by Mike McKay
Chapter 28
The sunset just began, and early stars appeared to accompany a first-quarter Moon through the night. In this part of the hospital ward, the only source of light was a dim LED lantern between the beds. Jasmine and Samantha sat on the frame of the broken window, measuring the Moon angular size with their thumbs.
The sunsets are so beautiful now. Before the Meltdown, one could not see real sunsets. Not in the gigawatt city, with its yellowish backdrop of air pollution and its wasteful street lights. A definitive improvement here.
Let's try Just-Adjust, Mark decided. I want myself a beautiful sunset, with young Moon and few stars on the side! And here it comes: one personal sunset for Mark Pendergrass. Happy?
Another swish of multiple bare feet behind the partition, the plastic film opened, and Mark saw the rest of his family. Patrick immediately jumped on Mark for a bear-hug, Pamela followed.
“Easy, Ricky! Pam! Remember, Daddy still has stitches on his arm,” Mary hugged Mark and gave him an endless kiss.
“You're late,” Clarice said, “I sent you my message ages ago.”
“Oh, the usual,” Mary waved her hand, “getting kids together is like herding cats! For starters, we sent Ricky to fetch e-mails. Good luck! Three hours! What did you do for three hours, Ricky?”
“Mom, I was a bit preoccupied.”
“Preoccupied! OK, Ricky. Tell Daddy how exactly you were preoccupied!” Mary demanded.
“With Monica, from our class. Didn't see her for ages and ages!”
William smiled, Samantha and Pamela laughed. Davy looked around and decided to join the laughter too.
“For ages! Five days, if I count right!” Mary said.
“Honey, life goes on,” Mark said. “Patrick spent three hours with a girlfriend, no big deal.”
“She is not a girlfriend, Dad. Just… a classmate, OK?”
“OK, Ricky,” Pamela said. “Let's call her a classmate, whatever. For your info, Dad, Monica is the girl, who now, by pure chance, – sits next to Ricky on every lesson!”
Upon this revelation, Patrick made Pamela a face, which caused yet another burst of laughter.
Mark smiled. Patrick, demonstratively indifferent to girls half a year ago, started turning into a young man.
Mary was dressed in her old, home use only, blouse and tattered skirt, positively not something ‘appropriate’ just one week ago. She had Mark's presents on: the necklace and the bracelet with the real Swarovski crystals. He looked at her feet. Quite out of character, her beaten-up clogs, which used to be mandatory for going out, and made Mary complain of the blisters, were now replaced: with the black-and-golden barefoot sandals!
Pamela had Patrick's T-shirt and Mary's skirt. This particular skirt was made of their bedroom curtain, and Mary never liked it, saying the colors were too saturated and the flowers – too large. But the bright colors and extra-large flowers were exactly what Pamela envisaged. The T-shirt, way too tight for her, exposed the tummy, while the skirt happened to be too wide, – to be supported at the waistline by a length of rope with uncountable fancy knots. Her brown-and-green kama'a-ole and earrings made of green and yellow Lego blocks matched the improvised Calypso costume.
“You look awesome,” Mark said, “your new fashion is wonderful, girls.”
“I like it too,” Mary proudly demonstrated her bare feet. “I feel like I'm twelve again. That's the last time I played pirates with my sister.”
Patrick's pirate costume consisted of a pair of jeans, converted into below-knee shorts, and his favorite bandana. His dream was fulfilled: a standard-issue Army knife hung from the neck in a self-made plastic scabbard! He had finally convinced his Mom that no self-respecting ten-year-old should leave home without a proper weapon.
William's shorts were made from patched uniform trousers, and instead of the knife he had a donation bucket over his neck. Not the politically-correct official Salvation Way red plastic either, but a slum design. A proper, luxurious, no-nonsense, beggar bucket manufactured from rusted half-gallon tin, with an inscription written on it with a black permanent marker: Say YES to beggars. DONATE TO EVERYBODY. William wore welding goggles where one black glass had been replaced with an old camera lens.
“What do you have on your face, William?” Mark asked.
“My reading glasses. Sam's invention.”
