The Great Silence

by Emery C. Walters

He knelt beside me, looked at all the boxes behind us, and said, “Lunch is ready. Want some help with these boxes? Or would you rather…” With that, he kissed me. When he pulled back and I stood up, my knees felt like jelly. For a minute, I thought I’d need him to carry me down the stairs, preferably straight into my bedroom. But lunch was ready.

  Yes, indeed, I thought again, as I felt my way down the attic steps, give me the strength to endure my blessings.

  After lunch, Finn and Miranda chatted together, and I was grateful. I’d never felt comfortable around children. Miranda could be in her thirties for all I knew, but she was happy in a childlike way. Burk was lost in thought, then got up to find some paper and a pencil and started making notes.

  “The house next door is so close to yours, it wouldn’t take much to connect them; some wood paneling and some windows or doors or even a connection through the garages, with more concrete blocks…and the gardens could be combined…double the bedrooms…find someone who can cook…” He looked up at me and winked. “If we find more people…I could share yours. I wonder what’s in their basement and attic…” He looked up at me again, his eyes searching.

  I couldn’t even finish chewing what was in my mouth. I couldn’t even reach for my soda. I couldn’t take my eyes off his. I couldn’t stop my dick from knocking my napkin onto the floor, either. I think he understood because even though we think love is something invisible and only felt, sometimes it’s much more than that. This was one of those times.

  Chapter 14

  It must have been noon because the church bells were ringing again. Traditional? Maybe aimed for, but it was actually later, around one P.M., but we’d take the thought for the deed. It actually sounded good, this time. Phil must be figuring out the hang of things, so to speak.

  After the ringing of the bells broke my spell, I tuned into the conversation.

  Miranda was saying, “I called everyone on my phone, but nobody answered, so I didn’t bring it with me. I guess they’re all asleep, too.”

  Which, of course, made me understand why I hadn’t been using my cell phone while I still could. I couldn’t bear the thought of nobody answering. You wouldn’t know anything anyway, and I was already assuming the worst, but this way, I could pretend. Well, that sounded stupid even to myself.

  I heard Finn say, “That was clever. I turned mine off, too. Sometimes when it rang, it startled me so much I’d jump.”

  I could agree with that. There’d be that minute of, oh, my God, who’s still alive! And everyone I knew would flash through my mind. And it’d probably be a robo call or a wrong number, and everyone would crash down into being dead for sure again, asleep. They’re all asleep and won’t wake up.

  Miranda said, “Sometimes I sing when I feel scared.”

  As if on cue, Burk stood. “Let’s all drink and be jolly and drown our melancholy,” he came out with in a hearty tenor. I wondered where he’d gotten that, for I vaguely remembered it from some old 78 RPM sailor’s ditty record of my grandfather’s. That and a few others that couldn’t be sung in the presence of children.

  While we were sitting there, finishing up a bag of leftover Girl Scout cookies someone had found, finding balance and peace with each other over a meal together, we heard gunfire and then explosions in the distance. Miranda and I both ducked under the table. Finn and, belatedly, Burk, joined us.

  Burk said, “Stay calm. It’s not close by. I’ll go look out the windows and make sure everything is locked up tight.” He handed down the bag of cookies for us to finish.

  I’d never loved someone so much in my life.

  The gunfire continued and sounded as if it might be coming closer. I wanted to be a manly man and go help or something, anything, but Finn put his hand on my arm.

  “Stay with her. I have a gun, and Burk will keep me safe. But who will keep him safe? Let me have my chance to be a man.”

  So I cowered there, feeling old and helpless so that Finn would not have to feel young and helpless. The gunfire was indeed getting louder and closer, and now we could hear screaming, some hoarse, some high and brittle, some just words: “Run! Run!” and “Get up!”

  I put my arms around Miranda’s solid little body and held her close, and she used her own hands and arms to cover her ears and eyes, which were squeezed shut anyway. She kept a death grip on one of her dolls somehow.

  The screaming seemed to go on forever and echo all around the room. It reminded me of Poe’s poem ‘The Bells’ and the intensity of hearing that read out loud. I heard a door open somewhere and more shots. I heard Finn screaming encouragement, and then Burk cursing. I pulled the dish towel down and put it over Miranda’s head.

