{"id":192,"date":"2013-07-21T12:31:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T12:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/?page_id=192"},"modified":"2013-07-21T12:31:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T12:31:31","slug":"chapter-29","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/story\/chapter-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 29"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 29<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid.\u00a0 I had the whole box set of the paperbacks, which sit now on the shelves of my classroom library, dog-eared and falling apart and collecting dust, I\u2019m sure.\u00a0 There are no children left to read them.\u00a0 It\u2019s a shame\u2026 when we left school for spring break, my Amanda was almost done with \u201cThese Happy Golden Years.\u201d\u00a0 She\u2019ll never be able to finish\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Anyway\u2026 I remember reading those books and trying to imagine what it must be like to live in isolation on the prairie, a whole day\u2019s travel from any town, hundreds of miles from the only place I\u2019d known as home, with only my family for company.\u00a0 No electricity, no running water, few toys, and lots of work.\u00a0 It sounded impossibly hard, and when I really thought about that, it made me appreciate the comparatively easy life I lived.<\/i><\/p>\n

I was a tomboy as a kid, but never the outdoorsy type as an adult.\u00a0 I was content indoors, with my books and my movies and my computer.\u00a0 I loved the show Survivor, but not even for a million dollars would I have wanted to rough it for thirty-nine days, away from everything and everyone I knew.<\/i><\/p>\n

I never asked for this, but here I am, playing the ultimate game of Survivor.\u00a0 The days have started to blur together, but according to our calculations, it\u2019s Day 40.\u00a0 If I were on Survivor, I\u2019d be a millionaire by now.\u00a0 Ha.\u00a0 I wish this would turn out to be some crazy, epic reality show\u2026 one big joke on us all, that everyone I know was in on.\u00a0 Sounds like something FOX would have greenlighted, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 I wish\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

So much for a million dollars.\u00a0 Money is meaningless now.\u00a0 Most things are.\u00a0 All that matters is our survival, me and these people who have become like my family.\u00a0 Here we are, living in isolation, hundreds of miles from home, with only each other for company.\u00a0 Our lives are more precious than ever.\u00a0 Nothing about them is easy anymore.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Saturday, April 14, 2012<\/b><\/b>
\n9:00 p.m.<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

It was dark and quiet inside the Elliott house.\u00a0 Gretchen, the lone occupant, lay curled on the couch in her shorts and camisole.\u00a0 It had gotten stuffy in the house with all the windows shut and no air conditioning, since the power had been out all day.\u00a0 Near her on the coffee table lay a flashlight, her cell phone, a carton of melted ice cream, and a glass of lukewarm wine.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019d realized the power wasn\u2019t coming back on, Gretchen had decided she might as well indulge in what would go bad before it did.\u00a0 She\u2019d eaten as much of the ice cream as she could before it turned to soup, for once not worrying about her weight or the havoc it might wreak on her digestive system.\u00a0 She\u2019d opened the wine while it was still chilled, though she had never been much of a wine drinker.\u00a0 Shawn had brought the bottle home for Valentine\u2019s Day, but they\u2019d ended up drinking wine coolers instead.<\/p>\n

Now the bottle of wine was half gone, and Gretchen was half drunk, which suited her just fine.\u00a0 The effects of the alcohol made it easier to relax, to sleep, to empty her mind of worry and let it go blank and numb.\u00a0 She\u2019d been drifting in and out for a couple of hours now, pulling herself out of a groggy haze just long enough to check her phone.<\/p>\n

The battery would last two more days, at least, so for now, the phone still beamed her the time.\u00a0 But service had been down all day.\u00a0 She kept checking for bars in different locations around the house, but it was no use.\u00a0 The phone was as good as dead.\u00a0 She and Shawn didn\u2019t have a land line, but she supposed those were down, too, along with the power.<\/p>\n

Everything was dead.\u00a0 And from the sound of it, everyone<\/i> was dead, too.<\/p>\n

