Dead Reckoning

by Tom Wright

  I held her head back up and looked in her eyes. I saw the pain and the struggle. Then I saw the glint. Although her body had been ravaged and was near death, her eyes told me more in that instant than an hour long conversation could have. She was still there, and she knew I was here now.

  Charlie scrambled over to her and put his hands on both sides of her face and put his nose right up to hers and said: “Mamma, it’s Daddy, see! I told you!”—as if he had communicated with her a million times in that exact way. I held her and Charlie and pulled Kelly to us.

  “What happened to her?” I asked to no one in particular.

  “She got sick,” replied Charlie. “She got the flu, but she lived. She went to sleep for two weeks, and when she woke up, she never moved again. Except her eyes. And she breathes.”

  “How have you kept her alive?” I asked.

  “We give her water and mashed up food. Sometimes she chokes, but it goes in.”

  A sense of pride and awe flooded through me.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here,” I said as I began to pick her up.

  “No!” cried Charlie. “She doesn’t like to move. It hurts.”

  Her eyes softened, and a tear rolled down one cheek. I carefully put my arms around her again and held her. “I don’t know what to do for you,” I said.

  A whoosh of air came out of her mouth as she struggled to speak.

  “What?” I asked. “What should I do?”

  I leaned down and placed my ear against her lips.

  “Nuh” she said as all the air rushed out of her lungs. She struggled to reinflate her lungs and then continued: “hing.”

  I looked at her puzzled. She gasped for another breath and tried again: “Nuh-hing.” It wasn’t speech but rather sounds forced out by sheer willpower.

  I nodded as the lump in my throat grew.

  Relief spread across her eyes. She closed her eyes and managed to raise the corners of her mouth ever so slightly. Her lungs rattled, and she involuntarily jerked with a deep, wet cough.

  She opened her eyes again and tears streamed out.

  I wanted her to finish the sentence from the last time we spoke on the phone. I knew she couldn’t.

  “I love you too,” I said.

  I didn’t know if she could feel much, but I pulled the filthy blankets up around her neck—I knew how she hated being cold. I kissed her on the lips and then the cheek, and then I held my face to hers. My face felt hot against her cold skin, and I willed the heat out of my body and into hers.

  She coughed and struggled for breath. Then she sighed and relaxed, and I knew.

  “I’m here now. It’s ok,” I said.

  She looked at Charlie and then to Kelly. I pulled them in and laid each one next to her. They snuggled up to her without hesitation, as they surely had on many cold, scary nights.

  I rested myself across her and the children and laid my head down on her chest, careful not to cause her any more discomfort.

  Her breathing grew shallow and intermittent. I wondered how long she had been fighting for breath. I laid there for a few minutes listening to her heart beat. It gradually slowed. A bitter hatred began to bubble up from somewhere within me, but I fought it back.

  Charlie and Kelly began to cry. “Mommy, no,” Charlie whispered. I pulled them both tighter to their mother.

  “This is what she wants,” I told them, tears beginning to come for me, too.

  Every fiber in my body wanted to do something, to drag her from the hole and rush her to the hospital, the rush her to where I thought Jill, Jeff and Sonny were. I fought against the feeling, because there was no help. There was nothing to do but hold her. Emotion raged in me but quickly boiled down to just one: helplessness.

  The time between her breaths lengthened unbearably. Finally, she exhaled for the last time. I cried as I listened to her heart slow, thump-thump…..thump-thump………..thump-----thump………and then it stopped.

  Part of me died with her. I held the love of my life for a few more seconds, and then panic suddenly washed over me.

  “Where is Elaine?” I demanded. Visions of The Red Plague, vans, orange trucks, and guys in overalls skipped frantically across my mind. I jumped as I saw motion to my side. Tommy, still staring into the hole, repositioned himself.

  “She’s in the yard,” said Charlie, unemotionally, still lying next to his mother.

  Another part of me died. I sat back and struggled as my mind reeled. It was too much to deal with at one time. I felt like I was going to explode. I struggled to catch my breath in a frantic attempt to hold it together for Charlie and Kelly.

  “And Grandma and Grandpa?” I asked.

  “Grandpa died in a shootout,” said Charlie. “He’s next to Elaine. Grandma got sick and left and never came back. She said she didn’t want to get us sick. I followed her to the top of the hill, but she cried and told me to get away and threw rocks at me.”

  “You found her and buried her?”

  “No, but she’s dead. I put up the cross so she could be next to Grandpa.”

  I grabbed the children and held them again, Charlie returning the hug, Kelly ambivalent, imperceptibly trying to free herself.

  I fought the urge to give up. I had no idea what to do. Kate was gone, and now there was no one to help me figure things out. I was the only adult, and two children depended entirely on me. The crushing weight of responsibility bore down on me. Two months of emotion and doubt and anguish boiled to the surface all at once. Only half of my prayer had been answered, but that was more than I honestly expected. The pull of despair and the push of hope battled for my mind, and it was up to me—and only me—to decide the winner.