  “Here, this will hide you. Stay here; you’re safe!” It might have been a lie, but I had to know. I had to see what was happening. I, too, was a man, old or not. And those were my kids out there, wherever they were. I couldn’t stand the screaming for another minute without trying to make it stop.

  Then it did stop. There was a crack of a shot, and then the screaming stopped. There was more gunfire than before, and then the door slammed, but the cursing went on. Now there was crying, too, and I had to know which one it was, not that it mattered. If someone had shot one of my people, my loved ones, my family, I’d kill them. I had to know.

  When I reached the front door, they were there, both Finn and Burk, and they weren’t hurt. The crying was coming from a young woman with skinned knees and tears pouring down her face, her hair windblown every which way. Her clothes were torn, and her nails were bloody.

  “The boy!’ She cried. “Let me go out there! Maybe he’s all right!”

  Burk was holding her against him, and Finn had hold of her arm. The woman struggled to be free.

  “I’m so sorry,” Finn kept saying. “He’s not all right, but you are, and we’re here. You’re safe now.”

  Burk added, “And those two men will never hurt anyone again. If only we’d been quicker.”

  Finn said, “It is what it is. Hush now, let me take you upstairs and wash you up. I know this is awful, and you wish it had been you, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t your time. I’m so sorry.” He led the woman upstairs, and I have to add, I saw Finn as womanly as it was still possible for him to be. Caring, loving, as only a woman can, or as I was learning, a man can as well. Perhaps it was good, though, that, right now, Finn was still a blend, the best of both worlds.

  “He was my neighbor’s son, little Tad. He was such a nice boy. I found him in their back yard, eating garbage. I hadn’t known. I hadn’t left my own house. My family was dead. I put them in the basement. I didn’t know what to do! And then I found him, and I had something to live for, and then…” Her voice drifted off as the two went farther up the stairs.

  I stood next to Burk, and he held me. “Two men were chasing her and the boy. She fell, and the boy stood there waiting for her, instead of running. That’s how they got him. She was still down when we shot them.” He started to cry. You could tell he didn’t want to, but he had to. It had been so close, and we could both still hear the boy’s screams in our heads, where they might linger a lot longer than we wished.

  When we were able to let go of each other, he wiped his face. “I’ll go get the boy and put him in the garage for now. Those two, I’ll drag them across the street to the side yard, where your neighbor has that flower bed. She won’t be able to see them then. Damn! It was only a matter of a few minutes, that’s all it was. Damn.”

  I went back to Miranda.

  She still had the dish towel on her head, but now she was feeding cookies to her doll and singing, “Let’s drink soda and be jolly.”

  It wasn’t even the middle of the afternoon, yet, but I was pretty much done in. All I wanted was a nap. Well, maybe that wasn’t all, but that would do for a start. Hell, I’d settle for a quiet afternoon in the living room with a beer. Instead, I heard Miranda, still sitting under the table, telling her doll a story.

  “I can’t watch my shows anymore. The player w
on’t turn on. And I don’t have it. So I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time…um…”

  I went back up into the attic where I was sure we had kept our childhood books. I found two cartons of them and carried them all down into the living room. I didn’t see anyone else, but I could still hear Miranda under the table. I called her into the living room, and we opened the boxes of books together. I hoped like hell she could read, and I wouldn’t have to do that whole dad thing where you put the child on your lap and read to them! No! There were one and a half women—other women—in the house. So what if one had just been totally bereaved and nearly killed and almost ravaged, probably.

  Can’t a man just want a beer and some peace and selfish quiet once in a while? Oh. Yeah, I suppose if all these people had died, that’s what I’d be doing right now, wouldn’t I? What an asshole a person can be sometimes, even though we keep it only to ourselves, most of the time.

  Miranda picked up a book and asked me to read it to her, please, pretty please. So, of course, I had to do it. But I had her sit beside me and not on my lap. So there.

  As it turned out, we both fell asleep, so at least I got my nap.

