by Kate Morris
Roman led the way, and Jane took the pocket knife out of her jeans and held it in front of her the same way he was holding the pistol. They breached the threshold that led into the kitchen. The water dripped in the sink, making a plinking sound against the granite. They walked through the kitchen and into the long dining hall, which held a table and twelve chairs. The ancient hardwood floors creaked under Roman’s weight, although she could tell he was trying his best to be quiet.
They went into a formal parlor where beautiful paintings of fox hunt scenes hung proudly on the walls which were covered in mahogany wainscoting and burgundy damask wallpaper. It was truly a gem of a home. Mrs. Goddard told her that grandparents used to give tours around the holidays.
In the wide foyer to the front door and the grand staircase, they found Mrs. Goddard. She was face down. Dead. Lying in a pool of her own blood. She’d been this way a few days. The blood looked sticky and tacky around her body. Jane sucked in a deep breath of shock and looked away.
They stood there a moment until Roman led her back into the parlor.
“Stay here a minute, Jane,” he said quietly.
“No,” she hissed.
“Fine,” he said as if angry.
He snatched a throw blanket from the back of the settee and went back to her body where he covered her with it.
“I want the guns she was talking about,” he said. “We need to find those.”
“Where’s her car?”
“Probably stolen. It could’ve been stolen yesterday. Her son’s truck is gone, too. I bet people came by and stole them both.” He started up the stairs and said, “Do you know where she would’ve kept her guns?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know she kept at least one in her bedroom. She told me she always slept with her pistol right in the nightstand.”
They went upstairs, an area Jane had never been before and easily located Mrs. Goddard’s bedroom. It was decorated like the rest of the house in a vintage Victorian flair with floral carpeting, tufted furniture with fringe, gas lamp style lighting, and a massive four-poster bed. Roman ran to the other side of it and pulled a pistol out of the nightstand drawer.
“Found it,” he declared and opened the round part where the bullets went. “Loaded. Good. Look here. She’s got two extra speed loaders with it.”
Jane didn’t really know what that meant, but as long as it meant more ammo, she was glad. She wandered the room and touched the delicate belongings of its former owner. Mrs. Goddard always dressed well, like a proper lady. She was formal and strict but kind and classy, too. The huge dresser with the brown marble top contained her jewelry boxes and hair accessories.
“Found the rifle,” he said. “Thirty aught six. Good. She’s got a box of ammo for it here, too.”
He came over to her and touched Jane’s shoulder.
“We need to go,” he said. “Whoever took the vehicles could come back to loot the place again.”
“Yeah,” Jane said with a scowl of irritation at all of this. She touched a brooch. It was a gold one of a horse performing the pirouette for dressage. It was something she wore often.
“Jane,” Roman said, getting her attention. She looked up at him. “We should take this stuff. If it’s real gold or real gemstones, we may need them.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked angrily, unable to believe he’d be so callous as to loot an old lady and dear friend of hers.
“No, don’t think of it like that, Jane,” he said and cupped her cheek. “If this gets any worse, our cash money isn’t going to mean anything anymore. My dad said a few days ago that the stock market was about done.”
“So?” she asked, spitting fire angry now.
“So, if money’s no good, we may need to trade people for stuff like medicine and food. That’s why I took the drugs from the pharmacy. We can use them to barter. We could use this stuff, too, especially if it’s real gold and silver.”
“No,” she said, pursing her lips and thinking of Mrs. Goddard. “It’s not right. I won’t do it.”
“Then wait in the car. I’m taking it. If you can’t handle this right now, then let me do it.”
A tear slipped from her right eye.
“Jane, don’t cry,” he said and pulled her into him with one arm around her shoulders. “Dammit, not now. There’s no time now. Let’s just get this over with and get out of here.”
“What about the horses?”
“We’ll come back tomorrow. They all had hay. Let’s just go.”
She nodded and helped him stuff all of Mrs. Goddard’s beautiful jewelry into a small silk bag she found in the top drawer of her dresser. It felt so wrong. She felt like a good for nothing thief. She felt like her mother.
Roman drove them back to her grandmother’s house where Nana Peaches just about lost her mind when she saw the state they were both in. Then she went about tending their wounds.
“Dear me,” she’d occasionally remark as she used an antiseptic solution to clean their cuts and scrapes.
Jane found a lump on the back of her head, which she figured came from Mr. Goddard slamming her to the cement floor in the barn. Nana assured them that nothing was broken in her hand but wrapped it in a snug bandage with some sort of stinky cream. As she repaired them and tended their injuries, they told her of the situation at the pharmacy and then at the barn. She was devastated by the murder of Mrs. Goddard, who she’d known her whole life.
“I should go,” he said. “My mom…”
Roman trailed off looking into the distance. Jane knew he was remembering his father.
“I’ll call you later,” he told Jane as he went toward the door. “Make sure you’re both okay.”
She nodded and tried to offer a smile but failed because her mouth hurt from being hit. She wasn’t even sure when it had happened in the scuffle, but the side of her lip was cut.
