White Noise

I remember this show that was on before the end of the world. It was all about how these different people were preparing for the end of the world. They all had their own beliefs on how it would happen. Some thought Christ would return and take up all the believers that hadn’t sinned. But they said they’d sinned so they’d be stuck on earth in the ‘New Hell’. Others thought a meteor like the one that supposedly killed the dinosaurs would hit and the majority of the world would be destroyed. Then there were the ones who thought a strain of the flu or mad cow disease would take over everyone who ate meat and make them crazy or just dead.

My favorite episode was this couple with twelve kids under the age of twenty one who all believed that the moon was going to be hit by a Russian missile and be knocked out of place, which would cause the new ice age. No matter what these people’s end of the world belief was though; they seemed to be prepared. Bomb shelters or walls built ten feet around their property. Bunkers filled with canned goods and water bottles. They seemed like they would be prepared for anything.

Every now and then, I thought about these people. I wondered if they were surviving the real end. If their preparations for whatever end they thought would come to happen had actually protected them. I guess some of them were right on the money. It had been a strain of something that ended everything. Certain doctors thought they knew what happened, but most everyone had their own ideas of what caused it.

Honestly it didn’t matter. The end was the end. Maybe it mattered to whatever doctors were still alive if they wanted to try and find some sort of cure or had some weird OCD thing about having to know what happened. No matter what caused it; I still wondered if those weirdos who tried to prepare for the end actually survived.

I wished I had addresses for them. Though they probably wouldn’t be too kind to visitors. Plenty of them had weapons and guns.

***

My dad hadn’t been one of the prepared. Though I feel part of that reason would be that he was ridden with bone cancer for years before the end. With the hospitals overrun with zombies, and all of his doctors gone, Dad didn’t last very long after the end. Without his medication, oxygen, and continued chemo and radiation treatments, he grew frailer each day. Two months after the end, and he had lost the remaining parts of him that were functioning. His bones hurt too much to walk, and he soon became unable to breathe. I gently held his hand as he gasped and wheezed.

Mom died when I was six. Car accident. My brother Allen was in the car with her, and he lived. He had a scar from the open heart surgery that saved his life, and had nightmares about it until the day he died. At the beginning of the end, he turned. He had been in the street, fighting people over food and water, so he could bring home something for his family. My nephew, Henry, and his wife of four years, Kristy. Someone bit him when he was walking back to their New York apartment with what he’d managed to grab. He got away from them and went home, not thinking anything about it.

An hour later, he called me. He said he wasn’t feeling well but not to worry. I told him Dad’s doctors weren’t answering their phones. He told me not to worry, again. But then he started to scream, and the phone fell to the floor. Henry, two and a head of blonde curls, picked it up, crying. “Aunt Lettie.” He sobbed.

“Henry. Baby, what’s happening?” I had just given Dad his nightly dosage of morphine, but a little less, as his doctors were off the map.

“Mommy is trying to help Daddy. His arm is white and bleeding at the same time. What’s happening?”

“Henry, honey, you need to go hide.”

He screamed. A tiny scream. But a loud one. “Daddy bit Mommy!”

“Henry! Hide!” I ran upstairs so my yelling wouldn’t wake Dad.

I heard thuds, and Kristy’s screams. “Allen what are you doing?” She shouted, tears in her voice. “Oh God, Allen stop!” One final blood curdling scream, and a heavier thud, and Henry was crying even harder.

“Mommy isn’t moving, Aunt Lettie.”

“Henry, please, go hide. Go into Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom and lock the door.”

I heard scrambling as he ran, and tiny screams as he realized Allen was following him. A door slammed, and a lock clicked. “Henry, get in the closet, and be very, very quiet. Can you do that?” He made a small noise in a positive tone, and I heard the closet door close quietly. I started throwing clothes for Dad and I into a suitcase hastily. Slamming it closed, I jammed my keys into my pocket, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder. “Henry, it’s going to take me a day or two to get there. You’ll get very hungry but you need to remember to stay where you are. I need you to look in Daddy’s phone and find Amy’s phone number. Your neighbor. You remember her.” He made the positive sound again. “Tell me the number.” He struggled to read the numbers, as he had just barely learned them. I scribbled them down on my arm. “Okay. Henry, I’m going to call her and see if she can come get you.”

Henry’s stifled scream stopped me from trying to hang up. “Aunt Lettie, I think Daddy is trying to get in his room. He’s going to be mad that I locked it. He always gets mad.”

“Henry, don’t open that door. Daddy is not Daddy anymore. Do not open that door.”

I heard a scraping sound as he pressed his face against the blinds of the closet door, looking through them. “He’s breaking the door, Aunt Lettie.”

