Within minutes, Brian had finished unloading the things we’d brought back with us. He turned around and leaned against the counter with a sigh. He looked as exhausted as I felt.
“What should we do?” I asked quietly. I didn’t want to annoy him with my pestering, but I felt obligated to do everything I could for Sarah. I was wholly convinced she was the only reason I had a warm, safe place to stay. Had it been up to George, or even up to Brian, I probably would have been left on my own.
“I don’t really know that there’s anything we can do, Paige. Look, I know you’re really concerned, and I know you feel bad, but you don’t need to. You don’t owe any of us anything.”
“But that’s not true, I-“
“Yes, Paige. It’s true. So you crashed here a few days. Big deal. You help with chores and you don’t eat much. In fact, considering how absolutely little you eat, I’m kind of surprised you’re still standing.” I blushed at his comment, but it was true. I’d been exceptionally conscious about overeating and overstaying my welcome, so I’d been very careful to eat as little as possible. I was embarrassed that he’d noticed.
“I just don’t want to see her hurting.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Brian sighed and we both knew it wasn’t true.
“Alcohol?” I offered up.
“No, she has liver problems.”
“Pot?” Maybe Brian smoked. I didn’t know. Enough kids at the dorm did that I knew well enough how to bake special brownies, although if it came down to actually rolling a joint, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. I wasn’t that skilled, after all. It didn’t matter because Brian shot me a dark glance and I knew immediately that the idea was no good. Of course not, I realized, remembering Brian’s military past. He wouldn’t be caught with anything illegal in the house, and Sarah and George were old enough that I didn’t really take them for the pot-smoking kind.
With a smirk, Brian shook his head. “Not in this house, Sweetie.”
“It was just a suggestion.”
“I’m not offended. I just know she would never do it. Grams has never so much as smoked a cigarette. I doubt she’s ready to start something as extreme as that now. And while I have plenty of friends who do smoke, I have no idea how I’d go about getting any now. The time to stock up on weed has long past.” Brian sighed and melted into a chair. He looked just as worn down as I felt.
Realizing that I was beat, exhausted, and complete worn out emotionally, I told Brian good night. He nodded, muttered a soft “Nite,” and seemed to focus his energy entirely on staring at his empty coffee mug. He didn’t hug me goodnight. He seemed more tired than I’d ever seen him. The sparkle was all but gone from his eyes. I couldn’t blame him for feeling worn out. Sarah wasn’t even my grandmother and I was exhausted. It didn’t seem fair, not really. How could someone so kind and gentle be so sick? With the D-Virus raging on in the outside world, how could something else, something even deadlier, be lurking? It seemed like some sort of cruel joke. For what felt like the millionth time, I wondered what God was thinking. I had grown up in church. I had my faith. Today, though, today I wondered if it was all a lie.
I left the room silently and retreated to the living room chair. I wiggled around and tried to get comfortable, but it wasn’t happening. I heard Brian go upstairs and, seeing as how Sarah hadn’t been down in a while, I decided to take her spot on the sofa. As I slid the warm, hand-made quilt over my body and settled into the deep sofa cushions, I wondered if I would ever get to see my own mother again. My tears kept me company as I drifted off into a fitful sleep.
Chapter 12
I couldn’t sleep for long. I’d been sleeping fine all week. Seeing my friends die, watching the world crumble, and finding my place in a strange universe where I only had two pairs of clothes hadn’t been enough to keep me awake, but a thunderstorm was. Somehow it seemed too normal, too usual. Kansas always got bad thunderstorms, but tonight’s was different. The heaving thunder claps shook the tiny farmhouse and I wondered how good the roof was. Would it leak? What about the windows? Were they sturdy enough to hold up? I worried about how we would handle damage to the house without a repairman on call. After all, how would we get glass or new roof tiles without access to a hardware store? How would we install them without the right training? How would we fix damage to the siding?
