The Fourth Trumpet (2 page)

Once on the main road, Andrea looked up and down, searching for a sign of life—a car, a truck, a bicycle—anything that moved and had a living, breathing human being in or on it. She saw no movement anywhere. Not even a vulture.

Hunching her shoulders, she headed in the direction of their nearest neighbors. Sidestepping big puddles that lay, mirror-like on the dark gray macadam road, she trotted at a fast clip, eyes cast down. To keep a tight grip on her waning sanity, Andrea counted her steps. Out loud. Berry would’ve made fun, but she didn’t care. She needed to fill her mind with something inane.

By the time she reached the top of the neighbor’s driveway, she’d lost count—panting too hard, winded. It didn’t matter. Doing it had been insane in the first place. She shuffled up to the single story blue house, paused a heartbeat, then took the porch steps two at a time, tripped, caught herself. She rounded both fists and pounded on the front door. Still early, but somebody would be up. Bill Martin had his job at the bank, and Donna Martin had her third grade classroom at the local elementary school. But both cars were in the carport, so they hadn’t left for work yet.

No one came to the door. They weren’t home.

Andrea sat on the top step and buried her face in her hands. She wanted to cry, but no tears came. For several minutes, she sat there, eyes closed, arms wrapped around her as though her last vestiges of sanity might escape. Had she already lost it?

A piteous whine dragged her out of her despair. She sat up and looked around. The Martins’ German shepherd, Thor, sat at the foot of the stairs, gazing up at her with a forlorn expression. She stood and motioned for him to come closer. Instead of his usual ecstatic greeting, the dog lowered the front portion of his body, lifted his rear, and pawed at the ground, whining. Something agitated him. What?

“What is it, boy? What’s the matter? Do you know where everybody is? Do you know what’s happened?”

Thor lifted his nose and barked. His ruff stood up, and he leaped back and forth as though demonstrating a new circus dance or warding off attacks from an unseen adversary. Andrea left the porch and joined the big dog on the front lawn. Barking in short, staccato yelps, Thor circled around her, pushed against her legs, then shied away when she reached out to grab his collar.

“Thor! Come here, boy! You know who I am. I’m not going to hurt you, you big oaf. Come here!”

The German shepherd continued to run about the yard, barking and growling as though desperate to tell her something. When he bolted toward the rear of the house, Andrea followed. The dog led her to the back door, which stood wide open.

“Oh, gosh. No, no, no. This isn’t happening. It
isn’t
. Come on, Thor, go with me.”

Hesitating only a second, she stepped across the threshold and looked around the empty kitchen. Like at home, there were no signs of anyone starting breakfast or having been in there at all. Just cold shadows. “Donna? Bill? Anybody home? Hello? It’s me, Andrea!”

Andrea heard Thor’s heavy panting as he sat on stiff haunches, waiting to see what her calling would bring. Nothing. Shoving her fear as far down in her mind as she could, Andrea moved through the kitchen, into a hallway, and over to the master bedroom. She’d been through the Martins’ house many times before and knew they used the downstairs bedroom and not the two upstairs.

She gave a tentative knock on the closed door then, sucking in a shaky breath, opened it. Unlike her family’s beds, the Martins’ bed was rumpled and looked slept in. She called again. “Donna? Hello? It’s Andrea! I-I need help.”

She hadn’t expected a response and got none. Turning to the dog that had padded in beside her, she ran a trembling hand through her hair. “Where is everybody, Thor? What’s happened? This is impossible. I—”

Acute nausea roiled up. She dashed to the bathroom at the end of the hall and lost breakfast and possibly the previous night’s dinner as well. Weak and shaky, she lowered herself to the edge of the tub and sat, almost slipping in twice. Thor sat in the doorway, tongue hanging, and watched her with quizzical brown eyes.

“Oh, Thor, what am I going to do? This is too much for me to take in. I’m scared. Gosh, I’m so scared.”

Sensing her need for comfort, the big dog trotted over and licked the hands covering her face. He pushed his wet nose against her, until she cupped his handsome head. Fondling his big ears, she buried her face in the soft, outdoorsy-smelling fur on the top of his head.

“Good dog. Good dog. I’m so happy I’ve got you,” she said as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “You have to help, Thor. I’m not very self-reliant. I-I’m not sure I can do this by myself.”

