by J. M. Clark
Martin gunned the gas of his SUV in a panic, overwhelmed and determined to get his family the help they needed as fast as possible.
As any self-respecting good man would do, he was taking control of the situation. The fear, anxiety, and urgency had his adrenaline in overdrive, and he found it difficult to focus on the road. Martin looked in the back to check on his children. “Put your damn seatbelt on, Damon. And help your brother with his.”
When he turned back to the road, he saw the ambulance before he heard it. He wondered for a brief, fleeting moment why he hadn’t heard the sirens. All that adrenaline rushing through my head, he thought as he realized he was going far too fast to even try to stop. The last thought he had before smashing into the ambulance head on was, Maybe this is better.
Martin was thrown from the vehicle; he hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt. He felt his waist being wrapped around the bottom of a telephone post. His spine was instantly severed, every rib cracked or crushed. And one of those ribs had broken off and punctured a lung.
He laid on the curb, bleeding out of his mouth, attempting to get his breathing to catch up to the speed of his heart. It was pumping so fast he thought that it would come bursting out of his chest. With every beat, he could feel blood filling his mouth. The SUV had landed on its side in someone’s front yard. It was smoking, totally crushed. Martin caught vague images of the pieces of his children, now leaking from the door openings of the back seat. Both children were crushed instantly from the impact.
His wife, a labor and delivery nurse for Jewish Hospital in the city, sat in the passenger seat, which had found a new home in the back seat. Her beautiful face was crushed against the cracked glass. She seemed to be staring out the window at him. No lights were on upstairs in that house though. His dead wife gaped at him through the glass with one eye.
She would never look at anything again in this life. Half of her face had been torn off or peeled down to the neck. Exposing bone and an empty eye socket, the flap of skin lay on her chest, the missing eye on the floor of the Escalade, lying next to Damon’s Baby Bop sippy cup.
Just before Martin’s world faded to black, he thought about how his wife reminded him of that character from the Batman comics he would read as a child on his grandparents’ deck in the summers of his youth. The guy would be angry one minute, then cool the next. He had a big coin he would flip to decide what he would do next…She reminded him of that guy.
* * *
Juan never made it home to his wife and daughter. That was for the best though. He would have arrived at the small two-bedroom apartment to find them both dead, cuddled together in bed. The flu got them a few hours before he met his fate head on with the formidable Cadillac Escalade.
On the corner of Circle Ave and Reading Road, there was no sound—no one screaming, no one running out of their homes to witness the screeching accident. The sirens from the ambulance had retired for the day, and there would be no more sirens begging for all oncoming cars and pedestrians to move out of the way. Juan’s shift did indeed end early.
No one needed special care that afternoon. Juan Morales died instantly, with a steering column smashed inside of his chest. It burst his heart, but he didn’t feel a thing. Good for him. Eric, who was lying down in the back of the ambulance, broke his neck during the crash. He never knew there was an accident, and for that he could count himself lucky.
Most everyone else in that city—in every city, state, and country of the world—would not be so fortunate. Juan and Eric never had the chance to find out, but the fever claimed millions, even billions of lives that same day.
Chapter Four
Jacob
Some things you just know. So many of us have felt that strange sensation where we can predict something before we know it to be true. Before Jacob burst into the front door of his parents’ home, he knew what he would find, but all the same, he had to see it. He had a duty to uphold as far as a son, even as a decent human being, so even though he knew he would find his parents either so sick that death was imminent or already dead, he would witness it anyway.
Everything in his being told him that he should get in the car and drive away. Drive to Leanne’s, or maybe to Logan’s—really anywhere but his parents’ home. Something compelled him to stay though, and so he did.
He was right. No one was in the living room, or in the kitchen. The home he grew up in felt utterly empty and cold. There were no televisions playing, no food cooking; there was nothing at all. They are in the bedroom. He tried to believe it, but even then, he knew that he was only going through the motions of what an optimistic son should think in this kind of situation.
He walked slowly down the hallway, using the wall to balance himself because he needed the help. Pictures of his childhood memories decorated this hallway. School pictures, summer vacations, Christmases, and sporting events with his father. They were almost hard to look at while Jacob made his way to their bedroom. The bedroom door stood open; he didn’t need to walk inside to see what he knew he would find.
From the hallway he could see his mother, Valerie, lying in the bed, staring up at the ceiling. His father, Mathew, was crumpled into a pathetic version of the man he once was, lying on the floor next to the bed in a morbid-looking fetal position. A picture of the family laid next to his head. The frame had vomit all over it. His father had finally decided to wear the gym shoes Jacob had bought him for his birthday a few months back. Funny how you notice the most irrelevant things at the most inappropriate times.
Maybe those little thoughts were due to his brain attempting to retreat from the moment, from the trauma. To find normalcy at a juncture that felt anything but normal.
Jacob walked into the bedroom and touched his mother’s chest, just in case she was still among the living. She wasn’t. But again, Jacob knew that.
