supplies he received yesterday. Jason imagines that looking in your trove and seeing that little plain white box that is shaped just right to contain four sticks of butter conjures up the same feeling in modern times that prospectors must have had in the 1800s when they saw a little glint of gold in the hole they were digging.  He had looked up a tutorial and tried to make his own butter from a carton of cream once.  It had not gone well.  Yes, it was worth the risk and he would try to go find Earl Hane tonight as soon as the sun went down. 

Or so he thought.  Turns out that the fear of being shot full of holes has not waned enough to be lightly dismissed.  That night, Jason picks out his sneaking gear.  After a rummage through his closet he finds a black sweater, black slacks, and a ninja mask from an old Halloween costume, the rest of which would be ideal for his plans but is somehow missing.  To complete the ensemble, bright white Nike Air Monarchs.  Try as he might he cannot locate a pair of shoes that were not bright white, he swears he must have owned something other than white sneakers at some point but there aren’t any he can locate. 

He showers, dresses in his Dinner Party at the Gym ninja outfit... And finds that when he places his hand on the knob on his front door that undoes the deadbolt, he’s unable to turn it.  He removes his hand and tries again.  Nope.  Still can’t do it.  Jason takes a few steps to the left and uses a finger to create a space in the blinds, hoping that the sight of dark emptiness out there will steady his courage.  It doesn’t. 

Tomorrow, he says out loud.  Yes, tomorrow will work just fine.  There’s no deadline.  Besides that, he’s a little sleepy.  So Jason ends up planted on the couch staring at more Taxi episodes, stripped down to just his underwear, his ninja outfit folded neatly in a pile on the floor by the front door. 

The next morning, Jason wakes up to feel that he is clutching something in his left hand.  He opens his eyes and looks in his hand to see what he’s holding onto and discovers it’s the bandage that he put over his leg the previous morning.  The inside pad of cotton, previously white, is now completely stained red.  Jason cries out and throws the bandage across the room in disgust, where it strikes the front of his television and falls to the ground.  Only then does he realize that his other hand is down by his rash again, where it has once again been working to shred the skin previously concealed by the bandage. 

What the fuck!  he says in honest puzzlement.  There is no semi-calm handling of the situation on this second morning.  Jason runs to the shower and repeats the same procedure he performed yesterday, only now in a close to hysterical panic.  When he gets out of the shower, he forces himself to actually look at the rash.  The sight of it relaxes him.  After being thoroughly cleaned off and the little loose bits of flesh removed; it’s a little gross looking but doesn’t really amount to much more than a spot of discolored skin on his leg only... Does it look a little bigger now than it did yesterday? Perhaps... But that’s his own fault, rather his nocturnal self’s fault for scratching at the damn thing. Of course it’s bigger. 

Well, that stops now,  Jason says.  He slathers a palmful of antibiotic ointment on the wound, puts a replacement bandage on it, and then goes back to the kitchen where he opens his junk drawer.  To his relief, what he’s looking for is still in there, a black roll of duct tape.  He wraps two layers of the tape around the bandage, securing it in place.  Try to get through that, Sleeping Jason, he declares, relishing in his own MacGuyver like ingenuity.

That evening he’s staring at his front door again and can finally undo the deadbolt and put his hand on the doorknob before his courage departs again.  It comes back as another thought, the dark one that has been his companion for the last two days, that is the counter to the thin ray of hope of actually making a new friend.  What if the rash isn’t just a rash?  What if it’s a ticking clock? 

Come on pussy, let’s go meet Earl before you’re too dead to,  Jason says and turns the doorknob and steps out into the muggy open air for the first time in two years.

The first breath of fresh air hits Jason and even somewhat filtered by the ninja mask something wholly unexpected occurs, the now unknown but familiar olfactory input strikes his brain like a right cross and staggers him, flooding his mind with memories of nights just like this one, only before the world went to shit. 

