Humanity Gone: After the Plague (7 page)

             
“Coming up to see you. I… I wanna see what the top bunk is like.” she said with a smile on her face. She sits down at the foot of my bed.  I can see the fear in her eyes as she peers over the edge. Her smile becomes uncertain for a moment.

             
“You’re a bad liar; this is too high for you!”

“
I am not, and it is not,” she argues. I let out a little giggle at that.  She grabs my pillow and puts it in her lap. She pats it with her hand. “Now lie down.”

             
“What?”

             
“Lie down.  I wanna play with your hair.” she says calmly, like how mom used to say it.  There were many times we couldn't fall asleep at home and she would stroke our hair. Before we knew it we were asleep in her lap. I lie down on my side looking at the front door. 

             
“But I’m not tired.” I whisper.

             
“That’s okay.” she says as she gently separates a handful of my hair between her fingers. I close my eyes for a second and imagine I am with my mom at our old house. Dad is sitting in his recliner with a paper and Caitlyn is fidgeting in his lap with one of her books. It seems like that was just a few days ago. I feel some tears gather in my eyes.  Maybe if I try hard enough, this is what I will dream about.

Chapter 14: Caitlyn

             
I stretch like a cat across the bed as I wake up.  Light comes in through the windows of the cabin.  Sitting up slowly, I try to remember how I got back to the lower bunk.  Sara had fallen asleep while I was playing with her hair, and I had kept going for a while anyway before climbing down. The top bunk didn't seem so bad anymore.  Jon is awake, lounging on the bottom of the other bunks.  Jo is still asleep on top.  Yesterday was long for me so I can't imagine how they feel.  I get up and tip-toe to the table, but the creaky floor is annoyingly loud.

             
“What can we do today?”  I say softly out loud, spinning around and forcing a smile on my face.  We all slept inside last night, which should make them happy.  Those two nights on the sidewalk were awful. Sara stirs, but quickly settles and lays back down, facing the wall.  Jon opens his eyes, rolls his shoulders back, and looks at me.  It seems like only the bottom half of his face is smiling.

             
“I guess you are all energized. Are you hungry, Caitlyn? I'm sure I can manage something for our first meal.”

             
I nod a few times, keeping the forced smile on my face.  Breakfast has always been my favorite meal.  Sara and I didn’t have to get cleaned up, or change out of our pajamas.  We just threw our covers back and walked to the table.  The smell of bacon and pancakes always helped.  Mommy and daddy make, or made, the best breakfasts.

             
My smile stops, and I don’t inhale for a little.  I watch Jon walk toward the big cabinets next to the stove on the back wall.  As he opens the door, a few cans fall from the shelves and hit the wooden floor.  The sound is really loud. He quickly turns to me.

           
"Who packed this?" he asks.  I roll my eyes.

             
Sara stirs a little bit at the sound.  She rolls over and opens her eyes.

             
“Sleep better?” asks Jo, now sitting up.  She reaches over and runs her fingers through Sara’s hair. Sara nods and my sister and I share a smile.

             
I feel my eyebrows rise. Thinking of mom and dad took away my appetite.  I think I had forgotten when I first woke up. “I take it back.  I’m not hungry.”

             
“I know; I don’t think any of us are.” says Jo, turning toward me but not lifting her hand from Sara’s head.  “But you have to eat.”

             
I don’t say anything back.  My head just sinks and my eyes fall to the floor.

             
“I know things are kinda rough, but they will change,” says Jo, quietly.  She stands up, hops off the bunk, and walks over to me.  I feel her hand under my chin, so I look up to see her kneeling in front of me.  That same bottom-face smile that Jon had is on her face, too.

             
“I really miss my dad too,” she says.  “But he wanted me to get through this.  So I’m going to have to do some things that feel hard for a while.  Can you do them with me? Besides we have quite an adventure ahead of us.  Also best yet: there will be no school.”

           
"No reading?" Sara nearly falls off her bunk. Jon lifts his head from his search for food. 

             
"Oh no, young lady. You’re not going to give up learning on my watch," Jon says with a laugh. I’m not sure if he’s serious, but Sara thinks he is, and  she is not amused.

             
“Anyway, Jo’s right,” he continued, setting some things on the table.  “We all have an adventure on our hands.  This first one’s easy though!  We have to eat, and you can choose whatever you like.” He throws four unopened bags of mini-muffins on the table.  “As long as it's muffins”

             
“What kind of muffins?”  Sara pipes up.

             
“For your dining pleasure, we have blueberry and banana nut.” Jon answers. I remember dad getting them out of a vending machine once for me.

          
"You’re a nut." Jo jokes as she slightly slaps the back of Jon's head.   Jon flinches and raises his hand to the spot that she hit, and playfully throws one of the bags of muffins at her.

         
She catches it just before it hits her in the nose.  "Now Jon, don't throw your food." We all laugh.

             
Sara reaches for a bag, tears it open, and nibbles at a muffin. She never cared for them.  Mom's were the only ones she ate.

             
“Come on over, Caitlyn,” says Jon, patting beside himself on the bench.

             
I don’t want muffins.  I don’t want anything.  Jon just continues to look at me as I shake my head.

             
“How good are they?” asks Jo, looking toward Sara at the table.

             
Sara doesn’t say anything.  She doesn’t even change her facial expression.  She just turns toward Jo and nods with an entire muffin in her mouth. She goes to say something and it almost falls out.

