The Resurgent

by Blake Wilbanks

  The next morning Xavier and Demetria woke at the same time. They looked around the room of the shelter, but it was empty. They were the only two that were still there.

  The two of them pushed themselves to their feet and made their way up the steep steps of the shelter.

  They looked up to the sky. It was light blue, like always, but the ripple was still flowing through it like a current.

  “Dad?” said Xavier. “Dad! Where are you?”

  Neither of their parents was anywhere to be seen and they were growing a bit discouraged. They searched the house, but it came up empty, and then they searched down in the shelter just to see if they had missed them somehow, but it was empty, as well.

  “Where are they?” asked Xavier. “They couldn’t have just left us here.”

  “They probably went for a walk around the block and didn’t want to disturb us. Or, maybe they just went to get us breakfast,” said Demetria.

  “No,” said Xavier. “Even if they were doing that, I don’t think that they would leave us here by ourselves. You know how they are, they’re all helicopter parents. They like being around us more then they love alone time. And they love their alone time a lot.” Xavier used exaggerated hand motions every few words just to add to the effect of his words.

  Demetria sucked in a deep breath of air, then turned to look around the vicinity of her house. She took in every inch of everything. She turned a full 360-degree angle and when she was back face to face with Xavier again, she shrugged. “Let’s not freak out, yet.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” replied Xavier, with a sigh. “But I’m on the verge of it.”

  He didn't wait for her response. Instead, he turned and walked away, toward the front of the house. He wanted to do one more check everywhere, and then he was going to start walking around the block to see if Demetria could have been right about them going for a walk.

  "Still can't find them. They had to have gone for a walk because the cars are still here."

  "Well," said Demetria. "Let's sit down on the couch, watch some TV or something, and wait to see if they come back. Just ten minutes, and then we'll go looking for them."

  Xavier nodded hesitantly. He wanted to argue but couldn’t muster the energy to do so. He sat next to her on the couch, getting comfortable.

  It took them a while to find something good to watch. All that was on TV was old reruns of TV shows and movies, but they, after a couple of minutes, with some luck, stumbled upon a Sherlock marathon. It was Xavier's favorite show, and in his opinion, it was the best. He had tried watching other Sherlock Holmes adaptations but the only ones that he could get into were the show with Benedict Cumberbatch, and the movies with Robert Downey Jr. in them.

  They were the ones that interested him most.

  He and Demetria lost themselves in the world of Sherlock. Watching him and Dr. Watson solve crimes and fall into their usual fit of banter, throwing ideas off of each other back and forth.

  The two of them had grown so immersed into the show that they didn't catch the sound of the front door opening and then closing, and a moment later Xavier's father was standing before them. His hair was disheveled and looked as if he had been pulling at it for hours or something like that. His chest heaved with every breath he took.

  "Dad," said Xavier. His mood perked up and he pushed himself into a sitting position. "What's wrong? You look as if you've just run a mile. Are you okay?"

  Alexander nodded his head slowly. "I'm fine. I'm just having trouble finding your mother, and Legan and Denya. I looked basically everywhere and I couldn't find them. I don't understand where they could have gone, i - it doesn't make any sense." He took a seat in an old beat-up recliner that had patches of leather breaking off of it

  Xavier and Demetria sucked in a few deep breaths of air. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know where to look. And they certainly didn't know what to think.

  Where could they be? thought Xavier.

  That was all he could think about. The room fell into an uncomfortable silence that lasted a couple of minutes. He spent it lulling back and forth on all of the thoughts of all the possible places that they could be. But when he spoke them aloud, his father told him that he had checked all of those places already, and he was pushed back to square one.

  "So," said Demetria, after ten minutes of painstaking uncomfortable silence. It was a relief because the silence was beginning to become a little too unbearable. "I guess we didn't have to attend school today."

  "I guess," said Alexander with a sigh. He didn't know what else to say. He had overslept just like them, and when he woke to the sight of his wife, and their friends missing, he acted without thought and ran out of the storm shelter to search for them. But every place he looked came up empty.

  The fact that his wife, and the only two people that they could really call friends, were missing wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened to him that morning. While he was on his wild goose chase around the neighborhood, he ran into a few people that stopped him in his tracks telling him about their wild theories, that didn't seem that, wild to him at the moment.

  Everyone that he had run into kept saying that the rapture had taken almost everyone that was worthy through the night. The only thing that stumped Alexander was the fact that everyone that said that to him was a bible trader, and they preached every chance that they could get. For some reason, it was funny to him that they weren't worthy, even though they were bible thumpers.

  But it made sense. He had always thought that they were hypocrites, and in a way, this proved it.

  He sighed and pushed himself to his feet. "Come on you two," he said. "We're going to go back to our place, I'm tired, and I want to see if they show up there. Even though they most likely won't.” He said the last bit under his breath. Demetria and Xavier didn’t need to know that he had doubts.

  Back at home, Xavier and Demetria go to his room, to watch TV. They didn’t want to wake his dad, once he had fallen asleep.

