I wake up to a motherfucker of a spring storm. Rain is sheeting across the front windows and the wind is howling and gusting hard. It sounds like demons. The lights dim and a bolt of lightning strikes close by, immediately followed by a pounding thunder that rattles the windows and shakes the entire house. The storm is right on top of us. I start counting down from ten and before I get to four, Rachel is on the couch with me, pressing her face into my chest. I ask her is she’s scared and she says no in her “I’m not a kid anymore” voice, then pauses. Another flash of lightning turns the room into a photonegative, and the thunder threatens to knock the pictures off the wall. Rachel’s muffled, small voice says yes. She’s scared.
Rachel asks me if this is a tornado, and I tell her no. She’s petrified of tornadoes, ever since a middle of the night twister tore a new twenty-five mile long asshole through our previous town in Indiana. I’d been standing in the window, peering through the black rain, the girls in the hall closet, when the F4 ripped past, just a tenth of a mile from the house. I remember the eerie silence that followed the twister’s passing. It’s a lot like that, these days.
Like most spring thunderstorms, this one is over in a few minutes, the booms of thunder getting a little more muffled with each clap until they’re gone. Now, it’s just a steady rain. I wrap Rachel in the blanket I’ve been sleeping beneath and turn on the Disney Channel. It’s still on and for the first time ever, I’m pleased to see the hideously perfect faces of Zack and Cody as they frolic across the deck of their cruise ship.
At the front window, I watch as Sanjay Bedi peers in the big bay windows of the Reichert’s place. He holds his hands up around his eyes to block the light, then starts gesturing wildly at his wife Emily. She’s watching him out their kitchen window. Emily is white and manic and so scatterbrained Mandy refuses to allow Rachel to ride in their car when she drives. I can’t hear because the windows are closed, but I can see Emily gesturing back, pointing toward the rear of the Reichert’s house. Sanjay waves his arms some more, slumps his shoulders and trudges along the walkway, disappearing into the back yard. Half a minute passes and he’s back out front. I’m glad I locked the door. I watch as Sanjay crosses his front lawn and vanishes behind his own front door.
Amanda and I pass the morning watching CNN. The anchor, another newbie probably brought up from the mailroom, stutters through her broadcast. Her voice has a southern twang and she stretches out her syllables, making each word longer than it needs to be. To boot, she’s speaking slowly, as if her viewers are either deaf or stupid. I’m neither, and I’ve had it with warnings to avoid the infected, the video clips of riots, the doctors who don’t know shit but promise they’re working like dogs to bring society back from the brink.
Around noon, Rachel hops up from the futon in the sunroom, drops her book to the floor and stares out the window. Amanda and I join her. On the usually busy street that intersects ours, a U.S. Army humvee leads a futuristic white van. Stenciled on the side in big blue block type are the letters CDC. From the bullhorn speaker on the roof of the van, a man’s voice is telling us to stay in our homes. Curfew has been extended to twenty-four seven, looters will be shot and citizens caught outside their homes will be arrested, quarantined and detained until the “crisis” is resolved. The words are antiseptic and threatening. The van moves slowly on and the message repeats, fading away into the distance. It doesn’t return.
By mid afternoon, the rain has stopped and the clouds break. Sunlight floods the house. The windows have a light haze, left over from the buildup of grime from the Chicago winter. I wonder if we have any of that Windex spray-on stuff that flows through the hose, and then I remember it’s pointless. For all I care, the windows can crust over with shit.
Outside, birds are testing their wings and the grass is drying under a light breeze. Other than the fact there’s no human activity, the neighborhood looks peaceful, like any other spring day. While I’m at the window, I see the garage door on the Pinarski’s house disappearing into the ceiling. Dan Pinarski, a south-side self-proclaimed Polack who loves the White Sox and hangs a Bears flag on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, steps into the sunlight wearing coveralls, boots and a surgical mask. He walks to the end of his driveway, checks the mailbox, shrugs and disappears back into the garage. A few moments later, he emerges pushing his John Deere mower. Dan is a lunatic about his lawn, and I’m thinking he’s fucking gone over the edge. The mower starts on the first pull, and Dan lifts his noise reducing earphones to his head before he starts crisscrossing his front yard. Even though the doors and windows are closed, I can hear the motor of the John Deere whining as the blade trims grass to precisely three and one quarter inches in height. I’ve actually seen Dan out there with a ruler, spot checking different elevations across the lawn. Rachel joins me at the window and leans her head on my arm, her fingers encircling mine. “Are you going to mow, too, daddy?” she asks. I am not. As I’m thinking Dan must not have heard the message streaming from the CDC van, the humvee rounds the corner and slides to a stop, one wheel up on the curb in front of the Bedi’s house. I send Rachel to her room.