             
“See?  They’re good,” says Jo.  Soon enough, we’re all chewing away, except for my sister who is chewing loudly.  I hate it when she does that.  Daddy would never let her get away with it. Jon passes out some glasses with bottled water poured in them. I drink it down.

             
Jon crinkles up all the empty bags and sighs. I bet he wishes there are more we could eat today. “I promise breakfast will be a little more creative in the future.  I’m going to get back to the trailer.  It shouldn’t take too long.  Plus, I’ll see if I can gather anything else from inside.”

             
The smile fades from his face quickly.  I’m going to be twelve years old soon, so I can tell when someone is faking.  Sara hops off of my bench and runs over to him as he turns around to walk to the door, and I follow.  He jumps a little bit as I wrap my arms around his waist.

             
“Come back soon!” Sara says, doing the same.

             
This time, his whole face smiles, even if it is just a little one.  As he turns away, I feel an odd tingling in my throat and clear it quietly.

Chapter 15: Jonathon

             
It’s hard to leave the girls.  I already feel some sense of responsibility for the twins, a need to protect them.  Plus, they are one of the few elements of my life that might make me smile anymore.  Jo and I have gotten along well these past few days, but once things return to any sense of normalcy our problems will return.  The door subtly creaks behind me as I pull it shut, and the storm door slams against the frame as I walk to the car.  With a turn of the key, the SUV comes to life and drifts forward from my prompting.  Maybe the long drive will give me time to understand why I feel so compelled to bury this ranger.

             
With nobody else in the car, I’m a little less careful with the drive.  It feels good to take the turns a few miles an hour faster than I should: like an amusement park ride.  I give the steering wheel a particularly aggressive twist to the left, and the car turns just barely faster than traction should allow.  The extra floating dust in my rear-view mirrors confirms the fishtail.

             
Alright, that’s enough goofing off.  I need to remain in the right mindset if I’m going to keep everyone safe.  No mess-ups.  Not now, when there is no telling what the consequences could be.  My driving becomes immediately smoother.

             
As the road flies below me, I turn my attention back to the ranger.  I had originally felt a sense of duty or something to this man who had given us supplies that may save our lives as we get used to “living off of the land.”  The more I think about it, the more I realize that it must be more than gratitude.  I understand why I couldn’t explain it to Jo yesterday; I can’t even explain it to myself.

             
Maybe since I can't bury my father... 

             
I glance at the radio several times and begin to seek through the stations.  Each one is in static.  We really are secluded here in the woods. Or maybe they stopped broadcasting. Who would be broadcasting anymore anyway?

             
The road is becoming less dusty, and I can see pavement up ahead.  The ranger's station should be just over this hill.  The sun is well into the sky now, and although the warmth is currently pleasing, it might get annoying when I’m trying to dig a grave.  Is six feet a requirement or a suggestion?  I don’t have a clue.  It doesn’t really matter how deep it is.  The grave will be up to my chest.  That'll work.

             
The station is quiet.  Undoubtedly much like the rest of campground: an odd sense of stillness.  I throw the transmission into park and kill the engine.  As I open the door, I hear the sound of birds chirping in the treetops.  What would normally have been a serene string of tweeting was unsettling as it was at odds with the rest of the eeriness of the place.  I shake my head to get focused.  I need a shovel, and I need to find a place to dig.

             
Both present themselves immediately.  On the side of the station, there is an array of tools hanging from a row of nails embedded in the trailer’s outside wall.  Spades, shovels, rakes, hoes, hand tillers, and even a pitchfork are hung in no immediately apparent particular order. Wait...

             
Alphabetical? I muse, seeing that the cultivator is first and the watering pot is last.  I continue, seeing that a compound bow and quiver is just a few nails to the left of the watering pot.  An odd thing to just have lying around.  It’s been a couple of months since I’ve shot, but you don’t lose something like that very quickly.  Archery is more like riding a bike than swinging a golf club.  I joined the school's club the past year and was a pretty good shot.  I was saving up to by a bow this year.  Looks like I will take this one for free.

             
Again, I need to focus.  The place to dig the grave is clear as well.  Behind the trailer are two
wooden crosses sticking out of the ground.  One has a small mound in front of it.  The other is at the head of undisturbed soil.  A chill shoots through my spine as I consider what it must have felt like for the ranger to lash a cross and hope that it would be over his final resting place.

             
I make my way into the trailer. The ranger lies on the couch, undisturbed.  Only a few flies have found their way into the trailer, and they don’t appear to have decided where they want to land.  I stop to observe the situation.  Wrapped entirely in the blanket, he is just as easy to lift today as he was last night.  I navigate carefully out the front door, around the trailer, and I lay him a few feet away from what will be his grave.

             
I reposition the ranger beside the cross marked patch of dirt and mark the edges of the grave.  After hanging the spade back on the wall and trading it for a long, wide shovel, I come back to study the ground.

             
“Here goes,” I say, exhaling heavily through the words.

             
I was right about the sun.  A few dozen shovel-fulls in and I feel the unrelenting heat saturating my back.  It was unusually hot for this time of year.  All those bodies in the streets – the parking garage, I can only imagine the reek that surrounds them now.  Again, I am thankful for getting out of the city.

             
Time and time again, I stand, empty the shovel, and squat back down for another.  Time goes by slowly, but eventually I can tell that the sun is no longer rising higher into the sky.  At about the same moment, I start to measure the depth by leaning up against the hole's walls.  The hole is a bowl at the moment, so soon I can just work on leveling out the bottom.  I set down the shovel to look at my hands.  They are sore and blistered in a few areas.  My arms ache.