The tape of the press conference ended and the camera returned to the news anchor.
“As you just heard HHS Secretary Collins say, there is evidence that some Arab countries may have been hit worse by the Disaster than some countries in Western Europe. Nevertheless, vigilante attacks against Muslims continue. For more on that we go to a special Fox report with Greg Culp.”
The picture changed to show a reporter standing outside the smoldering remains of a building, in front of which stood a partially destroyed marquee that read “Gilbert Arizona Islamic Academy.” The reporter began, “Throughout the non-Islamic world, Muslims fear for their lives, and with good reason. Islamic homes have been burned, businesses have been looted, their inhabitants beaten and even murdered in mob actions. Islamic schools like this one behind me have been destroyed by local citizens. Fortunately, the school was empty and no one was injured. Throughout America, Islamic schools have been closed since the day after the Disaster, when three men entered an Islamic school in Cincinnati and shot sixteen students and four teachers.
“Despite the president’s plea for calm and his promise that FBI and law enforcement will hunt down anyone who participates in such acts, thus far police and other authorities have been unable to stop or even contain the violence. Contributing to the problem, authorities tell Fox News, has been the trend since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, of Americans to arm themselves, frequently with unregistered, illegally purchased firearms.” The news report then shifted focus to a sidebar story on the sale of illegal firearms.
When they had dug about four feet, Hank Asher decided the hole was deep enough; the standard six feet under was simply more than he could manage. He was about to pay the boy his ten dollars but paused with the bill in his hand as he looked at the boy and then down at himself. The distribution of dirt and sweat left no doubt that the boy had done less than his share. Hank checked his wallet again and, as a matter of principle, decided to pay the boy eight dollars instead of ten.
“Hey, what about my other two bucks?”
“Eight dollars is more than you deserve for the little bit of work you did.”
“Man, what a rip-off! I’m gonna go get my dad. He’ll make you pay me.” With that the boy threw down the shovel and stomped off.
Asher rested for a moment. It suddenly occurred to him that he still had to carry the bodies out and fill the hole back in. “That was really stupid!” he said, realizing he had gotten rid of the boy too soon.
Inside the house, Sheryl Stanford tried talking to Decker from time to time, but there was no indication he could hear her. He just stared blankly into space. She found some food in the kitchen and when she put it in his mouth he chewed and swallowed, but still he just stared. As she fed him, she continued to listen to the news in the background. There was an urgent and growing concern about disease from decaying bodies. Reports from around the world said that thousands of suicides were adding to the worldwide death toll. Most of these suicides took place in the victims’ homes, but others were more public: jumping from buildings and bridges, driving off cliffs, and the like. A few chose to murder others before turning their weapons on themselves.
There was a great deal of rallying around the flag. People flocked to houses of worship to find answers, but the Disaster had struck everywhere and large numbers of clergy had died as well, leaving a vacuum. Stock markets and exchanges in the U.S. remained closed and analysts predicted worldwide financial chaos and a serious economic depression. Insurance companies were seeking legal relief in the form of exemption from payment on deaths from the Disaster. Insurers said that without such legal relief, every life insurance company in America would have to declare bankruptcy, and analysts agreed that if the markets reopened before Congress and the president acted, insurance company stocks would not survive the first hour of trading. Opponents of these measures and other critics argued that insurance companies were certainly not the only industry at risk. Everyone had suffered, and no one could predict what would happen when the markets reopened. The government couldn’t bail out everyone.
After Asher finished the burial he came in and collapsed on the couch across the living room from Decker. “Has he said anything?” he asked.
“Not a word. He just stares,” Sheryl answered as she muted the television. “What are we going to do with him?”
“He needs to be cared for, but the hospitals are packed. I don’t suppose you’d take him home with you?”
Sheryl looked at Decker and then back at Asher. The desperate look on her face made it clear that she did not like the idea at all but was not comfortable saying no to her boss. As she struggled to respond, Asher let her sweat it out. He knew it was an unusual request, but these were unusual times.
Just then there was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Sheryl said, jumping up from her seat, hoping to evade her boss’s question. Asher was too tired to argue.
A moment later, she came back. “It’s a kid,” she said. “He says he wants to see Mr. Hawthorne.”
“Tell that lousy kid to go away, that he’s not going to get one penny more than I’ve already paid him! No, wait! I’ll tell him myself.”
Energized by his anger, Asher picked himself up off the couch and headed for the front door. “Look, you, I’m not—” Asher stopped himself in mid-sentence as he realized this was not the boy from the backyard. “Oh. I’m sorry, kid. I thought you were someone else. Look, Mr. Hawthorne isn’t feeling well right now. Can you come back later?” he asked, trying to get rid of the boy.
“I’m sorry, but I need to talk to Mr. Hawthorne,” the boy persisted.
“Like I said, kid, Mr. Hawthorne isn’t feeling well. Come back tomorrow.”
The boy held his ground.
“Okay,” Asher said, “look, maybe I can help you. What is it that you need to talk to Mr. Hawthorne about?”
