but then you have to tell me the plan. I’m sick of being in the dark.”
I never speak with candor, and Mom stops in surprise and turns to me, “I promise.”
Moving their bodies to the tarps isn’t as hard as I expected, it may be wrong to think that way, but it’s true. These corpses are just shells of the people I knew. Once Forest and everyone else is on a tarp of their own, I look at the door wondering how we will do the next part: Take them outside.
“We should get our suits on now,” I say.
Mom smirks, it’s a face I’ve seen so many times before. The face she makes when the men suggest a new “safety measure” or when Diane implements an energy conservation method.
“No need, Lucy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s no need for a Hazmat suit.”
“Why would you say that? All I’ve ever heard is you guys telling me to stay inside. It’s dangerous out there. Sanitize. Sanitize. Sanitize.”
“I know, Lucy, and I’m sorry. But I promise the air is fine.” Her self-assuredness is unnerving, but also laughable.
“I lost everyone I knew last night and now you want me to join them? Are you out of your mind?”
“Look, I know it’s an enormous amount to take in. But I’m telling you, the people we love, grew to a level of insanity I had previously only read about in books.”
“You know what, Mom, if you were just going to walk outside today then why didn’t you take the pills with the rest of them?” I roll my eyes. First she slaps my father’s face, now she acts like my whole life was a joke.
“Lucy, listen to me. You can open the front door, go outside, and breathe in fresh air, for the first time in your life. Don’t you want that?” She raises her arms in incredulity.
I do, but I also want to know what it means to live. Fear, no matter how foolish, is deeply rooted in me. If I pull it up from the dirt I don’t know what will keep me grounded.
“I’m putting on the suit. I’m not interested in dying any time soon.” I walk past her towards the hatch in the kitchen, grabbing the no longer forbidden flashlight from the table as I exit the study.
As I lower myself into the hatch I hear her say, “If you wear a Hazmat suit you’ll never know what living is.”
Once garbed in the suit and back upstairs, I refrain from arguing with her. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret, but I wish she’d pretend, for one more day, that our life hasn’t been a game of make-believe.
Mom pushes past the anti-contamination room and opens the big steel door. She looks back at me, in my head-to-toe gear and pauses, “Lucy, I’ve been waiting for so long to be free, if only for a moment.”
She runs outside and flings herself into the air and does a cartwheel, falling over halfway as she tosses herself on the grass. She’s a laughing heap, a lunatic, and I wonder if the crazy-hair-pulling-out person from last night has returned. I watch her evolve from the mother I’ve always known into this otherworldly person.
“Lucy, trust me, this is Heaven.” The word stings as she says it. Trust. I turn from her ecstasy and head to Dad’s corpse. I drag him to the doorway and hold the tarp by my gloved hands as I pull him over the threshold.
Before I get his body completely across, I stop and run back inside the house. In the study I grab a box full of old air purification masks. I know their filters are past usefulness, but it feels wrong to take him, and everyone else, outside unguarded. They died believing in a truth they created, and maybe that’s okay because all I have now is a useless Hazmat suit protecting me from a future I know nothing about.
chapter seven
M om helps me move Dad and the others outside, and we drag them one by one to the apple tree. I tell Mom this was the best, the only, spot. She doesn’t disagree. She just nods her head and helps me bring the tarps the short distance.
Once everyone
I never speak with candor, and Mom stops in surprise and turns to me, “I promise.”
Moving their bodies to the tarps isn’t as hard as I expected, it may be wrong to think that way, but it’s true. These corpses are just shells of the people I knew. Once Forest and everyone else is on a tarp of their own, I look at the door wondering how we will do the next part: Take them outside.
“We should get our suits on now,” I say.
Mom smirks, it’s a face I’ve seen so many times before. The face she makes when the men suggest a new “safety measure” or when Diane implements an energy conservation method.
“No need, Lucy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s no need for a Hazmat suit.”
“Why would you say that? All I’ve ever heard is you guys telling me to stay inside. It’s dangerous out there. Sanitize. Sanitize. Sanitize.”
“I know, Lucy, and I’m sorry. But I promise the air is fine.” Her self-assuredness is unnerving, but also laughable.
“I lost everyone I knew last night and now you want me to join them? Are you out of your mind?”
“Look, I know it’s an enormous amount to take in. But I’m telling you, the people we love, grew to a level of insanity I had previously only read about in books.”
“You know what, Mom, if you were just going to walk outside today then why didn’t you take the pills with the rest of them?” I roll my eyes. First she slaps my father’s face, now she acts like my whole life was a joke.
“Lucy, listen to me. You can open the front door, go outside, and breathe in fresh air, for the first time in your life. Don’t you want that?” She raises her arms in incredulity.
I do, but I also want to know what it means to live. Fear, no matter how foolish, is deeply rooted in me. If I pull it up from the dirt I don’t know what will keep me grounded.
“I’m putting on the suit. I’m not interested in dying any time soon.” I walk past her towards the hatch in the kitchen, grabbing the no longer forbidden flashlight from the table as I exit the study.
As I lower myself into the hatch I hear her say, “If you wear a Hazmat suit you’ll never know what living is.”
Once garbed in the suit and back upstairs, I refrain from arguing with her. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret, but I wish she’d pretend, for one more day, that our life hasn’t been a game of make-believe.
Mom pushes past the anti-contamination room and opens the big steel door. She looks back at me, in my head-to-toe gear and pauses, “Lucy, I’ve been waiting for so long to be free, if only for a moment.”
She runs outside and flings herself into the air and does a cartwheel, falling over halfway as she tosses herself on the grass. She’s a laughing heap, a lunatic, and I wonder if the crazy-hair-pulling-out person from last night has returned. I watch her evolve from the mother I’ve always known into this otherworldly person.
“Lucy, trust me, this is Heaven.” The word stings as she says it. Trust. I turn from her ecstasy and head to Dad’s corpse. I drag him to the doorway and hold the tarp by my gloved hands as I pull him over the threshold.
Before I get his body completely across, I stop and run back inside the house. In the study I grab a box full of old air purification masks. I know their filters are past usefulness, but it feels wrong to take him, and everyone else, outside unguarded. They died believing in a truth they created, and maybe that’s okay because all I have now is a useless Hazmat suit protecting me from a future I know nothing about.
chapter seven
M om helps me move Dad and the others outside, and we drag them one by one to the apple tree. I tell Mom this was the best, the only, spot. She doesn’t disagree. She just nods her head and helps me bring the tarps the short distance.
Once everyone