Copyright

‘TOAST’

October 2012

Terry McDonald

All rights reserved

‘Toast’

By Terry McDonald

TOAST

A Post-Apocalyptic Tale

(A final warning, this is not a happy place to go)

THE LAST CHRISTMAS

I’ve been inside the bunker most of my life. There’s not much to do inside the bunker. I know the Pinkies, that’s what I call the creatures from outer-space, the Pinkies might still be out in the world, waiting to get us. Or if that didn’t happen, we could get the pink plague.

Today I got bored and said I wanted to open the airlocks and go outside. Roberta asked me to stop talking about it, and got mad at me when I didn't. She called me a retart and threw an empty bottle at me. If it had been a plastic bottle, I wouldn't have dodged, but it was glass. It broke on the unpainted concrete-wall of our bunker and made a lot of noise.

Daddy came running out of his room. He saw the broken glass on the ceramic-tile floor, and that made him mad. He fussed at us about the broken bottle.

I told him Roberta called me a retart. That's one of the no-no words no one is supposed to call me because I'm special. Mama made it against the rules of the bunker to call me names, so he fussed about that too. It ended with what he usually says, "Waste not, want not." He was right to be mad. We can't leave the bunker to get more stuff, what we have now is all we will ever have.

I turned seventeen-years old a month ago. We had a party, but no cake. The only thing sweet we had was a candy bar. Daddy cut it in three pieces and gave one to Patti and Roberta, but he kept one for himself. I asked for a piece and he told me I had to wait. They sang happy birthday to me and gave me all three pieces of the chocolate for a present. I saved a piece to give to Patti later because she sometimes sneaks me treats, but I almost ate it all because it was so good.

My family moved into the bunker in the year 2037. I was six-years-old then. Now it's 2048. I don't remember much about life outside of the bunker. I can remember trees and sky and other stuff, but we watch so many holographic movies on 3D Digital glass, I'm not sure if my memories are real or from what’s been put in my head from the shows.

I cleaned up the broken glass. Roberta wanted me to help her out of her chair onto the floor so she could clean her own mess. She apologized for getting mad at me. Everything about the world outside scares her. She's older than me, I think she's thirty-four now, and can remember when the Pinkies took over the world. She wouldn't even be with us if Mama hadn't made Daddy let her inside the bunker on the day we moved in.

This is what I know from him and Mama and Roberta talking about it. She saw us moving out of our house, carrying the last of our stuff into the bunker.

Daddy says the entrance door is a work of art. It looks exactly like part of the driveway to our house. A piece of the concrete slab lifts up on special hinges and then there is a long concrete hallway that goes underground to the bunker complex he had the builders make before the house was built. Even though I know I had to have come into the bunker through the entrance, I don't remember it.

Anyway, Roberta drove her wheelchair over to our driveway, and Mama told her to come in with us. Daddy was real mad at Mama for what she did back then. I guess I was too young to remember that, because he always seemed to like Roberta just fine, even more since Mama died. I think he likes talking to her because she's older and remembers a lot of the same things he does.

Roberta stayed upset at me the rest of the day because I wouldn't help her to the floor. I used to not mind getting her out of the wheelchair, but she's fatter than when we first came in, and now I need someone to help me move her.

After we ate our eight o'clock meal, me and Patti put a blanket on the floor and we pulled Roberta from the chair and laid her on it so she could roll around and get some exercise. Roberta used to be in the Army, but she lost her legs in a war that didn't have anything to do with the invasion of the space monsters. She lost one of her arms too. Before she got too fat she was able to get out of the chair by herself, and only needed help getting back in.

Patti, my sister, doesn't come out of her room much, except to eat, and go to the recycle room to do her business. Before Mama died, she used to be different. She is fourteen-years-old and was just a baby when we moved into the bunker. She used to be the one who used the spa room the most. She liked to get sweaty riding on the stationary bicycle and then take a shower. She said the water felt colder if she did it that way.

The spa room is small, with a shower and tub. You can lie in water or stand up and let it spray you. There are other handles that can turn on steam to make the whole room real hot. I don't like it in there with the steam, but after I went through puberty, it was a rule that I steam once a week so I don't stink.

In a little room beside the spa is the bicycle that doesn't go anywhere. Sometimes I ride it and pretend I’m riding with the other kids from the E.T. movie. Patti used it more than me though, but she stopped going to the spa room much, and sometimes she refuses to come to the classes that the grownups have for us every day.

The compost toilet has a room all by itself on the other side of the spa room. Today was my day to empty the dried poop from the toilet. We recycle lots of stuff for the garden soil. Because everything we eat turns to compost, we have a lot more of the soil than we used too, but now-a-days most of the seeds won't grow because the soil is messed up and Daddy can't figure out what's wrong with it. The plants come up and grow a little bit and then turn brown and die. Now we eat the small plants before they turn brown, but we don't get seeds back and we’re almost out of seeds.

Roberta said our vitamin pills are too old to work any more, and not having enough fresh food is why our teeth are falling out and we all have sores on our skin, especially in our private areas and our heads. Last week Roberta had to lance a boil on my neck. It hurt and I was mad at her even the next day.

Tonight, at the 8 o'clock meal, Patti begged Daddy to let her drink the magic drink so she could leave. Just like always, he told her it wasn't time yet. He cried. Not loud, boo-hoo, crying, just tears running down his face while he finished eating. After the meal and after we let Roberta exercise, Patti and him went to their rooms, and only me and Roberta stayed in the main room to watch movies until 11 o'clock bedtime.

During sleep-time, I had the dream about Wall Street again. Daddy used to work on Wall Street and make a lot of money. He has stacks of the paper money in his junk box. He calls it his million dollars worth of "ass wipe." I don't know why he calls it that. It's too stiff and slick to use for wiping poop. He has shiny little gold bars in the junk box with the "ass wipe." I used to play with them when I was little. I liked to stack them up, and then make them fall so I could listen to the dull clunking sounds they made as they fell,

Wall Street is a scary dream. The sidewalk has a street on one side and a high wall on the other. I know about streets and sidewalks from the movies. The place in my dream is a dark, ugly city with tall buildings that have lots of glass windows. The buildings on the good side of the street have some windows lit up with light. Behind the wall on Wall Street, there are tall buildings too, but those buildings don't have windows lit up and they are darker than the other buildings.

I'm always scared in the dream. Daddy, and sometimes Patti and Roberta too, are trapped behind the wall. I can hear them crying and begging me to get them out. There is no door through the wall and it's too tall to climb. I panic and start to run on the sidewalk, looking for a way in, but no matter how far I run, I never find one. I run until I can't breathe, and that's when I wake up, with my heart pounding and all sweaty. I hate the dream.

I woke up this morning because of the dream, and because Roberta and Patti are in the living room arguing. I look at the green numbers on my table clock and see it is 6 a.m. Two hours before morning time.

They are arguing because Roberta told Patti I was talking about going outside yesterday. Roberta sounds angry. "I’m afraid he’s going to sneak and open the hatch while we’re sleeping. We can't open the seals. I don't care what you say!"

Patti is angry too. "Why not? Why would it even matter? The food’s almost gone. We're going to die no matter what."

Roberta starts screaming like she does when she doesn't want to hear something. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" She keeps repeating it. I start screaming shut up, shut up, too. I don't like them talking about bad things.

I heard Daddy shouting from his room. "Shut up, Roberta! All of you shut the hell up right now!"

I know he was real mad, because he doesn't like to curse. Roberta knew he was mad too, because she ‘shut the hell up'.

I stayed in bed and heard his bedroom door open and close and then he’s in the living area with them.

"What's got you two at each other this early? Christ, it's barely past six."

Patti tried to say something, but Roberta was louder.

"Patti thinks it's okay to break the seals so Marcus can go exploring. She knows good and well the Transmorphs are likely to still be active."

"It doesn't matter anymore," Patti screamed back at Roberta. "In a few more days all the food will—."

Daddy said, “Both of you shut your mouths... In my room... Now!"

I heard the wheel on Roberta's chair squeaking. It used to work on a motor but the motor broke. Now, if no one pushes her, she has to drive it with one hand back and forth to the wheels. We tried every kind of grease and oil we have, but the squeak always comes back. The door to his room clicked shut, and now I knew they would be whispering.

They have been doing that a lot lately, sometimes all three of them, and sometimes only two of them, going into a room and locking me out. That's okay with me this morning. I woke up with a hard weenie and decided to masturbate before I went to pee. It's okay for me to masturbate. Roberta caught me peeking at her in the wash-up room. We can wash as often as we want to because we have a well. Just like the air we breathe, the water is filtered, then, heated real hot. It gets filtered again and gets zapped with special kind of light to kill germs.

Anyway, Roberta was sitting in her wheelchair with her shirt off, so she could lean over the sink and wash her hair. I was looking at her fat, brown breasts. She saw me peeking through the door and touching myself down there. This was three years ago when I went through the puberty change.

Roberta didn't tell on me, but she had me push her to my room and told me to lock the door. She showed me how to touch myself down there so it would feel good. She told me, anytime I felt like I wanted to peek at her or even Patti, I had to go to my room and masturbate and the feeling would go away. Sometimes it feels better to do it while the pee pressure is there.

After I masturbated and went to pee, I went to the living area to watch Warner Brothers Cartoons. It is a collection on one of the old-fashioned DVDs, so it's not 3D like the ones on digital glass. I like the flat cartoons just as much because they're easier to understand what's happening.

Roberta and Patti are still in Daddy's room. Sometimes I can hear them when they get louder, but they never get loud enough for me to understand what they are saying. I wish they would hurry up and finish talking, because I'm hungry.

We used to keep food in the cupboard and in the refrigerator, but for over a year there hasn't been any food in the refrigerator. The food we have left is in plastic pouches that have to be mixed with hot water. We used to eat three times every day, but for a long time we eat only two times. I'm always hungry, and even Roberta is skinnier, with her skin looking empty.

Daddy keeps the food pouches in his room so he can ‘ration them'. I remember when we had lots of food. Spaghetti, and chili and cereal with milk made from powder. Every Sunday we had meat from the freezer, ham, and beef and chicken.

The meat is all gone and the only thing we have in a freezer is Mama.