Thor continued to lick her hands.

Satisfied that her stomach had settled, Andrea stood up and peered out the bathroom window. She could see the carport and the Martins’ two cars and Mrs. Martin’s vegetable garden—brown stalks and stubble—but nothing else. With a sigh, she turned, retraced her steps through the house, and out the still-open back door. She closed it, then circled the house one more time. Nothing.

She decided to go back home.

Tearing down the Martins’ driveway, Andrea’s energy evaporated by the time she reached the main road. She had to stop, bend, hands resting on knees, and gasp and choke for breath. She wasn’t normally so out of shape. Taking in great hiccupping breaths of air, she glanced across Kellermann’s pasture, toward the east. Her heart did a somersault.

The sky! The gray-white sky in the east—a sky that should be stained a bright pink with a rising sun—was slowly filling with what looked like black liquid. She didn’t know any other way to describe it. It was as if a giant oil spill was leaking into the sky, staining the white clouds greasy black.
Oh, God, what is it?

This time she didn’t count steps. She cantered most of the way home with a painful stitch in her right side and a heaving chest. Thor kept pace beside her, and that helped. Apparently his loyalty didn’t extend to absentee owners. The dog needed her as much as she needed him.

Laboring to breathe and snatching quick glances over her shoulder, she urged, “Hurry, Thor. We’ve got to hurry.”

Halfway across the front yard, Andrea skidded to a stop, then veered left and stumbled toward the garage. The car. What an idiot. She’d get in the car and drive somewhere—anywhere—just as long as it was in the opposite direction of that awful darkness. Swallowing a growing lump in her throat, she yanked open the garage door. She expected to find the cars gone and was actually surprised to see both her aunt’s and her uncle’s cars cold and silent. Behind the garage sat Berry’s dilapidated Chevy truck, which he worked on feverishly every waking moment. Andrea didn’t have her own car. A used Neon was in the works for a graduation present, but she didn’t have it yet.

Aunt Claire kept a spare key attached to her visor. Andrea opened the Explorer’s unlocked door. Finding the key, she shoved it into the ignition and turned.

Nothing.

She turned the key again, this time pressing a little on the gas pedal.

Still nothing.

Not a clicking sound or a sputter. The battery was dead.

For several seconds, she sat there, hands clutching the steering wheel, and staring straight ahead at the row of old license plates hanging on the back wall of the garage. She couldn’t think, felt as devoid of energy as the car. Only a whining and scratching outside the car penetrated her frozen mind. Thor. Upset about something. The darkness. It must be getting closer, and the old dog was apprehensive. Maybe he could sense something far more sinister than she could even dream of.

“Okay, boy. I hear you, I hear you,” she mumbled as she clambered out of the front seat, shutting the door with an audible bang. At the sound, Thor barked and his ruff stood up. “It’s okay, boy. I’m not going to leave you. We’re going inside where we’ll be safe. The car won’t start, and I have a very bad feeling that none of the others will either. Come on. Let’s go inside where it’s warmer. Wind’s picking up.”

A nervous glance at the eastern horizon sent a river of cold down her back. Through the grove of trees that her great-grandparents had planted in the early 1900’s as a windbreak, she could see the oil spill growing. The whole sky in the east was now soiled a dark, oily black. It seemed to swell as she watched, mushrooming, spreading, like a white cloth absorbing grape juice…or ink. She reached down and pulled on the dog’s collar. “Come on. I think we’re in for a really big storm. Damn. Probably a tornado.”

Thor obediently trotted along beside her—so close, in fact, that he tripped her. She pushed him away with one knee and he backed off. On the front porch, she stepped aside to let him into the house first then closed the door. After a moment of hesitation, she shoved the bolt into place. “There. Not that there’s anyone around to break in, or that it’s any great protection, but…well, it makes me feel better.”

Thor seemed to understand and gave her one staccato bark of approval. With only a glance at the grandfather clock, Andrea hurried into the kitchen with the dog right on her heels. Happy for someone to think about other than herself, she got out a large mixing bowl and filled it with water. She set it in a corner but Thor ignored it.

“Okay, boy, so you get your water from the creek. That’s fine. I’ll just leave this here in case you want it later.”

