Richard Cox - House of the Rising Sun

Death? Or life?

She lowered the gun and stared again into the barrel, into the round and infinite darkness. She imagined she could see swirls of color in that warm emptiness, swirls that eventually morphed into the smiling, drunken faces of Beth and Deidre and Molly. She remembered how her drama friends had been blissfully miserable as mothers, and despite her reluctance to admit as much, Skylar understood now why she’d felt so empty around them. Because the cliché was true—you couldn’t understand the biological suction of motherhood until your body was preparing to bear a child. And you couldn’t know if you would end a pregnancy until that pregnancy was yours.

She returned the gun to the nightstand drawer and went outside to talk to Thomas.

The next morning he walked her to the city limits of Kiowa Village, where the redneck color guard stood waiting. She cried when she turned away from Thomas and was led into town. Even as she was met by a group of concerned women, who marveled at her celebrity and offered food like bread and fried catfish, she cried.

Every day brought another single man who offered to protect her, who hoped to become her husband. There was a playground in town, and in the center of it stood a roundabout painted in alternating colors of red and white and blue, six pie-shaped pieces. She watched children spin in circles, laughing and squealing and cajoling each other. She stole glances at the mothers and fathers and marveled at how unmoved they seemed by external forces of danger that were all around them. She was struck by a feeling of togetherness, of social connection, and in certain moments she could detect a congruity with the world that previously had been unknown to her. The roundabout spun in a circle, sort of how life was a circle, and she could sense—only barely, but it was there—that the meaning of this terrible event wasn’t what had been lost, but what had been gained. That maybe the frenetic life she had lived, the things she had acquired, the glittery recognition by the world at large, had distracted her from a fundamental truth. The only point of life, as she previously believed, was not eventual death.

When you were poised to bring someone new into the world, the only point of life was life.

My Diary: Natalie Black

July 202-

Ifirst realized something was wrong with Brandon when he refused the Mounds bar. The boy won’t touch an Almond Joy, but he’ll eat six packages of Mounds if you don’t watch him.

We had been walking for eight weeks and two days (I think). None of the rest of us were sick, so I assumed Brandon had eaten something we didn’t notice. The boys get hungrier than we do, and they always bring stuff to us and say, Can I eat this? Can I eat that? It’s so sad. I try to feed them as much as I can, but if Paige and I don’t eat, we can’t take care of them.

After the warehouse, and after we regrouped at Tim’s place, Paige took us to her house to gather supplies. Like the rest of the food in her pantry. A mess kit. A tent. Matches and a lighter. Extra weapons and bullets. Jugs to store water in and tablets to purify it. We stop on the regular to refill, because water is so heavy, and we can’t carry much of it.

Then, even though I begged her not to, Paige took us back to the warehouse. She promised to maintain a safe distance, and approach only if it looked safe, but all I could think about were those bullets whizzing past my head as that awful man tried to kill us. When I tripped, I thought for sure we were dead. But instead, for a reason I’ll never understand, he stopped shooting and let us go.

We approached from the rear of the property, the same way we left it. By then two days had passed, and we assumed the building had been emptied or that a new group had taken control. Paige wouldn’t say much about what she hoped to see or do. Maybe she wanted to look for something of her father’s. Or maybe, one last time, walk where he walked.

But what we found was nothing like what we expected. It hurts to remember how excited she was.

“That’s a chopper,” Paige said as we peered through the trees. “A Chinook. Look!”

Until then, I’d never known what to call those helicopters with two sets of horizontal blades. I always thought of them as lovebugs, because that’s what they look like, two choppers mating in midair.

“There are two of them,” she whispered, her voice hopeful. “The Army is finally here.”

But Paige was careful as always, and soon we saw soldiers in defensive positions around the aircraft. Others were arranged in a line, relaying food out of the warehouse and into the helicopters. Beyond this operation, a group of civilians had gathered. It was smaller than the original crowd, but I bet there were at least 100 people. Maybe 200. Occasionally, we could hear the sound of someone yelling at the soldiers, as if in anger.

“They’re taking the food,” Paige said. “But for what? To whom?”

I explained to her about Blaise, how he believed there was a haven somewhere protected from all this, like maybe an island in the tropics. Paige seemed skeptical, but whatever the soldiers were doing was not meant to help anyone nearby. They didn’t take any food to the crowd, and when one man rushed the helicopter, the soldiers pinned him down and pushed a rifle into the back of his neck. I thought for sure they would kill the guy, but eventually they let him up, and he hobbled away.

Just before we left, Paige and I saw two more Chinooks approaching from the south. We heard them land on the lawn of the warehouse as we marched through the trees and away from there forever.

At first, as we walked northward, the sky remained a chalky sketch of blacks and greys and yellows. The heat was awful, and the smoke was so dense the air seemed to carry texture. There was ash on the road and in the grass and sprinkled over trees like snow. We rationed our water and refused to drink from ponds or streams, even though these were always surrounded by refugees. Later, we saw a lot of people on the sides of the road, collapsed or vomiting or just sitting there with glassy eyes. You don’t want to drink unpurified water, especially when there’s ash in it, so it’s a good thing we had our own supply until we were clear of the city.

Gradually, the skies cleared, we left the ash behind, and it was difficult to tell the pulse had even happened. I wanted to walk in the direction of Tulsa, to see if my house was still intact, but Paige vetoed the idea. It was starting to piss me off that she treated me like a child. But then, as we approached I-40, we saw a huge cloud of smoke on the western horizon, like a looming cold front. If Oklahoma City was still on fire, it meant Tulsa probably was, also. That taught me a lesson about making good decisions.

We’ve supplemented our food supplies with small game. At first it was Paige who did all the work, like killing rabbits and possums, cleaning them, cooking them. I couldn’t even watch. But tough times make tough women, as Paige likes to say, and now I help her with the food. My hands look like a man’s hands.

Originally, Paige wanted to take us in the direction of Minnesota or Wisconsin, but the day after we crossed into Kansas, we saw another cloud of smoke to our east. We were past Wichita, but not close enough to see Kansas City burning, so we didn’t know why there would be so much smoke… at least not until we ran into this awful-looking walker who had come from that direction. His face was red and shiny, and one of his eyes was nearly swollen shut. His bald head bubbled with blisters.

“What happened to you?” Paige asked him.

“Wolf Creek,” he croaked. “Nuclear hell.”

“Do you need help?” I asked him, shielding the boys behind me. “Where are you going?”