by Wade Ebeling
A weird sense of nervous immediacy bubbled in his stomach now. Daniel would show his father exactly how unneeded he really was. He truly wanted to save himself, and get everything in the house cleaned up, before Allen had a chance to come home and find him like this. Daniel’s new mission was to never let his father know that he had gotten sick. More particularly, to never let him know how he had gotten sick.
Daniel could almost hear his father’s gruff voice admonishing him. Although he had never been sick from any of the animals that he had snared before, his father would make it out to sound like it was his fault. “Why did I even put that giant jug of hand-sanitizer there? I told you to wash your hands after handling meat. It’s not my fault…It’s yours!” was sure to be what Allen would say, if he did happen to show up right now.
Over the past few months, Daniel had caught dozens of squirrels, rats, opossums, cats, and raccoons in the two snares set up in the backyard. Two opposing slats on the privacy fence had a short length snapped off from the bottom. This is where wire snares had their free-end nailed to the fence and the noose end positioned in front of the narrow holes. Any creatures scampering along the fence-line would duck through the hole, catching themselves in the traps.
‘He will never see me crying again,’ Daniel thought hazily. ‘Screw him! I don’t need him. I don’t need this house, or his crap. He won’t even let me touch the damn stuff anyways!’
“C’mon!” Daniel’s parched throat and cracked mouth managed to say strongly.
With that, his eyes opened and fought to focus. His mind, despite feeling swelled, focused with anger and demanded movement. Daniel rolled off of the mattress and onto all fours. His face hung low over the puke pot, making the next effort happen reflexively. He walked his hands backwards, carefully avoiding the overflow, until he was squatted. From his haunches, with a great moan leading the charge, Daniel stood.
His mind applauded him by working out where he could get drinking water the fastest. With the ash being so thick outside today, uncovering the water barrel, scooping a bucket full and running it through the filter seemed an impossible task. The cases of plastic bottles in his father’s room downstairs were his only option. The drawback with getting water from this room was two-fold. The first problem that he would have to overcome was mental; under threat of severe retribution, he had been barred from ever entering the room. The second obstacle was the padlock sealing the door closed. His father always carried the keys with him, so subtlety was not going to be an option. He would have to break into the room, and there would be no hiding it afterwards.
“Fuck it,” Daniel muttered, grabbing the edge of the kitchen counter for support. His brain felt like someone had placed it in a vice and then given some crazy person control over screw handle. Whoever the lunatic was, they kept squeezing away at random intervals and with different pressures.
He only made it to the end of the counter by inventing a strange looking shuffle. Slide feet forward, adjust hand hold, repeat. The garage would have to be his first destination. There, in amongst the bottles of propane, cases of fuel additives, and cans of fix-a-flat, was the only tool that he knew of in the whole house that could do the job, a broken pry bar that had been tossed aside by his father.
Just moving his arms and legs, as he staggered over to the garage door, made an incredible body odor escape and mount an assault. Sitting trapped in the folds of his six day-old clothing, the vile stench of sweat, vomit, and diarrhea wafted off of Daniel in increasingly intensive waves. His stomach no longer gurgled with just the scared anticipation.
The movements of his body were starting to come easier, having found a way to catch its balance. He remembered his father pulling the broken pry bar from the truck and tossing it in amongst a pile of auto store plunder. Daniel was surprised that, even after months had passed, his mind knew it was right next to the air filters and replacement hoses. A quick feel around the suspect area in the garage had the rusted pry bar in hand. The teeth on the cane head had been snapped off, but the slightly curved chisel end, though marred from heavy use, was still useable.
Daniel staggered back in from the dark garage, catching a glimpse of the snuffed candles that dotted the abused, white-with-gold-flecks kitchen countertop. The extra pain of walking back to where he had just come from was a welcome penitence. His feverish mind felt that he would have fully paid for the indiscretion of breaking the rules with this added task. All the fears over what his father might say upon seeing the breached doorway of the storeroom fully dissolved. He did not care what his father would do. As far as Daniel was concerned, it did not matter. Nothing Allen did, or said, mattered anymore. Nothing his father could come up with as punishment could be as bad as how Daniel felt right now.
A strange mix of misery and adulation accompanied the sickly pale boy, as he lit a candle with one of the cheap lighters strewn about. The warm, yellow flame revealed the way down the stairs, flickering bright to dim, like a signal lamp flashing out a warning in Morse code. The stored power in the solar-charged batteries had run completely dry some time ago. A sticky buildup of moistened ash and dust now covered everything outside with a thin sludge. Daniel had had no choice but to get used to the pervasive darkness. There was no way for him to be certain about exactly when the lights failed to turn back on, time can be a poisonous thing to ponder when you are alone.
By using the pry bar, the screws holding the padlocked hasp to the door jamb pulled out easily. The hinge rattled and floated about freely as he opened the door. Having personally carried almost everything down into the room, Daniel had been inside numerous times before. He had even been in here without supervision before, but never had he looked at all of the provisions in the manner that he did now. The candle only showed a fraction of what was really there. He knew the room’s size and narrow pathways even better than his father did. And he knew, from now on at least, that he would take anything that could be wanted or wished for from the room.