She died almost two years ago. She and Patti were playing dominos at the eating table, and the rest of us were watching a movie. I heard Mama laughing, and then she started making vomiting noises, only she wasn't vomiting, she was trying to breath, but she couldn't because she was choking on a big wad of chewing gum. The one thing Mama had a lot of was chewing gum, boxes and boxes of all kinds of different flavors. When we were younger she’d sometimes let me and Patti have a piece, but that stopped when she decided she had to ‘conserve it'.

Daddy tried to get the gum out of her throat with his fingers and then with a big wood spoon Roberta gave him. Mama's face was turning red at first, but then her face got real dark and she stopped breathing and she died.

Daddy was sad after that. He went into his room, and stayed in there for lots of days. Roberta and Patti didn't know what to do with Mama, and neither did I. We tried to get Daddy to come out of his room, but he wouldn't even answer us, we could hear him crying when we put our ear on the door.

After a few days, Mama began swelling like a balloon. Smelly, liquid stuff was leaking out of her. Our bunker is not big. It has three sleep rooms, one for me, one for Roberta and Patti, and one for mama and daddy. We have the living and cooking area, all one room. There is a door from there to the bathroom and spa, and another door that goes to the storage and utility rooms.

Me and Patti dragged Mama into the storage room and were going to put her in big black plastic bags. Roberta told us all the freezers were empty and to just put her in one of those.

We tried to be careful when we put her inside one, but Mama was longer than the inside of the freezer. She was heavy too, and her swollen skin started coming apart when we lifted her. Patti was littler than she is now and she dropped her end in. Roberta screamed like she was hurt, and rolled her wheelchair out of the pantry.

Even after she was in the freezer, we still had to bend her legs up to her head so we could close the lid. Bending her caused more liquid to squirt out and it smelled bad. Patti went into the utility room for a drill and some screws to screw the freezer lid shut. While she was in the utility room, I could hear her puking.

I'm not allowed to go into the utility room by myself anymore. Daddy got mad at me a long time ago when I turned some knobs on his nuclear cell. He knew I did, because lots of things got damaged by having too much electricity. It's a good thing he put lots of the same things in the bunker. He calls it redundancy.

Daddy finally came out of his room, but wasn't happy like he used to be. He and Mama would laugh all the time, but since she died, he doesn't laugh at all.

A few days after he came out of his room, he decided to have a funeral service. Roberta found a blue sheet that had never been used. She and Patti covered the freezer with the sheet and then they made paper flowers and hearts to put on top of it. The ceremony wasn't a good time. Mostly it was just all of them crying.

Since Mama died, nothing has been the same. Nobody seems to care about anything anymore. The bunker is dirtier and feels smaller. Even for most mealtimes, I have to remind them to cook, because they don't seem to even care about the schedule she posted on the wall. It is still the same schedule, except now lunch has a big X on it because that’s the one we don’t eat.

*

I watched cartoons until it was way past time for morning meal. Roberta and Patti were still in Daddy’s room. I went to the door and shouted I was hungry. Nobody answered me. I went back to the shelf to find a movie I hadn’t seen lately. I heard a door open. Patti came out and closed the door behind her.

“Are you hungry Marcus?” she asked me.

“I’m always hungry since we went on rations.”

“I know you are, but guess what? Tomorrow is Christmas and we can have all we want to eat today and tomorrow.”

I knew she was wrong. I went to the calendar Mama put up beside the schedule. “No, it’s not. It’s still October.”

Patti laughed, but it was a not funny laugh, it was a made up laugh like she and the others do sometimes.

“That calendar is wrong. Dad’s watch is right, and tomorrow is Christmas. He’ll show you when he comes out.”

“But what about Christmas presents?” I asked her. “Why didn’t he tell us before, so we’d have time to make some like always?”

“You know he hasn’t been the same since Mother died. He forgot to look at his watch and sometimes I forgot to mark off the days on the calendar, but it really is Christmas tomorrow.”

I started crying. I hate it when the schedule isn’t followed, but not having the right date on the calendar was worse than that. Patti came to me and took my hand to pull me to the eating table.

“Stop crying and sit down. I’ve got something to tell you that will make this the best Christmas ever. I’ll tell you about the surprise while you eat.”

I sat in a chair, but I was still crying. Patti told me if I didn’t stop, she wouldn’t tell me about Christmas. It was hard to stop, but I did. She warmed me a food pouch and talked while I ate.

Some parts of what she talked about, like how the food is almost gone and that we all have the scurvies and deficiencies made me want to say ‘shut up,’ over and over, like Roberta does.

“You know you were always Mother’s special little boy, and you will always be my special little brother?”

“I’m not little. I’m older than you, and I’m bigger than everybody but Roberta. I’m taller, but she’s wider and fatter.”

Patti got that look on her face that I like. When she wants me to cheer up, her face gets soft looking, and her smile seems like it comes from her whole body.

“I’m your big sister, no matter how old you are. Who taught you how to tie your shoes after everybody else gave up? Who reads to you when you can’t sleep and teaches you how to say sentences right? You better tell me I’m your big sister, or else I’ll tickle you ‘till you do.”

Most of the time, I like it when Patti tickles me. She never does it hard or too long. I didn’t want to be tickled now, because even though the calendar is wrong, I’m glad Daddy’s watch has the right date. I’m glad it’s going to be Christmas tomorrow and I want to know about the surprise, so I told her she is my big sister. That made her happy, and it made me happy to say it.

She’s not really my big sister, but she is my smart sister. Everybody is smarter than me, but I’m smarter in some things. I usually win when we play board games, especially Monopoly. I get all the good places and collect rent until there’re all broke. After I win, they play again, but I can’t play again because they say I’m too good and they want a chance to win. Their game takes longer to play because they don’t know how to play as good as me. Not chess though. I keep forgetting how the pieces move, especially the horsey. I finished eating and asked her to tell me about Christmas.

“Let me tell you about today first, because you get one of your Christmas presents today.”

That made me excited, and I stood up. “Where is it? What is it? Come on Patti, get it for me.”

“Sit down, Marcus, it’s not that kind of present, it’s a ‘doing something you want to do’, present. You remember you told Roberta you wanted to go outside. That’s what we talked about in Dad’s room. You and I are going out today. We get to go exploring.”

When she said that, I almost started crying again. I want to see the outside, but I don’t want the Pinkies to get me.

“Maybe I was just kidding Patti. Maybe I was just kidding and I don’t want to.”

“Yes you do. You’re just scared because I said you can.”

“The Pinkies might get me, might get both of us! We might get the pink plague!”

“Don’t shout Marcus. The Pinkies won’t get us, because we’re going to be careful, and we get to wear the hazmat suits, the spacesuits. We won’t get the plague.”

I forgot about being afraid because I got to thinking about the spacesuits. I wanted to wear one real bad. Daddy keeps them in a separate closet in the utility room. He put a lock on the door after he caught me trying to put one on. I was little then, and it was too big, but I remember having the helmet on and looking out through the glass window. Patti and the others call them hazmat suits, but I’ve seen them lots of time in cartoons and movies and they always call them spacesuits. Now I’m really excited about going outside.

“Can we put them on now? Can we go now?”

“No Marcus, you’ll have to be patient until after lunch. Dad and Roberta are doing something first.”

“But we don’t have lunch anymore.”

“We will today... and tomorrow too. See, that’s another Christmas present and it has to do with another present that’s even bett—.”

Patti made a noise in her throat and stopped talking. She started crying. Then she said, “Oh, God!” And she stood up and ran back into Daddy’s room.

I sat at the table and tore open the empty food pouch so I could lick the inside. It was dried chili. You’re supposed to heat water to mix it with, but sometimes I like to eat it from the plastic pouch and drink water so it can mix in my stomach. It tastes better dry.

When I finished licking the pouch I thought about watching more cartoons. Before I could, Patti came back to the table. Her eyes were red, but she was trying to smile. She sat back down in her chair and reached across the table for one of my hands to hold.

“I’m sorry Marcus. I didn’t mean to mess up Christmas. Something I thought of made me cry.”

“Was it about Mama?”

“Yes... No, it was something else, but that’s not important. What’s important is we’re going outside today. I’ll be using the video camera so we can show Roberta and Dad what we see. While we’re out exploring, they’re going to be making a special meal for tonight and getting things ready for a really special Christmas dinner tomorrow.”

This was getting to be the best Christmas ever. “What are they making?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, but they’re going to be using all the rest of our food to make both special meals.”

That sounded good, but then I got to thinking about the food. The food always had us worried, because we were running out.

“What will we eat after Christmas?”

Patti squeezed my hand real hard and started crying again. “It won’t matter after Christmas. After we eat the Christmas dinner, Dad is going to give us the biggest, bestest present of all. He and Roberta are working on it right now in his room. Tomorrow, after dinner, we get to drink the magic medicine and go to the better place.”

I got so excited, that I got up and began walking in circles around the table. I don’t know why Patti started crying again. The magic medicine was our ‘Ultimate Escape’. That’s what Daddy called it. I heard him talking to Roberta and Patti about the medicine one time when they thought I fell asleep watching the screen. The way they talked about it was scary, and they heard me crying, but when they told me about the magic medicine, I wasn’t scared anymore.

When you drink the magic medicine, you go to sleep. After you go to sleep, you can wake up anywhere you want to be, and you can be anything you want to be. I already know where I’m going. I’m going to the ocean and be a fish with Nemo and all his friends. I went in circles around and around the table, and in my mind, I was already a fish. Patti had to stop me and make me sit back down.

“I know you’re excited, but we get to do something fun while we wait. You and I are going to paint a Christmas tree on the wall. We can use all the paint and other craft supplies we need. We’ll have to hurry, because after Dad and Roberta finish crushing the pills and mixing the medicine, we’re all going to make decorations together and glue them to our Christmas tree.”

I almost stood up again to go in circles, but Patti grabbed my hand. “Come on Marcus, let’s get the paint.”

Patti drew the outline for the tree with a green crayon. She drew it big, almost to the ceiling. After that, she used a brush and green paint to make the outline wider and then I got to fill in all the rest. It took a lot of paint. Roberta came out while I was finishing and sat watching me.

Patti brought out colored paper, and aluminum foil, and frozen glue sticks in a plastic bag, from the storage room. After I finished painting, she put a fan to blow on the Christmas tree so the paint would dry fast. Then we all sat at the eating table and made decorations.

