by Kurt Gepner
"I thought you wanted to live," She demanded of him.
Brian panted and strained against the pain, while simultaneously retching at the contents of the glass. "It’s the most awful stuff I’ve ever tasted," he whined.
"So what?" Theresa screamed. She had a dust-mask over her mouth and her voice was muffled. "I guess you’d rather die than swallow something nasty?"
"No," Brian bleated. "But it’s so…"
"Drink it!" Theresa cut in. Brian looked at her pleadingly. Exasperated, she snatched a latex glove from the box and stretched her fingers into it. "Fine! Fuck it! You’re right. You don’t need any fucking sedatives!" She snapped another glove on her other hand.
Brian’s eyes were wild and his hemorrhaged right eye made him look maniacally terror stricken. Theresa plucked a pair of bandage scissors from the first aid kit and slid it right under one of the blanket-bandages. "Wait!" Brian cried.
"Why?" Theresa asked tersely. "It’s obvious that I take your life more seriously than you do." She jabbed the scissors at his face. "You either gulp that down right now, or I’m going to start scrubbing your wound clean with a wire brush!"
Brian took another sip and coughed most of it out of his mouth. "I’m trying," he sputtered pathetically.
Theresa threw her head back and howled. "Oh! My! God! You are re-fucking-diculous!" She took a deep breath and spoke with a contrastingly even tone. "Brian. Do you want me to help you?"
"Yes." His tears rolled freely down his cheeks.
Almost soothingly she asked, "Do you want me to do whatever it takes to treat your wound?"
Brian nodded, "Yes."
"Hank, Salvador," she said, addressing both with her voice but not taking her eyes from those of her patient. "You heard Brian. Right?" They both agreed they had. She took the glass from him. "Does he seem to be alert and aware?" The two men said that he was. She sat the glass out of the way, next to the wall. "Okay. Keep him from rolling over, and keep him from hurting me. I’m going to clean out the wound and sew him up."
Theresa cut the bandage free with three, swift snips. The release of pressure induced a franticly swinging elbow and screams of pain. "I said HOLD HIM!" Theresa roared. In the bedroom, Garrett started crying. Salvador wedged up against Brian’s wide back and grabbed his swinging arm. An instant later, Hank had Brian’s legs pinned.
Evie appeared through the hall door and said, "Come here, Garrett." She put out her hands and used a voice as sweet as honey. Garrett crawled into her arms, seeking comfort from his friendly neighbor. "Why don’t you girls come with me? I’ll show you my room, downstairs?" Lietha climbed after Evie right away, but Kalika hesitated and looked out at her mother’s back.
Brian shrieked in pain and kicked out a foot, convulsively. "Wait! Wait! Wait! I’ll drink it! I’ll drink it!"
"It’s too late," Theresa replied, as she might have been answering a tele-marketer’s call, after midnight.
"No. No. No. Give me another chance!" Brian squealed.
"Fine." Theresa said, sitting back on her heels. "But now that your wound is open, you’ll only get a few minutes for it to kick in. We’ll all get cleaned up, while we’re waiting." She handed Brian the glass while Salvador and Hank propped him up enough to drink it.
Brian took a breath and pinched his nose. Then he put the glass up to his lips and tilted. Before the liquid neared the rim, he lowered the glass as if to ask is there another way.
"Are you serious?! Just do it!" Theresa’s patience was spent.
Brian opened his mouth and quickly poured the potion down his throat. Almost instantly, he drooled out a portion of the fluid, but Salvador clamped a hand over Brian’s mouth. "Swallow it, you son-of-a-bitch." He spoke cruelly, vehemently. "If I find one dead child," he whispered in Brian’s ear, "who I could have saved, instead of fucking around with you, I’m going to make you choke on your teeth." Brian swallowed, hard. "Good boy," Salvador said as they laid Brian down.
"Okay, guys," Theresa said while tugging off her gloves. "Let’s get washed up." The semi-mundane conversation of scrubbing hands broke the spell that held Kalika entranced. She climbed out of bed and went down stairs to join Evie and her siblings.
CHAPTER TEN
The three would-be surgeons stood near the railing, scrubbing their arms in the gusty rain when a lone figure trudged up to the porch steps. In one hand she carried a tire-iron and in the other she held a bundle over her back. With the red jacket she wore over a white sweater, she looked like a scrawny, demented Santa Claus.
