by Brad Manuel
“The girl that was here with John’s son? She’s thirteen. How was she coming to Hopkins?” Melanie did not know the young phenom yet. She was too occupied with her own brood to meet new people past handshakes and quick introductions.
“She wasn’t necessarily going to Hopkins. I just said she was accepted.” Paul had his boots on and stood. “I can’t believe I know two of the people who survived the rapture. I admitted one to medical school, and saw another speak. I’m going to play the lottery today.”
Paul, John, and Emily went out the front door in search of a vehicle and baking supplies.
Todd sat in the kitchen by himself, enjoying a few moments of quiet. He finished his breakfast and entered the living room to sit next to Melanie. He put his hands on the cushion. “This doesn’t feel all that comfortable.”
“That’s the couch, not this one.” Melanie motioned to the other sofa occupied by the three little girls. “I was listening to you and your brothers discuss Hanover. Aren’t you the one who brought us up here? Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”
Bridget and Wendy were making bead necklaces on the other couch. They were not paying attention to the conversation.
“Sixes?” Casey asked Melanie. She focused on her cards.
“Go fish.” Melanie told her. Casey frowned and started rooting around the pile of cards on the table.
“I’m just trying to get a handle on our situation. If we are leaving, I want to know when, who wants to come with us, and where do we all want to go?”
“Jacks?” Melanie asked Casey. Casey frowned again, pulling a Jack from her hand and giving it to Melanie. “Yes.” Melanie said, accepting the pair and laying it next to her. “Sevens?”
“Go fish.” Casey replied.
“Nuts, I thought she had a seven.” Melanie reached into the card pile on the table in front of her.
“Competitive much?” Todd asked her. “Anyway, there was this big push to figure out our future, and now it has slowed down, or stopped. That’s fine, I just want to know what is what.”
“Nines?” Casey asked.
“Go Fish.” Melanie turned to Todd. “Your brother found his son. He wants to take a break. I think we all deserve one. I can see how you don’t need one, you’ve had your wife and children, heck you even had a dog this entire time. The rest of us want to take a breather, get to know each other, find out if we like each other, if we want to form this tribe your beautiful wife keeps talking about. Sixes?” Melanie had a smile on her face. Casey looked at her angrily. “I just pulled it.” Melanie flipped the six of diamonds around to show the little girl.
“If you want to do something productive, try to figure out a better water situation for us. Maybe the town water tower has a valve at the bottom and we could fill up things from it. There has to be a better way than filling rain barrels or melting snow. Two’s?”
“Go fish.” Casey said happily.
Todd walked into the kitchen. There was one more piece of strata, but he was full. He looked around for something to cover the food. He found plastic wrap. He poured half a cup of coffee and sat down at the table to think.
“Water.” He said to himself. He grew up in Hanover. He visited his parents for years. As he thought, he realized he had never noticed a water tower. “I guess the best place to start is the town hall.” He was spoke to Hubba, curled up on his blanket next to the warm stove. “You up for a walk buddy?” The dog did not move.
“That dog is not going to talk back to you, and he’s definitely not going on a walk with you.” Melanie called from the living room.
Todd knew she was right, and was impressed with Melanie’s hearing.
“Well, I guess I’m on my own.” Todd said to Hubba. He drank his last bit of coffee, grabbed a bottle of water from the counter, and went in the other room to have an adventure. Melanie was playing a new game with Casey. Bridget and Wendy were still making bead jewelry. Meredith and Avery were sitting in chairs reading books. “Anyone want to walk downtown with me? I’m going to see if we have a water tower anywhere near us, or if there are other options for drinking water.”
Avery lowered her book. “Sure, I’ll go. Can we look at other stuff too?” She elbowed Meredith. “You want to come?”
Meredith shook her head, not lowering her book. “I’m at a good part, and the fire is warm. I’ll catch you later.”
“Looks like it’s you and me.” Avery said to Todd. She got out of her chair and moved towards the coat rack. “I should be good in this, right?” She held up a ski parka.