Daniel made his way to the stacks of bottled water, setting the candle down on the top of one of them. Panic jumped out when his weakened fingers were foiled by the plastic wrap hugging the water bottles tightly together. Pinching several holes into the thick layer with his teeth, eventually led to his being able to liberate a few. He greedily drank from the first bottle until it was gone. Most of liquid missing his mouth, dribbling down the sides of his cheeks, soaking into the neckline of his dirty shirt and the clean carpet.
Grabbing an armful of the slippery bottles, he blew the candle out and headed back up the stairs. With life-giving water coursing through his limbs, the head spins that he was suffering from, which had started off as near complete revolutions, switched to a more manageable stuttering staccato. The worst was over. It would still take time and effort, but he knew he would live.
After making it down the hallway and into the big bathroom, Daniel peeled off his rank clothes. There, he ripped long rags from the yellow box sitting on the counter. Using his aching teeth, he opened two bottles of water as he stepped into the bathtub. He soaped and scrubbed himself as clean as possible. Two more bottles were opened to rinse the suds off with. The cool water raised wave after wave of goose bumps, sending them marching across his body. It also gave him a much needed burst of motivation.
Having now wholly shucked off the fear of his father, Daniel boldly walked into Allen’s, also off-limits, bedroom. Clearly marked storage bins were stacked two high under the window, which had a grey woolen blanket nailed over it for a sunshade, and along the near wall, where a dresser would have typically stood. Daniel easily found sock, underwear, and t-shirt labeled bins, tearing into a new package from each.
The contents of the two pants bins must have come from a military surplus store. Filling them were camouflage cargo pants of all different patterns. The sizes were all too big for Daniel, but he did manage to find a solid tan pair that only bunched slightly under his belt. They also came equipped with draw strings around the ankles, keeping the dragging
to a minimum.
With his new pants cuffed and cinched, Daniel quickly found a thin, long-sleeved, brown flannel shirt in the closet to finish covering his body. He drank from another bottle of water and climbed onto his father’s amazingly comfortable bed. Being clean and having water sloshing around in his stomach felt slightly better, but the last of his energy had been sapped away from the effort it took to get there.
Sprawled out on the bed, his body graciously absorbing the water from his moist skin, he felt a hunger pang. The feeling was not strong enough to change his plans for taking a nap, although, he knew what was going to happen when he got up. He was going to go steal a couple of cans of soup from his father’s storeroom in the basement.
……..
Tuesday, June 8 - 2030
In the past few days, with the help of youth, and ample food and drink, Daniel had regained all of his strength. He had also grown quite brave, even managing to go around the block twice in one day.
The first time around, he ran almost the entire way. This was partially from the joy he felt at just being able to run, and it was partially from the unshakable feeling that someone was watching him. The thick, blowing dust hindered the distance that could be seen, adding to the impending feeling of dread. A pair of goggles, which had foam on the inside of the rims, and a disposable dust mask kept the grime from getting into his eyes and lungs. These items also hindering his peripheral vision even more than the ash cloud did.
On his second pass, Daniel walked very calmly. Gripping the hilt of a combat knife, which he had found in his father’s closet, helped to bolster his courage. He kept practicing drawing and sheathing the sharp blade, being very careful with the wicked-toothed serration that it had on its spine.
Paying avid attention as he moved around the block, Daniel had noticed that there were four completely burned houses, and one heavily burdened by a tall tree creasing its roof. Two houses, he was almost sure of, had people living inside of them, with the possibility of two others. It was really quite hard for him to tell without walking up and knocking on the front door. This, he was sure, would be a very bad idea. Most of the houses he walked past just looked sad and empty. Others were sealed, having long been boarded up, with no possible way of knowing what lurked behind the permanent shutters.
One house in particular, on the far side of the block, captured his interest. Every window and door had been smashed out or kicked in. The ranch-style house, similar to the one he lived in, seemed to sit further back than the others, and it somehow managed to look even darker inside despite being open to the elements. Daniel felt a foreign compulsion drawing him ever closer to the house, and the closer he got, the more his pulse raced in fright. The more pure the trepidation became, the more Daniel liked it. He was finally challenging himself.
Each step closer to the house became an excruciating pleasure. The front door was nowhere in sight, begging Daniel to step onto the low porch. Everything he saw looked similar yet alien at the same time, like he was stealing thoughts from someone else’s dream. Windblown drifts of powdered ash crossed over the threshold, and tiny opossum tracks created a pathway over their peaks. There were no signs of recent human activity. This encouraged Daniel a bit. Being here was a both a safe and dangerous choice. He wanted to go inside right away.
A small smile puckered at the corners of his lips. The feelings he was having hung on him akin to the way his new clothes did, comforting, while at the same time being slightly uncomfortable. As strange as these emotions were, they felt well-suited to him. He was alive, the racing of his heart told him this plainly.
