by A. R. Shaw
Dalton and Sam watched and were able to tell by the look on his face that the sleepy boy, looking around, was coming to the conclusion that something wasn’t right. It was clearly daylight and everyone remained in their bunks. The two men watched as Bang climbed down the ladder, looking confused. He jumped the remaining two rungs without making much of a sound. The microphones were working well; Dalton could even hear the blankets as they moved about.
The boy walked up to Graham’s sleeping form.
“Oh, here we go,” Sam said.
Bang shook Graham’s shoulder. No response.
“Graham, wake up,” Bang said, whispering at first.
Graham showed no signs of life. Bang tried again with more force, using both of his hands and his weight as he pushed on Graham’s chest.
“Graham, wake up,” Bang said again, a little louder this time.
Getting no reaction, the boy started to look around. It appeared to Dalton that the boy was on the verge of panic.
“Calm down, buddy, they’ll be fine,” Dalton said out loud to himself and Sam, but wished he could reassure the boy himself.
Bang returned his attention to Graham and put his ear on Graham’s chest, presumably to hear his heartbeat. He lifted his head, patted Graham twice lightly on his chest, and looked around at the others.
“Crap, poor kid,” Sam said, making Dalton feel even more guilty.
Bang walked over to the girls’ side of the room and slid his hand down Sheriff’s furry side without getting a reaction. He laid his head down on the dog’s side too, and must have heard the rhythm he needed to because he stood up again.
“Smart kid,” Dalton said.
He pushed roughly on Macy’s back, moving the whole mattress with both her and the dog, but neither stirred. Then, as if it just occurred to him, Bang ran around Macy’s bunk to Tala’s against the wall and saw that her long black hair fell over her face. He gently moved it away and then said, “Tala, wake up” as he shook her shoulder. He put his small hand up to her mouth and nose. Feeling for breath? Yes. Of course.
“Uh, this is hard to watch,” Sam said.
“He’ll be fine. At the back of the room, he was the least affected by the gas, so it’s likely that either Mark or Graham will wake up next,” Dalton speculated.
As if the boy read Dalton’s mind, he ran from the girls’ side and climbed the ladder over Graham to investigate Mark. This time, he climbed up right over Mark’s legs and up to his chest, shoving the older boy hard and saying in a loud voice, “Mark, wake up.”
“Stop it, kid!” Mark yelled, scaring Bang and causing him to jump back.
Sam sloshed his coffee in reaction to the surprised response. Dalton also jumped back.
“Whew!” Dalton said and grabbed his chest as he saw his young cousin alive and pissed off. Sam slapped Dalton on the back, knowing it was important to Dalton that the boy be cared for.
Bang leaned down and whispered to Mark, “Something’s wrong. Everyone’s still asleep.”
Even though the boy whispered, all Dalton had to do was turn up the volume to hear the conversation. Sam was surprised and a bit concerned such technology existed.
“That’s not right,” Sam said, and took a sip of his cooling coffee.
“Yeah, well, I wish we’d had these in China before everything went to shit,” Dalton said. He turned the volume back down to a normal level. Dalton started noting the time each boy woke up on the log he had in front of him. If there were problems with the others, they could at least read the data and try to gauge what the likely waking time should be based on location and weight.
They could see Mark struggle to come around. He put his hand blindly on Bang’s shoulder and tried to reassure the younger boy. Even though it was fully bright in the bunkroom, Mark said, “It’s okay, Bang, it’s just too early yet. Go back to bed.”
Bang nudged him again. “It’s daytime, Mark. Even Sheriff won’t wake up, or Graham or Marcy.” It was as if his using Marcy’s name triggered some automatic reflex; Mark elbowed himself up, squinted, blinked several times, and stared across the bunkroom at Marcy. “Crap, you’re right,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He sat up quickly, swayed, then asked, “What is going on? Ohh, the room’s spinning.”