Patti showed me how to cut strips of paper while the glue sticks warmed up in the oven. I cut a lot of different colored strips. Then Patti had me bend each strip in a circle, and put a spot of glue to hold them that way. While I was doing that, Patti and Roberta cut stars, and bells, and candy canes out of paper. Daddy cut stars out of foil, and he cut a lot of foil strips he called tinsel, skinner than my paper ones.

    It was the most fun I ever remembered having. Every once in a while, one of them would start crying, but others would tell them to stop. They told me it was because they were happy, but I knew they missed Mama. That made me want to cry too, but they thought of things to say to make me happy again.

After I made a bunch of circles, Patti showed me how to use other strips to make a circle inside two of my circles to make a chain. The grownups finished with their decorations and began to make food for lunch. They brought a lot of plastic food pouches from Daddy’s room. Patti stayed at the table to help me make the chain.

All of a sudden Daddy shouted, “Wait just a minute, we’re doing this wrong.” We all stopped what we were doing and looked at him. For the first time, in a long time, he had a real smile on his face.

“Christmas music,” he said. “We need Christmas carols... Roberta, you’re in charge of the Christmas CDs. Let’s get the Christmas spirit all through this ugly place. This Christmas is in honor of Susan, and by God, we’re going to do it right... Don’t sit there woman, get your squeak on. Put your wheelchair in drive and get some music playing.”

Susan is Mama’s name. This was the first time since she died that somebody said her name and nobody cried. Roberta pushed the wheels with her one hand, back and forth, and her squeaky chair zigzagged to the entertainment wall. She started looking through the CDs and she put one in the player, ‘Deck the Halls’, began playing. That’s one of my favorites.

“Let’s save that one for when we’re decorating the tree,” Daddy said. Pick another song, and turn it louder.” She did, and ‘We Three Kings’ came on. Roberta started singing along with it and so did Patti. I just listened, because I don’t know the words, but I remember it from other years.

Before lunch was made, we decorated the tree. We glued the paper bells and stars to the tree and cut my paper chain to glue in lines across it. I made too much chain and they made too many stars and bells. Patti took all the extras and glued them to the walls all around the living area. Then she hung the skinny foil strips on anything she could. She hung some in my room and glued some of the paper decorations to the walls too. While she did that, Daddy cut out big foil letters and then stood on a chair and glued them in the space above the tree. The letters spelled ‘SUSAN’. He climbed off the chair and we all stood in front of our tree to look at it.

“I’ve seen a lot of trees in my life, Jacob Green, but this is the prettiest of them all. Susan would be proud of this tree.” Roberta saying that made us all start crying. It was happy crying though, but it sure seemed like we were crying a lot today.

Lunch was spaghetti mixed with chili and it had real meat. Roberta cut up a whole pouch of beef jerky and put it in with it. Then she let it sit and steam, because she said the flavors would mix if it simmered for a while. She was right. It sure was good. There was enough for everybody to have two big bowls full.

There was enough chili left over for one more bowl, but everybody except Roberta was full. Daddy told her it wasn’t much, but “Merry Christmas to you.” Roberta got so happy she had to roll her chair around the table and kiss all of us.

It took me and Patti a long time to get the spacesuits on. We only have two. Most of the time was because they had to be sure I would be okay inside one, so they dressed me first. It was fun, but when they put the helmet on, I got excited and forgot to breathe through the mouthpiece. Then I got real scared and tried to get out of the suit, but I couldn’t find the openers for the helmet. Daddy held me still while Patti undid the helmet.

Patti was mad and started screaming at me for forgetting to use the mouthpiece. Roberta made her stop, but I felt bad because she called me stupid. Stupid is another no-no word in the bunker.

Roberta told her to apologize, and she said, “Do I have to apologize if he gets me killed out there?” I told her if she was dead, she couldn’t talk. That made her laugh, and she said she was sorry. She showed me the mouthpiece again. When she put the helmet back on, I didn’t forget to use it. The air from the metal tanks tasted bad, but not too bad.

After that, I had to get out of the suit because it was too uncomfortable to stay in while Patti put her suit on so Daddy could check it for leaks like he did mine. He was worried about ‘dry rot’.

After he decided the suits were okay and she took hers off, we had to go to the eating table so we could talk about our “mission of discovery.” He made it sound like a real adventure. On the way to the table, he went to the vid screen and turned on the ‘outside eyes’.

The outside eyes are six squares on the screen. I remember when five of them worked and we could see what the Pinkies were doing. I remember we sometimes saw funny looking bug-animals too. Most of them walked on spider legs like the big Pinkies, but there were some flying ones that had six long, skinny wings.

To begin with, the Pinkies were smaller, but later on the ones we saw were bigger and they looked like a football shaped spider. They had eight legs like a spider, but the legs came out of the top instead of the sides like a spider and they were darker pink than the body. The body hung below the legs.

When a Pinkie walked or ran, it made the body look like a pink football floating through the air. It only used six of its legs to move. The two in the front were shorter and had funny looking ends, not like a hand with fingers, but like the tentacles on an octopus. Daddy told us the football body was twice as big as a human body and probably weighted hundreds of pounds.

Now only the number ‘4’ square on the vid screen still works and it’s so dirty and blurry, you can hardly see anything. The other ones almost work, but they’re too dirty to make even a blurry picture.

Daddy sat in a chair and talked to us. “Are you okay Patti?”

“I’m fine.”

“How about you Marcus, are you going to be calm and do what Patti tells you to do and not wander away from her? I want your promise.”

“I promise.”

“Good... Patti, the first thing I want you to do is clean the glass covers on the cameras. I drew the locations on the palm of your suit, and I put a small bottle of cleaner and some rags in you suit side pouch.”

Patti laughed. “I think the first thing I’ll do is crack the entrance door and peek through.”

He started to say something, but Patti told him she would clean the camera covers after she made sure nothing was waiting to get us.

“Okay, but no more joking. This is serious. I don’t want you two to leave the yard. I don’t know if the front fence is still up, or even if the house is still above us. The house, or at least part of it, may be because I hid the air intake for our bunker inside a metal-clad closet and we’re still getting air.

“I haven’t seen anything pass in front of camera 4 in over two years, but that doesn’t mean Transmorphs are not still out there. Something would have to be practically touching the lens for me to see it. I want you to be careful. Peek out first like you said, and then go clean the surveillance cameras. After that, if you feel safe, take as much video as you can. The batteries for the camera were in the charger all night, but they’re old and I don’t know how long they’ll hold a charge.”

The talk about the movie camera made me think of something fun. “If I can catch a big Pinkie, Patti can take a movie of me riding it.”

Daddy threw his hands up in the air. “That’s it. I knew this was a stupid thing to do.”

Patti slapped me. She slapped me hard, and then she slapped me again when I started to cry.

“Shut up Marcus. Don’t cry, and don’t say anything else, or I’ll slap the shit out of you, and you won’t get to go out with me.” She said it real mean and she scared me so bad, that I stopped crying.

“I just told you, the trip is off!” Daddy shouted.

“Why?” Patti shouted back at him, “Because we could get killed? What the fuck difference would it make? Die out there, or die in here tomorrow night? Marcus deserves to go out if he wants to, and I’m going with him because I love him and because I want to see the outside before I die.” Then she screamed really loud. “God damn it. I don’t remember the outside. I want to see it.”

Roberta leaned towards the table, and slammed her hand down on it and made us all jump.

“Shut up Patti. Nobody is going to stop you and Marcus from going.”

“I said—!”

“Shut up Jacob. I’m talking... Patti, your father is not thinking well right now. He’s as freaked out as you and me... Jacob, it’s over. Why on earth we stretched it out this long, I don’t know. Remember the survivors we used to talk to on your radio. They all died a long time ago.

“They starved to death. Do you remember the last people we had contact with, the ones in the Artic? There were twenty of them. Remember they were running out of food and only had a couple of months left. Remember how four of them lived almost a year and a half after that. You and I know how they managed to live longer. Those four killed the rest. They turned—.”

“Don’t say it,” he said.

“I won’t, Jacob, but was it worth it? Hiding and surviving in a hole in the ground just because we could. Yeah, I know. We had hope, those first few years. Hope that some of humanity survived and could find a way to kill the morphs and clean their poison spores from the Earth. It didn’t happen. I think everyone’s dead but us. Even if some people are alive somewhere, in a special bunker like this one, they might as well be dead. We’re not living, Jacob. We’re alive, but this ain’t living.”

Daddy reached across the table and took Roberta’s hand in his.

“Patti, Marcus. Roberta is right. My thinking is skewed today. Please forgive me for losing my temper... Patti, we’re all on edge, but please, no more cursing.”

“I’m sorry Dad.”

“It’s okay,” he told her, letting go of Roberta’s hand to turn to her. “Just be careful out there... And you, Marcus, Patti slapped you good didn’t she?”

I was going to say something, but he raised his hand for me to stop.

“If you wander off or don’t do what Patti tells you to do out there, or if you argue with her, just think about how hard she’s going to slap you when you come back in. She’ll slap the dickens out of you, and neither Roberta, nor I, will stop her. Can you remember that Marcus? Can you behave out there?”

“I can, I promise.”

“Well, then, let’s get your suits on.”

He stood up, and we went back to the utility room for the suits. My face still hurt where Patti slapped it, but I didn’t say anything.

We got back into the suits but we didn’t put the helmets on yet. Daddy gave Patti a radio. He told her he wasn’t sure how long the old batteries would work but he was hoping for at least an hour. His radio is plugged into a charger, and won’t go dead, but she won’t turn hers on until we get outside because there is intercom in the three air locks. He said we only have enough air in the tanks for 30 minutes with a few minutes reserve.

Before we could open the first door to the exit, Daddy turned on a switch to kill the ‘biologicals’ with ultraviolet light. After that, he turned the three locking wheels so the metal door would open. Even after he did that, the door still wouldn’t open. He said the seal was contact welded to the frame from not being opened. Roberta brought him a metal spatula from the kitchen, and he used it to loosen the rubber around the door and then it opened.

Me and Patti put on our helmets. After Daddy made sure they were on right, we went into the small room on the other side of the door and he closed it on us. Patti waited until he tapped on the door three times and we heard him shout “okay.” from the box on the wall. Then Patti began turning the wheels on the door at the other end of the little room.