Earlier, while searching through his father’s forbidden stash room, Daniel had found dozens of individually wrapped LED flashlights. At first, he thought them completely useless; there were no batteries to make them work. This morning, however, Daniel had made a more thorough search of the room, and, inside a long flat box, he found four solar-powered battery chargers.
The scavenger hunt for corresponding batteries went on for nearly an hour. Finally, packed deep in the corner of the room, Daniel found two medium sized boxes filled with rechargeable batteries of all different sizes. The flashlights took three AAA’s to function, while the chargers could only handle two batteries at a time. Taking three of the chargers, six of the batteries, and two of the flashlights upstairs into the empty, small bedroom, he laid the chargers out flat on the hard-wood floor.
Turning away from the challenge that the derelict house posed, Daniel started heading back home. He wanted to know if the flashlights worked. Either way, he was coming right back to explore the menacing house. He walked with a purpose around the inside corner of the L-shaped block. Once around the corner, he would be able to see his house. A smile was splitting his face under the dust mask, and his footsteps felt lighter. Daniel found himself having fun.
When he realized what a great adventure this was when compared to a solitary life spent indoors, Daniel planned to equip for a full excursion. He wanted to take a backpack, stuffed with bottles of water and some of the chewy, fruit and grain bars; flashlights and knives made it all sound far too good to be true.
In the storeroom, there were entire stacks that consisted solely of the energy bars. Despite their various flavors, each box had the same outline of a man hiking on the cover. That silhouette always managed to look like it was having fun, like it was doing the greatest thing that someone could possibly do with their time. This did not make any sense to Daniel. The thought of someone marching around for pleasure was one that he could just not process anymore. Such activities had not existed inside his world for so long that they seemed ludicrous. But now, happy in his new-found freedom, he understood the picture once again.
Daniel looked up, seeing the one sight that could wipe his smile immediately away. His father’s truck sat backed into the driveway.
He did not stop walking; his pace did slow considerably, though. He did not feel frightened or worried about what might ensue when his father saw the obvious signs of forced entry around the house. He just figured that the inevitable argument was about to happen. It was just human nature that he would prefer skipping past it to the part where he and his father started ignoring each other again.
The distance closed faster than he would have cared for, proving that at least part of him was not prepared for what had yet to come. Daniel walked back through the door and into the house; not as a condemned man, but as his own person, resolved to having a confrontation. Daniel knew it was unavoidable, so why try to avoid it? He had managed to put up quite the well-built psychological wall in the past few days, and he could honestly say that he really did not care anymore. His father could do nothing more harmful to him beyond that of what he had already endured.
“There you are!” Allen yelled, but his voice was not angry, it was relieved. “Shut the door. Shut the door,” he added, between raspy, dry coughs.
Wondering if his father had truly been worried about him, Daniel said smoothly, “I was just down the street.” He said it like it was no big deal, something he did all the time. His father seemed uncaring about Daniel having been outside when he got home. Instead, he was staring wide-eyed at Daniel’s new clothes and knife.
“None of your clothes fit you anymore? Man, you’re getting big. How about your shoes? They look way too small for you. Do they hurt your feet?” Allen asked his son, a perplexing look on his face. “Was it you that broke into my room?” Allen continued easily, still looking at Daniel like he didn’t recognize him.
“Yeah,” Daniel managed in reply, without his voice or gaze breaking.
“Looks like you tore through it pretty good. Did you find anything useful?” Allen asked with genuine interest. Starting to find this amusing, his eyes brightened and a small smile had formed.
When Allen first arrived at home, greeted only by the conspicuous, nostril-burning stench of bleach, he started to get angry about Daniel not answering his hails. As he started to look around, seeing that everything of his had
been gone through, the padlock ripped right off the door in the basement, he became irate. After an half an hour had passed, without seeing hide or hair of Daniel, Allen then became worried.
The feeling had snuck-up on him. All of a sudden, after a year of hiding away the concern he sometimes felt, Allen was seriously concerned about his son. By the time Daniel came strolling in the front door, like nothing had happened, he was so relieved to see his boy alive that everything else became comical. He even began to feel pride in his son. At long last, he felt, Daniel had taken charge of his own life. It had been a long time since Allen felt anything positive for his son.
“I found those solar thingies, and some batteries,” Daniel answered honestly. His father just smiled in response. This was more than just a little disconcerting. “Oh, and some flashlights,” Daniel added, his brain shutting the list down there.
“I forgot I had those…Do they work?” Allen posed, trying to stifle a low series of coughs.
“I was…I was just coming to see. I wanted to go back…” Daniel started to tell his father about his plans for packing a bag and returning to the vacant house, but stopped himself.
“Where are they? Let’s take a look. I haven’t had a flashlight in a while. Jason…Uncle Jason will flip out if I brought one back for him,” Allen laughed.
Daniel’s shoulders dropped. He figured that his father was just going to take the flashlights, leaving him without a good way to look inside the inviting house down the block. “They are in there,” he said, pointing to the little bedroom, already thinking of how long it might take to charge another three batteries with only one solar charger left.
