Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

“No. This wasn’t like that. When they woke me up, it was like I was in a haze. Like I had taken one of my—” He stopped, and his jaw grew stiff, and Andrew could see his muscles throbbing under his cheeks. “You didn’t.”

“Sean, I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t know what? That people were going to attack us?”

“I didn’t think—”

“You never think. I saw you and your brother talking. Oh, Sean’s so paranoid. Sean needs to sleep. I didn’t need to sleep.”

“Sean.”

“Did you give me a sleeping pill?”

“I didn’t know—”

“Did you slip me a pill or not?”

“I crushed it up and put it in your potatoes. I thought you needed sleep. I thought you would—”

She saw it too late, Sean raising his hand, winding his arm back to deliver a blow, his eyes boiling with a fury Andrew had seen before—in his own father’s eyes. Sean pulled his hand back at the last moment, Elise flinching though, mouth open and hand pressed against her cheek as if Sean had gone through with it. He held his open hand up, primed his fingers into a fist, and let it drop to his side. “You killed us,” he said, his voice cracking. “You killed us.”

Andrew slipped the rest of the way up the stairs and came into the kitchen, his lungs constricted, scarcely able to take in air. He put his hands on his knees, taking in deep breaths before moving to the base of the steep stairway.

He climbed upward, noticing the first trace of a bloody footprint three fourths of the way up, the prints growing darker and clearer with each rising step. The stairs were dusted with drywall fragments, pellet holes along the wall. His eyes crested over the last step, and he jolted back and stumbled down two steps before grabbing the railing and steadying himself.

This was all wrong. All of it. He didn’t want to live in a world where Sean, who cared so much for his family—he saw the concern and love in the man’s eyes every day—almost hit his own wife. That was what Andrew’s dad had done. Not Molly’s. Not the man he knew. He didn’t want to live in a world where a man might chop off someone’s finger for no reason. Or a world where a dead body was at the top of the stairs, half his neck blasted away so that his head craned over at a ninety-degree angle, dark blood fanning out from under his neck like a bib tucked into his collar. This wasn’t the world he wanted. For himself.

For anyone else.

He held onto the rail. Acid rose up his throat, and he heaved. Nothing came out. After coughing for a minute, he stepped up to the top, cupping his hand around his eyes, diverting them away from the dead body. But the image had already seared into his memory. He squeezed around the banister toward the master bedroom.

Molly was exiting as he came into the hallway. They rushed toward one another, embracing, kissing, both of them crying, Andrew stroking her hair, pulling her closer. He pressed the tips of his fingers along her spine, massaging her tense muscles.

“God, I didn’t know what was going to happen to you,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you okay? Do you feel all right? How’s the—”

“I’m okay.

“What about your finger?”

“It’s fine, Andrew. It was just a cut.”

“He was going to chop your finger off.”

“It’s not the worst thing that happened today.”

He stared at the closed door to the master bedroom, a muffled sobbing coming from behind it. He held Molly tighter. “What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

The air felt heavier, colder. Molly sucked in her bottom lip and kept a strong face for him. “What happened downstairs?”

“They made us load up their truck.”

“And they got away?”

He nodded.

“How much did they get?”

Andrew sighed. “The generator. A lot of food.”

Molly covered her mouth. “How much?”

Andrew said nothing.

A tear formed on the edges of her eyes. “We need to tell him,” she whispered.

“Not right now.”

“He needs to know. Everyone does.”

“This isn’t the right time.”

“We can’t hide it for much longer.”

“You don’t understand—you, you just don’t understand.”

“I can’t keep pretending it’s not happening.”

“What’s not happening?” a voice said from down the hall.

Molly looked past her boyfriend, and tears rushed out of her eyes. “Daddy,” she said and bolted to him.

Sean lifted his daughter up in his arms and held her close. She cried awful, terrible sobs. Sean shut his eyes briefly and then centered them on Andrew, those eyes burning like a fire stoked, hot and ready to burn down everything in their path. And Andrew couldn’t stand the heat.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” Sean told her, turning his attention back to her.

But Andrew knew that wasn’t true. It wasn’t going to be okay. Nothing could ever be okay again.

MICHAEL WATCHED KELLY spend her days in silence. She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, recoiled when he tried to comfort her. He encouraged her—pleaded for her—to eat more, offered her food from his plate every night, but she told him she wasn’t hungry. But she was hungry. He could see the bones in her jaw growing more defined, her cheekbones popping out a little more each day. He almost asked her once whether she didn’t eat because she wanted to die but stopped himself. There were questions he didn’t want answers to.

He had heard what happened to Kelly from Elise, but Kelly never spoke of it. And after a while nobody wanted to talk about it. Sometimes, if he was honest, that was okay with him. Because talking about it meant speaking of why those men had come in the first place, how they had gotten into the house with no one knowing, why he had never slept with the damn shotgun next to him like Sean had asked, why he had let his sister drug Sean. Even though nobody discussed it out loud, his inner voice wouldn’t stop repeating: They raped your wife, and it’s your fault.

He didn’t sleep much anymore. Most of them didn’t. Two weeks after the invasion and four or so months after it all started—Michael wasn’t sure exactly, time blurring together—each person had little dark circles under their eyes that hadn’t been there before. The corridors of the home reverberated distant and indistinct sobbing. Much to Michael’s surprise, Aidan seemed the least affected, maybe because he was brave, maybe because he didn’t fully understand the situation. Kelly’s withdrawal hit him hard though. He loved his aunt and just wanted to make her feel better. When he asked why she was feeling so sad, Michael told him that she was sick and left it at that.

Elise and Sean barely talked. The dynamic added unneeded tension in the home. Meals, now cooked over the fireplace, were torturous. Where there used to be conversation, now there was just the crackle of fire, teeth chewing and gnawing, and silverware clanking on dishes.

With the entire house now being pummeled with cold and only the living room fireplace to repel its assault, everyone spent most of their time there. Not that anyone could go anywhere else for long. The upstairs still had graphic splatters of dried blood they couldn’t expunge. Nobody wanted to see it. Or remember what happened along with it. And the other rooms were freezing cold. Michael spent his time pacing around, walking through the kitchen and then back to the living room, pulling at his beard, trying to kill time any way he could. And there was a lot of time to kill.