Bodies are blown in half.
Limbs separated.
Heads disintegrated.
It is a drop in the bucket.
The Rabid claw their way over the sandbags, and through the barbwire without as much as a pause. The tank operators hold their ground for mere moments, which is admirable considering the size of the force they are up against. The hatch is ripped from its hinges. Flailing bodies are removed. The defiant tank commander pulls the pin from a grenade, holding it to his chest as teeth pierce his flesh.
Flash.
Smoke.
No visible gore, not from this height, just a temporary parcel of empty space opened up by the explosion, but quickly filled in by the horde.
It looks familiar. Like some summer blockbuster made for teenage boys. But it is not a movie. It is nightmarish reality, a reality taking place an anemic 60 miles from where I stand.
A single news anchor sits behind a half circle desk, his hands resting flat against the surface, papers spread recklessly before him. A false skyline remains at his back. A much happier and calmer picture than the one currently being painted in the streets below.
Ladies and gentleman, we are going off the air. It has been an honor to serve you these past ten years. What we’ve just seen taking place underscores the dire circumstances we currently face. It would be dishonest for me to sit here and tell you that everything is going to be okay when the truth is, we are at a grave crossroad in human history. But, make no mistake. If we do find the sunrise, it will be because we unite as Americans, as we’ve always done in times like these. Goodnight and God bless. May we see each other again soon, in this life, or the next.
Lee drops his face into his palms.
Vertical bars of color collide across the screen, the words No Signal flashing in neon green letters at the center of it all.
Momma turns with tears in her eyes, clutching my hands. “It’s going to be okay sweetie, I promise.”
Momma has had a lot of practice.
7
“Looks like I’m not making that recital,” I’m standing behind the couch with my arms crossed.
“Looks that way,” Bethany says, her chin trembling, trying to hold it together.
“I’ve got to get a hold of my brother.” Lee leaps from the couch, his eyes bloodshot.
“Everyone just calm down for one second. The phones are all down sweetie, remember?”
“Email still works, internet still works. My brother can help us.” He sits down at the computer desk by the sliding glass door.
It was Mommas’ idea to place it there in the first place. She had this whole starving artist thing going when we’d first moved in, had this grand idea for a novel about dance and theater during the early years of the industrial revolution. She believed the sights (a splotchy backyard surrounded by dilapidated wooden fencing) and the sounds (mostly the stall and stop motor of our neighbors rinky-dink pull start mower) would inspire her.
Cassie Malone smoothed the furrows of her dress, and steadied her nerves as she stepped onto the station platform…
That’s as far as the sights and sounds of nature had taken her.
“What’s your brother going to do for us from Alabama?” Momma stands behind him with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her Rolling Stones pajama bottoms.
“My brother is an ex Green Beret.”
“And?”
“And…I’m emailing him. Do you have a better idea?”
“You said he lives in the middle of the woods and barely has running water. He has email?”
“My brother leads a neo-conservative group of bigots that believes the government is trying to enslave its citizens, if there is one thing those people have, it’s the internet. Read any blogs lately?”
“Sounds lovely.”
“Yeah, well, we may vote on two separate ends of the spectrum, but when it comes to apocalypse scenarios, he’s the guy I want around.”
Lee clicks send.
8
3:36 am…
The power goes out.
3:36 am…
My sister screams…
…a blood curdling…
…voice box rupturing…
SCREAM!
3:36 am…
If I’d known that it might be the last time I’d experience dependable electricity, I’d have stayed up a little later. I'd have played my stereo. Danced a dance. My music. I’d have savored my music one last time.
If I’d been given a countdown to the Stone Age that’s exactly what I’d have done.
Dancing acapella?
That's no kind of fun at all. There are the experimental pieces, heck, I'm working on one myself, but most of the time you need your music. Interpretive dance IS the music; it’s the interpretation of the music through movement.
3:36 am…
The music has died.
9
I sleep with a box fan. So when the power goes out, aside from the cries of terror taking place on the other side of the house, it's the death of the white noise that kicks me awake. I spring up in bed, sweaty palms, and my heart pounding against the walls of my chest like some desperate prisoner.
It's not so much the screaming,
it's the blackness.
Blacker than black. Thick. Alive.
An ill-worded description perhaps, but it’s all I’ve got.
The ambient lighting that used to cast itself atop my windowsill is non-existent.
The motion activated spotlights in the backyard.
The distant streetlamps that peered in through the woods.
The luminous cast off of our neighbors living room.
Gone.
The panic-stricken voices of my family (and Lee) swallow the silence. It sounds as if they’ve made their way into the kitchen.
“Bethany, it’s okay, just calm down, honey. Lee, the flashlights are under the sink, look down for crying out loud.”
“Well, I can’t exactly look anywhere; I might as well be wearing a blindfold.”
Something hollow and metallic crashes and clatters.
“Geez-us! Careful now.”
“Well, if you’d help out a little instead of...”
“Instead of what, comforting my daughter? Is it really that hard to find a flashlight?”
I refuse to move. I am a blind man in a snake pit.