I sat, curled up in my space on the couch and stared at the closed drapes ahead of me. I knew that I needed to stop worrying. It was important to stop focusing on the negative or I’d just stress myself out. Worrying about “what-if’s” never helped anyone. It certainly wasn’t doing me any good.Flashes of lightning occasionally made their way through the dense curtains and momentarily lit up the room, revealing the pictures on the wall and reminding me how alone I was. I couldn’t do this, not tonight. No one else was awake and I didn’t know how they were able to sleep through the incredible noise. It felt like a freight train would ram through the house at any moment. I couldn’t do this alone.
Finally shifting the quilt off of myself, I slipped down from the couch and darted as quietly and quickly upstairs as I could. I doubted anyone could hear the creaking of the stairs over the sound of the thunder, but I also didn’t want to wake Sarah if she had finally been able to get some rest. Her room was to the right and the door was closed tightly. I fought the urge to open it and check on her and George, to make sure they were safe and warm. It wasn’t my place. I knew that, and waking up to a strange girl tucking an extra blanket on you would be weird.
Instead, I turned to the left, to Brian’s door, and opened it without knocking. He was snoring loudly in the bed but at the moment, no noise had ever sounded as wonderful and welcoming. My clothes came off quickly and I slid under the covers on the opposite side of the bed and curled up next to him. I wrapped my arm around his abdomen, positioning my body directly next to him. His snoring stopped momentarily as he rolled over and realized he had company. His kiss was as soft as I expected it to be, and it didn’t take long for me to forget the thunder.
**
The gun shot that resonated throughout the house was loud enough to wake us both. The second shot had Brian darting down the hall while I pressed my body on the cold floor of the tiny bedroom. What was happening? Were we being attacked? The sound of rain was still pounding against the glass but there were no broken shards. I reached for my clothes and pulled them hastily on. I wished for my shoes, but they were downstairs. I crawled on my hands and feet to the bedroom door and peaked out, expecting to see an invasion, but there wasn’t one.
There were also no more gunshots.
Brian sat at the top of the stairs, expressionless. I opened my mouth to ask what had happened, but the slightly-ajar door to Sarah and George’s room said it all. So that had been the solution. That had been the way to fix Sarah’s pain and George’s heartbreak. That had been it. Brian wasn’t crying. He just stared at his hands, silently, blankly. Standing, I walked over and sat down next to him. I placed my hand on top of his and stared down the narrow flight of stairs alongside of my new companion.
Words would be of no comfort, so I didn’t waste my breath trying to come up with something consoling or profound. Words could not fix this. Nothing could fix this. I understood why he had done it, I thought. I wondered if I would have done the same thing. How do you live with someone your entire life and then watch them die a slow, painful death? Wouldn’t this be better for everyone? Wouldn’t this be the compassionate thing to do? I didn’t blame George, not really, but it didn’t take away the pain of losing someone. Anyone.
Brian did not try to hold my hand. He didn’t push me away, but he offered no acknowledgement that I was there. I wondered what he was feeling. He had nobody left. He was even more alone than I was. At least I still had the hope that my parents would be alive, despite the ever-growing fear that something was wrong, that I would be too late, that I had failed at getting to them before the virus struck.
Suddenly, Brian began to scream at the top of his lungs. He s
tood and began kicking the wall. Soon a small hole formed at the bottom of the wall, near the flooring. He kept kicking. There was nobody here to hear his screams but me. There was nobody here to save him. There was no one. Nothing could stop this. Nothing could cease the anger, the pain, the grim reality that this was our world now.I pushed the door open to Sarah’s room and walked inside. And I closed the door behind me.
I couldn’t see any bodies at first, just a thin, spreading pool of blood.My eyes adjusted to the dark and then I could see them. Sarah lay asleep in the bed, a single bullet through her forehead. Her hands were folded gently on her lap and she had a half-smile on her face. She looked just as peaceful as she had alive.The thunder wouldn’t bother her now. The pain, the aching, the terror of not knowing how much longer she had to endure the pain, that was finished. The blankets were neat and orderly, just like everything else in her bedroom. Everything that is, except for George.
