by Paul Curtin
“That won’t be for a while,” Sean said, poking his head in the doorway before disappearing.
Michael cleared his throat. He didn’t really care if Sean had heard him. Last night’s dinner had left everything out in the open. He followed Sean, Kelly behind him, and said, “Why do you say that?”
“Why listen to me? I’m living in a fantasy.”
He clenched his teeth. “Humor me.”
Sean paused as if to savor the moment, Michael not knowing something. “Volcanic eruptions don’t just send ash into the air. A lot of it gets trapped in the upper atmosphere. And that blocks the sun. All sorts of chemicals get released too. Even with small eruptions, the temperature of the earth cools afterward. This kind of eruption—it’s worse. It’ll be global.”
“How do you know that?”
“Read about it.”
Michael shook his head. “So, you’re saying it won’t stop snowing?”
“Not saying that. Just that—this might be a long-haul kind of situation.”
Sean grabbed a set of keys from his pocket. They came into the master bedroom. He placed a key into one of the gun safes and let the door ease open. Opened another. There were fewer weapons than Michael had expected—only a dozen handguns, a few hunting rifles, two shotguns, and a few thousand rounds of ammunition. Still overkill, but less than he had expected.
“Listen, Mike.”
He cocked his head.
“We’re stuck here with one another. Like it or not.”
“We’re not stuck here, Sean. I’m leaving as soon as the snow melts.”
Sean whistled. “You don’t listen, do you?”
“I listen fine. You’re being a little paranoid.”
“There’s ash falling outside, and you’re still holding onto the idea that I’m paranoid.”
“Who’s to say this won’t blow over in a few days?”
Sean reached into the gun safe and pulled out a shotgun. “It won’t. I’ve read about this before—Yellowstone. Ash raining in Pennsylvania means this’s way worse than anything they could have expected.” He sighed. “You know, we don’t have to like each other. But we’re sure as hell going to have to learn to work together.” He paused. “Ever shot a gun?”
“I have a 9mm at home.”
“Ever shot it?”
He shook his head.
Sean extended the black weapon to him, the barrel catching the light, shimmering dark and cold. No stock, just a pistol grip. An efficient contraption for killing. Sean said, “A twelve gauge. Close range loaded with bird shot. Just point and shoot. Nothing fancy.”
Michael’s heart sped up just looking at it. “I’m not taking that.”
“We need to be able to defend ourselves.”
“From what?”
“Everything out there.”
“There’s nothing out there. All we have is you, and you’re scaring the shit out of everyone.”
“Maybe we should be a little scared,” he said, grabbing a rifle. He shut the doors, locked them, and grabbed the keys. “We’re meeting downstairs.”
Sean left.
Kelly stood in the doorway. “You just can’t help yourself.”
“What?”
“From being an asshole.”
She shook her head and left too. He listened to her footsteps, tilted his head back, face angled toward the ceiling, and closed his eyes. Just perfect. Now he was the bad guy.
The television, prone to spats of snowy pixels, played the news silently behind the group. Nobody spoke. Molly hugged her little brother. Kelly had already joined them. As Michael took a seat, she looked at him and then away. She whispered something to the kids, and they smiled. Elise sat across from them as if stewing on something.
Sean set a shotgun on the coffee table with a clank. That brought an end to any smiles. “Everyone did great today,” he said.
Michael resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Thanks, brave leader.
“We need to cover the ground rules and make sure we all understand the situation.”
Or at least his interpretation of the situation.
“We’re going to stick to the house. As of right now, the electricity is holding strong, but I don’t expect it to stay that way. But we have our backups. We have a ton of wood outside for the furnace and the fireplace, and we can always cut more down. We can charge the chainsaw battery with the generator and we have the wood-chopping machine on standby. Regardless, everyone needs to stay inside.”
“So we’re prisoners?” Michael asked.
Sean sighed. “I didn’t say that.”
“It was implied.”
Kelly hissed Michael’s name.
“I implied that it’s not safe outside,” Sean said, “and that we should probably err on the side of caution.”
Kelly silenced Michael with another sharp look. He bit his tongue.
“We’ll boil our water, just in case. We have a sealed well on the property—a mechanical pump as a backup, so we’ll be good on water. Food is looking fine for now. I’ll make a ledger after we’re done here to track that too.”
The kids shifted.
“We need to be ready at all times. So, I’m asking the adults to be armed.”
Michael understood that it was key to control his volume and tone when he spoke. His wife was already at his throat, and he didn’t need to add fuel to her indignation. He spoke softly as if in disbelief. “Sean, you know how crazy this sounds?”
“I know it does. But that doesn’t make it less real.”
“Elise?”
“What do you want me to say?” she asked.
“I want you to tell him how insane this is.”
She rubbed her chin and turned her head.
“I see ash,” Michael said, “not people coming to take the food.”
Aidan’s voice cut through. “Is that why we covered the windows?”
Silence. Sean licked his lips. “There are bad people out there, bud.”
