Long Chills

by Ronald Kelly

  As the festivities wound down around ten-thirty, Sam pulled himself up out of his rocker, went into the fix-it shop, and locked the door behind him.

  The prospect of sleep usually filled him with unease and unanswered questions… would he wake up in the morning or not? But that night the excitement of the day and the camaraderie shared by the folks of Watkins Glen had dulled his fears. For a change, he felt strangely contented. He turned off the light in the front room, passed the aisles of shelved junk and appliance parts, to his twin bed against the back wall. He didn’t bother undressing, just kicked off his shoes and lay down with his hands folded across his chest. Then, thinking he might resemble a corpse in repose, he put his hands behind his head and slept as he did when he was a younger man.

  He dreamt of Estelle as she had been when they first courted. Honey-blonde and buxom in that angel-white dress she had sewn by hand. Not tiny and gray and withered, ravaged by Alzheimer’s and cancer, confined in that Birmingham nursing home that stank of disinfectant and unwashed asses. Then later, in the rose-colored casket, surrounded by flowers, looking like some taxidermist’s mistaken interpretation of his beloved. Too much lipstick and rouge. A curl of a stranger’s smile that he had never seen upon her lips in fifty-nine years of marriage.

  And he dreamt of a boy. A lover of baseball, bicycles, and fishing. One that had grown into a man; into something even more… or less. One who had abandoned his folks and his town for a world of strangers and endless highways.

  By eleven-thirty, the dreams had passed and Sam’s slumber deepened into something akin to death. But one that was never lasting and complete.

  Then at midnight, the sun came up, brighter than a billion sparklers and hotter than Hell unleashed.

  They called it The Burn.

  At least that was what the news media labeled it. Funny how journalists – or those who claimed that distinction – had a snappy label for everything… including the end of world as we knew it.

  Nobody really knew how it happened or why. Some said it was China, some South Korea or Iran. Some said Al Queda was behind it… or Islamic Jihad, the Hezbollah, or two dozen other terrorist organizations. Some claimed the Russians were up to their old tricks again. The trouble was, no one knew exactly who the culprit was. But whoever they were, they had succeeded in sprinkling the world with a shitload of nuclear bombs. No continent, no country, no state had been spared.

  A few major cities had suffered direct hits – New York City, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Washington D.C. – but from the ground, not the air. Most of the devices, however, had detonated within a fifty mile radius of major cities, leaving the buildings intact, but flooding them and the surrounding areas with radiation.

  There was even an urban legend circulating that a secret society of high school nerds who had gathered forces on the internet had been responsible, just to show those bullying jocks how powerful the acne-scarred and unpopular could be. After all, anyone could learn to build a nuclear bomb. There were at least half a dozen websites on the internet that gave you step-by-step instructions on cooking up Armageddon in your own garage.

  When Sam stepped outside the fix-it shop door the next morning he found his beloved Maple Avenue gone. Instead, it had changed into a sluggish, noisy river of total strangers.

  He stood there for a long moment, wondering if he was still asleep and in the middle of some confusing nightmare. But he knew that he was as awake as awake could be. Something had happened overnight. Something pretty damned bad.

  The street was choked from curb-to-curb with cars and folks on foot. Most were still wearing night gowns and pajamas. Some walked like zombies, their eyes dull and full of shock. Some cried and some cussed, mostly at one another. Horns blared impatiently as those in front of them took their good time heading… where? They themselves seemed at a total loss at where they were headed. The whole thing reminded Sam uncomfortably of the Bataan Death March back in 1942… of which he had been an unwilling participant. Except that there were no Japanese soldiers to bayonet or behead you if you stumbled and fell.

  Watching this exodus of humanity surging through the heart of his hometown caused the old man to feel disoriented and a little faint. He held onto the back of Estelle’s rocker to steady himself. Sam peered across the column of refuges, searching for a familiar face. He found it directly across the street. Millie Hopkins, the owner of the pet shop, stood in her doorway. She seemed as frightened and confused as Sam was. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. It was clear to see that she was upset.