It’s a good thing she brought the spatula with her, because the seal on that door was welded too.

The door opened to another little room with a door we had to open. This time all Patti had to do was turn the wheels and tug the door handle.

Just like before there was another room. The door in there was on the ceiling. It was too high for Patti to reach it but I could. I shouted to Patti to ask her how many more doors there were. She told me this was the last one and not to shout so loud. I thought I had to shout because of the helmet.

The last door didn’t open easy at all. After I turned the wheels, I had to use the spatula. This time, when I jabbed around the edge of the door, it sounded different, like the spatula was hitting something hard. She made me stop and shouted at the wall.

“Dad, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Angel.”

“The seal on the last door is brittle and is breaking up. The pink got to it because the chips are pink and they’re not rubber.”

“Damn... We’re lucky they didn’t get to the others. It doesn’t matter. We have intact seals on the other two doors. Do what you have to do. Is Marcus having any trouble?”

Patti turned my head so she could look at me through my little window.

“He’s fine.”

I jabbed at the seal a lot harder and pieces of it began falling to the floor. When I pushed up on the door, lots of pieces fell down on us. The door went up easy and I could see part of the sky. It was blue like I remembered it. We climbed steps and looked out. Some things, like rocks and dirt and the sky were the colors they should be, but everything else I could see, was pink. I started to run through the door, but Patti grabbed my arm.

“God damn it, Marcus. Don’t move until I tell you to, and you’d better stay beside me, because, if you don’t, I’ll have Dad hold you down when we get back inside, and I’ll beat you with the broom. Do you understand me, Marcus?”

I told her I did. She made me stand behind her while she looked outside. I’m taller than she is and I could see too. All the regular trees were gone, but there were tall pink things that might have been trees, but they looked really different. The ones near us went up in the air so far it was hard to see the tops. They had a center like a tree trunk that was darker pink than most of the pink stuff we could see. Almost at the top, legs like the Pinkies have went way out from the trunk and back down to the ground. The trunk went up past the legs and at the top were even darker, big round pink leaves.

Patti turned the radio on.

“Dad, can you still hear me?”

“I hear you. Is the last door open?”

“Yes it is. We’re at the entrance, looking outside. Outside is bigger than I thought it would be... look. I’m almost afraid to go out. I feel funny, like I might float off, or something.”

“I know it’s a shock, seeing that much space, but don’t worry, you won’t float off. If you’re too afraid to go out, just take some video and come back in.”

When I heard him say that, I started saying No, no, no, and tried to get past Patti. She shoved me hard and I hit the wall.

“Stop it, Marcus. We’re going outside in a minute. I’m just trying to get used to it.”

“We have to go outside. We got all the doors open.”

“We will. Just stand there for now.”

Daddy talked on the radio again.

“What do you see out there?”

“Lots of pink stuff out there. There are some tall towers with spider-like supports. Off to the right of the door I can see some structures that might be buildings. They aren’t too far from the door. We could walk to them in only a couple minutes.”

“Any green? Do you see anything green?”

“No green anywhere.”

“Okay. Do you see anything moving?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Clean the camera covers like you said and then look around.”

“Okay. Be careful. I know the house is probably gone, because it was mostly wood. The pink attacked anything organic. Look for a black iron-pipe sticking up from a metal box. That’s our air intake. I’d like to see it.”

“Okay. Wish us luck, Dad.”

Patti put the radio back in her pouch and turned my head so she could look in the window again.

“We’re going out. I’m scared shitless. I’m not going to move around very fast. After we go out, stay beside me and listen to everything I say. If you see anything moving, let me know.”

I told her I would and followed her into the open. As soon as we were out, I could see the buildings. Some were small and some were really big, but they all looked the same, like footballs cut in half, long-ways. The eight legs coming out of the tops of them made the buildings look like Pinkies.

Patti only took a few steps past the door and then stopped. She turned and fell against me and tried to grab me, but she almost fell down so I grabbed her instead.

“Hold me Marcus. I can’t open my eyes again. The outside is too big. I feel dizzy and I think I’m going to puke. I can’t walk. Get me back inside the lock.”

I picked her up, and carried her back inside the airlock. She was breathing hard, but she didn’t puke like she said she might. After a minute, she started talking to the wall.

“Dad?”

“I’m here.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t stand being out of the airlock. I got dizzy and the world started spinning. We’re coming back in.”

“Hold up a minute, Patti, is Marcus having difficulty too?”

“No, he seems fine.”

“Like you said, nothing matters anymore. Show him how to use the video camera and show him where the surveillance cameras are located. He wants to explore, so we’ll let him... Let me talk to Marcus... Marcus, I’m going to trust you to behave and not get too excited. Patti is going to show you where the cameras are. They’re mounted on metal poles. Three of them are low enough for you to reach. She’ll give you the cleaning materials. Clean the glass covers. That’s the first thing I want you to do. Will you do that?”

I pushed the button. “After that, can I go to the Pinkie city?”

“If you hurry and clean the lens, and we don’t see anything moving, you can. Marcus, listen, you and Patti only have twenty minutes of air left. When I say come back in, you have to promise you’ll come back exactly when I say, otherwise you’ll die.”

“I promise. Can I go now?”

Patti said, “Wait a minute. Dad, I’m going to let him take the radio with him and the camera. You’ll have to tell him what to do, but if any morphs see him, I won’t be able to help him.”

“I understand.”

“Okay. I’m giving him the rags and cleaner too.”

Patti had me look at the drawing on her hand to see where the cameras are that I have to clean. She turned on the camera and showed me which button to push, and how to look at the square that showed what I was recording. I took the radio too and went back outside.

I think I remembered the concrete door from when I was little. It is in our front yard. It is not in our front yard anymore, because to have a front yard there has to be a house. The driveway is still here, but where the house used to be there is nothing but wires and pipes scattered on a big square of concrete. One big iron pipe is poking up out of the concrete. I saw more skinny metal pipes standing here and there around the concrete square. The skinny pipes had the cameras on top. I walked to the closest one and sprayed it with cleaner. The camera was as high as my head. After I wiped it with a rag it was still dirty, so I sprayed it again and scratched the dirt with my glove before I wiped it. This time it was mostly clean. I felt the radio vibrate in my pocket and took it out. Then I pushed the button to tell Daddy I cleaned a camera.

“I know you did. Roberta and I can see outside. Look below where the camera sits on the pole. There’s a metal knob there. See if you can turn it backwards from the way a clock turns. Turn it all the way around two times.

I tried to picture the way a clock turns and tried to turn the knob. It didn’t turn, so I tried the other way and it did.

“I turned it Daddy.”

“See if the camera will turn. If it does, try to point the camera at the buildings you and Patti saw.”

I turned the camera.

“That’s good Marcus, but we can only see the tops. There’s another knob lower down on the pole at a joint. See if you can loosen it.

I tried, but I had to tell him the knob wouldn’t turn either way.

“That’s okay. I’m amazed the other knob did. I want you to stand behind the camera and try to push the top of the pipe towards the buildings. You may have to push hard, but I know your can do it. Push the pipe, not the camera.”

I pushed like he said and it was easy to bend the pipe.

“Too far, Marcus. All we see is the ground. Pull the pipe back up a little.”

It took three times, but I did it right. I cleaned the other two cameras that weren’t too high. I could only turn one upper knob and none of the lower ones. Daddy had me point the loosened one at the tall pink trees and bend the pipe back so he could see the tops.

When I finished that, he had me use the video camera Patti gave me. He told me again how to use the buttons and had me take pictures of the air pipe. He got all excited about me telling him ‘pink vines’ were going into the top of the pipe. He had me follow the vines away from the pipe for a little ways. The vines were going to the pink buildings. I kicked one of the vines and it broke like glass. I was pointing the camera at it when I did and told Daddy. He told me not to do it again. I said okay and that I wanted to go the buildings now.

“Go ahead Marcus. Walk slowly and keep the video camera on. Roberta and I are watching the camp through the surveillance camera and see no movement. If you see anything moving, I want you to run to Patti and get back inside. Don’t break this rule Marcus. The Transmorphs are killers.”

The buildings were further away than they looked and they were bigger. Half way there, I began walking on pink stuff growing from the ground. Until then it was just dirt. The pink stuff was as high as the tops of my boots and every time I took a step, it broke under my boots and made the same glass breaking noise as the vine. Daddy had me point the camera close to it.

Before I got to the buildings, I found a dead Pinkie. It was on its belly and two of its legs were bent like it wanted to get up, but the other ones were stretched straight out away from the body. One of the two short front legs was broken off.

The dead Pinkie was way bigger than me. If there was a hole in it, I think all four of us could fit inside. Daddy told me to walk all the way around it using the camera. I did, but I was close to the buildings now and I wanted to go look. I could see lots of things now besides buildings, even more dead Pinkies. Before I could leave, he asked me kick the Pinkie body. It didn’t break, so I picked up the broken off short leg and hit the body with it. The body didn’t break, but the leg sure did. It broke into a bunch of small pieces and stung my hand.

I walked to the buildings with the camera hanging from its strap around my neck and told what I was seeing. Sometimes he’d have me stop to get closer pictures. There were lots of dead Pinkies outside the buildings, and there were cars too. Not cars, like we had before they came, but Pinkie cars like footballs flat on the bottom and the cars had legs. I knew they were cars, because they had glass in the front and in one of them I could see a Pinkie inside it with its legs all folded up.

I used the camera to record it all. One of the open buildings had a hole in it, a big half circle. It was too dark inside to see and I was afraid to go in. Roberta came on the radio and told me how to change the camera to infrared and had me just stick it through the door and move it slowly up and down and sideways. After I did that, I changed the camera back to regular and walked around taking video of stuff.

I was getting bored because nothing was alive. Daddy told me I only had a few minutes of air left. He told me to turn off the camera and to go back to the bunker where Patti was. On the way back, between two buildings, I saw a small dead Pinkie. It was low enough for me to climb on. It was slippery, but I held one of its legs and pulled myself up. I sat on top and pretended I was riding. It wasn’t as much fun as it would be to ride a live one, but it was fun pretending.

I stayed too long, because Daddy came on the radio and asked where I was. He told me to get down off the Morph and go to the bunker because me and Patti were almost out of air. He scared me good about suffocating. I ran for a little while but my legs got too tired so I walked fast the rest of the way back.

