by Lukens, Mark
She remembered when they’d met in college, at Auburn. She was a year younger than him. She was physically attracted to Ray immediately, but she was also attracted to his studiousness, and how responsible he was for a young man. He had his life planned out. He had a part-time job at college, and he’d saved enough to buy a sensible used car. She stayed in a rented house with three other college girls, and there was this balcony on the second floor. She would call Ray, ask him to take her somewhere, and she’d wait on that balcony, watching the street for his car to pull up. When she saw that old blue car with the fading paint pull up, her heart had fluttered. It felt like she was light, about to lift up from the earth. She wished she could describe exactly how she felt when Ray would come to take her away. Maybe if she could describe it to him, then he could understand the feeling she’d been chasing, wondering if she could find that wildness and freedom with another man, if not with Ray anymore. But maybe she’d just been chasing youth and feelings she could never re-create.
She wondered if Ray was still going to leave tonight. Was he going to leave them alone with all of this—whatever all of this was—going on? She hoped not. She was suddenly afraid to be alone here in this house with the kids, without Ray.
“Dad’s home!” Mike shouted from the living room.
Kim set her cup of coffee down and hurried into the living room. Mike stood in front of the windows with the drapes pulled back.
“Get away from the window!” Kim snapped at him.
Mike looked at her with wide eyes of confusion, not sure what he’d done wrong.
“Just close the curtains,” she said and forced a smile on her face.
Mike closed them.
“We just need to keep them closed for now,” she told Mike.
“Why?”
She really didn’t have a good answer for him. “Because Dad said so.” She marched over to the coffee table and picked up the remote control. She shut the TV off.
“Hey,” Vanessa said. “I was watching that.”
“Come on. Let’s all go meet Dad at the door.”
CHAPTER 6
Ray’s heart skipped a beat when he didn’t see Kim’s SUV in the driveway as he pulled in.
Was she gone? Had she gone somewhere?
But then he saw Mike in the front window, waving at him enthusiastically. Kim must’ve pulled her truck into the garage. Good idea. He waved back at Mike as he shifted his 4-Runner into park and turned off the engine.
When he’d entered their subdivision a few minutes ago, he’d glanced around at the streets of the neighborhood. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he got home, but it wasn’t as crazy as the places he’d seen in the city. He’d gotten stuck in traffic again after the gas station and it had taken him hours to get home. He’d idled past long lines at other gas stations and banks. He saw people ravaging grocery stores; it looked like some of the people were literally running out of the store with a shopping cart full of food without paying for it. Parking lots were madhouses. Businesses were closed down, some of them boarded up.
Nothing felt normal anymore.
Even his own neighborhood didn’t feel right. Maybe he had expected his neighborhood to be better than the rest of the city, and maybe the people here were a little calmer, but there were still signs that everything had changed. People were gathered on their lawns, some of them with dust masks on—one man actually had some kind of gas mask on. Some of the groups talked animatedly to each other, almost like they were arguing. Others were more conspiratorial, sneaking suspicious glances at him as he drove by. There were more people outside their homes than he’d ever seen before; it seemed like everyone was home even though it was a Friday afternoon. He saw one family packing up their car with suitcases, bags, and boxes, the parents snapping at their teenaged kids to hurry up.
Now Ray was home. He’d made it. He got out of his truck and grabbed his small bag of overpriced groceries with the two folded maps tucked down inside. He also grabbed his silver coffee thermos, his rumpled suitcoat and tie. He locked the doors and went to what they called “the back door,” even though it was really on the side of the house, tucked away behind the garage in a little alcove. This door opened up to the laundry room, and from there it led to both the garage and the kitchen.
Kim and the kids were already at the door, Kim holding it open for him.
For an instant Ray stared at his wife. He wasn’t sure if it was the strange day he’d had—the strangest of his life—or the fear that he’d been trying to suppress all day, but in that moment he was ready to forgive his wife; he was ready to do whatever it took to stay together with her and his children and get their lives back to normal. Suddenly he wanted their old life back.
Kim looked scared even though she was fighting to keep a brave face for Mike and Vanessa. She also looked unsure of what to do; should she hug him, give him a kiss, leave him alone? She looked scared to make the wrong move, to make him angry, and he hated that look on her face, so he gave her a hug and kissed her neck, holding her tight.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his ear, her body racked with sobs for a moment. “I’m so sorry.”
“Dad!” Vanessa yelled.
Kim turned away from the kids so she could wipe her eyes after she let Ray go.
Ray did his best to hug Vanessa with all of the stuff in his hands. “I missed you so much!” he told her.
“I missed you, too,” Vanessa told him. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“There’s no school today.”
“I know.”
“Do you know when we’re going to school again?”
“Hopefully never,” Mike said.
Ray sighed. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”
They all went into the kitchen. Kim closed and locked the door and followed them.
