Sleepers

by Jacqueline Druga

Did he panic? What?

  “Daniel?”

  His head moved slowly from left to right looking.

  “Daniel, come on!”

  His lips moved. I didn’t hear any words. For a brief second he made eye contact with me, then clutching Jeremy, Daniel looked around again.

  I stepped from the car and hurried to him. “Daniel, come on. We have to go.”

  “What’s happening, Chirp?” Daniel asked softly as his eyes met mine. They glazed over like I had never seen them. “What’s happening?”

  Before I could question, I slowly turned around to see what it was that drew his attention.

  We moved to Hawthorn Street because it a picture-perfect middle class neighborhood perfect for raising a family. We chose that street because so many young couples were living there, all having children.

  And as I looked around, I saw those neighbors. The ones we spent many Little League seasons cheering alongside, swimming with, and attending picnics. I saw the entire block of families all doing exactly what we were doing.

  All of them held their children, some held one or two. All of the children the same as Jeremy. All of us rushing to our vehicles to try to get these children help.

  We were not alone.

  As I stood there taking in the devastating awe of it all, my mind repeated the question Daniel had just asked.

  What was happening?

  4. One Point Eight

  What had I become? A shell of a woman, a weak human being who couldn’t talk, think, or move. I could only stare at my son, weeping from the depths of my soul while praying to a God whose existence I began to doubt.

  But of course that was a contradiction, because God seemed the only logical explanation for what was happening.

  Logical? Nothing was logical. Someone tell me something. Someone give me an answer.

  My son, who not long before was vibrant, energetic and ready to play baseball, now lie on his bed, his hands retracted, mouth agape, eyes wide and bulging, his body in no less than a vegetative state. His skin was so white he looked almost bluish, and the color wasn’t the only thing. His hair began to fall out; he appeared as if every ounce of his life force, his soul were slowly being sucked from him and there was nothing we could do.

  Nothing.

  And all that deterioration occurred within four hours of his first seizure.

  We tried to get him help. We made it within two miles of the hospital but traffic was jammed. Every parent sought help for their child.

  He trembled and moaned in pain and we had no choice but to turn around and bring him back to the comfort of his home.

  George Lawson was a doctor who lived three streets over. I didn’t know him before he knocked on our door and told us that the Masons sent him over to see Jeremy.

  He did for our son what he did for the others, offered us little advice and gave him a sedative that helped the seizures and allowed him to calm down.

  We received more from George Lawson than those poor individuals who chose to wait with their suffering child in the gridlocked traffic.

  Waiting for help that they probably wouldn’t see.

  And it wasn’t just our house, our street, our city. It was everywhere.

  Every town, every country, every single child under fourteen fell ill at the same instant.

  1.8 billion children, all dying at the same time.

  For as much as I wanted to doubt the existence of a God, what was happening was no less than an act of a supreme being.

  In my heart, in my mind there was no explanation.

  None.

  Yes, the airwaves flooded with explanations. Everyone was trying to give their theory. But how do you explain an event that affected more people than there were in China?

  Some said, since viruses emerged daily, this was a new one that inflicted only the young. While plausible, how was it possible that it inflicted them all at the exact same time?

  Scientists were working around the clock.

  There was no way they could work fast enough.

  Religious leaders claimed it to be Judgment Day, with the taking of the young being the first sign, the Rapture.

  What?

  The Rapture? I was raised Christian. I knew the Rapture to be this selective event. Where the young, the innocent, the pure and those in Christ would be lifted from earth, lifted and saved so they were spared the destruction and horrors about to be bestowed upon the earth.

  What happened to the disappearance, the waking up to find only clothes? What happened to the ‘rising’ in glory of those chosen for the Rapture?

  This was not glorification. It was nothing less than a damnation and the youngest and innocent of them all were the targets.

  To watch a child full of life suddenly look shriveled like a dying 90- year-old man gasping for life, to hear of babies being born without life, babies who weeks earlier were normal on a sonogram.

  Stillborns across the planet.

  The Holy Bible Rapture?

  If He wanted to make His Rapture so horrifying than do it to me, my husband, to anyone who knew of sin, not innocent children who hadn’t even begun to know life.

  No, if this was God’s work, then He was not a God of love and understanding, He was, indeed, like the Old Testament portrayed, a God of wrath.

  And to do this to the children of the world?

  It wasn’t peaceful, it was painful. I heard it in my son’s cries.

  My child was suffering; he was not spared.

  His soul was still there and with each sedated call of my name, my heart broke and I swore if it indeed was God’s work He was not a God worthy of my praise.

  Damn my soul, I didn’t care. Not at that moment.

  Not as I watched my son die.

  5. Dust

  It was so hard to look at my son lying in that bed. With each passing second, another ounce of life was leaving him. It was not the same child who two days earlier didn’t understand why some of his friends weren’t allowed to stay over because their parents believed that Daniel smoked pot.

  He looked at me with his big brown eyes, questioning with innocence and following up with, “Does he?”

  “Does he what?”