George was on the floor. The gun was next to him.His wound was bigger. There was so much blood that I couldn’t even tell where his face used to be. I had once heard stories in a Psychology class about people who tried to commit suicide but who missed and survived, doomed to live a disfigured and disabled life. George had been careful not to let that happen. He had taken his one shot and made sure that it was a good one. Suicide was not clean. There was brain matter everywhere. The floor, the side of the dresser, and the wall were all bloodied. He must have been kneeling by her bed. He must have been saying goodbye when he did it. One last soft word to his sweetheart, to his everything.
I covered my mouth to keep from screaming and backed out of the room before I could keep looking. Brian reached past me and closed the door without a word. He lifted his foot and kicked the wall one last time. There were two deep holes in the flower-covered wallpaper now, but neither one of us really cared.I rushed into the bathroom and didn’t bother to close the door before I started hurling into the toilet. George was dead. Sarah was dead. Nick. Elizabeth. Everyone. All of them. Crying didn’t make throwing up any easier. I gagged and choked as my stomach turned and reeled. It wasn’t fair.
I continued to sob as I hurled into the toilet, the weight of the shoulders on my world. Why had this happened? Why this? Why us? Why Brian? I had never done anything terribly bad. I had never done anything especially horrible. Weren’t bad things supposed to happen to bad people? It didn’t seem fair. After already losing all of my friends, now I lost the only two people who were looking after me. In many ways, I had emotionally adopted George and Sarah as grandparents. I threw up some more and tried to stop thinking about it.After a minute, I felt two gentle hands pull my hair back from my face and pat my back.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.
When I had nothing more to pour from my body, I closed the toilet lid and leaned back against the wall, breathless and exhausted. I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. This wasn’t exactly the type of “morning after” I was used to. I was tired of feeling sad. I was tired of being angry and scared and of nothing going right. This wasn’t fair. I half-wondered if I was going crazy, if this was all just a dream. It didn’t seem possible to be real, yet the corpses in the other room proved me wrong.
As if reading my thoughts, Brian said softly, “Nothing is going to be the same again.” Then, sighing, “He couldn’t bear to see her in pain.”
“Did you know?” I asked, instantly regretting it.
“No, I didn’t know. You think I ever would have left the old man alone if I’d known? Fuck, Paige. Have you always been this damn insensitive or is this a recent development?”
He stormed downstairs and I didn’t blame him. He was right. I didn’t bother to get up and follow Brian or even try to explain myself. He was completely correct in his analysis of me. Spoiled little Paige: the only-child, the princess who couldn’t survive on her own when the virus struck. I hated myself for all the mistakes I was making. I hated myself for my stupid comment. A million different things ran through my head, different things I could have said, different things I ought to have said.
My stomach churned and I kneeled back over the toilet. I was going to be there for awhile.
**
“I’m going to need your help if you’re finished.” Brian stood in the doorway to the bathroom, staring at me. He didn’t smile, didn’t offer a bit of hope that the night before had meant anything to him, but to be honest, I didn’t know if it meant anything to me, either. There’s something strange about losing everything you know at once and it’s quite enough to make you feel like you’re going mad. Your first time is supposed to be something magical. I’d always been taught you were supposed to wait until you were married, until you were in love. I’d been taught a lot of things, though, and I didn’t really know which ones were true anymore.
“I’m finished.” I stood, wondering if there was still enough water to flush the toilet. We’d all been careful, and while there was still plenty of water from the well, the pressure had gone way down. The pump that forced the water into the house was electric, so while we had water, we would have to go outside and manually pump water or do the old-school bucket-and-dip method of getting water out once the house’s reserves were gone.
It was still raining outside. Waves of rain pounded against the house making it difficult to hear what Brian was saying unless he raised his voice. I felt like I was being yelled at. Brushing it off, I asked him what he needed me to help him with. His eyes were full of pain. I tried not to think about how difficult the days ahead were going to be.
“We can’t leave them here. Everything needs to be sterilized and cleaned.” I could tell it pained him even to say it, and my heart ached for him. The kid didn’t even have time to mourn his dead before he had to start being a grownup. I reached a hand out to him and placed it gently on his arm.
