Project Pallid (27 page)

Without
another word, the shaken girl removed the card from her keyboard and, handling
it like radioactive uranium, she placed it on the counter beside her.

Gradually,
the eyes of onlookers returned to their own duties, leaving minds to race with
the questions that’d been plaguing all of Madison, Platsville, and neighboring
towns, since the first warnings of pandemic were released a day earlier. It
wasn’t played up enough, though—not to the degree it should’ve been. They
were mostly cautionary words about a few unexplainable events with common,
connecting origins that traced back to Mrs. Arnold and the hospital.

All
signs pointed to an infectious virus or something of that sort, but the details
of it were still hazy, and the advice they’d given was vaguely simple: stock up,
seek shelter, keep indoors, and watch the news; new information would be
released as it became available.

The
lines that went through the grocery store that day represented almost every
member of our community, and it was the last that most would ever see of each
other again.

“Darryl!
Darryl!!” Mom shouted up from the pantry. “Darryl, where are you!? What have
you been doing all day!?” There were other muffled words I couldn’t make out,
but I’d already tuned her out by then.

I
sat at the table and texted with Catee. It was Saturday afternoon, and we’d
made it safely home from the grocery store. Catee was home, too, as was
everyone else who’d stocked up and heeded the media’s warnings. Everyone that
is, except for Mr. Laverdier, who still hadn’t returned since leaving Catee and
me in the open, empty garage, days before.

April
30
 
3:42 PM

Have
you heard from him yet?

April 30
 
3:44 PM

He called and said he’d be by

to pick me up at 6:00 tonight.

April
30
 
3:45 PM

Pick
you up? To go where?

April 30
 
3:47 PM

Out there. To Damariscotta.

He said it’s not safe here anymore.

April
30
 
3:48 PM

Like
it’s any safer with him!

April 30
 
3:50 PM

I know! I don’t have any other choice

Where else am I going to go?

I can’t stay here alone. I’m

scared. I want to be with you!

April
30
 
3:52 PM

I
want to be with you too, Catee.

Hold
on a sec. BRB.

April
30
 
3:53 PM

I’m
scared too, BTW.

 
“Mom! Mom!!” I yelled again. And because
I expected her to still be down in the pantry, I was startled by her emergence
from the kitchen.

“Darryl!
Where are you?!” she yelled down the hall, in search of my dad. He’d learned to
avoid her entirely in the weeks that’d passed, and since she’d become all too
chummy with her new idol, Pastor Dave.

“Mom??”
I repeated, and tried to reclaim her one-track attention.

“What,
Damian!?” she snapped.

“Sorry,
Mom.” My response came coated in as much sweetness as I could muster, and I
hoped it might trigger something in her that would make her remember me, and
speak to me the way she always had before. In a way that, in spite of all the
toxicity that’d consumed her brain, would show that she still saw me and loved
me like her son. Or, if nothing else, in a way that would show I was even
relevant in her new, self-righteous world.

Her
look softened some, but only marginally, as her attention turned from finding
my dad, to me.

“What
is it, Damian?”

“I
was just wondering if Catee could come here? She’s all alone at her place, and
she’s scared.”

“Well,
of course she’s scared, Damian. As she should be. As everyone should be. But
it’s not my place to go into town and pick her up. Not when Pastor Dave needs
her. And besides, he’s picking her up, later on. You just tell her to hold
tight.”

“How
do you know that????” I asked, dumbfounded by the knowledge she’d kept to
herself.

“That’s
not up for discussion, Damian. And like I said, you just tell her to wait
there, to stay inside, and he’ll be home to grab her, soon enough.”

“But
she doesn’t want to go with him, Mom. She can’t—

“Damian,”
her words turned stern, “I’m sorry if I sounded like it was up for negotiation,
so let me rephrase it for you: We are
not
picking her up. She is
not
coming here. And as far as I’m concerned, you are
not
to have anything
more to do with each other. All it’s done is cause problems—more problems
for you than you could ever imagine. You two are clouding each other’s vision.
Filling each other’s heads with theories and lies that are going to get you
into more trouble than you can handle. And so maybe I’ve been too
open—too accepting—too willing to allow you to warp each other’s
minds. Well, that comes to a stop, here and now. Give me that phone, Damian.”
Her words came with a velocity and finality I didn’t see coming. They caught me
off guard and left me speechless.

“Give.
Me. Your. Phone. Damian.” The punctuation of each word showed no give on her
part, and my resistance came unrestrained.

“No!
Never!” I yelled and jumped to my feet. “You’re just as bad as he is! You’re
just as crazy as he is!! What’s happened to you!? What’s wrong with you!?
You’ve lost your mind!! You’re nothing more than his brainless puppet, now!!!”

She
was quick to move, but I was faster, and I knocked my chair to the floor
between us. I darted around to the backside of the table and stood opposite
from her. She moved one way, and I moved the other. She turned back, and I
reversed directions and banged out my final text to Catee:

May
22, 2012 3:58 PM

Don’t
go with him! Stay home!

I’ll
come for you!

It’s
all I had time for before Mom surprised me and flung across the table with unprecedented
agility. Her fingers dug into my forearms and latched on like manacles. I tried
to pull away, but the surprise of it all was too much, and by the time my hands
wriggled free from her grasp, I was phoneless. And before I could protest, she
banged it on the table until splintered shards of its screen bounced across the
grain of the wood.

“MOM!!!”

“What’s
going on in here!?” Dad finally emerged from the hall.

“That
crazy bitch just smashed my phone to pieces!!!” I couldn’t believe my own words
and, had it been any other time, my dad might have lashed out at me for them.
But times were different then, and I gave words to what he’d felt and wanted to
say for weeks. His response was a muted one that showed unbiased allegiance to
neither of us.