  24

  Shadow Beach, Whidbey Island, WA

  I buried the love of my life next to her parents and our beloved daughter. As I shoveled dirt back into the hole, I felt ironically grateful to have been the one to do it. The hole was for her, but I could have easily laid down in it myself and never got out. But in that hole, I got my closure and found some resolve.

  I stood up straight, back aching, dirty, sweaty, and cold and stared defiantly into an ambivalent world. It would have been easier to give into fate, but I had half of my life back, which was half more than I had dared to hope for. What I had already been through was nothing. This was the purpose. It was time to man up.

  “Where is mommy?” Charlie asked suddenly.

  I had half expected such a question eventually, but its frankness startled me, nonetheless. I leaned on my shovel and looked at him.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, stalling. “I just buried her.”

  He picked a carrot out of his MRE and threw it angrily onto the grass.

  “No! I mean is she in Heaven?”

  I swallowed hard. It was tempting to fall back on mankind’s crutch and just say yes. I found myself sympathizing with millions of our ancestors who, when faced with such a dilemma, chose the soothing path of hope over the painful trail of truth.

  “You know I would never lie to you, don’t you?” I asked, sitting down next to him.

  Charlie nodded.

  “This is one of those things that I don’t know for sure. But I will tell you this: if there is a Heaven, no one belongs there more than your mother.”

  “But what do you think?” he asked, unsatisfied.

  “I think that as long as you remember her, how she smiled and how much she loved you, and as long as you make her proud by doing the things that she told you were right, she will always be right here,” I said as I placed my hand over his heart. “She will always be part of you.”

  Charlie lowered his head.

  “You know, Charlie, sometimes when you feel bad or you’re scared or you don’t know what to do, if you just pay attention, you might be able to feel her. I don’t know what happens after people die, but wherever she is, if there is any way she can help you, she will. Do you believe that?”

  Charlie nodded.

  I hugged him and then leaned bac
k to think. Kelly continued to work quietly on the MRE I had given her. I asked her what she thought, and she ignored me.

  “Did you bury Grandpa and Elaine by yourselves?” I asked.

  “No, Tommy helped,” Charlie responded.

  “Where is Tommy?”

  “He went home.”

  Charlie explained that Tommy lived with his grandmother a few houses down. I remembered that she was very old, possibly an invalid. Tommy’s grandmother was sick, according to Charlie, but not like the others—just a cough. That worried me.

  I considered the three crosses they had built. Made of driftwood, each cross had a name scrawled across the cross beam—or at least the name Charlie and Kelly assigned to each person: Elaine, Gramma, Grampa. They also scratched out a number which represented their best guess as to the person’s age. They got Elaine right but wrote 80 on both Grandma and Grandpa’s crosses—about 15 years high on both. I reckoned that kids always guessed high on the ages of adults.

  Not particularly religious, Kate and I had never taken the kids to church. Yet, they thought to place crosses on the graves, which I would have found curious if not for the conversation we’d just had.

  “Why did you put crosses on the graves?” I asked.

  “So God can find them…when he comes looking,” responded Charlie.

  “Do you think God will come looking?” I asked.

  “Tommy does.”

  I remembered that Tommy’s family had been religious, and I suddenly knew where Charlie had gotten his new interest in God and Heaven. I asked if he wanted to put a cross on his mother’s grave.

  “It’s cold,” Charlie said. “Can't we do that tomorrow?”

  “No, now,” said Kelly.

  They were the first real words she’d spoken since I arrived.

  “Me and Tommy dig the holes, and Kelly makes the crosses,” said Charlie.

  “Ok, honey. Do you want to help me pick out the wood?”

  She nodded.

  I carried Kelly down the beach piggyback, as I had done many times. She selected two pieces of driftwood which were much larger than the others. I carried Kelly and one piece of wood back while Charlie carried the other piece.

  On the way back, I suddenly got a strong case of the willies. I stopped and scanned the houses along the beach. I felt like we were being watched, but nothing moved. I shrugged it off to circumstance and continued on.

  Kelly showed me how to etch the names and numbers into the wood with a shell. Charlie got a nail and rock and secured the two pieces together and beat it into the soft mound of dirt over their mother’s grave.

  By the time we finished, darkness had settled across the land and spilled out over the water. A light rain resumed. The sound of much larger drops echoed from the forest creating the audible illusion of two different rain rates.

  I took the children inside the house and cleaned them up. I washed their clothes in the bay and dressed them in some of mine while theirs dried. I selected the driest firewood and built a fire in the fireplace. Then I dragged three mattresses into the living room and made them up with the least dirty of the blankets and linen.

  “We have to go back down in the hole,” Charlie said.

  “I’m here now,” I said. “And we’re not going to live like animals anymore.”

  Charlie looked away, embarrassed, and I immediately regretted the remark.

  “Come here,” I said to them both.

  “I am so proud of both of you, staying alive this whole time, finding food, caring for your mother, and doing hard things like burying your sister and grandparents. I don’t know how you did it, but you two are like grownups. In fact, you are more grown up than a lot of grownups I know.”

  This gave Charlie a boost. Kelly continued to stare blankly at me.

