My Dear Christopher

My Dear Christopher,

When you were a boy, I remember you asking me about the locket I kept. As a teenager, you believed it looked too delicate for a man to wear, but I let you believe what you wanted because some stories are too dark for an ambitious boy to hear. I have now decided it is time for you to know the whole story, and you can love us or hate us for what we did.

__________________________________

Carmen stood in line beside me and held my hand like a little child clinging to a rag doll.

“Josh,” she whispered to me. I could feel her shake like a limb in a strong breeze. “I love you, seriously love you.” She whispered as if it were her last chance to say the words. Her parents had died of a dangerous strain of the flu only weeks before, and she had not been the same since.

“I love you more.” I laughed.

She rolled her eyes, “This is not a contest, Josh. I mean it. I love you.”

I bent over and kissed the top of her blonde head. “I do, too,” I muttered.

I reached around her and pulled her against me. Setting my chin on the top of her head, I breathed a sigh of relief. She was not strong enough to survive the virus, but the vaccine would protect her.

It had been three months since people had started getting sick. “But it’s over now,” I told myself.

People with weak bodies had quickly been seen as carriers, and the strong stayed away from them. All the strong but me that was… It was just too much fun to be around Carmen Hamilton.

“If I live through this,” Carmen once again began to talk as if her time on earth was over.

I put my finger over her lips. “You are going to live through this.” I kissed her. “It’s over now.”

“Carmen Hamilton,” a nurse called out, and Carmen stepped out of line and towards her. The line did not really seem to be much of a line. The system was run by a list of names rather than who had arrived first.

Carmen turned and smiled at me as if she were confident.

“I’ll be at the diner next door,” I muttered.

“Wait!” She turned back to me and, reaching around her neck, took off the heart-shaped locket she loved. “This was my mom’s,” she told me. “If I don’t see you again, I want you to keep it.”

I started to refuse it, but then thought better of the decision. I slipped it in my pocket before kissing her again. “See you.”

__________________________________

I had never known the meaning of the word ‘fooled’ before that day. I sat in the diner until nightfall, waiting for Carmen’s return.

And then it happened. Glancing out the diner window, I saw a face I recognized from earlier in the line. The man had gone in long before Carmen, smiling. Now he stared into the distance as if his soul had been removed from his body.

“Hey Germ-o!” a teen called out as he passed the man. because that was the strong people’s name for the weak.

Without any warning, I heard a sound that still haunts me in the night. It was not a cry, or a groan, or even a scream…it was so much darker. I sat in horror as the man from the line threw his entire body at the boy.

None of us could help him. It had happened too fast. It seemed as if everyone in the diner was watching, as if it were part of a nightmare they could not escape. We were unable to move, unable to think, as the boy took his last breaths and then fell lifelessly.

“What happens to Carmen if she comes out to find that guy?” I wondered to myself.

Then another emotionless body walked out of the vaccination center… then another, and another. It took moments for us to be the weaker group hiding in the dinner as the hunters surrounded our fortress.

I did not cry at that moment, although I must confess, I cried daily after the original horror wore from me. I realized it had been a trick. Eliminating the weak had been the initial idea for destroying the virus before the vaccination had appeared. Kill everyone who might be a carrier, before the virus grew to kill the strong.

“They turned the weakest people into killers, so that only the strongest people could fight them off!” someone laughed inside the diner, as if this were the work of a genius rather than a killer. They believed they would be the one person strong enough to survive. Everyone in the building laughed, because none of them saw themselves as weak enough to die from this sickness… everyone but me. Little did they all know, they would all die within the first week.

“Carmen,” I mumbled under my breath. I hoped she would not walk out of the building. I hoped that she had realized it was a trap and had run away.

Then, out walked a steady body. It did not shake. It showed no emotion, but in the cold face, I could see the slightest memory of the woman I still loved.

____________________________________

Within a year, the world had changed completely. Families were a thing of the past, because caring about anyone did nothing but slow one down.

“They all have to die eventually,” someone said, as they looked out a peephole in a wall of the shoe store in which we now hid. There were no children. No one cared about innocence enough to save one. Everyone’s mind was purely on survival. But I still loved, I loved one of the monsters the world could only hate.