He made his way down the ladder, then stumbled across the room. “Marcy? Marcy!” Mark yelled over to her, but there was no response. Dalton saw panic in his eyes, terror. Mark reached out to touch her, and winced. “Crap, my arm hurts,” he complained, rubbing the sore area.
“Mine too,” Bang said.
“Whiners,” Dalton kidded as he observed the scene.
Bang shimmied down the ladder after Mark and tried to push on Graham a few more times.
“Graham!” Bang said again, a panicky pleading in his voice. “Wake up, please wake up!”
Bang wiggled Graham’s bearded chin, causing his mouth to open slightly. Mark came and tried to help Bang. “Graham, wake up, something’s wrong!” he yelled.
“Wake up, something’s wrong, Graham. We need you!” the boys said again.
Dalton met Sam’s eyes and saw a reflection of his own feelings of culpability as they watched this unfold. “It’ll be okay,” Sam said, but didn’t sound so sure.
“Yeah,” Dalton answered. He didn’t feel all that certain, either.
Graham started moving reluctantly. He muttered, “Lea’ me ’lone,” and tried to roll back into the dream where Nelly and he lay on a blanket under the warm sun as he ran his hand over the life within her that they had created. Nelson for a boy, they’d decided, and Grace for a girl. The sunlight sparkled on her red hair and she laughed . . .
“Graham! Please! We need you!”
The boys? Yes. Both boys. Bang and Mark were shaking him, insisting something was wrong. Right, the boys needed him. He needed to help them. “Okay, I’m coming,” Graham murmured.
His eyes were still closed as he moved his legs around. Mark moved the gun away until Graham awakened fully. “I’m coming,” Graham repeated, but he dozed off again, so Mark tugged on his shoulder once more.
“I’m coming,” Graham said again.
He opened his eyes a slit and saw both boys looking at him with concern. “Wake up, Graham. Please!” Bang’s small voice trembled.
“I am,” Graham said.
He blinked his eyes a few times and then shook his head, trying to break free of the sleep that held him down.
“What’s going on?” he asked and felt a deep stab of pain in his right arm, like he’d been slugged, or maybe he’d pulled a muscle.
“We don’t know yet,” Mark said, and left his side to go over to look at Macy and Sheriff, who were in the same state as Graham, half awake, just beginning to stir. Mark climbed the ladder to Marcy and pushed her legs over. “Marcy,” he called to her again.
She lay on her left side. As the boy shook her back and forth, she became annoyed at the motion and lamely swiped her hand at whoever was pestering her.
Graham watched the commotion as Bang trying to help him stand. Not seeing Sheriff in motion concerned him right away. He squinted at the dog and then looked beyond him to Tala. “She’s still sleeping too,” Bang said, and Graham looked up at Bang, not certain how he knew that Graham’s concern was more for Tala than the others.
“Where’s Ennis?” asked Graham as Mark jumped down from Marcy’s bunk. Both boys looked at him like they didn’t know.
Graham swung both feet to the floor, hoping the room would stop moving if he planted them there. He rubbed the sides of his face and looked blearily at the floor in front of him, then stumbled toward the living area to check on Ennis.
“What’s all this?” Graham motioned with his opened hands to the pile of stuff lying on the floor of the living area.
“I don’t know,” Mark said. “We never left the bunkroom. We were too worried about you.” Graham shook his groggy head. He willed his legs to work, and walked around the pile of stuff, not even trying to inventory it yet, even though ther
e was a big generator sitting there. Then he returned to the bunkroom and made it to Macy’s bunk first.
“Hey, Macy girl, wake up,” Graham said, shaking her slight body. When she only peered at him, confused, he grabbed her chin and shook it sideways a few times to bring her out of her stupor. She started to stir on her own and then Graham walked around to Tala.
“Tala,” he said. She lay on her side facing him. He completed what Bang had started and pushed the rest of Tala’s black raven hair over one ear, out of her face, and then sat on her mattress. “Tala, wake up,” he said again.
“What in the hell is going on in here with all this yellin’?” Ennis asked from where he stood in the doorway.