His mind struggles to process the smell mixed with the climate of a summer night and force feeds him phantom scents that Jason not only knows aren’t there where he’s standing, but possibly don’t exist anywhere in the country.  Grilling hot dogs.  Cut grass.  Tanning lotion, chlorine, fruity alcoholic drinks. It all comes rushing back to him in a violent torrent. 

Jason has his hand on the outside doorknob, preparing to pull it closed behind him, but instead he leans heavily on it, putting his full weight on the knob.  The door complains loudly as it sways inwards but it holds him up as a single choked sob escapes him.  His vision becomes blurry with tears as he remembers things he has subtly trained himself to forget, things that everyone had taken for granted right until the bitter end of the old world. 

Jason slowly steadies himself, swipes a hand across each eye to clear them, and then pulls the door shut behind him as he originally intended to.  Then he sits down on the ground hard with his back against his door.  Everyone said it was already getting bad before Pandora landed, that there were so many additional reasons to hate other people.  This is a line.  I’m standing on this side of it and if you’re standing on the other side, I want you to come to this side of it or die painfully.

That was bad, but nowhere near as bad as this.  After all, here he was risking death by firing squad for the possibility of hearing another voice, of seeing another face, and he didn’t give a fuck how that person voted, what color their skin was or what God they believed in.  He just wanted some connection, the kind that couldn’t be made up for over the internet no matter how much everyone told themselves that it could.  Jason sits there and thinks about these things, knee deep in a pity party, when suddenly two thoughts occur to him.  How long has he been sitting here, and is he absentmindedly scratching at his rash through the slacks, two layers of duct tape and a bandage again?  Indeed, he is.

He hauls himself up, looks around and then walks away from the parking lot and towards the center of the complex where a somewhat pitiful commons area/community garden is located.  Even before the madness, Jason had only been to the commons area once, during his initial tour of the place. It was empty then, just as it is now, the patch of dirt where you were free to plant tomatoes and zucchinis if you wanted sadly free of any sprouting produce. 

Jason stands on a section of this patch of dirt now, turning slowly 360 degrees and looking around the complex for signs of his neighbor.  There are none to be seen, it’s just as black in the entire complex as it is outside his apartment. 

Fuck it,  Jason says and then cups his hands over his mouth and yells, Hello?  He had hoped that the sound of his yell wouldn’t carry past the parking lot out to the street, but as soon as the sound of it is out he flinches from it as the echoes bounce all around him.  The volume that a single voice could make was apparently more grandeur in dead silence.  Jason receives no response for his efforts.  There’s no way Mr. Hane hadn’t heard him, that yell was so loud. 

Over the next hour, Jason circles the complex, knocking on doors, yet another fruitless attempt to draw out his fellow survivor.  He loses track of which doors he’s knocked on after a while; the apartment complex is designed to look identical throughout.  Standing in the community garden in the commons again, he shouts,

Hello?  one more time.  Still no response.  He hadn’t thought it would be possible to return to his apartment even more depressed than he had left it, but that’s exactly how he steps back into his living room, closing the door behind him and ripping off his mask in frustration.  He changes back into his t-shirt and sweatpants, leaving his sneaking clothes (could he still call them that?  Good sneakers didn’t yell at the top of their lungs, he thought) by the door. 

The initial impact of disappointment wears off in about ten minutes.  He sits on his couch and thinks of what to do next.  If the other person was here, why hadn’t they answered him?  Were they scared?  Did they not want company, were they one of those weird people who were perfectly fine on their own, the sound of his yelling voice and knocking an unwelcome intrusion into their new ideal existence?  Too many possibilities to count, but it was possible at least that they were asleep, in the shower, or otherwise engaged in an activity that would have prevented them from hearing him at all.  Not likely, but possible. 

Jason decides he will try again. Not tomorrow night in case they were afraid of him.  He didn’t want to chase them deeper into hiding than they already were.  Maybe in a week.  He had plenty of time, nothing else but in fact.  He’d find him. It might take some time, but he’d find Hane even if he had to force his way into every apartment in this complex.  Although he hopes it won’t quite come to that.

