Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

I suppose I’ll always be shocked by death, the look of it on faces. Then all was still so… fresh, everything, even the outside air, smelling like a slaughterhouse town gone ripe.

I’d taken the painting off the wall and carried it with me under my arm from house to house, leaning it against porch steps next to uncarved pumpkins. Kodie didn’t even question it.

It became rote work. We made entry, I’d clear the house to make sure it was safe, and then she’d flip on the lights and start filling. I’d check back, next two. As the tubs filled, my eyes would glaze over at the rushing water and I’d think about how it all used to be and how was it going to be. As the waterlines crawled skyward, I saw great dark stinking pits and they were filling with bodies.

Those visions felt like my summerdreams, which I sort of lied to Mr. E about. I lied in that I didn’t tell him I was having them every night , the exact same one, only our clothing and the clouds changing, and every one had the MoPac train coming down the track we were on at the end, trapping us on the trestle. The kids would see us if we ran or jumped. We froze. Dream ended. My heart pounding as my eyes whipped open.

We made our way around the entire block, feeling good about our modest progress. We’d excitedly talked about the need for chlorine tabs to throw in the tubs. We’d need to hit the library and do book research on how to do this—how to do everything. In one house a bedside Bible caught my eye. I let the water fill the tub and flipped to the passage Jespers wrote on his whiteboard, Matthew 16:23— Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me. For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.

It needs you to need it.

Seek you. Seek you.

The static and whine roared through the house. That sound and Bass’s flat-toned imploring drew us into the room. We heard the buzz of static from the street. The front door was open and when we walked in we saw Bass standing in front of the rack of electronics he’d constructed. Top and center sat the ham radio. Bass bobbed his head.

He’d been busy. Before that, he’d set up the solar panels in an array on top of the detached garage to catch westering sun. I marveled.

Bass had connected it all to Martin’s big speakers. He glanced back at us, lifting his eyebrows in acknowledgement. “Whole block’s tubs are filled,” I shouted, backhanding his shoulder. “Hey, kill that for a sec.” He turned it down but the static was still there.

“So, this thing’s going and I’m learning how to use it. Pretty simple, really. Just turn the dial slowly and look for open channels, listen for voices, keep calling out our existence. There’s got to be another group like us out there banging away doing the same thing.” Bass twisted the knob to a clear frequency, lifted the mike, and spoke. “Turn it to the US standard frequency here and… CQ CQ. This is Bastian in Austin Texas USA calling CQ and waiting for a call… ”

“Seek you. You say seek you?” I asked.

“No. The letters. C and Q. Just the thing you say. Means we’re calling any amateur radio station out there. There’s all this protocol and codes in this guide that came with it,” Bass held up the thick soft-backed book, “but it’s meaningless now. You guys can do it, too, whenever. Just come over and grab the mike and push this here. I say we leave it open and ping away as often as we can.”

The static compounded the emptiness, hissed how desperate our hope.

“Hey, it’s Halloween,” I said. Lifted chins and attempted smiles. This might be the first Halloween that truly scared us.

“I’m going as a ham radio operator,” said Bass.

“I think Kevin and I already did our trick-or-treating,” said Kodie.

I blurted in higher-octave Peanuts -speak, “I got a pack of gum!”

“I got a rock ,” Bass said like a deflated Charlie Brown. We laughed. Well, I only chuckled because when he said that, I thought of stone piles.

That image overwhelmed and so I blurted to dispel the feeling. “Do we hit the road and expose ourselves to God knows what, or stick here?” Silence. “Right now, I think we take safety where we can find it, and stick together. Agreed?”

“This radio’s our hearth and fire. We stay here, I say, for now, for tonight at least,” said Kodie.

“See any reason for us to be searching for some other place to stay? Any place safer?” I put air quotes around safer . “Before we set up any more stuff like this, let’s be clear. I mean, we could go over to Camp Mabry and see what’s what.”

Kodie said, “Not tonight. Safety net’s gone. No police, army, doctors, mommies and daddies. We can’t go roaming around in the dark, not after Butler Park.”

“No,” Bass said. “I see no reason why we’d risk leaving what we know here. I’ve set all this up, you guys have made backup water available. I’ll get the generators going.”

“These first days are triage. Breathing room until…” I shrugged, motioned to the radio.

“Whatever we think of next,” said Kodie.

“Whatever comes next,” I said.

Kodie chortled. “I think we’re good on weapons for now,” she said, nodding at the arsenal against the wall. Bass and Kodie had moved the couch to another wall and arranged everything, the guns and ammo, so we could get to them quickly. We all turned to take in the impressive display.

“Should we go to someplace more fortified, a hotel or something? I dunno….” I said, still spitballing.

Bass answered, “Hate to say it. We’d be trapped up there, if, well, you know—”

“If the hundred thousand kids of Austin decided to turn on us? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Kodie was kind of mad. “We need to stop tiptoeing on eggshells and talk plainly and honestly to each other or we’re never going to make it.” Oddly, she shot Bass a knowing look, which he returned. When I searched both their faces, they looked down.

And then Kodie wheezed, her first of the day I knew of. It crackled and whined. An uncomfortable static-filled quiet followed.

“I’ve loaded all these here,” Bass said, waving his hand in game-show-display form. “I know guns. Fourteen different species of handguns here, all ready. Same with the twelve shotguns. Now, these automatics here, civilian-grade military assault rifles, your Bushmaster M-16s, these are all topped off. I can teach anyone to shoot who doesn’t know how. We should all know how at least. Over here you’ve got your…” and as he continued with his proud inventory all I could think of was kids. Mowing down kids, sweating and sneering like Rambo. What else would we be shooting at?

When Bass was finished, I had to say it. “Let’s not avoid the nine-hundred-pound pink gorilla riding the elephant in the room. Anyone here think there are adults alive? Show of hands.”

Kodie raised her hand. “We don’t know anything for sure.” She punctuated this with a cough.

Me: “True. But, Occam’s Razor. No military jets or tanks. There’s nothing, right? We know this.”

“Still. It’s early. We don’t know,” she said.

“Can we agree they’re dangerous? Are we willing to shoot to kill if it comes to that?”

Bass said, “If in mortal danger, we’re going to protect ourselves as needs be. If a hoard of a ten thousand kids comes running down the street at us, I say we get out the M-16s and…”

“What, mow them down?” Kodie asked, slackjawed at Bass. More sarcasm than disdain.

Bass said, “If they’re coming to kill us, then… yes.”

“When I fired into the air the night of, they scattered,” I said. “Probably all we’d need to do.”

“They won’t go into a cemetery for chrissakes,” said Bass. “They’re scared kids.”