by C. Gockel
That realization made the enormity of the whole situation come crashing down on me. I let out a choked little sob and fled my brother’s room, running down the stairs to the family room so I could turn on the TV, could reassure myself with the sound of someone else’s voice, even if the newscasters were following the commands of people who might already be dead. I had to know a world still existed out there beyond my house, even if it was a world swiftly falling apart.
But when I picked up the remote and turned on the television, nothing came on to reassure me. Some stations blank, others showing a “please stand by” message, others with a test pattern of colored bars. My heart rate sped up as I moved from channel to channel, thinking that there had to be at least one still broadcasting, one that hadn’t been abandoned.
AMC seemed to be showing a rerun of The Walking Dead, which had to be someone’s idea of a sick joke, as I didn’t think that show ever ran before nine o’clock at night due to its content. And that wasn’t even the worst. Farther up the band, on a channel I didn’t recognize, the screen was black, with words in stark white emblazoned across it:
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood….
I wasn’t much of a Bible reader, but even I recognized the quote from Revelations.
Making a disgusted sound, I clicked off the TV, then turned when I heard my father come to the door and lean against the frame, his shoulders slumped.
“It is the end of the world,” he said softly.
That couldn’t be my father — my hard-nosed, practical father, the one who made sure I knew how to shoot, how to catch a fish and clean it, how to change the oil in my car and swap out a flat tire. Nothing ever fazed him. But now some underlying steel seemed to have given way, his firm jaw somehow loose, his eyes blurred with sorrow.
“Dad?” I said uncertainly.
“She’s gone,” he told me, voice flat. “While we were down in the kitchen.”
The words didn’t seem to make any sense. Or rather, my mind refused to make sense of them, because if I understood those words, I’d know in that moment my mother was dead, and I just couldn’t face that. Not yet.
For the longest moment, I didn’t say anything, only stared up at him as I turned the remote I held over and over in my hand, its familiar rectangular shape suddenly alien, cold and hard. Not wanting to hold it any longer, I set it down on the coffee table.
“No,” I said at last.
“Yes,” he said softly. “It doesn’t look like she suffered. At least, not like some that I’ve seen. You’d almost think she was asleep.”
“Maybe she is asleep,” I protested. “Maybe you just thought — just thought she was — ” I couldn’t say the word. Not in connection with my mother. If I said it, then it would be true, and I couldn’t bear that.
He didn’t bother to contradict me, only watched me. Something of the no-nonsense father I was used to was clear in those eyes. They said, I don’t want to believe it, either. But that doesn’t make it less true.
That hard knot was back in my throat. My eyes burned. For some reason, though, the tears wouldn’t fall. They just remained where they were, burning like acid.
Finally, I asked, “What should we do? Should we — ” I couldn’t even finish the question. This would have been bad enough under normal circumstances, but at least then there was a routine to follow. You called the doctor. The doctor called the ambulance, and then eventually someone got in touch with the funeral home. That was how it worked when Grandmother Ivy — my mom’s mother — had passed.
Now, though…now you couldn’t even get a call through. And if by some miracle you did, it wouldn’t matter, because there wouldn’t be anyone on the other end to answer it.
My father wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We don’t need to do anything,” he said, that scary monotone back in his voice. “It’ll take care of itself.”
And something in the way he said those words made me too frightened to ask what in the world he meant.
Chapter 4
He went into the kitchen after that. I didn’t follow, but instead just stood there in the family room, my entire body feeling as if it had been encased in ice. One thought kept hammering away in my head, over and over again.
She’s dead. She’s dead. Your mother is dead.
I wished I could cry.
From the kitchen, I heard the clunk of ice dropping from the dispenser, the sound of liquid pouring, although not from the refrigerator door. I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly what it was.
My father was not, unlike a lot of cops, a heavy drinker. He and my mother would have a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, and I’d seen him drink champagne at weddings and have a beer after a morning of washing both his and Mom’s cars, but that was about it. But there was a bottle of Scotch he kept high up on a shelf, a bottle that rarely made an appearance. One time when his partner Josh was shot in the leg while breaking up a domestic dispute. Or the time my mother found a lump in her breast and had to go in for a biopsy. It turned out to be nothing, a benign cyst, but we’d all been fearing the worst.
And now the worst had happened, although in a manner none of us could have imagined, and he was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, drinking Scotch on the rocks.
And I was too scared and shocked to even give him shit about it. If he wanted to seek comfort in a glass of Scotch rather than in me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Still with that horrible lump lodged firmly in my throat, I went back to the staircase and slowly went up it, each step more and more difficult, as if I were in some horrible alternate dimension that kept strengthening the gravity pulling at me with every movement. Finally, though, I made it up to the landing, then went to Devin’s room.
He had shifted and was now lying on his side, half his covers thrown off. They’d probably felt far too hot, but I knew he had to stay warm. I crossed the room and grasped the sheet and blanket, hesitating as my hand paused on the comforter. Maybe that really was a bit too much, since it had been a mild, warm day, and his room wasn’t anywhere close to cold yet. I could always put the comforter over him later.