It can’t see me…
It can’t bite me…
IT sees the world through two milky puddles and has a hankering for flesh.
The blackness, like alcohol and sleeping pills, mixes with my worst imaginings, amplifies them, and leaves me unable to wake.
They come through my bedroom door like gangbusters, Lee blinding me with the flashlight as if he is some sort of dime-store detective. I can’t win. I wrap my arms across my eyes to dampen the assault.
“Honey, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’d be fantastic if I could actually see.”
“Oh, sorry,” Lee aims the beam towards the floor, highlighting a layer of dirty laundry and some crusty dishes I haven’t yet transported to the sink.
The three of them gradually swim into view like a defogging mirror.
“I think it best we all gather together in the living room.” Momma says, rubbing the back of Bethany’s head as she clings to her side.
“Agreed, strength in numbers,” Lee does his best to subdue the tremor in his voice.
We’d only lost power once in my life. Three years ago. It’d been an ice storm. Took down miles of power line.
“The worst ice storm in state history,” the news stations had hounded that point long after the ice had melted, the trees were green, and the birds were chirping.
I’d seen snow a few times before, nothing major; it’d always been a tease job. Usually it was a thin sheet of powder that allowed us to construct a few poorly sculpted snowmen, which were then pounded into slush by the midday sun. But, I couldn’t complain. You beg, you don’t choose. Especially when y
ou live in the Southern US of A. Winter is a novelty season, a niche job.
Winter wonderland?
Forget about it!
You were more likely to spend it in the wading pool.
One horse open sleigh?
Forget about it!
Unless that sleigh was a trashcan lid and that horse was a 4-wheeler.
So that ice storm, yeah, it was a treat, no doubt about it. The power outage was no big deal either; it was quite the adventure. When we weren’t outside knocking shiny chunks of cold steel from the branches and bushes, we were inside playing board games, reading, laughing, and drinking cocoa and coffee. We were a family, more of a family than we’d been in a while. It was fun. Because we could hear the power trucks working. We knew that it wasn’t forever. A detour, a simple deviation from the norm. There was an end to it all.
This is different.
No power trucks.
No end in sight.
“For all we know, the grid is just on the blink, let’s not catastrophize this.”
Catastrophize. Another therapy word she'd picked up after dad died.
She lights a row of candles atop the entertainment center while the rest of us cut a crude circle in the carpet, the flashlight sitting between us.
“C’mon, you saw the news, there is no power company, and there is no grid. That world is gone; the new age dawned about 24 hours ago.” It was closer to 14 hours, but I let Lee have his point.
“All I’m saying, is that everything is pretty ugly right now without the shadow of cynicism entering the mix.” She extinguishes the match with a quick burst of breath and joins us on the floor, forcing a cheesy smile, and ruffling my hair.
“There is a thin line between optimism and delusion, one can get you killed.” Lee insists.
“A little optimism never hurt anyone.”
“Yeah, and neither did a little common sense, that’s all I’m sayin’.” Lee crosses his arms tight across his chest, further wrinkling an already wrinkled shirt. He looks to me for some sign of agreement, moistening his lips with his tongue. I suddenly realize he does that a lot, especially when things get tense between him and Momma, or whatever. Reminds me of a lizard, or a snake. A snake with a curly hippie beard and hippie hair usually held back with a hippie headband. Ah, but Lee is a good guy. Scared, obviously, very scared. He does a terrible job of hiding it too. Not like Momma, she hides it brilliantly. But heck, who can blame him? Not me. I am downright terrified.
“Yeah, I mean, if you don’t prepare to survive, you’re preparing to die.” I offer.
“Right on, nail-on-the-head, atta’ boy, Two-Step,” Lee grabs the back of my arm and shakes me.
Bethany rolls her eyes, “You sound like a bumper sticker.”
“You sound like Lee.” Momma corrects her, meeting my eyes with an ever present smile.
“Yeah, except he’s a pacifist, I’m a shoot first ask questions later sort of guy.” I create a half-hearted pistol with my fingers, cocking my thumb back and shooting Bethany between the eyes.
She wags her tongue in response.
“Actually, I’m a passive-FIST, emphasis on the fist.” Lee winks at me.
Clever play on words, if a little cheesy.
Momma jumps to her feet, remembering the refrigerator. “Tim, where’d you stick the cooler?”
“It should still be in the hall closet.” I’d been responsible for draining and dumping the ice after the 4th of July celebration last year.
Soon, she is in the kitchen shoveling ice and situating the lunchmeat, eggs, milk, cheese, and all the other spoilable items she can fit into the limited space.
“We’re gonna need weapons, some sort of self-defense. You got any guns, or swords, or anything like that?” Lee is up on his knees, his anxious stare bouncing from me, to Bethany, and back again.
I shake my head. “Nope, not really, kitchen knives, that’s about it.”
“We’ve got a broom.” Bethany says.
“I don’t think we’ll be doing any spring cleaning this year.” Lee chuckles.
“No, if you snap it right, it makes a spear.” Bethany is as plain faced as can be.
“A what?”
“A spear,” I confirm.
