Rebirth

by Michael Poeltl

  “He dragged me to the basement by the neck, I – I couldn’t scream or speak.” She was stone-faced now. “I tried to wiggle free, but he was too strong. When we reached the bottom of the stairs I knew I was in trouble. He kept dragging me across the floor and I went limp. I thought maybe my dead weight would make it harder but he kept going. Then he threw me on the couch and I said I would scream and he hit me in my face.” A hand moved slowly to her temple where I guessed Earl had punched her.

  “Jesus Christ, Caroline. I’m so sorry.” I stroked her hair. I wanted to make it better for her. I thought briefly how this could have been me.

  Tears burned my eyes and I rubbed them out. I felt I needed to be strong for her. She continued her story saying that Kevin and Fred had followed. The attack had clearly been planned in advance. Tears rolled down both of our cheeks. Had they only spared me because of my pregnancy? What if I hadn’t revealed this the day before? A full-body shiver went through me. How had it come to this?

  “But they were drunk; I could smell the gin on their breath, in my ear. Maybe if they weren’t drinking…”

  “Jesus, Caroline.” I managed through my hoarse throat. “Don’t give them anything. They did it, that’s enough. Don’t give them anything.”

  “I don’t know how long I laid there. I don’t even know how I ended up in the cold room. I just knew I couldn’t face any of them.”

  “Where was Sonny during all this?” I asked, propping myself up.

  “Never heard his voice.”

  “Sons of bitches.” I growled through clenched teeth. I vowed I would kill them then and there. The how and the when would eventually present themselves.

  Chapter Eleven

  The night Earl, Fred, Kevin and Sonny left to chase the flags, I found myself in the addition with Seth, trying to keep busy while we kept watch - as we had countless times before. It was a chore, one which I’d always dreaded. The boredom of sitting alone and staring out the windows, often into an abyss of blackness, was numbing. When the clouds dominated the skies and there were no stars, moon or even a faint flicker of light in the distance to focus on, your shift, in what we had nicknamed Skylab, seemed doubly painful. Of course, with the absence of light, seeing the enemy was made all the more easy, as they would carry either a torch or a flashlight, something to light their way in the darkness.

  This night did not produce an enemy, thankfully. Nor was the sky as black as it once was. Clouds moved slowly, offering us a glimpse of a star or even the moon. It was waxing Gibbous that night. Gibbous, a term I had learned recently, in one of Joel’s childhood books. Having read virtually every book in the house, I had turned to purely educational reading, and then finally to educational children’s books. I liked to think of the moon waxing rather than waning; the idea it would reveal itself gave me hope. Watching it wane made me feel as though it would disappear again, as it did in the beginning, and maybe forever this time.

  While poking around in Earl’s things - he and the other three had taken to sleeping in the addition - I came across a booklet under a pillow, a journal of sorts. It was one of Kevin’s sketch books, with a black textured cover and about 200 bright white pages. Many of these pages had been filled with a very steady hand. The penmanship was impressive. It was Earl’s handwriting; I recognized it immediately from his maps and charts and timetables which he’d posted around the house.

  After thumbing through the pages I closed the book, my interest falling back to the cover which had been carved with a knife. The carving formed words, and the words alarmed me for several reasons.

  MY STRUGGLE

  The title itself told a story. But knowing Earl, and relating the title to a history lesson on the Discovery Channel a few years back, MY STRUGGLE became profoundly more disturbing when translated into German; Mein Kampf. Hitler’s autobiography, and political ideology which propelled him into his role in infamy. Knowing Earl, he knew exactly how this title translated, and to whom he would be comparing himself. How would I live with someone I hated, someone I wanted dead? I opened the journal again and read, suddenly feeling Seth’s eyes upon me.

  “Are you sure you should be reading that, Sara?” he questioned timidly.

  “What’s the harm? They won’t be back for days.”

  “What did Caroline say to you today when you found her?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “She’s fine, Seth,” I lied. In fact, I wondered if she’d ever be fine again. “She had an episode.” I was sticking with that answer. People seemed to stop asking when you said the word ‘episode’.

  “Okay.” He let it go and I started flipping pages, hoping to gain some advantage over Earl by reading his secret thoughts.

  “I was impressed more than anything with the way Gareth carried himself. The total control he had over his membership inspired me.” He referred to the leader of the flags, who had hoped to grill each of us in an attempt to weed out supposed ‘sympathizers’ to the Reaper’s ideals. Gareth was a small man, and he ruled with fear. Joel saw that.

  I read on. “Gareth was well spoken, superior in his demeanor. People need to be led. People need to feel safe. Gareth offered those things. Two things to rule: offer safety and offer leadership.” He was taking notes the whole time!