“That’s all I’m wearing, plus a hat and gloves.” Todd grabbed his boots out of the boot bin and pulled them on. “We can check out some of the stores in town if you like. I just need to look at the Town Hall map to see if we have a water tower anywhere near us.”
Avery was dressed and at the door. She wore a cute pink knit winter cap with a pom pom top. “Every town has a water tower. It has to be somewhere.”
“I hope.” He replied. “We’ll be back.” He told Melanie.
“I’ll probably be here.” She did not look up from her cards, but put a hand in the air to wave.
Avery was a tall girl, almost a woman. She was thin from months of starvation in New York. The two days of full meals brought color back into her sunken cheeks. She had long sandy brown hair that she let fall out of the pink cap. She had beautiful brown eyes, and a wonderful smile.
Todd did not know much about Avery other than her striking physical appearance, and that she looked out for Meredith.
As they turned right towards town, Todd asked her basic questions. “So, Avery, what’s your story?”
“Do you mean what is my tragic rapture story or what is my life’s story?” She was more or less the same height as Todd, close to seeing eye to eye with him.
“Whichever you want to tell me. I can give you my story, or we can just walk into town and talk about whatever.”
“I grew up in New York City. My parents were normal people. I was the oldest of three kids, and we lived in a three bedroom apartment, rent controlled on the upper west side of Manhattan, pretty far from the park, but a nice neighborhood. My dad was an IT guy for a big law firm, and my Mom worked as a teacher at a tawny private school, which is where I got to go. I am, or I guess I was, a tennis player. I was pretty good, not playing on the tour good, yet, but ranked in the top five in New York state good.”
“John and his kids play tennis. I don’t think they are close to your level, but they play. There are courts here.”
“I am starting to miss it. I’m sure you had something in your life that was a grind. That’s what tennis became for me. Pressure to play well for my team. Pressure to play well and get into a good college. It was a grind to practice all the time. Now that it’s gone, I miss it. I miss playing for fun with some of my friends.” She looked at Todd as they walked. “I wasn’t a very nice person.” She paused for a moment as they continued towards town. “I knew I wasn’t nice, but when you’re in a good high school, and you’re pretty, and you’re a tennis star, and you have a senior boyfriend, well, you just sort of evolve into this self-centered bad person. I was mean, and petty, and self important.”
“High school, good times.” He told her.
“Yeah, well, it was fine for me. My parents gave so much, and my brother and sister were such sweet kids, and I was this self-centered bitch that steam rolled their lives.”
“I’m a parent. That’s not how we feel.”
“No, I was horrible. I’ve changed. You don’t sit at the bedside of your brother while he dies, then your sister, then your mother, and finally your father, without becoming a bit introspective. I know what I was, and I know what I want to be.”
They were to the corner of town, walking in a well worn path used by Rebecca or Greg hundreds of times. Someone had cleared the way with a snow thrower. Small banks arose on both sides of the path.
“I think about why I survived.” Avery’s voice was flat. ”Was it some kind
of punishment? A curse? Did some power make sure the selfish tennis bitch, who took her family and friends for granted, lived through their deaths. Did God keep me alive to make me realize how much I needed them? Is this a punishment for how I lived my short life? How I’d squandered my time with my family?”
“That’s pretty harsh thinking for a young woman.” Todd tried to console her.
“I don’t know you, Todd. I see that you have your wife and kids, and you didn’t go through the alone time that most of us did. I was alone in my apartment building for weeks. I stayed at my neighbor’s apartment because they fled the city to try and escape the disease. My family was dead right next door for four weeks, and all I had was time to think about how shitty a person I was. How crappy a sister I was. How ungrateful and disrespectful a daughter I was.” She stopped walking. “God, I don’t even know you, but I’m rambling on about how horrible I was. And then I tell you that you don’t understand because you are blessed with your family. I mean, all you asked me was ‘what’s your story?’ and now you’re probably like ‘I’ll never ask Avery a question like that again.”
