Alone
Page 5
Hannah’s things were still in the apartment. The landlord hadn’t bothered to move them out. A realization hit her as she saw Hannah’s stuff still scattered all over the apartment. If she hadn’t sent for her things, then there was a good chance she was dead.
Eve pushed open the door to Hannah’s bedroom and just stood there. Pictures covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Eve had taken nearly all of them. The pictures were of the two of them in high school, at prom, on spring break, graduation, frat parties, football games, hanging out at the park, and countless other events and places.
Eve went to the first wall and examined each picture individually. She laughed at their outfits. At their hairstyles. At the faces they were making. A flood of memories nearly bowled her over as she combed through the pictures. After a while, she left the room closing the door behind her. She wouldn’t be able to sleep in the room, not with the many faces staring down at her.
Too afraid to go back out into the dark night, she grabbed a blanket out of the closet and crawled up on the couch. She hadn’t thought she would be able to sleep, but she did. Her sleep wasn’t a peaceful, dreamless one though. Old memories created horrific dreams that had her tossing and turning and nearly tumbling off the sofa. The events of the last few weeks distorted all of her best memories into horror movie versions of the events.
Around six the next morning, she woke screaming from the nightmares. When she had some semblance of control over herself, she walked back home.
III – Jack Torrance
Reese and Toby, Eve’s niece and nephew, passed away the second week of March. Eve buried them along with her Grandma Yana, who died the following week, out in a plot of land in the backyard just beyond the privacy fence that surrounded the property. No one said anything to her about it. She really didn’t think that there were enough people left in the neighborhood for anyone to notice or mind.
She tried calling the courthouse to find out who owned the land, because it wasn’t fenced in with any of the neighboring homes, but what she mostly got were busy signals and answering machines. On the off chance she actually got a real person, all they ended up giving her was the run around. Apparently, all the people who knew who owned the property were dead. Since there was no one left to ask, she decided to use the plot of land as a mini-graveyard.
She marked off a small section of the land with a very shabby looking stone wall. She made sure she left room for at least eight to ten more graves even though there were only three of them left; her mom, Caleb, and herself.
The news stations officially announced the closing of the schools the week after Reese and Toby passed. This news wasn’t surprising, except in the fact that it took the university so long to make it. The university was all but bare by the second week of February, though most students had been gone since the end of January.
Each morning, Eve listened as a news anchor read off the daily list of business closings. After that, came the announcement that help was needed at the Wal-Mart, a few other grocery and convenience stores, a number of factories, and a few delivery agencies who were trying to stay open to help feed the diminishing public.
For the most part, the world had shut down. So much so that the government started issuing vouchers around the first of the month, so that people would be able to afford necessities. Some people, in the larger cities, had started taking whatever they needed or wanted. Fortunately, in Richardson even though the same kind of thievery was going on, much of it wasn’t in an angry-mob-looting style, but more in a hey-no-one-is-here-why-not-take-it-if-I-want-it calm sort of way. The government had declared Marshall Law, which kept much of the violence that people had once predicted to occur after an apocalyptic event to a bare minimum in the smaller towns.
Week after week, as Eve walked the few blocks from her grandma’s house to the courthouse she would see yet another building closed down or vandalized. News reports showed that things could be much worse. The images that flashed across the screen each night made her sick. A part of her was bracing for the hell that was soon to come, another part of her refused to believe it was possible.
One day while waiting in line to pick up her family’s vouchers, she overheard a military officer and a police officer discussing some of the riots other cities were experiencing. They swapped stories of panicked individuals and the government burning buildings to the ground, shooting people in the streets, and so many other things much worse than Eve could ever imagine.
“It hasn’t been as bad as it was predicted to have been,” observed the police officer to the military officer, both of whom were standing halfway up the courthouse steps.
“At least not here. I overheard the sergeant telling some of the other people about what it is like in places like New York City, Chicago, L.A., and Dallas. He said there were never-ending riots and fires,” the woman in the military fatigues informed the other officer. Eve’s heart cried when she heard them mention Chicago. That was the first time she let herself truly believe that she would never see Doyle again.
“Here, there are too many dead or sick people for there to be enough people to act a fool. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m arresting more than my fair share of crazy, sick, or drunk people nightly,” the cop interjected in a reassuring tone, obviously not wanting the military officer to think they weren’t doing anything to help control the situation.
“Miss? Miss?” The lady behind the counter, who was handing out the vouchers, was calling for her, but Eve had been too interested in the officers to pay attention.
“Miss, it’s your turn,” the lady behind Eve said, tapping her on the shoulder.
The line had been steadily flowing up the steps, but Eve had unconsciously stayed put, listening to the officers, and the people behind her were too shell shocked to notice that they hadn’t moved in a while.
