Ishmael
by P. M. Alexander
P.M. Alexander is a D.C.-based writer with prior publications in Altered Reality Magazine, The Waymark Literary Review, and The Floating Acorn Review. He enjoys writing grounded science fiction and horror, where regular people learn more about themselves in the most irregular circumstances. When not writing, he enjoys the city's free museums and tolerates its overpriced coffee. He is seeking publication for his debut novel.
The sky seems to pool around Ish’s head, as if gravity itself warped the night around him and wove the stars between perfect jet black hair. A self-proclaimed “morning-person,” he was staying up later than he should ― we all were tonight, in his defense ― but he already was capable of bending the darkness to his own will. Myself, decidedly not a morning person, couldn’t yet master such a trick. But I was able to live in the moment all the same, my adopted home given the circumstances.
The group, something more than thirty wanderers, had been searching for water for about two weeks. After being holed up in the plains of South Dakota, living in the shadows of mountains and monumental men, the greywater caught up to our position. It was too acidic to drink after the CritImpact Event, whatever we decided turned the sky orange and the water bleach white; Ish says it was an asteroid, and he’s generally smart enough to know, but I just can’t believe it was that simple. An asteroid would explain the ash in the air, but atmospheric ignition could be how the sky turned orange. Concentrated nuclear fallout is a curveball, but it’s one of those things I’d believe if someone said it with enough confidence. The greywater doesn’t fit any theory neatly though, running like tears through formerly-fertile land, of no use to anything but time.
The only thing we know for sure is that any sense of permanence is gone. Life was built around water and resources: when they went, we all had to go too. Two weeks ago, the greywater washed us out of our position and forced us on the move ever-Northward, looking for potable water beyond what we had in our dwindling reserves. Nothing, so far.
“They have to know we’re running low,” Ish whispered to me, watching the self-described “Sherpas” of our merry band of not-quite-strangers figure out what was next. The rest of us are standing by the treeline of an old park, our tents already set amidst a scene of overgrowth and abandonment. “We can’t just keep heading on south and hoping for the best.” Ish’s face always looked like a movie star’s, despite the circumstances. He always attributed that enviable fact to a comprehensive skincare routine: rubbing his face with a dry cloth each night, not daring to waste water on his vanity. I’d watch him sleep after, as his red face reset with the moon. His pores were stinging and angry, but always clear in the morning. If you asked him, of course, he’d laugh his beautiful laugh and said it was all natural.
“I don’t know about that,” Maddie responded. She loved listening to private conversations. I don’t like her. This was boys only. It didn’t concern her in the slightest. She’s a rude person. I don’t like her. Apocalypse or not, she let everything about her fill with grime and ugliness. Inside. Outside. I don’t like her. “I’m not sure we had clean enough water behind us anyway. Northward might be the only option.”
She snakes an arm around Ish’s waist. Ish is smart, very much so, but I don’t get why he tolerates her quite like that. He can only shrug as she continues her drivel. Even though I’m tuning it out, after a point, I just need to stop her shrill rambling. “We’ve seen waves of greywater before. Maybe this one will just pass, and the old camp down south will have potable water again.”
Maddie tilts her head. She smiles. She acts like what I said was stupid, but she’s too nice to say anything. “And then what? We do all of this again in two months, when the next wave of greywater comes through? What if it’s permanent? What if we don’t get enough water reserves before we have to move again?”
“Enough, both of you,” Ish says, standing and brushing himself off. He’s always too kind to me, and especially to her. “The Sherpas are going to make their call, and we’ll follow it. With the maps, the star charts, and whatever the scouts are telling them, they have a better handle on this than we do. We have to sit tight until then.” He strides away to save his sanity, leaving Maddie and I to presumably make some peace with each other. We will not.
“Y’know,” Maddie says, taking great care to look me up and down, “he’s a nice guy, Ishmael. He doesn’t want to speak his mind all the time, because it could hurt someone’s feelings.”
“Oh?” I’m not interested in her. I’m certainly not interested in the way Ish’s full name sounds leaving her mouth. I kick some mud clumps by my foot to try and speed this interaction up. He was agreeing with me, anyway.
“It’s his kindness,” she continues. “It’s why he’s such a good boyfriend, and why he’ll be a great father to our kids one day.”
Oh. That’s what this is. Gloating.
