Humanity Gone: After the Plague

by Derek Deremer

  “What can we do today?” I say softly out loud, spinning around and forcing a smile on my face. We all slept inside last night, which should make them happy. Those two nights on the sidewalk were awful. Sara stirs, but quickly settles and lays back down, facing the wall. Jon opens his eyes, rolls his shoulders back, and looks at me. It seems like only the bottom half of his face is smiling.

  “I guess you are all energized. Are you hungry, Caitlyn? I'm sure I can manage something for our first meal.”

  I nod a few times, keeping the forced smile on my face. Breakfast has always been my favorite meal. Sara and I didn’t have to get cleaned up, or change out of our pajamas. We just threw our covers back and walked to the table. The smell of bacon and pancakes always helped. Mommy and daddy make, or made, the best breakfasts.

  My smile stops, and I don’t inhale for a little. I watch Jon walk toward the big cabinets next to the stove on the back wall. As he opens the door, a few cans fall from the shelves and hit the wooden floor. The sound is really loud. He quickly turns to me.

  "Who packed this?" he asks. I roll my eyes.

  Sara stirs a little bit at the sound. She rolls over and opens her eyes.

  “Sleep better?” asks Jo, now sitting up. She reaches over and runs her fingers through Sara’s hair. Sara nods and my sister and I share a smile.

  I feel my eyebrows rise. Thinking of mom and dad took away my appetite. I think I had forgotten when I first woke up. “I take it back. I’m not hungry.”

  “I know; I don’t think any of us are.” says Jo, turning toward me but not lifting her hand from Sara’s head. “But you have to eat.”

  I don’t say anything back. My head just sinks and my eyes fall to the floor.

  “I know things are kinda rough, but they will change,” says Jo, quietly. She stands up, hops off the bunk, and walks over to me. I feel her hand under my chin, so I look up to see her kneeling in front of me. That same bottom-face smile that Jon had is on her face, too.

  “I really miss my dad too,” she says. “But he wanted me to get through this. So I’m going to have to do some things that feel hard for a while. Can you do them with me? Besides we have quite an adventure ahead of us. Also best yet: there will be no school.”

  "No reading?" Sara nearly falls off her bunk. Jon lifts his head from his search for food.

  "Oh no, young lady. You’re not going to give up learning on my watch," Jon says with a laugh. I’m not sure if he’s serious, but Sara thinks he is, and she is not amused.

  “Anyway, Jo’s right,” he continued, setting some things on the table. “We all have an adventure on our hands. This first one’s easy though! We have to eat, and you can choose whatever you like.” He throws four unopened bags of mini-muffins on the table. “As long as it's muffins”

  “What kind of muffins?” Sara pipes up.

  “For your dining pleasure, we have blueberry and banana nut.” Jon answers. I remember dad getting them out of a vending machine once for me.

  "You’re a nut." Jo jokes as she slightly slaps the back of Jon's head. Jon flinches and raises his hand to the spot that she hit, and playfully throws one of the bags of muffins at her.

  She catches it just before it hits her in the nose. "Now Jon, don't throw your food." We all laugh.

  Sara reaches for a bag, tears it open, and nibbles at a muffin. She never cared for them. Mom's were the only ones she ate.

  “Come on over, Caitlyn,” says Jon, patting beside himself on the bench.

  I don’t want muffins. I don’t want anything. Jon just continues to look at me as I shake my head.

  “How good are they?” asks Jo, looking toward Sara at the table.

  Sara doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even change her facial expression. She just turns toward Jo and nods with an entire muffin in her mouth. She goes to say something and it almost falls out.

  “See? They’re good,” says Jo. Soon enough, we’re all chewing away, except for my sister who is chewing loudly. I hate it when she does that. Daddy would never let her get away with it. Jon passes out some glasses with bottled water poured in them. I drink it down.