“Invention!” Samantha said, “just luck! Grand David found his box of war photos. The albums were all wet, and the pictures all ruined, but he gave me his old camera. First, I wanted to build a make-believe steampunk goggles for Bertie. Zap attached the lens to old goggles from the 'Fill, I looked: wow! Well, Zap did the rest.”
“Can you read this?” Mark picked the business card.
“Hold it to the light and upside down,” William instructed. With his arm stump, he touched the lens to adjust the focus. “VET-TO-VET. Cool.”
“It really works!”
“Four letters at the time. I still have to figure out how to turn pages. Mister Todd can't call me totally blind no more.”
“Have you lost your Salvation Way bucket?”
“We've lost Salvation Way altogether,” William said. “SWC is closed since the hurricane, but the charities are running fine. People figured out they can run soup kitchens and collect donations without having a bunch of old-timers in blue uniforms bossing everybody around.”
“Billy started rap lessons,” Pamela said. “With that Quad at the market who has two different girlfriends every day.”
“Jack-the-Rapper?” Mark asked.
William nodded. “Jack says, I have a potential.”
“Writing the stuff, or just singing?”
“Both.”
“Flop it on our heads, then.”
“It's not ready for flopping.”
“Flop the best part of it.”
William touched his goggles. “OK. But it's not exactly rap. And please: don't laugh.”
“We are listening.”
“Promise?”
“Real promise,” Mark looked at Samantha.
“OK, OK, set ready for your laughter, conspirators. I know what the real promise means between two of you! So it goes like this,” he pointed his lens into Mark's personal sunset and started reading, punching the rhythm with his stump instead of a fist:
We will never fly back to the Moon,
We forget about Popper and Kuhn,
World of Bohr and Einstein,
World of Tolkien's runes
Now ending in slums,
And is ending too soon…
He stopped and shook his head. “Na-ah, give me another week to polish the rest! Besides, Jack says it's geeky. I'm missing the intended target audience.”
Frederick chuckled, “Popper and Kuhn? Yeah, right! Your Jack has no idea who they are!”
“Believe me, Jack knows! When he had two arms and two legs, he also had two Ph.D. – from Stanford. In modern English literature and in History of Science! I told him that now – even better. He can call himself a Quad Ph.D.!”
“I will not laugh,” Mark said, “your poetry sounds very darn good. Continue working on your rap.”
“I told you, Dad. It's not rap.”
“Whatever. But please take notice: the stand-up comedian career is futile.”
Life was going on. A bit difficult, and a bit tight here and there, but not unhappy, and sometimes – even funny. Normal. Mark would not even mind his younger kids meeting their dates-to-be in the woods. They dealt with the Sheldon Butcher, and the woods were reasonably safe – once again.
Mark smiled. They were not clinging on their former upper middle-class status any longer. Whatever pretense of their pre-Meltdown lifestyle they had – all blown away by the hurricane and washed by the flood. The sun evaporated the rest of Mary's ‘appropriate’ and ‘not appropriate’ dichotomy, and they became an equally-standard slum family from the equally-standard American slum:
from the unkempt hear down to their permanently bare, one hundred percent anti-sissy feet. Much better this way.
“Mommy!” Davy exclaimed suddenly. “Mommy! My legs!”
“Legs?” Clarice lifted the bed sheet. And then – they saw a little miracle. The polio started retreating. Davy was smiling and wiggling his toes. On both feet!
Mark looked into the sunset. Whatever the Year Zero throws at them, they deal with it. One thing at the time.
###
Dear Reader! Thank you for reading my book.
If you have enjoyed it, would you be so nice to leave me a review at your favorite retailer? If you believe the book is so-so, or even worse: if you have barely managed to the end of such a hopeless garbage – please do not write anything… Just joking! I am very interested in your opinion – positive, negative, or neutral. Writing about the humanity crisis is not an easy task. Everything is possible, but not every outcome is equally probable. If you think of the way to make the book more convincing or have spotted a logical flaw – please kindly let me and the other readers know through your reviews.
May the future be kind to you and to all you love.
Mike McKay.
2009
Other books by Mike McKay:
Houston, 2030: With Proper Legwork
Houston, 2015: Miss Uncertainty
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28