Jason decides he should, just in case Hane had heard him and was the timid type, give him some kind of beacon that points his way. So they both didn’t spend the next year looking for and not finding each other.  The best idea comes to him after a series of ridiculous ones which include making a sign to put up in the commons (he doesn’t have any supplies to make a sign with) and yelling I’m in 144!  periodically throughout the day out his front door. Instead, he simply pulls the string on the blinds in his window, raising them up and displaying his living room to the world. 

If Hane comes looking for him, the apartment with light coming out of it should be very easy to spot.  If he comes looking for him, which is a big if at this point.  Jason turns on the lights in the kitchen and all three lamps in the living room before retreating to his bedroom for the night.  As he lays in bed, he sets a reminder on his phone to close the blinds before the next supply delivery day. 

The next morning, as soon as his senses return to him, the first thing Jason checks is his improvised rash vault.  Sleeping Jason had tried to get through it, but lacked the dexterity to undo the two rolls of tape. 

Ha-ha,  he says triumphantly.  The celebration, small as it is, is short-lived.  Jason looks at his hand and sees flecks of gray, sticky little fragments of shredded tape co-mingled with more blood and bits of loose skin.  I’ve got to clip my nails,  he thinks, focusing intensely on something trivial for just a second in order to not think about the matter at hand.  He sits up from bed and as he does he feels a sting on his left arm, near the shoulder.  He lifts his t-shirt sleeve as far as it will go and sees another rash, identical to the one on his leg festering on his arm.  His scratching hand found a backup location to travel to, which explains the fresh blood on it. 

Fuck,  he says. 

He showers, planning to treat this new rash as he had the previous one because he doesn’t know what else to do.  By the time he’s showered, he’s resigned himself to doing a deep dive on the internet to guess what’s happening to him. Standing in his kitchen, his arm now freshly duct taped, he once again focuses on a trivial matter.  What should he eat today?  He yanks open the freezer and his eyes fall upon a package of ground beef that has been there for several weeks.  Jason has a sudden desire, unrefined but powerful to yank the cellophane off the ground beef and bite into it, to feel the cold block of hard meat and sinew ripping apart under his teeth... He slams the freezer door shut, taking heavy breaths and fighting down nausea from the thought.

You know what, just for that you don’t get breakfast at all.  You get coffee, Jason says, not sure who he’s scolding.  He takes a jar of instant coffee from the cupboard along with a pot, then he fills the pot with roughly a mug’s worth of water and sets it on the range, turning the heat up to high.  Then he goes into the living room, turns on the TV and starts Taxi, and as he turns back to go back to the kitchen, he freezes in mid-turn and lets out a cry of surprise. 

Outside, a woman sits cross-legged on the ground against the front door of the apartment across from his own.  The woman is wearing a facial mask that covers her face entirely from nose down, and is dressed in a loose fitting green and black flannel shirt and jeans, clean white Adidas sneakers, so white they appear to glow on her feet.  She is reading a brightly colored book with lots of yellow and orange on the cover, and symbols that look Asian punctuated in several spots by exclamation marks. 

The woman appears to feel him looking at her and looks up at him.  It’s impossible to know for sure, but the visible part of her face adjusts slightly, raising a little as if the lower half might be smiling.  She shuts her book and stands up, walking close to the window.  Jason joins her on his side of the window and sees that they are roughly the same height, he is an inch taller, if that.  The woman raises a hand slowly and moves it back and forth three times in a very slow wave. 

Hi!  Jason says at a slightly higher volume than he would have used otherwise, just to be sure he can be heard through the glass.  The woman takes a cautious half step back from the window.  I’m sorry, I just.... I’m so happy to see you,  Jason says apologetically, still at the alarming volume.  Do you want to come in? he adds, trying desperately to regulate his voice to a normal level. She stares blankly, tilting her head to one side in apparent confusion.  Maybe she can’t hear him after all.  Would you?  Jason says, pointing at her.  Like to come inside? he finishes, pointing over his shoulder into his apartment. 