  Jon crinkles up all the empty bags and sighs. I bet he wishes there are more we could eat today. “I promise breakfast will be a little more creative in the future. I’m going to get back to the trailer. It shouldn’t take too long. Plus, I’ll see if I can gather anything else from inside.”

  The smile fades from his face quickly. I’m going to be twelve years old soon, so I can tell when someone is faking. Sara hops off of my bench and runs over to him as he turns around to walk to the door, and I follow. He jumps a little bit as I wrap my arms around his waist.

  “Come back soon!” Sara says, doing the same.

  This time, his whole face smiles, even if it is just a little one. As he turns away, I feel an odd tingling in my throat and clear it quietly.

  Chapter 15: Jonathon

  It’s hard to leave the girls. I already feel some sense of responsibility for the twins, a need to protect them. Plus, they are one of the few elements of my life that might make me smile anymore. Jo and I have gotten along well these past few days, but once things return to any sense of normalcy our problems will return. The door subtly creaks behind me as I pull it shut, and the storm door slams against the frame as I walk to the car. With a turn of the key, the SUV comes to life and drifts forward from my prompting. Maybe the long drive will give me time to understand why I feel so compelled to bury this ranger.

  With nobody else in the car, I’m a little less careful with the drive. It feels good to take the turns a few miles an hour faster than I should: like an amusement park ride. I give the steering wheel a particularly aggressive twist to the left, and the car turns just barely faster than traction should allow. The extra floating dust in my rear-view mirrors confirms the fishtail.

  Alright, that’s enough goofing off. I need to remain in the right mindset if I’m going to keep everyone safe. No mess-ups. Not now, when there is no telling what the consequences could be. My driving becomes immediately smoother.

  As the road flies below me, I turn my attention back to the ranger. I had originally felt a sense of duty or something to this man who had given us supplies that may save our lives as we get used to “living off of the land.” The more I think about it, the more I realize that it must be more than gratitude. I understand why I couldn’t explain it to Jo yesterday; I can’t even explain it to myself.

  Maybe since I can't bury my father...

  I glance at the radio several times and begin to seek through the stations. Each one is in static. We really are secluded here in the woods. Or maybe they stopped broadcasting. Who would be broadcasting anymore anyway?

  The road is becoming less dusty, and I can see pavement up ahead. The ranger's station should be just over this hill. The sun is well into the sky now, and although the warmth is currently pleasing, it might get annoying when I’m trying to dig a grave. Is six feet a requirement or a suggestion? I don’t have a clue. It doesn’t really matter how deep it is. The grave will be up to my chest. That'll work.

  The station is quiet. Undoubtedly much like the rest of campground: an odd sense of stillness. I throw the transmission into park and kill the engine. As I open the door, I hear the sound of birds chirping in the treetops. What would normally have been a serene string of tweeting was unsettling as it was at odds with the rest of the eeriness of the place. I shake my head to get focused. I need a shovel, and I need to find a place to dig.

  Both present themselves immediately. On the side of the station, there is an array of tools hanging from a row of nails embedded in the trailer’s outside wall. Spades, shovels, rakes, hoes, hand tillers, and even a pitchfork are hung in no immediately apparent particular order. Wait...

  Alphabetical? I muse, seeing that the cultivator is first and the watering pot is last. I continue, seeing that a compound bow and quiver is just a few nails to the left of the watering pot. An odd thing to just have lying around.
It’s been a couple of months since I’ve shot, but you don’t lose something like that very quickly. Archery is more like riding a bike than swinging a golf club. I joined the school's club the past year and was a pretty good shot. I was saving up to by a bow this year. Looks like I will take this one for free.

  Again, I need to focus. The place to dig the grave is clear as well. Behind the trailer are two wooden crosses sticking out of the ground. One has a small mound in front of it. The other is at the head of undisturbed soil. A chill shoots through my spine as I consider what it must have felt like for the ranger to lash a cross and hope that it would be over his final resting place.