"Lexi!" Hank cried with a voice full of relief. "Evie!" He hollered over his shoulder, as he ran to his daughter. Plucking the bundle from her shoulder, he tossed it aside and said, "Just come here, Sweet Cheeks." Hank’s great arms encircled his daughter. Lexi collapsed against her father and let all of her anguish spill into his embrace. An instant later Salvador was beside them.
"What did you see?" asked Salvador, excitedly. "Is there fire everywhere?"
Lexi found her feet and wiping her nose with a soaking wet sleeve she said, "I’m so glad to see you, too, Salvador." Salvador snapped his mouth shut and looked at his feet.
Lexi fell against her father once more. "I didn’t think the house would be here," she cried. "Everything is burning. Cars blown up and people burned. Everybody I saw was just lost. Their houses were burning, or their cars had caught fire. It’s like the world has come to an end."
Theresa interjected. "I don’t mean to ruin this reunion, but we still got some work to do, if we’re going to save this guy’s life." Lexi glanced at the man lying on the porch. A great, gaping wound yawned from his immense side. It was obvious what they were trying to do, but she couldn’t imagine how a person could survive something like that without a hospital and doctors to take care of him.
"You’re right, Theresa. Lexi, come on into the house." Hank guided his daughter through the front door at the same time Evie came rushing into the living room.
"Lexi! My baby!" Evie swept through the room to embrace her daughter. "Are you okay?"
Lexi gave her mother a quick squeeze and backed away. "Mom, I’m going to get you all wet." Evie looked rebuffed, but Lexi soothed her, saying, "I was so afraid for you. I’m so glad you’re okay. Everybody’s running around crazy."
"Let’s get you dried off while you tell me everything." Evie led her daughter toward the hall.
Back in the small bedroom, Norah and her two girls were all sitting on the bed with Susanna Rae, reading children’s stories. They all greeted Lexi with hugs while Evie brought in towels and a robe. As Lexi stripped off her sopping wet clothes, and got herself dried, she told her audience of what she had seen.
"Everything was fine, you know, after the bridge-lift. It was like NASCAR, when the light turned green. Like we were all late for an interview, or something." Lexi’s excitable state brought everyone into the moment, as if they were with her when it happened. "I was just past the city-center exit when I started feeling sick to my stomach. At the same time, my car dies and some nasty smoke billows out of the dash."
Lexi took a breath to continue, but Norah cut in. "That’s exactly what happened here. This weird feeling and then everything caught fire."
Nodding at her sister, Lexi went on. "Needless to say, I whip over to the shoulder and jump out. But when I reach in to grab the phone, it was actually melting into the seat. So I’m like, ‘shit! How am I going to call Mom?’
"We had to throw our phones out the window," Norah commented.
Lexi continued without pause. "But right then, SMACK! Some old ghetto van rips my door right off the hinge."
"Oh my God!" Evie shrieked. "Are you okay?"
"If I hadn’t been reaching in to get my phone," Lexi said soberly, "I wouldn’t be. So, you know, I’m screaming, ‘Oh shit! Oh shit!’ And then there’s this huge explosion. I think it came from the airport, but who knows, right? Anyway, I grab what I can and when I look around, it’s like everybody’s gone berserk."
"What do you mean
…berserk? How so?" Norah asked.
"Well, for starters, cars are crashing into each other. Some are just stopped, right in the middle of the road, and some are pulled off, like me. And the van that took out my door, just blows up. Not like ‘BOOM’, but more like ‘WHOOF’. Then this guy jumps out, on fire, and starts rolling around. I’m like thinking, ‘shit! What the hell’s going on?’ I start to run over to help this guy. But right as I start running, THUMP-THUMP a bus runs him over! I can’t tell you how bad I felt, but at the same time I think, ‘man! That guy just had a really bad day!’"
"I can’t believe you’re so callous," Norah accused. "That man just died."
Evie shot her youngest daughter a look and then turned back to Lexi and asked, "What happened, next?"
Lexi narrowed her eyes at Norah, but continued her tale. "Anyway, most everybody is out of their cars now. Some people are actually getting into fights, like they can blame whatever just happened on the guy next to him. So I think to myself, ‘I got to get the hell out of here.’"