  “Leadership is often thrust upon an individual. Joel was voted our leader, and Joel cracked under the pressure. What is better is to take leadership, there is power in that and people respect power.” I felt a pang of anxiety. He was building himself up to lead us all, and he would take control. As I read on, I found more passages that related to leadership; entire pages filled with plans to lead an army of his own, schematics of battles we’d fought. He took nothing for granted. He learned from everything and he documented it. I’d said before that Earl was too intelligent to have such a scary side. The very idea of Earl in control made me sick with fear.

  Flipping through more of the text I stopped again at a section entitled; Sexual cleansing - the immediacy of procreation. “The purpose of life is to procreate and evolve. In a world where humanity has likely lost most of its populace, procreation is key to the survival of the species. What does not encourage procreation cannot be allowed to consume resources. A sexual cleansing is necessary. The homosexuals need be exposed and exterminated, so as not to consume that which will feed humanity’s future.”

  “So, whose journal is it? Kevin’s?” Seth sounded despondent. My heart went out to him. I knew he was gay, I’d always known, and reading Earl’s grand plan, I wondered if he knew it too.

  “No, Earl’s,” I replied and cleared my throat. Should I show him? I felt I had to protect him.

  “So, what’s he saying? Kill the flags - good. Hate your neighbor – good. No more ammo – bad. Something along those lines?”

  I laughed and smiled at him, then shook my head.

  “He’s fucked, Seth, and I’m afraid we’re in trouble. He’s talking about taking control, leading us all.”

  Seth didn’t like the sound of that. “Earl can go fuck himself. The guy’s a pussy with a gun. I’d never follow him.”

  “But what if he used the others to back him up? We’re two women and two men. He’s got four men.”

  “Well, I can’t see those guys actually forcing us to do something. I mean Jesus, we’re all friends here right?”

  I thought of what they’d done to Caroline and almost used it as an example but stopped myself.

  “I think they’re all under his spell and are capable of anything. The most we can hope for now is that the flags get to them before they get to the flags.” And I meant it. They would be doing us a favor if they killed Earl. I feared for our futures and for the future of my baby if he returned.

  Chapter Twelve

  Earl, Sonny, Fred and Kevin returned to the house a week later. My heart sank at the sight of them. One, two, three, four, I counted as they moved through the front door, no worse for wear as far as I could tell. Sonny went straight to the kitchen, passing me without a word
.

  “What happened?” I asked, struggling to contain my hatred.

  “We got them,” Fred said on his way to the basement. I became nervous: they were all behaving strangely.

  “Well, is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing to concern yourself with.” Kevin marched past me, following Sonny into the kitchen.

  “You fucking pussies!” Earl cried from the front hall. I jumped out of my skin. I flushed at the sight of him.

  “Rest easy, Sara.” Mistaking my rage for fear, he approached me. “We got all of ‘em!” While he spoke, he flapped a piece of something between his fingers. He also wore a colored cape draped over his shoulders.

  “Oh my God.” As he got closer I could see what he held. It was skin, flesh! I backed off automatically. “What have you done!”

  “This is my prize!” he shouted. “All of ours! Think of it as our flag, courtesy of the flags!” Then he removed the cape from around his shoulders, threw it over the railing of the staircase and went to the kitchen. I was frozen in terror at what I was seeing.

  *****

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. The mental image of human flesh draped across the railing just one floor beneath me was too horrifying for words. I could only imagine what my subconscious would conjure up if I allowed myself to sleep. I had seen so much death by this point, nothing should have shocked me. But this blatant desecration incurred a new level of horror. Finally, when I could toss and turn no more, I got up and wandered outside, escaping through the bedroom window, crossing the rooftop and navigating down the TV antenna to where Sonny was standing on the back patio.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Talk to me, Sonny.” I begged him. “Whose skin is that?”

  “It’s Gareth’s,” he replied. “Jesus, Sara...” His head lowered and his eyes closed.

  “I don’t think I want to know any more.”

  “We killed them all. We killed most of them in their sleep. But when the guns went off a few of them woke up, and we shot them down.” He paused. “Maybe to them it was all a dream, you know? Doesn’t everyone hope they’ll just die in their sleep?”

  “Yeah,” I said, mesmerized by the monotone of his voice.

  “We shot them like cattle. One, two, three… they fell like sacks of potatoes, blood everywhere.” Judging from his tone, Sonny had realized revenge wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  “I wish you hadn’t gone, Sonny.”

  He turned then and looked at me wearily. “Yeah. Me too, Sara.”

  He continued to describe how Freddy had located Gareth during the early part of the melee and secured him to a tree with rope, letting him watch his army be gunned down in front of him. Earl swaggered over to Gareth when the last of his followers were dead, and before cutting his throat, said; “Ever seen an animal skinned, Gareth? Know how many animals I’ve skinned? Enough to know how to skin a man.” Then the knife came out and Earl slid it across Gareth’s throat slowly, a shallow cut. Thick red blood ran slowly down his neck and chest, collecting on his robe. The cut was not deep enough to kill, only to torture. Gareth’s mouth opened as if to protest and Earl jabbed the knife down on his tongue cutting through his jaw. He left it there for a time and circled his victim, sizing him up.