“Something’s wrong with people,” Bang said. “I don’t feel good, and no one wants to get up.”
Graham looked back down at Tala, who had opened her eyes at hearing Ennis gripe. “What’s the matter?” she asked him. “What’s Bang talking about?”
“Just try to wake up,” Graham said, and found himself stroking her long silky hair.
Mark got Marcy to sit up and she tried her best to stay that way, but her eyes closed again. She fought to stay awake, but wanted nothing more than to slide back to her pillow.
Bang tried to wake Macy up, but she was having none of it.
All at once, the four males seemed to notice, during all the commotion, that Sheriff had not budged at all. Nor was his chest rising, as it had earlier. His ears were not rotating to the obvious noises.
“Oh, no,” Graham said and pushed his weight over the edge of Tala’s bed.
The dog’s dead weight held Macy’s legs down under the covers. She wasn’t fully awake yet to comprehend what was really going on. She could only tell that everyone insisted she get up because she obviously had forgotten something important, though the group had not told her what that was yet, and she was annoyed by their demands.
Graham stroked the dog’s fur and reached his head down to listen to the dog’s heart. “He’s alive. He’s got a heartbeat. Let’s just give him time,” Graham said.
Then, looking from one to the other, he said “Does anyone know what happened?” He got nothing but negative head shaking. When he came back to Tala, she’d begun fading again, so he wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her over to him. Ennis walked in and sat down behind Macy to help sit her up with Bang’s assistance.
“Maybe we’re getting it,” Bang said, and everyone knew what he meant but didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Bang, you go get some water for the girls,” Ennis ordered.
Bang ran off, and Graham heard him shove a chair across the floor, then heard the water running.
Ennis felt Macy’s forehead. “She’s not feverish,” he said.
“How are you feeling, Ennis?” Graham asked while he rubbed his hands up and down Tala’s arms to help rouse her.
“Drugged up is the best way I can describe it,” Ennis said.
“Nothing happened last night? You didn’t see anything?” Graham asked him.
“No, I watched those deer in the yard and I don’t ’member much after that. Musta fell asleep,” he said.
Bang handed him a glass of water, and Ennis put the rim under Macy’s lips. “Take a sip, girl.”
She did, and then opened her eyes a little, but closed them just as quickly.
Macy was able to blink her eyes more now, so Mark reached down for the glass and Ennis handed it to him to do the same for Marcy.
Graham continued to rub Tala’s arms to keep her awake, but she just leaned against his chest, eyes closed.
“Tala, look at me,” Graham said, raising her chin. “You have to stay awake now, okay?” She nodded and tried to stand unsupported, but slumped. He grabbed her and thrust her toward the living area. “Walk,” he said. “We all need to move around more. That’ll help us, throw off the sleepiness we’re all feeling.”
“Ugh, what’s wrong with me?” Tala asked, stumbling forward as Graham propelled her into motion.
“I don’t know. We haven’t figured it out yet.” Graham guided her around the stuff on the floor. “Ennis, Mark—get those girls up and moving.”
Graham took Tala into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her to sit in. He then went back into the bunkroom and grabbed the note off the pile of stuff. Ennis had Macy mostly mobile, and Graham just picked her up and carried her into the kitchen. Tala pulled the chair out for Macy and when Graham put her down, she held the girl upright.
“Bang,” Tala called. “Can you make some coffee, like I showed you?”
He nodded and began the work, carefully measuring coffee.
Mark and Ennis helped Marcy down the ladder, and they joined the others. Marcy sat in a chair beside Mark and put her head on the table, falling asleep again. Mark pulled her up and slid her over to lean upright against his chest.
The coffee aroma filled the small space, perking them all up, as Graham read the note to himself, then read it again and said, “Son of a bitch!” Hell, he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it sure caught everyone’s attention.
The letter shook in Graham’s hands. “They drugged us. That’s what this is. So they could break in here and give us this.” He motioned to the items on the floor.
