Science may have found a cure for most evils;
but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all-
the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller
“You are looking at very disturbing shots of the fighting that has erupted on the White House lawn behind me. Riots, just like this one, have ripped across every town, in every country. The situation has been compounded by the continued silence from presidential cabinet members. Their whereabouts, and their health, are still unknown. It would seem the U.S. has collapsed like all the nations before it. All we can do now is hope and pray. This is Mitch Case with MCSB World News reporting on assignment in…aaah. No. No…aaaaahh…”
The camera angle rotated, tumbled. Mitch’s screams transformed to gurgles. The sideways view of trampled grass, smoke, and red and blue lights filled the TV screen.
I hit the power button on the remote and vanished the clip I’d seen numerous times. News broadcasts were on continuous replay. How long had it been since the cameras stopped rolling? Four…five weeks?
I lay in bed next to glass doors that opened to a screened sun room on the deck. The room overlooked wilting bushes, overgrown shrubs, and an algae-infested in-ground pool. There was a time, not too long before then, when I loved that view from my bed.
Lightning bugs flickered through the screen. The sun bowed behind the maple trees bordering the property. Silver-green leaves waved in the residual light. The shift from spring to summer used to be my favorite time of year in Missouri. I would prop the doors open and welcome the richness of soil and clay, the sweet smell of the earth drying out after the rainy season.
But the doors remained closed and a musty staleness choked the room. I sank into the pillow. My hip bones threatened to poke through the cotton sheet. My dinner sat on the night stand untouched.
Dull strands of hair knotted around me. I plucked at the ends. Only a couple of months earlier, I took pride in my fit physique. A vegetarian. A five miles a day runner. I lifted weights with Joel every morning. But that was before. In two months, twenty pounds of muscle seemed to dissolve from my body, leaving a frail shell to hold what was left of my soul.
Hairs on my nape prickled. The shadows concealing the deck thickened and gathered. There, just beyond the sun room, a section of the darkness contracted. Was it…was someone there?
The deck was two stories up. Joel had chopped off the stairs to secure our home from looters and other threats. He said it would take a ninja or a forty-foot ladder to access the deck from the outside.
The only way in was through the barricaded front door. And I would’ve heard the garage doors. Certain I was alone, I hugged myself and squinted at the deck.
A small form emerged on the other side of the glass door. My shoulders bunched to my ears against a stampede of goose bumps. The uncropped outline of a child solidified. Darkness gravitated toward two cavernous holes where eyes should’ve been. A teddy bear dangled from one hand.
“Aaron?” I gasped and tried to sit up. My arms shook with the effort.
The shadows dispersed into nothingness. I rubbed my eyes. Another nightmare? But I was awake. My breathing quickened, and I wrestled to control it. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been Aaron. I watched my boy die two months prior.
The silence broke with a giggle and the patter of feet. A fleshy palm flattened against the glass then receded into the dark. I gripped the sheets and worked my throat against a lump. An oily handprint remained.
The garage doors squeaking vaulted me back to reality. Joel must be home from wherever it was he went. If not him…ah well, maybe my wish for death would finally come.
Each lock on the interior door snicked, one by one. What incited him to leave every day? Pre-outbreak, he kept our garage stockpiled with water and non-perishables. We should’ve had another month of basic survival supplies. I knew a shit storm brewed outside but didn’t care. Instead, I focused on the handprint—didn’t dwell on the fact it couldn’t be real—and tucked back into that safe place in my mind. The place where I climbed the corporate ladder, laughed and drank with friends, and tucked children into bed at night.
His boots landed with purpose along the wood floors. Should I feign sleep? He’d just wake me to eat.
The stomping stilled. Gun oil flooded the room, overlaying his usual scent of Cavendish pipe tobacco. He leaned on the door jamb. “Did you at least try to eat?”
I bit my cheek. Maybe he’d give up and go away.
He wore his armor carrier vest rigged with bullet proof plates and a hydration system. It outfitted a tactical custom radio, a first aid pouch, and mag pouches for his M4 carbine and Glock 19 pistol. Married to a gun dealer for fifteen years, I’d learned to catalog the details of his equipment.