Under a Broken Sun

by Kevin P Sheridan

  I don’t remember much. But I do remember my dad reasoning with the gunman. I could tell this Cokehead wasn’t all there, and when people with guns aren’t all there, there is no reasoning with them.

  But I had to try. “Put the gun down,” I said quietly. My voice was shaking.

  “You get me the money out of the register and maybe I will,” he replied.

  “No problem. I’ll get it. Just relax, ok?”

  “I AM RELAXED.”

  Yeah. And the coke pumping through you is probably just medicinal. I walked to the cash register, and Cokehead shouted to Marilyn “You too! Move it!”

  The two of us reached the cash register and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Let’s go man!” Cokehead shouted, shifting his gaze all around him.

  “I’m trying!” Still nothing. I lifted it up and dropped it, using everything I had. The bitch was heavy.

  But it didn’t open up.

  “I’m gettin’ pissed off!”

  “Look, goddammit, it won’t open!”

  “I’m gonna blow her head off!”

  “Calm down, man, there’s gotta be a way, just let me think.”

  “NOW!”

  “WAIT A FUCKIN’ SECOND!”

  BLAM.

  Blood sprayed out of him reaching all the way to the cash counter, covering my hands and face. A chunk of his forehead landed on the counter.

  Everyone screamed, even me. Ashley dropped out of the grasp of the guy like her puppet strings were cut. I watched her fall into a heap next to the bloody mess.

  I looked at the opened front door and a fat dude stood in the dull moonlight, slinging his twelve-gauge shotgun over his beefy shoulder. He took a few steps in and we saw his face in the firelight.

  “Goddamn looters,” he said, his breathing short and raspy. Then Fatman looked at me. “You a goddamn looter?”

  I shook my head no. I didn’t want to move, but blood was dripping down my face and I desperately wanted to wipe it off. At least stop it running. It was making me sick. Coulda been covered in HIV.

  “What’s that in yer bag?” Fatman said, pointing to the gym bag on the floor.

  “Nothing, just, supplies we bought before everything went south. We’re camping.”

  “Camping,” he said, chewing on gum or tobacco or something.

  “Yeah. Camping. At, um, Valley Forge.”

  “Huh.” I thought the guy was gonna spit chewing tobacco, but he blew a big pink bubble instead, then sucked it in with a sharp snap. I looked for Marilyn but she was gone. Then I looked at Ashley down on the ground, lying on her stomach and groaning. Blood seeped out of her back left shoulder.

  “Holy shit, she’s alive,” I said kneeling down to her. The guy pumped his shotgun.

  “Uh-uh. Hold it right there, mister. I’m not stupid. I know a ruse when I see one.”

  “What? She’s hit. You fucking shot her!”

  “That’s what you want me to believe, ain’t it. I know the truth. You all are invaders, right? Government agents sent to take us good folk out.” He put the shotgun on his shoulder and walked towards me. “That man was a looter – but you…you’re different. You’re an agent. I can tell. I got to take you out too.”

  He lowered the shotgun, pointed at me, and then…snapped his head back, gurgled, coughed up blood, and collapsed.

  Marilyn stood behind him, staring at the sandwich knife sticking out from the back of the guy’s neck.

  No one moved. Our first kill.

  Ashley took a handful of shotgun pellets to the left shoulder. Not serious, but bad enough to hurt like hell. I knelt beside her, Marilyn pulled the knife out of the Fatman and cut Ashley’s shirt down the back with shaking hands. I looked at the wound, Marilyn stared at the knife.

  “Marilyn," I said, “get me some water, gauze and paper towels. Hurry.” She bolted away and I focused on keeping Ashley calm.

  “Fuck me, that hurts,” she said.

  Not the reaction I expected. I thought she'd be hysterical. A basket case. Must've been in shock. I tried to reassure her. "You'll be fine,” I said. I brushed her hair away from her face. "You're not gonna die."

  "No shit, asshole," she said. "Just some buckshot to the shoulder. Jesus it hurts."

  "I know. I’ll get you cleaned up, then we’ll get you to a doctor to take the buckshot out. Can’t leave it in there your whole life.”

  However long that may be.

