Never Fear Page 10

  “Oh, Bern, oh, Bern, oh, Bern,” she moaned. “I'm so sorry. If only I'd got there sooner!”

  Bernadette's eyes fluttered open and the darkness was gone. Only her own spring-sky blue remained, clear, grateful. Her lips began to curve upward but made it only half way to a smile, then she was gone.

  Carole hugged the limp cold body closer and moaned in boundless grief and anguish to the unfeeling walls. She saw the leering faces begin to crawl away from the window and she shouted at them though her tears.

  “Go! That's it! Run away and hide! Soon it'll be light and then I'll come looking for you! For all of you! And woe to any of you that I find!”

  She cried over Bernadette's body a long time. And then she wrapped it in a sheet and held and rocked her dead friend in her arms until sunrise.

  ***

  With the dawn she left the old Sister Carole Hanarty behind. The gentle soul, happy to spend her days and nights in the service of the Lord, praying, fasting, teaching chemistry to reluctant adolescents, and holding to her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was gone.

  The new Sister Carole had been tempered in the forge of the night, and recast into someone relentlessly vengeful and fearless to the point of recklessness. And perhaps, she admitted with no shame or regret, more than a little mad.

  She departed the convent and began her hunt.

  SHUT DOWN

  Jeff DePew

  OCTOBER

  Callie

  A gust of wind swept through the darkened neighborhood, sending a flurry of leaves spinning in its wake. Some of the leaves spilled up against garbage cans left beside driveways; others piled against car tires and windshields. And more leaves, brown and yellow and orange, buffeted against the desiccated corpses that lay in the street, on the sidewalk, or on front lawns of empty houses.

  A young girl walked down the middle of the street, pushing a jogging stroller. Her long, brown hair was tied up in a braid beneath her Seattle Mariners baseball cap. She wore a denim jacket and an oversized backpack. Around her right wrist was a leather dog leash she had found. The leash trailed several feet behind her, where it was clipped to the belt of a slightly older boy who followed her, occasionally slowing, only to be jerked forward with a gentle tug.

  Her name was Callie, she was twelve years old, and she was walking through Oregon to find her grandmother in California.

  The only sounds were their footsteps and an occasional murmur from the baby. She still hadn’t named him. She had been thinking of Sam, or maybe Ryan. That was—had been—her father’s name. The thought of her father pressed down on her like a weight. Another cinder block thrown into her backpack. Remembering was like that. Thinking about her mom, her dad, their house. Their life together. Life in general. Life before. Cinder blocks. Cinder blocks that weighed her down. Kept her from moving on. But you couldn't forget. You couldn’t just pretend like nothing had existed before IT. That was no solution. A loud squawk from the stroller broke her out of her thoughts.

  She stopped and reached down and pulled back the blanket so she could look at the baby. He was holding a jar of baby food (sweet potato and peas, it looked like) with two chubby hands and trying to bite the lid, his baby logic telling him this was the best way to get the contents of the jar into his mouth. His eyes widened and he smiled wetly up at her when he saw her.

  “Hungry?” she smiled back at him. Callie turned to her brother, Jake, who was slowly shuffling forward, his eyes vacant and staring. “How about you?” she asked, expecting (and getting) no response. “You ready for some dinner?”

  She took a swig of water from a metal bottle fastened to her backpack. She yawned and stretched, twisting from side to side, glanced around at the houses. The nights were getting chillier, and she wanted to find shelter for the night. She preferred the houses with no cars in the driveways. That generally meant no one had been home when IT happened, so there were no bodies on the houses. Not always, but usually.

  ***

  She decided on a one-story house, blue, with white trim. There was no car in the driveway, and the front door was undamaged. It was very rare that she found a house where there had been obvious damage and/or looting. So rare in fact that she rarely even thought about it anymore. There had to be people to loot, and since there were hardly any people…

  Some part of her wished there were more signs of other people. A busted-in front door, or a campfire burning at night in the distance. But nothing. She hadn’t seen anyone other than Jake and the baby—his name is Ryan—for over a week.