As I began to settle the sheet over his shoulders, though, something felt wrong. At first I couldn’t quite figure it out, and then, even as I realized what the problem was, my mind didn’t want to acknowledge it. Not this. Not so soon after — well, after.
The last time I’d been this close to him, heat had fairly radiated from his flesh. Now, though, he felt cool, and when I reached down to touch his hand, his fingers were like ice, and somehow already stiff, although logically I knew it was far too early for rigor mortis to have set in.
Then again, what was logical about any of this?
I recoiled, letting go of my dead brother’s hand, and backed away from the bed. As my father had told me about my mother’s passing, Devin didn’t look dead, just asleep. For whatever reason, his face didn’t have that sunken look about it that my mother had worn. Maybe his fever hadn’t burned as hot?
Not that it mattered, because he was gone, too.
A frightened little sob tore its way out of my throat, and I continued to back away, creeping out into the hallway and shutting the door behind me. I knew I should go downstairs and tell my father what had happened, but for some reason my feet took me in the opposite direction, toward my parents’ bedroom. Before I even knew what I was doing, my hand seemed to have reached out of its own accord and was turning the knob. I’d just seen death. I needed to see my mother’s, too, so it would be just as real. Maybe then my brain would be shocked out of its current numb state.
The sun was beginning to set, but my parents’ bedroom had a window in the western wall, so a warm, mellow light was flooding the space. It was certainly bright enough for me to see where my mother’s body should be lying, propped up against the pillows on her side of the bed.
Only…she wasn
’t there.
My first thought was that my father must have moved her, but why in the world would he have done that? Besides, there wasn’t anyplace he really could have moved her, not unless he put her in the bathtub for some reason.
On second thought, that notion wasn’t so strange. He could’ve put her in an ice-cold bath in an attempt to bring her temperature down.
I rushed into the en suite bathroom, but the tub was empty. As I stared down at it, I realized that was a ridiculous notion. Even if my father had put her in the bath, I would have heard the water running, and I’d heard no such thing.
Thoughts racing, first rejecting one idea, and then another, I returned to the bedroom. From this angle, I could now see a pile of fine gray dust marring the surface of the blue and tan striped comforter, the one my father had permitted in the room only because “it wasn’t too girly.”
Dust? My mother would never allow dust to collect on the furniture, let alone a pile like that right on the bed.
Cold coiled in the pit of my stomach as I stared down at the strange little pile. On a dare from Devin, I’d once peeked inside the urn containing my grandmother’s ashes…and they had been almost the exact color and consistency as the ashes now sitting on my parents’ bed.
No, that was impossible.
Then my father’s words came back to me: It’ll take care of itself.
Was this what he’d meant? That somehow after she passed, my mother would simply crumble into a pile of dust?
No, I refused to believe that. There had to be an explanation. Otherwise….
Otherwise, this whole situation had moved from the unexplainable and tragic to the positively Biblical. Whoever heard of bodies turning themselves to ash, unless it was by some strange otherworldly force?
“You see,” my father said. He must have come upstairs while I was standing there, staring down at my mother in shock. His speech sounded a little slurred, but at least he hadn’t brought the glass of Scotch up with him.
“What — what happened?”
“It’s what happens to all of them,” he replied. “Usually within an hour of death.” Rubbing at his brow, he added, “Very clean, when you think about it. Much better than having all those bodies lying around, don’t you think?”
I stared at him in horror. “That’s Mom lying there!”
“No,” he corrected me. “That’s what used to be your mother. The part of her that was really her — that’s gone. To a better place, I have to hope, but after everything I’ve seen today, I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
His voice was sad, but resigned. And as I looked at him, I noticed the way he wasn’t completely steady on his feet, the glisten of sweat on his forehead from the last rays of sun coming in through the window. Maybe my mind had registered them earlier, but had dismissed them as effects of the alcohol. Now, though….
No. Even as my mind recoiled from the thought, I found myself asking, “Dad, are you sick?”
He gave me a sad smile. “I think I am. Finally caught up with me, I suppose.” His gaze moved to the bed. “I should probably lie down, but….”
“Go to the guest room,” I said. It used to be my room, but my parents had refitted it as a spare bedroom just the past year.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “I want to die in here, next to where she slept.”
“But — ” I didn’t have the strength to mention the ashes, all that remained of my mother, but from the way my father was staring at them, he knew all too well what I was thinking.
“Get her vase,” he told me. “The Waterford one I bought her for her fiftieth birthday. She’d like that, I think.” He reached out and grasped the doorframe, as if that was the only thing holding him up right then.
I wanted to protest, but I knew that wouldn’t do any good. Besides, I didn’t know how much time I had until he fell over right there in the doorway. My mother’s collapse had been sudden and shocking, and Devin’s not much better. So I nodded and pushed past him to run down the stairs and go into the living room, where the vase in question stood on one of the end tables.