  Chapter 15

  We slept and read, dozed and read and sang songs together until people started coming in from the other rooms in the house. Finn brought the woman down, sat her on the couch, and brought her a glass of wine. She introduced herself. Her name was Talia.

  Then Finn went and brought me a glass of wine. “Shh, you don’t need to know where we found this. Just enjoy.” Then he took Miranda upstairs to wash up for dinner.

  I smelled something good cooking, though I had electric appliances, so didn’t figure that out until later. Burk had brought the neighbor’s barbeque grill from their back porch over onto ours and was cooking right outside the kitchen door. His cleverness and quick thinking never failed to amaze me.

  While we were alone, Talia said, “I should have just let them rape me. Then Tad would still be alive.” She looked so depressed and guilty, I couldn’t just leave it alone.

  I said brusquely, “Likely, they’d have raped him, too. You did the best you could, and in my opinion, it was a pretty damn good best.”

  She looked at me like she’d never thought of anything like that ever happening, but her shocked expression soon faded to a crumpled mess. Then with a deep breath, she managed to compose herself. “I suppose you’re right.” She sighed. “Thank you for that. I think.” She shuddered, and then we both drank some wine.

  Would this day never end? Banging started on the front door! The fucking door! I almost dropped my wine. Talia just looked at the door and then away, picking up some of the children’s books scattered between us on the couch. Finn and Burk both appeared in the doorway, both with guns in their hands. How the heck had they just materialized like that?

  “So help me, if there’s a bag of dog shit on fire and nobody there, I’m gonna kill someone!” Burk muttered, making the rest of us laugh hysterically. Even Miranda laughed, though I was pretty sure she didn’t get the reference.

  “He said shit!” She laughed.

  I walked over to the door and looked through the old-fashioned peephole. It was Barney, a guy I had worked with overseas. What in hell? And he wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him, about our age, but confused-looking. Maybe she was just scared and overtired. Barney held her elbow.

  “Bruce, are you there? Please be there. Everyone’s dead. I flew in here the day before you did, and now everyone’s dead. I finally remembered you lived here! Please be here, man!”

  I opened the door and let them in. Barney almost fell into my arms, sobbing. Finn put his gun away and took the older lady. He and Talia took her into the other room. Burk went back out on the porch to tend to the food, muttering something about putting another shrimp on the barbie.

  I gave Barney my glass of wine, what was left of it, which I thought was pretty damn big of me.

  After a while, Burk announced dinner was ready, and there was a bit of a crush as people tried to get washed up. Some of us were a complete mess. Some still had bloodstains. Some were just possibly unclear of the concept, which was nice for them.

  Barney said, “When I first got sick, I left the hotel and walked to the hospital, but it was a crazy zoo. People were everywhere, dying or dead or screaming. Nobody was doing anything. I had some medical training in the Navy, so I started trying to triage, but it was impossible. I wandered around, looking for staff. I literally bumped into Dr. Williams here. We were both looking the other way and walking fast and bang! Knocked us both silly. I think we both screamed.

  “We just went and hid. We went to the cafeteria and found a corner that was empty, got some food, and ate. Then we packed some up for later and found an empty exam room.”

  Dr. Williams blushed. “Shh, Barney, they don’t need to know that!”

  Barney smiled at her. “Okay, Rose, no tales out of school here then.” He was beaming. “Anyhow, we shacked up there for a while…”

  “Barney!”

  “Sorry!” He didn’t look sorry at all. They smiled at each other again. “Then the gunfire started and the explosions. The restaurant across the street blew up, and then the hotel I’d been in just—crumpled. We decided to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak, and then I remembered you lived here and went crazy trying to remember where and…well, here we are. Thank you for taking us in.”

  Burk had cooked sausages, bacon, potatoes, and some mixed vegetables out of a can. “You two can have my room,” he said, looking at me with a quick grin.

  “Talia can room with Miranda if that’s okay with you two,” Finn offered. They looked shyly at each other, and both nodded.

  As we finished the meal, Barney looked around and saw the musical instruments we had just set on the breakfront. “Is that a violin? Let me see,” he said, getting up and bringing it over to the table. He opened the case. He needed a shave and a shower, and his clothes were torn and filthy, but when he lifted that violin out of its case, his face was radiant.