  Marilyn returned with my gym bag and a roll of paper towels. I poured water over Ashley’s back and dabbed at the blood with the paper towels. I saw the silver glint of one small ball in the shifting firelight of the torch that Marilyn held above me.

  “There,” Marilyn said, pointing.

  “Yeah, I got it. Give me your knife.”

  Marilyn handed it to me, and I told Ashley “This is gonna hurt a little.” She gritted her teeth and cussed some more while I used the knife point to pop the ball out – not too deep. Still, she was awfully brave for a fourteen year old.

  The others pellets were buried in small holes – about five or six total. I wasn’t even gonna try for those. No point carving her up like that. There had to be a doc nearby.

  “You know where we are?" I asked Marilyn.

  She nodded. “I live about ten, twenty minutes away.”

  “So you know of any doctors around?”

  "Yeah," she said, looking down. “My dad,” she whispered.

  8.

  Ten or twenty minutes my ass. An hour later, we stood in front of Marilyn’s house with Ashley’s good arm slung over my shoulder. Sweat ran down Ashley’s face despite the near freezing temperatures. Marilyn paused before forcing herself up the front steps. She pounded on the door, and after a moment the bolt turned from inside. The door creaked open and an older woman, long strands of gray and white hair spilling over her shoulders, looked out at us with sleep still in her eyes, a single candle illuminating her face.

  Then recognition. “Marilyn?” The door open wider and the woman threw her arm around Marilyn’s neck. “Oh, Marilyn. Thank the Lord, I was so worried you were hurt. Come in, come in.”

  We followed Marilyn and her mom in the house, me dragging Ashley. Her mother seemed normal enough, which scared the shit out of me. When the world is falling apart, those who look like they’ve been expecting it are the creepiest.

  Once inside, Marilyn introduced us to her mother, Madeline. The hallway to their house went back into the darkness even after Madeline lit up a well-used candelabrum. She lifted the heavy silver up like some horror movie hostess, and led us into the room to our right. The ‘parlor’ she called it.

  I laid Ashley gently down on the couch - an antique from the looks of it – on her stomach off of her wound.

  Madeline’s eyes went wide. “Oh heavens, she’s hurt. I’ll fetch your father right away. Please rest easy, Adam. Marilyn, get our guests some water from the well.” She scuttled off out of the room and up the stairs.

  “A well?” I asked Marilyn. She looked away, clearly embarrassed. I knew the feeling; my dad could be a real pain in the ass whenever I had friends over too. He would begin with questions about their religion, and then probed them about God and the heavens and so on until my friend got so uncomfortable that he either left or just agreed with Dad just to shut him up. And that was just my guy friends. I never even let girlfriends see him.

  Marilyn’s father, who Madeline introduced as Del, came down the stairs in a hurry carrying a medical bag. “Hello,” he said as he immediately set down next to Ashley. “Your daughter?” he asked, and only then did I notice that I was stroking Ashley’s hair to calm her down. I lifted my hand up.

  “No, no. We were just caught out there. We found her.”

  “He saved my life, Daddy,” Marilyn announced. Her Dad shot a look at me.

  “Well, I suppose I must thank you for that,” he said as he rummaged out a syringe and needle from his briefcase. “But you keep to yourself. Marilyn knows we have stric
t rules about dating, don't you young lady?" Young lady? Marilyn was my age, maybe even older. And dating? Seriously? Did they even know what was going on? Was he really worried I'd try to bang her in the backseat of my car? A forest, maybe, but not a car.

  Marilyn nodded, looking at the floor, and mumbled a "yes sir". She'd turned into an eleven year-old. Her father noticed her arm, still wrapped in a bandage. “Did you cut yourself again?”

  Marilyn nodded again, like a little girl reproached by her father. Her mother chimed in to me, “She’s so clumsy when it comes to scissors. Cuts herself all the time, poor girl."

  I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt down, making sure none of my scars showed. Didn't want anyone to know I was "clumsy" too.

  A quick injection and Ashley sucked in the air through gritted teeth. “There,” Del said. “That’ll numb the area. Now let’s get those pellets out.” He pulled out a long tweezers-like thing and started digging. Ashley fell asleep. As Del pulled out a ball he dropped it into a paper cup Madeline put next to him.

