First Days After

by Jay Vielle

  Jake was fighting through the guilt of a struggling marriage and the lack of contact with his sons. That’s enough to trouble a man without having to wonder if any of them are dead due to a nuclear holocaust. He’d held it together for a day a half and gotten us to gel as a group. At least for a while-- until we locked out Tanner Heffner’s family. Then something in him snapped, and he was starting to lose it. Jake controlled his breathing and stood up straight.

  “But that’s not even what bothers me the most right now,” he said. I raised my eyebrows incredulously. If that wasn’t eating at him, what was?

  “When you’re a Marine. A soldier of any kind. Even a combative athlete, like a wrestler, you have to have a certain battle mindset. On the mat, you might be wrestling a friend or someone you’ve known for years, but once you step in that circle, it has to be all business. You have to do whatever it takes to win, things that might otherwise damage your friendship. Off the mat, you can buy them a beer. Inside the circle, they’re the enemy, and anything within the rules is fair game, even if it hurts or permanently damages them.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s a little dark.”

  “You have to go to a dark place. A really dark place. You have to shut down afterthought, cancel out your morals for a time. It’s even worse on the battlefield. You might have to maim, kill, even go after innocent people without hesitation, all to complete the mission. You’ll endanger your sanity if you don’t go to that place. That dark place. It’s like shutting off the power to your brain, your ethics. If you hesitate in those crucial times, you can get someone killed. So you turn yourself into something a little scary. You have to.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m listening. What are you trying to say?”

  “Well, you hope you can turn the power back on, but for that short time, you’ve got to shield yourself from feeling anything remotely sympathetic. I’ve been to that place. You can feel the darkness taking over you. It’s a survival instinct. But there’s a toll. It steals from your soul when you return to sanity. It’s like you’re a werewolf or something. You almost can’t remember what you said or did, like it was an alternate personality. Then the come down after. It’s hard on you. Hard on me at least. Some guys, they don’t regret it. I always did.”

  “So, are you telling me that you were there just now? In the dark place? When you were threatening Wes, Lou, and Mark?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “If they had gotten into it with me, I’m not sure what I would have done,” he said, breathing in. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I would have liked to have seen you kick their asses,” I said. “That was a douche move. A horrible decision. An inhumane decision they made,” I rambled.

  “Decisions can be changed and unmade. You can’t unbreak a bone or revive the dead,” he said.

  And right then I realized that when Jake said he was in the dark place, it meant he might have--would have killed those three. If he could. I’m not even sure with his training and experience he could have handled three big, young, athletic men. But that is most certainly what he meant. He was suggesting that for a brief moment, he wanted to kill them. Kill them for real. Despite all the death we had seen and experienced over the past couple of days, that thought scared the hell out of me. Actually seeing murder take place with people I knew. I processed that a minute, then started to back out of the room.

  “Look dude, I’ll leave you to your thoughts. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You’re not intruding, Eddie. In fact, you’re saving me a little. Let’s head back to the cafeteria. My head is coming back to me, feeling a little more like myself again. We really need to establish some ground rules with the group now. This kind of thing can’t happen again.”

  I nodded, smiled, and took a reassuring breath as we walked down the hall together. I was just starting to feel comfortable around him again, when I heard footsteps running down the hallway towards us. It was Glen Billings. He was carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows.

  “Mr. Fisher! You gotta come fast. Something’s happening. It’s Tanner’s family.”

  Jake shifted into a run and headed towards the rotunda in the main hall. You could see his legs and their perceptible limp as he ran. As we reached the large, glassed in lobby at the rotunda, we looked out the windows. About thirty yards away in the lane in front of the school, four men were beating on a car with what looked like a mop handle. They’d managed to crack a window, and a woman inside the car was screaming. It was Mrs. Heffner. Tanner and his father were trying to keep the windows intact, but Tanner’s hands up against the broken glass were already bloody.