He did not repeat the test with his father; he knew the man was gone. His father’s tongue protruded from his mouth, and his eyes were as big as the moon. No son should have to find his parents like this, in this sullied and horrific state. But the reality was, there were no specific laws of nature that would rule out the unthinkable.
Surely that was better than the opposite. They always say no parent should have to bury their child. Odd that it was viewed as somehow easier for a child to bury the beings who bore them into this world. To Jacob it felt like a god dying—he imagined that it felt that way for all children who went through the same thing.
In any event, his parents would never have to realize that horror, so apparently there was some silver lining involved in the mess Jacob found himself in.
He didn’t cry though; the shock was far too heavy to allow tears. He couldn’t even fathom what the hell was going on. He and his dad were just talking about the game yesterday, and his mom was planning a lady’s trip to Mexico with some of her church friends. That wasn’t twenty-four hours ago. Today he found them both dead, lying in their own mess.
He thought briefly that this could be a dream. But even nightmares had some semblance of mercy, as the fear would wake you up when things went too far. No dice on that day.
There would be no waking up to reality. Jacob was left to deal with the realization of the day: that this was reality. And he was not mentally equipped for that task. But what human would be? He laughed to himself, and it instantly felt wrong to be laughing.
He stopped laughing abruptly, wondering if perhaps he was going insane. He grabbed the comforter and covered his mother up with it. Then he opened the ottoman at the bottom of the bed and got another blanket to cover his father. That was better, and more respectful, he thought. Jacob walked out of his parents’ bedroom, closing the door behind him.
He collapsed in the hallway outside of his parents’ bedroom, across from his own room, and finally allowed himself to sit in the moment. To accept what had happened. He had been able to see this through, knowing the outcome but still doing what was right. His father would be proud of him. Jacob buried his face in his hands
and allowed himself to finally cry.
Chapter Five
Trevor
Nine-one-one was still busy. After about forty-seven calls (according to his cell phone call log), Trevor decided to give up on help. He placed his phone on the coffee table as he walked over to sit in his favorite chair in the living room. He remembered his wife bought him this chair from the Value City down the road. What was it? About two years back, as an anniversary gift. He had eaten every dinner in that chair since the day it showed up on the moving truck.
Trevor pushed the latch down on the right side of the chair and reclined back. He stared at the ceiling, following the blades of the fan going around and around. That had always calmed him, and this afternoon he needed to be calmed. Life would not, could not ever be the same. He had just lost everything…but…but…
Amy could still be heard upstairs, mumbling to Michael about waking up. She was telling Michael’s body that he couldn’t “schleep” through a whole school day. She was on a constant loop and had been for the last hour or so. It was useless to try to stop her, so he stopped trying. After closing Tricia’s bedroom door, Trevor had tried to go back into their son’s room to pry her away from the bed, but still she wouldn’t budge. He thought it best to leave her to it, let it play itself out.
Nothing could prepare you for the horrors of seeing your children die, as Trevor had witnessed this beautiful autumn afternoon. On a normal day, a day unlike this one, he would still be at work, talking to customers about the football games yesterday. Trevor wondered how many NFL players were alive today. That was an interesting thought. Bet that money couldn’t save you from this. He put his hands behind his head and tried to relax the anxiety residing in his heavy heart. One moment you could have the world, and the next you could have nothing at all.
Trevor thought that he would raise his children from infants into adulthood. He’d put his hopes and dreams into them, investing so much time and money into these little people that he’d helped Amy create with his own body, only to watch them fade away before his eyes, suddenly and painfully
Trevor just sat there, staring at the ceiling fan and listening to Amy mumble her words, which were beginning to sound like a song to him. There would be no more Little League baseball games with Michael. No more football. Tricia would no longer bug him for money to buy clothes (the kind of clothes he rarely approved of) anymore. They would never sit in the living room together and watch television programs while eating dinner again. That was all terrible and hard to cope with, but Trevor felt guilty about the thing that hurt him the most.
Amy would never be the same again, and he hurt for her the most. He felt like trash for feeling the way that he did, but he loved her so much.
Clearly, she’d snapped, and he had begun to doubt she would ever leave that room. He knew that eventually he would come to terms with what had happened to his children, and he would move on. As hard as it would be, he would do it. But if Amy didn’t make it through this, he knew that he wouldn’t either.
Before there were kids to be loved and nurtured, there was just her. Amy had been his reason for living for so long, he knew that going on without her was not possible. So he would not allow that to be the case, no matter what.
All those years away from her overseas while he was in the service, he had never touched another woman. And there had been ample opportunity to do so. Amy had always been the only woman for him, so even now, he would wait for her. As long as he needed to wait to see if she would snap out of it and come walking down the stairs.
Who counted time anyway when the world was ending? Until she came to him, he would lie back in the chair his wife bought for him and stare at the blades on the ceiling fan while she continued to wipe the face of his deceased son and sing her little song.
