How do people know that before somebody dies they see a white light? They're dying, right? They're not exactly in the position to be able to share their experience. Is the experience of almost dying the same with actually dying? And when they say that their life flashes by their eyes when they see death staring at them, why did they say it was their whole life?
When I felt the cold barrel of the pistol on the back of my head I didn't see my childhood, I didn't see my high school life or when I was the only person to graduate from college without a relative accompanying me. I saw Susana. I saw her cropped hair and her sparkling hazel eyes and her smile that makes you drop dead. I remembered how I felt when I held her hand for the first time, I remember the way she talked to me as though we were the only two people left in the world (I was ready to believe that, considering everyone else was killing each other). I don't think you see your whole life, I think you see what's most important to you. To me it was Susana, because there was literally nobody else in my life.
I felt disoriented. Everything was bright and blurry. I felt something wrapped around my arms and legs, keeping me still. I felt like I was lying in a bed. My head was in pain and my limbs feel like they fell asleep.
"He's waking up," said a woman's voice. Was that Susana?
"Susana?" I asked. She was the only thing I was worrying about. "Susana? Susana?"
"I'm not Susana, dear," the woman's voice answered. The voice seemed familiar.
I was finally able to get a clear view of the room. It was small - it looked like the room of a dormitory. The bed I was tied to was on one side of the room, there was another bed on the other side. The room was empty aside from the beds. The woman was sitting on the other bed, looking at me.
She looked like she was around my age, she seemed masculine – and not just because she was holding my shotgun in her hand.
I tried pulling myself off the cuffs binding my hands and legs but to no avail. The woman got up from the bed and pointed the gun at me. "Calm down," she ordered, "you're safe."
"Safe my ass, you're pointing a shotgun at me - my shotgun."
"You pointed it at my friend!" she shouted, putting down the gun.
"You broke into my house!" I shouted back.
"Only because we were ringing on the gates for like an hour and nobody was answering. There was a huge padlock on the gates; we assumed somebody was living in it. When nobody answered we thought otherwise."
I rattled off a string of very unfriendly words, all of which I don't see the point of sharing.
"Hon, you seriously have to calm down," she said. "You really are in a safe place."
"What place?" I was starting to get angry, but the way she talked to me seemed to have had an effect on me, as though she was able to persuade me to calm down just from her tone.
"The university." A man walked in from the open doorway. He was wearing a creased polo shirt with old jeans and soiled dress shoes. His face was bony and had a receding hairline. "Good morning, people call me Professor, like I'm one of the X-Men. I see you've been acquainting yourself with Joanne."
"He actually is a professor," Joanne explained, as though all past hostility disappeared. "Should I remove the cuffs?" The Professor nodded. She took them off, and it took a surprising amount of effort to fight the urge to throttle Joanne after she removed the cuffs.
"Welcome to the university," said the Professor. "Tell me something: a few weeks ago we saw a car drive through here, it was customized with bumpers that looked like they were made to take down barricades."
I was silent. I was still trying to assess how friendly they would be. They could have sent Joanne to my room precisely because her demeanour seemed the least hostile (she was their least hostile?). The professor could easily be the most insane person in the university. I've read how psychopaths were feared for the fact that they could behave normally around other people (as compared to the less-feared people stricken with insanity).
"Where's Susana?" I asked, deflecting the question.
"Who?" asked the Professor.
"Susana, she was in the house with me."
The Professor had a look. I don't know how to describe it. He looked at Joanne, signalling for an answer.
"We didn't find anyone else in the house," answered Joanne, who gave the Professor the same look.
"Don't toy with me, Professor!" I said, nearly shouting. I was being furious. Susana wasn't one for hiding, they would have seen her. "Where are you hiding her?"
I stood up, rushed for the doorway. The Professor stood out of the way as I burst through the hallway. I was definitely in a dormitory. There were five other rooms in the floor, all of their doors closed.
"SUSANA! SUSANA!" I shouted, walking around the floor. It looked like there was nobody else in the floor with us. I opened a door; it was empty except for the beds. I opened another door, same thing.
"Joanne!" the Professor called, Joanne ran down the hallway and pinned me to the wall. She looked masculine but she didn't look that strong. Either that or I was weak.
She pushed my face into the wall, locking my arms in her grip. "Calm down, you asshole!" she ordered. Through the grip I was still shouting: "SUSANA! SUSANA WHERE ARE YOU?" She let go, and when I turned around she pinned me back against the wall, this time facing her.
"HEY," she shouted at me. "Calm. Down. Now." I have no idea why I suddenly became obedient, but I did do as ordered. I stopped shouting, but I was still furious. "Believe us when we say we did not find anyone else in that mansion."
"I want to go," I said. "I need to go back to the mansion right now."
"If you do that you will be walking," the Professor said in a calm manner from the doorway of the room I was in. "The ash from the fire is disappearing. Their sense of smell may be compromised, but believe me when I say they will be able to properly see and hear you. Do you think they won't follow you inside?"
"You brought them inside the neighbourhood?" I asked Joanne, her grip still strong on my arms. "Did you bring a car? "
I should explain why I asked this question. When driving back to our neighbourhood, Susana and I agreed that it wouldn't be safe to bring the car inside because it might lure them to us, so we found a house with a garage somewhere outside the gated community and hid the car there.
"Well, yeah we drove around the neighbourhood," answered Joanne. "All the other houses were empty, but then we went to your mansion and found a goldmine. We brought everything we could find here."
"You took everything?" I was a bit angry at the notion. They noticed it.
"Well of course, that food can feed us for a month," said Joanne, now looking a bit distressed.
"One month," said the Professor, coming closer to us, "take note of that. One month. When they reached us, a lot of people died. I had to kill my co-workers, my students, and you don't want to know who else. Before this happened the university had a population of nearly ten thousand, now there are a little over two hundred of us left alive. The rest are out there, looking for the next living being to eat.
"One month is our estimation. If every person takes one can of food a day, then your goldmine will only last us a month. One month is a long time to live, when death is literally right outside. Don't you want to feel the satisfaction of having been the reason that a hundred people were kept alive for a month?"
He was a good professor. He made me feel guilty about being angry at them for taking all of my supplies. I remember thinking that he must have been a lawyer of some kind to be able to argue this well. It didn't even look like we were arguing, I was never able to respond. I just nodded, and Joanne let me go.
"Let's show him the campus, Joanne," said the Professor, leading the way out of the building. Stepping outside was like stepping into Alice's Wonderland.
Everything looked like the world hadn't turned into hell. The buildings were newly painted, the grass was green, the flowers were blooming and the streets were free of litter.
"Welcome to the University," said the Professor.
Right now, I'm starting to think that people don't really see a white light. That everything they've said with what happens before you die – it's all fabricated. Though if I died and this was my white light, it was missing Susana.
I missed her, and now more than ever. I hoped to God that what I was feeling wasn't love or even any kind of infatuation. I hoped I missed her just for the sake of it, because if I became attached then things would go horribly wrong.
She was important to me, and I can bet I was important to her.