“Martha.
What’s going on? What’re you doing?”

“I’m
doing what you aren’t, DAR-RYL,” she snapped. “I’m doing what I can to save
this family! And speaking of that, where’s Nicole!? Didn’t you tell her to get
home like I told you to? And what have you been doing all day?! Why isn’t that
pantry reorganized like I said needed to be done! Where are the beds?! Where
are the rations??!! Am I the only one here who’s got their head screwed on
right anymore!!!” It was the most laughably, paradoxical thing she could have
said. At least, it would’ve been if someone we loved weren’t coming unraveled,
right before our eyes.

“You’re
crazy, and I’m done with you! Forever!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs,
charged from the room, and headed toward the stairs and my bedroom.

“Well
don’t go thinking things are going to be so grand up there, either!” Mom yelled
from behind. “I’m pulling the internet, too! You’re done with that girl until
you come to your senses!! I’m doing this for you, Damian!! I’m doing all this
to save you because you refuse to save yourself!!!”

The
tears that welled and poured from my eyes were a mixture: one was rage, another
sadness. One was for Catee, and another, for the death of my mom. One for my
dad, who’d lost his soul mate, and one for me, who’d become a helpless victim
in my own life.

May
2
^nd:

Mom
left that night. She tried and tried, even forcefully and by the arm, to drag
my dad and me with her. She said it was for our own good and that we needed to
go with her. That she’d talked with Pastor Dave and that it was time. The
pantry and the plans she’d so militantly put together were to be abandoned, and
a new plan—one that broadcasts hadn’t suggested—was underway. We
were to go to The Gathering’s encampment in Damariscotta to meet up with Mr.
Laverdier and to await his guidance from there.

As
much as I resisted, I was torn. I didn’t know what to do. I tried calling Catee
from my dad’s phone, but got nothing. Why wouldn’t she answer? I wanted to make
sure she got my message and that she was staying behind. That she was waiting
for me to meet her in Madison. But, what if she hadn’t? What if her dad got his
hands on her, and he’d dragged her off to Damariscotta with him? I had to put
faith in what I knew in my heart: that she was there, waiting for me. Knowing her
the way I did, I couldn’t begin to believe she’d allow him to do that to her. I
couldn’t imagine she’d leave me behind without her. But what if she didn’t have
a choice? What if he pulled her away the very same way Mom had tried doing with
me?

In
the end, I opted to stay behind. My dad did, too. And it was a sorrowful
occasion as our family separated. Mom wished us the best, and she told us that
she’d be waiting when we came to our senses. That help was there for us. That
we still had time to pledge ourselves to Pastor Dave and to be safe. And then
she placed one of The Gathering’s cards on the table, before she closed the
door on us.

We
didn’t buy into it. Neither did Nicole, who, like so many others, failed to
recognize the magnitude of what lay ahead, and who’d already hunkered on campus
with the rest of her dorm.

“Well,
looks like it’s just me and you now, kid.” My Dad forced out an uneasy chuckle.

“It’s
been just you and me for a while now,” I replied, while we stood and stared at
the door.

“Don’t
get to worrying too much about all this,” he tried to reassure me. “It’ll all
blow over, soon enough. If I know your mother, she’ll be back by the morning.
She loves this family too much to be away from it right now.”

“I’m
starting to wonder, Dad. I don’t think she even remembers who she is anymore; I
don’t think she remembers us at all.” With no response from him, I continued to
fill the awkward silence of the moment. “I tried to warn you. Catee and I tried
to warn everyone, but no one wanted to listen. Now look … look how everything
turned out,” I said. “You know he’s the one behind it, Dad. Right? Mr.
Laverdier started all this.”

“You
really think he had something to do with this, don’t you?” Dad asked, still
skeptical of my finger pointing.

“Well,
don’t you???” I asked, surprised by his ongoing resistance to the obvious.
“Everything I’ve seen. Everything we’ve read. It all points to him, Dad.” I
calmly said. “Why else would he be acting the way he is? Why else would he be
building an army the way he is? This is
his
doing, Dad. He’s playing
like a God or something.”

“I
hear what you’re saying, Damian. Trust me. I hear you. I guess it’s just hard
for me to wrap my head around something I haven’t actually seen for myself. You
know, I asked your mother about what you told me—about those meetings out
at his camp. And I asked her about that injection, too …”

“Well?
What’d she say?”

“Nothing.
She said it was crazy. Told me I was a fool if I believed the wild minds and
lying words of teenagers instead of hers.”

“And???”

“Well,
I guess I believed her at the time, Damian. Your mother
is
my wife. I
had to take her word for it,” he said mournfully.

“And
now???”

“Now?”
He repeated back. “Well, now I’ve got to say … well, I guess, maybe you’re
right. Maybe she isn’t entirely all right in the head anymore. I think maybe
she’s a little sick. A different kind of sick, though. Not like those people on
TV. I think maybe she just needs some time to work things through, and
eventually, she’ll be back to the woman she always was. I can’t help but
believe everything will set itself right again before we know it. I have to
believe that,” he said, more to himself than to me. “I’ve got to believe it.”

My
heart broke for him as he spoke. His words, always more sarcastic than serious,
had become heavy in their candor. It was a time of crisis in more ways than
one. And for him, it was one that was compounded by the betrayal of the person
he’d held closest in life. I wasn’t sure how’d he’d react if she didn’t come
back that night … or the next morning … or the day after that. The thought of
her being gone for good was unfathomable, and it wasn’t one we’d
entertain—at least, not aloud.