“Your arms are sore, right?” He turned to address the rest of them. “They gave us all flu and tetanus shots and Ennis, you also got a pneumonia shot,” he added and shook his head in disbelief.
“That would explain why my arm stings,” Ennis said.
“I don’t know how to feel about this,” Graham said with indignation.
“Who did it?” Mark asked.
“The preppers, the people who had you,” Graham said.
Graham walked back into the bunkroom and looked at the stuff in the middle of the floor, then walked over to Sheriff and ran his concerned hand down the fur of the animal again. Sheriff felt warm and Graham could feel the dog’s pulse. He scanned the room and looked for any sign of forced entrance.
“Is the front door locked, Ennis?” Graham asked.
“Yep, been locked,” he said.
“The only other way in would be through the windows, then,” Graham tried to open the one closest to Tala’s bunk. The lock from the inside appeared in place. He opened it, letting in some of the cold air along with its moisture. Graham reclosed it and snapped the lock tight.
“How in the hell—?” he said under his breath as he strode back to the pile of items and knelt. Something about the window caught his eye again, and then he knew what he hadn’t seen before. From this low view, he caught on right away. He got up quickly and examined the panes. Clearly they were replacements, because the two on the bottom were newer, not with the wavy flaws of old glass and with a new bead of off-white caulking, unlike the rest.
“Too simple,” Graham said. Then he turned his back to the window and tried to see what the intruders would have seen in the same position.
“They got Sheriff first, and probably with the strongest hit. I’ll bet that’s why he’s still knocked out. He damn well better be okay,” Graham said with an ominous warning.
Still holding the letter, he watched as Ennis and Bang carefully handed out cups of coffee. Coming out of the sleepy stupor proved a challenge, especially for Macy, whom Tala kept jiggling, as much to snap herself out of it as to rouse Macy.
“I’m trying,” Macy said, grumbling.
“I know, dear. Here, try this.” Tala held a coffee mug to Macy’s lips. She looked as worried about the girls as their own mother would have been.
Graham watched them recover, trying to make sense of the situation. “I think they meant well,” he said with reluctance. “If they get exposed to us as carriers, they’re dead. I guess I can understand, but jeez . . . So they broke two panes out of the window. Used something to put us all to sleep. Opened the window and climbed in. Gave us all immunizations and dropped off some supplies for us to combat the intruders,” Graham said, trying to make sense of it all.
“Yeah, the prepper elves,” Mark said. “What’d they bring?” he asked. “Can we trust them?”
Graham turned around. “Well, there’s a generator,” which was the first, most obvious thing to mention. He left Macy’s side, knelt in front of the pile, and rummaged through it. “There’s a water pump, what looks like a large can of something,” he picked it up and almost dropped it, surprised by the lightness of it. He turned it over to read the label. “Vegetable seeds, so I guess we don’t have to worry about that now,” he said.
“Yay!” exclaimed Tala, suddenly more awake.
Graham picked up two large bottles. “Multivitamins for adults and children,” he said. Then he noticed three large boxes. “Motion detector lights, surveillance kit with cameras, radio,” Graham said, in a reluctant manner, “and a first aid kit.” He moved the kit aside to find, last but not least, a large package of Oreos hidden beneath it; he took it over to the others. “And—Oreos,” he said, prompting them all to cheer.
They tore open the package and shared the rare treat with one another, dipping them into their black coffee. The sugar rush helped exterminate the last fleeting grogginess left behind by the injections and sleep mist.
“Look, he’s moving,” Bang said with a mouthful of cookie. “Sheriff!”
They all turned around to look at the beloved dog. “Let’s give him space to come out of it on his own,” Graham said. “I think if we’re hovering, he might get defensive,” he added.
“What did the letter say exactly?” Tala asked.
“Oh, here.” Graham handed Tala the letter while he stood Macy up. He wrapped one of her slender arms around his waist and held her close as he walked her around the living area, trying to help the girl to fully come to as Tala read the letter out loud.