by Bowman, Dave
"If you don't go see him now, you'll regret it the rest of your life," Myra whispered. "Trust me on that. I know you think you know better than all the adults in your life, but I know that much. You have to go say goodbye."
For several moments, Katie let herself be held by her grandmother. The girl’s red hair fell over her face, creating a shroud around her, and she closed her eyes.
Finally, she sat up, sniffed and pushed the curls away from her eyes. She looked up toward Brody’s bedroom window, then at Myra.
"I'm ready."
Heather looked up to see Katie standing in the doorway. Myra stood behind her
"Look who I found," Myra said, squeezing Katie's shoulder.
Katie stood staring at her father in shock and disbelief. She cautiously took a few steps inside the room, coming to a stop at the foot of Brody's bed.
"Katie," Brody said as his eyes focused on his daughter. His voice was weak, but he worked to make it steady.
"Hi, Dad."
Heather wiped the tears from her face before Katie could see and stood up slowly. "I'm going to leave you two alone. Okay, Brody?"
"Okay," he said, and nodded at his sister.
Heather walked slowly through the room, giving Katie a half smile. "We'll just be downstairs," she said as she pulled the door closed behind her.
Brody smiled at his daughter. "Come sit down," he said in a raspy voice.
Katie moved to the chair beside the bed and sat down nervously.
"Dad, I'm sorry I didn't come up here sooner," Katie sputtered. "I just – I –”
Brody waved away her concern with a slight gesture of his hand. "It's okay. It's me who needs to apologize."
He took a slow, deep breath.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me," he said slowly. "I should have stayed with you that day. And I'm so, so sorry I won't be there in the future."
"Dad, no," Katie protested, shaking her head furiously. "You're going to get better!"
Brody lifted his hand a bit from the bed to stop her. "Just let me tell you what I need to say."
Katie nodded and looked down at her hands.
"I know this is all scary. But you're going to be just fine," he said. "You're a very strong, smart girl. I know you can make it, even though the world is so different now."
Katie burst into tears and leaned across the bed, throwing her arms across his shoulders.
"No, Dad, no," she begged. "Please don't leave me!"
He embraced her, and for a moment remembered the time when she was little and hugs were more frequent. At that moment, as she clung to her father, she still looked like the same little girl.
"Shhh, it's going to be okay, Katie."
Her shoulders shook as she wept. He held her, though he could feel himself growing weaker. He could feel time running out.
"Listen to your grandmother, Katie. She’s a good woman. Your aunt, too. Always try to do the right thing in life. And Katie, always remember that I love you."
His voice was barely above a whisper now. His hands grew weak, and fell down to his side. Speaking had used all his strength.
"I'm sorry," Katie said between sobs, pulling away to look at him. "I'm sorry I was mean to you. I don’t know why I’m like that."
He smiled at her. "You have nothing to apologize for, my daughter."
He turned his head away to cough into the pillow, and she watched him through her tears. Letting his head collapse into the bed once more, he blinked and struggled to focus on her again. But he did, resting his vision on her sparkling, green eyes.
"You've made me so proud," he whispered.
34
Paul shielded the sun from his eyes with his hand. He was walking west on a small highway, halfway between Corsicana and Waco.
He had gotten an early start today after spending a restless night trying to fall asleep.
Luckily, he hadn't seen any more visions of his dead wife. But he still saw reminders of her and his children everywhere. The abandoned minivan on the side of the road like the one Marie drove, the porch swing like the one the kids had piled onto when they visited Marie's parents. Discarded candy wrappers, advertisements from a newspaper blowing down the road – everything in the world, it seemed, reminded Paul of what he had lost.
All he could do was keep walking. He moved fast, as if he could outrun the bits of memories that kept popping up around him. But wherever he went, his mind turned to his family.
He periodically asked himself mental questions as if to test his own sanity. What was his age, what was the date (or his best guess), what had been the events of the past week? Of course, there was no objective third party to measure his responses, but he at least thought he was still mentally competent at the moment.
He didn't seem to be losing his mind.
But how could he know for sure?
And what if those visions of Marie came back? Or worse, what if he found himself in some strange place and he couldn't remember how he got there? The experience of waking up two days ago disoriented in the middle of the forest and not remembering how he had gotten there was one he didn't want to repeat.
So he tried to keep his mind sharp. He did mental arithmetic problems as he walked. He constantly calculated how many miles he had yet to cover, and how many he had put behind him. But because he didn’t want to spiral down into a black hole again, he tried to avoid actively recalling memories of his wife and children – at least not yet.
Instead, he tried to remember parts of his childhood. He brought up every detail possible of growing up in the country – helping his dad on the farm, playing with Jack and the neighbor kids, listening to his parents laughing as they danced in the living room when they were in a good mood. There seemed to be a lot of love to go around back then. Paul wondered how things could have changed so much in his own lifetime.