“Yep, Tim used one at the school, stabbed two of those things; one through the chest, the other right through the neck.” She brings a closed fist to the front of her throat, expanding her fingers rapidly to demonstrate the wound.
“Hon, did you know about this?” He eyes us suspiciously.
“Know about what, dear?” Momma yells over the sound of shifting ice.
“Your son, stabbing two of those things at school?”
“Yes dear, he did it to save his sister, it was very brave.”
“The blood is still on his boots.” Bethany assures him.
“Wow, that's heavy.”
Not gonna lie, I feel a little surge of pride skate through my chest.
“So, what was it like…how’d they react?” His words flow like molasses. He speaks as if he’s been the last one chosen for the pickup basketball game. Eager to learn. To please. To fit in. A grown man. Seeking insight on how to kill from a kid thirty years his junior.
“They didn’t react, not really.” I try to explain.
“It was like they didn’t feel the pain, ya know?” Bethany is right. That’s exactly what it was like.
“That’s wild,” Lee is sitting back on his heels. Fingers in his beard. Barely breathing.
“I mean, they knew it was there, they knew they’d been run through. But it was just an obstacle, something that was hindering them from attacking. There was no recognition of pain.”
“That’s why you've got to shoot em’ in the head.” Bethany brings it home.
“You think it’d work the same if you stabbed them in the head?” Lee moves his arms as if he is clutching a spear of his own.
“Don’t see why not.” My chest is swollen to capacity, my head on the brink of explosion. The pride is no longer just skating through to say hello, it is now hanging out in the center of the ice, turning circles on the nose of a single blade.
“One of them was our assistant principal.”
“One of who?”
“One of the people Tim stabbed.”
“She was attacking Bethany, so, I did what I did.”
Bethany smiles at me. Letting me have my moment.
“Man, that’s heavy stuff.”
“The heaviest,” Bethany nods, solemn. I’m not sure if she’s hamming it up for my sake or what. Either way, I appreciate it. That little egotistical maniac on ice skates in my chest adores it.
“It is what it is.”
Icy cool.
Pistol to holster.
Off into the sunset.
10
I open my eyes just enough to see their outline. They are above me, on the couch, their naked feet inches from my face. They are forehead to forehead. Their fingers intertwined. Instinctually, I know it is a conversation that I'm not supposed to hear and that they will cease speaking if they realize I'm awake and listening.
So I lay still.
Unnaturally still.
“I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to last like this. Four mouths to feed, and food is scarce, barely a cooler full, the dry goods on the shelf, and that’s it.” Momma sounds scared.
This is the real HER.
The HER when the guards are down.
The HER when she is certain the kids aren’t listening.
“We’ll make it work, ration it out…go hunting.” To his credit, Lee sounds a bit more solid. The wobble in his voice has steadied out.
His big boy pants are on, as daddy used to say.
“You, hunt? Now that’d be a sight.” Momma laughs.
“Hey, I can try.”
“Scraping up road kill doesn't count.”
“We all have to start somewhere.” He brushes her hair back and kisses her nose. “It’s going to be fine, one day at a time; it
’s all we can do.”
“You sound like a group therapy session, one day at a time.”
“Caught it from you.”
She laughs again, but just a little this time. She is crying a little too. Sniffling. Wiping tears away. “Maybe we should just pack the car and head west, like the neighbors, I’ve got a sister out in Dallas.” She suggests.
“We don’t know what the roads are like. We’ve got no way of defending ourselves. You saw the news, it’s chaos. The entire infrastructure of this country…gone for all we know. I say we’d do best just to ride it out for now.”
She doesn’t say anything to this.
Silent agreement. Either with a shrug of the shoulders or a nod of the head.
Is it a good plan? I don’t know. Is there a good plan? Probably not. Just bad and worse.
Hope for the bad, pray for the worst to remain at bay.
Hell of a motto.
But, it is a hell of a time.
11
No power meant no stove.
Know power. Know stove.
I helped Lee dig a fire pit in the backyard. We circled it up with cinderblocks that’d been stacked against the base of our house since we’d moved in. No purpose, just stacked, one on top of the other, cobwebs and crusted dirt filling the gaps. We brushed em’ off and tossed em’ down.
“Pine, you want to fill the bottom in with pine, the meat will soak up the flavor.”
I don’t know pine from birch from oak; it’s all wood where I am concerned. So while Lee is in the house collecting the afternoon meal, I fill the pit with whatever cast off twigs and branches I can come by. We use a lopped off piece of chain-link fence as a grill face. We wash it down with the hose first (our water, at least the cold water, isn’t dependent upon power). After coating the chain-link with some artificial butter, and striking a fire with a book of matches and some lighter fluid, Lee drop the burgers.
Momma is inside with Bethany going through the dry goods and creating a menu for the days ahead. I haven’t mentioned the conversation I overheard. No point in it. It wouldn’t change anything. Far as my momma knows, her kids are shielded from the reality of our circumstance. No point getting her all worked up. She’ll simply pull me in and try to comfort me with some half-truths and a few outright lies.
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 5