I don’t give her the satisfaction of a response, instead turning an unfortunate crumble of dirt into powder beneath my boot. She seems satisfied enough with that, returning to her tent to cackle at my foolishness. She was an earring saleswoman before the Event, which means she has no real skills to help out here. She would’ve been left behind in some flyover country strip mall if the CritImpact Event hadn’t happened, chirping and squealing herself through a sad little life. We picked her up a while back in Boise, half-dead. She always says that it was the happiest moment of her life, to be found by us (really Ish) and given a second shot at being a real person. It only cost the global hydrosphere and countless lives for her to get it.
I don’t like her.
When the mud clump is sufficiently destroyed beneath my heel, I realize Ish has been gone for a minute too long. I’m pretty sure I’m not usually this clingy, but between the indecision of our group’s elders and Maddie’s bile, I need some familiar comfort. I start an aimless walk around the campsite, hoping to maybe, perhaps, by chance, run into him along the way. I’m used to the wilderness; I sold sporting goods outside of Bismarck before Ish and the group picked me up. As paradoxical as it seems, that retail knowledge prepared me for this primal life: which tents are better than others, how to use the right base layers when it gets cold, and what to do when your hiking boots start to chafe.
There’s no one behind the tree line, or in it. Any sort of ambient light is long gone, making me rely on stars and what we’ll call “natural intuition.” A condemned snack shack lies empty, while some stragglers at a smoking campfire can’t say they’ve seen him. Finally, against a creek bed on the other side of the campsite, I see his form cast against the paper white river. I approach as silently as I can, but he knows me well enough to pick apart the sound of my movements.
“You shouldn’t antagonize her like that,” he says, not bothering to turn around. “It puts me in a hell of a position, y’know?”
“I don’t know, Ish.” I walk up next to him, overlooking the rushing greywater from a cracked boulder. “Maybe she should learn to stay where she’s wanted.”
“I want her,” he shoots back, almost too loudly. “I want her around, I mean. She’s getting better at breaking camp in the morning, and she’s made a point of cooking for me.”
I can only shrug at that. We’re chasing each other’s shadows here, as we do too often. I don’t feel like shining a bright light on my own, so I try with his. “You said it yourself, we have to trust the leadership’s read on this. I’m sure the rest of the group feels the same.”
“Some do, some . . . not so much.” He sighs, finally turning to face me. “They’re not infallible, you know. The Sherpas. But they are the best chance we have at not dying out here, if for no other reason than the safety in their numbers.”
“You’re right, they’re not infallible.” I reach into my pocket and thumb over a neat souvenir I found on the road. Ish notices, his eyes making it clear that he doesn’t have time for bashfulness. “They have tools. Maps, and star charts, and whatever the advance scouts report back. But more importantly, they think we don’t have any of that. That’s their most valuable resource. Till now.” I toss him my prize, a bundle of brownish paper, with a gentle translucent film that shines against the moonlight.
“What is this, man? I’m not in the mood for arts and crafts.” Even his condescension feels gentle with me.
“They’re pH testing strips, I grabbed them off of that school salvage mission last week.” That makes Ish take a closer look, and a weight I didn’t even know was there is lifted. “I sold these all the time a lifetime ago. They’ll work with greywater, tell us what’s safe to drink and what’s not.”
He tosses the bundle back to me, then turns back to the river. “That’s a good grab, honest. The Sherpas will be glad to have it whenever they decide to get moving again.”
“They don’t know, actually, and I don’t see a reason why they have to.” Ish’s shoulders tighten, but he refuses to let me see his face. This is it. “I know you’ve thought about it, going off by ourselves. We’re slowed down by a larger group, obligated to share resources and opinions with strangers. We can do more if we break away and go it alone, you have to understand.”
“Uh-huh.” Still not looking. I try to get closer to him on the boulder without scaring him, without scaring myself more than I already am.
“Ish, don’t pretend like you trust them, like you enjoy having these decisions made for you instead of—”
“Will you stop it already?!” Ish turns and screams at me. His voice echoes all around the campsite, something that seems to shock every last tree, rock, and shrub around us. Not him, though. “This isn’t because of their leadership, or resources, or any other bullshit reason you thought I’d buy. It just isn’t.”
He’s quiet for a while after that. I am too. Of course I am. There’s no easy response to that, to someone so clearly seeing through you and not liking what they find.
