#apolocheese

It had been a very strange end to the civilized world. Slow mentions of climate change rolling into the local TV station, playing in the background while she poured a stale bowl of cheerios before work. Then came the sunburns, not something Yolanda had to deal with, as a surgeon. But through the trauma bay windows she glimpsed partial thickness burns from only falling asleep on the back porch or a couple hours without sunscreen.

Baran insisted she begin wearing baseball caps and sunglasses and clothing covering more skin. She passed it off subtly, a comment here or there about how sexy those designer sunglasses are on her, a reward in the form of morning head should Yolanda have set out longer scrubs for the day. But Yolanda knew it was out of worry, mostly because Baran would force the same restrictions with much less subtlety on their son without needing a placating guise over her worry. A two year old would fight being wrestled into clothes each morning without discernment over why he might be wearing long sleeves in May.

Things picked up when the federal government argued over who would get off their fat ass and do something.

After countless vetos and fillibusters and grandstanding for the upcoming mid-term elections, a plan was haphazardly thrown together by NATO in the eleventh hour. Sun poisoning cases skyrocketed, Yolanda’s medical journals were releasing new emergency procedural editions bi-monthly, and finally the day came that Baran’s phone pinged.

Schools closed indefinitely. The weather app providing so many updates and heat advisories each day that Yolanda deleted the whole thing in a moment of intense frustration. Then the notifications came pouring in like amber alerts, incapable of being silenced. 

Her hours were cut into thirds at the PTMC, working with half the staff and twice the patients.

Forest fires rampaged the west coast, nearly sixty percent of American states reported historical temperature highs. 

The rest of the world fared no better. No matter your nationality, if you peer up into the dusty sky burning amber, you feel the end drawing closer.

Then came the evacuations, a shrieking bugle for the end of days. Buses once painted white, now streaked with the dust bowl’s violence, ferried through each county and off to unclaimed Canadian wildernesses they went. Army ants marching refugees through military outposts, through smoking forests and abandoned downtowns.

When the final straw snapped the camels back, Yolanda was at work.

An intense surgery, up to her forearms in some poor soul’s chest cavity while her senior resident doctor corrected her form with necessary sharpness. Emery Walsh was blunt and brief, it was exactly what had likened her to Yolanda in the first place.

It’d started with that asshole ortho surgeon Yolanda only called “Dr Park” because she refused to feed his ego with the ridiculous nickname the ED had given him. Predictably the man deemed himself too important to silence his phone in an operating room. So when it blared out and Yolanda flinched hard with her fingers nearly slipping off of the scalpel, he simply ignored her and jammed a meaty hand into his pocket. 

Pulled the phone out, glanced at the lit up screen with one hand bracing him on the medical cart holding a lung on dry ice. Choked on his spit and stiffened up to his full height, eyes flicking up to the two surgeons across the prep team from him.

“Get out your phones. Did you get this?” He demanded, thrusting the screen over the table, the patient forgotten beneath him as Yolanda bit back a string of words that would undoubtedly resolve in her career termination.

NWS: EVACUATION MANDATORY for all Pittsburgh zip codes. Life threatening SOLAR EXPOSURE WARNING in effect until 8:50 PM CST. FOLLOW LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT GUIDELINES FOR A SAFE EVACUATION.

NWS: EVACUACIÓN OBLIGATORIA para todos los códigos postales de Pittsburgh. AVISO DE EXPOSICIÓN AL SOL CON RIESGO MORTAL vigente hasta las 8:50 p. m. CST. SIGA LAS INSTRUCCIONES DE LAS AUTORIDADES LOCALES PARA UNA EVACUACIÓN SEGURA.

Yolanda stared at the phone, lips parted in shock, brow furrowed, head whipping to face Emery.

“Put your phone down immediately, Dr Park. Focus on our patient.” Bit the attending, eyes flaring with fury.

Yolanda had never wrapped up a surgery faster, guilt coursing through her like blood as she placed the final sutures with less patience than she knew she was capable of. But her mind was on Baran, on Kaveh, their house in the suburbs, their dumb little weiner dog, the boxes of memories from her mother in the basement, Baran’s favorite chinese takeout place in town, the hospital itself.

