by Brad Knight
“Why didn't you help her?” Cordelia said in an accusatory tone.
“Honey, we’ve been through this already,” Troy said, trying to calm her down.
“She is obviously starving and desperate. I’m sure that she wouldn’t be coming here if she weren’t,” said Cordelia.
“That ole bat never had a kind word to say to dad,” Brandon said.
“So what, she was in need and we didn’t help her.”
“Look, I need you to be strong, Cordelia.” Mary looked her daughter firmly in the eyes. “Your father is right. We have to hold onto all of our supplies if we hope to make it through this situation alive. There will be other people trying to beg us for help, and as cruel as it seems, we have to keep those doors shut. Is that understood?” Cordelia began to feel tears flowing down her face again as she nodded her head and hugged her mother. Brandon rolled his eyes when he saw how emotional his sister was acting.
A couple of days later, it was Troy’s old friend, and Mary’s ex-lover, Steve who came by with his whole family, asking for help. Again, the irony of the situation did not escape Troy as he looked into the periscope at his old friend.
“Troy, I know that you’re in there. I also happen to know the amount of supplies that you have stored away in that shelter of yours. You have more than enough food to share with me and my family, and you know it. Now, I know that I’ve done some things to seriously mar our friendship, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m asking you to search your heart and find some forgiveness for me. Don’t allow my children to suffer because of a vendetta.” Steve had positioned his middle-school aged children at the door. They had miserable and hungry-looking expressions on their faces.
“So that’s what you think. That I’m not opening my door because of what you did to me? Think again, Steve. I’m not opening this door because I love my family and I’m going to do everything that I can to ensure that they have enough food and water to survive for as long as we need to. Go and find your own supplies, Steve. You are a crafty son of a bitch, you’ll figure something out,” Troy said as he took his finger off the intercom button and stepped away from the periscope.
“Come on guys. We aren’t likely to get any help from that selfish prick. Maybe some of the other neighbors still have some sense of humanity left,” Steve said before leaving. “CURSE YOU!” he turned around and shouted.
Mary couldn’t help but weep when she thought about the fate of not just Steve’s family, but the rest of the desperate families that were struggling to survive out there.
Troy comforted her. “I’m so sorry, Mary, but this is the way it has to be.”
“I know, dear, it’s just so hard,” she said as she wet her husband’s shoulder with her tears.
***
Later that night, Mary and Troy were awoken when a fight broke out in the children’s room.
“I don’t want to have to hear that!” a voice shouted. It was Brandon who was complaining to his sister.
“I’ll handle this.” Troy got out of bed, got dressed and entered the children’s bedroom.
“What’s goin’ on in here?” Troy said as he looked first at Brandon who was sitting up in his bed, and then at Cordelia who was sitting in a chair in her nightgown.
“Nothing,” Cordelia said as she rolled her eyes.
“Nothing my butt. I’m over here trying to sleep, and I suddenly begin to overhear Cordelia’s conversation with her boyfriend. They were saying some pretty raunchy stuff to one another, and my sister over here was touching herself.” Brandon made a disgusted expression.
“That is not true,” Cordelia said, as she turned three shades of red in embarrassment.
“Honey, you cannot be having conversations like that or doing things like that except when you are in private.” Troy felt a bit uncomfortable about the situation.
“I didn’t know he was awake. Do you really think I would have such a conversation if I thought my creepy younger brother was listening?” she said in her defense.
“I don’t know, but let’s not have any more situations like these. If you need privacy, go to the bathroom. As for sex conversations with boys - they are strictly forbidden, if you want to keep that phone,” Troy said, looking at his daughter who wore a look of guilt on her face.
“Yes, Dad.”
Troy turned to leave the room, but Cordelia caught him by the hand.
“Dad, I need to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“When I was talking to Henry, he asked me if I had any supplies that I could loan his family. He told me that they were running out of lots of basic stuff, and would be starving before too long if they didn’t get some help. Please Dad, let me go see Henry and bring him some things. You can go with me if you want,” she pleaded with him.
“No, Cordelia, it’s too dangerous to venture outside, for lots of different reasons. Besides, we’ve been over the situation about supplies. We cannot begin to give our supplies away. Everything that we give out to someone else is something that we are going to need down the line for our own survival, do you understand that?” he asked her.
She did not agree with him, and she burst into tears and then disappeared into the bathroom.
“Dad, can’t I sleep downstairs?” Brandon asked. “Sharing a bedroom with her is starting to drive me nuts.”
“You can if you want, son. Look, please be patient with your sister. She really misses her boyfriend. You have to understand, she really cares about him. It’s hard for her being apart form him, knowing that we can’t do anything to help him.”
“I know, dad, I’ll try.” Brandon laid down in bed and tried to get back to sleep.
***
In the morning, Troy woke up to the sound of the outside doors being opened.
“What the?” he said as he shot out of bed and down the stairs. Cordelia was dressed and opening the locks on the last steel-reinforced door that led to the outside. In her backpack were a ton of supplies including bread, milk, water and a whole host of canned foods. Just as she opened the door and got outside, her father came running up behind her.
