Reaper’s Sabbath… what a stupid name. Three guesses as to who was emo enough to come up with that one. I kept saying it didn’t make sense. First of all, I thought the Sabbath was Sunday. But they told me that, traditionally, the Sabbath was the seventh day. So Saturday. Okay then – I get that.
But Reaper’s Sabbath? That’s retarded. The Sabbath is a day of rest, right? Well, sure, everyone did “rest” on that day, if you’re going to use “rest” as a P.C. term for DIE. But the Grim Reaper? He sure didn’t rest. He had himself a heyday! At least for the morning. Maybe he rested in the afternoon, after everyone was dead. Like a siesta. Maybe we should have called it Reaper’s Siesta instead. Haha…
I’m not really laughing. I just can’t force myself to really write about what happened on that day. Everyone I know dying? Nope, not going there.
You know, if I survive long enough to grow up, I’m gonna be one majorly screwed up adult. Probably even more screwy than the one who coined the name Reaper’s Sabbath.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
3:00 p.m.
Gabby stood on her knees in the center of the couch, one hand clutching the back of it for support, the other pulling the filmy drapes aside so she could see out the bay window. She had been in that position, watching the street outside her house, for close to half an hour now. In that time, she’d seen birds and bugs fly by, even a small, green anole crawling down the palm tree in the front yard, but no other movement. No people. No cars. No sign of her mother’s white Escape.
Across the street, the neighbors’ house was quiet and closed up, curtains drawn, blinds shut. Odd, considering the electricity had been out for hours now in Tampa. Gabby had opened the blinds in the kitchen to allow the natural light from the sun to stream in. The bay window offered plenty of afternoon sunlight to brighten the living room. She would have guessed her neighbors had gone out, to the movies or the mall, or, if those were also without power, maybe the beach. But both of their cars were there, parked side by side in the driveway. Yet she’d seen no sign of life from the house all day.
It wasn’t just weird anymore. It was downright scary.
She hadn’t been too concerned when she’d re-awoken mid-morning and found her alarm clock dark and numberless. On the coast of Florida, the power was often knocked out due to storms or the heat. Granted, it was sunny and seventy-something, but maybe a transformer had blown, or a line had fallen, or… something.
Her ideas of what that “something” could be had grown steadily more sinister as the day had progressed, dimly and quietly.
At first, she had wondered why no one had bothered to call and wish her a happy birthday. Sure, her friends were supposed to be coming over for her party that night, but she’d still been hoping for at least a text from Makayla. Or Colton… Wishful thinking, maybe. He probably didn’t even know it was her birthday. A kiss didn’t mean they were suddenly boyfriend and girlfriend.
But phone service was out, too. She’d discovered that tidbit when she had tried to call her mother around noon. Her phone still had power left, though it wouldn’t for long with her charger dead, but she hadn’t been able to get a signal or a connection. The land lines were down, as well. What had happened to take out the power and the phones on a clear, sunny day like this one?
She thought about the news report she’d seen yesterday, about the strange planes, about the threat of terrorism. She thought of the apparent emergency that had called her mother into work on her birthday. Had something happened? What was going on?
Gabby was afraid to leave her house, but staying cooped up there, watching out the window for her mother to come home and worrying when she didn’t, was going to make her crazy. Already, her heart was racing with barely-controlled panic, and she felt clammy, almost shaky, the way she felt before she had to give a speech in English class, only worse. The more she thought about it, the worse it got. Her mind was getting carried away, and the rest of her couldn’t stand it. She had to give herself something to do, something to keep her mind from thinking anymore.
Maybe she could ride her bike to the gas station at the edge of her neighborhood. She could ask the attendant there what was going on, and there was a pay phone she could try calling the hospital on, if it worked. And if it didn’t, well, at least she might kill enough time for her mom to be home by the time she got back.
Her mind made up, she scrambled off the couch and ran to her bedroom. She put on shoes and stuffed the pockets of her shorts – in one went her house key and wallet, which contained about ten bucks of babysitting money; in the other, her cell phone, just in case she picked up a signal away from home. Then she locked up the house and went out into the garage to get her bike. The ten-speed, painted a glossy, electric blue with hot pink accents, had been the highlight of her tenth birthday. She wondered if there would be any big gifts for her this year. She hadn’t asked for anything special.
She walked her bike out the back door and rode it over the grass to get to the sidewalk out front. Usually, she had to dodge joggers and little kids in strollers when she rode on the sidewalk, but today, the pavement was empty. The faint clicking of her bike chains as she pedaled seemed unusually noticeable, and Gabby realized it was because the rest of the world seemed unusually quiet. Bird chirped, insects buzzed, and trees rustled in the breeze, but there were no other human sounds. No lawnmowers roaring across the yards. No skateboards rumbling over the pavement. No children laughing as they played.
Gabby slowed to a stop and stuck out her toes to ground herself. She looked around, struck with the ominous realization that there was no one in sight. No one outside on this beautiful, spring afternoon. Absolutely no one, anywhere.