Patti was mad and fussed at me the whole time until we got back inside the bunker. I did run out of air in the last airlock, but because we had to get decontaminated with ultraviolet light I was okay. We took off the suits and all our clothes till we were naked. Patti told me if I looked at her, she would cut off my weenie.

We put on dark glasses and Daddy decontaminated our bodies. He made us do almost like exercises. We had to bend and twist so the light could shine everywhere on us. Each time we got in a new position the lights would flash. I could feel the heat, but not too much because it was so fast.

When we got back inside the bunker, Roberta took the camera and told us to go take a shower and to scrub each other with a brush. That was sort of fun, except Patti wouldn’t let me scrub some parts of her and made me brush her with my eyes closed. When she did me, she scrubbed my weenie too hard. She was still mad at me for making us almost run out of air.

We went to the living area. Roberta was at the computer desk and I could see she was doing something with the video from the camera. Roberta is real good at doing computer stuff. Even with only one hand, she could type faster than any of us

Daddy got up from the chair where he was sitting close to her and went into his room. When he came out, he was shaking a glass jar that rattled.

“Guess what I’ve got in the jar?” he said.

Patti jumped to her feet and ran over to him. “It’s popcorn. It’s popcorn.” She was excited and now I was too. It was years since we had popcorn.

“Damn you, Jacob. I knew you were hiding food from us.”

“I sure was... Think about it Roberta. If I didn’t, there wouldn’t be any today and the best part is, we can have all we want.”

Roberta turned back to the computer. “It’s so old and dry, it probably won’t pop anyway.”

“Oh, it’ll pop all right. I moistened it last night... Roberta, wouldn’t it be nice if we had some butter.”

Roberta spun her chair back around. “You telling me we have butter for it?”

“As soon as I rehydrate it, we will. Actually, it’s margarine.”

“Buttered popcorn,” Roberta said in a dreamy voice, “and this is the last day I have to worry about calories.”

“Lately, you haven’t had many calories to worry about. Today is different. Today and tomorrow I have more and more surprises to spring on you three.” He was smiling and happier than I could remember him ever... Except when Mama was alive and they would turn on music, and sing and dance. That was a happy time for me too.

“Now Jacob? Can we have it now?”

“Roberta, I wouldn’t have shown it if we weren’t going to have it now. You keep working on the stills from the video and I going to give you the first batch all by yourself.”

Roberta got a different look on her face. “Why, Jacob?”

He went over to her and reached for her only hand. “After Susan died you saved me. You took over the children and gave me time to heal. I never did thank you, but the first batch out of the popper is yours. I love you for so many things.” Then he kissed her. He lifted Roberta’s face up and kissed her almost like he did Mama, except not on the mouth.

Roberta was crying when he let her go. “Thank you, Jacob,’ she said to him as he went back to the cooking area, “I want the popcorn, but your thanks and kiss means more to me.”

Patti got up and went over to kiss Roberta too. “I love you Roberta. I’m glad you get the first popcorn.” Roberta hugged her with her arm and then looked at me.

“Do you love me too, Marcus?

“I love you, but sometimes you get mad when I touch you.”

“That was back when it was your hormones touching me the wrong way. Come over here and give me a kiss.”

I did, and she hugged me too.

In the kitchen the popcorn began popping and coming out of the chute into a big plastic container. Roberta began making funny sounds. Daddy shook salt and poured a stream of the warm margarine into the container. He brought it to Roberta and held it so she could smell it and then put it on the computer table beside the keyboard.

“We have more popcorn than we can eat in two days.” He touched her cheek and went back to the cooking area to make more. Roberta saw our eyes on the bowl.

“Look how fat the corn popped. You two come get some of this. I think you father can pop it faster than we can eat it.”

Roberta was right. Before we could empty the bowl, he had another one waiting. We ate three bowls full and that was enough for me and for Roberta and Patti too.

“Aren’t you going to eat some popcorn?” Patti, asked Daddy.

“Nope, I’m keeping room for supper tonight.”

“What are you cooking? Roberta asked.

“Not me, us. I want a southern style meal tonight, so you’ll have to direct me. Let’s see. I have two cans of chicken breast chunks, a whole box of dehydrated potatoes, a can of turnip greens and a can of pinto beans. Oh yeah, and white gravy mix. Think you can handle those ingredients?”

“Oh God yes! A chicken casserole covered with gravy.”

“See,” he said. “I’d have never thought of that. As soon as you finish with the video Marcus took, and we look at what’s out there, we can make a supper fit for royalty.”

“Another hour and I’ll be ready.” Roberta turned back to the computer and started humming a Christmas carol. That made Daddy remember the Christmas music and he told Patti to get it going. I just sat where I was and watched Roberta at the computer and Patti putting a CD into the machine.

I was thinking about a lot of things. Too many things. I felt like crying and singing and laughing and jumping up and down. Patti came back and sat beside me. She can always tell when there is too much happening in my mind.

“It’s a whole lot of happiness today, Marcus. You sit still ‘til you feel like moving. It’s okay to just sit and not think and be happy.” That’s what I did, and she did too. She held my hand for a long time. After a while, when she could tell I was calmer, she put on some slow dance music and pulled me up. Daddy had taught us how to dance and it was nice moving to the music.

When Roberta finished her work at the computer, he joined me and Patti on the couch. Roberta put the keyboard in her lap and moved as close to us as the cable let her. She turned on the vid screen instead of the smaller monitor.

“What I’ve done is break the video into sections and before each section I made a composite of stills. The stills will let us focus on what we’re seeing and allow me to enhance or zoom in on anything interesting.

The first picture was of the pipe and the vines going into it.

“Freeze that,” Daddy said. “Can you zoom in for a close up of the top of the pipe?”

The picture moved and the top of the pipe got bigger.

“Son of a bitch! What the hell are the vines doing in the pipe? ... Zoom back... Look on the ground. There aren’t any vines going anywhere else. They’re inside our vent on purpose.”

“Why?” Roberta asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m taking a look at the air system... Later, let’s see the rest of what Marcus took.”

The moving video of the pipe came on for a few seconds and it stopped to show another still picture. This was just a picture of the buildings before I got to them.

“There’s nothing green out there Jacob. Nothing but shades of pink where there’s anything at all.” Roberta sounded like she wanted to cry.

Patti told them, “Before I got to feeling sick and went back inside the airlock, I looked all around and there’s nothing green anywhere. If it’s not pink, it’s just bare dirt or concrete.”

Daddy started talking. “The source of the pink plague came streaking in at night, a meteor, a shooting star. It exploded high in the sky. Minutes later, the particles began to fall. It was like a rain of pebbles that fell on the east coast of England and part of France. The little particles were about as big as a bean.

“Even though there were millions of the particles, they were spread over such a wide area, that it didn’t seem like much. I remember how the government tried to downplay the event to begin with.

“The particles were hard little translucent pellets, like the pearls on Susan’s necklace she wore sometimes, except the particles were pink instead of white.”

“I remember that necklace,” Patti said. “She always wore it for special days, like birthdays when we’d dress up.”

Roberta said, “I remember a video on YouTube of a little boy in England. He was sitting by a rail track with a hammer and showing how easy it was to break the particles. I wish to God we could have cracked them all. There was even a man in France that collected a bunch and made them into jewelry to sell on the internet.”

“I remember that,” Daddy said. “I remember they also arrested him and confiscated his stock, but he’d already sent a lot out. Anyway, about a month after the particles lay on the ground, they all fell apart and turned into a powder. The powder was very fine. The wind picked some of it up and spread it all over the place.

“The powder the wind didn’t pick up, the part that stayed on the ground, started to grow. It was like a pink colored moss to begin with. That lasted about a week and then the moss started growing taller and began spreading, and wherever it spread, it ate anything organic.”

Patti said, “I read in one of your old newspapers that tourists from all over the world had carried some back to their countries and pellets started growing there too.”

“That’s right Patti,” he said. “They weren’t supposed to take any with them, but the particles were so small they were easy to conceal. It was because of those pink pellets sitting in people homes that the scientists and government found out the pink powder did not need just live things to grow. They could thrive off of anything organic, wood, cloth, even some plastics, especially electrical insulation.

“Worst of all, because of being in people’s homes, when the pellets turned into a powder, it was blown around through the heating and cooling vents, the world found out that the pink powder could live on animals, including people and their pets.”

“That’s when the panic really started,” Roberta said. “The pink would start growing that moss stuff wherever it touched the skin.

“The doctors tried shaving it off and burning it with lasers and even cutting the skin off, but they found out that it got into the blood stream too fast and started growing on the inside too. You died within a week after getting a pink spot. It was so bad that the government made the media stop showing how people died from it. They suffered horribly. Jacob, I’m so glad you stocked this place before the craziness.”

“Yeah, I barely beat the FEMA and National Guard clamp down on buying bulk. If I had waited another week, it would have been impossible. Even the personal energy system was bought just in time... well maybe not just in time. The price doubled to a million-five after the pink fell to earth, but two weeks after I bought, the price tripled and the week after that, there were none to be had.”

“Do you ever feel bad about killing Scott Adams?” Roberta asked.

Daddy looked at me and said, “Son, is any of this bothering you? Would you rather go to your room and play one of your games?”

“Nope, I don’t want to go to my room. Can we have more popcorn?”

He laughed at what I said, and he stood up and walked behind me to squeeze my shoulder. “Patti, what do you think? Is it okay to have popcorn while we watch a presentation about the monsters that ate the Earth?”

“I’m with Marcus,” Roberta said. “More popcorn.”

“Me too,” Patti said, raising her hand like we were voting.

“Popcorn it is.” he went to the cooking area, but kept talking.

“Scott was as financially able as I was. I even offered to let him run an electrical line to his bunker, if he decided to build one. I made the same offer to all our neighbors. Our power generator is oversized for our needs. The thing about the cell is, whether it’s used a lot or a little, the expected useful life is only ten years. We’re on borrowed time already.

“Scott thought I was overreacting. That was before the dying started. All of our neighbors, our friends, were laughing behind our backs, sometimes in our faces. On moving day, the day I decided we needed to take shelter in the bunker, Scott came over with his family and demanded we let them in with us. There was no way I was going to let six more people in. There was barely enough room for us.”