Maybe part of him was hoping the return to Loretta would mean a return to those simpler days. He caught himself thinking that he would go back there and find it just as it always was, the small rural area that time seemed to pass by. But he knew that change had come to even small towns. And worst of all, the attacks had affected even the rural areas he walked through now.
His childhood home would not be the same. His parents were gone. But maybe, just maybe, Jack would be there. Maybe there was something left of this life to go on fighting for.
And so he kept walking. And he would keep at it for a few more days until he arrived. He would make it to Loretta, one way or another. He didn't know what would be waiting for him there. He had to prepare himself for the worst. Everything would be different, changed.
Paul didn't fear for his own safety. He wasn't concerned with attacks from the criminal elements he knew were roaming free without check on the streets. What worried him was something darker, more ambiguous.
He just hoped that he could keep his own inner demons at bay.
35
Katie finally left her father’s room and dragged herself down the hall, feeling like her legs were filled with lead. She came to a stop at the top of the stairs. Myra and Heather, who were waiting tensely downstairs in the living room, looked up at her expectantly.
"He wants to see you both," Katie said before turning back toward the room.
Myra and Heather followed Katie back into the room. The three of them kept vigil at Brody's side, each of them saying goodbye in their own way. Outside the window, the light began to fade as the day drew to a close.
Katie woke the next morning in her own bed. She didn’t remember when she had finally fallen asleep, but she had stayed at her father’s side until the wee hours of the morning.
He had gone peacefully.
Brody didn't speak much after his time with Katie. He just lay there in bed, resting his eyes at times, then looking at each of them in turn.
He, too, had said his goodbye.
After she woke up, Katie lay in her own bed for a long time, looking at the oak tree through the window.
How could he be gone?
Katie’s throat was sore and filled with a lump, but she didn’t cry. She just felt a dull numbness. She didn’t know if that would ever change. Nothing, she was sure, would ever return to normal.
Finally, Myra knocked at her door to check on her. Her grandmother walked in the room and wrapped Katie in a hug.
"I'm making lunch downstairs," she said.
In a numb sort of daze, Katie got dressed and went down to the living area. Heather and Myra, whose faces were tear-stained and tired looking, each gave her a hug, and then she joined her family at the dining room table. The three of them stared at the food on their plates, but no one ate. The three of them were in a daze, still reeling from watching Brody slip away.
“Brody was a good man,” Myra said softly.
“One of the best,” Heather said, not lifting her eyes.
After another long silence, Heather finally reached toward the plate of sandwiches in the middle of the table. She served herself some food, then began to pick at it.
"I'm going back out to look for Dad on the bike," Heather said. "Guess I should eat something."
"Heather, you've been out there looking for him all day," Myra said. "And you stayed up all night. You need rest. You're going to run yourself ragged."
Heather shrugged. "It doesn’t matter. I have to do something. We just lost Brody. I don't want to lose Dad, too."
Myra shook her head and looked down at her lap. "I know."
"But you're just giving up on Dad, aren't you?" Heather asked. "Well, I'm not really to give up on him."
"I'm not giving up on him either, Heather," Myra said. "But you've gotten almost no sleep the past two nights. I just want you to take care of yourself."
Heather looked down at her plate and took a bite of her sandwich. She glanced out the window as she ate halfheartedly.
"I can help you look," Katie said in a hoarse voice.
Heather and Myra looked at her.
"Are you sure, Katie?" Myra asked. "It's fine if you don't feel up to it."
"No, I want to do it," Katie muttered. "I want to get out of the house."
Her eyes flicked up toward the stairs, then back to her plate.
Heather followed Katie’s gaze toward the stairs, toward Brody’s room. "We'll have to bury him. I was thinking about under the willow tree in the backyard. I can start digging this evening. It’ll take me a while, though, to get it deep enough."
Myra gave her a slight frown. "Let's not talk about that right now."
Heather dropped her sandwich on the plate. "When do you want to talk about it?" she snapped.
Myra raised her hand to shush Heather, but Heather pushed her chair away from the table.
"And while we're discussing difficult topics, what are we going to do about firewood? Why is the woodshed empty?"
"Your father and I ordered three cords of wood last week," Myra said quietly. "It was going to be delivered tomorrow."
Heather exhaled sharply. "I guess that's not going to happen now. We need wood for heat. It’s already starting to get cold." She began to pace back and forth across the living room. "And what about water?" Heather asked, glancing toward the supply of five-gallon water bottles. "That will last us two weeks if we’re lucky. What then?"
Myra glanced at Katie. "Heather, can we talk about this later?"
"No, we can't," Heather said. "We can’t keep skirting around all this. We've got to think about the future. We've got to make some decisions."
Myra sighed. "I have been thinking about it. I've been thinking about it all the time."
Heather snapped her head to look at her mother and stared at her with a pained expression on her face. "Then what are we going to do, Mom? How are we going to survive? We’re in the middle of a national collapse, and we’re not prepared at all."
"I don't have all the answers, sweetie. But for starters, the creek has water. We could bottle some and carry it home on the bikes. We’d boil it, of course. I'm sure that would help tide us over for a while.”