She broke into a run across the front lawn in the direction of her boyfriend’s house just as Troy caught her by the arm. He realized at that moment that neither he or Cordelia had their masks on. He could immediately feel his lungs becoming irritated. The air had become thick with debris, and the sunlight was so dim, it looked as if a thunderstorm might start up at any moment, but no thunder was heard.
“Let me go, dad,” Cordelia said as she broke into a coughing fit.
“No, it’s unsafe out here. The very air has become toxic. You are coming back home with me, young lady, and you are not carrying those supplies to Henry’s family!”
She continued to pull away from him. He put both of his arms around her to restrain her as she kicked and screamed.
He picked her up while she was still kicking at the air and carried her back to the shelter. Once they got back inside, she collapsed onto the couch and began to sob uncontrollably. Troy quickly closed all of the doors and locked them all one by one. Luckily, the doors had not been left open and the contaminated air had not entered the building.
Troy picked up the supplies and returned them to the spare room next to his indoor garden. He put the canned goods back on the shelf and the milk, bread and water back where they were being stored. Then, he went to do his best to comfort his daughter. She had her face in a pillow, and continued to cry.
“Honey,” Troy said as he put his hand on her shoulder.
“NO, GO AWAY!” she shouted at him as he retracted his hand.
“Cordelia, I know this is hard, but you need to listen to me now, and listen good. If you try a stunt like that again, you could jeopardize the health and safety of our entire family. That door is to remain closed and locked at all times. Do not for any reason open it again without getting permission from me. As for the supplies, they are to be used for this family and this family only. If
we kept on giving out supplies to neighbors and friends, we will be out within a month or less. I cannot allow that to happen.”
Cordelia took her face out of the pillows and wiped her eyes. She immediately ran out of the room and up the stairs without saying a word to her father. He sat down and put his head in his hands. Then, he got up and returned to the bedroom and tried to get some more sleep.
Troy got up before everyone else did later that morning and got more updates from the news. The situation had grown dire, especially in all of the major cities in the United States. Looting and rioting was at a fever pitch as marshal law was declared across the entire country. Several violent standoffs between angry mobs and the police took place. Many innocent people were robbed and murdered as gangs of thugs went through neighborhoods hunting for provisions.
Troy thought again how lucky they were by comparison to all of the other people on the outside. The acid rain situation was even more serious than scientists originally thought. In many places, the rain was so toxic it could burn the flesh right off of someone if it made contact with their skin. Quickly, Troy switched off the television before any of the others had a chance to hear the bad news that got worse with each passing day.
A few minutes later, Troy heard the sound of thunder as a storm approached the area. He couldn’t help but wonder just how acidic that rain that was going to fall would be. After a few minutes, a huge downpour was occurring. The roofs of many homes were damaged as the acidic rain began to dissolve the ordinary shingles that wouldn’t hold up to the sulfuric acid that was beating against them.
Not too long after this, Troy was looking around with his periscope when he saw Cordelia’s boyfriend, Henry running in the direction of the house, trying to keep the rain off of him with an ordinary raincoat he had on. There were visible holes in the coat where the acid had begun to eat through. A few seconds later, he was at the door pleading to be let in.
“Please, Mr. White, let me in! This rain really burns!” he yelled. There were now sores visible on his face and hands where the toxic rain was beginning to burn through his flesh.
“I’m sorry, son, I can’t do that. You need to seek shelter elsewhere,” he said.
Cordelia and Brandon came down the stairs, having heard the conversation that was taking place. Mary came up behind them.
“Daddy, let him in, that’s Henry out there!” Cordelia yelled.
“I can’t open the door, it’s too dangerous. The rain falling out there will burn the flesh right off of your body. I can’t risk it. Besides, the air has become too toxic to breathe with all of the debris in it. I’m sorry,” he shook his head.
“NOOO!” Cordelia yelled out as she ran for the door. Brandon grabbed her with both hands around the waist and tried to restrain her.
“Let go of me!” she screamed as she threw wild punches at her brother, hitting his face and neck.
Mary ran up and stood between Cordelia and the door, blocking her exit. She tried desperately to get past her mother, but she would not allow Cordelia to pass.
“I’m sorry dear, but your father is right,” Mary said, as she restrained her hysterical daughter. Cordelia continued to thrash about and kick with her legs.
Henry’s screams were heard outside as the rain began to strip his flesh from his body. Troy peered through the periscope, only to see Henry collapsed on the ground, blood pouring from various places on his body where the skin had been burnt away to reveal the tissues underneath.
Troy quickly averted his eyes and went to try and console his daughter. By this time, she had stopped struggling and was bawling her eyes out in her mother’s arms. No words of comfort could assuage her as she began to mumble indecipherable words through her sobs. Then, she jerked away from her mother and ran upstairs. She slammed the door of the bedroom behind her and collapsed on the bed.