“Oh. Sorry,” Eve apologized, smiling a weak sort of smile at the lady behind her, then climbed the steps to the makeshift counter on the landing outside of the courthouse. She wasn’t sure why they had set up the counter outside and not inside, but she never bothered to ask.
Once she got to the counter, Eve could tell the woman was desperately wanting to be impatient with her, but she was too tired and traumatized to make too much of a deal about Eve’s lack of attention.
“How many are still alive in your home?” the lady asked in a very unemotional, routine sort of way.
“Three. Two adults and one infant,” Eve reflexively told her.
The voucher lady jerked her head back as if Eve had slapped her across the face. Eve heard the lady behind her start to cry.
This sort of thing happened to her every time she came. The death of the children was probably the worst thing about the apocalypse, for most people. Sweet, innocent children. People hurt more thinking about what this disease had done to the children than thinking about what it was doing to them.
The voucher lady took a moment to collect herself. Eve had learned to be patient with people. She completely understood how these people felt.
When the lady behind the counter had collected herself she asked, “How old is the infant?”
“Three months,” Eve said tentatively.
The face of the lady behind the counter went white again, and the lady behind her sobbed harder. The line behind her grew quieter, if such a thing were possible. Even the two officers stopped talking. Eve could feel all of their eyes staring into the back of her head.
As her face began to regain color, the voucher lady took the two driver’s licenses Eve handed her and the paperwork the hospital had given them when Caleb was born. She entered their social security numbers into a database that was supposed to check to see if people were really who they said they were and to see if the people others claimed to still be alive, really were.
The database wasn’t accurate, everyone knew that, but the powers that be were trying to keep up the pretense that everything was going to be all right. Eve knew the database was incorrect because she hadn’t r
eported the deaths of any of the people she had buried, and she knew if she hadn’t then it was more than likely others hadn’t either. Besides, people were dying too fast for the system to be completely up to date all of the time.
“Would you be willing to join a program we are starting? We are trying to organize a group of people to deliver food and supplies to those who are too sick to leave their homes?” the woman asked, handing Eve her vouchers and a pamphlet about the government-run delivery system. A pamphlet, seriously, Eve thought looking down at the folded piece of paper in her hand.
“Do you think that it will be safe for the baby if I have to bring him with me?” The moment the words came out of her mouth Eve wished she hadn’t asked such a question.
After a long pause the woman said, “That wouldn’t be recommended, miss.”
“Sign me up,” she replied with a shrug while trying to put a little pep in her voice. “And I’ll work as long as my mother is healthy enough to take care of him.”
“We are appreciative for all the help you can give for as long as you can give it. Come by tomorrow morning and go into that door right there,” she said, pointing to a set of double doors to her left. “Go down the hall and into room number fourteen. Bring your driver’s license with you. I’ll add your name to the list so that they will be expecting you. Again, I thank you.”
Eve took the information and quietly left the counter. She hurried down the steps, purposely not making eye contact with anyone. The looks on their faces would be too much for her to bear. Even the officers were watching her. Keeping her head ducked, she turned right at the bottom of the steps and all but ran from the courthouse.
-----
The next morning she did as the woman instructed. Her body shook with fear and nervousness, but she was determined to do all that she could to help anyone who needed her as long as she could escape the confines of her home.
Her mother was hesitant about her leaving them alone all day. Eve tried to reassure her that she and they would be fine. Not that she really knew if she would be, not in the world they were living in, but she felt as if she would be safe. Besides, Eve desperately needed to do this.
Her mother and Caleb were her world now, and she loved them very much, but she didn’t think her sanity would last much longer. If she continued to stay shut up in the house with them all day every day, she was bound to snap. Of course, she would never tell her mother this for fear of upsetting her.
Eve had always been on the go. She was never able to stay put for any length of time. Unfortunately, her inability to be still was what had been keeping her from ever fully following in her grandfather’s footsteps as a writer and journalist. She loved to write, but she had never had enough discipline to sit down and finish anything.
Journalism she thought she might be able to do if it involved lots of traveling. The parts where she had to sit in front of her computer for long hours typing up her reports would get old, but she thought if there was enough going from one place to another she could handle it.
This lack of discipline was why she would never receive anything higher than a B in any of her classes and why she had so many story ideas scribbled down but no actual novels or short stories to submit for publication.
Her mother was her complete opposite. Sadie would be perfectly content staying in the house for the rest of her life. She didn’t have agoraphobia, anthrophobia, or any other phobia; she just liked being in the comfort of her own home. This meant that she wasn’t developing a case of cabin fever, as Eve was. This also meant that she didn’t understand why Eve wanted, no, needed to get out.
As Eve was leaving for her first day, Sadie had begged, pleaded, for her to stay home. When her pleas didn’t affect Eve, she asked her daughter why she needed to join the delivery crew. Eve had wanted to yell, ‘Because I feel my sanity gradually slipping away, and I’m afraid if I stay in the house any longer I’m going to go mad, that’s why. She didn’t scream this of course; she just lovingly hugged her mother and told her she would be back around five.
