From the Indie Side (4 page)

“Emily… I need
you
to wake up.”

A stir.

“Come on now!” a voice cracked.

The warm touch of someone’s hand.

“Huh?” she muttered.

Someone nudged her, squeezing her shoulder
until she moved.

“What?” Groggy and disoriented.

“Emily! Girl, it’s an emergency!”

Reluctantly, her eyes swam dully in a sliver
of fuzzy dim light. She found the outline of a familiar figure
standing over her.

“Mom?”

“Come on, Emily. You have to get up. We have
to go, now!”

Emily peered over to her bedroom window and
tried to focus. The night’s blackness encouraged her to go back to
sleep.

“It’s still early… and teens need more sleep,
anyway. ’Kay?”

Another shake came then, harder, pulling the
sleep out of her.

“What, Mom?” Her voice sounded scratchy,
caught in her dry throat. “What is it?”

“We’ve got to go. There’s something wrong…
terribly wrong!”

Emily heard the sound of panic and something
clicked inside her, some terrible notion. Thoughts of her father
immediately came to mind. She searched the darkness, frantic.
Something’s happened to him?
But before she could ask, her
mother yanked back her blanket. Cold air rushed over Emily’s bare
legs. Her teeth chattered while she rubbed away the slumber in her
eyes.

“Emily, I need you to move!”

“Mom?” she asked. She was awake now, and her
voice shook with worry. Her mother stopped and let the blanket fall
to the floor.

“Mom, is it Dad? Is Daddy okay?”

“I’m fine, but we have to go!” her father
answered. She turned to see his tall silhouette against the light
splintering through her bedroom door. “We need to get to the car. I
don’t think the house is going to last much longer!”

Another storm?
Emily swung her feet
over the edge of her bed and stood up. She gripped the carpet,
squeezing her toes. As the lure of sleep loosened its hold on her,
she shook off the early chill and realized that she needed to pee.
Storm or no storm, whatever the emergency, it would have to wait
until she was done. Emily glanced at her window again.

“How early is it?”

“Almost morning,” her mother answered,
throwing loose clothing onto her bed. “We need to get moving!”

Must be a storm.
That would explain
everything.
It’s an evacuation
, she concluded, and recalled
the time when she was nine and they had to pack some things and
hurry to the big shopping mall for safety.

Somewhere above her bedroom ceiling, Emily
heard a crash. The sudden sound made her flinch. She didn’t just
hear it, though—she felt it. Then a second crash came, dropping
something even harder. She felt it rumble across the floor and into
her feet.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Emily, it’s the house!” her father answered
sharply, and then continued to shuffle what was in his hands before
packing it away. He stopped a moment, and looked at her with firm
eyes. “Listen to us, and get moving!”

And that’s when Emily realized what she
wasn’t hearing: there was no wind, not even a breeze. Living near
the beaches, she was accustomed to hearing the rough surf,
especially when a seasonal storm came through. But now, she heard
neither the rush of air nor the pounding of the waves: the outside
was eerily silent. She should have heard
something
. What
about the morning seabirds?

Two more thumps. But these came from below
her window, outside. A neighbor? The sound of a car door creaked
open and then closed, followed by the slamming of a trunk lid. A
voice came next, escalating to a yell, telling someone that they
needed to hurry it up. Another car door opened and then closed.
Emily began to understand that whatever was happening, it was
happening to everyone; the neighborhood was awake and in
motion.

A scream came then, cutting through her
bedroom. She jumped. Her mother cupped a hand over her lips while
her father’s mouth fell open. The voice had a throaty and raw
sound, tortured, and her body went cold as the hairs on her arms
sprang to life. She exchanged a frightened glance with her mother
and then looked over to her father.

“Daddy, what was that?” The first scared
tears pricked her eyes. “Momma, why did someone scream like that?”
Her father raised his hand, shushing her, and then waited. For a
minute they just stood in her room, listening. Garbled sounds, wet
and drowning, came next. The person tried to yell out, but to
Emily, the voice sounded marred and deformed. The few words that
she could make out were something about not leaving the
house—
Stay inside!
—and then the shouting ended abruptly,
punctuated by the crumpled sound of someone falling. Silence
followed. Her father’s hand stayed in the air.

