Yet the dogs, and the birds ... Jolene felt the fingers of fear creep up her spine and she did her best to ignore the growing sense of foreboding as she and Mags walked down the long driveway to the house next door, still wearing their N95s.
“Mags, you stay here and let me see where Mr. and Mrs. Dibbs are.” Jolene placed her hands on Mags’ shoulders, looking her in the eye. “We’ll check on everyone, including your mom, and you can be my helper.”
Mags nodded enthusiastically. Jolene walked to the front door of the house.
There was no doorbell, so Jolene knocked once, then twice. She tried the doorknob. Locked. She peered towards the driveway and saw the car was gone.
Mags watched, curiously, as Jolene checked the front bay window, then moved around to the side of the house, peering through the kitchen door window. Jolene couldn’t see anyone inside, so maybe the Dibbs’ had been away during the spraying. Or they were holed up in their own storm cellar.
“Mags, go to the front porch and sit there. Wait for me. I’m gonna try around back, okay?”
Mags nodded and did what she was told, clutching her doggy.
Jolene opened the side fence to the backyard and went in, calling out as she did.
“Mrs. Dibbs? Mr. Dibbs? You guys here? Hello?”
There was no answer.
Lying on the grass just a few feet away from the open back patio doors was their black Doberman, Racer. Jolene knew the dog was dead the second she saw it. Its eyes were open, bulging in their sockets. Jolene retched, swallowing back a mouthful of acidic bile. She felt strangely cold. This was pest control ... designed to kill bugs, and mice, and ... pests. Not dogs. She ran back around and found Mags staring out into the street, where dead birds peppered the dark gray asphalt.
Jolene took Mags by the hand. Mags followed without a word as they went to the next house. This was the Wilson’s place, and their little girl, Arlette, often played with Mags on the weekends.
“Hello? Is anyone home? It’s Jolene Riley ... Hello?”
There wasn’t so much as a rustling of a curtain.
Jolene tried the front doorknob and found it unlocked. She opened the door and stepped into the living room.
“Hello, it’s me, Jo Riley! Hello?”
There was no answer. Jolene searched the house. There was no sign of life, not even of their little Chihuahua, Wilbur. Small patches of the white mist still covered spots on the dark wood floors and mahogany couch in the living room.
Jolene tugged Mags away from the Wilson’s house and back towards her own. She rushed inside, locking the door behind her. She led Mags into a small family room adjoining the kitchen that had been closed off during the spraying.
“Mags, I want you to stay right here on the couch. I need to do a few things here, and then we’ll go see your mom.”
Mags began to cry. “Can I take off the mask? It itches my mouth.”
Jolene hesitated, then took off her mask and took a deep breath. She waited, her hand up towards Mags, then took a few more breaths and nodded, hoping she wasn’t being premature and handing them both a death sentence.
“I think it’s okay, but if you start feeling funny, you put it back on. The pest control guys might have accidentally sprayed too much, and that made people sick.”
“Was she dead, Jo?”
Jolene was struck dumb.
“Was Arlette dead?”
Mags asked with such innocence it burned a hole through Jolene’s heart. She had two choices. Tell the child the truth or lie. This was not a time for the truth. Jolene didn’t know the truth anyway.
“No, honey, they weren’t at home. I think they might have gone out of town. Right now, we need to find a way to get some help and make sure we are not going to get sick, so like I told you, the second you feel icky, you put the mask back on. Got it?”
Mags nodded, her eyes full of tears. Jolene ran over to the child and kissed her softly on the top of the head.
“I am going to take care of you. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” Jolene said, her voice muffled by Mags’ soft hair. “I’m gonna get you a treat,” Jolene said, moving towards the kitchen, her purse still on her shoulder and her hand resting on the gun tucked away inside, just in case.
