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By keeping the small girl to his chest, he blocked the smoke from slipping into her nose. Though the fire raged five blocks east, the wind wafted its fumes through the cracked streets. Tripping over the cement’s fractures, were the city’s people. Only, now and for almost a year, the country's people have been in an ongoing psychosis. No reflective-eyed man, woman, or individual knew where they were or where they were truly going the day that they had lost their minds.
“Ma- ma- ma- ma- ma.”
“Mirai,” he whispered when she tried to peek past his shoulder, “no,” he ordered softly, carefully pressing her face against his shoulder.
“Need a break?”
Neji glanced to the one remaining person throughout the nation-wide collapse.
“I can take her,” Shikamaru reached out.
Neji couldn’t help but notice the male’s limp a hundredth time. “No, I’m okay. Thank you,” he declined, hoisting the growing girl up again.
The two had each other. Together, they walked through the streets of people whose arms hung numbly or whose backs began to hunch at their tiresome hikes from subdivision to subdivision. Colors of their irises faded until they became a toxic green that often lit in the night. It corresponded with the disease that flowed through their green veins and paling skin. At first glance, the sickness’ victims appeared to be standing corpses, but they spoke. They spoke of their day, of their family and their plans. However, each walking deterioration had no clue of how old their plans truly were. They were people, but they didn’t eat. They wasted away.
The two kept their heads down low, careful not to look into the green of one’s eyes. It did not matter if they provoked a corpse, called it names or beat it. If they were to look directly into their eyes, they would be chased relentlessly. The nearly deceased would emit a jarring scream that told others nearby that they’ve found a pair that differed from the rest of the infected. The scream would draw other corpses near but in a blinding flash. They would come running with greater bodily coordination than they had when swaying from street to street.
“Tighten her blindfold,” Neji requested, coming to a stop.
Shikamaru removed the heavy cargo bag from his back to take advantage of the small stop. He untied the knot that tangled with the girl’s short, unruly hair long enough to retie it, securing it against the toddler’s eyes. “Let’s go in here,” he suggested.
Neji bobbed the one-year old up and down in his arms and looked to his left where a dead LED open sign hung. It was a pit stop.
Shikamaru lifted the bag by its top straps and limped towards the broken glass doors. He held one open for the two and kept his head down low.
“Da- dada.”
Neji watched the ground where there was a single step up from the street in order to enter the dusty stop. He stepped aside to give the other male space to enter on his good foot.
The two stood at the entrance and looked towards the ceiling for any mirrors that would tell of other shoppers browsing the aisles. “It’s empty,” Shikamaru said.
“Are you sure?” Neji asked, keeping a hand against the girl’s head.
“Ma- mam.” She sat patiently in his arms. She learned long ago that it was best to do as either of them said even if she hadn’t completely grasped its depth.
“Hey!” Shikamaru called out, accidentally frightening the girl into flinching.
Neji rubbed her back.
Shikamaru waited for a response from an amicable, brain dead customer or employee. He heard nothing. “We should be good,” Shikamaru said.
Neji watched the Nara and waited for his next move. He continued to Bob the girl even as Shikamaru left his side to browse whatever hadn’t wasted over in the shop after the year’s end.
Neji checked the ceiling mirrors again before looking up and down the walkway, careful not to gaze too high above the dirtied shopping tile. He saw no bare toes poking through ruined boots or torn bedroom shoes of a person who had been walking for over three hundred and sixty five days.
Carefully, he lowered himself to his knees and released the girl, standing her against the floor. “Mirai,” he began.
The girl did not touch the navy blue cloth that covered her eyes and she stood at attention patiently. Her small lips, however, were stuck in a constant frown and her cheeks were a spotty red.
“Do you want to walk?” Neji asked. Any step that she could take on her own had become a treat.
The girl held onto the male’s finger and trusted him to lead her through the cramped store. She didn’t speak. In such circumstances, it couldn’t be rushed. It was rare that either one of the pair saw the girl’s eyes because of the risks that passed them by each day, but she had eyes like her mother before her mother’s went green to match the girl’s father’s.
Neji stopped and felt the motion at his finger halt. She patiently waited to be guided.
He searched the aisle for something sweet that Mirai could enjoy. His eyes skimmed from hard candies to gummies then cherries, maraschino cherries. There were jars of different colors. Behind the red was a bright green.