  “She was shot,” Del said, digging up the third bloody buckshot.

  “Yes sir,” I said, trying my best to be professional and polite.

  “Why was she shot?”

  “There’s a lot of strange people out there right now, sir,” I said. In case you didn’t notice, dipshit, something seriously fucked up is going on.

  “Yes, I suppose there are. Especially now. The Devil has made himself known.” He dropped the last of the buckshot in the cup. “There, that ought to do it. I’ll patch her up but she’s going to be quite sore for a while. Some of those buckshot got to her muscles. Now come on in to the kitchen and tell us what you know.”

  Ashley slept hard while Madeline poured tea from a cast-iron kettle that she heated over the wood-burning stove. Another set of candles crowded the center of the kitchen table, and Marilyn rarely looked up at while her father grilled me questions. I told him about the plane crashes, the power, and the scene at the airport. He just nodded while Madeline gasped and said “my heavens” about a thousand times.

  Then he went silent. Finally he said, “What do you think caused it?”

  “Solar flare,” I responded. “My dad sent me a note that I was able to print out. It explains it all and what we need to do to survive. I’m meeting him in Chicago and then-“

  “Your father’s wrong. It is the day of judgment.”

  Aw hell no. Not again. I had no response to that. Silence floated between us like a cloud of noxious gas. Marilyn whispered “Daddy, please don’t.”

  But he didn’t listen. He leaned forward onto the table, folding his hands. “Who is your father?” he asked.

  I paused. “Dr. Roger Dawson. An astrophysicist. He’s been studying this-“

  “I know who he is,” Del’s gaze grew stronger and made me look away. “Thought he disproved the existence of God. Of Heaven. What does he say now?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him,” I said, looking down. I could feel anger boil inside me like the water in the teapot. I needed a cut or I was gonna explode. I stood up, “We better go,” I said.

  He grabbed my arm as I went past. “You can’t leave, Ashley is too weak. She needs her rest.”

  “She’ll be ok,” I said.

  Madeline chimed in, “Adam, he’s right. Let her sleep.”

  “Then I’ll go alone! It’s not going to be safe to travel during the day anymore. The night provides cover and cooler temperatures.”

  “Cover from what?” Del asked.

  I swallowed it all. From folks like you. From the crazies that are out there. From the fuckin’ nutbags that think they need to wipe out the earth for Jesus. All I said was "From Reverend Hill and his followers."

  He shot Marilyn a look. “You saw Reverend Hill?” Marilyn nodded. “Why didn’t you say so? What was his message?” Marilyn didn’t say anything. Del leaped up and ran around the table. “For God’s sake, girl, you have a message for us!”

  Madeline got up and played with her apron. “Oh dear, oh honey, please tell your father. We need to know.”

  Marilyn looked at me with soulful eyes. I could see her pleading to get her out of here.

  “He said we're all gonna burn in hell,” Ashley said, suddenly standing in the doorway. “And I agree. So let's get going.”

  I walked over to Ashley, “You ok? I mean you’re ok to leave?”

  “The sooner the better,” she said. She was changed. Something about being shot, and surviving, made her appear, I dunno, older.

  Del approached us. “Go then. We’ll find Reverend Hill’s message. And if he says to destroy the nonbelievers, Heaven help your soul. Marilyn, go to your room and wait for me there."

  “NO!” Marilyn shouted. She rose up from the table walked to me, then faced her father. “I'm done with you and your fucking ‘punishments’. I won't follow you or your twisted God. And I would never, EVER want to go to a Heaven that would accept people like you.” she said

  Her mother gasped. “Marilyn!”

  “Satan's power is strong,” Del stated curtly. "Think, girl. Think carefully about whose side you choose. There are consequences for our actions." Madeline gripped her husband’s sleeve, crying.

  Marilyn took my hand, leaned forward to her father, and said, "Fuck. You."

  That did it. I was in love.

  I hoisted my bag on my shoulder smiling and steadying Ashley until I felt she could walk on her own again. We left. Marilyn never let go of my hand. Hers was shaking.

