by Brandon Dean
I don’t think I could’ve beat a snail in a race, moving at the rate I did as I made my way back home. I dragged my feet as I watched stray drops of my own blood spoil the clean surface of the now ankle-high snow. My feet had grown numb, but who knew if it was from the cold? Everything was numb by then.
The sun had started to set, but the typical orange hues of the sunlight bouncing off the horizon were replaced by blackness in this strange sky. Had it not been for the tiniest bit of moonlight, I would’ve been lost and left to freeze. A week ago, having my ass kicked with no way to navigate myself home would’ve been a scary enough situation, but the pain I was feeling now reminded me that I was alive. Besides, I had much bigger issues to worry about. My mom, for one. I had no idea if she was even alive, and if she was, I was going to have to tell her that Dad was dead.
All those thoughts kept rushing through my head. What if Mom hated me for what I had done? I debated whether I should even tell her. Would she understand? She needed to know the truth—and it wasn’t like I was Superman: unless I were to miraculously heal my injuries before I walked down those cellar steps, she would know that things had gone terribly wrong without me even opening my mouth.
We were in a dog-eat-dog world now, and I either had to get used to it or die. There wasn’t any room left on the table for choices anymore. The choices I’d had to make since the bombs fell had been getting more and more difficult. There wasn’t a way out of it; this was a nightmare we couldn’t wake from, a world that made me question everything I’d ever been taught. If God loved his children, why let them suffer? Why allow evil to win? I didn’t even care that I was having blasphemous thoughts. Why fear the hell below when you’re living through hell on earth?
I eventually dragged myself down the streets of Mayfield and then down Ashford Lane until I arrived at the remnants of my home. The cellar was blanketed by a thick layer of snow—it must have been at least six inches deep by that point. Ohio was no stranger to heavy snowfall, and had it been a few months earlier, the sheets of white would have been an expected sight. But it wasn’t. It was May. I wiped the snow away from the cellar door with my arm and placed my hand on the handle, taking a deep breath.
“Come on, Mom, pull through for me,” I uttered prayerfully as I opened the door and closed it behind me. I placed my duffel bag against the wall before removing the medical supplies. Mom was motionless where I had left her, but I could see she was breathing.
I removed my gas mask, dropped it on the floor, and began looking for one of Mom’s old sewing kits. A single needle and a bit of thread was all I needed; I hadn’t had any luck at the pharmacy in finding some proper stitching supplies. After scrounging through a few boxes, I found what I needed. The needle was slightly rusted, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I’d just have to sterilize it with alcohol and buff it out the best I could. I lit the oil lamp again and began reading the back of the penicillin bottle to find out how much I should use.
I lifted Mom’s dress just enough to expose the back of her thigh, then slowly and carefully injected the penicillin into it. She flinched, but other than that, she hardly moved. I poured some rubbing alcohol into my hands and rubbed them together before grabbing the chunk of shrapnel that had wedged itself into her side with my thumb and index finger. She opened her eyes slightly as I began to wiggle it back and forth, trying to break it free from its burrow. Once I could move it just enough, I knew what my next step would be.
“Sorry, Mom, this isn’t going to feel good,” I said before quickly pulling it out. Her eyes were wide open now; she thrashed and screamed in pain. “Mom, calm down!” I urged, trying to soothe her. “I know it hurts, but you need to save your energy. And I need you to stay still.”
She wept in pain for another couple of minutes before focusing her eyes on me. That was when she saw my beaten face and torn clothes. Her eyes grew wide as she looked around the cellar. I dreaded the question she was going to ask, and I couldn’t think of an easy way to answer her.
“Where is your father?” she whispered weakly.
“Dad . . .” My throat choked on the words. “Dad didn’t make it.”
Mom looked at me, more confused than upset. “But he’s on his way, right?” she mouthed with little volume.
“No, Mom . . . He’s gone,” I said, my shoulders sinking in shame and grief.