In the kitchen, she quickly put together a tray of goodies for Mags and brought it out to the waiting child. Mags held her doggy and ate the cookies. Jolene kissed her again and went back into the kitchen, then sat at the table and put her head in her hands, thinking and trying not to think at the same time. She had to put some pieces together and figure out what had happened, and how to deal with it. She wanted to do neither. Just hours ago, all she could think about was finally ending her life and the horrible pain and suffering of the last few years. All she wanted was to find the promise of peace and rest.
Now, she had Mags to think about.
She got up and searched the pantry. They had plenty of food and water to last them both for a while, and there were the other houses she could raid. Oh God, she didn’t want to even contemplate it, but her years of disaster training had kicked into play and despite her emotional state, her survival instincts were going haywire. Life wasn’t her cup of tea since Robby died. Somehow losing your only child can take the wind out of your sails.
She closed the pantry doors and leaned against them, feeling the coolness of the wood on her forehead, wishing Anne had never rung her doorbell.
“Jolene? I’m scared ...” Mags called out to her from the adjoining room.
Jolene let out a sigh and went to her. “Hey, honey, I know,” Jolene said. She sat on the couch beside Mags and took her small hand. “Very soon the power will be back on, and we can watch TV until your mom gets back. In the meantime, why don’t you try to nap while I do some things in the kitchen? I think a nap would be good.”
“But will you check on me?”
“Every minute. I promise. And if you need me, you just holler. I’m right there in the kitchen, see? You can always see me. I promise I won’t go any further, well, unless I have to pee. Then, I’ll leave the door open. Deal?”
Mags giggled a little at the thought. “My mommy pees with the door open all the time.”
“I used to, too, when— Well, I think a lot of grown-ups do that,” Jolene said, fighting back a fresh wave of tears. “I’ll tell you something that will make you laugh. Once I was peeing and checking my cell phone, and I dropped it in the toilet.”
Mags was laughing hysterically. Jolene laughed, too, remembering putting her hand in pee water to save her $800 phone, which was then worth less than five bucks. Mags settled down and Jolene went back into the kitchen. She opened up the backpack and took out an older handheld FT-60 ham radio. It was small, but useful for her emergency training.
She turned the handheld on and gave a little cry of joy when it powered up before promptly squelching the static, leaving the volume low enough so she could hear it. She let it scan the frequencies, looking for activity. It scanned and scanned. There was nothing to stop on, no voice to cut it off.
She pressed the PTT call button and spoke in a low hushed tone.
“CQ, CQ, CQ. Anyone listening?”
There was silence.
“CQ, CQ, CQ, this is KI6YES. Calling out of Morris, Indiana.”
Silence.
“Come in, please?”
No response. There was always someone on 2 meter. Always.
“CQ, CQ, CQ, this is KI6YES calling out of Morris, Indiana. Come in, please?”
More silence.
That is when she began to feel really, really, alone.
Jolene ran. She knew she had limited time to do what she had to before Mags woke from her nap and found herself alone. She didn’t want Mags to panic, but she also didn’t want the child with her right now.
Anne and Mags lived three streets away and Jolene didn’t see one living person walking around the entire three blocks. No movement inside windows. No noises from the backyards. She got to
Anne’s house quickly, her breath coming in gasps, heart pumping.
The car was not in the driveway, and that gave Jolene some hope. She checked the garage first, peering through the small window above the side door entrance. Anne’s car was gone, which meant that Anne had not returned from her urgent care appointment when the spraying began. She checked the front door, which was locked, then went through the back to the patio doors.
She banged on the glass repeatedly, but nobody came to open them. Jolene hesitated, then took a patio chair and threw it against the glass door, shattering it. She’d explain to Anne later about her concern. Now wasn’t the time for concerns about trespassing.
Dodging shards of glass, Jolene went into the house, calling out as she did. She checked every room, finding nothing out of place. No bodies. No Anne.
After a thorough search, she knew she could go back and tell Mags that her mom was not at home and most likely safe somewhere else. She ran around the side of the house and into the street, trying to get home as fast as she could, hoping to God Mags was still snoozing peacefully on the couch.