“I like talking to you, Avery. It’s why I asked. I don’t know you, but I want to know you. We’re probably going to be together for the rest of my life, helping each other, our children, our grandchildren, survive whatever world we can carve out for them.” He looked at her when he spoke. “You’re right, I have a different perspective. I didn’t lose my family or my brothers. I have people in my life that know me. I can’t say I’ve experienced the gut wrenching loss that you did. Hank, my oldest brother, who you probably just met for a moment, he can talk to you about loss and despair. I can talk to you about hope, about fighting for the next chapter in my life. I do not have the opportunity or the curse that you do. I did not suffer through weeks of solitude or months of desperation and starvation, but I can help you think about where you want to go and help you become who you want to be.”
They walked again, and Avery continued. “Well, to recap, I was a bitch, and my family died, and I’m stuck in an apartment in New York with not so much food. The stores were all looted weeks before, no more deliveries were being made to Manhattan. I was up a creek without a paddle or even a boat. I cried a lot. I kept waiting to get sick, hoping I would get sick. I didn’t want to live and fight to survive. I’m seventeen, I’m a princess, I’m not a badass who takes on the world and kills animals to eat. Shit, I was a vegetarian.”
Todd laughed.
“Yeah, that does deserve a laugh. I’m not a vegetarian anymore, I can tell you that much.” She laughed too. “So, I’m into my third week of loneliness, the power is off, I’m trying to ration my food, my water, and I’m in a really bad place. I’m bored, and one of the things my mother always told me, ‘you’re never bored if you have a good book.’ Totally a mom thing to say, right? Anyway, I find my neighbor’s bookshelf, and they were Jewish, and I find Night, and I read it.”
“Incredible, right?”
“I’m sitting on a couch, and I finish this book, and I’m crying, and I realize, I am going through something similar. I mean, not the horror of being murdered, but losing everything, losing my family, watching them die one by one as I’m helpless to do anything about it. I think, what the hell is wrong with me? I’m alive. I’m strong. Get the hell off the couch and do something.”
“Pretty big stuff for a seventeen year old princess.”
“You’re not kidding. It was October, and cool in New York. I put on jeans and a warm coat. I pack a backpack full of stuff I can use, and I start walking. I don’t even care where I’m walking, but I assume people might be near the park or the water. I’d heard rumors about the park, about fighting and guns, all before my dad died. I decided on the river. I walked west and south, and who do you think I run into?”
“Meredith?”
“Sal Torvale.”
“No.”
“Yes.” They stood in front of the town hall. Avery’s story was so riveting neither of them wanted it to stop. “I run into this absolute creep. The one thing I will say about Sal, he was not a pervert. He never once acted or spoke sexually towards me. He wasn’t a gentleman, but he wasn’t a perv. There, I said something nice about him. Now, the rest of his personality? I could tell he was high. I went to high school, I’d seen the stoners, the rich kids who took drugs. Sal was just floating along, and he didn’t care about anything. He would smash windows and doors as if he liked it.” She turned and looked at the town hall. “Like this glass door. He would pick up a rock and throw it through. Is that what you and I are going to do? Maybe, but he wouldn’t even try the door first. It might be open, but he didn’t care, he would smash it.” She walked over and pulled on the door. It was locked, but she noticed the bolt was barely catching the hole to lock the door. Avery tugged and the door popped open.
“See? Sometimes you don’t have to destroy things. Anyway, the problem with the rapture, as I’m sure you’ve realized, once you hook up with someone, you’re stuck with them. I couldn’t shake Sal, well, I could have, he got high and passed out a lot, but really I couldn’t. How could I leave a person who was providing food and protection for me? It’s like you said a few minutes ago. I’m stuck with this bum for the rest of my life.”
Avery held the door open for him. A second door was also glass, but did not have a lock. He pushed it open and let her into the building.
“How long was it just the two of you?”
“A week. An entire week with just me and Sal. He’s high almost all the time, but he’s functional enough to get us food and shelter each day and night. It’s funny, he was breaking into places to find drugs, while I hunt for food, water, blankets, a bed. I might have been helping him more than he helped me that first week. Anyway, I keep asking him, ‘do you think we should settle somewhere, have you heard about other people?’ but I don’t ask too many times because, well, I’m afraid of the guy. The one thing I controlled was our direction. I keep moving west and south. We ran into Jaime a week later. She was a spitfire old woman, heavy, smart, funny.”
