Down in the Park
By Jacob Strunk
His skull is picked clean, the rock beneath it a wash of mottled black where animals have lapped up most of the congealed blood, pulled away the fat and soft tissue. She sees the fracture, maybe half an inch wide, from where his head hit the rock and a shimmer of grease that she guesses was once his brain. His windbreaker is torn open, too, and his shirt, and his guts. His ribs are exposed and bear thousands of tiny teeth marks, as does his spine, and she imagines in a few days there won’t be much more left than the tattered scraps of his clothes. She watches life teem in the horror where his hands should be: maggots, flies, who knows what else.
She kneels next to his pack, tugging it from under his too-light body. She opens it and finds a few cans of tuna, beans, a protein bar. It’ll do, but she thinks it’s no wonder this guy didn’t make it. A $300 coat and some fancy shoes – she wonders briefly if they’re her size, but no, too big – and he probably figured he was set. He’s hardly the first.
She’s not sure how long it’s been since the lights went out, but waking before dawn she felt the probing fingers of dull ache in her lower abdomen and knew her period was coming; so it hasn’t been a month. An hour before daylight, she looked across the San Fernando Valley from the rocky outcropping where she’d spent the night and watched huge clouds of noxious black smoke curl into the lightening sky, an upraised black arm ending in a fist. Maybe half a dozen fires today. Some days there are more, and eventually, she knows, they will merge into one and consume whatever’s left of the city, the mountains, the park. And whoever is left in it.
It’s February, but it’s still been 80 degrees during the day. That’s how she knew he was here; she smelled him from above, figured he’d be down here in this wash before she even saw the red of his windbreaker. Moving slowly, it took her half an hour to reach him. The whole way down, she watched birds circling overhead, listened for anything that might warn of waiting danger.
She’s stuffing the tuna into her own pack when she hears something behind her, and she spins, her hand reaching for and finding the long knife that had belonged to her neighbor, the one with the drinking problem, the chef. It’s a Wüsthof, and very sharp. She could never afford one herself, but now it’s in her hand, her arm tensed like a snake before a strike, the blade pointing hungrily at the terrified face of a guy much younger than she is.
“Whoa,” he says, his hands out in front of him. “Whoa, I’m not –”
Not Mitch, is what she thinks. And he’s not.
***
A few days after the world ended, after the grid went dark and the skies went oily with smoke and ash and she let her phone battery die playing the one Bob Seger record she had downloaded – those Hollywood nights in those Hollywood hills – Mitch came for her. Living under a garage, her modest one bedroom tucked beneath a 90 year old house in the hills, is probably what kept her alive that long. No one knew she was there, and as her neighbors had packed up and left, as she’d heard their screams and gunshots late into the night, she’d made the decision to stay. To wait this out here. She had the high ground, after all. And after years of OK Cupid and eHarmony and guys from improv class and musicians and bartenders and swiping and swiping and swiping, of course Mitch is the one who came for her.
“Ruuuuuth.” She froze. She was already on her knees, digging in the soft earth below her deck, trying to figure out if she could grow anything there. If she had to, that is, not that this wouldn’t all be over soon, but – “Ruthiiieeeee.” And then his laugh, unmistakable, that little chuckle that at one time had given her goosebumps, made her heart flutter – that laugh gave her goosebumps again. She heard someone else and knew he wasn’t alone. And more than that, deep in that reptile place at the back of her skull, she knew everything would change now.
She backed down the hill as quietly as possible, disappearing into the tall agave even as the heavy leaves tore at her skin and clothes. She sank low and peered up as Mitch and three other men came down the steps from the street. She watched as they walked onto her deck, as they kicked open her door. She listened as they laughed, heard them smashing her things, watched them leave with heavy duffel bags full of the food she’d collected. She watched Mitch pour her saved water over the side of the deck gallon by gallon. And she realized, watching him scan the property from the deck as his friends looted her apartment – his eyes burning with the same hatred and intensity they’d had when she finally left him – she could never go back inside, and he would not stop looking.
***
“You okay?”
“It’s nothing.” She suppresses a groan. It’s not nothing, not really, but after dealing with something once a month for 25 years, you get used to it. And even as it remains very much a thing, as it defines your life and dictates how you live it 60 days a year, that’s not worth explaining. Not anymore. Not to a man. Not to Kevin, she thinks he said his name is.
They’re in one of the shelters in the Boy Scout camp. She’s come through here before, a week ago maybe, and figures it’s safe. Most places in the park are safe. Safer than the city, anyway. Car alarms, explosions, gunshots still make their way faintly up into the hills. But she’s rarely seen anyone up here, not up close. Three times she’s caught glimpses of Mitch and company, always from far away. One of those times, she watched them kick a dog to death in front of two terrified kids surely no older than 20. They laughed as they did it, and the dog’s yelps split the air and found Ruth where she knelt, watching. Hiding. She watched them cook the dog, eat it. Then they started on the kids. Another time Ruth watched them pull apart a woman with a broken leg; she screamed until her head came off.
Ruth leans in, stirs the beans, bubbling above the Sterno can. She used to like cooking. She hands Kevin a spoon.
Thank you. She can tell he hasn’t eaten in days. His hands are shaking. He looks so young.
She asks him where he’s from. He starts to tell her, but she’s not listening. She knows she can trust him because, as scared as he is, he needs her. They both know that. She has the windows open and is listening instead to the park outside, the light rustling of leaves, the call and response from a familiar pair of owls. She’ll make sure the Sterno’s out before the sun’s gone. And she’ll let him sleep first, listening to make sure they’re alone.
Oh, those big city nights in those high rolling hills…
She’ll take Kevin with her tomorrow. She wants to start making her way east, toward the river. She knows it’s only a matter of time before the fires find their way to the edge of the park. She’ll follow the river south to the ocean. That’s the safest bet if she’s ever getting out of here. It’s a been few days since she’s seen Mitch, but she knows he’s close. It’s his nature to take things he wants, and she knows he wants her.
Above all the lights…
She spoons warm beans into her mouth, then some of the dead man’s tuna. It’s funny, she thinks, all those years living alone: how many meals just like this had she eaten in front of the television after a bad audition? How many cans of tuna has she rested on a knee, ashing a cigarette into it after a breakup? It is funny, almost like this is where she was headed all along.
They’ll leave early in the morning. Head east. They’ll move slowly, stay out of sight. It’ll take a couple days this way, but it’s better. Smarter. And if Mitch does get close, she’ll leave something to slow him down. She looks sidelong at Kevin, imagines him falling – imagines him pushed – down a gulley, his leg snapping; imagines Mitch hearing the screams and following the sound while she moves swiftly and silently to higher ground. Imagines herself watching. Again.
She had all of the skills.
Ruth spoons more beans, then winces as a knot of pain squeezes deep within her like a fist, wondering when she’ll start to bleed.
THE END
Author Bio: Jacob Strunk has been short-listed for both a Student Academy Award and the Pushcart Prize in fiction, as well as the Glimmer Train short story award and a New Rivers Press book prize. His films have screened in competition and by invitation across the world, and his fiction has appeared in print for over 20 years, most recently in Flash Fiction Magazine, Coffin Bell, and The Chamber Magazine. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and teaches film and media in Los Angeles, where he lives with a few framed movie posters and the ghost of his cat, Stephen. You can find further information about his work and previous publications at www.sevenmileswest.com and follow @sevenmileswest on the socials.