  Anyone alive, she thought glumly.

  She wheeled the stroller up the driveway and around the side of the house to a wooden gate taller than her by a good two feet. She tried the metal latch. It opened, and she carefully pushed the gate open and led her brother inside and pulled the stroller behind her. She turned and latched the gate, bent down and picked up a twig, and stuck it in the hole where the padlock would go. It wouldn’t keep out a determined trespasser, but Jake wouldn’t be able to get out, even if he wanted to. And it would keep dogs out.

  She slipped the leash off her wrist and reached over and unsnapped the metal clip from his belt. “Okay, buddy. You’re free.” She stood and watched him. No reaction. No smile, no walking forward, no nothing. She sighed and checked on the baby. He was fussing a little, but he’d be okay for a few more minutes.

  Callie tried a side door and it opened easily. She glanced once more at Jake and the baby. They weren’t going anywhere. She pulled out a flashlight from a pocket in her backpack and slipped inside. She scanned the room. A kitchen. Neat and orderly. Tile floors and counters now covered with a fine film of dust. She sniffed deeply. The sickly-sweet smell of rotting fruit, and beneath that a fouler smell emanating from the refrigerator. No way she was opening that. She'd learned the hard way not to open refrigerators. The smell was ungodly.

  She knelt, and using her flashlight, carefully scanned the counter and corners for rat droppings. She hated rats, and since… IT… they seemed to be almost everywhere. But this looked okay. No little, black, telltale signs.

  She crossed to a doorway and checked out the rest of the house.

  A small family/living area with a couch and a TV mounted to the wall, two bedrooms, one with a king-size bed and an attached bathroom, and the other smaller, with posters on the wall. Another room with a desk and a computer, and a bathroom.

  No running water, but the toilet tank was still full. She could fill up her bottle. A hall closet supplied some blankets that she spread on the floor of the living room. She went to a door that led to the backyard and unlocked it.

  She levered the stroller up over the threshold and wheeled it into the living room, then lifted the baby out and laid him in the middle of the blanket. He squinted up at her, his mouth pulled down in a grimace. He was getting fussy. “Don’t worry, buddy,” Callie whispered. “Give me five minutes.”

  She went outside to get her brother. Then she would clean and feed them both before putting them to bed.

  She stepped around the corner of the house to get Jake, and her heart stopped.

  He was gone. She went to the gate, but it was still closed. She turned and saw him. He was behind the house, standing in knee-high weeds. He was… staring down at his feet.

  Is he looking at something?

  “Jake?” Callie approached him warily. He didn’t acknowledge her. He had walked off one time before. Just a few feet. Like now. But it was always disconcerting. And yet, it was also a good thing. If he could walk off on his own, without being led or pushed, it meant he was thinking, didn’t it?

  Callie walked up and put a hand on his shoulder. She thought he trembled a bit, but it was hard to tell. “What’s up, buddy?” she asked, glancing down to see what he might be looking at. At his feet sat a faded, half-deflated soccer ball. Her heart began to race. Jake loved soccer. As far back as she could remember, he had been playing soccer. He was hoping for a scholarship, a full ride to UC Santa Barbara.

&
nbsp; She stepped forward and tapped the soccer ball with her foot. It rolled a foot and stopped. She watched him carefully. Had his eyes widened slightly? He seemed to be focusing on the ball, but it was hard to tell. She kicked the ball a bit farther. He took a step toward it. On his own!

  Apparently, that was all he had in him. No amount of cajoling or nudging could get him to move toward the ball again. But it was something.

  It was hope.

  ***

  Later that night, Callie sat in a canvas deck chair on the back porch. The door behind her was open. Empty baby food jars sat on the floor. One for the baby, and three for Jake. She'd clean up later. She'd had a protein bar and some applesauce she had found in the pantry. And a can of Coke.