  “Smoke pot.” Jeremy said.

  “Do you know what pot is?” I replied, trying my best to be evasive.

  “Uh, yeah, Mom, I’m twelve.”

  The perfect out of a parent in any situation where you don’t want to answer a question or want desperately to change the subject is to actually hold the conversation while you cook.

  “Just asking,” I said. “Could you find me the long wooden spoon, thanks?”

  “I hope he doesn’t. He has a dangerous job.” Jeremy sought the spoon. “He could electrocute himself while under the influence, or worse, cut the power to thousands of homes.”

  I stuttered some in shock over what he thought was worse than the death of his father.

  “Does Dad?” he asked.

  At that second, Daniel walked into the kitchen. “Does Dad what?”

  Saved.

  Jeremy finally handed me that spoon. “Josh can’t sleep over because his dad says you smoke pot. Do you?”

  “Yes.” Daniel nodded. “And I buy it from his dad.”

  I’m sure my husband didn’t see my mouth drop open in shock. He laughed, darted a kiss to my cheek and started to leave the kitchen. He did pause in exit. “I’m kidding, Jeremy, I don’t smoke pot.”

  Then Daniel left.

  Jeremy pulled up a kitchen stool, sat at the counter across from me and propped his face on his hand.

  “What?” I asked him.

  Jeremy sighed and looked up at me with this huge puppy dog brown eyes. “He does.”

  Now those brown eyes were lifeless and gray. They stared back at me, but not like they did a day earlier. There was nothing behind them. Nothing. I felt it. As we inched around the twelve hour mark, the only inkling of life remaining was the occasional squeeze of his hand or whimper of my name.

/>   He remained like that for a while.

  Daniel appeared to be holding up better than me, but I knew my husband. It was killing him. We took turns trying to call our daughter and other son, but that was useless. Getting a line out seemed impossible. A neighbor suggested to Daniel that communications were shut down to avoid even further chaos. Perhaps that was why the news was sporadic.

  No answers. None at all.

  There was a quiet to the night, a feel to it all like I had never experienced. Just quiet. I had cried so much, I could barely see and my head pounded out of control. I sipped on some bourbon but that didn’t help. Sitting next to Jeremy was all I could do.

  Daniel paced, tried to call Jessie, tried to call Danny then sat next to the bed.

  Me, I didn’t move.

  My other two children were not far from my mind, but forgive me, not forefront. Not as I watched Jeremy. They would want my attention on him.

  Jessie listened, I felt that. She was safe at school, staying put and waiting, just like Daniel told her. Danny, I guessed school officials wouldn’t let them leave; he was underage. But not so underage that he fell into the age of children who took sick.

  About two in the morning, a massive storm blew in. It blew in quickly and without any warning. It went from a clear crisp night to something ridiculously violent. The sky lit up with lightening. You couldn’t see the bolts, only the clouds as they brightened orange and green as if the sky were on fire. The wind battered the house and I swore we were going to lose the roof. Daniel opened the windows some for fear they’d shatter.

  It lasted over an hour, and then the quiet returned. Quiet and dark. The power had gone out. Something told me we had seen the last of the power for a while.

  Just before the sun came up my son began this odd breathing. A raspy, wheezing escaped him as he took short huffing breaths.

  I remember when it started. My hand shot to my mouth, my eyes closed, and I fought the remaining tears.

  Daniel sat down across from me on the other side of the bed, grabbed Jeremy’s hand, looked at me and said, “He’s leaving us.”

  I knew it. I felt it. I heaved out a single sob and wanted to die. I just wanted to die right there with my son.

  Looking at Daniel was useless. I always looked to him for strength, but he had none at that moment. He squeezed to Jeremy’s hand, bringing our son’s frail fingers to his mouth, and my husband cried.

  Imagine what it was like.

  A quiet dark surrounding you, no speaking and the wind that seeped through the open window carried the distant sounds of parental cries that matched our own.

  Heartbreaking cries.

  I had reached my end as I knew my son was reaching his. I crawled on the bed next to him, scooting up close behind him and wrapping my arms around his curled up body.

  I just wanted to hold him. Hold him one last time. I was there holding him when he took his first breaths of life, I wanted to cradle him while he took his last.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I wasn’t supposed to watch my child die.

  Feeling as if I wanted to absorb him into my soul, I clutched tighter to Jeremy. The moment I did, Daniel whispered out an, ‘Oh, God, Chirp’, and I felt it.

  I felt my son leave me.

  In every sense of the word, he left me. The tighter I held, the faster he left. His body crumbled in my arms like a thousand-year-old book.

  Crumbled into a fine, gray dust until all that remained were his clothes and hair.

  Despite the fact that I was faced with the undeniable realization that what transpired was beyond human control, I lost it.

  Slipping into an agony where death would be the only relief from the pain, I was uncontrollable in my reaction until I eventually passed out.

  6. Stillborn World

  The world went on pause.

  There was no radio, no news, no power. Not a sound of a car or plane. Absolute quiet. Everything and everyone just stopped. How could it not? Nearly one-third of the population, all of which so very young, died and vanished.