The loud click stopped her in her tracks.
Jolene held her breath, hearing footsteps behind her.
“Hello?” She called out, her voice quivering.
She heard someone coming closer still, moving faster towards her.
“Don’t move, don’t!” A male voice demanded. Jolene hated herself for not bringing her gun.
Damn stupid move.
“I’m not armed,” she said.
The footsteps were closer, and Jolene knew she might have to fight, or flee, and neither option appealed to her. Maybe it was a neighbor from around the corner, someone she didn’t know—
“Fucking shit, Jo, is that you?”
Jolene whirled around and let out the biggest sigh of her life as her best friend Brian rushed towards her. In one hand, he carried a shotgun.
“Oh, God, Brian ... you’re alive!” She ran into his arms as he dropped the gun to embrace her.
“Yeah, I’m alive. And glad as a fly on shit to see you are, too. Jesus, I didn’t recognize the back of your head. Sorry, girl. Jesus ... Everyone else is gone, Jo. Everyone on Birding Street, Gilder Court, you name it.”
Jolene put her cheek against his chest as the tears she’d been holding back ran rampant. Her body shook with grief, fear, confusion, and terror.
“No, Mags is alive. She’s at my house. Anne left her with me before—”
He held her tightly for another moment and then broke the embrace to face her.
“What the fuck happened here?”
Jolene shook her head. “I don’t know ... I don’t know?”
They stood in the middle of the street, dead animals lying on the ground. Birds scattered like stones. The white powder was gone now, as the sun grew higher in the sky.
“Let’s go see if we can figure something out,” Brian said.
“I’ve got my handheld at my place.”
Brian picked up the shotgun, and they walked quickly back to her house.
It was surreal. Usually, Jolene couldn’t go outside to get her mail without having to say hi and chitchat with a neighbor or two.
Today, there was no one to say hi to.
At least she had Brian. She always had Brian.
4
Mags was still asleep, much to Jolene’s relief. She and Brian huddled in the kitchen over lukewarm sodas. Jolene had put most of the fridge goods in a cooler, but she knew they wouldn’t last long if the power didn’t come back on soon. It had to.
“I think we are under terrorist attack,” Brian said, his voice low so as to not wake Mags.
“I don’t see how—”
“Jo, can you explain this?”
“Brian, come on, this isn’t one of your big conspiracy things. We don’t know what happened yet. Don’t make assumptions. Why do people always cry terrorist attack every time something out of the ordinary happens?”
“Jo, are you blind? One minute I’m putting beer in the fridge for a weekend barbecue, the next I’m hiding out in my cellar from a bunch of planes about to take my roof off and wackadoo yellow trucks that look like something out of a cheap movie. Then, I come out to find everybody is gone, like vanished ... and this bizarre white shit is lying all over the ground. Not to mention my dog is dead in the backyard, as well as the neighbor’s cat. What does that sound like to you?”
“First of all, we don’t know if everyone is gone. Did you check every house on your way here?”
Brian shook his head. “Let’s just say I checked enough. People I saw this morning ... they’re not here now, but their cars are. It’s like they just disappeared. No bodies lying around, like the dogs and birds and shit. What’s up with that?”
The ham radio scanned frequencies over and over, up and down the dial.
Jolene picked it up and pressed the PTT.
“CQ, CQ, CQ, anyone listening?”
There was nothing ... Silence.
“CQ, we have an emergency situation. Please respond!”
The static continued as the scanner moved over frequencies, all quiet of chatter.
Jolene closed her eyes and once again saw herself at the bathroom mirror, the Glock in her hand, so ready to let go and move on, so ready.
“You get anything on the county emergency prep channels?” Brian asked.
Jolene shook her head.
“Red Cross? PERT? Government bands?”
Again, Jolene shook her head no.
“Power’s out. Cells are dead. Even the hams are flatlined. You tell me what this is, Jo, cuz I’m all fucking ears right now.”