  I make my way into the trailer. The ranger lies on the couch, undisturbed. Only a few flies have found their way into the trailer, and they don’t appear to have decided where they want to land. I stop to observe the situation. Wrapped entirely in the blanket, he is just as easy to lift today as he was last night. I navigate carefully out the front door, around the trailer, and I lay him a few feet away from what will be his grave.

  I reposition the ranger beside the cross marked patch of dirt and mark the edges of the grave. After hanging the spade back on the wall and trading it for a long, wide shovel, I come back to study the ground.

  “Here goes,” I say, exhaling heavily through the words.

  I was right about the sun. A few dozen shovel-fulls in and I feel the unrelenting heat saturating my back. It was unusually hot for this time of year. All those bodies in the streets – the parking garage, I can only imagine the reek that surrounds them now. Again, I am thankful for getting out of the city.

  Time and time again, I stand, empty the shovel, and squat back down for another. Time goes by slowly, but eventually I can tell that the sun is no longer rising higher into the sky. At about the same moment, I start to measure the depth by leaning up against the hole's walls. The hole is a bowl at the moment, so soon I can just work on leveling out the bottom. I set down the shovel to look at my hands. They are sore and blistered in a few areas. My arms ache.

  I need to know what time it is and give my hands a break; I don't want to get back to the cabin too late in the day. A quarter-turn of the keys in the ignition of the car shows that it’s still only one o’clock. Good; I have plenty of time.

  I finish the grave rather quickly now and work through the pain each fling of the shovel delivers. I stand up against the wall to check. It comes right up to my chest. I hoist myself out and lay the ranger’s body next to the grave. After lowering myself back in, I pull the ranger off of the ground and lay him gently on the bottom.

  Refilling the grave takes half the time of actually digging it. As I finish the mound, I consider making some parting remarks. There are only a few shovel-fulls left.

  “Thank you, sir,” I begin, weakly. I empty the shovel onto the mound two more times. “You gave us some more time to get on our feet.” The last bits of dirt fall from the shovel’s edge. “Hopefully we’ll be ready by the time it runs out,” I say, more to myself than to him.

  I’m glad I came back. Something about fulfilling this man’s final wishes gives me a sense of belonging here. There are no adults left to do adult’s work. I may be about as old as it gets, now. Although that thought is intimidating, I feel a kernel of confidence sprout in my mind that says if anyone can handle this situation now, it’s me.

  I exhale as if the job is finished, but before I can look away, my thoughts return to my father. Paralyzed, I realize that I’ll never have the opportunity to recover his respect, if that was even possible.

  “I swear, father.” I whisper while staring at the cross on the grave. “ I swear that I won’t.” I mean it. Whatever it takes. A few moments go by before I relax my grip on the shovel and use my dirty hands to wipe away the tears building in the corner of my eye.

  I finished burying my father.

  I turn my head toward the tool wall, and after a momentary pause, I collect its contents and pile them in the folded down back seat of the white SUV, including the bow and quiver full of white-finned red arrows. A wooden stop sign about 20 yards into the campground catches my eye. My hand grabs the bow.

  I hope you were right about these woods ranger. remembering his note, and the reference to game. I hope the archery club at school taught me enough to do something about it. Despite the pain in my arms and the quarter sized blisters on my hands, I pull back on the string and notch an arrow. My split-finger hold grabs the arrow I take a squared stance, just like I was taught. My arm raises the weapon.

  The pain from digging is gone for a single moment, and all I feel is the tension in my leading hand and a focused stillness as I release the arrow.

  Chapter 16: Jocelyn

  I’m not sure how long it takes to dig a grave, so I try not to worry, but Jon’s been gone for a while. Why was he so insistent upon going alone? None of us should be doing anything alone anymore. I’m going to make that a rule when he gets back.

  I look toward the window for the thousandth time today to see if there is any hint of orange among the clouds. The clear, bright, blue sky reminds me that it’s not as late as my nerves are telling me it is.