“Heavy?” Todd asked, he looked at a large aerial map of Hanover Township hanging on a wall in the lobby, scanning water works notations.
“Yes, she was actually kind of fat. She was round and pissed off. She wasn’t from New York. She got stuck there. Anyway, she meets us and says there is a group of survivors forming at a seminary in Chelsea. When Sal and I arrived, Cameron, Wendy, and Bridget already made their trek. I’m sure you’ve heard highlights of that, amazing. Ahmed was there. He acted very important, like he was trying to contact the Mayor and the President directly to see what the next steps for our country were. I did not have the heart to tell him everyone was dead. He kept dialing numbers on his phone. Meredith was in a corner, sitting in the fetal position. She wouldn’t talk. She barely ate. She was a mess.”
Todd made big red X’s where he thought there might be water towers. None of the X’s he drew were near town. “What woke her up?”
“Bernie pulled me aside and told me the girl’s name was Meredith, and asked if I would take her under my wing. Bernie was too busy with the three little ones. Kelly wasn’t around to help out yet. Jaime was too old to break through the wall Meredith built. I was enlisted to help.” She stopped and pointed to a spot on the map. “There’s one.”
“Thanks.”
“I was glad to have buffers between me and Sal. As I said, he never tried anything, or looked at me funny, I think because he had a daughter my age, but I was still creeped out by the guy. I told Bernie I would do whatever she needed, and I went around the room and introduced myself. I started with the kids, then Ahmed, who gave me his resume, and then sat down next to Meredith.”
“And?”
“She was at a bad age. The little ones were too young to understand. Older people have seen or experienced death, and can digest it. She was old enough to understand, but too young to digest. I was sort of the same way, but maybe I was just old enough, anyway. You’l
l get to know her, she’s a great kid. She was one of eight children, the fifth born. She lost everyone.” Avery stopped. “And had to watch it happen. Her parents were Mormon, and her grandmother lived with them too. Can you imagine? Eleven people living in New York together? Anyway, they had a place in Queens, a house, and her father heard about Bernie, ‘The Pastor Who Didn’t Get Sick’ was the blog article. He brought Meredith to the seminary on his deathbed. Their car was parked across the street from the seminary all winter. He went into an apartment building and died in the stairwell. I made it my mission to get her out of her cocoon.”
“You did that and more.” Todd looked at the map before turning to Avery. “I didn’t see anyone die.” Todd confessed to her.
“What do you mean?”
“You and everyone else, you talk about seeing someone die from the rapture, and, well, I never did.”
“How is that possible? You have to have seen people dead. They’re everywhere, even here in Hanover.”
“I’ve seen the bodies. I saw the grave in Central Park, the gunfight at the Metropolitan. I’ve seen death, but everyone talks about watching parents, children and siblings die. Emily and I were in our house with Jay and Brian. We didn’t lose anyone in the house. We lived our lives, shielded from it all. I don’t know the despair you have experienced. I can guess what it’s like, but I didn’t have to deal with it myself.”
“You didn’t lose anyone in your life?”
“I lost three in-laws, four nieces, I lost plenty. Friends, probably all of my extended family, but I didn’t watch anyone die. You talk about being there, next to the bed when your parents passed. That’s unreal to me. My brother Hank held all of his girls’ hands as they died. I can’t believe he is recovering from that. Everyone in the group has experienced a level of pain I can only imagine.”
“You know why Bernie snapped back in New York? She took in all of the orphans and needy, she watched people die over and over again. The morgue truck was parked outside her building for the first months. She buried her own family, tended to dozens, hundreds, thousands of other people who died in beds around the seminary.” Avery looked down and shook her head. “I think it blew a fuse in her brain for a while. We are all excited about this second chance at life. We met about it after dinner that first night, talked about how incredible this opportunity is, to meet up with other normal people. You’ve saved us, helped us find our way.”