“Be careful,” he said.
“You, too,” she added as her grandmother busied herself behind them in the kitchen.
“Lock this door,” he said. “Make sure you keep your grandmother’s shotgun with you two at all times.”
He stooped and kissed her cheek.
She couldn’t help the frown on her face as she watched him get into his car and drive away. Then she shut the door and locked it. She also slid the second lock home, as well.
Yesterday, the electricity went out and stayed out most of the day. He wasn’t sure how much longer it would work at all. Small things he took for granted like being able to read the glowing red numbers of the clock on his nightstand was now something at which to marvel. Hot water, cooking, lights, all of it meant something new now. People weren’t meant to live without the basic creature comforts. It was time to learn, though.
Nothing was guaranteed anymore. They had to pool their resources, forage during the day while the things hibernated, and stick together at night. This was the wrong state in which to live during something like this because of the weather, but it was too late to leave. The freeways were either congested or closed down by the military. Gas was in short supply without semi-trucks delivering it. Florida would’ve been a better choice. Now, they were left with no choice and had to figure out how to stay warm all winter without the benefit of electricity should it further decline and eventually fail altogether.
Keeping their group alive another day was the most important thing he could focus on. There would be time later someday in his life to reflect on the craziness of it all. If he survived long enough to have a ‘later’ in his future.
Chapter Twenty-three
When he arrived home, his mother was angry he was gone so long. He explained what happened, and she grew even madder.
“Mom, we were getting prescriptions. I had to help Jane…”
“You need to be with us!” she retorted. “Your obligation is here at home now. You shouldn’t be out fighting with the masses and leaving us at home alone to fend for ourselves. Forget about that girl.”
He didn’t wa
nt to upset her further, so he said, “Fine, Mom. Where’s Connor? Has he eaten yet today?”
“Roman, I’m still his mother,” she snipped. “Of course, he ate. I let him go over to play with the neighbor kids. I figured it was good to let him get out of here for a while.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked because he was scared Destiny or her parents could have it. He already knew one of the twins did.
“Yes, he needed to get outside,” she said and gulped the rest of the red wine from her glass.
“There’s another broadcast tonight,” he redirected their conversation and turned on the television.
“Why do you want to watch that? It’s just depressing,” she complained and tripped over the coffee table leg.
“You okay?” he asked and caught her elbow. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Roman, don’t nag me,” she said and plopped down into the sofa’s deep cushions. “I called the hospital. I couldn’t even get through to anyone.”
“I tried to explain this to you. They are overwhelmed. It’s completely crowded out with patients. The Army has taken over the football field at the high school to run a medical site there. People are supposed to go there and take their sick family members there instead of the hospital, but it looked like people didn’t get the message. It was so crazy. I’ve never seen it like that before.”
“Well, they certainly didn’t take very good care of your father, did they? I’ve been trying to reach our lawyer all morning, too. I’m going to get him involved.”
Roman dropped that subject because he knew she didn’t quite comprehend the extent of the problems in their country. She was living with her head in the sand.
“I hope this all ends soon,” she lamented. “I need to arrange a memorial for your father. Plus, I still need to close that deal in Portland.”
Roman shook his head and went next door to find Connor, who was playing in the driveway with some other kids from the neighborhood. He took him back home and straight upstairs to shower.
“Where’s your puffer, bud?” he asked him as Connor was dressing in his room after.
“Over there. By the bed like always.”
“Be careful with it. Don’t lose it. I’m not able to get one from the pharmacy just yet.”
“Okay, I will.”
Then he sat him down to talk to him about their father again. His little brother cried, and Roman had to hold it together and not show weakness. He was in charge of him now. He had to be strong for all three of them. His father was counting on him.
“I’ll have dinner ready soon,” he said when they were done talking. “Come down in twenty minutes, okay?”
His little brother nodded and turned on his video game equipment. Roman wasn’t going to argue with him about it. He needed the distraction.
He went downstairs and cooked up a quick batch of macaroni and cheese and grilled some chicken on the stovetop grill. Outside, the winds picked up and blew leaves all over the back patio. His father would’ve wanted those raked up right away. Roman smiled with fondness and called Connor down to dinner as the overhead lights flickered nearly a dozen times but finally stabilized. His mother refused to eat, wrinkled her nose at the food that was being offered, and went back to her wine in front of the television that was playing the emergency broadcast from the other night on a loop. Maybe she’d watch and finally get it.
His phone rang, and Roman picked it up. Then he wished he had looked first at the caller id before answering. It was Stephanie. She was distraught and stressed out and crying into the phone. Roman felt bad for her. She just lost her mother. He told her what happened with his own father, and they talked for a while before she said she wanted to come over. He refused her because she’d just been around her mother who was infected. He felt like a jerk about it, but he had to protect Connor. Then she called him some crude names and hung up on him. Typical.