From the living room, Sheryl Stanford called to Asher, “Hey, he moved his eyes a little!”
Asher went to his friend’s side and looked, but saw no sign of awareness.
“Mr. Hawthorne, it’s me, Christopher Goodman.” Asher turned around and saw that the boy had followed him into the living room.
“Mr. Hawthorne, please tell these people you know me. I’ve come a long way and I don’t have anywhere else to go. Uncle Harry and Aunt Martha both died in a plane crash. I don’t have any other family. Uncle Harry told me if anything ever happened to them I should call you. But you didn’t answer your phone.”
Asher, who knew of Harry Goodman from Decker’s articles, put the pieces together. “Your uncle is Professor Goodman from Los Angeles?”
“Yes,” Christopher responded. “Did you know him?”
“I know his work. What are you doing in Washington?”
“Uncle Harry told me that if anything ever happened to him and Aunt Martha, I should find Mr. Hawthorne,” he repeated. “I don’t have any other relatives and Mr. Hawthorne was my uncle’s friend.”
“How’d you get all the way out here from Los Angeles?”
Christopher paused, apparently hoping to avoid an answer that might get him in trouble. “I drove my uncle’s car,” he admitted finally.
“You drove from Los Angeles?” Asher said, surprised. “How old are you, kid?”
“Fourteen,” Christopher answered. “I didn’t have any other way to get here.”
Asher shook his head in disbelief. “How’d you get all this way without getting stopped by the cops?”
“I guess they’re pretty busy with looters.”
“I guess so. Well, look, kid. I’m sorry you drove all the way out here for nothing, but Mr. Hawthorne won’t be able to help anybody for quite a while.”
Christopher looked at Decker.
“In fact,” Asher continued. “I’m going to have to find someone to take care of him.”
“But, I don’t have anywhere else to go. Most of Aunt Martha’s friends are dead and Mr. Hawthorne is … well,” Christopher paused to th
ink. “Can I just stay here for a while? Maybe I could help you take care of him.”
“I think that’s a great idea!” Sheryl chimed in, still fearing she’d be stuck with taking care of Decker. “Let him stay.”
“Let him stay,” another voice repeated hoarsely.
Asher, Sheryl, and Christopher all turned toward the only other person in the room.
“Let him stay,” Decker said again.
11
The Master’s Promise
Three weeks later
Derwood, Maryland
THE COOL MOISTURE of morning soaked slowly through the seat of Decker’s jeans as he sat on the grass beside the grave of his family. Mindlessly he stared at the upturned soil, still numb from his loss. It would be spring before the surrounding grass would begin to encroach upon the settling mound of bare dirt.
Decker had put in an order for three gravestones but was told that it could take as long as a year and a half to get stones with names on them. Generic stones with “Beloved Wife,” “Beloved Father,” “Beloved Daughter,” etc. and no date of birth could be had in half the time and at about one fourth the price of a personalized stone, delivery included. Someone else was offering four-week delivery on personalized grave markers made of reinforced plastic with a “marble look.” Decker had decided to wait for the real thing.
His wife and children were not all Decker had lost. Shortly after Christopher arrived, Decker had learned that his mother and older brother were also dead. His uncle had buried them, together with others, on his farm in Tennessee.
Still, some had it much worse. The dead who had no one to bury them had been laid by the thousands in mass graves. In the city of Washington the poor had tried to bury their dead on the Mall—the strip of park that runs from the Capital to the Lincoln Memorial—and in other city parks, but were turned away by U.S. Park Police and National Guard. Some expressed their frustration and protest by leaving the dead on curbs with the garbage.
Among those who died were many celebrities of one sort or another: politicians, religious leaders, heads of state, a few actors and actresses. The U.S. lost twelve senators, sixty-odd congressmen, three Cabinet members, and the vice president. It seemed that everyone had lost someone: wives, husbands, children, parents.
As the sun rose above the fence slats on Decker’s right, the individual blades of grass released their moist coats of dew into the morning air. Decker heard the sliding glass door open but did not raise his eyes from the ground to look.
Christopher Goodman approached Decker, stopping a few feet short. After a moment he seemed to realize he would have to speak first. “Breakfast is ready,” he said softly but brightly, adding that he had fixed Decker’s favorite—waffles with plenty of bacon and scalding hot syrup.
Decker looked up after a second, smiled appreciatively, and extended his hand toward Christopher. “Give me a hand up,” he said. Christopher never asked Decker about the hours he spent sitting by the grave in the backyard. He just seemed to understand and allowed Decker the privacy of his thoughts.
“What about your family?” Decker asked, opening the subject as if in mid-conversation.
Christopher didn’t miss a beat, but answered as though he knew and understood exactly what Decker had been thinking. “When they didn’t come home and they didn’t call, I decided to call the airline. They told me that Uncle Harry and Aunt Martha were listed on one of the planes that crashed when the Disaster struck. They said they didn’t have enough people to handle all of the calls, much less to clean up all of the crash sites and evacuate all the bodies and notify their next of kin.” Christopher paused. “They did tell me where the plane went down,” Christopher said, pausing again. “I tried to find it on my way here but it was a long way from any roads.” Christopher seemed distraught by the memory of the agonizing decision he had made to leave his aunt’s and uncle’s bodies in the wilderness where their plane crashed.