  Through the years, he had always had trouble sleeping. And Xavier had learned to let him sleep and not wake him for his own selfish needs. Especially when he could do whatever he needed to, himself, plus his father needed sleep more than anything else, right now.

  In his room, Xavier and Demetria tried to act as if nothing was wrong as if their parents hadn’t just magically disappeared and were nowhere to be found.

  Demetria laughed at something that happened on the TV. But he could tell that it was forced. It came from her chest, rather than her gut, and Xavier didn’t like the sound. Anything insincere should be a crime. Or, at least that is what Xavier thought. He preferred all things genuine rather than the alternative.

  But, despite all of that, he forced himself to laugh along with her. It wasn’t because of something that happened on the Television, that was just mediocre hilarity, but rather to fill the void of silence. If there was one thing that he hated most in the world, it was silence.

  For one: it was scary and unavoidable, and two: it always crept into the void as if there was nothing better that could fit there. It was like forcing a puzzle piece. In moments like that, you could never have a happy moment, but you could try. But it would be a hell of a shot in the dark.

  Whatever was playing on TV provided a little bit of a distraction, but it didn’t help much. Every now and then, as they would fall and get immersed into whatever was happening, and the plot got good enough to suck them in, their minds would lock in on something else, they’d lose focus on whatever it was that was happening in the show and they would fall into thoughts about where their parents could be. They were scary thoughts, but they were downright unavoidable.

  And that was when the sound of silence was at its worst. The only voices that they could hear were the ones that filled their heads.

  At least Xavier had his father, but Demetria had neither her father nor mother.

  They had been awake for a couple of hours now, and their p
arents still hadn’t returned. There was no telling where they were. With each passing moment, every ounce of hope that they had of them coming back slimmed down to nothing.

  “Where could they be?” thought Xavier, aloud. He didn’t mean to speak his thoughts, but the words had practically formed on his tongue and escaped his mouth of their own volition. But he was grateful for it. It was a sound to fill his ears, and even though it only lasted a couple of seconds, to him, it was enough. And he was glad when Demetria replied.

  “I have no idea. I don’t understand why they would have just left like that.” She sucked in a deep breath of air, trying to compose herself. When she spoke, her voice was thick with emotion, like she was getting ready cry. And she didn’t want that.

  In all the time that they had been friends, neither of them had ever seen the other cry. That was probably why they got along with one another so well. They were both the type of people to hold their emotions in and let them out whenever they were alone.

  And neither of them was alone at the moment.

  “Yeah,” said Xavier, pushing himself to his feet. “I don’t understand either.”

  He made his way over to the window and pulled the curtains to the side. The sun’s rays filled his room that was dark and lifeless, just a few moments before, with light. It almost made everything better.

  Almost.

  He looked out the window, taking in everything that he could see, just like he had done before. But, instead of his street being filled commotion and all kinds of chaos like it had been the night before, his street was quiet and uncharacteristically vacant. They were the only ones that seemed to be home, save for the house at the end of the street where Tyler lived.

  The car in the driveway was parked haphazardly, sideways, and there was a dented garbage bin tipped over on the lawn beside it. Other than that, the rest of the street seemed to be empty. It was practically a ghost town.

  And with that, Xavier couldn’t help but wonder where everyone could have been. Whatever they were seeking shelter from last night seemed to have been over with, so everyone should have returned home.

  Shouldn’t they have?

  Demetria peeked over Xavier’s shoulder and looked down onto the street down below. She seemed to have been thinking the same thing that he had.

  “It is weird,” she said matter-of-factly, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “Normally this street is filled with people mowing their lawns, kids running around playing games, and open-invite backyard barbeques that made your stomach rumble with hunger from the smell. I know you and I used to complain about the noise, but now I kind of miss it.”

  “Me too,” he replied. He meant it. The noise would be a welcome distraction, and now that it was gone, he wanted it back more than ever. He used to complain about not being able to hear himself think, but now all he wanted was to not be able to. His thoughts were a menace, and they couldn’t be tamed. They roared, like the crack of a whip, and demanded to be heard.

  He sucked in a deep breath of air. It was something that he did, a lot, to calm his nerves, and it always seemed to help. But it didn’t help now. If anything, it felt like an unwelcome distraction that didn’t help anything anymore.

  It didn’t work. It made him question if it had ever even really helped, or if it had just been some pathetic excuse and his conclusion was: no, it didn’t help. And yes, it was just some pathetic excuse.

  He heaved a heavy sigh, and threw himself onto his back, on his bed, and Demetria did the same. She cuddled up to him, something that they rarely ever did; only when one of them was ever feeling truly scared. And the fear was seeping down into the very core of their being.

  They looked up at the ceiling that was plastered with an overly exaggerated amount of glow in the dark stars. They weren’t glowing at the moment, but Xavier was sure that if he got up and closed the curtain that they would. Then they would be surged back into a dark and melancholy room with just the TV to keep them company, again.