  “Millie!” he called above the steady roar of the crowd. “What the hell’s going on?”

  The little white-haired lady with the reading glasses chained around her neck stared at him incredulously for a long moment. “You… you haven’t heard what happened?”

  “I just rolled out of bed,” he replied.

  Millie burst into a fresh bout of sobbing. “It’s horrible… just horrible.”

  “What, Millie? What’s happened?”

  “A bomb went off forty miles north of Birmingham,” she wailed. “They think it was a nuclear bomb. Can you imagine that? A nuclear bomb going off here in Alabama?”

  “Lord have mercy!” exclaimed the old man. “How did it happen?”

  “Nobody seems to know,” she said. “The news is saying that it wasn’t isolated… that it’s happened all over the world. Here in the United States, in Europe and Africa. Everywhere. Two hundred and eighty detonations… at least that’s the count they’ve totaled so far. The folks on the TV and radio are talking crazy. Rumors of war… of the End Days. Nobody seems to know exactly what’s going on.”

  Sam was stunned. Nuclear bombs? Nobody even talked about them anymore. He remembered the fears he had experienced back in the fifties and sixties… the Cold War and the potential for global disaster it had stirred. But those anxieties had faded with the tearing-down of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism. Who would want to start such madness all over again? A country we were at war with? Or maybe terrorists? It was possible, he supposed. There had been enough attacks in the States and abroad lately. The bombings at the Grammy Awards and Noble Prize ceremonies, and the gunning down of some of the world’s greatest medical minds at an international medical symposium last year.

  “Sam!” shrilled Millie from across the street. “Sam… I’m scared!”

  “I am, too,” he assured her. “Do you think you could make it through this crowd? You can sit over here with me, if you like.”

  Millie looked horrified. “And leave my babies? You know I couldn’t do that.”

  Sam thought about Millie’s shop, full of her beloved animals; puppies, kittens, hamsters, yellow-and-green parakeets, and goldfish. She would have no more abandoned them than she would her own children.

  “I know you can’t,” he told her, forcing a smile. “Now why don’t you go on back inside. Might be a mite safer. And lock the door behind you.”

  Millie nodded. “Yes. Yes… I believe I will.”

  Sam watched as the elderly lady turned and went inside. She no more had the door shut, when a gunshot rang out in the street. Sam searched the crowd and saw a woman in a pink bathrobe with a little girl clinging to her legs. She brandished a .38 revolver, her eyes wild. “Get away from me!” she screamed. “Don’t touch me!” Those around her gave her some extra room, but all kept right on going, heading southward down Maple Avenue.

  “Sweet Jesus, help us all,” muttered Sam. He sat down heavily in his rocking chair and, for the next few hours, did what he always did… observe. But there was no peace and comfort in today’s sitting. Only fear and dread.

  Around three in the afternoon, things turned ugly.

  The shock that had infected most of the wanderers had gradually changed into outrage and anger. And hunger was a factor, too. Most of those folks hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday’s suppertime.

  The sound of glass shattering drew Sam’s attention. Further down the street, a crowd was
breaking into Mercher’s Shop-Rite. The owner, Ted Mercher, stood at the door, trying to stop the tide of hungry and desperate people, but they flung him to the side and ignored his hoarse protests. Sam watched in alarm as Ted clutched his chest and dropped to the sidewalk on his knees. His grown daughter, Tina, was beside him in an instant, her pretty face pale and full of terror. With some effort, she pulled her ailing father to his feet and the two disappeared down a side alleyway, leaving the looters to do as they pleased.

  Sam sat there as the long shadows of evening fell, watching as things grew progressively worse. Around six-thirty, a minivan stopped in front of the video store with a violent sputter. Directly behind it, a Ram pickup truck blared its horn impatiently. Soon, the two drivers stood in the street facing one another. One looked to be a business man – a lawyer or an accountant – while the other was a redneck in oil-stained jeans and a Confederate flag t-shirt.

  “Get this piece of shit outta my way!” snarled the lanky redneck.

