The Great Silence

by Emery C. Walters

  “I’m scared, Burk. I mean not just of the mouse, but of everything. What’s left? Who’s left? Are there bodies all over town? Are there survivors like us? Will people get violent and kill for food? Thank you for being with me! Thank you.”

  “So kiss me, you idiot,” Burk said, smiling. “I like older men.” And as we drew closer together to do so, he added, “And I’m scared, too.”

  The kiss might have blossomed into more, but just then, we heard the pitter patter of tiny feet as Paris made quickly for the carpet so she could throw up the semi-digested mouse in comfort.

  Burk sighed. “I’ll get it. You’re old. You need your rest.”

  I smacked his ass for him as he got up.

  When he came back, he had a pad of paper and a couple of pens. “We could use the computers for this, but if—when—we lose power, we’d lose our notes. Now, let’s see what we need to do, can do, and are willing to do. First comes survival, and under that is safety and supplies. Under safety is here, elsewhere, and environments, you know, the neighbors, rats, etc.”

  “Contacting others,” I put in. “All our families, friends, and then the people around us we may want to organize with, get together with, or avoid. While the phone still works, and if we still have Internet and TV, radio. Hey, one of the neighbors has a ham radio antenna. Do you know anything about that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, I do,” replied Mr. Jack of all Trades, Burk. “Good thought. Of course, that may also involve safety and health. But if you point me in the right direction, I can do it.”

  I looked him dead in the eye and said, “I want to go with you. I don’t like us being separated.” Only, I ruined my sincerity with a huge blush.

  “So noted,” Burk replied, patting my cheek.

  Our eyes met and held like lovers. Sigh. I’m such an old romantic. Such an old fool sometimes, too.

  “It’s okay,” he added. “I understand. And I should teach you to shoot.”

  “Naw, I’ll teach you karate. That’s a lot more fun. Body contact, you know…”

  We shared a smile. I think we both knew where this was heading. It was no longer a matter of if, but when. Gee, and I hadn’t even seen him naked yet. I must be slipping.

  Thinking of that, I said, “You know, if we shower together, it would save water.”

  He didn’t even look at me. He just nodded and wrote down on his list. “Water. Lots of water. Damn it, everything’s a priority one. I don’t know what to do first. We need extra water, we need to contact people while we can, we need to restructure the house so the doors and windows can’t be broken through. We need to bury bodies, we need to see if there are others we want to connect with. I don’t know what to do first, man. I’m sorry!”

  With that, Burk jumped up and wandered over to the window. “Hey, come look. I heard something and—oh, my lord—come see this!” He waved at me urgently, never taking his eyes off whatever he saw.

  I ran over to join him. It was a plane, a large one, way off course for SEA-TAC, and much too low. In fact, we watched as it smashed into the Columbia Center, which burst into blackness and flames.

  Chapter 5

  “It’s like 9/11 again,” Burk stammered. “But why? Is it war? Terrorists? Just people got sick or passed out while flying? Oh, God!”

  I put my arm around him and held him tight. This was indeed a horrible thing to watch and even to just consider, but as we did so, other planes came into sight. I recognized several as being from the Whidbey Island base, or so I thought; but there were others, too, and they all swooped and flew all around. Then things fell out of the bottoms of some, and bullets were fired from others. I couldn’t even breathe, but suddenly, Burk pushed me away from the window, and together we ran into the hallway and cowered behind the bedroom door. We could hear some of the explosions that followed, but whether they were bombs dropping or airplanes crashing, we did not know.

  Burk crawled into the den and turned on the computer and the TV. The television held only static, but over the Internet came a voice, Anderson Cooper maybe, I don’t know, saying we were under attack.

  “The Soviet Union or North Korea, we don’t know, has decided we spread the Blue Plague to them on purpose. The…” static “…take cover…” more static “…this is bullshit.” Then there was only the static.

  Something rattled the front door, and I turned to it, frightened.