The doctor from the CDC came on again in a live feed and so did the same general. They spoke about the decline of the country and the fact that they were doing everything they could to gain control of not only the population but the virus itself. The updates were not good at all. His mother fell asleep on the sofa again, so he let her go and covered her with a blanket. Connor, he put to bed in his own room and locked the door from the outside. He was going out and didn’t want his little brother to wake up and find him missing. Then Roman dressed in his favorite color, which was fitting for what he needed to do and sent Jane a text. She assured him that she and her grandmother were fine. He let her know he’d be gone for a few hours, and when she asked where he was going, he told her not to worry. He didn’t answer her where he was going. Then he had to ignore her next three texts because he didn’t want to answer her. He figured she’d want to go, and he didn’t want her doing this with him.
Roman took his father’s pistol again and left home in his car. He drove toward the grade school and parked around back. It was completely empty of faculty vehicles, school buses, or anyone else. He pocketed his keys and set the locks. The rain that had threatened all day came pouring down as he dashed toward the rear double doors. Roman paused and took a breath, considering the ramifications if he was caught. Nobody was around. None of the houses in the neighborhood driving toward the school had their lights on, either. Time for second-guessing himself was over.
He removed the crowbar from his backpack and slammed it against the glass partition on the top of the door. Roman knew these kinds of doors had locksets that mounted into the concrete floor. But he wasn’t a super sleuth cat burglar, so he hefted himself up and through the broken window, careful of the remaining glass. He was in without any alarms signaling. Perhaps nobody set the alarm, or maybe they just weren’t worried about it because so many other things were more important at the time like sick children or teachers with bloodshot eyes who wanted to murder their students. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, probably intuiting that he was up to no good.
Roman hurried toward the administration offices, which he knew by heart because he was in charge of Connor, and he had to go often to speak with the people who worked in there. The outer door to the administrative offices was locked, but with a few hard kicks, he was able to bust the cheap, hollow door and get in. He kept his face mask up, his leather gloves on, and his flashlight beam on low. He strode with purpose past the secretary’s desk and through another door that was left open. To his right were three offices that housed the principal, vice-principal, and another secretary. His father often complained about the overhead of too many administrators on the public school system budget. It was usually around tax time that those complaints were levied.
He sped past another series of offices down a hall to his right and came to a stop at the end. It was the nurse’s room where she tended to sick kids who had the flu or who needed meds dispensed throughout the day or who fell down at recess or, like Connor, needed an emergency inhaler because they’d forgotten theirs at home.
Roman turned on the lamp on her desk instead of the overheads so as not to draw a lot of attention if anyone were to drive by and take a look at the school, someone like the police. He foraged drawers, looking for inhalers, but found a lot of other things like bandages, tape, and antibiotic cream all meant for scraped knees and elbows and boo-boos from the playground. Roman paused for less than a second before jamming it all into his pack. Inside of a glass cabinet, he spotted medicine that would require an actual RN to dispense them. He tried the handle and found it locked. Since he was still wearing his black leather gloves, he used his fist this time and broke the thin glass. The lock easily twisted from the inside, and he opened the cabinet doors. A loud clanging somewhere within the school startled him in the middle of reaching into the cupboard. Roman froze, waiting and listening for the sound to repeat itself. He stood there straining to hear for a good sixty seconds. When it did not come again, he assumed it was the settling of the building from the cold outside or the wind from the thunderstorm ban
ging against windows somewhere in the big brick building. It was no less nerve-rattling to assume than it was to know for sure what had caused the noise. He jumped out of his skin when the alarm system started screaming. He knew he hadn’t tripped it, but someone else just did. It was time to go.
Having his confidence jarred slightly, Roman picked up the pace. Instead of rooting through and trying to find individual meds or reading the labels, Roman just took everything that would fit into his backpack, including a small box of inhalers on the bottom shelf. Then he zipped it closed and slung it over his back. Retracing his steps, he jogged to the exit and climbed through the window again.
Without the use of the flashlight so that he didn’t draw attention to himself, he ran to his Range Rover and hit the remote to unlock it. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to look. Something was running toward him in a reckless yet fast-paced manner. He realized it was one of them, one of the infected because it was growling and grunting and faster than hell. It ran in a slightly hunched over shuffling motion but still managed to be quick. Roman fumbled like an idiot and dropped his keys. He snatched them back up, got inside the SUV, and shut the door right as the man slammed into it. Roman instinctively lurched away from the door and hit the lock mechanism. The former man, current thing of indescribable repulsion, banged its head against his window. As hard as he was hitting it, he was going to break Roman’s window. He jammed the keys into the ignition and fired it up. Something hit his car from the other side, and he whipped around to see. It was another one trying to get in the back passenger door, a woman this time. He wasted no time and peeled out in his haste to get away. His heart was racing. They could’ve gotten into the school, probably would now that he was leaving it open with that broken window. Maybe one of them was what he’d heard in the school before the alarm tripped. Perhaps they’d already been in there with him. He shivered and turned up the heat as the rain beat down on his windshield.