“I wasn’t here yet, but I heard the shooting.” Roberta said.

“Scott and his family left. I was bringing in the last of our personal items when they came back with a lot more of our neighbors. They waited on the street while Scott came up to me at the airlock door. He demanded I let them all in. When I refused, he pulled a pistol. Susan was inside the airlock with our shotgun. She shot Scott. The load of birdshot shredded his chest and knocked him flat on his back. Susan came out and fired another load at the rest of our neighbors by the street. They were too far away for the birdshot to do much damage, but a few of them were hit and they all went running... All Susan said was “Fuckers” and that was the last word ever said between us about Scott.”

“I say “fuckers,” too. Those so called ‘neighbors’ didn’t stop at my door on the way over. I reckon a black, crippled war vet wasn’t on their priority list. I heard the shots and came to see what was going on. When Susan saw me, she ran out and pushed me into the bunker. Your sorry ass was fussing at her the whole time.”

“I apologized to you that same day.”

“I know you did, but it hurt me all the same.”

“Well, I’ll tell you now, Roberta, you’ve been an asset to us. Hell, you were an asset before we came in here... before the plague; Marcus spent more time at your place than he did ours. Besides being our babysitter so Susan could have some free time, you were like his second mother. Susan wouldn’t trust anyone else with him. You actually loved him.”

The corn was popping now and Roberta had to talk louder.

“Marcus will always be my special boy.”

It made me feel good when Roberta said that. Daddy brought the popcorn over with some smaller bowls and we all filled one up. I filled Roberta’s for her until it was piled so high some of it fell off when I put it on the computer table.

Roberta started the video again and it showed me getting closer to the buildings. It froze again on a picture. Roberta zoomed in so the buildings filled the screen.

“Look at the size of the dead Transmorphs,” Roberta said.

“Look at the size of everything,” Daddy said. “We can come back to this. Can you run the vid back in slow motion, I want to see something.”

Roberta ran it back until he shouted, “Stop.”

“There, on the horizon to the left of the buildings, that pink smudge. Can you zoom on it?”

Roberta moved the fingers of her hand on the keyboard and the smudge grew bigger. “The resolution’s not great.”

“It’s good enough. What we’re seeing is the tops of buildings, very tall buildings. That’s a fucking Transmorph city.”

Roberta pointed her finger at him. “Yes it is, Jacob, but that’s enough with the foul language. We’ve all been cursing too much. We need to not let our last days be defiled with vileness.”

Roberta used the keys to move the screen to another smudge closer than the city and made it clearer.

Daddy said, “Christ! That’s some kind of freaking aircraft! A God da—. It’s a stinking airplane!” He stood up and went to the screen to see it better. “I don’t know how that weird thing flew, but it definitely crashed. I can see dead Morphs scattered in the wreckage. Take us back to the pictures of the buildings close by.”

The picture of the building came back on the screen.

“Run the video in until you get to a closer view of a dead Morph.”

The next still picture was of the dead Pinkie I hit with the leg. My hand was itching where it stung me when it broke.

“Something happened to them. I think this Morph was diseased. Look at the gray spots on the body.”

“Maybe they ate all the green and starved to death,” Patti said.

He shook his head. “No. Even before we came in here, the Transmorphs hadn’t developed anywhere near to what we’re looking at, but they were already cultivating their own food. Their chemistry is different, but they use the same minerals and elements we do. I think they consumed our organics, simply because it was a faster source of processed compounds.”

“They’re made out of glass,” I told them. “I hit the Pinkie with its’ broken off leg and the leg broke just like glass does when you drop it.”

“What we’re looking at is the exoskeleton, the empty shell of a Morph. The Transmorphs used a lot of silica in its life forms, even what we thought of as their plants. When the first mobile forms appeared, they were like small insects, soft on the inside with hard exoskeletons.

“That was as far as they had developed before we moved in here. We were able to still receive cable after we locked the place down. The governments around the world were fighting the spread of the beasts and the plague, using poisons, fire, throwing everything but nukes at it. Then the intelligent morphs started appearing. Not as big as the one we’re looking at on the screen, but they had energy weapons we never dreamed existed. The worst of them was a long-range beam that caused whatever they hit to explosively disassociate into its atoms, a disintegration ray. They destroyed our armies and aircraft.”

“The cable stopped pretty soon after that,” Roberta said, “and it wasn’t long after that the radios stopped transmitting, even short wave. Your father thinks the Morphs used transmissions to target the senders.” She pushed at the keyboard and we were at the buildings looking at another still picture.

Daddy pointed at the screen. “Do you see how all their structures have support legs coming out of them? I think that wherever the Transmorphs came from, their planet must have had either very high winds or else a lot of earthquakes. The articulated joints of the supports may have been for dampening out shaking.”

“The buildings look like they just grew where they are.” Patti said.

“They did,” he told her. “Everything about the Transmorphs is organic. Even their weapons were a combination of organics, with inorganic materials incorporated. The structures were complicated and the scientists couldn’t figure out how their technology worked, much less reproduce their weapons.”

Roberta pointed at the screen. “Look at the buildings and the other dead Morphs. They have gray dead areas too.”

He leaned to look closer. “You’re right. The buildings are dead too.”

Roberta said, “Marcus. Go to your Dad’s room and get his reading glasses so we don’t have to try and see through him.”

I did what she said and I got them in a hurry so I wouldn’t miss anything. Roberta changed the picture on the screen. Now we were looking inside the building with the open door. The colors were all wrong but we could see stuff and dead Pinkies inside the big room.

“God damn! Look at this place. That wall over there. I swear those flat areas are image screens. Look at the panel below them. I bet those bumps on the surface are controls.”

Roberta said, “Jacob, I know all this is disturbing, but you just used the biggest no-no of them all. If you keep it up with your foul language, I’m leaving the room. In this final time, you know better than to use the Lord’s name like that.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Forgive me Lord... I’m sorry Roberta, but I’m having trouble believing all this, the technology, the intelligence. All that information was packed into those little pink pellets.

“They were a lot bigger than a human sperm and an egg, but look what they produce.”

“You’re right Roberta. Do you know what I think? I think the Earth killed the Morphs. A virus, a germ, maybe an organic compound got to them.” 

Patti raised her hand and shook it to get attention. “Since all the Transmorphs are dead and their buildings too. Do you think it’s safe to go outside? I mean, could we live out there now and grow the seeds you still have in the freezer?”

Daddy got excited too. “Maybe. We’d have to test it. One of us would have to go outside and see if they got the pink plague.”

“Not me,” Patti said.

“I’ll go,” Roberta said. “I would love to see the outside, just to breathe the air again.”

Patti waved her hand again. “Dad, when we came in, I saw a hole in Marcus’s glove while I was helping him out of the Hazmat suit. If some pink got in, how long would it be before you could tell if he was infected?”

Daddy got real loud. “His suit was breached! You should have told me the minute you came back in.”

“It was just a little rip and I forgot.”

While they were talking, I was looking at my hand. My right one, the one I use for everything, the one that stung when the Pinkie leg broke, had a little pink spot in the palm. The pink spot had skinny, thin lines spreading out from it. I held my hand up so they could see it. “I got the pink plague.”

Daddy took my hand so he could look at it closer.

“The bigger entities may have suffered a catastrophe, but the causative element is still active. Marcus is infected.”

“Okay Jacob. If you want to curse, I’ll cover my ears.”

“No, Roberta. I’m over being mad. At least we have our answer and we’ll be gone before Marcus starts to suffer.”

Roberta said. “You know what, Jacob, we do have our answer, and we will be gone before the pink can get to us bad. Let’s open all the locks and set some fans to blow the stink out of here and let’s get clean. Let’s get cleaner than we’ve been in years. We can dress up and act like real people. For just these last two days, let’s reclaim our world.”

We had fun. I’m glad I got the pink plague. We opened all the airlocks and set two fans blowing our old air out. Then Daddy and Patti took Roberta to the washroom, and put her in the tub. They scrubbed her for a long time.

Best of all, when my turn came, Patti washed my hair for me.  I tried to wash hers, she made me stop because she said I was making it hurt.

Daddy and Roberta made the best supper I can ever remember eating. It was so good that all we did after Roberta said the blessing was make noises while we ate. After supper, we sang Christmas carols. Roberta had found some Christmas lights and had me and Patti glue them to our painted tree. With the big lights turned off, and the tree lights turned on, the tree looked like a real one. After that, we went to our rooms to sleep.

When morning came, my hand was itchy. The pink spot was all over my palm and part of my fingers. The pink was like fuzz now and I could scrape the fuzz off, but my hand still itched. I went to find Daddy to tell him so he could make it stop. He was sitting on the couch looking at the picture of the vines going into the air pipe. The airlock doors were still open and it was cooler than I could ever remember it being inside the bunker.

After he looked at my hand, he took me into the supply room. He went through some boxes and found a tube of stuff. He made a hole in the top and smeared white cream all over the pink. It stung for a minute and then the itching stopped. He put a bandage on my hand so the cream would stay there. He didn’t talk much, so I asked him was he mad at me for getting the pink plague. He told me he was thinking about something else.

We had oatmeal and scrambled powdered eggs for breakfast. Roberta made special milk out of the powder by mixing some of the margarine in it. Roberta noticed Daddy wasn’t talking much.

“Cat got your tongue, Jacob?”

“Those vines going into the vent pipe got to nagging me and I couldn’t sleep. Since we have the doors open and don’t need the air filtration system anymore, I tore into it to see where the vines went.”

“What did you discover? Cooked vines on top of the air burners?” Roberta asked.

“No. The vines went through the pipe before they got to the burners. They went through the metal and right into the concrete surrounding it. I couldn’t tell where they went after that, but it got me thinking. If they could go through metal and concrete, and if they showed so much interest in our pipe that they ran vines all the way from a building to it, there had to be a reason. They didn’t kill us, so what was their interest?

“I started looking at the walls in our living area. I didn’t find any sign of vines breaching the walls, but I did find small, discolored areas that at a casual look were simply blemishes in the concrete. With a magnifying glass though, you can see small flecks of clear silica. I used a chisel and dug into the concrete. It was so soft that I didn’t need a hammer. I didn’t have to go deep to find pink behind the two spots I dug out. There are dozens of the spots scattered throughout our bunker.”

“The Morphs were spying on us?”