The hospital descended rapidly into chaos. Patients of highest severity cases were being briskly carted into elevators, any that could fathomably walk left to shakily make their way downstairs.

Emery and Yolanda had the same thought at the same time without saying a word, weaving as a wordless unit through the throng of panicked people, Dr Park shoving through after them.

The Maternity ward existed in limbo on the fourth floor. Some nurses deserted those in labor, but more than enough courageous nurses stood strong at their sides. Procedural evacuation evaded them here when the baby was crowning. 

A med student Yolanda recognized from the ED shot through the doors behind them breathlessly with a determined "What's the plan?”

A memory, locked in the recesses of Yolanda’s mind. Flashes of the exertion on her muscles as she bridal carried a woman to a free gurney across the ward. Animosity was forgotten as she and Park hoisted an unconscious woman bleeding from under her gown onto the floor with each step they took toward a wheelchair. The med student proved undeniably useful, Mohan as Yolanda and Emery had learned and began to shout at her from various points around the floor.

Time warped and distorted and Yolanda was left reeling, clawing for purchase as the ground fell out from beneath her. Emery shook her by the shoulders, grasping and jerking her back and forth with desperation until she could focus.

She doesn’t like to think about the rest of it.

Husbands with grief-slackened expressions, spouses in despaired fetal positions by bed sides with still, cloth-covered figures. Nurses, residents, EMTs in endless cycles of exertion and exhaustion. Power was cut from the building after only about an hour. Backup generators left fluorescent lights flickering and the acrid smell of fear and sweat on the backs of the necks of the damned.

Eventually there was no one left to clear from the floor but desolate families and the bodies of those who did not survive.

Some dark, miserable part of Yolanda that she hadn’t struggled with in years reared its ugly head and murmured darkly that it hoped Baran and Kaveh were gone by the time she got home. They would be better off without her just making things harder. She didn’t have the temperance to see her family safely through a multitude of useless federal checkpoints, and she didn’t have the willpower not to just fall back into drinking when they were shipped wherever it was the buses disappeared to.

A more forceful part of her would not bear being separated from her loved ones, and most certainly would not stray from their side the moment danger presented itself.

Once steady surgeons hands tremored terribly from exhaustion as they tugged her shirt up over her mouth and nose, shakily staggering out the trauma bay doors in the half-deserted ED.

She knew Baran would be there, and so she was.

Dust and ash raining from the sky followed her, swirling frantically into the car with her as she slammed the door shut behind her.

She stared out the front window, scrubs coated in ash, skin streaked with blood and sweat.

Her eyes were glassy and vacant.

She’d saved eight lives. She’d counted. She didn’t know what happened to them when she got them out of the ward.

There had been 34 women in active labor on the maternity ward floor.

Walsh saved more than she did, Park stuck to his guns for nearly as long, she reasoned vaguely with herself in the back of the boiling pot of trauma brewing in her mind.

Their possessions cluttered the backseat and trunk, Yolanda heard Kaveh coughing from the dust in the backseat but could not so much as glance at him. 

The pale gold headlights of the Volvo were eclipsed by constant sand and dust and ash carried through the beams by violent winds.

It had smelled the same then as it did now.

It felt the same.

That consuming displacement from reality, and a bitter burn in her nostrils from inhaling dust.

The man, the polite stocky boy beside the green-eyed woman, made a noise she recognized, a panicked, voice cracked yelp as he dove for the crumbling figure. She watched the woman plummet to the dunes hard, a shocked groan escaping her whilst she doubled over.

Kaveh screamed, terror painting his young features. Yolanda registered somewhere in the back of her mind that the terror was bred from something she had done.

By the time Yolanda’s feet had the good sense to move, the two scavenger people had flattened the woman on her back, the littler woman gesturing frantically with her hands, shouting something Yolanda couldn’t hear through the insistent throbbing of her blood pressure in her ears.