Green were the eyes of the girl’s parents during the spontaneous visit. They had entered the house and immediately felt that something was awry. The house smelled heavily of a burning oven and when they called out, the girl’s parents would answer. The married couple called them into the kitchen in a lighthearted tone that died into silence once they caught sight of the boys. Their smiles were gone and their kind words were replaced by ear shattering screeches before both the girl’s parents were scrambling around the kitchen island to scratch or bite at the two boys. The younger pair had only wished to see if the two were coping just when the area began to ooze green, but by their arrival, the man and woman shared eyes greener than the sickly maraschino cherries that swam in the jar atop the dusty shelf.
The younger pair won against the onslaught and stood over the couple whose blood seeped into the cracks of the wooden planks. They found the girl in her room fast asleep after extinguishing the fire. They ripped the month-old from her crib without so much of a greeting beforehand. They stripped her of her home and ran from the home’s doorstep without looking back. By then, they knew that no law could help or scold them. They knew that in the world that began to take shape that in some strange way, they had been in the right.
Neji reached out for the red maraschino Cherry jar and slid it aside enough to hide the toxic green and grabbed the saturated gummy box from the shelf.
The girl registered him lowering himself to the ground and listened as the male ripped the box. She released his finger and placed her hands against his crossed leg.
Neji tore the plastic to a bag of the gummy snacks and held a blue treat between two fingers. “Open.”
His chest burned from the distance they had to run in the thickening air. Nevertheless, he kept the girl in his arms and she wailed at the top of her lungs towards the horrific sounds behind them.
The group was made up of many and some quicker than others regardless of the bone that might have stuck through their leg. The crowd was quick, but the pair reached the two-seater quicker.
Neji yanked the yellow door open and didn’t bother closing it before Shikamaru’s worsening foot slammed on the gas of the running car. They drove down the street and out of sight from the mob of seemingly teething adults.
“It’s okay,” Neji assured, “sh.” He reached out and closed the door. Then, he noticed Shikamaru’s silence through the girl’s screams. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
“Don’t take it off again,” Shikamaru ordered.
Neji’s eyes met the glove department of the front seat and his back met the felt car seat. The coast had been clear. He only wanted the girl to see daylight for a day if only for a moment, but she saw one of the decaying first. Through the broken glass is where she spotted it and it called any that swayed on the block. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
Finally, the girl cried herself into fatigue and even then, they kept her blindfolded. It was soaked by her tears, but after the close call, Neji didn’t have the means to remove it. All it took was an accidental glance through a window.
It was by chance that their eyes hadn’t run green or that their veins hadn’t colored their skin. Their flesh didn’t whiten and they still felt every pain that had scraped or scratched them along the way and neither of them knew how. They didn’t ooze at the mouth or secrete white through their noses and they accepted it as only being that by chance.
Neji’s mind drifted but presently, he stared at the lamp in horror as his imagination ran without limit. In the dark, he could only picture what could happen in an hour or a day or months from then on. He kept the girl in his arms and in his lap when the sound of a box being deconstructed brought him back to the pitch black garage that had, much like the rest of the city, run dry of electricity. They would stay in the confined space and claim it to be one of their many emergency camps.
Shikamaru sat atop a crate, keeping the heel of his injured foot against the ground with the toe of his boot up. He opened the box of cracker biscuits and stood on one leg to hand it to Neji over the makeshift bonfire.
Neji held onto the clear pack of wrapped biscuits and began to work it open as Mirai reached out to touch the plastic. With her blindfold hung loosely around her neck, she could see the broken crackers and reached for the flakey snack that Neji held up for her. With much concentration, her small hand took the snack by the grooves of its edges and inspected it with both hands.
Neji sat the rest of the snack against the ground next to him. He looked up to the male across the pretend fire and found Shikamaru staring at the plastic lantern, deeply in thought.
“Mama, mama.”
Neji frowned, spreading his hand against the girl’s stomach at the feeling of her leaning away, but he kept his eyes on the injured. “What?”
Shikamaru said nothing.
Instead, Neji watched him stand and slowly move around the light to stop by his side. Shikamaru brought his hands to the sides of Neji’s stress-stricken face and placed a long kiss against his forehead. He then used great effort to kneal next to the girl. He picked up the pack of crackers and plucked one from the wrapping. He handed it to the girl who took it with wide hands.
“Dada, da.” She babbled.
He smiled softly, but it was exhausted. He wiped the crumbs from the girl’s over-sized and faded red tee and held the side of her head, leaning her close enough for him to press his lips to the part of her pigtails.