  There was a crowd of about thirty people inside the school with their faces pressed up against the school doors and windows trying to look outside. All of them were completely frozen. Immobile. Disbelieving what they were seeing, and physically incapable of movement—or so it looked. It took Jake about four or five seconds to process what he was looking at. Then he grabbed the bow and the quiver from Glen’s hands and slammed his way through the crowd into the door handle and went outside. The noise the door handle made was a loud pop, and it resonated throughout the rotunda. That door represented much more than inside or outside. It was a wall between the known and the unknown-- between the-safe-for-now, and the who-knows-what-is-waiting outside. Everyone was looking at it as if it were some kind of impassable line. Now they watched Jake walk towards the car. The three men stopped for a moment and looked up.

  “Gentlemen, I’m gonna need you to back away from that car, please,” said Jake. The men were a mix of ethnicities. One white, loaded with tatoos and wearing a doo rag; one apparently Hispanic, wearing a Barcelona soccer jersey, and one extremely tall black man in a dark shirt and cut-off shorts. The Hispanic one turned towards Jake and smacked the mop handle into the palm of his hand. The black guy took his hands off the car and turned.

  “Yeah? Well I’m gonna need you to shut the fuck up,” he said. The smaller white guy reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife. All three started walking towards Jake, who had managed to nock an arrow on the string of the bow. He slowed to a stop and dropped the quiver on the ground, and stuck two more arrows into the dirt.

  “That’s close enough, gentlemen,” he said, jockeying the bow into position.

  “Fuck you, Robin Hood,” said the Hispanic guy, whose pace had quickened a bit, apparently in an attempt to get slightly ahead of his partners.

  “Last warning,” said Jake, drawing back the bowstring.

  “Chíngate cabrón,” said the Hispanic.

  Jake pulled the end of the arrow back to his cheekbone, exhaled, and released. And shot the Hispanic directly in the face. His head snapped back and he dropped hard to the ground clutching his face. The arrow had penetrated a cheekbone and gone into his mouth. Everyone in the rotunda had a collective gasp.

  “Holy shit,” Wes Kent said, almost whispering. Melanie and Maureen winced and turned away.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Maureen repeated.

  The white guy in the doo-rag and the big black guy halted immediately, wide-eyed.

  “I got two more right here with your names on them,” said Jake, nocking a second. Both men started backing away slowly, the doo rag shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I don’t think so,” said doo rag.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. I don’t even know your names,” said Jake.

  The large black man frowned, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a handgun.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  “Okay, motherfucker,” the black guy said. “My turn now. Drop the fucking bow or I do you.” Jake held his aim and didn’t move.

  “Standoff,” Jake said.

  “No, it ain’t no fuckin standoff, motherfucker. I can shoot you six times before you get off one more shot.”

  “Yeah, but can you hit me?” Jake said. “I’ve already established what I can do. Your friend over there might not live through the night. He’ll die slowly without medic
al attention. You can join him if you want. You drop the gun and I’ll think about not puncturing your lung.”

  “Bitch, you know who won the West, right? It wasn’t the fuckin Indians. You got three seconds to drop that fuckin bow. One.”

  As he counted, doo rag started circling behind Jake, who was immobile and focused on the gun. He had the arrow pulled back to his cheek and was holding it there. The bow wasn’t that powerful. It was used in Physical Education classes and had about a 40 lbs. draw. The arrows were target arrows, which meant that although they didn’t have blunted tips, they also weren’t terribly sharp. At that range, the arrow could do some damage to human flesh, but compared to the gun, the arrows were much less deadly, and I’m guessing Jake knew it. It was a bluff, but the damage done to the bleeding Hispanic thug had made it a credible one.

  “Two,” said the black guy. The white doo rag wearer had gone all of the way behind Jake now and was about to pounce on him. In order to hold his bluff, Jake had to focus on the gun bearer, but you could see his eyes track the doo rag guy. Ironically, in trying to help, doo rag had actually given Jake a chance, since doo rag’s partner wouldn’t shoot with him right there, but Jake had no reason to hesitate. I wondered if Jake was aware how close he’d gotten, then I saw Jake’s eyes flit to the periphery just for a second, and he smiled.