  The baby (Ryan, she reminded herself) lay on the floor on top of a folded blanket, a makeshift crib of propped-up throw pillows around him. He had eaten, was clean, and was fast asleep in a pair of light-blue pajamas Callie had taken from a department store.

  Callie liked to keep everyone together in one room. She would sleep on the couch. Like the baby, Jake had been fed and cleaned as well. It was more work than the baby, obviously, but she had gotten used to it now. Just something she did, but didn't necessarily like. Like homework, or cleaning the bathroom every Saturday.

  Jake was asleep on a mattress she had pulled to the floor and dragged into the family room. He had rolled off a bed on more than one occasion and once had received a nasty bruise on his forehead. She had been really worried, as any bad injury could be a real problem these days. But he had shown no ill effects, and the bruise healed in a couple of days.

  He did seem to dream. He moved around a lot in his sleep. Did that mean his brain wasn’t completely dead—that there might be hope for him?

  She sank back in a chair and gazed up at the stars. So many more than ever before. Without the pollution and the city lights, the stars blazed at night. Before, they would have to get out in the country to really see the stars. Her mom had wanted to drive out of town and watch the meteor shower the night IT happened. The Perseids Meteor Shower. She and Callie’s father had been out running errands. They never came back. Was that what had caused… IT… the Shut Down… to happen? The meteors? She tried not to think about that day… three months ago? She had given up trying to keep track of the date. She too many other things to think about.

  Callie’s eyes blurred. She blinked, and she realized she was crying. She hadn’t cried in weeks. It was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She leaned forward and put her head in her hands and wept. She cried for Jake, and for the baby, who would never know his mother and father. She cried for her own mother and father. But mostly, she cried for herself.

  It

  “We'll be back in a couple hours,” Mom said, sunglasses in one hand, looking around the counter for her keys.

  “Marie! Let's go!” came her father's voice from the garage.

  “I know. I know. I'm looking for my keys,” her mother called back, searching in her purse for the third time.

  “Hello! You don't need them! I'm driving!” Callie could hear the laugh in her father's voice.

  Mom looked up, shook her head, smiled, blew a kiss to Callie who was watching from over the back of the couch, and headed out to the garage. Callie heard her parents laughing as the door to the garage closed.

  That was the last time she ever saw them.

  About an hour or so later (she was never sure) she was idly watching a baseball game and texting her best friend, Erica. Just an ordinary Saturday in August. Too hot to be outside unless absolutely necessary. Erica had just finished telling her about some new eyeliner she was planning on getting when there was a sudden, loud metallic screech, and a brilliant white light filled Callie’s eyes. She closed her eyes and jerked her head to the side. The terrible, metallic screeching sound (like a gigantic shovel scraping on concrete) continued. It was loud, louder than anything she had ever heard. It went on and on. It was everything, everywhere. She began to feel nauseous. Then it all went dark.

  Callie was never clear if she had blacked out or not. Her eyes took a moment to readjust, and her ears were ringing. She gazed around the room, dazed. The TV was still on, but the picture was weird. The camera was just showing the ground. There was part of a shoe in the lower left corner. The camera wasn't moving, and neither was the foot.

  Callie picked up the remote and changed the channel. Cartoon, commercial, a sports news program—but the camera shot was off-center and the hosts looked like they were asleep, unconsciousness, or something. They were slumped in their chairs. Not moving. Eyes open, but unfocused, just staring. A man came in from off camera. He was holding a clipboard and he walked unsteadily to the broadcast desk. He said something too soft to hear. He nudged one of the hosts, a bald man with glasses, who slid off his chair and fell bonelessly to the floor. The man with the clipboard looked at the camera, his face panic-stricken, and stumbled out of the picture.

  Callie clicked the remote and checked more channels, but they were all the same. Any live programs just showed the hosts or newscasters lying on the floor or slumped over their desk. Everything else was just movies or commercials or dead air.

  She glanced around for her phone and grabbed it off the floor. She texted Erica.

  hey did you hear that

  No response. She tried again.