“Look, I— I’m sure you mean well,” he starts, as unsure of himself now as I always was around him, “and I have appreciated getting to know you since you joined up, really. But no, man, we can’t. Not right now, not like this.”
“We can,” I whisper, barely audible over the river’s crashing. I raise a hand to his cheek; he looks so sad, too sad for this. “We have to try, at least. There’s no more rules anymore, Ish. We can do whatever we want, be what we want to be. And I want . . . you know what I want.”
The ghost of a shadow runs along his face, before he screws his eyes shut. “Yeah, I guess I do. You’re not subtle, you know.” And we both laugh at that, thank God. “Maddie just loves holding it over me too, any time me and you get too chummy around her.”
“Fuck her.” It’s too quick out of my mouth, and Ish’s face certainly agrees, but I mean it. “I’m sorry, but fuck her. Don’t sit there and pretend like she gets you. You know she doesn’t. The talks we’ve had, the side of you that you keep walled off, she doesn’t see that. It’s a half-life, Ish, you’re supposed to want more for yourself.”
“And, let me guess, I’m supposed to want you back?” he spits. “That’s where this ends for you, right? Happily ever after together, dying of thirst in the middle of nowhere.”
Somehow, we’ve gotten too close to each other in this conversation. I feel the heat roll off his face as he talks, as if he should be steaming in the night’s chill. “You’re not too subtle either, for what it's worth,” I whisper. We’re too close. Six inches of space, I count them, six goddamn inches, that I certainly can’t cross. And for what? It’s not like—
His lips crash into mine. They’re restrained and tight, until they’re not: we make the conscious decision to take as much of each other as we can. Lips, tongue, teeth, all imperfect mortal barriers to something deeper, our souls colliding into one after so long apart. We’ve been mirror images of each other for so long, with the same grief for a life we never got to have. But we’re on the other side of the glass now, free and unlimited in each other. It’s the start of the rest of everything we’ll ever have, in this precise moment.
He gently pulls away, eyes shut. The lingering taste of each other still hangs on our breaths, with the river’s roar reminding us that we are still, in fact, on earth. I appreciate how peaceful he looks like this, denying himself sight amidst the symphony of his other senses.
But then he speaks. And the music is silenced.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.” He brushes past me, retreating back to camp. I try to keep up, but something has me in its grip, weighing me down to the cold forest floor.
“What do you mean? Why can’t you?” He shakes his head, refusing to give an answer or any real acknowledgment of what just happened. “Goddammit, why am I not enough?!”
Ish spins on his heel and faces me down, refusing me the dignity of coming any closer to me. “The weather can jump between smog or wet ash in minutes. There’s no pure water in sight. Instead of my actual family or friends, the few I held onto before the event, I’m roaming around with a pack—” He punishes the dirt twice beneath his heel. “—of fucking strangers! And the funny thing is that I should be grateful, because I know that’s the best I can do right now!” He takes a shaky breath in, before massaging his tired forehead into something more restrained. “I need . . . stable. I need easy. What you want, and don’t pretend like I’m wrong, isn’t stable. It’s just running around and hoping that we don’t die, with a fraction of the resources or responsibilities.”
“It’s freedom,” I sob, “fuck, it’s joy, if we’re even allowed that feeling anymore.”
“Yeah, it is.” He chokes his own cry back down, taking both of us with it. “But I can’t do that right now. I have to choose— I want to choose this. Maddie, the caravan, wherever it ends up, I’m choosing that. I’m sorry, I really am.” He turns and walks away, shoulders starting to shake. Gently, he raises both trembling hands in surrender, as if that absolves him for turning his back to me.
I should call him a coward. I should beg for any scrap of attention he’ll give. I should argue what’s left of my dignity into a respectable friendship, seal away my longing for another time.
The music of him is gone, ceding its ground to the river’s dull scream. I can say nothing that would be audible over its roar, leaving my tears for me and me alone.
#
I am not a morning person. But in my departure the next day, when the sky is still blood-red and the earth rests quiet, I feel a new type of liberation. Somewhere between terror and wanderlust, it sits uneasy in my stomach and stormy in my mind. I let it wash out of me as best I can, flowing out of my legs into the forest floor. It takes memories and inconveniences alike; what’s left is a diamond certainty. Sinless, free, and alone, I take my leave.