Neji’s eyes were fixed on the lantern the moment the male had nearly broken himself to kneal, but something struck him the moment Shikamaru started a limp from the light. He heard the rummaging of tools from a suncast somewhere beyond the light’s reach. He looked towards the pitch black of the garage but no matter how long he tried to focus, his eyes couldn’t adjust to the dark past the lantern’s help.
“Mama, mam.” Mirai slobbered against the soggy biscuit and played with the crumbs against Neji’s lap.
“Shikamaru.”
Mirai tossed the crumbs towards the lantern.
Neji’s chest began to go sour. “Shikamaru,” he repeated more loudly.
They had a rule.
“If I call your name three times,” Shikamaru had said before the months brought about the cold, “and you don’t answer, I’m closing my eyes and walking away. The same goes for me.”
Neji’s heart began to throb fearfully.
“Don’t look back.” He had ordered it.
“Shikamaru,” Neji called a third time, no longer caring who could hear him beyond the metal of the garage door. He removed his hand from Mirai’s stomach to hold the blindfold to her eyes. “Shikamaru,” he retried desperately. The sourness changed into a deepening prickling pain. His pulse quickened.
Odd footsteps that match the rhythm of the male’s limp scraped against the cold, garage floor. Still, Neji saw no green light in the dark, so he stared into the black, low enough not to make contact.
Neji swallowed, holding onto Mirai securely. “Shikamaru,” he whispered as the steps grew closer. He had given him more than the three strikes that they had agreed to. Then, the toe of the other’s boot appeared in the light’s edge and with it, two reflecting eyes glowed before Neji could find a face to go with them. His heart jumped and he sealed his eyes before hunching over the small girl. Regardless of the adrenaline that coursed violently, Neji remained stuck against the ground with his ear pressed to Mirai’s head.
First, he felt a tear roll from his eye and across the bridge of his nose before it broke against the girl’s matted curls. Then, he felt a nose against his temple. A hand held his back and another came around Neji’s arms that held the blindfolded toddler.
Neji shook and finally, a small cry muffled by his arms escaped him. The smaller of the two, however had simply grown bored of the snack and sat calmly underneath Neji’s protective weight.
Shikamaru’s lips met his cheek.
“Dada.”
The hand left Neji’s arms and brushed knotted curls from Mirai’s forehead. The girl wrapped her hand around Shikamaru’s dirtied thumb.
Neji stilled at the soft rub of Shikamaru’s nose. “I love you,” Shikamaru said.
Another quieted cry shook Neji, confusing the small girl. She sensed no danger beyond Neji’s trembles. He remained in Shikamaru’s hold by the soft light until his tears had dried. It could have been ten minutes or twenty. Even then, he kept his eyes closed. Then, he had to pry himself from the hold.
Neji stood and Shikamaru’s injury kept the male grounded. He lifted the heavy bag that Shikamaru had carried all those months and placed its strap over a single shoulder.
“Dada, Dada.”
Neji left the box of crushed crackers for the male, knowing that they would simply go stale. Then, he neared the garage door and with each step, his heart fell lower and lower. His knees met the floor and he gripped the handle to raise the townhome garage door. He looked out to find that the sun had just broken the horizon.
Neji took a cautious look back, catching the poor splint around Shikamaru’s ankle and the stained hems of his bluejeans. He held the back of the babbling girl’s head to keep her face against his chest as his nose faced the sky. His eyes shut tightly and he kept his lips sealed as he stifled a weep. Finally, with enough courage drawn from Shikamaru’s wish, he took a step into the neighborhood’s dawn.
“Dada.”
Shikamaru stood against his poor foot and ankle.
“Dada, Dada.” She couldn’t see, but she could tell if something around her had changed.
“Sh,” Neji hushed softly as he distanced them from the stalking figure in the garage.
“Dada.”
“Mirai,” the girl was making it more difficult than he had always imagined it.
“Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada,” she exclaimed at the absence of the scraping sound of Shikamaru’s boot.
Neji resented the small hand that shot out over his shoulder and how she kicked in his arms.
“Da-!” The rest was a tiny sob that he knew would build up.
He noticed a wandering corpse in the corner of his eye and lowered his head. There was no quieting the girl. Neji held her tightly as he crossed the street, leaving Shikamaru in the dark of the garage to watch their backs even then.
“Daddy!”