The gun hit the sand with a soft thud. Her hands tore the scorched pant leg up, she might’ve said something like “Let me, I’m a surgeon.” but she had no real way of knowing. In the corner of her eye she could see Kaveh hoisted back to his feet and out of her way.

But her gaze was frozen on the metal.

A tarnished steel calf strapped into the boot, a seemingly handmade wrap tethering the prosthetic to a flushed, irritated looking knee and lower thigh. A single blue wisp of smoke issued from the bullet where it was crushed halfway through the front of the steel calf.

With great effort, Yolanda dragged her eyes back up to the shocked jade ones opposite her.

“You shot me.”

Silence.

The winds swept down the sloping sands, the stocky man she’d called Dennis heaved a deeply resigned and relieved breath and the Javadi girl buried her face in her hands.

“You actually shot me. Holy shit.”

“She’s a fucking cyborg.” “Language, Kaveh.”

Several minutes were spent trying to both haul the woman to her feet and stabilize her. It became clear walking independently was a non-starter, which was how Yolanda found herself with a deeply aggravating stranger's arm slung around her shoulder.

Baran demanded she carry the young woman with a fiery intensity that even at Yolanda’s grown age sent shudders up her spine. The Dennis boy had insisted he should carry her, the young woman made some inappropriate comment and let her expression settle right back into its infuriating smug bastard she’d clearly mastered years ago. 

“How fast can you run on it?” Kaveh pressed, overlapping with Tanner’s breathless “Does it hurt?”

Once rabid looking dobermans trotted ahead, noses tilted up into the wind, docile as house cats. Almost as if Yolanda’s heart hadn’t stopped watching the beast tear into her son's shadowy cowering figure from a distance. And once more when the beast's owner tugged down that headwrap, thus her heart stuttered again. 

The beast’s owner, Santos by name as she had mentioned. Pointedly forgoing her first name, perhaps— but whatever cool distance she’d fought to maintain in their initial meeting was effectively dwarfed by their physical proximity.

Each step exhausted the young woman more and more, Yolanda could tell by the way she grimaced when she thought no one was paying attention, the way she collapsed incrementally more and more into Yolanda’s side. Some guilty part of Yolanda clung right back, silently desperate to atone for her violence. A confusing emotional journey only further exacerbated by both her simmering unease with the attentive glances cast to Santos by her own wife, and the younger woman’s hips brushing into hers with every forward movement.

For Christ’s sake. Baran turned the prosthetic over in her palms, eyes alight with fascination at the half-handmade modified metal scrap. Yolanda was nearly jealous of a prosthetic leg.

Similarly, a few strides ahead, her wife was regretting her commandment.

Fingers smoothing along the grooves of the steel, she threw yet another furtive glance over her shoulder, gaze catching on the limping figure tucked into Yolanda’s side. 

God. Ivory skin, scarlet coloring her cheeks and the tips of her ears where she kept tucking her hair behind them. A restless look painting her watercolored eyes, an unsteady gait sending her weight back into Yolanda repeatedly. Sweat at her hairline, exertion glistening at her hairline in the moonlight— at one point she caught her lower lip in between her teeth and released a tiny pained whimper. 

Baran whipped her head back around to stare blankly ahead, jaw flexing as she grit her teeth.

She knew her wife, she didn’t have to look at Yolanda’s face to see its twisted expression in her mind. They had a type, the two of them, and this poor girl her wife had callously shot was an unfortunate distraction.

Baran busied herself with passing the leg back to Dennis and mulling over how best to imprint upon her son exactly how much trouble he was in.

The horizon began her slow betrayal, stars scattering backwards, disappearing from the hues of purple clawing higher. Nobody needed to say anything. The pace was increased.

Heads lowered, boots sinking halfway up to the ankle as they took the largest incline, sand landsliding down with each staggering hoist upwards. Yolanda made a choice and took no prisoners, pausing and rolling her shoulders, the younger woman’s head snapping to her. 

“We have to move. Sun’s coming up.” The woman urged, eyebrows furrowed.