  “I – I can’t,” the other attempted to explain. “We’ve run out of gas.”

  “Well, you should have filled up before you ran out, you dumbass sonuvabitch!”

  “I couldn’t. The last place we stopped wanted fifty dollars a gallon. I don’t have that kind of money. We’ve got a long way to drive.”

  “I don’t give a damn where you’re going, mister,” growled the man. “You can go to hell, for all I care. Just push it outta the way so I can get by.”

  The accountant looked at him like he was crazy. “I can’t push this thing…”

  “Sure, you can. Just put your white-collar ass behind it.” The redneck pulled a 9mm pistol from the hip pocket of his jeans and leveled it at the van driver. “Now get to pushing.”

  “You stupid bastard,” snapped the accountant. “Why, don’t you just go around…”

  The crack of the pistol rang out and Sam watched as a dark circle the size of a dime appeared just above the accountant’s right eye. The gunshot man seemed to stare at his murderer in puzzlement for a long moment, before falling flat on his face.

  Almost instantly, a woman with short brown hair leapt out of the van, shrieking at the top of her lungs. She knelt beside her dead husband, pulling him to her, cradling his bloody head in her lap. In the van windows, the faces of two children – a boy and a girl – could be seen, full of shock and horror.

  “Why?” the woman screamed. “Why did you shoot him?”

  “He was an asshole,” the man said with a shrug. “He should have done what I told him.” Then he stuck the gun back in his pocket, climbed into the truck – which held a wife and child of his own – and, backing up, roared past the van and headed southward down the avenue.

  Sam watched for a long time as the woman wept and wailed over the loss of her husband. After a while, the children left the van and joined her. Together, they sat around the dead man, at a total loss at what they should do next. People continued to move around them, either regarding them with pity or ignoring them completely.

  Why isn’t somebody helping them? he wondered. Then, with shame, Why aren’t you helping them?

  Sam finally decided that he could sit and observe no longer. He was scared to step off the sidewalk into the street – hell, he was scared shitless! – but he had to do something. He walked across the pavement and stood above the woman and her children for a long moment.

  The woman peered up at him, her eyes dull and drained of emotion. “Yes?”

  Sam didn’t quite know what to say at first. “I – I’m sorry,” he said. “About your husband.”

  “He didn’t have to shoot him,” she mumbled.

  “No,” said Sam. “It was uncalled for.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. Her pale pink dress was saturated with drying blood. “Where were you headed?”

  “Gulf Shores. John’s parents live right there on the beach.”

  “That’s a mighty long ways to go,” said Sam. He looked toward the sky and saw that it was getting dark. Not knowing of anything better to do, he took his keychain from his overall pocket and wrestled one of the keys from the ring. He handed it to the woman. “Here. There’s a little white house on Marigold Lane, a couple of blocks down. Green roof and a white picket fence out front. Ya’ll stay there for as long as you want. The power’s off, but there’s canned food in the cellar; tomatoes, beans, preserves. You’re welcome to them.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, taking the brass key from him.

  “Cause it’s the decent thing to do, I reckon,” said Sam. “Now, I’d go on and get these young’uns indoors… before it gets dark. No telling what sort of craziness could happen around nightfall.”

  “Yes… you’re right,” said the woman. She stood up, leaving her dead husband lying on the asphalt. “What about John?”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Sam promised. “See that he gets a proper burial and all.”

  “I appreciate that,” the woman said. Her hollow eyes stared at him for a moment. “My name is Angela. These are my children, Sarah and John Jr.”

  “Nice to meet y’all,” he replied. “You can just call me Sam.”

  “Thank you, Sam,” she said. Then she and the two children started down the sidewalk in the direction of Marigold Lane.

  Sam watched, making sure the three reached the correct street. Satisfied that they were on the right path, he turned back and looked down at the dead accountant named John. The corpse stared back at him with glassy eyes. John was a big fella, overweight and well-fed. It would take some doing to move him.

  “You and your damn promises,” mumbled Sam.