Shawn had left her a message in the night.\u00a0 A much deeper sleeper than he was, she\u2019d slept right through it and awoken in the morning to find it on her voicemail.<\/p>\n

\u201cGretch, it\u2019s me.\u00a0 I hope you get this message; I\u2019m not sure how much longer we\u2019ll have phone service.\u00a0 The power\u2019s already out in Baltimore; we\u2019re running off back-up generators here at the base.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 Her husband\u2019s voice dropped to a hush, and he spoke rapidly, as if he were afraid of being overheard.\u00a0 \u201cThe situation\u2019s gotten worse.\u00a0 People are dying, and we\u2019re no closer to finding an antidote.\u00a0 I\u2019m worried we\u2019re already too late.\u00a0 Whatever this thing is, it seems to be a hundred percent lethal.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

A pause; he seemed to realize he\u2019d said too much and backtracked.\u00a0 \u201cListen\u2026 I\u2019m not telling you this to scare you; I don\u2019t want you to worry about me.\u00a0 I\u2019m keeping myself safe, and I want you to stay safe too.\u00a0 Stay inside, like I told you, and wait for me.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t make a breakthrough in the next twenty-four hours, I\u2019m coming home to get you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Another pause, perhaps to make sure she\u2019d understood.\u00a0 Then he added, \u201cAt some point, self-preservation becomes the priority.\u00a0 Remember that.\u00a0 I love you.\u00a0 See you soon.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

The message cut off there.\u00a0 Gretchen had listened to it a dozen times since; she knew it by heart.\u00a0 \u201cIf we don\u2019t make a breakthrough in the next twenty-four, I\u2019m coming home to get you.\u201d\u00a0 <\/i>She checked the time again.\u00a0 Just after nine p.m.\u00a0 Eighteen hours since he\u2019d left the voicemail.\u00a0 At what time would he give up and decide to leave?\u00a0 And with the east coast crippled by illness, how long would it take him to make it home?<\/p>\n

If he gave it the full twenty-four hours, he wouldn\u2019t leave until early morning.\u00a0 But if he\u2019d been up all day, maybe he\u2019d get some sleep first.\u00a0 And if he couldn\u2019t fly, if the airports were down, he\u2019d have to travel by car.\u00a0 Any way she sliced it, she couldn\u2019t expect him until tomorrow, likely late.<\/p>\n

All day, as she\u2019d sat and watched the hours tick by, Gretchen had tried to rationalize with herself this way, telling herself there was no reason to worry yet.\u00a0 She\u2019d give Shawn another day, maybe two, before she\u2019d worry about him.\u00a0 Not that she would need to.\u00a0 He\u2019d be home, like he\u2019d promised, or if he did make a breakthrough, he\u2019d find a way to send word to her, knowing her tendency to overthink things.\u00a0 Exactly like she was doing then.\u00a0 But trying to rationalize her fear away wasn\u2019t very effective.\u00a0 She still worried.<\/p>\n

The worst part, she realized, was the lack of contact.\u00a0 She\u2019d tried to call Shawn back immediately after listening to his voicemail, but by then, her cell signal was already gone.\u00a0 Service had been down all day, as she guessed it was up north, too.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t call Shawn in Maryland any more than she could call her family in Indiana.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t even call her friends from school, who were her only real friends in Atlanta.\u00a0 The isolation, the lonely feeling of being cut-off from everyone she loved, was terrifying.<\/p>\n

In the modern age of technology, she\u2019d never been more than a phone call away from her family and friends.\u00a0 Now, without a working phone, without the internet, without electricity of any kind, she understood what it must have been like to have lived before all those things were invented.\u00a0 She imagined she was a pioneer bride, alone on the prairie, cooped up in her soddie while her husband was away, fearful of wild animal attacks and Indian raids and all the calamities that could possibly keep her man from coming back home to her.<\/p>\n

This reverie carried her away from the dark, empty house for a few moments, but then she was back, lonely and anxious as ever.\u00a0 Still, it gave her a thought.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll try reading again,\u201d she said aloud.\u00a0 There was no one around to hear her talking to herself, and the sound of her voice \u2013 the sound of anything, really, besides her own uneasy breathing \u2013 was oddly comforting.<\/p>\n