I bit my hand. “Henry. Henry. Be very, very quiet.” He made his quiet positive sound again. “Henry, I love you. Mommy and Daddy loved you. Everything’s going to be okay.” He whispered through his quiet crying that he loved me too. I dropped the suitcase. “Henry, I’m going to call Amy. You stay on the phone. Alright?” Another soft noise. I put him on hold and dialed her number as quickly as I could.

“Amy? Amy its Allen’s sister, Scarlett.” I talked over her as she started the usual phone pleasantries. “Amy. I need you to go save Henry.” I choked on my tears. “Allen turned and Kristy is dead and Henry is in the master bedroom closet. Please. Please go save him.” She put her hand on the microphone and spoke to someone else in the room, then told me that someone named James was going in to save him. “Please hurry.”

I switched back over to the other line. “Henry? Henry, someone is coming to save you.” There was no sound on the line. “Henry?” It was quiet. Just the sounds of scraping and wood breaking. “Henry, answer me!” I yelled.

I kept yelling his name into the silence. “Henry!”

More thudding, zombie shrieks, and then crying.

“Henry!”

***

Phones no longer worked. Even if you managed a way to charge them. They didn’t work anymore. All of the towers and satellites were shut down or destroyed. Yet we all carried them. As if we hoped that one day, one day, we’d be able to use the numbers of the ones we loved, and see if they were alive. See if they were surviving.

I shoved my phone back into my pack, after my daily check to see if it magically worked again. I buried it underneath my clothes and food, then swung my pack onto my back again. “We need to move.” We’d decided to head along the highway, with the hope that there would be houses along the way that we could stop at nightly. A weak hope, I thought, but a hope. Needless to say, I didn’t think they had a reason to hope. But, a leader needed to give hope, not take it away.

We had been walking down the center of the highway for the majority of the day, and it was getting to the part where we needed to find a place to stay. I wasn’t going to snap at Darren for being the main reason we’d left. I wasn’t going to snap at anyone or even in general. I was going to keep it all together. Because a leader keeps it together. A leader keeps it together so that their group keeps it together.

Natalie and Darren headed the group, Sasha and Ian behind them, and Peter and I brought up the rear of the group. We didn’t walk too far apart, but we didn’t walk too close together. Either extreme could end badly.

“Is that a house?” Sasha spoke up, breaking the silence we had all fallen into. We all followed her finger towards the gravel road off to one side of the highway.

“I’ll check it out.” Darren offered up. Natalie followed after him. The rest of us stood at the edge of where the gravel and asphalt met, watching the bend they’d went around. Minutes passed before we finally saw Natalie appear quickly around the corner.

“Come on!” She shouted, waving at us, then took off running the way she’d came. Surely enough, at the end of the gravel road, a large two story cabin stood in the center of a large deck. Darren stood at the edge of the deck, kicking a zombie off the edge. Ian rushed forward and swung his bat down into the skull. Darren was breathing hard as he thanked Ian. It was then we all noticed the three other zombies that had been taken out, lying around the yard. Natalie let out a sigh of relief. “Are you okay?” She trotted up the steps to Darren, grabbing his arm.

He kissed the top of her head. “I’m okay. Scar, this place good?”

I looked up at the sky, then back at the cabin. It was secluded, but that could be a bad thing. It was big, and that could also be a bad thing. But the sky was darkening, and we didn’t have any other options. “Yeah.” I said. “It’ll work. Let’s clear it out. Ian, Sasha, Natalie, get rid of these please.” I motioned at the zombies on the ground. “Then find some wood, and pry off some of the deck edging so we can use the planks to board up the windows.” They all nodded and Peter followed me to the deck. We headed up and to the door.

After trying the doorknob, I pulled the lock picking kit I’d found in the evidence room of a police station from the side pocket of my pack, and knelt in front of the door. If we were staying here, we couldn’t afford to break in. We needed the doors and windows in tact to better protect us. I felt the lock click once, twice, then five times, and then swung the door open.

Darren and Peter went in first, both immediately spotting a zombie on the open first floor. As they took them out, I realized there was another rising up from the floor behind Darren. I sprinted forward and hacked into its neck. It let out a short shriek until I hit again, knocking its head clean off. Darren looked at me, eyes wide. He thanked me, then ran a hand through his shoulder length hair, and headed for the one door in the room. It was an empty bathroom. We all headed up the stairs, and found only one more zombie locked in the master suite.

We took all the rotted bodies out and threw them into the woods, then helped the others bring in the planks. We used the hammers the guys carried and the nails we all had some of, and quickly fortified our temporary home. We settled down in the living room, having brought the mattresses down from the top floor. We all drifted to sleep, and only I seemed weary of our surroundings.