Her stomach rumbled. Rummaging through the cupboards, she found a can of chili and grappled again with the old can opener. This time she avoided nearly cutting off her finger. She emptied the contents into the same saucepan she’d used for the soup, lit the gas burner with a match, then stood over it, spoon poised. Every minute or so she gave it a good stir then watched as the thick stuff struggled to reach a boil. With one eye on the gathering storm outside and the other on the pan, she leaned against the stove to wait.

“Don’t want to burn it,” she told Thor, who was keeping an eye on her from the rug in front of the sink. “Mmm, smells good, huh? I’m pretty empty since I lost everything earlier, and I’m so cold this’ll feel good going down. Hope it’s spicy enough to make me sweat. Hope I don’t get sick again. Hope I can eat it before the storm comes crashing down. I bet there’s hail.” She knew her sentences were rambling, but she needed to hear a voice—even if only her own.

When the stuff began to bubble, she turned off the flame, got down a bowl, and dished out spoonfuls of steaming chili. Then she put the pan in the sink and turned on the faucet to fill it with water so it could soak. The faucet made a funny popping sound, sputtered, coughed, then released three explosive spurts of water.

“What?” Andrea exclaimed in annoyance. Then she remembered. They were on a well. The pump was run by electricity. No electricity, no pump. No pump, no water. “Oh, no. If I don’t have any water, I can’t make it. How will I get water?”

The same place Thor got his few laps whenever he wanted it, she thought. She’d have to do it the old-fashioned way. She’d have to go down to the creek and bring water back in a bucket. Then she’d have to boil it really, really well so she didn’t get a parasite or something. This was getting worse and worse. She wasn’t a Girl Scout—far from it. “Oh, Berry!” she wailed. “Where are you when I need you? You’d know what to do.”

With a lump the size of Texas in her chest, Andrea sat down at the kitchen table and ate her chili. She washed it down with a can of orange soda. She didn’t care that it was cold. Her mind was cold. Her heart was cold. Her whole body was cold. She was probably suffering from hypothermia and didn’t even know it. She could topple over in a dead faint and be none the wiser.

Did it even matter?

She must’ve gone into a trance or maybe even fallen asleep right there in the chair because all of a sudden Thor nudged her thigh with his big nose. It did the trick. She sat up, blinked, then looked down at the dog and sighed. “Thank you, you big old teddy bear. I better move around before I really go under. Here, you can eat the rest. I hope chili agrees with you.”

She set the bowl on the floor and the big dog lapped up the remains in two hungry slurps of his long tongue. “I guess I’d better look around for stuff that you can eat. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get something.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “Let’s make a roaring fire in the fireplace, okay?”

Uncle Mike always kept the large wood box filled with split logs. On the other side of the fireplace sat a huge iron kettle overflowing with kindling and pine cones to help start a fire. Andrea had never laid a fire before in her life. She’d watched her uncle and cousin do it, though wasn’t sure she remembered how.

She knew there had to be air or a draft or something so the flames could “breathe” but that was about the extent of her knowledge. She lifted the lid on the wood chest and took out three one-foot logs. She laid them inside the fireplace and stuck some dry pine cones in the cracks. Next, she wadded some newspaper and shoved that in, too. She struck a match and brought the tiny orange and yellow flame to the edge of the paper. It caught. She leaned forward and blew on the little flames licking at the paper and neighboring pine cones. In a couple minutes, she had a fire.

“I did it. I did it,” she breathed.

Thor circled the thick braided rug that Aunt Claire kept in front of the fireplace three times, then lay down. Andrea sat beside him, petting his coarse fur while watching the bright flames dance and quiver. The fire created a warm envelope around her and before long the leaping, dancing flames made her eyes heavy. She rolled over, reached up to drag the afghan down from the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she curled up beside the dog and closed her eyes.

Somewhere in the peripheral of her consciousness she knew she should be heading to the basement and finding a corner in which to hide from the storm. She’d never experienced a tornado but had certainly heard about them. Her aunt and uncle had countless narrow-escape-stories about funnel clouds and terrible winds. But she didn’t get up, didn’t move from her cozy spot in front of the fire. Thor wasn’t moving either so maybe it was all right.

She didn’t care. She had already slipped into another kind of darkness.