Winds of Change

by Jason Brannon

  “You’re turning to salt,” Chuck told him. “Don’t even bother wrapping up in plastic. That won’t help you. It almost makes me want to throw you outside myself just to see it happen. You don’t deserve to live.”

  None of us could have said it any better. We didn’t have much else to say about anything at that point. I think most of us just sat there, contemplating the course our lives had taken and realizing that we should have seized every opportunity. Of course, you can only wallow in regret for so long before the game becomes tiresome. Chuck was the first one to grow weary of playing the What-If game.

  He picked up the two-way radio again and thumbed the button. “Leland? Are you there? Please answer if you are.”

  “Right here,” Leland came back.

  Chuck looked at me. I replied by shrugging my shoulders.

  “What happened a few minutes ago?” he asked. “We heard screaming and a woman speaking in a foreign language.”

  “Oh that,” Leland said offhandedly. “One of the cooks trapped in here is Russian. She’s also deathly afraid of mice. She saw one and lapsed into the mother tongue. It took us nearly ten minutes to get her calmed down. If you were trying to speak to me then, I’m sure I didn’t hear you.”

  “He’s lying,” Wayne said. “After all that we’ve been through, I don’t think something as inconsequential as a mouse would even register on the Richter scale.”

  Chuck held his hand up for everyone to be quiet. It was clear that he was still trying to form his own opinion of the situation.

  “I’m going out,” Wayne said, getting to his feet. “Turning into a pile of salt can’t be any worse than staying here with you guys. Maybe I can get Leland to tell me the secret to staying alive.”

  “I’ve got the plastic ready,” Steven replied. “Commit suicide at any time.”

  “Then wrap me up,” Wayne said, glaring at Ashley and then at me.

  “Don’t do anything foolish,” I cautioned him.

  “Listen to him, boy,” Jesse Weaver added, backing me up. It felt good to have his stamp of approval on what I said. It meant that the potential for conflict was that much less. I’m not sure what I would have done at that point if forced to argue with Wayne Richards and Jesse Weaver at the same time.

  “I’m going out,” Wayne insisted. “If I make it out alive, I’ll go to the restaurant. If not, then I won’t have to look at any of you ever again.” He looked at Ashley as he said that last bit. Her eyes immediately started to gloss over and tears began to stream down her cheeks, but she didn’t break down. She wasn’t going to give him that sort of satisfaction. It was certainly a feather in her cap.

  None of us argued anymore as we wrapped Wayne Richards up. Whatever the outcome, it was clear that this would be one less problem for us to deal with. Still, it was hard not to notice the lost, injured look in Ashley’s eyes. Despite what he’d done, she still loved her husband. She was also clearly afraid that he was going to die the minute he walked out those doors.

  “Make sure to tell Julie I said hello the next time you see her,” Wayne prodded as we finished strapping the plastic into place with duct tape.

  “You show your wife a little respect,” Jesse said, smacking Wayne in the back of the head. Wayne glared at Jesse Weaver, but he wasn’t stupid enough to retaliate.

  “Just let me out of here,” Wayne said.

  “We thought you’d never ask,” Jesse replied. “Now get out and die.”

  Without another word or even a look back at his wife, Wayne Richards threw the lounge door open and ran out into the potentially contaminated store. Chuck and I were there to shut the door behind him and resecure the makeshift seals we had fashioned for the gap beneath the door.

  We waited there for Wayne to scream, to run back pounding on the door, something. Yet when he actually spoke to us in a calm, normal tone, it was unexpected.

  “All right, you morons can come out now. It’s safe.”

  “How can we believe you, Wayne?” Ashley said. It was clear that her question had dual significance.

  “Because, you stupid twit, I’m not dust. And since I belong in hell for the terrible things I’ve done, I guess the threat’s either gone or everyone was wrong about the wrath of God in the first place.”

  The next sound we heard sounded a lot like a bagful of marbles bursting and scattering across the concrete floor.

  “Wayne?” I said.

  But Wayne didn’t answer. I had a pretty good idea about what happened out there and what that sound had been. The winds of change had judged and transformed Wayne Richards completely. I think I can speak for the group, Ashley included, when I say that he was a much more likeable fellow as a pile of salt.

  Always full of surprises, Jesse Weaver was the one to put his arms around Ashley in consolation. It had taken the death of his own spouse to change his outlook on life, but I’ll have to say the change was a definite improvement. The Weaver boys, however, didn’t seem to know exactly how to respond to any of it. Their mother was lying there on the concrete, growing colder by the minute. Their father’s attitude had done a three-sixty. And now, he had his arms wrapped around a beautiful twenty-something girl that seemed the antithesis of Vera Weaver. Yes, the gesture was obviously meant to be a gesture of consolation. But there wasn’t a one of us, the boys included, who hadn’t given Ashley Richards the once-over, or in Chuck’s case, the twice-over. Jesse Weaver had to be getting a little thrill out of being that close to her. Or maybe my mind was working overtime when it should have been taking a break.