  Finally, after facing the leader of the flag army once more, Earl pulled his sidearm and shot Gareth in the head, just as Connor had been executed. Freddy then untied Gareth and Earl went to work on the corpse.

  “Jesus, Sonny,” I choked. “That’s horrifying.”

  “Yeah, pretty fucking sick.”

  “What are we going to do about him?” He knew who I meant: Earl.

  “I don’t know anymore.” He was distraught. “I’m not taking sides. I’m leaving.”

  He said he wanted to resume his long-abandoned search for Tom, a friend who we’d lost during those first crucial hours after the bombs had dropped. Tom was a gawky looking kid, his eyes too big for his face, his teeth misshapen and his self-esteem non-existent. Sonny was looking for purpose again, some semblance of reason to go on. I pleaded with him to stay, to watch over me and the baby.

  “Sonny, I - I’m so sorry things between us got so messed up. But you see now, you see what Earl is. He’s sick!”

  “I see that. I guess I always knew that, Sara. But after Connor, and Joel….” He trailed off. “After the flags and everything went to shit, after all we’d accomplished here. I just needed someone to tell me it was alright to take revenge.”

  I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sonny, I’m scared for us. I need you to stay.” I wiped away a tear with my other hand.

  Sonny gently removed my hand. “Sara, I’m not staying. I can’t.”

  “I’m begging you, Sonny.” I began to cry. “He’ll kill us all, eventually. He’ll write a reason in his journal and then he’ll carry it out.” Sonny’s heavy hand touched my head gently.

  “There’s nothing for me here, Sara.”

  I couldn’t argue that there was nothing here, but what was there beyond here? Part of him had died when Connor and Joel died, the other part perished during that trip he had taken with Earl to exact revenge. We were all dying inside. How much more could any of us take? I resigned myself to his departure.

  “Come with me.” He suggested.

  “Where would we go?” I asked.

  “East. Tom had family on the east coast. And then we could find a boat. And then…”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’ll sail it.” He turned to look at the house and breathed deeply. Looking back at me his gaze lingered. “You’re not coming, are you, Sara?” He smiled sadly then.

  A journey like that was not something I could manage while pregnant. Open to the elements, food and shelter uncertain from day to day. “I’ll miss you, Sonny.”

  “Don’t,” he said, before he turned and entered the house for the last time. I would never see Sonny again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Caroline had not recovered from the attack, and her deep depression left Sid with little to work with.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Sara. Caroline won’t so much as let me touch her. Has she said anything to you?” Sid sat with me on the edge of my bed, where I huddled and fought back pregnancy-related nausea.

  “The episode.” I kept up the lie. “She’s still shaken from her episode last week. She’d never experienced anything like that before and she’s afraid it could happen again.” I was becoming an excellent liar. Not something I was particularly proud of, but necessary to keep a promise to a friend.

  “I can’t seem to reason with her and it’s scaring me you know? I feel like Connor must have felt when Julia was so depressed.” Our friend Julia, a former resident of this home and my very best friend, had cut her own wrists months ago to avoid bringing a child into this world. This memory haunted me more than ever, having now become pregnant myself and experiencing the same sad thoughts.

  “Sidney, give her some time. I’ll continue to talk with her, you just be her rock until she can open up to you again.”

  “I guess. I miss her though.”

  “I know you do. I miss the old Caroline too. Be patient, okay?”

  “I will. Thanks, Sara.” Sid left me to my thoughts. I was sitting up in bed, caressing my ever expanding stomach. What would my baby look like, I wondered. God I hoped it would be healthy. Who knew what the last few months could do to a fetus. I put those thoughts out of my mind and decided he would be a he, and that he would look like Joel. Ten fingers, ten toes, bald, and terribly handsome. I smiled and realized I was looking forward to meeting him. But what would I call him? I had no names picked. Should I call him Joel after his father? No, I decided that would be too painful. Maybe I’d name him after my own father, Leif. That was a strong name, and he would need all the strength he could get.

  Just then Kevin appeared at my door. “Sara,” he said flatly, “Earl would like your ear.”

  “Then tell Earl to come see me. I’m not jum
ping every time he calls.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to facing Earl one on one. We were used to arguing with each other now over just about everything, but in front of everyone, never just the two of us. I felt an urge to get up and call Sid back into the room when Earl’s frame blocked the doorway.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Earl.” I greeted him uncomfortably. His hands were hanging from the top of the door frame and his feet jammed up against either side of the opening as if to fill the space completely.

  “Sara. Can we talk about this baby of yours?”

  “I see no reason to discuss that with you,” I shot back.

  “No reason? I’m the one protecting this house; you have every reason to discuss this with me.”