“You’re going to scare him,” Elise said.
Aidan stood up. “I’m not scared.”
“You don’t have to be,” Sean said, “because we’re here to protect you. All of us.”
“Can we maybe talk about this later?” Kelly said. “This’s too much.”
“Dad, we just boarded up our home to keep people out,” Molly said. “People I know are out there right now. My friends. My—”
A tinge of guilt hit Michael. He had forgotten about her boyfriend. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t much care about anyone else outside the room. His mom and dad were long dead. No real friends. Molly, though, had people she cared about close by.
“Then maybe we can talk later,” Michael said.
Everyone agreed silently. Sean said, “Let’s all try to get some sleep.”
With a rifle slung on his shoulder, Sean turned to his daughter. They shared a long hug before he kissed her forehead. The weak smile drained from her face when Sean couldn’t see. But Michael saw. Her smile returned when Sean looked at her.
“Take your brother upstairs, all right?”
She nodded and took Aidan’s hand. The other adults watched them ascend and then stood quiet for a few tense seconds. He watched the back of Sean’s head and waited for him to speak. When he turned, he looked tired, like his shoulders were worn down and curved from carrying a heavy weight. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Sean said.
“We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“I won’t stop you.”
“You won’t?”
“It’s not my business,” he said. “Just don’t come back.”
Elise gripped Sean’s arm.
“Excuse me?” Michael said.
“You can stay. But if you leave, you’re on your own. Nobody gets back into the house.”
/> He huffed. “Unbelievable.”
“Realistic.”
“You think I’m doomed if I leave?”
“It’s your choice.”
Sean led the way up the stairs and out of sight. Elise didn’t look at Michael. He rubbed his eyes, feeling incredulous. There was no way he was the only one seeing it—the delusion. He couldn’t be the only one. Kelly had to see something. She…
Kelly disappeared into the guest room and closed the door. He plopped down on the couch instead of following her.
He couldn’t find the remote, so he watched the TV in silence. There was footage of people in lines at grocery stores. Civilized. Then a map came up of the areas under a state of emergency. Most of the continent covered in red. He leaned forward on the couch. It was everywhere. More footage rolled. Gray-colored dust fell like a blizzard in Kansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Ohio. Snowplows were useless. Cars crashed in the road.
The signal fuzzed for a second and the image turned to black.
He walked to the TV and shut it off. As he came back, his eyes rested on the shotgun laying on the coffee table. The barrel glimmered in the light of the lamp and dimming fire. He put a hand on it, fingers curling around the barrel, and something leaped in his chest.
He stepped back and sat at the far end of the couch, away from it. It wasn’t necessary—the guns, the worry. Nobody was coming to Appalachian Pennsylvania to take anything from them. Yet, his eyes kept wandering back to the gun, and his heart pounded every time he looked at it.
Every time.
Sean
Sean was already awake when the power went out.
It wasn’t the first time. A week after the ash started falling, the power had ceased without explanation. It hadn’t bothered him then, not with the generator, solar panels, batteries, and extra fuel he had to power his home.
But this time it did.
He had been lying in bed staring at a digital alarm clock across the room, its red pixels like a burning coil against the dark. Each passing minute seemed longer than the last. The sleeping pills were always an option, but they didn’t bring real sleep. They just knocked him out. He had a supply that would last him a few months even, but he feared dependency when there would be no refills.
As the weeks had passed, the reality had sunk in further: the ash would not stop falling. Everyone had guessed it would stop after a few days, but two weeks had passed. Then two more. It would stop a few days and then sprinkle again. There wasn’t much ash accumulation, just a dusting, but the sight of it falling brought back feelings of helplessness. When the live radio broadcasts stopped, he had seen the situation with grave clarity. It was day forty-five.
No new pills ever again. No rescue. No relief coming.
He hadn’t slept well in weeks, just an hour or two here and there. He stared up at the ceiling and thought he saw his own breath, though it was nonsense. With the wood-burning furnace running less, most of the house was cold, but not frigid. Not yet.
When he looked back to the clock, the piercing red coils zapped off, leaving only a ghost image of the numbers. The generator had run out of fuel. The solar panels—which he had to risk his body often getting on the roof to clean—weren’t picking up enough sun, so he had to run the generator every other day. Even that thought brought doom and gloom. He would refill it in the morning, but there would be nothing to replace the spent fuel in the main supply.
No relief coming.
He pulled the covers closer to his neck.
“You awake?” Elise whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t sleep again?”
He touched her shoulder. “You cold?”
“A little.”
“Come over here.”
His limbs were stiff and restless, but he allowed her to shuffle in next to him. Elise had been complaining that he had been distant. And he had been. So, he let her rest her head on his shoulder and pulled her close. Her hot exhales grazed his chest, and he imagined her mouth, and her tongue. Her tongue further down…
He snapped out of it. She didn’t want it. A cruel irony in that. She thought he was distant, but she never wanted to have sex. And she wondered why.