"Wait a minute," Susanna Rae holds up her hand. "Are you saying that all of the cars quit running?"
"As far as I can tell," Lexi’s eyes were sincere. "Even some of the cars that were parked in driveways were smoking on my way home."
"Oh Hell!" Susanna Rae threw her head back. "That means that my brand new BMW is toast."
"Susanna Rae! Let Lexi tell her story. Not everything is about you!" Evie admonished her sister.
Susanna Rae sneered at Evie but said, "Go on, Lexi."
Lexi took a breath and with both hands indicated the towel on her head. "Of course, I’m totally drenched by this time. I mean, everybody is. Right? Buckets of water are dumping from the sky."
"It’s raining!" Abby offered her observation.
"Yes it is, Abby." Lexi concurred with her niece before going on. "Anyway, I go to pull the rest of my crap out of the trunk."
"Yeah, because you keep your car like a trash can," Norah interjected.
"Norah," Evie snapped. "This is not the time! Go on, Lexi."
Susanna Rae leaned over to Norah, conspiratorially, and said, "She is a bit messy."
"What-ever," Lexi spat. Then she went on. "So as I’m wrapping up all my crap in my old blue hoodie, some guy grabs me from behind and throws me right on the ground."
"Oh my God!" Evie cried. "Did he hurt you?"
"I’m getting to that," Lexi said. "So he throws me to the ground, and right there, on the side of the highway, he’s trying to rape me!"
"You’re kidding. Right?" Susanna Rae asked, skeptically.
"No," answered Lexi with her hand held up, solemnly. "And he’s yelling all this bullshit:" She lowered her voice to imitate a man. "It’s Armageddon! Judgment day is upon us! And a bunch of shit like that."
"Men are such fucking pigs!" Susanna Rae spat the words like a curse. "Didn’t somebody do something?"
"I’m getting to that!" Lexi’s voice climbed in pitch.
Pulling Abby tight, Norah said, "Excuse me! Little ears. Watch the language."
Susanna Rae grimaces guiltily, but Lexi went on without acknowledging her sister. "So, anyway, I lay there while he tries to rip my clothes off, because he totally knocked the wind out of me. But wet clothes don’t come off so easy. Right? And as soon as I can breathe again, I throw him off me and run to the trunk. He grabs me again, but I’ve got the tire-iron in my hand. Thank God I had a flat last week!"
"I’ll never give you any grief for not picking up after yourself, again" Evie said. "So did you hit him?"
"You bet I did!" Lexi grinned. "I whacked him a couple times over my shoulder. But then he tries to grab my arm, so I bit him. Hard!"
"How foul!" Susanna Rae exclaimed. "Did you draw blood? You might be diseased!"
"Let’s hope not," Lexi says and shudders at the thought. "Anyway, he punches me in the head and I let go." She rubbed the back of her head and winced.
"You poor thing," Evie said pityingly.
Lexi shrugged. "It’s all good," she said and continued her story. "So then, all-of-a-sudden, I’m facing him. And he’s like this clean-cut guy with nice hair and a tie. But fuck him!" With a quick, guilty glance at her nieces and then sister, Lexi muttered, "Sorry, Norah." Norah returned her look with a roll of her eyes, as if to ask ‘now you apologize for your language?’
With a half-hearted smile to her sister, Lexi raced on with her telling. "So, anyway, to Hell with him! I’m not getting raped! I swing the tire-iron as hard as I can and hit the bastard right across his ear. He drops like a lump of shit so I grab my stuff and run. And you know, all those people on the bus were just standing around the guy they’d run over. Not a one of those fuckers even notice that some guy was trying to rape me. I didn’t even stop to tell those jackasses what happened. And when I looked back, that piece of shit was still laid out. I hope I killed him!"
"No shit," Susanna Rae concurred. "A creep like that is just going to do it again."
"You’re talking about murder," Norah said, incredulously.
"She’s talking about self-defense!" Susanna Rae stabbed her finger at her niece.
"Okay!" Evie raised her voice and held up her hands. "Not now! Lexi, what happened next?" Lexi was looking with disgust at her sister. "Come on, Sweetheart," Evie encouraged. "Just go on. What happened next?"
Lexi blinked and looked away from Norah. "Well, I started hoofing it to the house. When I got to Fourth-Plain, I crossed over the Five," she said in reference to a major East-West boulevard in the city of Vancouver that ran perpendicular to Interstate Five. "Of course, south bound traffic was backed up a couple miles, because of the bridge-lift. You know?"