  Finn smiled a secret smile. Music made him happy, made him alive; you could see it in his face and whole being.

  Barney played beautifully, but we were all exhausted, and it made for an early night.

  I woke around two in the morning to dead stillness. Burk was curled up half on top of me. We were sweaty, to say the least, but no way was I going to disturb him, let alone move him off me. The window was open just a crack, which probably wasn’t a great idea, but you had to have some air. The moon was high up, looking innocent and pure.

  I thought about our meeting with Phil later today at the cathedral and wondered how we would get all seven of us over there. I was sure Burk would think of a way. He was wonderful, and he was mine. And I hadn’t had to do the chasing either; he’d made it plain that all I had to do was accept. I wasn’t even too sure that my not accepting would have deterred him.

  In this stillness after the awful day we’d had, I thought of the bells, and I thought of what little I knew about the church I’d been brought up in. Maybe others were the same. I wouldn’t know, but I knew a little about bells, having been a bell ringer and acolyte, mostly against my will, as a young teenager, back when Mom and Dad had made me go to church. Okay, I also knew quite a bit from some movies I’d seen, including some spaghetti westerns I hadn’t really understood. Even some war movies taught a lot about churches, and that reminded me of Helga and how the church in Germany had saved so many of the Jewish children. Imagine something similar to that nightmare happening again, causing her to lose her place in the world. Poor old thing. I wondered how the bells were affecting her.

  Between the Compline service, or even the ringing of the bells in the evening, and more bells in the morning calling the parishioners to morning prayer, was ‘The Great Silence.’ Other than the usual bad guys with guns and explosions, the great plague had brought a great silence onto the world. That silence, like the church one, was a time for meditation and renewal but also a t
ime for coming together. We didn’t have the leeway to wait until morning. We had to make our own light in these dark days. I was comfortable with the little bit I knew and figured I could leave the rest up to Phil. Like medicine, I knew very little, but could now leave the rest up to Rose Williams. Imagine being so lucky as to have a doctor appear in our midst; another miracle, one might say, in a time when we really needed every miracle we could get.

  I pulled Burk closer to me. He farted in his sleep, and I had to suppress a laugh. If that didn’t mean true love, I didn’t know what did.

  I remembered a phrase from a book of my mother’s: It will be another day in the morning. I went peacefully back to sleep.

  Chapter 16

  I awoke around seven. The sun was up, the day was shining, Burk was stretched out naked beside me. There was a weight on my stomach; it was my cat. The kitten was on Burk’s hip. I heard snoring from the floor beside me. There was Finn, curled up in a blanket, with Miranda beside her. Both asleep. It looked like it was going to be a chaste and pure morning, even though the kitten was now batting at a part of Burk that was moving. I was fascinated. I was rather fond of that piece of him myself. I didn’t want to see it damaged.

  Burk woke with a start, then smiled at me. “Oh, honey, what a nice way to wake me up!”

  I put both my hands up to cover the grin and snorts that were ready to bubble out. He’d hate me if I laughed, and everyone woke up. His face as he figured out what was going on down there made me lose it, and I had to bury my face in the pillow, which woke up my cat.

  “Well, then.” Burk accepted defeat. “Let’s talk about cars. I put Tad’s body in the trunk of mine. And your neighbor has a Hummer. Did you know that? That old couple had a Hummer? Well, I have the keys to it now. We will not walk to the cathedral. One cannot simple walk into that place.”

  “What about the boy?” I asked as quietly as I could.

  “I’ve given that a lot of thought. One option is to take him to the church for Phil to deal with, but then there’d have to be a service and all that. Frankly, I’m not ready for that. We’ve all lost someone. I’m thinking of putting him in the ground here, well, maybe in the garden of the house behind us. You don’t need to know all the details. But it will tie me up this morning. I hope I can leave you in charge of the troops and loading up the Hummer with all the crap we’re taking over with us.” He started to get up, but then saw the two on the floor. Miranda was sitting up, and Finn was just staring at us.