  It didn’t seem that bad. If it were under different circumstances, that is.

  The TV provided peaceful background noise, as they stared up at the fake stars in a transfixed stupor. For some reason, unbeknownst to them, it helped them forget about all of their thoughts, and pretty soon they were falling into a peaceful, dreamless, slumber, where their thoughts and everything else didn’t matter.

  * * *

  Xavier was awakened by the sound of a loud knock at the door.

  He looked around the room, it was dark. From the lack of sunlight beading into his room, he could tell that it was dark outside. Well, by that and the fact that the moon was casting a ray of pale grayish light down onto the world below.

  He made his way down the stairs, slowly, not trying to wake anyone else up.

  His hand hovered over the knob of the door with anxiety-ridden anguish. He hoped that whoever was on the other side of the door was his mother and Demetria’s parents. That would be a relief.

  With one last breath of air, he pulled the door open. But it wasn’t his mother or Demetria’s parents on the other side; it was Tyler, the jock from school, and his neighbor at the end of the street.

  An intense wave of disappointment fell over him. He felt like crying more than anything else. But he didn’t. He pushed the emotions back and heaved a heavy sigh, something that he had been doing a lot of in the past few days since this, and school had started.

  “H – Hi,” he said.

  “Hey,” replied Tyler. “Could I come in? I don’t really know what’s going on, but my parents haven’t returned home yet, and I’ve checked everywhere, but everywhere is practically empty. A lot of people are missing, or something, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Sure,” said Xavier, for a lack of anything else to say, then slid open the door wider and stepped to the side to let him in.

  “Practically everyone is gone,” said Tyler, taking a seat on the couch, after Xavier had offered.

  “Yeah,” Xavier said, with a nod of his head in understanding. “My mother hasn’t returned either. My father and I don’t where she is, but we were with her just last night. And Demetria, her parents are gone, as well.”

  Tyler bit his bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth in contemplation. “Wow,” he said. “I – I don’t understand what’s going on, my parents are gone, I don’t know where they are.” He moved his hands in various different directions to exaggerate his words. “A – an – and that thing, whatever it is in the sky, is really freaking me out. And everything that’s going on, at the moment, I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Neither do I. I don’t understand a lot of the things that are happening, and I’m freaking out as well, but I’m really trying to keep my calm. Because I feel that if I start freaking out now, I’ll probably never stop. And that alone is a really scary thought.”

  There was a moment of silence. Neither of them spoke for a few moments. But the silence wasn’t like it had been earlier, with Demetria. It wasn’t laced with thoughts of where his parents could be but was instead laced with one coherent thought, alone: What’s going on?

  He didn’t dwell on it for long. Instead, he looked back up at Tyler, who was twiddling his thumbs, just to have something to do, and asked him if he wanted to lie down for a bit.

  And then he was leading him up the stairs, not stopping to think about the fact that he barely knew him, to a guest room that hadn’t been touched in years. It was only used when his grandparents came down to visit from the Glendale, and they hadn’t in years.

  As soon as Tyler was settled into the room, Xavier left and made his way back downstairs. He sat on the couch and turned on the TV, but nothing was playing. The screen was frozen on the image of static, and the words: No Signal, were written in bold letters across the screen.

  His eyes furrowed in confusion and he tried to change the channel, but they all showed the same thing. He cursed under his breath, turned the TV off, and the
n went back upstairs to his room, and placed himself gently back in bed beside Demetria, who was taking up half the bed. But as soon as Xavier was back beside her, she pulled him close and basked in the warmth of his body heat.

  And he did the same with hers.

  Tyler pulled back the large comforter that blanketed the bed and draped it over himself. He let himself relax into it and fell asleep in a matter of only a few minutes.

  It was a dreamless sleep, but it was a great one. It made all of the difference in the world; he slept peacefully, hoping that in the morning when he woke that today was just a dream or a fantasy that could be deemed as one of the worst ones in existence.

  The next morning, everyone woke to the sound of a plate breaking.

  Xavier ran down the stairs, and into the kitchen where his father stood with a stack of plates in hand, and on the floor, there was a heap of broken glass from a ceramic plate that surrounded him.

  “Are you okay?”

  Alexander nodded his head. His whole body was tense, and there were dark circles—darker than usual—under his eyes from the restless night’s sleep that he had endured. He cautiously made his way over to the dining table and took a seat. He gulped back the lump that was forming in his throat and said, “I was going to make us all breakfast, but I don’t think that I’m for it at the moment.”

  “That’s okay, dad. I’ll make us some breakfast.” And with that, he made his way around the kitchen getting everything that he needed together to make pancakes. Just something that didn’t take too long to make, and didn’t make too much of a mess.

  “Who’s that?” said Alexander, referring to Tyler, who stood in the doorway, his posture rigid.

  “That’s Tyler,” said Demetria, before Xavier could even formulate the words and get a grasp for them on his lips. “He . . . goes to school with us.”

  Alexander made a noise in understanding. “And why is he here?”