After grabbing it, I hurried back up to my parents’ bedroom, where my father — through sheer force of will, probably — was still hanging on to the doorframe. I showed him the vase but didn’t stop, instead going to the bed and grasping the comforter, then tilting it so the gray dust would tip into the crystal container. During this operation, I didn’t dare breathe, but the dust was surprisingly heavy and didn’t puff up into the air the way I feared it might. Instead, it slipped down into the vase, filling it approximately halfway. Not letting myself think about what it held, I took it over to the dresser and set it down.
Since there was no way I would put that comforter back where it had come from, I folded it in on itself to trap any remaining dust, and set it on the floor at the foot of the bed. “Okay,” I said, my voice shaking.
My father didn’t seem to notice the tremor in that one little word, but only pushed himself off from the doorframe and then staggered over to the bed. After pausing to kick off his shoes and remove his belt, complete with holsters and badge, he fell down onto the mattress. That seemed to have taken the last of his strength, because his head fell back against the pillow at once, and his eyes shut. Incongruously, I noted how heavy and thick his lashes were, lying against his flushed cheeks.
“Dad?”
He lifted one hand. “Just tired. I took some ibuprofen on the way up. Not going to do any good, but I didn’t want you to have to get it for me.”
My heart was breaking. I could feel it…literally feel it. One piece torn away for my mother, the next for Devin. And when my father went, did that mean my heart would finally shatter once and for all, gone to dust like everyone else in the world?
Cramming my fist into my mouth to push back another one of those ragged sobs, I went out to the hallway and staggered over to the carved wooden balustrade on the landing. I wrapped my fingers around the rail and hung on as if for my life. No fever scorched its way through me, but I felt as weak as though my temperature was 110 degrees.
Beloved, it will all be over soon.
That voice again. It had to be a hallucination, some strange coping mechanism my brain had cooked up, but still I found myself replying out loud.
“Does that mean I’m sick and will soon be dead along with everyone else?”
No. That is not your fate.
“What is my fate?”
Silence. Apparently my subconscious or whatever it was that had created the soft, reassuring baritone didn’t quite have the balls to tell me what my future held. Not that you needed to be a fortune-teller for that. Raging fever, and a pile of dust somewhere. Should I go out on the family room couch, or hike my way back up to my apartment when the time came? That seemed like a lot of unnecessary effort. After all, no one was using the spare bedroom.
I went into the bathroom to get a drink of water and saw the big bottle of ibuprofen sitting on the counter, the cap still off, as if my father hadn’t possessed the strength or will to put it back on again. Fingers shaking, I picked it up and twisted it onto the bottle, then put the ibuprofen back in the medicine cabinet. I didn’t want to leave a messy house behind.
Messy for whom, I didn’t know. From what my father had said, it didn’t sound as if anyone was getting out of this alive.
The thermometer was lying on the top rack in the medicine cabinet. I already knew I wasn’t sick, but I needed the external reminder. I took it out, opened the bottle of rubbing alcohol, and wiped down one end of the thermometer. Then I stuck it in my mouth and waited.
98.1. Up a little from the last time, but still below normal.
I rinsed it off and put it away. Then, moving so slowly I felt as if I were dragging my feet through mud, I went back to my parents’ bedroom, half expecting to see a pile of dust there. To my surprise, my father’s eyes opened when I came into the room. They were bright with fever and had those telltale dark circles beneath them, but they seemed
lucid enough. Maybe he wasn’t as far gone as he had thought.
“Dad, I could try some ice — ”
A very small shake of his head. “No. Once you have it, you’re done.” His eyes shut, and I could see how his big frame was wracked with shivers, even though he’d pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I repeated, wondering what he had to be sorry for. “None of this is your fault.”
“No — not that.” He shifted under the covers, then opened his eyes again. “Sorry that we’ll all be gone, and you’ll still be here.”
Something in his words chilled me. In that moment, I could see how dying along with everyone else might be preferable to being left in a world with no one to talk to, no one to even know I’d somehow managed to survive. Voice brittle, I replied, “Oh, I’m sure I’m not long for this world, either.”
“Fever?”
“No.”
He closed his eyes. It seemed as if he didn’t have the strength to keep them open and focused on me for more than a few seconds at a time. “You’re immune, Jess. Don’t know how…or why….”
That is not your fate. Despite the stuffiness of the room, I shivered as I thought of those words, spoken gently by someone who wasn’t there.
“Write down what’s happened. Maybe…there’ll be someone left to tell.”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. “I will.”
“Might as well put that English degree to some use.”
Oh, Dad. Even at the end, he had to make a joke. “All the commas will be in the right place. I promise.”
No reply. He could have simply fallen asleep, but I didn’t think so. Unlike my mother and Devin, he’d pushed all the way to the end, burned the candle until no more wick was left.
Somehow I put one foot in front of the other, walking slowly until I reached his side of the bed. A finger against his throat, telling me that he had gone, had left this world and was with Mom and Devin. I had to believe that. I’d break apart otherwise.