I would watch from a hiding spot atop the building every night as Carmen walked past. A lifeless stare was the only thing playing across her face. For a split second she would turn as if she could feel me watching her, the monster would seem to leave her, and my darling Carmen stared back at me as if the year had vanished. We were once again ready to take on the world, if we only had each other.

‘I love you, seriously love you.’ Carmen’s words would play through my head. At moments I would find myself wishing I had never cared about her, that the woman I still loved was not wandering the streets soaked in blood. If I did not love a monster, I would be as strong as the hardhearted people I fought beside. But loving her was my weakness and curse, I knew I would breathe my last breath saying her name. I could not stand the thought of saying goodbye to her memory. That was what it would have taken to leave what I felt for her behind. So, I carried on; the Romeo surrounded by strong fierce warriors.

“If they break in here, we’re all dead,” one of the men said in a cold voice.

“We’ll kill them before they get us.” Someone mumbled.

None of us knew each other’s names. A name would be a connection, which might make us care about each other. We were all there to die, and to kill the people we had once called friends.

“Do you hear that noise?” The youngest in our party asked.

We were all silent as we listened to the digging outside. “They’re getting in,” a woman muttered as she stood from her spot on the floor. I held Carmen’s locket tighter in my hand as if those creatures outside might be coming for it.

The big man in our group lifted the weapon he carried. “I’ll make ’em wish they never came here,” he said. So much hatred was in the tone. It seemed as if he was looking forward to killing them.

“There they are,” the youngest muttered as a pale hand came through the wall.

“I’ll take care of them!” The big man stepped forward and before the creature could get in they had fallen dead.

Everyone in the room rejoiced… everyone but me. I knew Carmen might be the next one to try to breakthrough.

But, my group had underestimated the enemy. The wall crumpled before us like sand against a wave as the room instantly filled with soulless bodies, each there to claim our lives.

“I can’t hold them!” someone screamed before they fell under the stampede of monsters.

I fought, but not like the rest. I was watching for her.

My heart jumped, as if nothing had ever come between us, when she came through the broken wall. Carmen’s soft eyes met mine and, between lifeless cries, I knew she recognized me.

A creature grabbed me, pushing me against a wall.

“I love you,” I tried to call with what I believed would be my last breath.

I had not expected her to recognize me, but she did. In Carmen’s expressionless face I saw the so-familiar strength. “I love you, too.” she tried to mutter, but the words could not leave the twisted lips that I had once kissed. I watched as she fought to say the words that still filled her mind and soul.

The creature holding me stopped his attack. He stared into my face as if the emotion he saw across it was familiar to him. He slowly let me fall to the floor.

I knew I should hide, but I could not leave Carmen to be killed by the people with whom I had been hiding. “Carmen,” I called out.

As she turned and looked at me, I saw in her eyes the closest thing to life I had ever seen within one of the creatures.

I watched a battle between her body and soul. Her body wanted to carry on the way it had been programed, but her heart did not belong to the body.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the monster I had just been fighting, He fought for his life now, not to kill.

Then I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen as Carmen changed in an instant. The bitter stare seemed to fall from her. I had never noticed it to be bitter, but it was. Like a snakeskin leaving its body, the monster left her, and the woman who had held my hand in line so long ago stood before me.

“Josh!” she cried with her soft voice. I had not realized how much I loved her voice.

She let down her guard and began to run towards me, as if coming home from a long journey.

“They’ll kill you!” I tried to cry, but every face in the room had changed. We had all become men and women once more, for we had all been monsters, not just the creatures we were fighting.

Carmen flew into my arms and held her face against me. “Josh,” she whispered.

I watched the big man who I would later know as Paul, lay down his weapon. He buried his head in his hands and cried. We all cried, as the monsters died among us.

_______________________________

It took months for the creatures to leave us. People mentioned court hearings, but there were not enough innocent souls to put together a jury, so we just turned a page and said goodbye to the past.

So, now my dear son, I send the heart-shaped locket, that you once called too delicate for a man, along with this letter. I send it at the request of your mother, who hopes that it will forever remind you that what you choose to do with your heart is far more important than what anyone might do to your body.

With all the love a father can besot up on his son,

Your Father, Josh Williamson.