“You’ve got it. I thought I was so clever, that all my precautions worked to protect us and now I know. The Monsters let us live simply to observe us. We were human rats in a cage. That’s all I accomplished. We suffered all these years in this rat cage, and for what, a few more years of stunted existence.”

He began crying. He put his head down on the table on his arms and was heaving up and down and making noises like the time Mama was choking. Roberta rolled her chair over to him and I went to get the wood spoon. Roberta had her arm around Daddy’s shoulders and waved her hand at the spoon to let me know she didn’t want it. It took a long time for him to stop crying. Me and Patti finished eating and then just sat there until he finally lifted his head up.

“Patti, Marcus. Are you glad you got to live all these years in the bunker? Are you happy?”

“If you’re asking me if I’m glad I got to live, yes I am. This bunker is all I know.”

“Thank you Patti. How about you, Marcus?”

“I like the bunker too.”

“You’re so silly Jacob,” Roberta said. “It may have been a stunted existence, and it may have been small, but we had life in here. We lived in here, had happy times here. Through you, the Lord blessed us with a few years more than the rest of humanity. Somehow we managed not to devolve, and we treated each other with civility. This was a place of love. Instead of lamenting the fact, let’s bow our heads and thank him.”

He said a prayer and Roberta said, “Amen.”

After he finished his breakfast, Roberta told him she wanted to go to the Pinkie outpost. He squirted some oil on her squeaky wheel and I went with him to the bunker entrance to help him get Roberta and the chair up the steps. Even though we had the airlock open and the fans going, the air outside still smelled better than the air in the bunker. It felt good to be out without the spacesuit on. I wanted to go with them, but they told me to stay with Patti.

She put my favorite movie, ‘Finding Nemo’ into the vid machine for me and I watched that. She stayed at the table writing in her journal. I asked her what she was writing. She told me she was writing about us and she was going to leave it on her bed for just in case other people were still alive and found it, they would know who we were.

They were out for a long time and the movie was almost finished by the time they got back. They sat at the table with Patti, and I listened to them talk while I finished watching the movie.

They said that the Pinkie’s technology was as good as anything humans had. They went to the big tower things too. Daddy thinks the towers are launchers for loads of the pink pellet things. He thinks the Pinkies just shoot them into space and hope they land somewhere so they can spread.

The movie finished and I went to sit with them. My hand was itching again and Daddy put more cream on it and a bigger bandage because it was all over my fingers and going up wrist. This time the cream didn’t work as good, but it did make it not itch as much. While he was fixing me, Roberta put on Christmas music. This time we didn’t sing. It felt good to sit at the table and listen to it.

When the music stopped playing, Patti told us she wanted to say something.

“Dad, I don’t want to wait until tonight to drink the poi—.”

“Be careful Patti,” Daddy said, looking at me. “Magic medicine is what it is.”

“I don’t want to wait, either.” I told him. I was still thinking about Nemo and going to the ocean.

Roberta said, “There’s really no reason to delay it Jacob.”

He started to say something, but he put his head on his arms on the table and started crying again.

Roberta yelled at him to stop. “Don’t get me to cursing you, Jacob. You need to be the strength here. I say go fetch the rest of the food you’ve been saving for today and let’s make our Christmas dinner and then get it over with. I can’t stand spending the rest of today thinking about it.”

He just kept on crying. Patti was sitting beside him and she pushed him so hard he almost fell out of the table. Then she yelled at him.

“Stop crying! I’ll fucking curse you. We’re all scared. We don’t want to die either.”

I stood up and started turning in circles and making noises with my mouth so I wouldn’t hear them anymore. Patti pushed at me until we were in my room and she closed the door. It took her a long time to make me calm down. She told me to think about going to be with Nemo, because that was where I could go after we ate Christmas dinner.

She left me in my room and I could hear them in the living area. Mostly they were too quiet for me to know what they were saying. Sometimes they got loud, but I just thought about playing and swimming in the ocean. I fell asleep and Christmas music woke me up. Patti came into my room and told me everything was all right and that everybody was happy again.

When I went out my door, I could smell the food cooking. I went to the cooking area where the grownups were.

“Are you all better now? Patti told us you took a nap.”

I told Roberta that I was better and that I went to sleep so I could be with Nemo instead of with them. Fussing makes me feel bad and confused. She told me they were finished arguing forever and she started talking about all the food Daddy had brought from his room.

“He should have brought it out earlier so I could have gotten started sooner. We’re having baked ham, macaroni with creamy cheese sauce. He had two cans of strawberries and a can of cherries. I’ve got pies baking in the oven along with the ham. The empty cans are on the table if you want to try scraping them with a spoon.”

Roberta knows I like to do that. I went to the table. Besides the strawberry and cherry cans, there were some funny shaped cans with a key still attached to the lids. I used a spoon to scrape the ham juices out of them. Then I scraped the bean cans. I saved the berry cans for last. There were still some cherries left in the bottom of all three cans. It was so sweet, it made my two bad teeth hurt.

The Christmas music was still playing and nobody was talking at all. Patti sat at the table watching me scrape the cans, and Daddy and Roberta were working on dinner.

“Was it good?” Patti asked me when I finished and put the spoon down.

I told her it was. Then she stood up and took my hand. I thought she was going to take me to my room again, but she went through the airlock door. I followed her all the way to the entrance.

“I’m going to try standing outside again. I want you to go with me and stay right beside me holding my hand. If I look like I’m panic... Getting too scared, I want you to bring me back in.”

I told her I would and that there wasn’t anything to be scared of. All the Pinkies were dead.

“I know that, Marcus. I was just afraid of how big it looks outside. I made me feel like I would fall up into the sky.”

“That’s silly, Patti. Even outside, you can only fall down.”

“I know that in my head, but my body doesn’t. I want you to go out very slowly and hold my hand. I’m going to keep my eyes closed. Once we get out the entrance, I want you to stop and just stand still so I can get used to it. Don’t let go of my hand for nothing. I don’t want to die... I mean go to my special place, and not know what it feels like to be somewhere besides inside the bunker.”

I went out of the bunker real slow, especially on the steps. Patti held my hand tight. She must have known when we got outside, because her hand got tighter. After we walked a few more steps, she told me to stop and be ready to take her back inside if she told me to.

I watched her careful and she opened her eyes for a few seconds and then closed them. She started shaking a little bit. I asked her if she wanted to go back.

“No. That wasn’t too bad. I’m going to try again.” She opened her eyes again. “Wow,” she said, after she closed her eyes again. “I can’t believe people really lived out here.”

She opened and closed her eyes again some more and then she opened them and kept them open, but she leaned on me and held my hand even tighter.

“If my heart would slow down, I would be all right, I think. Let’s turn real slow so I can see all around.”

We only turned about halfway, because she stopped and closed her eyes again.

“That made me dizzy. I can’t get my eyes to focus right. Turn me so we face the buildings you went to.”

After I turned her, she opened her eyes again. “It’s better when I’m not moving. We stood like that for a while. Her hand wasn’t so tight anymore.

“I wish I could see the world when it was green, like in the movies. Somehow, the pink doesn’t look right, with the blue sky over it... I thought I should at least go outside before... Anyway, it wasn’t worth it. Not the way the world is now.”

“I think it’s pretty out here. The air is better too.”

“But everything that means anything to humans is gone. There are no birds or butterflies or squirrels.” She squeezed my hand. “I want you to know, I love you Marcus. Let’s go inside and see if the ham is cooked yet. I can smell it all the way out here.”

“That’s because the fans are blowing it. I want both kinds of pie too, even if the sugar does make my teeth hurt.”

“Mine hurt too. I guess it’s a good thing we go tonight. We won’t have to have Dad pull them when they get worse.”

Her saying that almost made me go in circles. He pulled two of my teeth already. Both times, him and Patti tied me up after he gave me a pill to make me sleepy. The pill did make me go to sleep, but I woke up and he was pulling and it hurt so bad, and I was mad. They didn’t untie me until I promised not to hit them.

The food was ready. There was so much food on the table we barely had room for our plates. Roberta told Patti to put on enough Christmas music to last for a couple hours and to turn it low so we could still talk while we ate.

She put ham and macaroni with cheese on my plate and kept them separated because I don’t like my food to touch. She put other food for me in little bowls, beans, mashed potatoes and some greens. She let me put my own salt and pepper on everything and nobody yelled at me when I put a lot.

After everybody had their food, Daddy took a bottle from the refrigerator and filled a small glass for each of us.

“Ladies and gentleman, I present you Dom Perignon. Not the best wine, but good enough. Let us drink a toast to our Christmas dinner. Roberta, would you do us the honor.”

Roberta looked surprised. “Are you sure? I think you....”

“I merely supplied the ingredients. You’re the one who produced this feast.”

“God, I wish I could stand up and do this right... Okay, everyone lift your glass.” I did and was about to drink it. “No Marcus, wait until after the toast.” She saw me looking at the table for my toast. “This is a different kind of toast. Not the kind you eat. I say some words and then we drink... Here goes.

“We are survivors and quite possibly the last of our kind. We waited out the destroyers of our world. They’re all dead. Our world is still poisoned, but we won because we’re still here, longer than the Monsters. Jacob, you made this possible. I propose a toast to the finest, kindest man I have ever known. I propose a toast to the man who conquered the enemy by outlasting it. Jacob, this is for you. We love you.”

She drank her drink and we did too. It was good. I liked the way it tickled my tongue. Daddy went around the table and filled our glasses again. Like the big meal we had yesterday, nobody talked much except to say “ummm.” I ate all the food Roberta gave me and then she didn’t make me wait for them to finish their food before I could have pie. The pie only made my teeth hurt a little bit. I drank my wine and asked for more. I liked the way it felt bubbly on my tongue.

“Only enough left for one more round son. After we finish dinner, we’ll have another toast.”

I stopped myself from looking at the table, but Roberta saw me almost look and laughed.

“Words with two meanings always did give you a hard time Marcus.”

  Patti said, “Words that don’t sound the way they are spelled do too. I still remember how mad he got about the word, ‘know’. He was so sure it had to be kanow.”

“I remember that,” Daddy said.

“It’s a good thing we never had need to use words like physique or fatigue,” Roberta said. “He would have gone in circles forever.”