  Burk ran down the hallway and looked out the peephole and said, “It’s that girl I saw. I think we can let her in! She looks so frightened, but how did she find us?” He unlocked the door, pulled her inside, and slammed it again behind her.

  She looked about sixteen but may have been older. She was shaking in fear, and her clothes had blood splatters all over them. “You dropped this in the store,” she said, holding out a piece of paper on which he had written my address. “I don’t know what to do! I’m so scared. Thank you for letting me in. I just can’t do this alone anymore! Everyone around me is dead and now this…” She waved awkwardly outside. “I’ve seen some guys who look like they’re dead, but they’re not. They have knives and drugs. They saw me, and I ran and ran!” Then she collapsed, fainted maybe, and Burk carried her to the den and placed her on the sofa. We pulled the blinds down and closed the drapes.

  “I hate to do this, Bruce, but you two should get in the basement. I’m going to the house with the antenna and find out what’s happening.”

  I looked from him to the girl. Was she up to a two-block walk? She looked so white and was breathing so fast. “Be safe.”

  I pulled the girl up and headed for the basement stairs. I knew he was right to go alone. I was shaking so hard myself and, to be honest, was quite afraid to leave the relative safety of my house anyhow. On the way, I pointed to the house with the antenna, and he left without another word. I was blinded by sudden tears, but put my arm around the girl, and we stumbled down the steps to the basement together. If nothing else, it was a miracle we didn’t trip over Paris and break our necks.

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” the girl asked as I thought about whether or not to turn the lights on.

  This part of the basement had no windows, so I lit the overheads. The girl was pretty, but her mascara was running, and she needed a bath. Her hair, though a beautiful cardinal red (I guessed Feria by L’Oréal), was a disaster.

  “Is that man your son?” Her gaze left me and took in her surroundings.

  Just your average basement, left over partly from the fifties and updated in the seventies; part old furniture and way past their prime televisions and stereos, and part pool table and shag rugs. And a bar, I’d almost forgotten about that. Should I offer her a drink? Why not? Age didn’t matter right now, but a little calm could only help. Besides, I needed one drastically.

  “Look at all these antiques!” the girl said.

  I handed her a small glass of whiskey. “Kill or cure,” I muttered. “Sip it if you don’t drink much.”

  After one sip, which showed for sure that she didn’t drink much, going by the gasping and her eyes watering, she said, “My manners! My grandmother would kill me…well, shit. My name is Fiona, Fiona Mackintosh, but I prefer to be call Mac. Macnut, my brother used to say, but he’s…um, dead now. They’re all dead. They all caught the plague or plaque or whatever it was. My brother and I used to play this game where we’d hold our breath and see who could turn blue the fastest. I think I better sit down.”

  She dropped onto the couch. I handed her a bag of cookies, and even while she opened it and ate some, as if she’d been starving, she continued to prattle away as nervous as a, well, not a cat. Paris was stretched out on the stereo cabinet, sound asleep.

  I left them both to it and started sorting boxes of locks, toilet paper, soap, and medicines. I had to keep busy, or I’d be chewing my nails off worrying about Burk.

  After a while, the girl stood up and came over to me. “I am so grateful you let me in. Some guys followed me home the other day, and I was barely ab
le to get inside and lock the door. They shouted, ‘We’ll be back!’ when they finally left. Then the bombs started up, and I grabbed your son’s address and just panicked. I didn’t even get my phone or anything.”

  “We’ll take you back when it’s safe, if you want, but I imagine Burk will think you should stay here.”

  “He’s dreamy.” She sighed.

  “He’s g…not my son, just a friend,” I said. “My name is Bruce; his is Burk. Welcome to the family.”

  “Our cat died, too. Everybody died, except me. Why didn’t I die, too? I lived through all that disease, and I didn’t want to die at the hands of some gorked-out, drunken rapist.”

  “We’re working on safety and supplies,” I said calmly, faking it, actually. “Come help me sort and maybe label things. Oh, that fur thing on the stereo is named Paris, the only one of my three cats who is still above ground.” I don’t know why I couldn’t say “dead.”