  How do you even begin to comprehend that? I know I didn’t, which made sense that no one else did either. I supposed once the initial shock wore off, things would happen. But people handled grief differently. That frightened me, because there would be a lot of people who just didn’t care anymore.

  Not a single person on the planet wasn’t affected one way or another by the event.

  Although it was daylight, it was dismal and gray, as if another storm was about to roll in.

  We stayed in Jeremy’s room for a while, both of us crying, and then Daniel carefully wrapped what remained in the sheet, folded his bedspread over that and spoke the first words to me in hours. “I’m going to go find a place to bury him.”

  He began to leave the room and paused at the door. “Chirp, I know how this feels. My heart is broke. No, it is completely crushed right now. I know this is horrible, but you, me, we gotta pull it together. We have to. Okay?”

  With a hard sniff, my hand clenching the bedspread, I peered up to him. “How?”

  “I don’t know. Find it,” he said firm. “Find it. We have to. Because we have to find our kids.”

  With that he turned and left.

  It took a moment, staring at the sealed bedspread for me to realize how right he was.

  I had to pull it together. I didn’t understand how all my strength was failing me. I was the person people ran to when things went wrong; I was the person people turned to for wisdom and strength. There I was so emotionally drained I could barely muster the strength to stand.

  But I had to.

  Pressing my lips to my fingers then running them over the bedspread, I whispered my love to my son and stood.

  My first step in pulling it together would be to help Daniel.

  As small as it was, it was still a step.

  ****

  Daniel had been outside earlier in the morning. Shortly after Jeremy had passed away, he left to get some air. Bill and Jenny from across the street were making coffee on the huge grill they used to brag about. No children of their own, they knew what was happening on the street to us all. They made coffee and some food just in case anyone needed or wanted it.

  They had to be at a loss at what to do, how to help. The idealistic young professional couple who dreamed of one day starting a family were probably grateful they chose careers first.

  They moved the grill to the street so anyone could walk up.

  I had some of the coffee when Daniel brought it to me. But Daniel brought me nothing else. No news of what I’d see outside.

  Our street looked like a war zone. It looked like one of those streets you’d see on the news in somewhere Midwest America, struck by a tornado, not a suburb outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  Cars were battered with tree limbs and dirt, the street was mud-laced, and many homes were missing shingles, siding, even pieces of roofs.

  Part of our roof was gone and a piece of our chimney lay in our front yard.

  I was so wrapped up in my world with Jeremy that, though I noticed the storm, I didn’t think twice about how bad it really was.

  I stepped outside rubbing the chill from my arms; Bill was right across the street sitting in a lawn chair. He stood almost cautiously, a tall lanky man who seemed frightened as he walked to me.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  I only nodded.

  “If you need anything, let me know. Okay?”

  “Thank you.” I reached out placing my hand on his arm, taking in the sincerity of his tired eyes and turned my head.

  As I expected, Daniel was digging in the flower bed outside the house, our beautiful flower bed that we worked on as a family. That would be where he’d place Jeremy.

  As I began to leave Bill, I noticed the smoke rising in the distance from the city. My face crinkled with curiosity as to what could be causing that much smoke. Bill must have seen my expression.

  “Tornados, three of them ripp
ed through Philly last night,” he said.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I have radios. Army radios from my dad. I heard chatter. Actually you could see them last night,” he said.

  My mind immediately went to Danny. “Were they anywhere else, did you hear?

  “No. Just Philly. Well, I’ll uh, I’ll let you go. If you need anything . . .”

  “Thank you for being here for everyone on the street.”

  He didn’t say anything else. Tightly closed mouth, nearly biting his lips, he extended his arms as if to say ‘it’s the least I can do’ and he stepped back.

  I moved to Daniel who had begun to dig. I tried to see if anyone else was out and about. I saw Tom Mason walking into his home, more like a dragging walk. He set a shovel on the porch and went inside.

  The feel of the street was indescribable.

  How do you even begin to console or feel for others when you can barely console or feel for yourself?

  “Do you need my help?” I asked Daniel.

  He shook his head. “I’m fine. I don’t really need to dig that far down. Just enough . . .”

  The scream made him stop. It was a woman’s scream, loud and shrill. It wasn’t like the screams from the night before, those filled with agony and heartbreak. This one was different. It was a scream that seemed to be produced by physical pain. Echoing through the hollow, empty streets, long and continuous, intermittently shouting ‘no’.

  Daniel immediately dropped the shovel and turned to listen for the location. He took a step forward and then started running across the street.

  It wasn’t unlike him; I wouldn’t have expected anything different from my husband.

  I followed and so did Bill, across the street and two doors down.

  The Masons.

  Daniel didn’t knock; he raced right in. Me, I knew exactly what was causing her screams the second I crossed the threshold.

  I was right. We hurried upstairs all arriving within a split second of each other.

  Greg Mason stepped from the bed where his wife Beth, thrashed back and forth. A pool of blood soaked the bed between her legs.