Patti saw me getting mad. “We’re not laughing at you Marcus. We’re laughing because we love you and it is a fun memory. Like the time Roberta was angry at you for something and you stuck a broom handle through her wheels so she couldn’t chase you.”

That was funny and I smiled too.

“We do have some good memories,” Daddy said.

“More than a few,” Roberta said. “I don’t kanow about the rest of you, but I’m stuffed... God, it feels good to say that. I’ve been so hungry these last few months, I found myself wishing for a plague of rats. I must have thought of a hundred different ways to cook them.”

Everybody laughed. Patti said, “That is nasty, Roberta, but I kanow what you mean about being hungry.”

I wanted to say something too, because I was starting to get sleepy. “Can we drink our Magic Medicine kanow?”

They all stopped laughing and looked at me. Nobody said anything. Daddy stood up and turned his back. He made a noise like he was choking, but when he turned around he was smiling.

“You really are going to be with Nemo. You know that, don’t you Marcus.”

“I already told him I’m coming. He’s waiting for me inside a big seashell.”

“I’m going to be with your mother. I’ve already told her I’m coming too. I told her I want to bring Roberta with me.”

“I told you Jacob, I’m going to be with my mother and father.”

“I told her that, Roberta. She said she would find them and have them waiting with her. I would ask you if you would like to hold my hand on the way.”

Roberta started crying. “Yes, Jacob, we can go together.”

I saw Patti was crying too. “Where are you going Patti? You never told us yet.”

“I don’t know. In the movies they seem to always be going to heaven, but I don’t know what that is.”

“You can go with me to the ocean. You can be a fish and play with me and Nemo and if the ocean feels too big, you can go in a seashell until it doesn’t feel so big. Go with me Patti.”

“You’re coming with us to see your mother,” Daddy said. “She’s waiting for you too.”

“I... I...”

“You’re coming with us,” he said.

“Give the child time to think, Jacob, and no matter what she says, leave it alone,” Roberta said.

“She’s my daughter and—.”

“Leave it alone Jacob.”

“I’m going with Marcus,” Patti said. “I’m not letting him go into the ocean with just a little fish to watch out for him. I’m going to be a barracuda. If it’s true we go where we want to when we leave, then I’m holding his hand until we get there.”

“She’s made her decision Jacob, and I think it’s the right one. Now let’s have our after dinner toast. I swear I think you may have slipped a mickey into that champagne. I’m getting downright drowsy.”

“I may have shaken in a few valiums,”

“Well give me another hit. I like it.”

This time, after he filled our glasses, Patti told us I had to make a toast. That got me excited. Not go around in circles excited though. Just the excited, that makes my heart beat faster. I had to think in a hurry because I wanted to drink my wine.

“Start out by saying ‘I propose a toast,” Patti told me.

“I propose a toast to the bunker and to Christmas and to Patti coming with me to the ocean.” Then I got to be the first to drink my little glass of wine.

“That was a wonderful toast, Roberta said, “and Jacob, I think you put more than a few valiums in the wine. We need to do what we need to do before we fall asleep.”

“I think we had better. I’m ready.”

“Are we all going to stay at the table after we drink it?” Patti asked.

“What do you think we should do angel?” His voice sounded funny, like he was having trouble making sounds.

“Me and Marcus want to be alone together... My tongue feels funny.”

“Mine too,” Roberta said. “Jacob, let’s go outside and lie on a blanket and own our world again. I don’t want to die in this chair.”

“We better hurry then. I figure we’ll have about a half hour after we take the potion. Marcus will have to help me get you outside.”

He stood up and went to the refrigerator and took out a small brown bottle and poured it into the little bit of wine that was left. He came back to the table and poured it into our glasses. Now the bottle was empty. Roberta had Patti to go get her blue blanket from their bedroom.

“Marcus. After we drink the magic medicine, we need to hurry to get Roberta up the steps. Can you do it?”

I told him I could. Patti said she was coming to help because she wasn’t waiting by herself for me to come back.

We drank our magic medicine without a toast. Then we tried to hurry, but we had a hard time walking because our legs felt funny but we got Roberta outside. Even Patti came out and helped lay Roberta on the spread out blanket. Daddy had us all kiss each other and we had such a hard time doing it, we got to laughing.

When me and Patti went back in, I fell off the last step and landed of the concrete floor. Patti fell on top of me. It didn’t feel like we got hurt, but my pink plague hand was bleeding through the bandage and I couldn’t move my fingers. After we got up, I told Patti and she said I probably broke it. I thought that was funny and started laughing. Me and Patti laughed even more because we were trying to walk straight but the walls kept getting in the way. When we finally got to the couch in the living area, I could barely hold my head up.

Patti said, “I feel funny, Marcus.”

“I do too. You kanow what? We should watch Nemo so we can see where to go.”

Patti crawled to the vid machine and after the movie started, she made it go fast to the part where Nemo was. I got on the floor and crawled to be beside her. We were so close to the screen it felt almost like we were in the water already.

Patti took my hand in hers.

“It’s beautiful in the ocean, isn’t it Marcus?”

“Yes it is.”

“I’m afraid to go... I feel sick.”

“You don’t have to be brave and be a barracuda. Be a little fish and hide in the big ocean with me and Nemo. Nemo got smarter and won’t run off again.”

Patti was holding my hand hard now. “Don’t let me get lost Marcus.” Her voice was starting to sound far away. I held onto her hand even after she fell over. My eyes were burning and the inside of my head was making bright lights flash. I felt myself throw up, but it didn’t matter because I could see Nemo. Nemo was looking at me. Patti was making little noises. I wanted to tell her we were on our way to the ocean, but air wasn’t going in and out of my lungs. Bright blue light exploded real big in my head, but it didn’t hurt. I could see blue like a hole in front of me. Nemo was inside the light and I had to hurry because... the... light... faded... away.

Terry McDonald.

I hope you enjoyed this story and that you take time to leave a review.

More of my longer work you will enjoy reading. All titles are available at Amazon.

'Worn Out Boots'

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JVC6FSO

'WORN OUT BOOTS' a duet of stories of an apocalyptic event and the chaos that ensues in the aftermath.

I labored to present a story that would be entertaining as well as enlightening. Apocalypse and post apocalyptic fiction most often deals with the ramifications of a scenario entailing the total breakdown of authority. Such a situation would not be soft or pretty and would in fact be frightening and in many ways, deadly.

'WORN OUT BOOTS' uses as a vehicle, the life of Jeremy, a teenager, a college student, a boy hardly prepared to be thrown on his own resources. You the reader will follow him and witness his transformation from a boy who was almost a sheep, to a man who is a force to be reckoned with, and then you will capture a snapshot of his later years as he enters old age.

I do hope you enjoy my newest offering to the genre.

'THE TRASHMAN'

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F4BJB00

A stand alone novel of catastrophe. Professionally edited October 7, 2013

Twelve Weeks rated in the Top 100 Post, Apocalyptic Genre

'THE TRASHMAN' is a hard hitting story of a family forced to flee Atlanta to seek refuge from a fast spreading, very lethal strain of MERS-CoV.

A common family, unprepared for disaster, the Olmsted's learn that surviving anarchy requires a rapid change of mindset.

THE TRASHMAN is a fast moving tale of survival, heartbreak and triumph.

Fast-paced action blended within the story.

Extreme Violence, Language, Adult Situations

DISASTER

Fifteen Weeks on Amazon's Top 50 Best Selling Genre Fiction > Science Fiction >Post-ApocalypticProfessional Edit June 21, 2013

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BF2Z5QG

Action filled apocalyptic prepping tale that illustrates 'Too much, too little, too late."

Violence, language, adult situations.

Some people think only the best prepared can survive a disaster. That strong good people shouldn't die. If that is what you are looking for in this book it might behoove you to take a pass. My protagonist, basically a good person, is a bit shallow and is not a perfect human being. He is your average Joe who takes a kicking, but survives to fight on.. This being said, I stand by him.

'Disaster' is a novel about an average, middle class family that belatedly realizes society is on the verge of collapse. They take a number steps to prepare for the coming disaster, but make mistakes with horrific consequences. Along with others, they discover there is more to prepping than buying supplies.The Henderson family is racing toward a deadly confrontation with reality.

A high-speed train wreck with few survivors

'HARD ROAD' A Post Apocalyptic Adventure.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANVD22O

Fifteen Weeks on Amazon's Top 50 Best Selling Genre Fiction > Science Fiction >Post-Apocalyptic.

Travel the Hard Road and experience the Action and Adventure within the pages.

Language, adult situations, violence.

A Post Apocalyptic Tale wrapped around a Believable Story. In the year, 2017 a plague decimates the global human population with a survival rate of only one in six hundred. One nation after another is infected and accusations of bio-terrorism lead to nuclear war. The Western Hemisphere is spared from any nukes but eventually the plague arrives in the USA leaving only a half million alive. A three-year nuclear winter kills even more. Social structure is nonexistent and anarchy is prevalent.

It is in this world that Jake Markett must travel to a refuge in South Georgia, a bastion of hope and safety for the few survivors who make it there.

    'ANNIE HIGGINS'

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BMGEHJQ

ANNIE HIGGINS IS a stand alone novel of catastrophe. Fast paced aftermath adventure.

Adult situations, violence, language. Professionally edited.

TWO BONUS SHORT STORIES ADDED

It is the year 2028. The survivors of the plague and the limited nuclear exchange of 2017 are few and scattered. This is the story of a group of these survivors who embark on a cross-country journey from Spokane, Washington to a civilized refuge in the state of Georgia. Their caravan is attacked, the men and boys are killed and the women and horses are taken.

The task of rescuing the women falls on the shoulders of thirteen-year-old Annie Higgins. Annie is determined to reclaim her mother from the highwaymen no matter what the odds.

Annie is an amazing young girl. Her careful planning, her words of wisdom and her acts of heroism will have you cheering for her.

Annie will warm your heart. Annie will break your heart.

GRAN DE DADDY prelude to apocalypse

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BYGFRDY

Exciting Novel from Best Selling Author of 'DISASTER'

Language, Violence, Adult Situations

A fast moving Adventure

GRAN De Daddy ( Phil Cohen ) is a prepper, preparing his bug-out in Missouri for the coming collapse of civilization. His preparations are interrupted by the kidnapping of his grandson, Michael. Sometimes it take a psychopath to catch a psychopath.