She had tried reading throughout the day, but all she had to choose from were the books on her shelves, books she had already read, and none of them had held her attention.\u00a0 Now she went to the bookshelves again, searched for a moment, and then pulled down a tattered paperback, one of the oldest on the shelves.\u00a0 It was her mother\u2019s favorite book, an old pioneer romance called \u201cA Lantern in Her Hand,\u201d and she\u2019d borrowed it once in her young adulthood and never remembered to return it, taking it with her as she moved around the country with Shawn.\u00a0 It panged her heart to flip through the yellowed pages and think of her mother, but she carried it back to her spot on the couch and settled down with her flashlight to read.<\/p>\n

It took her three tries to get through the first page.\u00a0 Try as she might, she could not focus.\u00a0 Her mind kept wandering.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t shut off her own thoughts long enough to put herself into the story.\u00a0 Sighing, she closed the book, not bothering to mark her place.\u00a0 She was only on the page two.<\/p>\n

She got up from the couch and paced around the living room a few times before making her way to the front door.\u00a0 She did not open it, but instead leaned close, peeking out the small pane of glass in its center.\u00a0 She could see outside, into the street.\u00a0 The streetlights were dark, as were all the houses.\u00a0 No porch lights were on, no lamps lit.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t even notice the faint glow of a flashlight or flickering of a candle in any of the windows of the houses across the street.<\/p>\n

The only source of light to illuminate the dark night was the moon.\u00a0 It was full, and its glow beamed blue-white light down onto the street, casting shadows of the trees and lampposts.\u00a0 Among these, she could see the lumpy shape of something lying on the sidewalk.\u00a0 The something was a someone, her neighbor.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t know his name, only his face, which she\u2019d smiled at when she\u2019d seen him jog by from time to time.\u00a0 He\u2019d been lying there, dead, since she\u2019d gotten up that morning and first looked out.\u00a0 She knew he was not alone.\u00a0 There were no others on the street, not that she could see, but she was sure there were behind closed doors, filling the beds of the dark houses across the street and on either side.\u00a0 With nothing else to do, she\u2019d been looking out all day, like the guy in that movie Rear Window,<\/i> and she\u2019d seen no signs of human life.\u00a0 Not one.<\/p>\n

Maybe her other neighbors were just doing the same thing she was:\u00a0 hiding.\u00a0 But with no curtains moving, no lights flickering, no doors cracked open for impatient dogs to go out, she suspected there was a more sinister reason for the stillness in her neighborhood.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t ease her fears any.<\/p>\n

Reluctantly, she backed away from the door and returned to her book, clicking the flashlight back on.\u00a0 She forced herself to concentrate this time, saying every word aloud in her head, trying to picture the descriptions and actions in the words, those and nothing more.\u00a0 She sipped at her wine between pages, and eventually, she began to relax again and let the story draw her in.<\/p>\n

Gradually, her eyelids grew heavy, and her head nodded forward, towards her book.\u00a0 Yawning, she set the book aside and turned off her flashlight.\u00a0 It was nearly pitch black in the house, with only the faint glow of her cell phone and the moonlight through the windows to see by.\u00a0 Of all the things that scared her, though, the dark was not one.\u00a0 She padded to her bedroom, relying on memory and feel to avoid running into things, and crawled into bed.<\/p>\n

As she lay curled beneath the top sheet, hugging a pillow, she savored the fuzzy feeling in her head from all the wine and how it seemed to absorb all her thoughts before they could go on too long.\u00a0 Unable to stay on any one train of thought for more than a few seconds, she quickly drifted off and was asleep within minutes.\u00a0 Dark, silent, and still, her house joined the others on the block.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

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Chapter 29 I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid.\u00a0 I had the whole box set of the paperbacks, which sit now on the shelves of my classroom library, dog-eared and falling apart … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":29,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/192\/revisions\/193"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}