  “Look, you two did the best you could, and I am very proud. But I am here now, and I will protect you. If anyone comes around to harm you, I will kill them. Do you understand? I won’t let anything happen to you again. We have to be careful, but we are not going to be afraid of everything. We are not going to hide in the corner. Do you understand?”

  Charlie nodded. I’m not sure Kelly heard me.

  “But what are we going to do?” Charlie asked. “They will come back.”

  “Who?”

  “The bad guys.”

  “What bad guys?”

  Charlie described the looters and their big, bright, orange truck. He told me that they went through the houses looking for food and guns. He said that they sometimes teased people or stole them. He said that it had been weeks since they had last come, but surely they’d be back once all the low hanging fruit on the island had been harvested.

  “I hope they don’t come back,” I said. “But if they do, I won’t let them hurt you. Besides, we won’t be here long.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll explain that later. For now, we are going to stay and wait for some friends to come here. When they do, we’ll go with them.”

  “What friends?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “Why won’t you tell me who it is?”

  I resisted getting his hopes up. Truth be told: I shouldn’t have gotten my own hopes up. I couldn’t know whether Jeff had found any of his family alive and if he hadn't, whether he could have found the strength to continue on. Would I have sailed back up here to find him if I had nothing left? I thought back to my moment in the grave. At least he had Sonny and Jill.

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. You’ll find out if they come.”

  “If they come?”

  Charlie looked into my eyes and must have understood what I meant because he dropped his line of questioning.

  “Can Tommy come with us?”

  “Tommy!” I exclaimed. I had forgotten about him. I needed to check on him and his grandmother.

  “Are you two all right here by yourselves for a minute? I want to check on Tommy.”

  Charlie and Kelly shook their heads in unison. Kelly began to shake.

  “Ok, you can come with me.”

  “Tommy won’t let you in if you don’t know the special knock anyway.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. Why didn’t I think of that?” I said, smiling.

  I motioned for Charlie to follow me into a back room. Kelly sat rocking on the floor.

  “What happened to Kelly?” I asked.

  Charlie looked down in embarrassment again. I reassured him again that none of it was his fault.

  “The bad guys came,” he said. “They teased her.”

  “What do you mean ‘teased her?’” I asked, suddenly more concerned about the meaning of the word “teased.”

  “I don’t know. Tommy said they was teasing her.”

  “How does Tommy know?”

  “He’s the one that came back from hunting and found them teasing her. He shot at them, and they ran out to their orange truck and took off. That’s when we dug the hole under the house—to hide.”

  A sharp anger rose in my belly.

  “Did they tease mommy or Elaine?” I asked. Part of me didn’t really want to know the answer. Since they were both already out of their misery, the answer could do nothing but hurt me. But another part of me had to know the truth.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie replied. “Mommy and Elaine were here though, so I think so.”

  Another part of me died. I had to fight to mask my anger in front of Charlie. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I started to shake.

  “How long ago was this?” I asked with a trembling voice.

  “Long time. Just after it got cloudy.”

  “And they didn’t come back?”

  “They came back the next day,” Charlie said.

  My blood began to boil.

  “But they got run off?” Charlie continued, following me out of the room.

  “By Tommy again?”

  “Nope, up on the hill, before they came down. Shooting and stuff. It sounded like Cowboys a
nd Indians. They were shooting and hollering like Indians all day. Tommy and I dug the hole in the basement and got in.”

  I was puzzled by the cowboys and Indians thing, but who knows what kids imagine when they’re scared?

  Charlie and I walked down the street toward Tommy’s while Kelly rode piggyback. The rain had turned to snow but, to my relief, was not yet sticking on the pavement. The falling snow deadened all sound except for the tapping of large, melted drops falling from the trees in the woods next to the road. My flashlight barely cut into the eerie, quiet darkness.

  The feeling of being watched came back. I tried to look around, but it was too dark to see. I felt for my gun and was relieved when I had hold of it.

  After about eight houses, Charlie stopped at a fence, swung part of it to the side, and stepped through the resulting hole. I lowered Kelly to the ground and helped her through the hole and then followed. Charlie crossed the yard and stopped in front of a small window in the basement. He knocked three times fast and then waited. He knocked three times fast again. Then he knocked three times slowly and loudly. A light flickered behind the window and then it cracked open.

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah. My Dad’s here and we’re coming down. Don’t shoot.”

  “I won’t,” Tommy whispered.

  We walked through the front door, and like every other structure I had entered since landing, it had been ransacked. But unlike the others, it had been cleaned up again. Large stains on the carpet in the living room suggested prior savagery. A salty breeze wafted in through the missing front windows.

  We descended the stairs and found Tommy waiting in front of a shelf askew to the wall. Behind the shelf, the wall opened into a hidden room. Faint light flickered inside.

  I grabbed Tommy and hugged him tightly. He hugged back, unsure of what was going on. He was already a hero, and I vowed to protect him like my own.

  “Tommy, how is your grandmother?” I asked.

  “She’s ok. She’ll be fine. She’s sleeping,” he said nervously.