  The old man went back to the fix-it shop and found an old Radio Flyer wagon that had once belonged to his son. It wasn’t one of those new-fangled bulky plastic ones, but one of the big all-metal deals with the rubber tires. Before he left the shop, Sam went to a gun cabinet in the corner. He took out a couple of guns that had been passed down in the Wheeler family for generations; a hogleg Colt .45 revolver and a Winchester ’73 lever-action rifle… the kind Jimmy Stuart toted in that old western movie of the same name. He stuck the pistol in his overall pocket and laid the rifle in the bed of the wagon.

  It took some doing, but he finally wrestled poor John into the wagon, leaving his arms and legs dangling over the sides. The excessive weight made the wagon hard to pull, but he managed to get the thing rolling. As he started down the sidewalk, heading for the little cemetery next to the Baptist church, those who walked the street on their long journey to nowhere seemed to pay him absolutely no attention, as though a man toting a corpse in a child’s play wagon was the most common sight in the world.

  Sam was a block from the church, when he got too close to the edge of the sidewalk. The left-hand wheels dropped off and the wagon pitched to the side. The body of John the Accountant tumbled into a drainage ditch. Sam saved the wagon from following, but knew there was no way in hell he could pull the man out. The ditch was a good four foot deep.

  He stood there in indecision for a long moment, then walked across the street to the Chestersons’ house. Their car was gone and, from the way the doors of the house and garage were left open, he figured that they had freaked out and took the refugee road with everyone else. The Chestersons had only lived in Watkins Glen for a couple of years and weren’t natives of the town. They had no roots to hold them there like those who had lived there all their lives.

  Sam went in the garage and rummaged around. He found a quarter gallon of lawn mower gasoline and some old newspaper. Taking both, he walked back to the ditch, tossed the papers on top of the body, then doused it with the gas. He searched his overall pockets until he found a book of matches that he kept with him out of habit, from when he smoked a few years back. Lighting one, he flung it at the fuel-sodden newspapers. It wasn’t long before the drainage ditch became a funeral pyre.

  “Decent burial, my ass,” he said, spitting to the side. Then, pulling the wagon behind him, he walked back to the fix-it shop.
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br />   That night he dreamt of the boy.

  Walking down a wooded pathway to their favorite fishing hole. Poles slung over their shoulders, egg salad sandwiches and raisin oatmeal cookies in a paper sack. Father and son, hand in hand. The boy’s grasp was fidgety and self-conscious.

  “Extra fingers just means you’re more friendly when shaking hands,” Sam told him.

  The boy grinned up at him. Together, they went on their way, the warm sunlight on their faces.

  At the fishing hole, they caught five little ones and a big one.

  The next day the power went off.

  Sam couldn’t say he was surprised. Folks didn’t exactly clamor to work the morning after Armageddon. Of course, some of the folks in town had generators. Sam had one hooked up in the back room, but only ran it a few minutes at a time each day. All he had was ten gallons of gasoline and he knew that wasn’t going to last forever. Besides, the nearest source for fuel was the Exxon station a couple of miles out of town and word was that their tanks were completely tapped out due to the flow of refugees who had wandered down the highway during the past twenty-four hours.

  Sam had powered up the generator long enough on the morning of July 6th to watch the news coverage of the Burn. It was a badly-edited, confusing mish-mash of emotional interviews and aerial footage of tremendous black holes where major cities had once been. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened or why or who had been responsible. The news anchors had lost their polished professionalism. The men looked exhausted and unshaven, while the women appeared to be wired-up, their normally perfect hair askew and their makeup hastily applied. Both genders looked as though they were in dire need of a hot shower and good night’s sleep, which they obviously refused in favor of doing hour-by-hour coverage of the Burn.

  That day, Sam sat out front of the fix-it shop and kept silent vigil as the parade of the scared and homeless continued down Maple Avenue. There weren’t as many as the day before, just a few in vehicles and perhaps a couple hundred or so on foot. He noticed some of them looked sick and disoriented, ugly burns and weeping sores covering their exposed skin. He wondered if they had been caught close to Ground Zero when the bomb north of Birmingham had detonated.