Tim Washburn - The Day After Oblivion

“Already tried. She won’t take it.”

Gage hangs his head. “Do you want me to take her?”

“No, I’ll hold her. You can console Holly. She’s in the bedroom.”

Gage nods and trudges down the hall. He eases the door open and finds the room dark. Thinking Holly might be asleep, he starts to pull the door closed and hears a sniffle. “Holly?”

This time it’s a sob. Gage clicks on the light to see his wife on the bed, a pillow over her head. He walks over and lies down beside her.

“Where… where… did… you go?” she asks, between sobs.

Gage wraps an arm around his wife and pulls her closer. “I went over to Dr. Samia’s to see if she had any formula.”

“She didn’t… did… she?”

“No.”

Holly lifts the pillow off her head. “Maybe Dr. Abbasi has some?”

Gage is hesitant to tell her the truth in her fragile state of mind. “Doc says he lived in Oklahoma City.”

Holly drops the pillow back on her head and sobs.

“We’ll get through this, babe.”

The sobs stop and Holly flashes immediately to anger. She throws the pillow to the floor. “How? You going to start producing milk in your breasts?” She sits up and scoots back, sagging against the headboard.

“Dr. Samia seemed confident your milk will come in.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not here, is she?”

Gage pulls himself to a sitting position and leans back against the headboard. Holly refuses to look at him. “Are you producing any milk?” he asks in a soft, calm tone.

She shakes her head side to side like a dog with a snake. “Not enough!”

Gage knows another question will push her over the edge. Instead, he reaches out to take her hand and she yanks it away. “I even went looking through the cars on the highway. I don’t know what else to do, Holly.”

Holly swipes a tear away with the back of her hand and exhales a long, shaky breath. “Gage, our baby is going to die and I can’t do a damn thing about it.”

Gage scoots closer and tentatively reaches out for her hand again. This time she allows him to take it. “She’s not going to die, Holly. If I have to drive across the state looking for formula, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Holly, staring straight ahead, says, “You better start driving.”

Gage nods, pushes off the bed, and steps out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him. Olivia is still crying and Susan is still walking.

“Where’s Henry?”

Susan glances up. “In the barn. How’s Holly?”

“Not good,” Gage mutters as he walks down the hallway to Henry’s study. After entering the combination he pops the door on the gun safe and grabs one of Henry’s pistols and a box of ammo before relocking the door. Gage heads for the door and strides across the yard, entering the barn. “Henry, you know everybody in town. You have to know where another pediatrician lives.”

Henry is puttering around with something on the workbench. He pauses to think. “We haven’t been to a pediatrician since the girls were small. But, I think old Dr. Stone is still around.”

“Where does he live?”

“Uh-uh, Gage. If you’re going, I’m going.”

“Load up.” Gage turns and heads for the pickup.

Shawnee, Oklahoma

“We should be coming up on a highway that’ll take us back north,” Alyx says, peering out the windshield.

“Why do we want to go north?” Zane asks. “I thought you said I-40 ran right past Weatherford.”

“It does. But it also runs right by Tinker Air Force Base.”

“Damn.”

“I agree. We need to head north and pick up the turnpike, which feeds into I-35. From there, we can pick up I-40 again, bypassing the entire mess at Tinker.”

Zane shakes his head. “That’s miles out of the way.”

“We have no other choice. Right now, we’re about thirty miles east of the base. We’re not going to get much closer and Highway 177 feeds right into the turnpike. Otherwise we’ll be chasing our tail trying to navigate the back roads.”

Although not particularly happy with the decision, Zane takes the exit when they come to it. He navigates around a clump of cars at the exit before hitting open road. The area is mostly rolling farmland that’s interspersed with an occasional house. Most of the homes are postage-stamp size compared to the barns and farming equipment that surrounds them. Trucks of all shapes and sizes are parked haphazardly around the yards and there’s an assortment of tractors that range, sizewise, from a notch above a riding lawn mower to hulking behemoths that are taller than most of the home’s rooflines. Toss in an occasional combine here and there, along with all the tractor implements needed to run a farm, and Zane bets the final tally has to be in the millions of dollars.

“How do they afford those monster tractors?”

“It’s the great American way. They’re mortgaged to the hilt.”

“I guess they won’t have to worry about making payments for a while. Your dad have any tractors?”

“Of course. You can’t have a farm and not have a tractor. It’s tiny compared to most of these.”

Zane glances at Alyx and smiles. “Do you put on your Daisy Dukes and drive the tractor around the pasture?”

“Does that turn you on?”

“Yeah, a little.”

Alyx laughs. “During the summers when I was home from college, I’d help Dad bale the hay, but I sure as hell wasn’t wearing a pair of short shorts. The mosquitoes would eat you alive, and what they didn’t get, the wasps and bees would. Sorry to burst your bubble, but most of the time I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.”

Zane smiles. “That’s kind of sexy, too. Were you wearing a cowboy hat?”

Alyx bats her eyelashes. “Nope, a ball cap.”

They hit the turnpike at Wellston and follow it west, back toward Oklahoma City.

“So your dad designs wind farms?” Zane asks.

“Yep. Got his engineering degree from Texas A&M and went to work for an energy company that was just starting a wind division.”

“Your mom and dad meet in college?”

Alyx nods. “Their junior year, and married after both graduated. What about your parents?”

Zane grows silent. After several moments he says, “My parents died when I was eight years old.”

Alyx gasps. “I’m so sorry, Zane. What happened?”

“My father had a business meeting in Frankfurt. He did something in banking, but I don’t know exactly what. We were living in Brooklyn, and my sister and I were out of school for Christmas break. We were all, the entire family, going to spend the week of Christmas at my grandparents’ house out on Long Island. At the last minute, Mom decided to join my dad on the trip. A second honeymoon, they said, although it was supposed to be a relatively short trip—three or four days. They were supposed to be back home four days before Christmas. My grandparents drove into the city to pick us up and that was the last time we ever saw our parents.”

Alyx edges closer and puts a hand on his arm. “How did they die?”

Zane stares at the road ahead for a few minutes before turning to look at Alyx. “Ever hear of Pan Am Flight 103?”

“Oh my God. They were aboard that plane when it went down over Lockerbie, Scotland?”

“Yes. December 21, 1988. And it didn’t go down; it was blown up by two Libyan nationals. My parents were on their way back from Frankfurt.”

Alyx sits in silence, processing the news. After several moments, she asks, “And your grandparents raised you and your sister?”

“They did, even though it was hard for them to feed themselves much less two extra mouths.”

“I thought Gaddafi paid some type of compensation.”