Hope part 1

I produced a lot of writing for Nanowrimo last November. After taking December off, I decided that I would try again at another novel. I will attempt to post my daily ramblings in the hope that eventually it will become a book which will entertain you as well as myself…

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2012 Plot Roach.

Hope part 1

By Plot Roach

She shook the spray paint can with her right hand as she lined up the rocks with her left. She heard the clacking of the ball bearing in the can and imagined that she could feel the pressure building up in the metal beneath her fingers. When the river polished stones were lined up in front of her, she popped the top off of the can and tossed it over her shoulder, releasing a spray of bright biohazard orange over the waiting rocks. Chemicals were released upon the wind, finding the rocks, the pavement beneath them and the shoes of the woman who held the spray paint can.

"I don't know why you keep making those things." Darla said, watching as her friend’s shoes took on yet another spray painted hue. "It's a waste of time when you should be helping me."

"It looks like you have it covered," The painter said as she laid on another layer of paint.

"Ginny-"

"Sky," the woman corrected. "I'm calling myself 'Sky' now."

"It doesn't matter what you call yourself, you're gonna starve if you don't stop this nonsense and start looking for food instead of spray-paint."

"We have more than enough and you know that," the woman said. "What's really bugging you?"

There was a rumble in the distance and the gloomy morning took on an even more ominous tone. Both women looked off into the distance. "It's gonna rain." Darla said, pulling her jacket closed as if the coat could close off something more dangerous than the morning chill.

"You think?" The woman who called herself Sky asked with a teasing note in her voice. She chased after the plastic cap of the spray paint as it rolled in the wind and pulled on Darla's sleeve. "Let's go inside before the rain falls."

"I don't want to."

"They can't hurt you, you know."

Darla didn't know if the woman meant her memories or the dead bodies that they had left behind them. “Won’t the rain ruin your paintings?" Darla asked, raising an eyebrow at Sky. She remained where she stood despite the woman pulling on her sleeve.

"If anything, the rain might make a nice background pattern through the paint," Sky said, pushing a stray lock of dirty brown hair out of her eyes. "I'm going to go inside and stay dry. Feel free to keep my rocks company." She dashed off into the distance, stopping under the eves of the store to look back at Darla before she negotiated her way through the broken glass door and back into the dark building.

Darla spared one last look up into the brooding sky that matched her mood and sighed. She kicked a glowing orange rock and it smeared a little of the paint along one edge of her sneaker, she tried rubbing if off with a finger, but only succeeded in getting the stuff further along her shoe and covering the index finger of her hand. "It figures." she mumbled and ambled through the deserted parking lot and toward the store. As she walked, Darla wondered why Sky even bothered painting the rocks that she left behind. It’s not like she’s keeping them or making them to give to someone, she thought. Not that there’s anyone left to give things to.
Pausing at the broken front door, she steeled herself and stepped inside, picking her way through broken glass and bits of refuse. She picked up the electric lantern that she had left by the entrance that morning. Though the place was not completely dark, the clouds had choked away the sun's brilliance until a sickly light filtered through the murky shadows of the store. Windows, tinted to reduce the glare of a summer sun, only made the place look darker in the winter months.

She knew that she would find Sky in the crafting aisle, planning her next art project. And though the woman did not fear the dark as Darla had, she would take a flashlight, not to see her way through the tangle of aisles and downed goods abandoned by shoppers, but to see the color of the paints she would pick for the next day's work.

"Just once you could start up the stove and maybe get the water boiling for me," Darla whined into the darkness. She paused at the craft aisle and shined her lantern into the dark. She was met with a scattering of tools, broken wooden dowels and a few skeins of variegated yarn in a mess upon the floor. The rest of the racks were as pristine as when they had been faithfully stocked by the store's workers. When Ginny -no, Sky- she reminded herself, had gone down these aisles to seek her materials she had taken what she needed and left the rest as she had found it, as if afraid to wake the ghosts of the dead who once stocked these aisles.

