Tim Washburn - The Day After Oblivion

“Where’s your mom?” Holly asks.

“I don’t know. Something’s going on. I can feel it in my gut.” Gage pulls the screen door open and nudges the front door open to reveal the living room. Gage stops in his tracks, stunned. The bed from upstairs is sitting in the middle of the room and lying atop the bed is his father, and his mother is sitting in a chair nearby. Most of Raymond Larson’s hair is gone and he looks severely emaciated. He doesn’t appear to be conscious. Gage finds his feet and shuffles into the room. “What’s going on, Mom?”

With effort, his mother, Ginny, pushes out of the chair and walks quietly across the hardwood flooring, nudging them back outside. Ginny walks over to the table and sits and Holly joins her. Gage, still stunned, leans against the tree.

“I had no way to reach you, Gage. The phones quit working and none of the farm trucks are running.”

“Was he outside when it started?” Gage asks.

“Not when it started, but within an hour or two. I begged him not to go outside, but he was determined to get the cattle up and into the barn. He was only outside for a little while.” Ginny pauses and dabs a tissue at the corner of her eye. “By day three, his hair was coming out in clumps. Garrett and Juliet came over and moved the bed downstairs for me.”

A tear breaks the surface tension and drifts down Gage’s cheek.

“How long has he been unconscious?” Holly asks, tenderly.

“He still has some lucid moments. They’re fewer and further between as the days pass. I don’t know how large of a radiation dose he received, but it must have been substantial.”

“And the cattle?” Gage asks.

Ginny glances up at her youngest son, tears shimmering in her eyes. “I checked on them about four days after and they were already dead.”

A lengthy silence descends upon the trio, each with their own interpretation of possible outcomes, none of them good. After several moments, Gage asks, “Garrett, Juliet, and the girls?”

“They’re all fine. Your brother walks up here a couple times a day to check on him. And me, too, I suppose.”

Gage pushes off the tree. “I’m going to sit with him a spell. Holly, you okay?”

Holly doesn’t know the answer to that question. With the bloody panties, and now this, it’s like an avalanche of dreadful happenings. “Go sit with your dad, Gage. I may walk down and see Juliet and the girls.”

Gage nods, palms his cheek dry, and returns to the house. The chair his mother had been sitting in is still warm. He scoots it around where he can reach his father’s hand. “I know we don’t ever hardly say it, Dad.” Gage pauses as the dam breaks and a river of tears flows down his cheeks. “It’s only… three… words, yet between… us it was always… one”—Gage expels a shaky breath—“one of the most… difficult… things to say. So I’ll… say… it… now. I love… you.” Gage sobs as he grasps his father’s hand with both of his. “I love you, Dad.” After several moments of sobbing, Gage dries his eyes and stands, bending down to kiss his unconscious father on the forehead. “I love you so much.” Bleary-eyed, Gage makes his way to the door. This time his mother is there to greet him. She leans into him and Gage wraps his mother in an embrace.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Backtracking around the Oak Ridge area, Zane and Alyx top a ridge and finally get a look at the surrounding area. Both gasp.

“It looks like Mars. There’s not a twig of grass left standing,” Zane says. “What was the thought process behind this madness?”

Alyx finds her voice. “That’s the problem. There wasn’t any thought process. Just sheer madness, plain and simple. I hope those responsible were wiped from the face of the earth.”

“Think Washington, D.C., is still standing?” Zane asks.

“Not a chance.”

“What do you think happened to General Vickers?”

“I don’t want to think about what happened to any of them. I just hope they had time to lob some nukes at the asswipes who did this.”

They drive another fifteen miles before finding a road that cuts back west. Now along the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Zane steers the pickup west through the Daniel Boone National Forest. The road is a winding two-lane dotted with run-down houses every couple of miles. The area is lousy with small creeks, and at the next bridge, Zane slows. “Think the water’s safe to drink? I’d like to save the bottled water until we really need it.”

“What?” Alyx says. “Are you a hoarder? We have plenty of water for now.”

“Okay, smartass, exactly how long is it going to take us to get where we’re going?”

“I have no idea. Surely not more than a few days.”

A few miles farther on, they pass a church, then another church, and finally a third church, all of differing denominations. “People like their churches around here,” Zane says. “They’re bunched so closely together you could visit all three on a Sunday morning and not break a sweat.” A mile down the road a sign welcomes them to Pine Knot, Kentucky. As they enter the outskirts of town, they pass two more churches, both of indeterminate faith. “There can’t be enough people in this small town to fill all of these churches.”

“People and their ideologies,” Alyx says. “They all think they’re going to the same place, with each thinking their path is the only way.” Alyx pulls the shotgun onto her lap and points the barrel out the side window. “All of these churches are making me nervous.”

Zane laughs. “Why?”

“They must be doing something to repent for on Sundays.”

The pass an auto parts store, a local pizza place, and a Dairy Cheer—all ransacked.

Alyx cocks both barrels. “I’m not picking up a good vibe from this place, Zane. Can we skirt this little downtown area?”

Zane glances to his left. “I don’t see very many side streets. Might be best to stick to the main road.”

“Do it quickly, then. People are moving toward the road.” Alyx turns in her seat and braces the stock of the shotgun against her shoulder, the barrel pointed out the side window.

“I see them.” Zane spots a sign announcing a north–south highway ahead. “Coming up on a highway. Need to take that south.”

“Fine, just don’t stop the truck.”

Zane presses down on the accelerator as more people spill out of the downtown buildings. “Why are they blocking the road?” Zane shouts over the wind noise.

Alyx repositions herself in the seat to improve her line of fire. “I told you I was getting a bad vibe about this place.”

“Hold on. I think I spotted a way out.”

Alyx braces a foot against the dash as they zoom past a funeral home. Planted on the front lawn are several oversized crosses, each draped with a dead body. A sign hung around one of the victims reads: LOOTER.

“Why couldn’t they just shoot them?” Alyx asks.

The group of people is growing as Zane keeps the gas pedal nailed to the floor. At the last instant, Zane cuts the wheel to the left and they shoot down a diagonal road that T-bones at Highway 27. He slows enough to keep the truck on four wheels, whips a left turn, and stomps on the accelerator. “What the hell was that?”

Alyx pulls the shotgun in, lowers the hammers, and turns in her seat. “That’s what you call crazy. Think those were their fellow townspeople staked to the crosses?”

“Hell if I know. I’m just glad it’s not us.” Zane releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “That takes Deliverance to an entirely new level. The only thing missing was an inbred boy picking a banjo.”

“I bet he was there somewhere.” Alyx rubs her arms and shudders, the shotgun still nestled in her lap.