The kids began talking to Ray at the same time, both telling them more about the school closing, Mike complaining that Mom wouldn’t let him go down to his friend’s house.
“Okay,” Ray told them. “One at a time.”
Kim took Ray’s suitcoat, tie, and coffee thermos. She set the thermos on the kitchen counter and gently laid the suitcoat and tie over the back of a kitchen chair at the four-seat breakfast table off to one side of the kitchen. Ray watched his wife do those things, things that used to be routine, and for just a moment everything felt normal again. It felt good to be home. He felt like he’d been out on some battlefield, but now he was safe for a moment, like he was tucked away in a fortress.
But he knew that feeling of safety was only temporary. Something was wrong out there in the world, very wrong. And the sooner he came to grips with that, the better.
Ray talked to Mike and Vanessa for a few moments, listening to everything they had to say, keeping his promise that he’d made to himself today to be there for his family like Kim wanted him to be. He glanced at Kim. She smiled back at him, but that nervousness still lingered in her eyes. He wanted to talk about some things with her, but he didn’t want to say them in front of the kids.
Almost like Kim had read his mind, she scooted the kids out of the kitchen. “Go on, let your dad breathe for a minute. Go watch some TV.”
“Okay,” Vanessa squealed, already running off to claim the remote control.
“What’s for dinner?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know,” Kim answered. “What are you cooking?”
“Mom,” Mike said with an exasperated sigh at the same time. He looked at Ray and the bag in his hand. “What’s in there?”
“Just some drinks and snacks.”
“Can I see?”
“Later,” Ray promised.
“Go in the living room with your sister,” Kim said a little more firmly. “I need to talk about some things with your father.”
Mike knew not to push his mother too far. He turned and made an exaggerated winding-up motion of his body, like he was some kind of cartoon character getting ready to run, and then he darted out of the ki
tchen.
Ray watched the archway to the living room for a moment, and then he looked at Kim who still stood in the middle of the kitchen.
“Ray . . . I’m sorry about . . .”
“Not right now, please,” he said in a gentle voice. He set his bag down on the counter and opened it. He needed something to do; he didn’t want to talk about Kim’s infidelity, or talk about getting back together—hopefully there would be time for that later.
“What did you buy?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I . . . I had to get some gas and there were these mobs of people inside the store. They were grabbing everything they could get their hands on.”
Kim walked over to him and spoke in a low voice. “They said on the news that everything’s shutting down. Some of them were saying something about a system-wide computer virus.”
“I don’t know.”
“How are we supposed to get money out of the bank?” she asked, her voice still a whisper.
“I don’t know.”
“And those guys that chased you at the bank. Why would they chase you?”
“I don’t know,” Ray said again. “These three guys . . . they were just staring at me like they hated me. Like they wanted to kill me. They started running towards me, and then everyone else joined in. I didn’t know what to do. I just drove out of there. I drove on the sidewalk to get away. They were throwing rocks and sticks at my truck. It was like . . . like they’d all gone crazy or something.”
“Did they say anything?” Kim asked. “Did they call you names? Tell you to stop?”
Ray shrugged. “One of them said something about a black guy . . .”
Kim nodded knowingly.
“But I didn’t hear most of what they said. They just started running after me. But there was this old lady I talked to right before it happened. She had this . . . this kind of lost look in her eyes. And she was speaking gibberish, like she was getting all of her words mixed up.”
“Maybe she was drunk,” Kim suggested.
Ray shook his head. “I didn’t smell any alcohol.”
“Maybe she was high on some kind of drug.”
Ray didn’t respond. He was afraid it might be something else altogether, something too frightening to utter to his wife right now.
Kim stared at Ray, suddenly somber, like she had something terrible to say. She glanced at the archway to make sure that Mike wasn’t there trying to eavesdrop, then she looked back at Ray and continued in a whisper: “There have been some reports on TV talking about people killing others, slaughtering them. People turning into animals. Some are calling them rippers because they . . . they are ripping people open and . . . and eating them.”
“Eating them?” Just when Ray thought he’d reached his breaking point of shock, something else tested it.
“I don’t understand this,” Kim said. “Are people going crazy because the economy is collapsing, or is the economy collapsing because people are going crazy?”
Ray thought of Doug and his other co-workers from this morning. They had been talking about a plague. Doug had mentioned an airborne rabies virus. And then he remembered Craig’s words on the phone only hours ago. Was there some kind of plague out there? Were the people at the bank infected? That old lady he’d talked to? Had he already been exposed to the disease? Had he brought that disease home to his family, to his wife and kids? A panicky feeling surged through him.
“Ray,” Kim said.
Ray realized that he’d been lost in his own mind again. He looked at Kim.
“Is it true? Is there some kind of plague or something? A virus? They were saying something about it on the news.”
He shook his head. There was no sense in denying it, no sense in trying to protect her, but he still said: “I don’t know.”
“You work at the CDC. You haven’t heard anything?” The question almost seemed accusatory.