  Trying so hard to console himself, Kenneth Weaver kept eating candy bars. He must have consumed fifteen or twenty of the chocolates since the whole thing started. Had there been any alcohol nearby, Jake Weaver would have likely resorted to drinking. As it was, he had only carbonated beverages to drown his sorrows. Between the two, they had a pile of cans and wrappers that could have doubled as a piece of modernistic art. I think both of them were consuming as a means of coping with everything that was going on around us.

  At this point, we were all surviving the best way we could. I couldn’t fault either of the boys for their reactions. The rest of us, however, had our own methods. We spent the rest of the day playing poker with a deck of cards that we found in one of the associate lockers, and it took our minds off things temporarily. Of course, reality always reasserted itself during the short breaks we took between hands when we would call Leland over at the restaurant to see if there were any new developments.

  Occasionally, I would reconsider Wayne Richards’ theory that Leland Kennedy had something to do with the tragedy around us. The whole situation was strange, and the fact that Leland was still alive made it even stranger. But, try as I might, I just couldn’t convince myself that he was responsible for any of this.

  I’m not sure if everyone else felt the same way. Some thought it suspicious that he had survived. The rest of us considered it to be a sign of hope. At that point, we were clinging to anything that seemed like a good omen. We were also clinging to each other.

  Take Jesse Weaver and Ashley Richards, for instance. They slept side by side that night. I think the fact that they’d both lost a spouse brought them together. It seemed a little bizarre that Jesse Weaver could sleep with another woman while the corpse of his wife was still in the room. But he didn’t seem to have any trouble. Maybe he just needed someone to console him, and Ashley was convenient. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t fault him.

  By the end of the second day, Vera’s body was starting to smell a little. We’d covered her up with some of the spare towels that hadn’t been used to block up the space underneath the door. But that hadn’t been very helpful.

  “Mom’s starting to stink,” Kenneth said, echoing the sentiment we all felt but were reluctant to say.

  Jesse Weaver slapped his son in the back of the head. “Don’t disrespect your mother like that,” he roared. That anger was quickly followed by a fresh bout of tears, and I suddenly felt bad for questionin
g his motives with Ashley Richards. It was clear that he still loved his wife and was hurt by her passing. That didn’t make Vera smell any better, of course, but it gave Jesse Weaver a bit more respectability than I had given him credit for earlier.

  This time it was Ashley’s turn to comfort Jesse. He seemed drawn to her like an iron filing to a magnet. “We’ve got to put her out,” he murmured into Ashley’s shoulder.

  At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

  “Put her out?” Chuck asked. “What do you mean?”

  Jesse looked up from Ashley’s tear-stained blouse. “Burial is out of the question so we’ll have to do the next best thing. We put her out. Let the atmosphere do to her what it’s been doing to everyone else. It will be almost like cremation. She won’t know the difference anyway.”

  “Are you sure about what you’re saying?” I asked.

  “Positive,” he said grimly.

  The boys didn’t say anything at first. They were apparently surprised by their father’s decision to toss their mother out like some unwanted sack of garbage.

  “That’s Mom you’re talking about,” Kenneth said. “Are you really that eager to get rid of her?”

  Jesse Weaver stood up, towering over his son. “I don’t want to hear that out of your mouth ever again,” he roared. “Under normal circumstances, I would never consider something like this, but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

  “I don’t think it matters anyway,” Jake Weaver said. “That’s not Mom anymore, just the place she used to live. I say we put her out. It’s not like she won’t rot anyway. When you look at it that way, it seems like we’re actually preserving her memory. I don’t want to remember her after she starts to turn icky and smells worse than she does now. I’d rather remember her like she was when we came into this store.”

  “Kenneth?” Jesse Weaver said. “I want all of us in agreement on this.”

  Kenneth bit his bottom lip to hold back the tears. “Do it,” he whimpered.

  Jesse looked at the rest of us and squared his shoulders to show that he was ready. “Can you guys give me a hand with Vera?”

  “Sure,” we all murmured in unison as we grabbed the body and lifted it up.

  Jesse stopped at the door. “Just so you know, Vera was one of the saintliest women that’s ever lived. She’s put up with me for all these years, and I’ve put her through a lot. When we put her out and she turns to salt, that isn’t going to be an indicator that she lived a sinful life. Understand?”

  It was clear that Jesse didn’t want to consider the possibility that his wife might have kept secrets from him during their marriage. Still, none of us saw any reason to disagree with him. If living with a few delusions was all it took to get him through something like this, then that was a small price to pay.

  There was no graceful way to dispose of Vera’s body. We couldn’t leave the door open more than a fraction of a second for fear of turning to salt ourselves. That meant we had to actually heave the body out the door like a sack of garbage. Both of the Weaver boys started crying as we threw their mother out. The body didn’t last more than a couple of seconds before changing. We didn’t actually see it happen, but the same noise that had accompanied Wayne Richard’s transformation accompanied this one as well. It sounded like a bag of marbles had been spilled and were rolling across the floor. In reality, it was grains of salt skittering across the smooth concrete, blown by winds of change.

  “Goodbye, love,” Jesse Weaver cried as Ashley slammed the door shut.