Tears streamed from her eyes like a flowing river, and her lips trembled.
“Mom, please . . . don’t cry,” I said, my own voice cracking.
She just looked at me. “How do I not?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” I said, breaking down. I was tired of crying; I was tired of suffering. I gave Mom a tight embrace. “I miss him, Mom. When does it end?” I cried.
She ran her fingers through my hair like she’d done when I was a little boy; it was the most comforting thing I had felt since all this had begun. We sat in that cellar for hours, trying to cope with our new reality. We were all we had.
Mom went back to sleep after I finished treating her wound. I poured a small amount of alcohol inside, then stitched it the best I could. It wasn’t neatly sewn, but it was closed, and that was all that really mattered. I pulled an old wool blanket over her and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “Good night,” I said before sitting against the wall. I was in no condition to sleep; there was too much on my mind. I saw the cellar door start to leak, and while I knew it couldn’t hold the weight of the snow forever, I also knew it had to—we couldn’t leave yet. Neither of us would get very far in the shape we were in. We needed time, something I knew we didn’t have much of.
I thought about Dad’s last words; I felt like I’d done right by him. “I need you to take care of her.” It kept playing in my head. I heard him, and who was I to deny him of his final wish? I wondered how he was doing, wherever he was. Funny, all my life I had been told about heaven and hell. I’d always looked forward to those pearly gates and being surrounded by everyone I loved. It had always given me peace of mind, too, knowing that the end wasn’t the end. Streets of gold with no crime, no pain, no goodbyes. It was a nice thought, and if there really was a heaven and hell, I was sure Dad was in heaven. He deserved nothing less.
Still, the longer I was awake, the more I thought. I was beginning to wonder if it even existed at all. Was it a lie to trick us into being better people? Or was it perhaps a lie to unite us as a society into conformity? I didn’t know—still don’t, and I don’t think anyone ever will—but part of me couldn’t bear the thought of Dad being gone completely. I didn’t want him to hurt anymore, I didn’t want him to be scared. I wanted him to be happy, but I wanted him here, with us. Still, I tried to think of him having the time of his life up there, and realized that maybe, just maybe, that was why so many still believed: because we could never truly let go of the ones we loved.
But on the other hand, the more pessimistic side of me insisted that it was all a sham, a construct of deceit. “Jesus loves me, this I know . . .” Well, I was beginning to think I needed some kind of evidence of that. What all-loving father, what divine creator without sin, would idly sit back and watch his children be slaughtered like cattle?
I spent the next four days watching Mom heal. The first day, she ate green beans. She needed all the energy she could get; and though I felt as if I were going to die, whether it be from my physical or emotional pain, I knew I could likely spare a couple of days without food. My stomach disagreed, though, growling at me every time I watched Mom take a bite. She stayed awake a little longer than usual—to me, that was a good sign.
Just before I went to sleep, I rammed the cellar door open with my shoulder; that had become a daily task for me during our time underground. The door had grown heavy from all the snowfall, and I knew it wasn’t a good idea to let it accumulate. On one hand, it could have collapsed on top of us. On the other, it could have gotten too heavy to budge when the time came to make our escape, and then
what? Still, I was determined: I would not die in a hole.
The second day, I went without food again, sustaining myself on only water. I usually let Mom have the clean stuff we had jarred, and grabbed some snow from outside and waited for it to melt for myself.
My stomach was beginning to resent the abuse I was giving it. The jar of food I found in the coat pocket turned out not to even really be food but sorghum—poor man’s honey. In what I can only call desperation, I scraped a big finger-ful of the sweet, gelatinous goo and stuffed it into my mouth. My lips puckered tightly as I tried my best to swallow. It wasn’t exactly food, but I figured anything was better than nothing, so I decided to use most of it to mix into Mom’s meals to help stretch them. I didn’t know what I was doing—I was no doctor—but she began to pull through. She was still much too weak to walk around for long, but she could now walk distances of about ten feet or so, and she could feed herself without me guiding the food to her mouth. She still needed my help using the bathroom, but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t about to give up on her.