Chapter Six
Jacob
Jacob sat in the hallway with his back against the door to his parents’ room, as if he were trying to make sure nothing came out. As if he could trap the memories inside that would one day come back to haunt his every moment of sleep. He’d finished crying and had now made the decision that after calling Leanne’s phone over a dozen times to no avail, he should stop avoiding the inevitable and get a clue about what the hell had happened to his town, his city, to the world. He was in no condition to drive right now, but he could educate himself. Or torture himself.
After an hour or two of reading every notification from every news outlet—from Fox News on the far right to CNN on the far left—he now knew that life as he knew it this morning was over. There didn’t even seem to be a plan in place. They were just telling folks to stay in the house.
That didn’t help my parents, he thought to himself. How many people are dead? There were thousands of reported deaths, and even more people were getting sick and being rushed to the hospital. So many that the hospitals were full and there were no beds left. Most of the nurses and doctors were sick themselves. The CDC had opened help centers at the sports stadiums in different cities to help the hospitals with the sick.
Had Leanne and her parents made it to US Bank Arena downtown to get some help? Maybe that’s why she hadn’t answered. He bet she didn’t put her phone on the charger like he’d said to do. According to the news, it wasn’t clear if this was chemical warfare from an enemy of the US, but the president was blaming it on North Korea or possibly Russia. He’d even mentioned terrorist sects from the Middle East.
Jacob didn’t think any of that made sense, because every country was being affected by this flu bug. Why would Russia or anyone else infect their own countries with such a ravaging pandemic? They wouldn’t…right? He banged the back of his head on his parents’ door as he tried to collect his thoughts. It was all so confusing, and really, it didn’t matter anyway. It was only a matter of time until he would get sick and be among the dead.
The notifications stopped updating suddenly. Pretty soon an hour had gone by, and nothing was coming up from any of the media outlets. Made him wonder if they were sick and dying as well. If those that provided the news and told us what to do were no longer living, then how could anyone get information?
Jacob tried calling everyone he knew, but no one was answering. Either the line was busy, or his calls were going to voicemail without ringing even once. He wanted to get up and go over to Leanne’s house to help her, but he was afraid. Afraid to see her the same way he had to see his parents. He couldn’t do it again. Dying sounded like such a better idea.
Leanne not answering his phone calls or text messages was enough to tell him that she was either at the hospital, getting help, or had suffered the same fate of so many people that day. He felt like a coward for not wanting to go see if she was still alive, but a man could only take so much in one day, and Jacob’s mental cup runneth over.
One thing that Jacob could not seem to reconcile though, was the “why” of his own physical situation. Why was he not sick? Everyone he knew seemed to be ill or dead—what made him any different?
He flipped his cell phone over and over in his hand, unable to make sense of what had transpired. He was afraid, confused, and feeling lonelier than he had ever felt in his life.
He wondered if Mr. Dansbury was sick as well. He was doing an awful lot of coughing and sneezing that morning. He didn’t look like he was going to die though. The flu bug was clearly airborne; if it weren’t, people wouldn’t be getting sick so quickly and so easily.
Jacob had no idea what to do next. Everything he saw said to stay in your home if you were there. Or to stay at the hospital if you had been fortunate enough to get inside of one of them. There was supposed to be government aid coming to every city to help people that were still alive, and to aid those that were suffering from this flu.
Jacob got up, left his phone on the floor, and walked down the hallway to his own bedroom. He closed the door and laid in his bed, crawling under the covers and pulling them up past his lips, just underneath his nose. He lay there like that, staring up at the ceiling and trying
to find sleep. He hadn’t done that in bed since he was a child, hoping the boogey man stayed away.
After another hour of listening to the sound of silence outside of his window—no sirens, no one talking, crying, nothing at all—he eventually dozed off to sleep.
When he awoke that evening, Jacob went back out into the hallway to retrieve his phone and to look in on his parents. (To see if they were still dead, he supposed.) Yes, his parents were still dead in their bedroom. Leanne still hadn’t returned a call or text message. No one had, for that matter, and there were no updated news notifications. Jacob dropped the phone and went back to his bed, lay back down, and did the only thing someone could do at a time like this…he waited.
The following morning, he awoke to the sound of footsteps in his cold and empty home. Help had finally come, or so he thought. Before leaving his bedroom to see who was in the house with him, Jacob looked through the blinds to see if it was the police, or maybe the National Guard. There was a long white van parked in the driveway, and there were people packed in the back.
Twenty Years Later
The Palace
Chapter Seven
Jacob
Jacob woke at 7:00 a.m. like clockwork, just as he’d done every morning for the past twenty years. He got up, stretched, and got a drink of water. Then he made a beeline to the bathroom to wash his aging face. Time had been kind to him; Mary always told him that he had aged so well, for whatever that was worth. Maybe he looked decent for his age, but he didn’t feel like it. Time had not been kind to him physically or emotionally.
