But the Children Survived (16 page)

Mindy put Baby Girl in the extra back-pack and tied the rope around the straps.  Mark hoisted Baby Girl up the ladder and pulled her out, handing her to Calvin. 

Then Mindy climbed the ladder and, with the aid of Mark's hand, got out of the hatchway opening and onto the ground.  It felt damp.  It made her knees wet.  She stood up and Calvin closed the hatchway door.  They all headed towards the road where the car was parked.

Calvin opened the back door of the car and Mindy, Mark, and Baby Girl all climbed aboard.  The interior was leather and smelled musty.  It also held faint traces of the scent of human decay.  Mindy put on her seatbelt, but Mark refused.  Baby Girl got on Mindy’s lap and stood on her hind legs to look out the window.

Calvin got into the driver’s seat.  He had brought a flashlight with him that he put on the seat next to him. 

"Hang on everybody, here we go.” 

Mindy rolled the window down so Baby Girl could stick her head out.  Her little ears flapped in the breeze as the car picked up speed.  When they finally got on the highway and Calvin pushed the car to 55, Baby Girl backed off.  The air conditioner was on so Mindy closed the window.

"Wish there was radio,” Calvin said.  “I used to love cruisin' the highway with my music on.  Just me and Miles Davis.” 

"Who’s Miles Davis?”  Mindy asked.

"Child, who raised you?  They certainly left out a big part of your education.  Miles Davis was just the greatest jazz trumpeter that ever lived!” 

"Oh, I don’t know what jazz sounds like.  I do like Justin Bieber though.”  Mindy was watching Calvin for a reaction, but his head was completely obscured by the hazmat suit.

"Shit, Justin Bieber!  That boy was the most overrated, why my daughter used to …” Calvin stopped talking. 

"Used to what?” Mindy asked.  Calvin was silent.  After a few minutes he started talking again.

"Nothing, just nothing.  Hey, Mark, Mindy, I want you to look at each other, and I don’t want you to look out the window until I say so.”

"Why?” asked Mindy. 

"Just do it.” 

Mindy looked at Mark and he looked at her.  They both started to giggle. 

"We can’t do this,” Mindy said.

They turned away from each other and saw the bodies piled high on both sides of the road.  They quickly looked back at each other. 

"That’s what he didn’t want us to see,” Mark said.  “I saw that at my house, at least at first.”  They both looked down at Baby Girl asleep between them.  They each started petting her.  They rode in silence for a long time, then Calvin began to speak.

"Mark, we’re going through Largo now.  We should be in St. Pete soon.  What street am I lookin for?” Calvin asked.

"Pasadena Avenue.  It’s between Treasure Island and St. Pete Beach.”  Mark was getting excited.  He would be home soon.  Mindy was stroking Baby Girl. 

"Is there going to be enough food there, Mark?” Mindy asked.

"Kinda late to be thinking about that.” Calvin was looking in the rear-view mirror.  Mindy could just see his eyes.

"There’s plenty of food.  I still had some and there’s a Granger's not far from me.” Mark was worried that Mindy might change her mind and go back with Calvin.  “We have to get you a bike.  Calvin, if you see a store that might have bikes, can you stop?” 

Calvin looked at him in the mirror.

"I really have to get back, kid.”  He looked at Mark’s face in the rearview mirror.  “Yeah, if I see anything I’ll stop.” 

A few miles from St. Petersburg, Mark spotted a Big Mart store. 

"Calvin, over there, turn left.” 

Calvin saw the store too and pulled to the left.  He didn’t want the kids to go inside.  The parking lot was full of cars.  There were bodies everywhere. 

"I’ll go in and see what I can find.”  Calvin parked the car and got out. 

"Keep the windows closed.  I’ll be right back.” 

Calvin grabbed the flashlight.  He closed the door and the kids watched him pick his way through the bodies while he walked towards the Big Mart.  Then they turned back to watching Baby Girl sleep. 

About fifteen minutes later, they saw Calvin emerge from the store with a pink two-wheeled bicycle with a basket on the front and streamers on the handlebars.  He opened the trunk of the car and put the bike inside.  Mindy was glowing.