Day three rolled around, and I had my first bite of actual food since coming back into the cellar. Brussels sprouts. I’d always hated brussels sprouts.
It was at about that time that I noticed the state we were in, as far as hygiene went. The body odor I kept trying to mask with rubbing alcohol was plain as day now. If we didn’t blow our cover somehow, I was sure it’d be just a matter of days before some wild coyote sniffed us out. I would wipe whatever plaque I could off my teeth with an old grease rag I found, and then insisted Mom do the same. I’d fill an empty tin can with snow and allow it to melt, dipping the same rag into the water and wiping dirt and grime off the both of us. It was a far cry from any proper bath, but it would have to suffice.
Mom got back most of the clarity in her voice then; she was still hoarse in comparison to her usual soft tone, but she was healing. I needed any glimmer of hope I could get, and I only wished Dad could have seen her pull through. We often talked about him. Memories mainly, the goofy, childish things he’d always do. What he would say to us right now if he saw us upset, how he was a man of values before all else. It was comforting. It was almost like he wasn’t “gone” gone, like he had just “gone to the store to pick up a pack of smokes” gone.
There was something tearing away at me, though, something I couldn’t quite understand.
“Mom?” I said.
“Yes, honey?” she asked.
“Why didn’t you let us know you were hurt?”
She stared off in the distance for what seemed like minutes, though I was sure it was just a few seconds. “I didn’t want you to go out there. Lord knows what’s waiting for us,” she said.
“What were you thinking? That you’d just be able to wait it out and get better on your own?” I asked.
Mom shook her head in regret and forced a smile. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. And look what I caused,” she said with a blank look.
“Mom, trust me, it isn’t you who deserves the blame.”
“If not me, then who?” she asked.
“Mom,” I said, my voice cracking, “I killed Dad.”
She looked at me, confused.
“Two guys approached us. They were going to kill us; we didn’t have a choice but to fight back. I had to do it out of mercy. He was shot and in pain, and he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He asked me to do it, and I felt like it was the only way to honor him.” I felt the hot sting of tears in my eyes.
“Clint, honey,” she said softly.
“Mom! What if I’d done things differently? What if I’d acted faster? All I needed was just a second, and Dad would still be here. I froze, I was scared, and now Dad is gone because I was a coward!”
“Clint! Stop!” Mom urged. “Your father would hate hearing you say that!”
“Yeah, well, he can’t hear me say it. And it’s all my fault!”
“No! It isn’t!” she insisted. “Things happen for a reason! He’s with God now—”
I interrupted, letting out a frustrated laugh. “God? God let this happen! If there even is a God, I’d love to have five minutes alone with him to make him answer for what he’s done to us!” I screamed.
Mom caught me off guard with a smack to the mouth. She pointed her index finder sharply at me. For a weakened woman, she sure could deliver a sting. “Don’t you ever say something like that again! You were raised better than that.”
“You don’t understand,” I muttered back.
“I don’t?” she replied. “Do you know what it’s like to see your child beaten black and blue, or to have the person you love more than your own life taken away from you forever?”
“No, no, I don’t,” I replied. “But do you know what it’s like to see the town you love full of dead bodies or to see both of your parents slipping away?” I asked softly.
“No. I don’t,” she murmured back.
“Face it, Mom, neither of us are cut out for this. Maybe that Darwin guy knew what he was talking about, with natural selection and all.”
Mom chuckled. “I don’t think a guy who thought we came from monkeys had any clue about how the world works.”
I laughed; Mom had always known how to make me laugh. She’d always had a way to make me feel better, one way or another.
“It’s gonna take a miracle for us to make it out of all of this alive,” I said.
“Life’s full of miracles, Clint. After all, I have you, don’t I?”