No, Darla thought. She's not the one afraid of waking the dead. I am. She tried several other aisles and panicked. "Where are you?" she called into the darkness. Both her pulse and her feet picked up speed as her search of the dark spaces proved fruitless. There was no other sound than the drumming of her heart in her body and her feet upon the cold linoleum floor. "Ginny! -dammit- Sky?! Where the hell are you?"

She wandered from Crafts to House-wares to the Pharmacy department with no luck. She flashed her light down each dark corridor of forgotten goods until, at last, she thought she caught a familiar flash. She stood still, unable to move from the ice in her veins, as her lantern illuminated the floor of the aisle in front of her. There, amidst the wreckage that had been the automotive aisle, was Sky's zippered sweat shirt, crumpled on the ground like an abandoned husk. Darla's mind raced as she tried to calm herself. Why had Sky not answered her? Was someone in here with them? Someone who had been watching them as they made the abandoned store their home? Had he been following them for days? Months? What if this place had been his home before they had come? Was he angry that they had taken things without asking for his permission? What had he done with her friend and what would he do with her if Darla let her guard down enough to get caught herself?

The rattle of metal in metal made Darla jump. She turned and threw her lantern, though she was loath to lose the light. It was her only weapon.

"Hey!" Sky called out. "What was that for?"

"Where the hell were you and why didn't you answer me?" Darla asked, squinting into the near darkness.

"You scared me to death!"

"Me?" Sky asked, retrieving the lantern from the floor, dropping the spray paint can she had been shaking to the ground. She gave the plastic lantern a good thump on the side and checked the battery hatch before switching the lantern's light back on. "You damn near killed this thing." Sky said, handing back the lantern to Darla. "And me in the process."

"Well, I thought..."

"What? You thought that I was the boogeyman?" Sky asked.

"You didn't answer and..."

"There's no one here, Darla. And there's no going to be."

"Then, why?...." Darla began to ask. It was the rocks that bugged her. Why was Sky making the rocks and leaving them behind if she didn’t think that there was anyone alive to find them?

"Why what?" Sky asked.

"Nothing... never mind..." Darla said, she turned on her heel and headed for the camping section. They had a makeshift home there, in a display of lawn furniture and a dome tent. She turned on the propane tank and put a large pot onto the small ring of fire. She filled the pot with water and rummaged through the basket of goods she had scavenged earlier while she waited for the water to boil.

"You don't have to cook tonight," Sky said, dragging her zippered sweatshirt jacket behind her. She had piled it high with spray paint cans and bottles of varnish. "I'm sure we can just eat some of the prepackaged stuff out of the cans instead."

Darla looked at the sweatshirt and almost pointed out to Sky that she was going to get her jacket dirty and it would have been much easier to bring her supplies over by using a cart, but she held her tongue. It was sky’s way of doing things, always jumping in without planning and heedless of the consequences of her actions. "I'm saving that for when we leave," she told Sky.

"Why are we leaving?"

"We can't stay here forever."

"Why not?" Sky asked. She was busily setting out the cans of spray paint by color.

"Because we'll run out of food eventually."

"Are you blind?" Sky asked. "There's enough food here to last a year easily, even if we ate like pigs."

"It won't all last that long, Gin-"

"Sky" her friend corrected her.

"Why do you want to be called sky all of a sudden?"

"Why do you want to leave?"

"There might be other people out there." Darla said.

"Aren't you the one always telling me that we're better off by ourselves? That we should hide from strangers because they might be dangerous, especially now that the flu has wiped out most of humanity?"

"That was before."

"Before what?" Sky asked.

Darla rummaged in the pocked of the oversized hunting jacket she wore and pulled out a long white piece of plastic, brandishing it at Sky as she had the lantern, but not throwing it this time.

On the end of the plastic stick were two small windows, both colored pink. "I'm pregnant," she said.