“But—”
“Does it really matter? It’s over.”
I stood there looking at him, felt his resignation. He sighed and didn’t look at me anymore. He shook his head as if it was all just a damn shame. Glanced at his dead wife, then looked into the loom of his house like someone else was there. I could just hear him mumble into the room, “I dunno. I dunno. All ruined now. All done.” He fell to a knee with a heavy thud, coughed haggardly, and closed the door.
I heard the dead bolt snap into place.
I expected to hear the shotgun.
But he was still there, behind the door, and I heard him whisper, “It needs you to need it.”
I didn’t bother to go in and help Mr. Fleming any more than I did scoop up that little girl on the Hancock Bridge. Sure, he’d locked me out, told me to go home, but I could’ve found my way in. But why? I knew: futility. I had to find my little brother, my friends.
Walking back over, I tried calling my dad in Charlotte. He’d moved there just before I entered third grade. I saw him twice a year, talked to him maybe once a month. I don’t even really want to talk about him much. He gave up on me, so I’ll not give him much time here. He’s got wavy brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin, thin, could eat anything he wanted and did without fattening up. Mom says I’m his twin, that I could pass for his very young brother. Apparently my dad, Nicholas March, was a looker, so I got from my mom, but that confuses me because I don’t consider myself one. A looker. I think he just got bored with Mom. She aged, got matronly and provincial, he didn’t. Simple as that. Though we kids never really know, do we? Gotta wait until we’re adults, parents ourselves before we start seeing the world through their eyes. Guess I’ll never know what happened. Like it matters.
Anyway, he strayed all the way to North Carolina. Now he lives with a twenty-nine-year-old woman (Mom calls her a girl) named Beth. She’s nice. I’d even say “go Nick” if he wasn’t my dad. I’m not into that being-friends-with-your-parents thing. Some of my friends’ parents try to act all cool with us, like hang out with us and relate, and it’s just an insult. One good thing about Dad: even though we didn’t see each other much, when I went out to see him or he came to see me, he didn’t try to be my buddy. He refused to be Good Time Dad. He tried to be a father. Stern and instructive, but not mean. That’s what it felt like, anyway. I guess it doesn’t make sense for me to say he gave up on me and then saying he tried to be a father. Like trying to make sense makes sense.
I pulled out my phone and called him, but nothing happened. I tried Martin’s cell phone. Same thing. Texting. Anybody. Nothing goes through. The last ones I had were those two from Bastian and Kodie. When I couldn’t reach anybody, couldn’t get online, when no apps worked, nothing, I said, “Shit,” and looked straight up at the sky.
I tried to get reception through the antenna on the old set in my parents’ room. All snow except for one Spanish language news channel. It didn’t come in clearly but I could hear voices and see some shadowy picture with heavy zigzags through it.
Some newsroom somewhere actually had a camera pointing at a newsperson. This man spoke Spanish which I took at school but he spoke so fast and the reception kept fuzzing so I couldn’t begin to understand. He kept looking off camera and the camera kept moving. Once, the man got up from his chair and ran around behind the camera and you could hear him talking, consoling the cameraman who obviously faltered. The newsman gasped and called out, “Antonio, Oh Antonio.” The camera steadied.
“Cerca cerca cerca,” he muttered.
Back at the desk, he tried to compose himself. The reception cleared and steadied. He wiped sopping sweat from his brow with his hand. He said, “Dios mio, es el final de nosotros.” He crossed himself twice and kissed his knuckle and repeated “El final el final,” shaking his head. The guy sat alone in the studio. He lifted his head to a loud noise. “Jesus Christo… El final”—he coughed and grabbed his throat and got that look on his face. Pain and panic. “Señoras y señores… me despido de ustedes.” He got up and shambled off camera.
I left the TV on in case while I packed a backpack.
I got Martin’s pistol and bullets from the closet. Though he did have a safe he kept it in sometimes, he didn’t always. Martin had it stuffed in the back of his bottom drawer with his rattier T-shirts. While not exactly your rootin’ tootin’ NRA type, he did take his gun ownership seriously. He’d taken me and Johnny to the shooting range once and gave us the talk about how dangerous they are and how to use it and basically here it is, pop off a few rounds but then stay the hell away from it. Checking a box Mom had drawn for him. Same with the safe.
I dunno. Maybe I’m too hard on Martin.
I tell you, I’d give anything to see him now.
I held it heavy in my hand and stared at it.
I found Martin’s nylon holster, strapped it on my shoulder and around my waist. It felt weird tucking the gun into its place. But I have to say, in sliding the loaded gun snug into its place not far from my beating heart, with all the horror happening and what I knew I’d come across out there, I felt so free right at that moment. Everything erased. Instead of total fear, right then I felt incredible hope. The guilt that came sidling along with that feeling I quashed by putting my hand on the gun butt just below my left armpit and looking out of Mom’s bedroom window. Freedom. Newness. Not now, but soon. A fresh start.
Though I had survival to worry about, I had no other worries. Those everyday burdens lifted away from my head, my shoulders, and most of all my heart, the constant compression there unwrapped. The elation I felt forced a laugh from me. One big burst—ha!
My laughter came from the open-ended feeling before me, not from anything being funny. Shock and disbelief reigned. My parents were surely dead. The world, the human one at least, had broken apart. All in one morning, planes fell from the sky, billions of people leaped from high places, died of some fungal crystal coming in a slow upchuck.
I’d not been able to slow down enough to really think, to miss anyone. It’s just been reaction, stimulus-response, fight and flight. Mostly flight. Running for your own life has left little room for mourning.
The Dollar Tree is in a tiny strip mall on Burnet less than a mile away. The two stoplights on the way blink red. At first glance, nothing looks wrong except there’s no traffic, kind of like how there’s none on a 105 degree day on an August Sunday afternoon, nothing but spectral heat vapors rising from asphalt.
Way up on Burnet, a car rolls toward me. I sat at the blinking stop sign and watch the big older boxy Buick or Caddy. It looked like a drifting boat as it angled across the road going the wrong way against traffic, if there had been any. It runs up over the curb, hits the Hat Creek sign, and stops.
Nobody gets out. I remember thinking it’s a rather benign apocalypse, all things considered. It’s not just in T. S. Eliot’s poem. This, in fact, is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.
Then I think of the lipsticked smile, the little girl’s vacant eyes. I think of the sound the nurse made when she hit.
Ends not with a bang nor a whimper, but a whuh!
I turned my head and saw a man dressed in dark clothing lying in the parking lot of the CVS. I stepped on the gas and turned sharply into the strip mall anchored by the Dollar Tree. I had expected to see bodies everywhere. I guess the dying went to someplace private to do it—that is, if they’re not leaping from high places (with smiles on their faces)—like a sick dog will go off by itself to a secreted place to die. An atavism, something to be done alone.