  “You will burn, young lady!" Del shouted behind us. “The Dark Lord will seek you out and destroy you all! He will bring you deeper into the fires of hell!”

  Deeper? That meant I already was in hell. Yeah, that sounded about right.

  9.

  Marilyn, Ashley and I travelled for five days straight during the night, heading west on the PA Turnpike, and in those five days, we didn’t see one man-made light. I keep waiting for everything to pop on like when a blackout ends, but it never did. No airplanes overhead, no helicopters flying around. No searchlights at night, no cop cars, not even local sheriffs. They must’ve been busy with their own hometowns. I wondered how people were reacting in different areas – were there riots? Looting?

  We stopped in Lancaster the first night. On the way we saw Amish people in their buggies with horses, acting as if nothing had changed. In their world, I guess, nothing had; just got hotter and harder to breathe. Fuckers.

  The next day we made it to Harrisburg; we could see the rising clouds of black smoke an hour before we got to it. The city was practically burned away. On the outskirts we passed a high school, with a banner still waving in the breeze that said, “Congratulations Class of 2013”. Welcome to reality. Hope you didn’t have any college plans.

  Along the main roads every store had been busted into. Even a Bank of America looked like it had been torn apart. Any electronic safe was inoperable. No alarms. People were probably millionaires now, sitting on a pile of money that could buy nothing. If this was as widespread as I thought, as devastating as it seemed, everyone’s self-worth suddenly became exactly and precisely what they had in their possession. Nothing more.

  We also saw more than a few dead people, and there were probably a ton more inside the quiet homes. Occasionally, we saw someone outside, and they all had the same lost look on their sweaty face. They’d wave, ask if we knew anything (we didn’t), and if we could contact someone for them (we couldn’t). Hundreds of thousands lost without the electronics they need to survive. Thousands of elderly people baking in their own homes. Even those who sat by their cars and waited for help to arrive probably passed out from heat exhaustion and died.

  No news, no news channels, no internet. We had no idea what to expect as we came around a bend, up a hill, or now, facing a tunnel.

  A long, pitch black tunnel.

  Moonlight bounced off of cars lined up in front of and through the tunnel, the word Blue Mountain hovered above the entrance like a warning
sign. “Death to all who enter here”.

  “I say we go around,” Ashley said.

  “You wanna go through these woods in the dark?”

  “You don’t know what’s in there,” she replied.

  Marilyn piped up. “I’m with Ashley on this one, Adam. That’s crazy.”

  “Going around’s crazy. We can’t climb that mountain, and we have no idea how far to the nearest road is.”

  “We’re unarmed, who knows who could be in there.”

  “Or what,” Ashley mentioned.

  I thought about it. Maybe they were right. Could be a whole camp of crazy homeless people in there. Or animals.

  The cry of a baby made the decision for us. Coming from within the tunnel.

  We ran into the dark tunnel, not stopping to build a torch. I yelled “Hello?” but only my echo answered me. The dead cars stood neatly lined up in their respective lanes, their owners having abandoned them a while ago. Except the owner of this car. Whoever was with the baby must’ve tried to get home but couldn’t.

  But shit, a baby? Christ that’s all I needed. I couldn’t just leave it. I hoped wistfully that Ashley would shoot off a ton of maternal instincts, take the baby up, and go home with it. We couldn’t slow down for a baby.

  The cries grew closer, bouncing around the tunnel. Another sound mingled with the high pitched wails. A grumbling. No, a growling. Several of them.

  Oh shit.

  I grabbed the door handle of the nearest car and opened it. The smell of death, spoiled milk or meat, wafted out and nearly knocked us over.

  I tried the car to my left. Locked. I pulled Ashley ahead as the crying quieted down, but the growling grew louder. Tried the next car’s door handle, pushed it in, and it popped open. “Ashley,” I said, “get in. If we don’t make it you get the hell out at first light.”

  “What?” Ashley fought me pushing her in, but her shoulder was still sore and weak. “Why me?”

  “Because you’ve been shot, dumbass! Now get in”

  I put my gym bag in the driver’s side as she slid over to the passenger seat. I took out the knife from the convenience store, and closed the door behind me.