“The car never started,” her father
whispered, talking to himself more than to her or her mother. “They
never made it into the car. So strong and fast. Very fast.”

“What do you mean…
fast
?” Emily asked.
“They could still be alive—we can help them!” But she knew what
she’d heard. It was the sound of a body collapsing onto the street
outside their home.

“No we can’t,” he answered, his voice subdued
and in a near-whisper. He lowered his hand and leveled his eyes.
“We can’t help anyone but ourselves now.”

“But they’re right outside!”

“Never mind them, Emily!” Her father spoke
with a hard, scolding tone. “Hurry and get your things
together!”

Emily bit down on her lower lip, hurt by her
father’s stern voice. She rushed past her parents, keeping her head
low and her sight fixed on the floor. She said nothing more as she
crossed the hall. Another scream came from outside, slowing her
step. The sound was thin and distant, but as real as the first. She
picked up her feet, as if to run from the screams. Emily closed the
bathroom door, trying to shut out the horrid sounds. What nightmare
had she awaken to?

Alone, hidden away from the world, Emily
began to cry. The toilet seat was cold, but she hardly noticed it.
She heard a volley of sharp words. Emily cupped an ear, trying to
make out what her parents were saying. Another set of screams crept
under the door—loud enough to momentarily interrupt their chatter.
When it became quiet again, her mother started to yell.

“Did you do this?” she hollered. Her voice
was loud and shaking. “Tell me you didn’t do this, please! TELL ME,
PHIL!”

“I don’t know what happened,” he snapped.
“None of our models ever showed a reaction like this. Conditions
are incorrect… it’s got to be wrong!”

“
Incorrect? Wrong?
” Emily’s mother
shouted back sarcastically. “People are dying, Phil! Don’t you hear
them? Did your
precious
machines do this?”

“I’m going to fix this,” her father stated
flatly, resigned. Emotion was absent from his voice. “I can fix
this.”

Her mother’s crying slowed, her hushed sobs
moved past the bathroom. Two quick knocks rapped against the door,
pulling Emily’s head up.

“Hurry it up, Emily. No time for anything
else. Okay?”

“In a minute!”

The bathroom lights flickered, and the
electricity shut off. Blackness swallowed everything, and Emily’s
breathing became still. A moment later the lights blinked once,
flickered back on. The lights sometimes did that when a hurricane
blew through their small coastal town. But this wasn’t like any
storm they’d been through before.

Emily breathed again, catching the first
bitter taste of salt. Unlike the ocean breeze she’d grown up with,
the briny taste was strong and chemical.

“Daddy, the lights!”

“Power is going to go out soon… we’re losing
the substation.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know, Hon. We all are, Emily. Hurry it up
now,” he answered. The electricity popped, sounding a crisp break
this time, shutting off all the lights. The blackness came again,
forcing her eyes wide. She found a thin rail of light stretching
beneath the bathroom door. A shuffle of shadow feet passed by. The
quick pace and short steps told her it was her mother. Her father
followed behind, continuing the argument from earlier. They were on
the stairs next, moving down to the foyer.

Her world became silent. The outside. Her
parents. She welcomed the quiet, but thought of the dead body. Or
was it
bodies
? The dead make no sounds. Her throat
tightened, her stomach cramped. The taste of heavy salt returned,
and Emily had a sudden urge to heave. She coughed out the burn
until stars were in her eyes, zipping around in a swirly dance. And
at some point, her arms and legs had become itchy. Whatever was
causing the screams outside had started to seep through the walls.
Her father was right, the house wasn’t going to last. Emily wiped
herself, dropped the tissue, and pulled up her panties. Her nightie
fell over her itching legs as she rushed out of the bathroom.

Back in her bedroom, the sun had finally
started to show. But it was different—off. The colors washed out.
With the sunrise, a gray world was revealed to her. Heavy fog
crowded her window, hiding what was outside. The entire world
reduced to a square of roiling gray.