She tilts her head even further.  Jason stares at her in confusion now.  Before he can try again to make her understand what he’s saying, the unmistakable sound of water boiling over the edge of a pot and hitting a hot burner on a stove goes off and Jason looks sharply over at the kitchen. 

Oh God, one second, he says, holding up a finger to tell the woman to wait.  He runs into the kitchen and grabs the overflowing pot by the handle and moves it off of the burner, and in doing so, spills a generous amount of the water onto the burner.  Most of it sizzles and evaporates, but a tablespoon of it runs over the stove and onto Jason’s sock.

AH, FUCK!  he yells involuntarily, spinning away from the stove and flinging the boiling water all over the kitchen.  Dammit, Dammit, Dammit!  he curses as he throws the pot with a loud bang into the sink.  Jason closes his eyes tightly and lets out a groan of pain, waiting for the burn on his foot to lessen in intensity. When it finally does, he remembers that there is an unobstructed view from the window into his kitchen and realizes that his new acquaintance has definitely witnessed his slapstick comedy routine. 

He hangs his head and goes back to the window.  Sorry,  he mutters, but when he looks up at her the top part of her face is smiling again.  She lifts her hand up to her already covered mouth and giggles, but not maliciously. 

She then tilts her head and raises both hands, both palms facing upwards as if to say, What are you gonna do? Jason smiles at her.  He holds up his finger, telling her to wait again, and goes into his bedroom to get a fresh pair of socks.  When he comes back, he doesn’t go to the window.  Instead, he just opens his front door and goes outside.  While he was changing out of his soggy sock, he had a moment of clarity. Either that or the boiling water had unclogged the gears on the part of his brain that was in charge of deductive reasoning. 

Hi,  he says again to the woman.  She waves at him again but doesn’t respond.  You... don’t speak English, do you? 

She shakes her head at him and makes a tiny muffled noise through her mask.  Mm-mm.  the universally recognized sound of no.  The sound is small, barely audible, and simultaneously one of the most wonderful sounds Jason has ever heard.  The woman opens her book and removes a piece of paper that has been neatly folded into quarters and steps forward, unfolding it and holding it out to him. 

Jason takes the piece of paper and looks down at it.  It appears to be an official government form.  The top half is written completely in another language.  Directly beneath the foreign language there appears to be a xeroxed black-and-white image of the woman’s opened Japanese passport, which along with a photo of her very pretty uncovered face contains some English text and her name.  Beneath the image is a block of English text, presumably the English version of the text at the top.  Most of this text is simple statistics: Age:20. Sex:FEMALE.  Jason reads through some of this but then his eye is immediately drawn to the only splash of color on the page, a single line of lime green text. INFECTION STATUS: IMMUNE.  Directly beneath this, the text returns to monochromatic TRAVEL STATUS: APPROVED. 

Huh,  Jason says out loud as he reads.  They must do things differently in Japan than they did here.  The Skulls didn’t care if you were immune or not, you’d likely not get the chance to explain that.  He points at his chest.  Jason. and then points at her.  Akira? 

The woman’s brow furrows, and she squints in a look of disapproval before shaking her head and making the no sound again, this time inserting a tone of stern disapproval into it. 

Okay, okay, Umm.... What do I call you then?  he asks, speaking loudly and slowing the words down because everyone knows this helps when speaking an unfamiliar language to someone.  He looks down at the piece of paper again and focuses on the section that displays her name.  Hane?  he tries, thinking the form might have her first and last name reversed. 

The woman shakes her head again, but this time without the piercing glare.  Ha-neh,  she corrects. 

Hane,  he says correctly, and she nods her head and points at him. 

Mm-hm.

Jason nods agreeably.  That’s pretty.  Hane,  he says, repeating the name fully aware that she doesn’t understand him so this observation isn’t made in how people make it when they’re being polite or trying to get laid, he honestly likes the way it sounds. After a moment of silence, he hands her document back to her. Jason smiles a little as he realizes that the name Galgathor would probably sound pleasing to him as well, but Hane is fantastic.  Hi Hane, good to see you again.  What do you want to do today, Hane? Hey Hane, could you pass the pepper?  The name sounds great in his head, and he looks forward to saying all of those things. 