I smiled. “Yeah, and you always will.”
That was about it for day three. I really needed day three. A million pounds of pressure lifted from my shoulders. I had desperately needed to talk about the guilt and horror that were chipping away at me. And, of course, Mom was there for that. She always was.
By day four, Mom’s voice was almost back to normal. We both ate that day—not much, but just enough. By then, we were down to our last two cans of food and half the jar of sorghum.
Mom could also use the bathroom with less help now, and her hand wasn’t as shaky when she fed herself. That was when I felt it, for the first time in a short forever: happiness, pride. I had done something right. I thought of what Riley had asked me a few days before, or maybe it was a couple of weeks or months by then—it was hard to keep track of time. “What are a couple of kids from Mayfield gonna do?” Well, I didn’t know what my old friend was doing, or even if he was still alive, but I knew I had made a difference. A small change in the vast scope of things, maybe, but a colossal one to me.
I knew we had to leave soon. But in that moment, I had to focus on cherishing every breath we took. Laughs, smiles—for once, they were genuine. I rummaged through miscellaneous boxes in the cellar. In a box buried underneath an old roll of duct tape and a box of nails, I found an old set of checkers. “What do you say?” I asked Mom with a smile, holding the game in front of the lamp’s light.
She grinned back. “Sure. Beats sitting here, doing nothing.”
I removed the box’s contents and laid them out on the cold floor.
“I call red,” Mom said before I could even set up the game.
“Maybe I wanted to be red,” I said playfully.
“No, no. I want it more,” she insisted.
“Why are you so bent on being red?” I asked curiously.
“Well, there’s a reason we put this old game in the cellar in the first place,” she said.
“Yeah, and why is that?” I asked.
“Because it’s missing one of the black pieces!” she laughed with a snort. I let her have it her way; it didn’t matter to me. Not even when she won eight games in a row.
We ended our night looking through old photo albums again, both of us tearing up whenever we saw Dad’s smile. Sure, it was sad, but it was nice being able to cry over something worthy of our tears. Something special.
“
Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, it matters. It has to. At least, I think it has to,” I said.
“And why is that? Who knows what’s out there?” She had a point; I didn’t see the difference in going north, south, east, or west. As long as it was better.
“I guess we just pick a direction and keep going,” I said.
“As good a plan as any, I suppose,” she said. She was easy to convince that we had to leave. She’d always been a rational woman.
My one and only goal was to avoid the city. I felt that would be the safest course of action, with the least risk of running into anyone dangerous. Our landscape was filled with hills and trails, the type of outdoor scene you would see on a postcard. At least, it had been. As I ran my idea by my mom, I told her that, despite the fact that it would take longer to get wherever we were going, at least we’d be more likely get there. She didn’t object.
“So, when are we leaving?” she asked.
“First thing in the morning. We’ll get what rest we can and use the little light we have to our advantage before it gets pitch black out there when the sun goes down. Sound good to you?”
Mom shrugged. “Sounds as good as it can, I guess.”
“Good. I’m going to get some things together, then I’ll get to sleep. You should go ahead and get your rest. You aren’t a hundred percent yet.”
Mom agreed hesitantly. “Good night, Clint,” she said.
“Good night, Mom.”
I filled all of our jars with snow to let them melt overnight, wrapping some loose cloth around them to prevent them from freezing once we got out there in the cold. In my duffel bag, I packed the lighter as well as the remaining rubbing alcohol to use as a fuel source for fire. I held the jar of sorghum in my hand, sighing as I placed the disgusting goo into the bag. We had one chance, and we needed all the help we could get. I checked the ammunition in the rifle’s magazine to confirm that there were eight cartridges left, as well as the handgun I had picked up in the pharmacy. Six in there—fourteen shots total. I sharpened the blade of the hunting knife I’d picked up against the concrete walls. It didn’t have to look pretty—it just had to be sharp. And with some time and focus, it was.