  “Jake, watch out behind you,” I yelled, pounding my hand on the door. The black guy instinctively pointed his gun towards us behind the glass. Everyone screamed and dropped, and Jake let the arrow go. The black guy tried to turn away, and the arrow caught him in the rear deltoid, in his back shoulder muscle. He cried out, dropped the gun, which skidded under the Heffners’ car, and started falling to the pavement, clutching at his arm. As he did, doo rag made his move and dove at Jake. Jake spun and met the attack with the bow, slashing it into doo rag’s head. The combined impact jerked doo rag’s head back and he dropped to the ground. As he shook his head and tried to recover, Jake was on him. He grabbed the guy’s head in his hands and tried to snap his neck, a move I always had seen in the movies, and always wondered if it was realistic. It didn’t work. It must’ve hurt like hell, judging by doo rag’s face, but he wasn’t dead or even immobilized. It did slow him, however, as doo rag reached for Jake’s hands on his head, and winced, trying feebly to get Jake to let go. Jake set up to do it again and that’s when the freight train hit.

  The black guy had gotten up with the arrow dangling from his arm and attacked Jake in a rage. He hit him like a linebacker trying to make a tackle, and the two went tumbling into the ground. Jake was on his back, and the black guy was trying to hit him. He’d forgotten the arrow, and as he lifted his right arm to punch Jake, only to find sharp pain lancing into the back of his shoulder. He winced in pain and cried out. Then he feebly took a swing at Jake with his left, but Jake had time to block it. They struggled for a moment, then Jake reached up with his left hand and jabbed the arrow in deeper. The black man hollered out in rage and put his left hand on Jake’s throat and started to squeeze. Jake choked for a moment, then reached up again, and this time yanked the arrow out, which came out easily due to its construction design for targets. The black guy howled and loosened his grip. Jake tried to wriggle out from under him, but the attacker recovered himself, winced and then tightened his grip—now with two hands—on Jake’s throat. Jake took the arrow and jabbed it hard into the black man’s right eye. He flew backwards in pain, thrashing on the ground. Jake sat up, and as he did, doo rag was coming at him with his knife. Jake went from sitting to kneeling so quickly that I had to ask myself when it happened, but even on his knees, Jake was able to dodge the lunge like a bullfighter. As doo rag guy went flying by him, Jake snagged the wrist of the hand holding the knife. He dragged in a circle, making him stumble, taking him down, then up, then twisting the knife hand back towards doo rag’s face. Then a final back step and a bowing motion threw doo rag violently to the ground, and the wrist—twisted hopelessly back upon itself and possibly broken, released the knife. Doo rag clutched his wrist and cried out. Jake picked up the knife, walked over to doo rag guy, who was on his side clutching a broken wrist, and slit his throat with his own knife. Everyone near me in the rotunda let out a collective gasp.

  Then Jake turned back towards the large black guy, who by now was sitting on the ground holding his bloody, mangled eye socket in both hands and screaming. Jake walked up to him slowly. The black attacker was in shock, and at this point could see his death coming. Jake dropped down to one knee in front of him. The big man instinctively cringed, but Jake held up a hand gently as if to say, ‘wait a minute.’

  Jake leaned in towards him and appeared to whisper something to him. The big man answered him back. They had a quiet exchange for a few moments, then the big man got up and started to walk away, still holding his eye. Jake walked over to the car where the Heffners were. They looked like everyone around me: mouths open, jaws slack, disbelief in their eyes, mixed with a bit of horror. Jake knocked on the window, asked them if they were alright, then got down on his stomach and retrieved the gun from underneath the car.

  “You guys keep this. It’s got some bullets left, and who knows what you may find when you start to look. Either way, it’s a nice deterrent from any would-be attackers.”

  Scott Heffner took the gun, and quietly thanked Jake.

  “And if you all want to come join us now, you’ll be welcomed.”