"Why are there so many fools on the road, in weather like this?" Evie asked no one in particular.
"Maybe they were all on their way to help their sister move back in with her mommy and daddy," Lexi shot at Norah.
"Hey!" Norah shouted. "I never asked for your help! That’s your own deal!"
"Both of you!" Evie shouted over Lexi’s attempted retort. "Stop!"
Abby looked between her grandmother, aunt and mother and began to weep.
Norah clucked and took a breath before drawing her daughter tight into her arms. "Now, now, Abby," she said, soothingly. "We love each other. We’re just upset right now, but we love each other." Norah looked around at the other women in the room. "She thinks that when grown-ups fight, it means they don’t love each other."
Abby pushed away from her mother. She sniffled as tears tracked down her checks, but she reached out to her grandmother and aunt. Both Evie and Lexi leaned in to hug her, but she pushed away from them. Instead, she turned to her mother and tucked her tiny fingers into the collar of her mother’s shirt. Then she pulled her mother into the other two women. "You make upt, now," she demanded.
Evie smiled at her granddaughter and put her arms around her own little girls. The two sisters hesitated and Evie said, "Oh, come on." Then they all held each other.
Abby crawled over to Susanna Rae and pulled her by the sleeve. "You too, Annie-Sue," she commanded. Susanna Rae didn’t resist and when all four women were in each other’s arms, Abby joined in the love. "Now, you pay nice," she instructed them.
All of the women laughed and fawned over Abby, who reveled in their attention. Many tears fell as a small portion of the tension eased away and the family bonds were strengthened through the innocence of a three-year-old. After a long moment of unity, Evie turned to Lexi and asked her what else she had seen on her trip home.
"Well, like I said, the Five was backed up and every car was smoking, or burning," she said with a sweep of her arms. "People were milling around, like cattle. Some were walking into town, but a bunch of people were clustered under the overpass, out of the rain." With a shrug she said, "I guess they got spared most of the wreckage, because they were at a stand-still when it happened."
"What happened?" Susanna Rae asked. "That’s what I want to know."
"There was one guy, who’d climbed
up on the highway divider, yelling at everybody." Dropping her voice again to imitate the masculine, she said, "We’ve been nuked. We’ve been nuked. We’ve got to get over to the fort and form a militia."
"Oh Hell!" Evie exclaimed. "Tell me that nobody was listening."
"I wish I could," Lexi answered in despair. "But a lot of people were gathering around him. That’s not the worst of it, though."
"What could be worse than a bunch of whack-jobs forming a militia?" Susanna Rae asked, disdain dripping from her voice.
"I could just make out some lady’s voice coming from under the overpass." Lexi cupped her hand around her ear, as if straining to listen to something. "She was preaching, if you can believe it."
"I can believe it," Norah said. "People need faith in troubled times."
"Yeah, but she was using words like ‘rapture’ and ‘kingdom come’ and ‘repent’ and ‘tribulation’. You know, like all those people had missed the holy bus to heaven."
"I was wrong." Susanna Rae said. "What could be worse than a bunch of religious whack-jobs forming a militia?"
"I don’t know," Lexi answered, as she went on. "All I can say is that by the time I’d got far enough up the road to see under there, it was packed with people. And most of them seemed to be paying her a lot of attention."
"Be afraid," Evie said. "Be very afraid."
Lexi nodded in emphatic agreement with her mother. "Anyway, I came straight up Jasmine, once I got to this side of the freeway. The only house that wasn’t burning, as far as I could tell, was the one that was empty and up for sale."
"That makes sense," Evie said, thoughtfully. "If whatever happened caused electronics to blow, then a house with nothing plugged in would be spared."
"I guess it’s a good thing," Norah injected, "that dad is such an energy freak."
Evie nodded, with wide eyes. "The way he and Kyle wired this house is probably what saved it."
"What do you mean?" Susanna Rae asked. She had never been particularly interested in the remodeling that Hank and her sister lavished upon their home. As far as she was concerned, they should have sold a long time ago and moved into a newer home in a better neighborhood. Now that it was one of the few dwellings left whole, she had a burgeoning interest in what her relatives had done to the place.