“We can do this,” I told him with determination. The truth was that I’d never seen a real dead body before. I’d gone to funerals, sure, but morticians were a skilled bunch and when my grandmother died I hadn’t been completely sure she was actually dead. The Nana I knew, the one I loved, the one I’d spent my summers with, looked asleep. She didn’t look dead. I learned eventually that learning how to apply lifelike makeup on the dead is actually a very difficult job, but at the time, I just wondered how anyone so dead could look so alive.
Sarah and George did not have that problem. I had seen plenty of crime show episodes on television, but in those flicks there was always a coroner to take away the body. The corpse was always placed neatly in plastic, zipped up, and taken away to be autopsied and buried with class and dignity. We did not have that option. This clean-up would not be neat, tidy, or clean. It would be messy. It would be hands-on and it would be gross.
“Get some gloves from under the bathroom sink. They weren’t contagious and didn’t have the virus, but the last thing I need is you catching something from unsanitary cleaning.”
I opened the bathroom cupboard and revealed a small box of gloves next to an unused bottle of hair dye. I wondered when Sarah had last dyed her hair at home. The bottle was dusty and had a picture of someone that I guessed was from the 70s or 80s. I slipped on the gloves and handed a pair to Brian, who did likewise.
“First we need to move them. We can’t do anything in the rain, so we’ll put them by the back door until it stops. The room needs to be completely sanitized. Since the high-efficiency washing machine isn’t exactly running these days and we can’t use the hospital grade sanitary function, anything with blood or mucous on it has to be destroyed.”
“Destroyed?”
“Get some trash bags. We’ll put everything in there and burn it later. There’s bleach in the kitchen beneath the sink. We can use that, too.”
I got everything Brian asked me for and met him in Sarah and George’s room. He had wrapped Sarah gingerly in her quilted bedspread. He paused for a moment, leaned down, and kissed her softly on the forehead. He whispered something I couldn’t hear and picked her u
p easily. She looked so small in his arms. I wondered, for a moment, if she had carried him as an infant the way he carried her now. Without a word, Brian carried his grandmother lovingly to the kitchen and placed her by the backdoor.
When he returned, we both stared at George for a moment. I tried not to look at his face. I still couldn’t take it in without feeling queasy. I felt bad for it. Guilt swelled inside of me. This man had been hurting. He had been in pain, yet all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to clean up his body. Scrubbing brain matter from the wall was not something I had ever expected to do, much less today. I needed to have a better attitude and I knew it. I could do this.
“We need to wrap him up, but I can’t do it alone. Can you help?” Brian looked like he half-expected me to refuse, but I didn’t. I would help him. It was the least I could do.
I nodded, covering my mouth and looking away. “Hold on a second,” Brian told me. He darted out of the room and returned a moment later with the shower curtain from the bathroom. “This will work better than a quilt,” he said simply, and laid the shower curtain next to George’s body. “Grab his feet.”
Obediently, I grabbed George’s bare ankles and Brian lifted him from the shoulders. George was heavier than he looked, but we managed to get him on the curtain in one try. Brian wrapped the sides of the plastic around his grandfather. He hesitated for a moment and I wondered briefly if he wanted to say a word of goodbye to him, as well, but Brian simply walked over, grabbed the plastic by George’s feet, and began to pull his body out of the room. It took both of us to get him down the stairs, but we did it and laid George next to Sarah on the kitchen floor.
Brian grabbed the bleach, some towels, and a box of plastic garbage bags. Before I followed him, I pulled back the kitchen curtain and peered outside into the rain. The storm was bad. It would be awhile before we’d be able to bury George and Sarah. The ground would be damp for days. Why hadn’t George held off at least until the ground dried up? I frowned with disappointment at myself. I knew he had been in pain, but he had made a lot of work for us. I wished, briefly, that he had gone outside to do the deed.I wished, just for a moment, that he had waited for a sunny day, or, probably most of all, that he hadn’t killed himself at all.
Never Look Back: A Dystopian Novel Page 10