"Thank you, Calvin!”  She was now as excited as Mark was.  “Do you think Baby Girl will fit in the basket?”

"Might be a little snug, but I think she’ll be okay.”  Calvin’s eyes smiled at her.

They got back on the road going south. Calvin turned off the road at 18th Avenue South and headed towards the beach.  Mark was grinning from ear to ear. 

"It’s really happening Mindy, I’m going home.” 

And then Mindy remembered her home.

"Calvin, can we go by my house?” 

Calvin was silent.  He knew what that child wanted to do and he didn’t like it.  He couldn’t stand the thought of her hurt face, her crying, when she realized her people were long dead. 

"Calvin?”  Mindy was waiting for him to answer.

"I don’t know where you live.”  Calvin was driving faster. 

"I lived on 22nd Avenue.  Can we please go by there?”

"Calvin, we gotta show her.”  Mark put his hands on the backrest of the front seats.  “It’s the only way she’ll get it, Calvin.”

Reluctantly, Calvin found himself turning off 18th Avenue South and heading towards 22nd Avenue.  He tried to hold back his feelings for the sake of his little lady.

They reached 22nd Avenue and Mindy was earnestly watching as each house went by.  She believed they were going in the right direction, but 22nd Avenue was long and they might have entered it at the wrong spot.  Then she saw her school and knew she was getting nearer. 

"There’s my school!” Mindy shouted. 

"How much farther?” Calvin asked.

"I guess, I don’t know....maybe a couple of blocks?”  Mindy grew anxious.  She was so worried and so excited at the same time.  Then she saw her little white house with the green shutters.

"STOP!  It’s right there.” 

Mindy stood up and put her finger in front of Calvin’s facemask pointing left.  He slowed down and stopped.  He then reversed the car until they were parked in front of Mindy’s house. 

It was daylight but the house was dark inside.  Like a lot of homes in Florida, the windows were covered to keep the intense heat out.  The covers also kept out the light.  They all exited the car and slowly walked towards Mindy’s house. 

Mindy stood at the front door.  She turned the knob but it was locked.  She turned and looked at Calvin.  Calvin tried the door and then kicked it with his foot.  It didn’t open.  Afraid to tear his suit, he looked around for something heavy.  He found a rock and threw it into the front picture window, breaking the safety glass into a million pieces.

Mindy and Mark took rocks to break off the little pieces left in the window frame.  They then climbed into the house.  When they got in, they opened the door for Calvin to enter. 

The house was very quiet.  It had a musty, shut-up smell.  Mindy walked from room to room but couldn’t find her parents.  Their bodies weren’t there.

"Maybe they went to a neighbor’s?”  Calvin suggested. 

"I don’t understand this.”  Mindy was crying quietly.  “I don’t know where they could be.  They should’ve come home by now.” 

Calvin walked to the back of the house and looked in the yard.  There was a pool full of leaves and debris, but no bodies.  The yard was clear.

"Well, do you want to check your neighbor’s?”  Calvin wanted to get moving.

"Yes, just the ones next door.” 

The little band, dog in tow, walked to the house on the right of her house and checked there.  That door was open and the neighbors were sitting on the floor decomposing.  They all left in a hurry and went to the house on the left of Mindy’s house. 

There the house was also open, and the little family of four was also dead.  Mindy had known the children living there.  She had played with them often.  The sight of them lying on the floor that way made Mindy break down.  She ran out of the house and into the car with Baby Girl close behind.  Mark and Calvin closed the door of the house and walked to the car.  Mindy burst out of the car yelling.

"I have to check something!” 

She ran into the house.  She was searching frantically for something her parents had given her before they left.  She had forgotten to take it to Grammy's.  Mindy found it in her bedroom on her dresser.  It was a brochure from a hotel casino in Las Vegas. 

Her parents had gone there and had given Mindy the brochure with the phone number in case she wanted to call them.  She folded the brochure and put it in her pocket.  She also took a picture of her with her parents and went back to the car. 

"I really wish we had found her folks,” Calvin said.  “Where the hell are they?”  Mark raised his shoulders up and down. 

"It’s really weird,” Mark said as he got into the car and Calvin into the driver’s seat. 