Yolanda simply nodded, then bent. Hooked an arm under the woman’s knees and stood up with her, actively ignoring the ensuing protests.

“You’ve done enough, I can carry her.” Dennis attempted to interject, clearly preparing for Santos to lash out and writhe from Yolanda’s grip.

Yolanda adjusted the woman in her arms, getting used to the strain, shaking her head.

“Like she said. We have to move.”

Kaveh was the only one smiling. Baran scoffed under her breath but said nothing, ushering the group to continue up the slope. Their shoulders bowed against gravity and exhaustion alike, all but Yolanda.

She stiffened her posture, she hoisted Santos higher. Santos proved to be unpredictable yet, swallowing her obvious desire to complain and tightening her arm around Yolanda’s neck.

Before they could clear the crest of the massive dune, the smaller woman held up a hand, sniper rifle coming up to rest the butt in the crook of her shoulder. She made to scope over the sands below, but Baran placed a placating firm hand on her arm. “No need. We’re here.”

Atop the sands the eight of them paused to catch their breath. Sure enough, lying nestled under a towering landlocked cliff, tucked into the shadow provided by the overcropping of rock, sat a house. The house haunting Santos’s dreams. She’d always been taken with the structure, not nearly liveable looking by old world standards, but entirely glamorous in this reality.

Santos heard Dennis and Javadi physically exhale sharply at the same time. Distrustful hope written all over their faces. Distaste sat on her tongue like vinegar. Santos knew better.

The fence surrounding the Victorian house was almost laughably ordinary. Faint lantern light glowed from between the slats of the boards covering the first floor’s windows, signs of permanence, signs of people. 

“As cute as I remember it, Baran. You should plant some flowers out front, if the HOA signs off.” As sardonic as Yolanda could’ve guessed the young woman would be. Sort of funny, when taking in the context of Santos sat comfortably in Yolanda’s bridal style carry.

Jealousy quirked its ugly eyebrow as Baran huffed a dry laugh. More of a laugh, more of a smile than Yolanda had gotten out of her in weeks. For Santos and her bratty sarcasm. 

For a moment, Yolanda pictured that she and Baran were on the exact same page. This woman was only a distraction packaged in her pouty lips. Any residual guilt about her possibly, hypothetically eyeing the young woman after she unwrapped her face was quenched, because Yolanda was positive her wife was no less guilty by this point.

Focus. Move.

Yolanda, with a subtle hint of possessive flair, shifted Santos higher in her arms and set off down the dune without a word. Dennis seemed more a guard dog than the real thing, with the way he loyally stuck to Santos’s side.

Movement first, then sound. Shadows spilled off the front porch, uneven coordination in the unsteady sands as they shot forth, voices carrying.

For whatever reason, Santos had no interest in looking at any of them as they neared, opting to glance back over Yolanda’s shoulder the direction they’d come. She missed gazing into sunrise and sunset, deceptively dangerous oranges and golds streaking the horizon with a siren song. Three small silhouettes broke off from Baran and collided with the figures, the two younger boys clearly plunging into their parents arms.

On the porch, two silent figures, hesitating under the shadows. Their gazes swept over the unfamiliar faces, the bead of sweat down Yolanda’s forehead, the increasingly raspy breaths drawn in by the stranger woman curled in arms.

Such a distortion from what Santos had expected. 

None of the lightless, pale, malnourished half-humans baring their crooked yellow teeth with their wild dilated pupils, bony hands swiping for Santos’s flesh. 

Un-tattered fabric, clean skin and groomed hair, full cheeks and arms and stomachs. 

“Donnie!” Yolanda called out. The sound vibrated through her chest into Santos’s body. She jerked her head around to finally face the welcome committee. 

The man on the porch hustled down, jogging lightly up the slope to them as Yolanda subconsciously brushed her hand in soothing circles over where it held Santos upright at her spine.

“Can I give you to Donnie? Just until we get you inside?” The voice is lower, murmured to Santos. Yolanda doesn’t look at her, not at first. When she does, those dark eyes are swimming with conflict, enough to put a hitch at the back of Santos’s throat.