  But Mac said, “And she’s underground, too, in a way! I mean, this basement, here.” She blushed. “I’m sorry. I always try to be funny when I’m scared.”

  Oh, she’ll fit right in, I thought.

  “I didn’t even bring my tampons!” she burst out, making me quiver in fear or something.

  Anyway, ewww. Even that reminded me of my childhood. Girls had cooties then. Apparently, they still did.

  Chapter 6

  Finally, the door opened, and after a near-heart attack on my part and a big smile on Fiona’s, er, Mac’s face, Burk came downstairs.

  “Everyone is blaming everyone else, and whole nations are bombing the shit out of both their former enemies and former allies. I contacted four stations, all in different countries. I think we’re okay here. Nothing has been in the sky or falling out of it for a couple hours now. You never know, of course. But for now, I, oh, I’d forgotten all about you! Hi, I’m Burk.”

  “Fiona, but I go by Mac. Are you guys going to let me stay? I’m not going to put out, so you might as well know that right up front! Your dad’s been really nice to me, but he’s old—but I don’t know about you.” Her chin went up bravely, but her quivering voice gave away her fear.

  My eyebrows went up. There’s being blunt, and then there’s being blunt. But Burk was great.

  “No, honey, you’re completely safe here. Must have been something in the plague, you know, rendered us uninterested in girls. Now that it’s safe, can we take you home to your…people…or well, what can we do to help you?”

  “I need my things! I’ve got my period!”

  Burk winced. He looked at me. “Shall we all go walkies, Dad?”

  Little prick, I thought, behind my fake smile.

  “I can cook!” Mac said brightly. “And I don’t eat much. I could really be helpful.” She looked ready to cry. “I can’t stay at home. My family is all dead…and…I’m scared to be alone with them. What if they come back to life? What if it’s a zombie plague? What if those men who followed me come back?”

  In the end, Burk picked up a gun, I took a knife, and we all carried bags, and set out to walk to her house. It was so weird out, with some houses blasted by totally unnecessary bombs. What if there had been survivors in them? We saw three or four people, mostly in the distance or hiding themselves as quickly as they saw us. I guess there is safety in numbers.

  Her house was only a twenty-minute walk, but the neighborhood was quite different. The houses were much smaller and shabbier. I didn’t want to feel better-than, but I did feel luckier. We entered the house, held our noses against the smell of death, and bagged up everything she needed, both what she’d already owned, and what she’d brought back from her shopping sorties. She only cried after we had left the house and were almost back to mine.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t have time to bury your loved ones,” I said to her, taking her arm. That’s on our list, but there’s so much else to do, as well.”

  Once safely back inside, I showed her upstairs and let her pick a bedroom. My room, which had been my parents’, was on the first floor with the den, living and dining room, and kitchen and bathroom, and the pantry. The other three bedrooms and two baths were on the second floor, and another whole suite, which used to be rented out, but was now just an attic full of stored items, was on the third. I wondered if we’d find, or rescue, other survivors, and who and what they would be like. She settled in, and Burk and I checked the locks and set to looking for something to fix to eat.

  “She thinks I’m your father,” I said.

  “Well, in that case, there’s going be an incest party later,” Burk growled, hitting me with the dish towel, shocking the hell out of me—but in a very nice way. “She’s not invited,” Burk said simply, then flapped his hand on the end of his arm, limply. “Just us boys.”

  But as it turned out, it wasn’t that night. Things were getting noisy again in the neighborhood.

  Mac was as good as she claimed. She was quiet and got busy stowing her stuff in her room. Then she came down and examined the kitchen and pantry. “I’ll fix something, maybe some meat and veggies before the power goes out and they spoil. Hey, you have room outside for gardens. We should plant veggies now that it’s spring.”

  In a bit, we sat down to eat. It was quiet outside, and we all relaxed. Well, Burk and I did. She was fired up and talkative.