Only... She won’t know what the hell he’s talking about.  Instead of being a barrier that would stop the link of friendship from forming between them, Jason registers this as a minor inconvenience.  He could learn to speak Japanese, he’s heard that it’s really hard but seeing as there’s not much to pull his focus away from the project he thinks he can do it. 

Hane looks at the open door of his apartment and then at Jason himself. 

Oh yes, please be my guest,  Jason says and then stands in the doorway and beckons to her.  Hane walks towards him and then stops beside the front door, pausing to kick off her sneakers and revealing socks underneath that are as piercingly white as the sneakers themselves.  Jason’s own socks are almost gray in comparison... He hopes she won’t notice this before she brushes by him on the way into his apartment.  The physical contact would have been negligible in the old world, just the brushing of her shoulder against his.  In the new one, it’s enough to make them both pause and appreciate it. They stare at each other for a beat, unable to keep themselves from smiling, and then she continues past him to stand in his living room.  Jason remembers he had just flung a pot of water all over his kitchen. 

Please, have a seat,  he says to Hane, gesturing towards the couch.  Hane nods a single time and walks in that direction while he goes to the bathroom and pulls out a couple of bath towels from underneath the sink.  He also shuts the door and gives the bathroom a cursory guest friendly inspection, which it passes after he pulls the shower curtain closed.

After the water is all soaked up and the used towels are stashed in a hamper in the bedroom, Jason comes back to the living room and finds Hane crouched by the bookcase next to his television, running her finger over the various Playstation games he keeps in there.  Jason sits on the couch and waits for her to finish looking.  Her finger stops at one game and she pulls it from the bookcase. Hane comes over to him and holds the game out to him so he can see the artwork on the front of the box. 

Spiderman?  You want to play? he asks, pointing at her and pantomiming pushing buttons on a controller.  She nods.  Yeah, okay.  That’s a good one, but it’s only one player so... I’ll tell you what you play and I’ll watch.  And I keep talking.  Radish Cadillac dish soap bubblegum she doesn’t understand you. God Jason you’re a moron."  Hane hands the game to him and flops down on the other end of the couch. 

Jason turns on the Playstation and puts the game disc inside it.  He grabs a controller and comes back to the couch.  After navigating through the opening menus and getting to the actual gameplay, he hands her the controller. He only has to watch her move Peter Parker around the screen for a couple of minutes to realize that Hane is great at this, she almost beats the first level boss before he gets her with a cheap shot.  As the game enters a loading screen to reset to the beginning of the fight, she scoots herself to the middle of the couch and holds the controller out to him. 

Oh.  Okay.  We’ll take turns,  He takes the controller and plays until he dies and hands the controller back to her.  They continue in this manner until Jason notices the light is changing outside.  Apparently hours have gone by and neither of them have noticed. 

Jason gets up from the couch and stretches at the end of her turn and goes to the kitchen as she plays.  He makes turns on the stove and makes them each a grilled cheese sandwich, putting them on small plates and cutting them in half and then brings the plates, along with a bag of tortilla chips into the living room and places them on the coffee table.  Hane seems distracted by the smell of food, and her turn ends quickly as she keeps sneaking glances down at her sandwich.  She presses a button on the controller to pause the game and drops to the floor so she’s sitting at the table.  He sits down next to her. 

The coffee table is small so they’re sitting almost shoulder to shoulder, but there’s still a small gap between them.  Hane looks at him and then scoots an inch to the left, closing the gap so they are actually touching.  She looks down at her sandwich and then up at Jason. 

Ladies first,  Jason says.  Hane grasps the bottom of her mask in one hand and pulls it over her head, placing it next to her plate on the table.  She takes a small appraising bite of the sandwich, then follows up quickly by taking another normal sized bite.  She looks at Jason and nods her approval before reaching into the opened bag of chips and dumping a handful of them on her plate.