Decker was touched by Christopher’s obvious pain. For three weeks now Christopher had provided Decker with supportive companionship, never once saying a word about his own loss. Perhaps, Decker thought, it was time to start thinking of someone besides himself. Without thinking it through, he asked, “Would you like for me to go with you to find them? We could take them home to Los Angeles and bury them there, or we could bring them here and bury them in the backyard near Elizabeth, Hope, and Louisa.”
Christopher seemed to appreciate the offer but responded that he didn’t think it was a good idea. “No, it’s, uh … too far,” he answered.
“That’s all right. I can help you drive,” Decker told the precocious fourteen-year-old, trying to make a joke and not catching the hint in Christopher’s voice that he preferred not to talk about it.
“Mr. Hawthorne,” Christopher said directly, “their bodies have been up on that mountain, exposed to the elements and animals for nearly a month. I don’t think …”
Decker was shocked at his own stupidity. How could he have missed that? “I’m sorry, Christopher. I didn’t think.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Hawthorne,” Christopher said, and from the understanding look on his face, Decker could tell it really was. Christopher had apparently accepted the harsh truth with determined resolve to go on. “Come on,” Christopher urged. “The breakfast is getting cold.”
Decker was beginning to understand Harry Goodman’s fear of disclosing Christopher’s origin. Over the past few weeks, without knowing it, Decker had come to think of Christopher almost as his own son. Perhaps it was because of the loss of Elizabeth, Hope, and Louisa. Much of the feeling, though, was due to Christopher’s totally unselfish attitude, always giving of himself and never asking for anything more in return than room and board. Decker finally and firmly resolved that the story of Christopher’s origin was one the world could do without.
Three days later Decker was spending the afternoon reading through recent copies of NewsWorld that Hank Asher had brought over to help bring him up to date on the world, restore his interest in life, and assist in his recovery. He was scanning an article on possible theories for the cause of the Disaster when he read something that tied his stomach in knots.
“The search for a cause,” the article read, “has been so elusive that the CDC has even considered a great many concepts out of science fiction. One such theory, called Andromeda for its resemblance to The Andromeda Strain 29 by author Michael Crichton, was that some widespread, commonly occurring—and therefore overlooked by researchers because it was assumed innocuous—virus or bacteria simultaneously underwent an evolutionary change that made it extremely virulent.” Decker felt his stomach tighten as he considered the possible implication of what he was reading. “If so,” went the hypothesis, “then the reason that additional similar deaths have not occurred is due either to some natural immunity of the remaining population, or else the killer bug just as quickly went through a second evolutionary change that rendered it harmless.”
Decker scanned the words again: “widespread, commonly occurring—and therefore overlooked …” His mind went back to the night before the Disaster. He struggled to remember what Professor Goodman had told him about the research he had done on the cold virus. Was it possible the Disaster had been caused by the genetically engineered cold virus Goodman had been working on two years earlier?
“Such a simultaneous evolution of geographically dispersed cultures,” continued the article, “would require genetic engineering beyond anything currently known to exist, and would virtually rule out a natural cause.”
Decker could not breathe. He would have to tell someone what he knew.
“Like many others, however, the Andromeda theory has been ruled out based on the evidence of the autopsies. Such a viral or bacterial agent would have left clear and definite indicators that have not been found in any of the victims’ autopsies.”
Decker caught his breath. In just those few seconds, he had been torn by so much stress and anxiety that he had the beginnings of a major ten
sion headache. He breathed deeply and tried to relax his mind and muscles, taking the time to think through what he had read and consider whether he should still call someone at the CDC. No, he decided, the article was right. The autopsies would have revealed some kind of evidence. The theory had been investigated and found lacking. Besides, this was more than he had strength to think about.
Decker got an ice pack for his headache and lay down for a short nap. When he awoke, he again began going through the pages of NewsWorld. If it did not entirely focus on the Disaster, every article had at least some mention of it. In the most recent edition he came to an editorial written by Hank Asher:
There comes a time following every great tragedy when someone very authoritatively states that those who have lived through it will never be the same. Perhaps it is a cathartic statement. Perhaps it marks or at least helps to mark the point at which we all agree it’s time to begin to move on, time to get back to the business of life. It is never easy, but it is necessary.
I am not suggesting that we try to forget what happened, or that we forget those who meant so much to us. Most certainly I am not suggesting that we stop looking for an explanation for what happened or a way to prevent its recurrence.
In an age in which we’ve come to expect quick answers, it only adds to the horror that no one can provide an explanation for this tragedy. They say funerals are for the living, that they give a stamp of finality to the loss of loved ones. But that finality can never really come so long as the mystery of cause remains. Scientists are doing everything in their power to determine the cause and prevent it from happening again, but for most of us there is nothing we can do but wait and hope.
In His Image Page 16