  “I meant to pass as a boy, but the period remark kind of threw that out the window, but still, when we go out and if we meet anyone, I’m Mac, okay? I’d feel a lot safer, and, uh, there’s reasons.”

  We looked at each other and nodded. I’d spent the last couple of hours sending emails and texts and listening to phones ring or go to voicemail, without ever contacting another—living—soul. So had Burk. We were both depressed about it, even though we had rather expected it. How long would these things we took for granted last without people manning them? Funny term that, but womaning them sounded stupid and awkward. If we were going to be a house of men, it didn’t matter. Too bad Mac didn’t have a dick. I almost asked her, but was afraid she might say she had one back home in a drawer. Anyhow, she was just a kid to me, and it would be awfully rude.

  “Do you have seeds? I can garden. Can you get some?”

  I nodded.

  “My grandmother taught…” Mac stopped and looked at us and shriveled back against her chair. “I’m not very hungry right now after all, but I did see ice cream in the freezer, and if the power goes out…”

  “There are large spoons in the drawer,” Burk pointed out, sounding either pained or amused. “Have at it. But don’t believe what the carton says, those half-gallon things are really one-person servings.”

  When she got up to get a spoon (or shovel, whatever,) I said, “Be careful. She’ll fall in love with you if you keep being nice like that.”

  “I only have eyes for you,” he sang, staring straight into my heart, I mean, my eyes.

  I had to admit, I’d never seen anyone eat ice cream with a gravy ladle before, but she seemed to do okay with it, even sharing with Paris, who had jumped up onto the sink.

  “If you guys go out foraging, get seeds, okay? I can make a spreadsheet of all the food we have, and then, oh, do we have detergent? We’ll need to do laundry at some point. I don’t mind doing that.” She looked worried, but had drips of ice cream on her chin.

  We were being bossed around by a teenaged girl. Okay, she had some good ideas, but still. But still. Both of us could go out together, and the house would be safe, so there was that. I had to believe that. There wasn’t a whole lot else to believe.

  Burk must have sensed it. “If it’s okay with you, Daddy-o, I’d like to check on your other immediate neighbors. We can hit the hardware store for seeds, too. You have shovels and garden tools, right? We have several hours until it gets dark, but we can pick up a couple of flashlights either in the store or from someone’s house. Assuming nobody shoots us.”

  I was just going to nod agreement, but that little monkey slowly pulled something out of his pocket and showed it t
o me.

  It was a condom. Actually, he had three in there. Maybe he wanted to kill me, (three?), but I blushed and smiled. He giggled, and Mac stared at him, perplexed.

  ‘Monkey,’ not the best of cute little names anymore, was it. It took me a minute to regain my balance. So much had changed, such vital things, that to be thrown for a minute by a simple word, seemed childish, stupid. It was a small thing, but it was symbolic of so much.

  Chapter 7

  Mac was cuddling the cat when we left. “Can you bring back a piano?” she called, only half-serious. “We’ll need music. I can’t live without music!”

  “There’s a guitar in the attic, and maybe a mandolin or a lute as well!” I called back. “Make sure you lock this door and don’t let anyone in.”

  “It’s eerie without airplanes and cars,” I said, noticing the silence.

  There were noises, like maybe a car or two far away, but it could never make up for the sounds of the vibrant, full-of-life city Seattle had been, especially in my location on Capitol Hill. We stood still and listened for a few minutes, hearing what sounded like firecrackers in the distance, but was probably gunfire. Then we went down the stairs and through the alley to the hardware store. It was cold and empty, and there was a hole in the ceiling now. We grabbed handfuls of seed packets and more flashlights, batteries, and a couple of backpacks from the camping supplies aisle.

  “Let’s go break into houses,” Burk said, and started singing.

  I wasn’t listening at first. As we walked back along the street, looking at houses, all dark and forbidding, I caught these phrases and had to wonder at just what kind of boy genius he had been as a sailor:

  “What will we do with a drunken sailor?

  “Way hay and up he rises,

  “Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe in him,

  “Put him in the bed with the captain’s nephew.”

  And…so on.