In the small conference room at the courthouse, the man in charge put them into groups of four. Each group had a van, a list of stores, a list of supplies to collect, and a map of the section of town they were to cover. Once each group had their supplies and were in their specified neighborhood, two people from the group would approach a house, while the other two waited in the van. If someone were to answer the door and announce who they were, they were supposed to give them a package with food and supplies.
Most of the time no one would answer. Some of these houses were empty; others were occupied—the people in them were simply too sick or scared to come to the door. The rules forbid them from going into a home, for safety reasons—people seeing the guns they carried might think they were trying to break in and rob them. Therefore, they never checked for survivors. If no one answered, they left a pamphlet hanging on the knob telling the occupant who they were, why they were there, and that someone would be back in a day or so to check on them. If they wanted them to drop off any supplies all they had to do was fill out the card and hang it back on the door.
“It should be worse you know,” noted one of the young girls in her group, who couldn’t have possibly been older than eighteen. She was looking out the window of their van at the world outside.
“What should have been worse?” a second girl, who wasn’t much older than the first, asked.
“The world outside,” the first answered.
“I know. I heard a rumor that there is another group of people going around at night clearing the roads and gathering up the dead. That’s why there are Xs on some of the doors. Those are the houses where they’ve cleared dead bodies from,” the second girl told them.
“I heard that the government is trying to keep the mess cleaned up so that it doesn’t look as bad as it really is.” This statement came from the only male in the group.
“I don’t buy that at all,” the second girl declared irritated.
“Why would they do that?” the first girl asked confusion evident in her tone.
“Two reasons,” the male replied. “To keep the panic down and to cover up the fact that they created this mess.”
“That’s bullshit. They would never do that,” the first girl nearly yelled.
“Yeah, of course they wouldn’t. Just like Thornton didn’t use the earthquake to hide his divorce and affairs. Just like he didn’t stage the attack on North American Flight 625 to try to start a war with Japan. Oh yeah, he is such a saint,” Eve finally spoke up. She had been sitting back soundlessly listening to their argument, but the part of her that was her grandfather’s granddaughter made her put her two cents into the debate.
“Thornton and Black aren’t responsible for all of that,” the second girl said, sounding a little defeated.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry but, yes, they are, and this is all the evidence I need,” Eve said, motioning out the window.
Eve didn’t want to fight with these people. She was too mentally exhausted to fight with anyone, but she felt that anyone who could look at all the things that have happened, were still happening, and not believe Thornton and Black were behind them was a fool.
The earthquake hadn’t affected her life much. She had been outside of the event, living on the opposite side of the country and all, but the events surrounding North American Flight 625 had affected her as they had affected her college roommate and childhood friend Hannah whose cousin had been on the plane. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t really thought about the incident until right then.
In Black’s fourth year of office, Japan supposedly shot down North American Flight 625 off their west coast, an act that caused Black to threaten to go to war with Japan over. The second the news hit airways though, things never seemed to add up right, mostly because not only were there verifiable claims that a plane resembling Flight 625 was shot down, but there were verifiable claims that a plane matching Flight 625 had crashed landed on a small, deserte
d island off the coast of the Ogasawara Islands.
By the time investigators discovered that there were indeed two planes, the one shot down and the one that crashed, and that luckily, the one that had crashed had held American citizens—most of whom survived the crash—Black had been reelected. Unfortunately, no one could tie the man to the conspiracy. No one could find out why there were two identical planes or why one was shot down. If the man and his administration could cover up that, then surely they could cover this up.
What he was trying to deflect his people’s eye from with that event was never discovered either, though some claimed he took the time to make some disreputable deals with a few Middle Eastern countries that had to do with oil, weapons, and religious factions.
“All right, everyone just stop before this gets violent. It doesn’t really matter who or what created this, all that matters is that we’re in the middle of it and we need to work together to keep as many people alive as possible,” said the second girl on the verge of tears.
“She is right; none of the politics of it matters anymore,” Eve conceded.
-----
Eve only worked for a week delivering food and supplies because her mother passed away the weekend after she joined the group. Eve had gone to her mother’s room that Saturday morning to get her up for breakfast, but Sadie had been too weak to move. Her mother had been feeling bad for the past week or so, but they weren’t sure what it was that was making her sick. Eve tried Googling her mother’s symptoms, but internet access was sketchy, since those who manned the sites and hub centers weren’t well enough to keep everything up and running properly.
Eve thought about going to the library to see if she could look up some of her mother’s symptoms, but her mom told her it would be a waste of time. Sadie knew that there wasn’t anything they could do about it…whatever it was. If she had the sickness, she was dead already.