Jason switches inputs on the television and flips through several channels, not seeing anything interesting when Hane puts a hand on arm and squeezes.  He looks in her direction and her face looks incredibly frustrated, like she has something to say but can’t.  She makes a grunt and then pulls her phone out of her pocket, taps on it and holds the display out to him. 

Oh!  Sure, I love that show,  Jason says as he sees the very familiar cast of Friends in a stock coffee house photo, he grabs the remote and navigates to the show on Netflix.  He starts the first episode and then opens the menu and activates the Japanese subtitles. 

When they are finished eating their sandwiches, Hane takes her plate and stacks it on top of his, then picks them both up and takes them to the kitchen.  Jason hears the water running as she rinses off their plates and puts them in the dishwasher.  He moves himself up to the couch and when Hane comes back; she sits next to him.  She doesn’t seem to be itching to return to their game, and neither is he, so they sit as the next six episodes of Friends play, laughing together at the funny parts. 

Some time later, Jason looks at Hane to check on her and sees that she has her head resting on one hand, her elbow propped up on the armrest of the couch.  She’s asleep.  Looking at her makes him yawn, realizing that he’s not chock full of energy himself.  He grabs an extra pillow from his bedroom and puts a new pillowcase from the linen closet on it, then grabs a blanket from the same closet and sets both items down next to Hane.  Jason looks at her one last time and then goes to his bedroom.  As Jason falls asleep, thinking about the day’s events and what tomorrow might bring his hand scratches absently at the duct tape on his left arm. 

Much later, closer to early morning than the middle of the night, a silently moving Hane creeps to his bedroom door, which Jason had left open.  She leans against the door frame and folds her arms, watching him snore and scratch at his arm.  Hane registers the information but doesn’t think anything of it, not yet.  She makes an expression of anxiety and indecisiveness and holds it for almost a full minute.  Then she comes into his bedroom.  Hane lifts the comforter on the empty side of the bed and climbs into the bed with him, sliding over as quietly as possible so that she’s laying right next to him. 

As their bodies touch, he inhales a sharp breath.  His eyes open sleepily for a moment and their eyes lock onto each others’.  Now caught in the act (her plan was to indulge in the enjoyment of human touch for a few hours before sunrise and then retreat to either the couch or her own apartment before her new friend knew he was being enjoyed, lest he get the wrong idea as men always seem to do given the opportunity) Hane maintains the eye contact and silently awaits his judgement.  Jason doesn’t wake up, not all the way. 

He leans forwards and brushes his lips against her forehead before rolling back onto his back and shutting his eyes again. It’s not a kiss really, but close enough to one to let Hane know she is welcome here.  She is relieved.  She moves closer to him and drapes an arm over his stomach, letting the rhythmic rumbles of his snores against her cheek put her to sleep.

II.  Steps Forward

Two months, an impressive roster of cooperatively completed video games and five binge watched TV shows later, Jason and Hane have settled into a comfortable routine together, mostly dictated by that first day and a bit of the next one.  When the sun had forced its way through the blinds that first morning, Hane had arisen, gone back to her own apartment and showered, then spent a couple of hours alone.  Then as lunchtime approached, she had returned to an anxiously waiting Jason’s apartment armed with a 10,000 piece puzzle, ground beef and a loaf of bread. 

This time he sat on the couch and enjoyed his relief (he had thought since he woke up that morning that she might not come back; he didn’t know why she wouldn’t but it still scared him)  while she prepared four homemade cheeseburgers, sticking two in his fridge for later and bringing the other two into the living room with the rapidly depleting bag of tortilla chips.  They ate while the next sequential episode of Friends played, then picked up the Spiderman where they had left off the previous day.  When neither of them can take anymore, Hane takes the puzzle she brought and dumps the pieces onto the living room table and the Friends marathon resumes. 

