Justin turned back towards the kitchen to get a bottle of water when he noticed his father’s Blackberry lying on the table next to the sofa. Back in the ‘normal’ days, his dad had the Blackberry almost surgically attached to his hip. To see the phone was to see the man. Nowadays the phone was not much better than a paperweight. Cell service was sketchy at best. It wasn’t even worth carrying it. That was why Justin was puzzled when he saw a red light blinking, the telltale sign of a message waiting. This was intriguing to Justin. Sure they still had electricity, thanks to a network of generators. But television was for the most part nonexistent, except for some news, and they weren’t broadcasting anything new. Telephones and cell phones were rapidly becoming instruments of the past. Justin was tempted to wake his mother and see if she would listen to the message, but if it was a spectral collection call and he woke her for that, there would be hell to pay. He decided to wait a few minutes for his dad to return. When it didn’t look like that was going to happen right away, he figured he’d get some clothes on and track him down. Justin no sooner came up from the basement wearing more respectable seasonable clothing when he heard and then saw the tractor trailer head out the front gate. Without actually seeing his dad, he knew for a fact his father was on that truck.
“Damn it,” he muttered. This meant it was going to be the better part of the day before he found out what the message was…..or from whom.
‘What if it’s Pops?’ he thought. Pops was his grandfather from back East. Nobody had heard from any of the East Coast Talbots since the zombie plague had begun. All the kids loved Pops. Where Dad was hard and angular, Pops was soft and easygoing. Not one of the kids could ever remember Pops raising his voice, unless of course it was to tell everyone that dinner was ready.
Only Mike knew differently. Pops Talbot had also been a Marine. If anything, Mike at this age was infinitely calmer than his father had been. Mike remembered the days in his youth. If he had been caught doing any one of the myriad of things his father considered inappropriate, his hands would be bleeding from the task of digging holes and then filling them back in. The kids thought Pops was a saint and Mike had no wish to smash their illusions. He loved the old man more than the Man Code would allow him to say, but the fact remained, he knew another side of the old man the kids didn’t.
Justin had never messed with his father’s phone, first because of the privacy issue. Mike had striven to drive that into all of his offspring. Trust is a sacred institution, and once it is shattered it is nearly impossible to put back together with the same integrity again. And second, because Mike probably would have been able to tell Justin was trying to listen to his messages by the way Justin would have had to position himself with his ear next to his dad’s hip pocket.
Mike also knew kids were curious by nature, if given the chance they would find all sorts of new and unusual ways to get into trouble. His goal had always been to remove as many opportunities as possible and, well, the rest will follow.
Justin didn’t think it would be a big breach of trust if he just checked the call log, and if it was Pop’s he could have his mom breach the code. Fumbling with the phone, Justin had a frozen moment of guilt and almost put the phone down, but his inquisitive mind wanted to know. What he saw disappointed him more than he thought possible. Something had been lost in the electronic netherworlds because the Blackberry screen only showed: “**u* **r* 7***2***5*”
‘Oh, that’s crap!’ he thought. He had finally built up enough pluck to even look at the screen and his reward was gibberish. Justin didn’t hesitate long, in for a dime, in for a dollar, so he pressed the voice mail button.
“……(Garble)….(static)…can’t….(static)….want….(garble)…fell…..(dial tone).” ‘End of message, to save message press 7, to delete, press 9’. Without even thinking, Justin pressed 9. ‘Message deleted’, came the officious voice. ‘There are no new messages.’ Justin broke out into a cold sweat when he realized what he had just done. ‘Oh crap, the old man’s gonna have my ass for this.’ He was half tempted to erase the call log and further hide his evidence of tampering, but he couldn’t do it.
The message may have been incomprehensible but the voice was not. It was his Uncle Paul, not by blood ties but maybe by something even stronger. His dad had known Uncle Paul for almost thirty years. They had grown up together in a small suburb outside of Boston. They had done everything together from playing football and baseball on the city and school teams to exploring an old Indian Burial ground aptly named Indian Hill. So when Paul’s family moved away in their sophomore year of high school, they had vowed to remain friends forever. But things for teens happen at a different pace than the rest of the world. There are girls and Friday nights and football and countless other distractions to keep them occupied. Sometimes the two friends would go for months at a time without communicating, always able to pick up the easy flow of conversation as if only hours had passed. So it was almost not even a surprise when the two realized that unbeknownst to the other, they had both applied for the same college, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. For four years they did not so much ‘attend’ the school as they did ‘frequent’ it. The two were much more interested in the social aspects of college rather than any educational benefits. When Paul went on the five-year degree program, the two parted ways again. Mike, under some heavy lobbying from his then girlfriend, Laurie, moved to Colorado. After a few months of the ‘we are so grown up and in love’ phase, Laurie and Mike’s relationship soured by degrees until finally they broke up.
The break up affected Mike more than he had known. Booze was becoming more and more of a crutch to get through the lonely nights. After one intense drinking session and a 3:00 a.m. call to his friend, Paul flew out to Colorado. It had been eighteen months since they had seen each other but it might as well have been eighteen minutes. The deal was sealed. Mike packed up everything and drove back East to live with his friend Paul who now lived in New Hampshire. Mike knew without a shadow of a doubt that Paul had saved his life by flying out to Colorado, just as surely as Mike had saved Paul’s by pulling him out of a burning car some years before. Living with Paul had begun Mike’s healing, but still the booze beckoned. Five years with the love of his life suddenly over was not easily forgotten. Mike knew he had to make a radical change, so when he came home one night and told Paul he had enlisted in the Marines. Paul nodded in understanding but internally was conflicted, if anything the two of them were peaceniks or at worst apathetics. So again the brothers from a different mother went their separate ways. For five years Mike lived in dirt and battled foreign enemies. Whenever he could, he would contact his friend Paul, just so he could be reminded there was a world still out there where being shot at every day was not the norm. If anything, this separation strengthened their bond. It was during the Marines Corps days that Mike met, married and began a family with Tracy. Paul had also married and moved back to Massachusetts. So when Mike told Paul that he was bringing his family back to Massachusetts once his current tour was over, Paul had nearly giggled with glee, or at least as much as was acceptable by the Man Code. Mike was two months away from his discharge from the Marines when he received a disappointing call from Paul. Paul’s marriage had acidified. The break up was imminent. Paul decided he needed the comfort of his family, who had in the meantime moved to North Carolina. Mike was understandably disheartened.