Troy went to his wife and hugged her. She too began to burst into tears. Brandon, who normally wasn’t very touchy feely ran to his parents and hugged them both at once as he felt the tears form in his eyes.
“It’s okay,” Troy said, “we are safe.”
Chapter 8
It was very difficult for Troy or Mary to get their daughter to come out of the bedroom. Brandon began sleeping on the downstairs couch so that he could give her some space and time to get over her grief. She did not eat for several days, despite Mary’s efforts to get her to do so.
Finally one night when Brandon and Troy were playing chess and Mary was making a tuna casserole, Cordelia suddenly came down from the bedroom and made an appearance. Her eyes looked hollow and there were huge rings underneath, indicating that she hadn’t gotten much sleep in the past few days.
“Are you hungry, dear?” her mother asked as she came over to where Cordelia was sitting down on the couch. Cordelia nodded her head and Mary went back to the kitchen to continue the preparations for dinner. Troy and Brandon kept playing chess, not wanting to force her to talk before she was ready. It wouldn’t take long before she began to talk on her own.
“How do you have such an interest in a such a boring game?” she asked Troy and Brandon. They both looked over at her and smiled. They were glad that she actually seemed to be returning to a state of normalcy.
“It’s not boring to us, dear. It requires a lot of strategy and concentration,” Troy said.
“Boring!” she said again.
“Dinner’s ready,” Mary said suddenly, causing the guys to put their game on hold. They got up and went to the dinner table. No one brought up Henry or what happened to him until Cordelia brought it up herself.
“Do you think Henry suffered before he died?” she asked bluntly. The statement was so jarring, Troy just about spit out the water he was drinking.
Mary put a hand on Cordelia’s head and patted it. “I really hope not, but I can’t say for sure.”
“I just don’t understand how God could allow all of this to happen. I mean, innocent people are probably dying all over the world, and for what reason?” she said.
“I understand why you would feel that way, but sometimes good things just randomly happen to good people. It’s not something that God probably intends to have happen.” Troy attempted to explain it as best he could. It was an odd subject to discuss with his daughter, due to the fact that he himself was agnostic and wasn’t sure how God fit into the picture. Though it was very understandable that she would be asking questions like this, at a time like this.
“I’m not sure I believe in God, anyway,” Cordelia said. “I mean, there’s so many things that don’t make sense about it all. I just don’t think some merciful God would allow this to happen to all of us.”
“You are welcome to believe whatever you want, dear. We have always told you that, and we still feel the same way. What you should understand is that lots of people have lost someone since this whole disaster began. As hard as it might be to believe, we are some of the lucky ones. We have only lost one person that we know of,” Troy said, trying to put everything in perspective for her.
“For a while, I had nightmares about it. I could see Henry over and over again yelling out in pain. Last night was the first night that I didn’t have the dream in a week,” she said. Her voice took on a somber tone. “I miss him so much.”
“I know you do, dear. It will take some time to get over this, but you will eventually come to grips with it,” Mary said.
“He was the only boy I ever loved,” Cordelia said, as everything about that horrible day came flooding back into her memory.
“Let it go, dear. You have to let him go,” Troy said as he patted her on the back. She nodded her head like she knew he was right.
“I keep going back to that day, thinking he might have been alright if we had only opened the door for him.”
“He was already badly burned when he got here, and whoever opened that door would risk injuring themselves and contaminating the shelter. We can only open the door for very short periods of time. Everyone needs to understand that we
will not open that door for anyone. Others will probably eventually come around begging for help or to be let in. We cannot allow those people to diminish our supplies, and if someone we don’t know comes around, we can’t trust them. Trust me, I know it’s hard, but we are doing this for our own safety. We can make it through this crisis if we stick to this rule, and stick together,” Troy said.
Troy decided to take a break from the news for a few days, for fear that it would only upset his children even more. Besides, it was unlikely to be good news, and more than likely would only paint a bleak picture. Instead, he continued to get his family into a routine that involved chores, gardening, house work and school studies. They had given Cordelia a week off from her duties, and it was now time for her to get back to helping the family.
“Let me help you with the dishes, mom,” she said after the family finished dinner. Mary was pleasantly surprised that her daughter was offering to help.
“Sure, dear.”
As the two of them washed the dishes, they began to talk for a moment about everyday things, trying to forget the crisis that they were in the middle of.
The vegetables that Troy had been growing were starting to become ripe for the picking. They would soon be able to incorporate fresh greens, tomatoes, and carrots into their meals that they were planning. Troy, with the help of his son, kept strict tabs on the inventory of their supplies, and everything was holding out just as he had hoped it would.
That night after dinner, the kids went upstairs to their rooms to start on the homework that their father assigned them. They would not be allowed to come downstairs until they were through with it, and then, Troy would check it to make sure that it was completed, and completed correctly at that. This met with some groans of protest from Cordelia, but after a little bit of moaning and eyerolling, she would follow through with the request.
After the children went to bed, Troy decided to switch on the news to get a report. Mary, who was also anxious to hear some more updates about the outside world, came and sat down by his side on the couch as he switched on the television.