Mindy soon joined them.  After she buckled her seat belt, they headed back to 18th Avenue South and Mark’s beachfront paradise.

 
Chapter 20

Mark’s house was on a road right near the beachfront.  You had to walk a few feet to the left to see the beach, but it was close enough.  His parents had been trust fund babies who decided to live off the land, as long as the land was on St. Pete Beach. 

They used their considerable fortunes to create a small haven for themselves and their son.  Mark’s father was Jeffrey Bennett, who’d had a brief career as a rock singer in the 1990s.  He had one hit song, which he sold to a company that had used it in its commercials for five years. 

His wife, Penny, was the daughter of a real estate king who developed most of the land on St. Pete Beach in the 1960s.  She had inherited the bulk of his fortune. 

Penny and Jeff insisted on installing solar panels in their home and encouraged their neighbors to do likewise.  They dug a well and installed a reverse osmosis filtering system throughout the house.  They built a garden where a pool had been, and they grew most of their food organically.  On weekends they traveled to farms outside the area to pick up raw dairy products.  They did not eat meat. 

Mark was their pride and joy.  Besides inheriting his father’s musical talent, he also liked to work in his mother’s garden.  Penny home-schooled Mark, but even when she tried to get him to participate in home-schooling activities designed to give the kids social interaction with kids their own age, Mark preferred staying home.  He just didn’t like other kids. 

Most of the kids he’d met during those outings just weren’t interested in what he was interested in, and it was torture spending an afternoon with them hearing about television wrestling and TV shows about pawn shops.  Mark would rather stay home and read a good book.

When he watched his parents die, he had tried to revive them.  He had pounded on his mother’s chest and begged his father to wake up.  When that didn’t work, he tried 911, but there was no answer. 

Mark didn’t know what to do with his parents.  When their bodies began to smell bad, he went to the shed and found two tarpaulins his dad had used to paint the shutters last year.  There was a rope on each end of the tarpaulins, so Mark rolled his mother into one and his father into the other.  He pulled the ropes tight and tied them.  He then rolled his parents’ bodies one at a time out the front door towards the beach. 

When he got them there, he put rocks in each tarpaulin, put them in a neighbor’s motorboat and took them out to the ocean.  He rolled them over the side of the boat, and as he watched them go down, he sobbed uncontrollably. 

For the first two weeks, Mark was afraid to leave his house.  He had enough food and the freezer was working.  He had his video games and DVD’s as well as all of his books to keep him company.  He was afraid to go outside and find bodies.  He’d seen some when he was taking his parents to the dock, and he didn’t want to see any more. 

The smell of rotting corpses grew stronger every day, but the wind blew strong there so it wasn’t too bad.  The sun was doing its job along with the humidity.  The flesh was being eaten by insects, the only survivors of this catastrophe.  By the end of the second week, the bodies had decomposed to bone.

When Mark decided to leave his house to search for food, he cautiously opened the door.  The smell was much better, and he walked out into the sunshine.  He looked around and noticed that not one body remained on the street.  No bones, no clothing, just grass, street, and beach.  He walked to the beach and looked north and south.  He turned and walked north. 

About halfway up the beach from his house, he found piles of clothing and bones.  He turned around and walked south.  Again, halfway from his house, he found clothing and bones littering the beach.  The one mile stretch of beach near his house was completely void of debris.  It was as if God, or aliens, or angels had reached down and swept them all away.

 Mark walked back to the street and up the block.  He didn’t see one body, human or animal.  The street had been cleared.  Now he was starting to freak out a little.  Was there someone else around here?  He hadn’t seen or heard a living soul for two weeks.  Who could have done this?

Mark walked the three blocks to Granger's and saw that there were bodies left a few blocks away.  The doors of Granger's were propped open so he walked inside.  He took a shopping cart and started to walk up and down the aisles. 

Mark’s parents had shopped in health food stores so he was unfamiliar with the brands he saw.  His parents didn’t subscribe to cable so he hadn’t seen commercials, except those his father’s song appeared in.  But those were for some computer, so no food brands there. 

He looked at the labels on the boxes. They might as well have been written in Japanese.  Finally, he just started filling his cart with whatever looked okay.  Towards the back of the store the smell was overwhelming.