Scott Nicholson - The Shock

This week, there had been no shoveling. If one didn’t count the graves.

“No, you’re not a baby,” he said to Marina.

“Maybe we walk to the neighbors’ house,” Rosa said, glancing out the window.

The closest neighbor was half an hour’s walk, even with a nine-year-old. Jorge wasn’t afraid of the distance. He was afraid of what they might find when they arrived.

Perhaps they would discover more people like Mr. Wilcox, whose face had been blank and eyes staring wide, as if the flash had blinded him forever. Or more like the Detoro family in the trailer next to theirs, with Alejandro and Sergio dead on the floor and mother, Nima, dead on the couch. Jorge had found Fernando Detoro in the barn, collapsed over the open hood of the tractor’s engine, his hands black with grease. Jorge thought perhaps Rosa and Marina survived because they had been inside, and so, that was part of their luck, but being inside had not saved the Detoro family.

“I don’t think we should risk leaving,” he said. “We have all we need right here.”

“But we don’t know—”

“ Sí. We don’t know. So we stay.”

Before Marina, they had talked only in Spanish when they were together, but Jorge wanted an American daughter. She would have had enough trouble because of her skin, although her straight black hair and onyx eyes surely made the paler girls jealous. Not that there were many paler girls around to worry about, now.

Jorge crossed the living room and drew back the thick velvet drapes. For a bachelor, Mr. Wilcox had put a lot of trouble into his home decorating. The front lawn was now getting ragged, and Jorge had to shake off the itch to mow it.

Nothing moved outside, except for a few crows perched on the white fence. Crows would enjoy this new situation. Plenty of meat to scavenge.

Jorge sat on the couch and stared at the big flat-screen TV. Its size was absurd, like many of the furnishings in Mr. Wilcox’s house. Now the blank screen was a mockery of all the things that had once played across it.

“I should try the tractor again,” he said. “If anything runs, it will be the tractor.”

Rosa didn’t challenge the flawed logic. Although they had been raised in a patriarchal culture, Jorge encouraged her to express her opinion. He valued her wisdom. Except now, she was frightened, and fear always hindered wisdom.

“We will be alone,” Rosa said. Marina looked up from her drawing.

Jorge glanced toward the kitchen pantry where he’d leaned a loaded shotgun against the racks of wine, spices, and canned goods. “Not alone.”

“Hurry back, Daddy,” Marina said.

“I will, tomatilla ,” he said, using her toddler nickname of “Little Tomato.” “You be good for your momma, okay?”

Marina smiled, nodded, and went back to her drawing. Jorge wondered if she would ever go back to school, or ever again have the normal American life he had wished for her.

He drew back the deadbolt and paused by the front door. He wasn’t sure whether he should be afraid. He didn’t know enough to be afraid.

Jorge didn’t want to retrieve one of the guns from the closet, because that would scare Marina. He fastened his work belt around his waist as if he prepared to weed the landscaping. The machete hung from his belt as it always did.

“Lock up behind me,” he said to Rosa before slipping outside.

The day was bright, the sunlight made even fiercer by the amount of time he’d spent inside. He stood on the porch, looking out between the high white columns. Birds chattered in the trees, but their chirps and whistles were spread across the surrounding woods, eerily sparse for late August.

So, not all the birds have died .

The trees were still, and the pastures vacant. The corn swayed slightly in the garden, the tassels just beginning to turn golden. Whatever had killed people and animals didn’t seem to have affected the vegetation.

Jorge stepped off the porch and walked past Mr. Wilcox’s silver SUV. The vehicle probably cost two years’ worth of Jorge’s salary, but now it was worthless. Jorge had found the keys in Mr. Wilcox’s pants when he’d searched the man’s body, but the SUV was just as dead as his boss. Jorge had even swapped out batteries with the tractor, but the engine hadn’t turned over.

Jorge wasn’t as skilled a mechanic as Fernando Detoro, but he was convinced that whatever had killed Fernando had silenced the engines as well.

He surveyed the road as he continued his trek to the barn. Mr. Wilcox often had visitors from town, fat men wearing ties who never set foot in the fields. Rosa said they were bankers and lawyers who used Mr. Wilcox’s money to make more money with no work. Jorge wanted Marina to have that chance one day. He’d been saving cash buried in a jar under the trailer. It was Marina’s college fund.

If she ever went to school again.

He entered the two-story barn. Jorge had lied to Rosa. The tractor had no hope of starting. The engine was in pieces, the radiator removed, spark plug wires and hoses arrayed on a greasy drop cloth.

“Willard?” he called.

On the day of the deaths, Willard White had been mixing chemicals to spray on the shrubs. Willard was the only one whose body hadn’t turned up, and Jorge wanted to be sure his family was alone on the farm. He also didn’t want Marina stumbling across a decomposing corpse.

Perhaps Willard is as afraid as I am. Perhaps he is hiding.

Willard was a local man, a gringo , even if he was unkempt and smelly. He also talked constantly, which is why Jorge couldn’t imagine him hiding for days. Willard ranted about “my old bitch of a wife, Bernice,” “the guddam government,” “guddam sun in my eyes,” “my bitchin’ back acting up again,” “that cheap bastard Wilcox,” “guddam milk thistles taking over the pasture,” and a long litany of life’s constant miseries.

Jorge checked the barn stalls, where a row of horses whinnied uneasily. Mr. Wilcox liked to show off his horses, even though he never rode them. Horses were a luxury, taking valuable pasture and providing no food in return, unlike the cows and chickens. But Jorge liked the horses, because they treated him as an equal, unlike the men.

He patted each on the nose and promised them grain. Unlike the llamas, they had survived the sun sickness.

Jorge entered the cluttered tack room, where Willard liked to take breaks and drink brown liquor called Old Grand-Dad’s. Metal trash cans full of sweetened grain stood in one corner. Harness dangled from one wall, and a row of saddles were perched across three sawhorses. One of Jorge’s duties was to ride the horses once a week to keep them all trained and in shape, but the leather gear was far from broken in.

The shovel Jorge had used to bury the people was hanging on the wall, along with axes, crosscut saws, sledgehammers, chains, animal harnesses, pulleys, fan belts, loops of twine, and all the other tools needed to operate the farm. Jorge couldn’t be sure, but the bags of chemicals and the backpack sprayers appeared untouched.

Thud-dunk.

Something had fallen overhead, up in the hayloft.

The suddenness of the sound kept Jorge from calling out. If it was Willard, the man would have heard him and responded. The barn was large but open, and sound carried well under the corrugated tin roof.

Jorge kept perfectly still, his heart leaping in his chest.

Nothing to fear. Everyone is dead .

Another heavy sound came from above, as if someone was dropping sacks of feed.

Jorge eased out of the tool room, careful not to let the door creak. He headed for the loft stairs and climbed, gripping the machete. Dust motes spun in the open windows like tiny insects. His ascent startled a chicken, which squawked and exploded from under the steps in a blur of feathers. It must have been nesting under there. Jorge wouldn’t trust those eggs, not with everything dying.