  They all got out of the car and followed Jake towards the doors. Jake picked up the quiver with the remaining arrows, slung it over his shoulder, and grabbed the fallen bow with his other hand and approached the door. No one spoke. Mouths still hung open. As Jake reached the door, he finally looked up and stared silently at everyone near the row of doors. I opened the one up in front of me and let him in. He gave me no eye contact as he walked past me. The Heffners entered and Jada hugged Tanner hard, and Maureen took Mrs. Heffner by the hand and walked her towards the cafeteria. I stole one short glance at the stunned faces of Orville, Kent, and Longaberger, then smiled to myself before turning down the hall towards Jake’s classroom.

  CHAPTER 5

  Maureen Kelly and Melanie Richmond sat in the cafeteria with the Heffners. Marianne Heffner was softly crying, almost keening. Tanner and his brother were whispering to each other, and Scott was trying to comfort his wife to no avail. Maureen and Melanie were whispering soothing messages towards Marianne. Al DeFillipo walked up to Scott.

  “You okay, man?” he asked. Scott nodded.

  “Nobody hurt, just scared,” he said.

  “Ugh, nobody?” asked Tanner, holding up his bloody hand.

  “Here’s a wet towel for that, Tanner,” Mrs. Eaves said, walking up from the kitchen. “Might want to wash out any glass you might have in there.” Tanner nodded, rose, and walked back to the kitchen.

  “Thanks,” said Scott.

  “No problem,” said Robin.

  An awkward silence continued for a bit while Marianne Heffner started to get her breathing under control. Scott looked outside at the two dead bodies lying in front of the school and shuddered slightly.

  “So, I never knew that Coach Fisher…I mean, holy shit. He saved our lives,” said Scott. Eyes shot around the room, which seemed a little less crowded than before. People had separated since watching Jake Fisher dismantle the attackers. No one seemed to acknowledge that any of it had even happened. I had followed Jake down the hall, figuring he was going to his classroom, but he went into the bathroom and locked the door.

  “Jake, you okay?” I asked. No answer came. I called again twice more, then decided to head back to the rest of the group. As I walked by Jake’s classroom, I heard an odd noise. I poked my head in and looked around, then realized it was some kind of ringtone. His phone was on his large desk, tucked away in the corner and plugged into the wall outlet. I picked it up just as it finished ringing. It read,

  MISSED CALL: TOMMY

  I ran back to the bathroom.

  “Jake, Jake,” I yelle
d. “Your son called. Tommy just called you.”

  The door exploded open and Jake came out, about to make a break for his classroom. I held up the phone to him and he took it.

  “He just called. You just missed him.”

  Jake immediately tried to call him back, but no one picked up. His face, which had come out from the bathroom with a look of desperate hope, suddenly fell. His lips trembled a bit.

  “Did he leave a message?” I asked. The face filled with hope again, and Jake dialed into his voice mails and listened.

  Dad, It’s Tommy. I’m okay. I’m stuck here on campus, but they’re saying we should stay anyway, since the town was totally missed by everything. I’ve spoken to Vinny, and he’s okay too. Dad, are you okay? I haven’t heard from mom. Call me when you can. We have power for now, but they’re not sure how long it will last. We love you dad.

  Jake’s face brightened, but he was fighting back tears. His entire body sagged and he leaned on a desk, like a wrung out dish rag.

  “He’s okay. They’re both okay.” I smiled at the news.

  “That’s great. Are they coming back here?” I asked.

  “Probably not. Neither one of them have vehicles. One of Laura’s family members is storing one of them. She sort of lives in between the two. I should probably get a hold of her. God, there are so many people I should have gotten a hold of by now,” he said, dropping his head on the table.

  “Jake, you have been literally saving people’s lives for two days. I think you can let yourself off the hook on this one.”

  Just then, Al DeFillipo walked in. He was holding his phone.

  “9-1-1 is out,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I just tried to call them. Tell them about what happened. There was just a message saying that 9-1-1 services were temporarily suspended. I’ve never heard anything like that before. There’s just--nothing.”