“No,” he said, but then: “Well, some guys were saying something about it this morning when we were all outside the office.”
“What were they saying?”
“It was Doug,” Ray warned. “You know how he is.”
Kim waited.
“Doug said he knows somebody down at headquarters in Atlanta. He said he heard there was some kind of airborne virus. He thought it might be some kind of bioweapon that either escaped from one of their labs, or a virus that was sent here.”
“Like what kind of virus? A rabies virus?”
“I don’t know,” he said, hating the sound of the same words he kept repeating, a lame answer.
“Rabies could explain how people have been acting the last few days,” Kim said. “All the murders. The people ripping other people open. Eating them.” Her last two words were a barely audible whisper.
He hugged her again.
“What are we supposed to do?” she asked.
Ray thought of the neighbors he’d seen on the lawn with the dust masks on, the one with the gas mask. They didn’t have any gas masks here at the house. He didn’t even think they had dust masks. What could they do if there was some kind of airborne virus spreading all over the place?
“We just stay inside,” he told her when he pulled away from her. “We’ll just keep watching the news.”
Kim was crying again. She wiped at her eyes and looked at the contents of Ray’s bag on the counter. She picked up the can of Spam. “Spam? That’s your end-of-the-world supplies?”
He stared at her.
“You don’t even like Spam,” she said.
He burst out laughing.
She started laughing with him.
“I don’t like it, do I?” he asked and laughed even harder.
“No,” she laughed. “You don’t.”
“What’s so funny?” Mike called out to them from the living room.
“Nothing,” Kim yelled back at him.
“Mike said he wanted to know what was for dinner,” Ray said and pointed at the can of Spam.
They both laughed even harder.
Ray felt tears in his eyes and he knew he shouldn’t be laughing right now. His marriage was falling apart, society was collapsing, he was unemployed, people had chased him at the bank, people were possibly infected by some disease and eating each other, but God it felt good to laugh right now. It felt good to be home with his wife and kids.
After they stopped laughing and wiped their eyes, Kim looked at Ray. “I tried to call you back, but my cell phone isn’t working anymore.”
“Yeah, mine either. The last call I got was from Craig.”
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. He was breaking up pretty bad. I think he said he’s getting out of town.”
“Yeah, so are the president and everyone in Congress. Big shock, huh?”
That wasn’t a good sign, Ray thought.
“What else did Craig say?” Kim asked.
“I don’t know. It was strange. He said something is happening to people.”
“The virus?”
“He didn’t say that,” Ray practically snapped. “He just said something is happening to them. And he said to go to his house if we didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“His house?”
“Yeah. Between the static I heard the word answers and the word roses. He said he’d left something there for me at his house. And then he said the word Avalon.”
“What’s Avalon supposed to mean? What do you think he left for you?”
“I don’t know.” There were those three words again—I don’t know. Those three words summed up everything right now for Ray.
“Dad!” Mike called from the living room. “Mom!”
They both turned towards the archway that led to the living room. Mike called them all the time for every little argument he had with Vanessa, but this didn’t sound like he was about to tattle on his little sister—Mike’s voice sounded different, he sounded afraid, on the verge of panicking.
“Mom! Dad! You need to come see this!”
&n
bsp; CHAPTER 7
Ray and Kim hurried into the living room to see what Mike was shouting about. He and Vanessa stood in front of the TV. Mike had the remote control in his hand.
“What’s wrong?” Ray asked as his heart thudded in his chest.
“Did you take the remote control from Vanessa?” Kim asked.
“No,” he said. “She asked me to fix the TV.”
“The cartoons went away,” Vanessa explained.
“It’s the president,” Mike said. “He interrupted the cartoons. He’s on every channel. He’s saying something about martial law. What’s martial law, Dad?”
“Let me see the remote,” Ray said.
Mike surrendered the remote control to Ray.
Ray flipped from channel to channel. Mike was right; the President of the United States was on every channel. Ray stopped at a channel and turned up the volume.
“What’s martial law?” Mike asked again. “What’s that mean?”
“Hold on, Mike,” Ray said.
On TV, the President of the United States stood behind a podium with the presidential seal on it. Behind him was a solid blue background with the icon of the White House on it. Two American flags drooped on poles, the flags on either side of the president in the background like sentry soldiers.
The broadcast seemed like any other presidential address to the public, but this one was different. It took Ray a moment to pinpoint what was so different, but he started to realize what it was: on every channel the view of the president was the same. Usually, there would be different angles of the same speech from different cameras from each news station, but this was the exact same broadcast on every channel. And there was nothing identifying which station this broadcast was coming from: Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN. Everything was eerily the same on every channel. Another thing Ray noticed was that he didn’t hear the sounds of reporters, there were no flashing cameras, nobody asking questions—everything was dead quiet as the president spoke. This wasn’t a live broadcast; this statement had been recorded earlier.