If only it blocked out the sounds,
too.
It seemed that as the gray light grew stronger, more
people were venturing outside. Emily heard doors, an occasional
scream. A car horn blasting across the street. Terse yells from a
woman to her family. And as before, the loud voices soon became
tortured screams. And ended with the sound of a body falling.

She tried to cover her ears, to close off all
the sounds. Her eyes began to burn, watering more than just
emotional tears. And the itch on her skin was starting to burrow
underneath, becoming painful. She wondered if their house was
simply going to melt, and then wondered how long before they’d
melt, too.

This is just temporary
, she told
herself as she dressed.

Soon Emily was gripping the stairwell railing
for the last time in her life. As she neared the bottom steps, the
notion of saying goodbye to her room crossed her mind. It was
silly, and maybe a little sentimental, but for a sixteen-year-old,
sentimental was sometimes everything. Her parents’ voices—and
another scream—kept her moving forward. But she’d become clumsy,
missing the last step, and fell hard onto the foyer’s wood floors.
Immediately, blood rushed to her ankle, making it feel warm and
swollen.

“Mom!” she began, but stopped when she saw
her mother’s body lying on the floor. Emily’s heart leaped into her
throat.
Had the poison—or whatever it was—killed her?
Her
mother’s face was hidden beneath her hands, but then Emily saw that
her shoulders were shaking with a run of sobs.

“Dad?”

Emily’s father was at her mother’s side, his
face tight as he tried to remain composed. “Barbara, I’m going to
fix this,” he insisted, wiping away a string of spittle from his
chin. “I promise!”

More tortured screams. But the sound was
louder this time, and seemed just outside. Emily stepped to the
front door and heard a woman’s voice. Her heart beat harder as she
leaned in closer.

“I’m dying… Please help me, I’m dying,” the
woman rasped. Her voice had the same throaty, pained quality as the
others. But Emily knew this voice—Ms. Quigly, she was sure of it.
Ms. Quigly must have come from next door, making it across the lawn
and to their front stoop. She’d probably gone outside for her cat
and gotten caught up in the fog. The poison had her now. At once
Emily’s mother jumped up, her hands reaching for the door. But her
father rushed by, pushing Emily out of the way.

“Don’t you open that door!” he screamed. “It
isn’t safe!”

“We have to help,” her mother pleaded. Emily
pushed between them and took hold of the cold handle. What
difference would it make? She’d open the door for just a
moment—just long enough for Ms. Quigly to get inside. Not since she
was three or four could she ever recall feeling a disciplinary
hand, yet before she could turn the knob, a sharp sting struck the
top of her hand. She pulled back and darted a hurt-filled look at
her father. A crazy mix of fear and alarm in his expression made
her back away.

“She’s already dead,” he told the both of
them. “Ms. Quigly died before she reached our door. She just
doesn’t know it yet.” Emily watched as her parents clung to one
another, waiting. Her mother flinched when Ms. Quigly called to
them again. They all flinched when the scratchy sound of
fingernails ran the length of their front door. Fear and shame
pressed on Emily’s chest, making it hard to breathe. When the sound
of Ms. Quigly’s body fell against the door, she knew their neighbor
was dead.

“I hate you for this,” Emily’s mother said,
leaving for the kitchen. Her father’s head slumped and he pushed
his hands over his face. Seeing him like that scared her. Emily
pawed at her arms, and saw the first visible signs of what the
poison was doing. Blotchy red patches had formed, some of them
rising in watery blisters. She instinctively reached for her face,
but found nothing. At once, the urge to leave became overpowering.
It wouldn’t be long before Death’s poison breath took their home.
They needed the security of a solid building; something more than
just flimsy walls. What was done, was done. She loved Ms. Quigly,
but dead is dead—you can’t fix that.

“Dad, we’re running out of time,” she told
him. “Tell us what to do!” He lifted his head, and his eyes grew
wide when he saw her arms.

“Emily, girl, let me see,” he answered,
lifting her hand. “You’re so much more fairer than we are. You have
to cover up more. Long sleeves—cover everything.” He looked at his
own arms, which were clear of any welts. He ran his hand along the
side of her tall red hair, then leaned in, kissing her atop the
head.