  Erica call me now it’s important

  Again, nothing. Callie pushed the CALL button and the phone rang and rang and Erica's voicemail picked up. “Oh, my God, Erica, what happened? Call me, please. I'm really scared and my parents aren't home.”

  She stood up and went to the front window, pulled the curtain aside, and looked out. There was a car sitting on their lawn. It had crashed into the big Mesquite tree. The engine was still running. There was a driver inside, leaning against the window. Just like the people on the sports show. Slumped over. She leaned closer to the glass and looked up and down the street and saw someone standing on the sidewalk a few houses up. It was Mr. Phillips, a friend of her dad.

  She opened the front door and raced down the sidewalk toward Mr. Phillips. But as she got closer, she slowed. He was so still, just… standing there in front of his house. Mr. Phillips was wearing cargo shorts and a Corona beer tank top. A garbage can lay on its side several feet away. His face was slack, eyes open, but staring blindly at nothing. Callie approached him warily and touched his hand.

  “Mr. Phillips? Are you okay? What's happening?” She was struggling not to cry. He didn't respond. She tugged on his hand. “Mr. Phillips! Please!” He stumbled forward and she quickly backed up. He fell straight down, face first, on his lawn. He never even put his hands out to stop himself. She backed away some more, hands to her mouth, and started back to her house.

  A baby was crying somewhere nearby. She stopped and looked around. It was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from. Someone was lying in a driveway street several houses up. A woman she vaguely recognized was standing on the sidewalk. She wobbled and collapsed.

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up. In the distance, an airplane was angling toward the ground. It disappeared behind a tree.

  Callie walked toward her house. Where else could she go? What was happening? It was like a bad dream. Her eyes burned, and Callie began to cry. She just wanted it to stop. She wanted someone to—

  She froze. JAKE! She had forgotten all about him.

  ***

  Jake was in the bathroom, standing, facing the sink. He was wearing jeans and a Real Madrid jersey. The water was running, and without thinking, she turned it off.

  “Jake?”

  He just stood there. Shut down. Just like Mr. Phillips. “Jake, are you okay?” She reached up and cupped his chin, forced him to look at her.

  “Jake!” Her voice was husky. “Please, Jake. Say something.”

  He stared impassively ahead. No recognition in his eyes. She tugged on his arm, and he moved forward. For an instant, she was afraid he was going to fall ov
er like Mr. Phillips, but instead he took a step. She tugged again. He took another step.

  ***

  She eventually led Jake into the living room, and with a soft nudge, got him to sit down on the couch. She noticed a blinking light on the kitchen phone.

  Someone called! Mom! Dad!

  The call had come in eight minutes ago, when she had been outside. She hit the “Play Message” button.

  “Marie, it’s me!” Grandma, thought Callie. “Marie, are you there? Ryan, Jake, Callie, anyone? Please. Something’s happened. Call me as soon as you can.”

  Callie selected her grandmother's number and hit CALL. It went straight to voicemail.

  “Grandma, it’s Callie. Mom and Dad are gone and there’s something wrong with Jake. Please call me. I’m so scared. I’m all alone. Please call me!”

  She walked back to the couch and sat beside Jake.

  ***

  Her grandmother never called back. Callie must have tried her number over a dozen times. And her parents, and Erica. No response from any of them. She thought about going out to look for Mom and Dad but had no idea where they had gone, and she’d been told that if she ever got lost that she should stay put. So she did. She took care of Jake as best she could—fed him, cleaned him, which had been really awkward at first, and had generally done the best she could.

  The baby was living with them by then. She had followed the sound of his crying, walked through the unlocked front door and found him in his crib, alone. His mother was lying on the kitchen floor, a box of cake mix still in her hand. The mixer was on, the beaters turning and turning in a congealing milk and egg mixture. Callie had turned it off before she left with the baby.

  So life had gone on. Existing, surviving, waiting for something (she was never sure what) to happen. And then, two weeks after IT, something did happen.

  On a sultry, windy morning, a fire started down the street, and by nightfall, Callie’s house was fully engulfed in flames.