A soldier wearing fatigues and a bio filter mask leaps out of the back of the humvee. Another steps out of the other side. Both have weapons raised and even though it’s daylight, I see the bright red dots of laser sights bobbing across the back of Dan’s head as he cuts the grass. The soldiers are shouting for Dan to turn around. He can’t hear. Dan turns to start the return swath and sees the humvee and the two soldiers. He sees their weapons and his hands leave the handle of the mower and shoot into the air. The soldiers shout for him to drop to the ground, and Dan steps forward, smiling and calling out that he’s not sick, he’s just cutting his lawn. The soldiers take a step back, and Dan takes another forward. Before his foot touches the ground, his head explodes as both soldiers fire short bursts of rounds. The rap-rap-rap of the automatic weapons jars me and I watch as Dan’s body shudders, wavers and then crumples to the ground, which is littered with pieces of skull and tissue. His wife, Karen, runs screaming from the garage and the soldiers again open fire. A fine red mist envelopes Karen’s torso and a jet of bright red blood sprays from her neck as the bullets rip a path through her jugular. She raises a hand to her neck and I can see blood streaming from between her fingers. Karen drops to her knees, a few short steps from Dan’s body and another hail of bullets from one of the soldier’s rifles blows the top of her head apart, and she drops to the ground, face first.
The soldiers keep their weapons high as they circle each body, prodding and probing with the toes of their boots. Dan and Karen aren’t moving. Another soldier, wearing a white bio suit with a full hood, leaves the humvee carrying a canister with a hose attached and sprays a fine mist of something over what’s left of Karen and Dan. One of the soldiers lights a match and tosses it over the bodies, and I hear a muffled WHOOMP! as a fireball engulfs them. An elf-sized mushroom cloud rises into the air. The soldiers return to the humvee and it backs off the curb and eases south, disappearing down the street. Whatever they used to torch the bodies must have been powerful. In less than a minute, there’s nothing left of the Pinarskis but some ash and a scorched, black stain on their perfect lawn.
Behind me, on the stairs, Amanda and Rachel are standing together. Rachel has her hand in Mandy’s. She asks me what the pops were, were they guns, or were they firecrackers, but it’s not the Fourth of July, she’s talking nonstop. Mandy nods her head and I tell Rachel that yes, they were guns. I tell her that the Pinarskis were shot by the Army, but I leave out the part about the funeral pyre. I wait for the waterworks from Rachel, but they don’t come. She just looks at Amanda, lets go of her hand, and turns back up the stairs and pads across the catwalk to the loft. Mandy and I lock eyes as the chimes of the Wii fill the top half of the house. Amanda backs up the stairs, turns and makes for the bedroom. The door closes, but I can still hear her sobbing.
In the loft, I join Rachel for a game of Wii baseball. She doesn’t feel like talking, and the truth is, neither do I. I think about letting Rachel win, but I realize she’s going to whether or not I allow it. She scores 3 home runs in a row, bases loaded, and I lose by sixteen. I tell her that things are different now, that life has somehow changed and it looks like it’s for the worse, but we’ll make it and we’ll be okay. She nods a lot, but she doesn’t speak. Not a word. As I walk back downstairs, I hear the familiar music of her skateboard game. With each step I take, I’m thinking we won’t make it. We won’t be OK.
In the living room, I’m in my usual spot in front of the TV. CNN is airing a segment on disposal of the infected. Burning bodies, according to the anchor, will ensure that the dead will stay that way. Footage shows a flaming row of human shaped forms while the white, bio-hooded soldiers stand guard. I’m sick of seeing this shit. I can look out the window and see the real fucking thing, so I press the guide button on the remote and scroll to the movie channels. The Breakfast Club is on Encore, and I tune in just as Bender says “Screws fall out. It’s an imperfect world.” I’m thinking, no shit. I think about how I should be standing out on the patio, watching a couple big steaks broil over a spread of glowing charcoal, a cold Goose Island or Blue Moon Pale Ale in my hand. Instead, I’m on the couch, wondering whether or not I should cover the windows with plywood and nail the front door shut.
Amanda doesn’t come down at dinner time, so I boil some water, and throw in a box of spaghetti. Rachel and I eat all of it, with butter and Ragu straight out of the jar. I have mine with a lot of parmesan cheese. Rachel calls it “stinky cheese”. I ask her if she wants some, knowing she doesn’t, and she scrunches up her nose as she sucks a full strand of spaghetti into her mouth.
As it gets dark, Rachel and I decide we’ll camp out on the futon in the sunroom. There’s still no sign of Mandy. I unfold the futon, throw a few blankets out and put the Evening on the Marsh cd in the player on repeat. The sounds of crickets and night birds fill the house. Upstairs, I grab a couple pillows from Rachel’s bed and put my ear to our bedroom door. Nothing. I slip into the room, and there’s Amanda, curled up small under the covers. I sit down on the bed beside her and rest my hand on her shoulder. Her eyes are open, red and swollen. “Why?” she asks me. I tell her I don’t know anything anymore, and she tells me we need to get out, head for my brother’s place, go to Canada, the woods in Wisconsin, anywhere but here. We don’t have the equipment, the supplies, the tools to survive out there, I tell her. At least here, we’ll have food and shelter. I kiss her on the forehead and she squeezes my hand. As I leave the room, I make sure the door is open.
I call my brother, and get an update from the east coast. My nephew made it home from Syracuse, they’re safe and riding the storm out. When I mention Mandy’s idea to head to New York, he’s silent for a while before telling me we should stay put. I don’t know if it’s because he really thinks it’s safer, or if he doesn’t want us there. I’m afraid of the answer, so I decide not to ask. We’ll talk tomorrow.
Rachel and I cuddle close. She’s asleep before I am, and I drift off with my arms around her, smelling her hair and feeling her softly breathing to the chirps of the crickets and cries of the loons.
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