That second night when Jason had gotten up, squeezed her shoulder and said, See you tomorrow. Hane had immediately (again, to Jason’s relief) followed him and joined him in his bed.  The pair have slept together almost every night, either at his apartment or hers since they first made contact.  Well, slept together in the literal sense.  The exception of course is the night before the supply day, they both stay in their own homes until the Skulls have come and gone on their scheduled day. 

Hane was gone again the next day before Jason woke up but this time instead of being in frozen in fear that companionship was a one-time thing, Jason takes the several hours to tidy up around the apartment, to shower, and tend to two fresh rashes that are forming on his body, one on his left knee and the other on his right arm, perpendicular to the one on his left arm.  Seated on the toilet in his bathroom, Jason tells himself to not be pussy and carefully unwraps the tape and removes the bandage from his very first rash.  This one had stopped itching, and he had hoped that when he got the bandage off, what he would see was a blemish free patch of skin where the rash had been. 

Instead, Jason lets out a gasp as he sees a patch of thick skin where the rash had been, covered in bumps and the color of lava.  Something about seeing that aberration poking out of the middle of his normal skin offends Jason at a previously unknown level, challenges his concept of reality and makes him violently nauseous. 

He jumps off of the toilet, throws it open and heaves yellow bile from his empty stomach into it.  Immediately after that Jason begins the only unwelcome component of he and Hane’s current co-existence; hiding what is happening to him from her.  He takes yet another shower, rinses out the taste of vomit from his mouth with Listerine and brushes his teeth a second time for good measure.  Then he bandages his first rash again, stepping out of his bathroom dressed in concealing clothing just in time to hear Hane’s polite little knock at the door.

Outside of the (plague) unpleasantness happening to his body and the increasing difficulty of hiding it from Hane, the past two months are the happiest that Jason can remember.  The two meet every day at ten o’clock or close to it at the community garden where instead of just a patch of dirt a very odd menagerie of tomatoes, strawberries, green beans and cucumbers are now sprouting.  They pour water on their meager crops and then move on to their newfound hobby; breaking into random apartments in the complex. 

There was really no motivation to do this, they didn’t need supplies or shelter but Jason had gotten the idea when he remembered that before Pandora 2.0 had really gotten going, this was a pretty full apartment complex and all the residents that were here previously all had to depart suddenly.  They left to join family or loved ones elsewhere, opting to evacuate to one of the mythical safe zones when the rumor of such things were still credible.  Most or all of their stuff was still probably here.  A kind of morbid curiosity had taken Jason once he had the idea, and once he conveyed the idea to Hane using Google translate (the idea was a bit too complex to be transferred using their go to communication system of yes, no, I like that and I don’t like that)  she had expressed interest. 

They searched around their complex and found an old tool shed that was easily accessible as the wood it was constructed of was so old it looked like a strong enough wind might have sent the entire structure tumbling over.  Jason kicked at the door until he got tired and when he stopped to take a break, Hane took up the kicking, making the door rattle on its hinges more dramatically than Jason had been able to with his kicks. 

Jason observed this with a wounded male ego and preemptively ended his breather.  After three kicks that they timed to hit the door together, the door had flown open, revealing the fruits of their labors.  The fruits in this case being a large cache of useless gardening equipment and once those had been pushed aside, the thing they were looking for.  A toolbox containing hardware for their potential break-in.  Jason lifted the toolbox up and went to exit the shed when Hane tugged at the back of his shirt. 

She gently took the toolbox from his hand and pointed at the cluttered workbench at the back of the shed which contained mostly junk but almost directly in the center, a dusty power drill and two spare batteries for it sits on top of a plain black case. 

What do we need that for?  Jason asks, raising an eyebrow at her.  Hane simply nodded, made her sound that means yes at him and pointed at the drill again.  Jason picked up the drill and drill accessories without further comment on the matter.  Hane holds the drill now, swinging it back and forth like a child with a favorite toy as they walk and look around the complex. 

