Patrick D'Orazio - Coming the Dark

He shifted and put his hands behind his head again as he lay back on the seat.

George stared at him and then gritted his teeth in frustration and flopped down in the open doorway of the van. He glanced at Jason and saw that the boy was staring blankly out the window, ignoring the conversation.

Turning back toward the house, he could no longer see Megan. The rifle felt strange in his hands, but he still wanted to jump up and go after her. His heart raced, and he felt torn between taking off and guarding Jeff and Jason, who weren’t in the best shape at the moment.

After a couple of minutes that seemed like forever, George stood up. He had resisted interfering for as long as possible. With the rifle in hand, he began moving away from the van. He knew that Jeff and Jason had the other rifle with which to defend themselves. That, along with the fact that he had heard nothing more ominous than the wind blowing, was enough to convince him that he needed to help Megan whether she liked it or not.

“I’m going to see what’s taking her so long,” he tossed behind him as he skirted the trees behind which they had parked. He came around them and stopped short.

Megan was standing on the porch with the front door open behind her, waving at him.

* * *

Megan had searched the inside of the house once she discovered the back door was unlocked. It looked like it had been abandoned weeks before, with many of the possessions of the family that had lived there gone. The garaged revealed only some dried oil spots where their vehicles once sat, but the pantry was stocked with all kinds of canned and dry goods. She didn’t attempt to open the refrigerator, knowing whatever was inside had gone bad long ago. The rest of the house looked to be in good order.

There were four bedrooms, which thrilled everyone to no end. Reasonably fresh sheets were in the linen closet, and George and Megan gleefully set to changing the beds. Jason snapped out of his daze a bit during this process and claimed one of the rooms that had obviously belonged to a teenager.

Megan played nurse and tended to Jeff’s bruises. There was little she could do for his jaw with no ice, but she bandaged his scalp, stinging his cuts with peroxide. After a quick examination of George and Jason, Megan pronounced that they were all in good health with no outstanding wounds or infections with which to concern themselves.

They agreed to have dinner together after checking out the barbeque grill and finding the propane tank half full. No steaks, of course, but George insisted he could do something interesting with the Spam and pork and beans they found on one of the shelves.

They discovered with some surprise that there was still water pressure and realized that the property had its own well and a generator in the basement. None of them had the knowledge to get the dusty old machine running, but they did find several large containers and fill them with water.

They pulled the van into the garage and loaded it up with the loot they had found in the house. Jeff was feeling less woozy and took charge of the task, dumping as much as he could into the rear of the van.

There was no heat, so each of them took a quick and invigorating cold shower and then ransacked the place for clean clothes. They picked through a sizeable collection of books and packed up several in a small cardboard box. When they sat down to dinner on the deck a couple of hours later, they felt exhausted but happy.

“It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?” Jeff leaned back in his plastic lawn chair and stretched out, lacing his fingers behind his bandaged head.

“Well, if that ain’t the understatement of the century.” Megan jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, and they all shared a quiet laugh.

“So now what?”

The survivors stared off into space as Jeff’s question hung in the air.

“I’m not asking for a big picture answer, guys, just asking what we should do next.” Jeff paused, staring at his empty plate.

“I mean, you know what I want to do.” The pause became awkward as Jeff, then Megan, and finally Jason looked at George. He could feel their eyes burning into him as he looked down at his hands. “I can’t ask you to help me get to my family. I know it’ll be dangerous. But I need to get back to them. I think…I think I want to find a car and head back home on my own.”

There was defiance on George’s face when he looked up. His eyes moved to Megan as she leaned over the table toward him.

She tried to smile but couldn’t. “We understand, George. We won’t try to stop you when you decide to go.”

Her smile did come then, but it was not confident or strong. She held her hand out to George, and he stared at it, his face full of relief. He blinked slowly and took her tiny hand in his oversized paw. When George looked over at Jeff, he was nodding in agreement. There was a hint of regret in his eyes, but it disappeared quickly.

George’s smile faltered when he glanced at Jason. The boy was trying his hardest to look disinterested in the conversation as he picked at the food remaining on his plate.

Jason had always been hard for George to read. From the time they were thrust together in the high school gymnasium alongside hundreds of other refugees, to their endless days stuck inside the church, the kid had shared little about himself. Their isolation had nearly driven George mad as he thought about and prayed for his family constantly. Jason, on the other hand, remained stoic and distant and didn’t seem to mind that they were trapped. All George knew about him was that he had lost his mother, a single parent, during the first few days of the plague. That was it. The rest of Jason’s story remained a mystery. That seemed to be the way the kid liked it.

The quartet fell into silence, the burning question of the moment answered. They sat back and relaxed, enjoying the sound of the slight breeze whispering through the trees and the crickets off in the distance.

After a while, Jeff sat up in his chair and clapped his hands together. Everyone looked at him.

“Well, enough of this lounging around and doing nothing crap. Let’s see if we can find a deck of cards or a board game in this mausoleum and have some fun.”

Megan grinned and went into the house. A few minutes later, she was back with a stack of games she had found in a closet. They decided on Monopoly, and for the next hour or so, until the sun started dipping down in the west, they rolled the dice and laughed with one other.

* * *

They moved a couple of sofas from the family room in front of the French doors at the back of the house and stacked the dining room table and chairs in front of the main entrance. They knew that neither of the makeshift barriers would hold up if they came under assault, but they would decide in the morning whether they should make the defenses more permanent or just move on.

They climbed the steps to the bedrooms, Megan fretting about Jeff’s head injuries, fearing he had a concussion. He laughed it off, but she insisted that it wasn’t safe for him to fall asleep if that was the case. Exhausted, he was prepared to argue with her until George stepped in and offered to stay up with Jeff. They would stand watch from up in one of the bedrooms. When he winked at Jeff as Megan was looking elsewhere, Jeff agreed quickly and the matter was settled.

The two men took the rifles and chose a bedroom with a view of the front lawn. They scrounged up a card table and chairs and settled in for a moonlit game.

“I’m okay, George, really,” Jeff said.

George nodded. “I know.” He smiled as he looked over at the other man. “I saw plenty of concussions back in my football days, and you don’t have any of the symptoms.”

He leaned forward and gave Jeff a conspiratorial look. “But like you said, Megan is going to do whatever she wants, and there’s not much you can do to stop her.”