  It was the closest thing to a funeral and a eulogy that we could give Vera Weaver. I knew we had done the best we could. Still, there was one thing that disturbed me about the whole process: Vera’s remains and Wayne Richards’ remains were quite likely mixed together now. It seemed a little irreverent and unfair to Vera and to her family, especially given the kind of man Wayne Richards had turned out to be. Vera had seemed like a good woman, hardly the kind that deserved to have her remains mingled with an adulterous fool that nobody liked, but given the circumstances, our options had been limited. I hoped she understood.

  “The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that the air has nothing to do with the changing,” Chuck said once we were finished brooding over what we had done to Vera Weaver’s body.

  “Please, Einstein, elaborate,” Pete said.

  “Think about it. We’ve opened that door twice. Some of the air outside has gotten in.”

  “So what does that mean?” Ashley Richards asked. “That we should discount the biological agent theory?”

  “I’m leaning more and more toward something supernatural,” Chuck said. “I think Leland Kennedy knows more than he’s telling. He may not be responsible for any of this. But I’m willing to bet he has an idea about what’s really going on.”

  Not surprisingly, Leland didn’t answer the walkie-talkie when we tried calling him.

  III.

  We moped the rest of the day. None of us had any ideas about what to do next. The snacks from the vending machine were depleting rapidly. At the rate we were eating and drinking, there wouldn’t be enough left for more than another day or so. Still, those mundane rituals were the only things keeping us sane at that point.

  I think all of us were just about to go out of our minds with boredom when the walkie-talkie squawked. It was Leland.

  “Well, well,” Chuck said into the radio. “We’re glad you decided to grace us with your presence again.”

  “I’m coming back,” Leland said. “Get ready for me and pray that I make it through a second time.”

  “What prompted that decision?” Chuck asked, looking a little confused. Leland didn’t answer. I think we would have been surprised if he had.

  It only took a few minutes for Leland to travel from the restaurant to our store. Somehow, he knew exactly where to find us. I don’t remember any of us telling him that we had locked ourselves in the break room. Yet, that’s the first place he looked.

  “Howdy folks,” he said, pushing the door open and holding it there. Strangely enough, none of us turned to salt.

  “How could you be so sure that we wouldn’t die when you left that door open?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say there’s a little more to me than meets the eye,” he said with a smile. I knew by the way he smiled that we were in trouble. It was like staring at a piranha.

  “He does have something to do with this,” Pete muttered.

  “Easy,” Leland said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t say I had anything to do with this. But I do know what’s going on.”

  “Explain yourself,” I said.

  “I believe in God. I believe in God’s wrath too. Think about the instances in the Bible when He shows that wrath - the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Plagues of Egypt. When God wants to punish lots of people at a time, he usually uses unconventional methods. He also gives plenty of warnings that he is going to exact such punishment unless repentance of sin is made. Noah and his family had months to spread the word. Jonah was given a chance to find righteous people in those evil twin cities. The Pharaoh was counseled time and time again by Moses on what would happen to his people if he didn’t free the Israelites. God didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to destroy the people of the earth without giving them an opportunity to atone for their wrongdoings.”

  “Make your point,” Steven said, standing up beside me.

  “My point is that God has nothing to do with this plague on mankind. Neither do terrorists.”

  “Who are you really?” Chuck asked.

  Leland sighed for a moment. “There are many names I go by, most in tongues long forgotten by man. The one most commonly used now is Alastor.”

  “The executioner,” Steven said, remembering his earlier interpretation of the Vera’s message when she spoke in tongues.

  “He’s the angel that opened one of the seven vials,” Pete murmured.

  “What are you?” Ashley asked, pulling the feather out o
f her shirt pocket and holding it to the light. It glowed with a faint luminescence. While she was clutching the feather tightly, you could see all the bones in her hand, like she had her palm against the lens of a flashlight.

  “I’m an officer in the Army of the Lord,” Leland said.

  “I don’t believe you,” Kenneth Weaver spoke up.

  “Me either,” Jake added.

  “I don’t blame you,” Leland said calmly. “I’ve kept a secret from you. You have every right to distrust me.”

  “Why are you here?” Terry asked.

  Leland considered his answer for a moment. “I’m here because I knew something like this was going to happen.”

  “You knew?” I said, hardly believing it.

  Leland nodded. “I would have tried to stop it had I known who to go after, but the world is wide, and the disguises are many. I got here a few minutes before the world changed. I knew that I was in the right vicinity, I just didn’t know who to pinpoint. The enemy has many faces.”

  “I don’t understand any of what you’re saying,” Pete said.

  This time it was Jesse Weaver’s turn to speak. “I think one of us in this room is responsible for what’s happening in the world. He went to the restaurant because he was convinced it wasn’t any of us at first. Now, I think he’s convinced it is.”

  “This makes sense,” Chuck said. “Whichever one of us is to blame knew that we thought the air had something to do with the change. That’s why the bodies disintegrated when exposed to the atmosphere outside. That’s also why none of us inside this room changed even though some of the air undoubtedly found its way in. The angel was preying on our fears and beliefs, giving them life and breath. It was letting us think what we wanted to.”