How about that one?  Jason says, pointing at a random apartment.  Hane grins at him, raises the drill towards him and squeezes the trigger twice, making a double chirp.  Jason steps back dramatically.  Careful with that thing Hane, I don’t want any extra holes in me. 

She neatly tosses the drill to the other hand and steps forward to place two pats on his chest.  Relax.  He wasn’t really concerned.  For whatever reason, Hane seems to know how to work the old drill with surgical precision.  This was a fact that she demonstrated in full at the first apartment they had broken into after politely watching Jason try all the tools in the toolbox to get the door open in a way that wouldn’t immediately raise suspicion if one of the Skulls passed by and saw it.

When they arrive at the door of the apartment, she works her magic again, putting the drill bit against the middle of the doorknob in just the right spot and drilling a hole through the knob in a way that severs the locking mechanism inside somehow.  Hane pulls the drill back out of the knob and drills into the deadbolt above it twice. She grips the knob, jerking it to the left, and the door swings open inwards.  At this point she steps behind Jason and gives him a polite little shove towards the open door.  Most of the residents had left of their own accord, but not everyone. 

Hane had gone into one apartment and had immediately discovered what was mostly a skeleton sitting at a small dining room table with a horde of flies buzzing around it, the head leaned over as far as it could go without falling off but still pointing its empty eye sockets in her direction as if to welcome her in.  Hane had screamed (she even does this in a subtle, polite way that would have to be seen to be believed) spun around 180 degrees, shoved Jason outside before he could also fill up on nightmare fuel and vomited a Denver omelette onto the pavement outside the apartment.  Needless to say, she doesn't go into the apartments first anymore, that duty is now Jason’s exclusively. 

Jason has a simple trick he uses to execute his exclusive duty, after seeing his own skeletal resident not long after Hane had seen hers and reaching an identical conclusion that seeing one was quite enough for anyone to see.  He closes his eyes tightly, steps into the dark apartment and inhales a small breath.  If there was death, it came with a stench.  No stench, no death.  Simple. 

This apartment seems to be stench free, so he turns around to Hane, who is standing behind him holding the drill protectively in front of her now and beckons.  Hane follows him into the apartment and shuts the door behind her. 

Together they both circle the apartment and turn on every available light.  Then they separate and begin rummaging through the apartment to relieve it of any and everything that might either be useful or interesting.  There are family pictures on the fridge, hung up on the walls, perched on top of the TV stand next to the television, but neither Jason nor Hane actually look at them.  Both have discovered on their own that doing so is almost worse than finding a skeleton, because currently all they are is unpleasant evidence of a world now gone. 

It takes the pair about twenty minutes to give the place a thorough search, and they load up Jason’s old duffel bag and start back towards his apartment.  Today’s loot includes a chess set, a book of scenic photographs, a sealed box of Maxi pads, a bottle of Ibuprofen and two bottles of fruit flavored Tums (finding these is like finding gold for Jason, he’s struggled with acid reflux since he was a child but just lately it has become unbearable at night until he took something to make it go away)  and a .357 Magnum and a box of shells to go with it, yet another firearm to add to their growing collection. 

Back at his apartment, Jason takes the bottles of antacids and places them on the nightstand next to the bed.  When he comes back out, Hane is setting up the chessboard.  They almost always find some kind of game or toy in the apartments and it’s tradition to test them right away.  Jason sighs.  He’s found that when it comes to games, both digital and analog Hane trounces him almost effortlessly.  There are a few exceptions to this rule, but not nearly as many as Jason would like there to be, and he’s almost positive that chess will not be an exception. 

His intuition is correct.  After her second win, he rolls his eyes and pats her hand in a congratulatory gesture.  He stands up, planning to go to the kitchen to make dinner.  Hane stands up and comes around the coffee table, standing still and blocking his path to the kitchen.  Jason goes to step around her and she sidesteps, standing in his way again.  She looks up at him, her eyes concerned.  For a few seconds, Jason is afraid that she wants a kiss. 

Afraid because he wants to kiss her, has wanted to since the first day they met but has