“Did the power go out?” Elise asked.
“Yep.”
“Wasn’t Molly supposed to fill the generator up before bed?”
“I asked her to.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on with her. It’s like she’s not here, you know?”
He had noticed the same thing. “If I could, I would hide in my room all the time too.”
“She didn’t say a word at dinner.”
“She hasn’t said a word all week. I don’t know what I did.”
“You didn’t do anything. Things are just hard, you know?”
Sean grunted.
“Is that what’s keeping you awake?”
He stayed silent. That and more. The slow-moving time, the diminishing resources, the lack of sleep itself. That was the most frustrating. He was upset that he couldn’t sleep, and so it caused him to get even less sleep. Then he grew more frustrated. Like a sick game being played on him.
There were also the ungrateful guests downstairs. He never saw them unless it was time to eat. All they did was eat and sleep like there was no sacrifice involved in providing for them.
“I weighed Aidan yesterday,” Elise said.
“Do I even want to know?”
“I think he needs to eat more.”
“We can do that.”
It sounded like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t. They lay quiet, listening to the wind against the walls. He finally said, “I never thought it would go down like this.”
“What would?”
“I thought it would be the economy crashing. If anything. Money would become worthless. People would panic. I never expected nature to wipe us out.”
“God has His reasons for things.”
He wanted to laugh. If God had any sense, this wouldn’t be happening. A lot of things wouldn’t have happened, for damn sure.
They didn’t talk. The clock was no longer there to occupy him. So, he stared at the blinds through the gaps between the lumber, imagining he could see out beyond them, beyond the hills and valleys and into the outside world—into the hearts of the people suffering and starving. He held her a little closer and hoped the figments of his imagination would never find their way to his home.
After an hour, he pulled his arm out from under his wife and reached for the nightstand. He clicked three buttons on his faux alarm clock, and the little compartment popped out. He grabbed his pistol, wrapped a belt around his pajama pants, and clipped the holster onto it. Grabbed his LED flashlight, slipped on his suede loafers, and tiptoed out of the bedroom.
The slow march downstairs took twice as long as normal, Sean cringing every time the wood boards beneath him creaked. It felt like the whole house would wake up. He looked around the dark living room. A soft light glowed from between the boards nailed to the window. A dull red smoldered from the fireplace. Cold seeped into his clothes. He pulled aside the chain mail and placed a log on the coals. As the flames licked the edges of the log, he looked back toward the sealed guest bedroom.
He warmed himself at the fire before walking into the kitchen and turning the knob to the reserves. He clicked on his flashlight, the beam shining as bright as car headlights. He descended the stairs. A chill radiated off the foundation. A hint of fog from his breath rose into the flashlight’s beam.
He reached the bottom and swept the light over the goods. His father used to tell him that a rich man’s wealth was his strong city. He eyed the hundreds of cans and jars of food, medicine, vitamins, batteries, cleaning supplies, and soaps. Relief settled into his soul, the secure feeling of being protected. His strong city.
Yet, the feeling
turned sour. The supply would run out. Nobody to trade and barter with for goods and services. And if the sun never came out from behind the clouds, they couldn’t grow more food. Everything in front of him. That was it.
He shone the light over one shelf and something in the middle caught his eye. Every night after dinner, if Elise had used something, he would enter the reserves and front and face everything on the shelves. Then, he would mark it in the ledger. Yet this morning, a single can was pushed back from the others—black beans. He approached the small, empty pocket and pulled the cans to the front. After he faced the label, he stepped back and looked around the shelf. Another hole. A can of corn.
He snarled and set it back into place. Black beans and corn were in the dinner the night before, but Molly was supposed to have fronted and faced for him. She had neglected that responsibility too. He shook his head. It was like she didn’t care.
After organizing the other shelves, he walked back up the stairs to relative warmth. He wouldn’t sleep, but at least he had his strong city.
The cold air penetrated his clothing, sinking into his skin, reaching for his bones. The fibers of his clothes became crusted with ice. His eyes were the only flesh exposed.
It was the worst day since the disaster. He tried to chop wood every day—sometimes with the wood-cutting machine, sometimes by hand, sometimes felling a tree every few days with the chainsaw—so he would never run out. But the cold was breaking his will. Each gust of wind shook trees and branches and threatened to knock him over. White powder and gray flakes emptied off the branches and roof. The ash was only a smattering now, just bits releasing from the upper atmosphere, but enough to darken the snow.
He planted the axe into the ground, the handle like an ice block. Looked up at his chimney. The smoke drifted upward. A gust of wind flattened it and pushed it away from the house. Thirty-five mile-per-hour winds, he guessed. Brutal.
He collected as much chopped wood as he could, trudging from the tarp to the garage door, tossing each piece in before repeating the process. When he threw the final piece inside, he glanced at the mercury hanging on the garage’s siding. Negative fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. He blew into the cloth covering his mouth to warm his lips, stepped inside, and closed the door.