“But for how long?” Heather asked. “And where will we get food? We can’t just go to the store anymore. And I know you have a few veggies in the garden, but it’s not enough to feed us all winter.”
“You're right,” Myra said. “I don't have a plan for how to survive here long-term. The simple fact is, we'll have to leave here eventually.”
Heather stopped pacing and looked at her.
“Leave? Where will we go?”
“Texas,” Myra said calmly. “It's the only place we can go.”
Katie watched as Heather let the words sink in. “Do you mean to Austin, to be with Annie and Jack?” Heather asked.
Myra shook her head. “Yes, to be with Annie and Jack. But not Austin. That little town where Jack's from. Annie said something to me once, how they had planned to go to his childhood home if things in Austin ever got too bad.”
Heather pondered that. “Yeah, I'm sure Austin is bad enough for them to leave, judging from what I've seen between here and Roanoke. It’s probably worse in the big cities. But what about Dad? We’re just going to leave him?”
Myra stood up and walked to the window, looking out on the front yard. “No, we won’t leave him behind. We’re going to keep searching for him. Every day. And tomorrow, we can go into town. I want to try to track down a few more people who might have seen him at the hardware store. Maybe they’ll have some idea of what he was doing in the woods.”
“That’s a good idea,” Heather conceded.
“We’re going to find him, bring him back home,” Myra said. “And then he’ll go with us to Texas.”
Heather crossed her arms over her shoulders and frowned. “Good. I’m glad you’re not giving up on him.”
Myra looked back at her. “Of course I’m not giving up. Your father wouldn’t give up on us, would he?”
Heather shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t.” She bit her lip and inhaled abruptly. “But . . . ” she began and hesitated. “But what if we can’t find him?”
Myra looked back at the window. “Then at some point we’ll have to start thinking about leaving. I hope it never comes to this – believe me, I truly don’t – but at some point, we will have to move on.”
Heather collapsed into the recliner, her father’s favorite. Her face crumpled in agony at the thought.
“We’ll search those woods high and low,” Myra said. “I promise. But the longer we go without finding him . . .”
Heather sniffed. “The less likely it is we’ll ever find him.”
Myra sat down near Heather on the couch. “I don’t like this any more than you do,” she said. “I love your father dearly, and the thought of leaving without him is unbearable. But I just don’t think we can make it on our own here.”
“How long should we wait before leaving?” Heather asked.
“I was thinking two weeks,” Myra said. “Maybe a week or so more if we can get enough water.”
“Okay,” Heather said quietly. “I can live with that.”
Katie stood up and moved toward the living room to join them. “We're not exactly invited, though, are we?” Katie asked. “You don't think they would mind us showing up there?”
“No, not at all,” Myra said. “I know Annie too well. Jack too. They'd want us with them. Besides, there's safety in numbers. If the government doesn’t help – if they don't get the vehicles and the electrical grid running again soon, we'll be on our own for who knows how long.”
“That means no internet and no phones, right?” Katie asked.
“Right, and no food distribution, either,” Myra said, making room for Katie on the couch. “We’ll all be sent back into the nineteenth ce
ntury.”
Heather snorted. “At least they had trains back then.”
“The point is we’ll all be on our own,” Myra said. “We’ll have to grow or raise any food we can’t find. And it takes a lot of work to grow all your own food.”
“What about the police or 911? The fire department?” Katie asked.
Myra shook her head. “We won’t be able to rely on any of that, maybe not for a long time. So we’ll have to look out for one another.”
Katie glanced at the front door, then at the shotgun in the corner.
“Yes, we’ll have to defend ourselves. We’re too vulnerable, the three of us here on our own,” Myra said.
“So we’re going to Texas because it’s dangerous here?” Katie asked.
“It’s dangerous everywhere,” Heather said. “The trip will be dangerous.”
“It’s not just safety,” Myra said, “though that’s part of it. It’s easier to live in a community, for defense and for growing food. And yes, the trip will be dangerous. But we can do it.”
“And it’s because of Annie, too?” Heather asked. “You miss her?”
Myra smiled. “That’s part of it.”
“I miss her too. It would be nice to be closer to her and Jack now that everything’s falling apart,” Heather said, shaking her head. “But we haven't even talked about the hardest part! How on Earth will we get there? It's got to be around a thousand miles to the middle of Texas.”
“We have bikes, don't we?” Myra asked.
“That'll take forever!” Heather said bitterly.
“You’re forgetting your father and I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail,” Myra said, her eyes twinkling.
“That was – what? – thirty years ago?” Heather asked. “Mom, listen. I rode a lot fewer miles then what it would take to get to Texas. And believe me, it's not pretty out there. And it's not easy, either. What about your knees?”
Myra bent down and reflexively rubbed at her knees. “I'll be okay. I can make it. I know it'll take a long time. But we have to try, don't we? We don't have enough food here to last more than a month, and the water will last us even less.”