  The rest of my day so far has involved a walk around the cabin site to get familiar with the nearby area and staring at our food supply trying to figure out how to ration it. “Nutrition for survival in the event of a world-wide catastrophe” was not a topic that was covered in junior year health class this year. I wish it had been. It’s going to be very hard to feed the four of us in a way that we don’t waste away or go crazy from eating the same things over and over again.

  I start to take some kind of inventory of what’s here from what Jon organized last night. We have a ton of what appears to be some kind of generic canned pasta, as well as various soups, beans, jarred vegetables, and a few generic larger cans labeled “Chicken-in-a-Can.” There is absolutely nothing appetizing about that. My organic diet is about to end. The pantry also holds some kind of perishable items that we’ll have to take care of first. We still have a few boxes of those mini-muffins that we had this morning. There’s a box on the floor that’s full of potatoes, of all things, and a pie tin wrapped in foil sitting on top. I grabbed it the night before off the counter of the station. Either the ranger or his wife did some baking before they passed. I hope it is still good. I peel the foil back and am satisfied that it still seems relatively fresh.

  I can’t help but smile at the last box that I see. Everyone has always said that Twinkies would be their food of choice in the event of a world-wide catastrophe. I guess we will find out exactly how long they last; two ten-count boxes of Twinkies lay on the top shelf of the pantry. Since Hostess even stopped making them, they could be some of the last real Twinkies in the whole country.

  How in the world did we fit all of this in the car last night? I don’t remember taking that many trips. Then I realize yesterday was pretty much a blur already.

  Eventually, this food will run out. Will we be able to get back to the grocery stores? No. They’ll be empty or too dangerous. How long will we have to sustain ourselves here? How can we possibly be expected to do all of this?

  “We just have to,” I say out loud.

  This conclusion feels liberating. The near panic that I had briefly felt was quickly fading away, like a heavy and cold blanket falling from my shoulders. Now, my questions have answers, or at least plans to find them.

  I don’t know how to farm. How will we grow our food? Trial and error. In the spring we will have to try our best. We have a well-pump, plenty of dirt, and plenty of sun. I start to walk away from the pantry to sit down. And when should we start hunting? It’s a long shot, but maybe the stores still have some seeds in them. Maybe people overlooked them in a panic and went for the more conventional products.

  Maybe it will not come to that. In the back of my mind I hope things will come together in the country. Jon keeps pushing that this will be our lives for a very long time. Maybe order will be restored with the help of other
countries.

  I look at the girls. They seem calm right now. I think they’re grateful to just have a place to call home again, if even for a little while. If Jon is right, eventually we will need to be living entirely on what we harvest and what we kill. When that time comes, we can’t afford to still be learning.

  We have bullets. Lots of them. The ranger’s rifle and shotgun had several boxes of ammunition next to them. Although it’s a substantial supply, it’s not infinite. Maybe there’s a population of fish in the river that we can use.

  Then it occurs to me, I have no idea what the hell I am rambling about. Please God don't let this last long out here.

  “Jocelyn? I’m hungry,” says Sara, with a half-pout, half-beg on her face.

  I put on a warm smile for her. “Don’t worry. We can take care of that right now and I have a surprise for you tonight when Jon gets back.” That pie isn’t going to last long. We might as well celebrate our new home and put some kind of positive spin on this.

  “Can… can I have some more muffins?”

  “Don't you want something else?” my mind goes to the few bags of chips we brought from our house. Don't all kids want junk food? She shakes her head. “Well, of course you can. Did you like those this morning?” We had some simple soup for lunch, but it obviously wasn't holding them over.

  “Yeah,” she replies with a timid smile emerging on her face.

  “Well good.” I give her some and she enjoys them. She offers Sara and me each one as well from the bag. “Ok girls, come here for a second. I want to show you everything that we have. We’re going to have to be careful with how quickly we go through these things?” I usher them over to the pantry and show them the shelves. “This will only last the four of us a couple of months at best-so we cannot be wasteful. And if help hasn't arrived by then we’re going to have to start relying on other things.”