The Broken and the Dead

When I awoke the next morning, Lucy was sleeping at the other end of the couch from me and even Elaine had come downstairs sometime during the night and was sleeping in dad’s recliner, her cell phone loose in one hand. I looked around. The TV was off and the lights didn’t work. I heard Mom in the kitchen and she was crying. I went in to her.

“Mom? What’s going on? Why are you crying?”

She turned to me and pulled me to her, wrapping me tightly in her arms.

“Oh, Johnny,” she whispered. She began to pet my hair like she had done the night before, and then it dawned on me.

“Mom, where’s dad?” I tried to look around, but Mom just held on.

“Where is Dad?” I asked again, and when she didn’t reply, I tried again.

“Dad? Dad!” I called out for him, but mom kept going “Shh, shh…” and murmuring, “it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Finally, she explained. “Johnny, listen. Dad got sick last night, he decided to drive himself to the hospital.”

She started to choke up.

“He left at about three.”

“Why didn’t he wake me?” I asked, already shaken. I could only think of the secret service agents that I had seen last night.

“Johnny...”

Mom started but could not finish. I saw her cell phone on the table so I asked if I could call him, but from the expression on her face I knew she had already been trying. That’s when Lucy led Elaine into the kitchen and we all had to go through the most awful thing that had ever happened to me all over again. Elaine was inconsolable; it was Lucy who kept trying to talk positively.

“Maybe Daddy’s phone won’t work in the hospital,” she said, and then, “maybe we can go see him.”

But I knew. I knew from the TV that if you got sick, you didn’t get better, and I knew we were alone. From her face I knew Mom knew it too. Later, Elaine came in, upset, fiercely texting and hitting send over and over.

“Mom, I can’t reach Marcus. I can’t get Tammy or Krista- I can’t get anyone.” and she started to cry.

Mom went to her and held her. Frankly, I didn’t care too much; Marcus was a dope and Tammy was stuck up, but then again, Krista was pretty nice and she always said hi to me even though Elaine thought I was just a dumb kid. My mom tried to stop crying, I guess for us, and told us we were having toast and eggs, however we liked them. She turned the fire on the burner and I remember sitting at the table, watching her crack egg after egg into her mother’s antique mixing bowl. I don’t remember how they tasted, but I remember Lucy looking like she was really thinking about something. Finally she spoke up:

“Mommy? Ronald wants to know something.” Mom tried to smile and looked kindly at her.

“Okay honey. What does Ronald want to know?”

Lucy took a deep breath, then, holding Ronald out in front of her she moved the little stuffed bear from side to side and she spoke in what a little girl would consider a ‘deep’ voice:

“I’m Ronald Bear and I wants to know, what should we do?”

Ronald’s question hit all of us like a brick. There were things we could do, of course there were.

“Water.” Mom said, “Lucy, you and Ronald go and fill every bottle you can find with water- and fill the tubs too.”

Lucy ran off, happy to have a task.

“Johnny, go out to the garage and find all the camping equipment and set it out where Daddy parks. Make sure it’s all in good shape and then find all the hand tools that you think we might need. Especially a saw, hammer, and screw drivers. Get all that kind of stuff- but only hand tools, you got that?”

I smiled at Mom. “Sure I can!” and I ran down the stairs into the garage.

Mom and Elaine went through everything in the house. All the canned food and things that would keep were arranged out in the garage by the camping things that I found. Then I could hear them talking and I knew they talked about cooking anything that might spoil first, which I guess explains the eggs. Anything that would keep, we would keep. Anything else was open season. I found the big plastic water cooler inside of the matching Coleman ice chest. I took it into the kitchen and set it on the counter next to a couple of dozen other bottles and jars, all filled with water and most with matching lids. Lucy had been busy. Everything from 2 liter bottles to jelly jars. Most of them had come from the recycling bin out back- Mom always ran everything through the dishwasher before she recycled it, which I never understood, but was now grateful for. There was also a full case of Lake-land Spring water that Elaine always insisted on, and for the first time I was happy for that too. Lucy came into the kitchen and clapped when she saw the water cooler and she quickly filled it. She really liked the little spigot thingy and I saw her getting herself and Ronald several drinks, but, always on task, she refilled the cooler after.

The power came back on for a while that evening, but the news channels had degenerated. Gone were the slick suited, always calm anchor-people with their practiced Midwestern accents. Now, makeup gone, worry lines, fear, and exhaustion marred them, easily read by all who cared to look. With disorganized paper notes, they read through scenes of tanks advancing through suburban neighborhoods, entire city blocks on fire, but the worst was the panic: people who packed themselves into a car in an attempt to escape suddenly found one, perhaps more of them, a child or husband or grandmother, changed into a killer. The anchors started calling them “crazies.” No one was immune, police stations, army units, fire departments, hospitals, schools and even churches hid serpents in their midst. Airplanes fell from the sky when someone, the pilot or some passengers, changed- nail clippers had nothing on this. Soldiers couldn’t count on the person next to them. I could only imagine what it was like for a soldier in a tank to find out he was trapped in a metal coffin with 3 or 4 monsters he once called friends who wanted only to kill and eat him. In our town, not far from us, rifle and machine gun fire crackled out, echoing through the night. Sirens and screams were punctuated by explosions. Some were so close that our windows rattled in their frames. The four of us huddled on the couch together, Lucy trying to get her teddy to go to sleep, Elaine sobbing quietly while my mother just stared, calm and stoic, at the TV while the scenes of the end of the world were displayed in high definition for us. Sometime that morning, the power went out for the last time and I wondered if the monsters would come for us in the dark. But they didn’t- not that night.