“I dunno. Brian, why would the cell phones be dead? If the power was down, they would still power on. But my handheld works. I don’t understand?”
Brian scratched his head. “Where was your cell when they came, Jo?”
“In my purse, which was with me and Mags in the storm cellar.”
“Was it on at the time?”
“Yeah, it’s always on, Bri. Why?”
“Just a hunch, but maybe if the cell was on, they did some kind of pulse thing. EMP, to kill the battery. Mine was on, too. It’s as dead as a doornail, Jo.”
Jolene could see the fear and frustration in her friend’s face. Her brow furrowed.
“Why aren’t there any dogs and cats running around, like us? Not every animal in this neighborhood was outside at the time.”
Brian shrugged. “I dunno. Wondered the same thing myself.”
“Maybe the power being out had nothing to do with the pest control stuff. Just coincidental. But I will give you this. Whatever they sprayed was a lot more toxic to humans than they thought, and when all is said and done, we have one hell of a lawsuit on our hands.” Jolene shook her head for emphasis.
Brian looked at her incredulously.
“Who are we going to sue, Jo? Tell me, did you happen to see a name on any of the trucks, or their moon suits, or anything that would help us identify them? Add to that we don’t have any bodies except dogs and birds and cats.”
Jolene flashed back to the bay window, and the trucks coming down the street in a line, one after the other, and the creepy, robotic drivers, in their protective gear, all the same ... and the symbol ...
“No, no company names, but they all had the same symbol. We can try to look up the company based on the symbol. It looked like a cross between a poison sign and a twisted-up Swastika. Gave me the fucking creeps.”
“The power is out, can’t even search the web on our cells.”
“We can find a place that has power, can’t we? Brandisville. Or Grove’s Corner. They have to be fine. We survived. We can get to another town and figure it out.”
Brian didn’t answer. They were both silent for a long time, with the only sound being the soft snoring of a little girl in the next room.
“We can take my car. I gassed it up yesterday,” Jolene finally said, breaking the silence.
Brian didn’t even bother
looking up.
“Did you try starting it, Jo? Cuz guess what, Hun. It won’t start. I tried mine. I tried my motorcycle. I even found keys in Mr. Gobley’s car and tried his.”
Jolene gaped at him.
“I don’t understand ... what would affect the cars—”
“Other than an EMP, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. All I do know is, we can either stay here and hope that whoever or whatever did this doesn’t come back to finish off the job, or we go on foot and find somewhere that has power and people.”
Jolene knew Brian was right. They had to make a choice, face the truth that something had gone down, their little town was gone, and they had to either stick it out or move on and try to get some answers.
“Brian ... what do you think should we do?”
He was about to answer when the ham radio did it for him.
“CQ. CQ. Calling CQ. This is CROW, C-R-O-W. Monitoring all bands. Anyone copy?”
Brian jumped out of his chair. Jolene jumped higher. The voice came across in a bed of static, distant, and weak.
Jolene grabbed the FT-60 and frantically pressed the button on the side.
“This is KI9YES, copy that, CROW! Weak signal, but copy that!”
She released and waited. There was considerable static and a series of tones as if a signal was struggling to get through. Jolene tried again.
“This is K19YES, please copy. Calling CROW. Anybody out there? Anyone?”
Jolene held the radio away from her head as a loud crackle of static broke through, followed by a voice that sounded so far away.
“CROW info request.”
Jolene pressed the PTT. “Come again, CROW!”
“CROW requesting info.” This time the voice was a tiny bit louder.
“Holy shit,” Brian whispered, shaking his head.
“CROW, info request received. Afraid I don’t have much. This is K19YES, name’s Jolene Riley, I’m in Morris, Indiana. We’ve had an incident. Several animal casualties, but the entire neighborhood is missing. No other details at this point in time. Copy and confirm your status?”
Black Mariah: Morris, Indiana (Black Mariah Series, Season 1) Page 3