A part of her wanted to turn around and go back to hiding out in her house. She was frightened. But she convinced herself to keep going. She had to find out what was going on. Knowing couldn’t be worse than not knowing, could it?
She began to pedal again, hard this time. She rose up off the seat and pedaled standing up to gain some momentum. Her bike whizzed down the sidewalk, bounced over a curb, and crossed the street without stopping for Gabby to look both ways. What was the point? The only cars on the streets were parked and unoccupied. No one was out driving, either.
She reached the gas station without encountering a single moving vehicle, let alone a moving person. There was only one car parked at the station, in a faraway parking space that told her it was probably the attendant. Well, at least someone was inside. She pulled her bicycle up to the door and leaned it against the building, not bothering to release the kickstand or lock it up. There was no one around to steal it, and besides, she hadn’t thought to bring her bike lock.
A bell jingled overhead as Gabby pulled open the glass door and stepped inside. The station was dim, with only the natural sunlight streaming through the front wall of windows to brighten it. The large, fluorescent lights hanging overhead were dark. The air was warm and stale without the air conditioning blasting. It seemed the power outage had affected the entire neighborhood, at the very least.
Gabby looked around. There seemed to be no one in the station. Nobody browsing the snack aisles, or raiding the large drink coolers in the back. Even the counter was unmanned, with no attendant standing behind it. But there was a car parked outside. Surely, someone had to be here. Someone had to have opened up the station that morning, hadn’t they? They would have locked up if they were leaving, wouldn’t they?
Desperate for reassurance, desperate for human contact, desperate for answers, Gabby tiptoed to the counter. The small screens on all three cash registers were dark. Holding her breath, she pressed her body against the edge of the counter and rose up on her toes to peer over it. At the sight of a pair of legs lying on the floor, she gasped and jerked back, stumbling a few feet away from the counter.
She released her breath slowly, shuddering, and stood still for a moment, frozen, as she contemplated what to do. She didn’t want to look again, afraid at what she might find, at what she might see, but she knew she wouldn’t just walk away without looking. Without checking. What if the legs on the floor belonged to someone who was still alive and in need of her help? She pictured a man, stabbed, like her father had been, lying in a puddle of his own blood. Maybe the gas station had been held up. An armed robbery, like the one that had ruined her family. She never wanted to see a sight like that again, but if he was still alive… if she could help save him…
Her feet felt like blocks of cement, but she forced them to move forward. Her pulse raced in her throat, and she could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears as she crept nervously toward the counter again. Like the child she had been before she’d lost her father, Gabby knelt down alongside it and peeked timidly around, prepared to squeeze her eyes shut if the scene was gory.
There was no blood on the floor, and for that, she was grateful. It wasn’t a man, either. It was a woman, not too old, probably early thirties, and she was lying on her back, still, very still. Beneath her red vest bearing the gas station’s logo, the woman’s chest was not rising. Gabby swallowed hard. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, flipped it open, and held it up hopefully.
Zero bars. Still no signal.
Gabby crammed the phone back into her pocket and inched closer to the motionless woman. She noticed the purplish sores all up and down the woman’s pale arms. And then she caught sight of her face. Her face, its complexion gray, its features distorted by the sores, with chunks of congealed vomit on the chin and dried flecks of foamy spittle in the corners of the mouth.
It was enough to make Gabby gag, then retch, and it was all she could do not to toss her cookies then and there, behind the counter. Choking, crying out, she bolted in panic for the door. The bell jingled behind her as she scrambled onto her bike and raced away.
There was no one around to hear her crying as she pedaled across town, but Gabby desperately wished there was. She had to find someone, someone who knew what was going on and could help her, even if they could not help the woman. The woman was dead. If she hadn’t known it before, Gabby had been sure of this when she’d seen her face. It was a face she wanted to erase from her mind, but she couldn’t. It kept popping up again as she rode, without any idea where she was going.
Her absent-minded pedaling carried her to a different neighborhood, one almost as familiar to her as her own. She hardly realized it until she found herself dragging her toes on the sidewalk in front of her best friend’s house. In the last year, the Deans had become like her second family, so Makayla’s house seemed like a logical sanctuary.
Gabby wedged the kickstand out on her bike and left it standing in the driveway as she hurried up to the front stoop. She rang the bell, and when no one answered, she tried the doorknob, knowing Makayla’s parents wouldn’t mind if she let herself in. It turned, and so she opened the front door. The house was unusually quiet, but even in its stillness, there was a comfort there. It smelled like Makayla’s house, where she’d slept over so many nights, a homey blend of scented candles and laundry detergent and the sawdusty smell of hamster bedding.
“Mak?” called Gabby, looking around. The living room was empty, the television off. The kitchen was also deserted, and the digital clocks on the microwave and oven were blank. No electricity here either. But were there people? In the kitchen, Gabby opened the back door, which connected to the garage, and peeked out. Both cars were there. So their owners had to be there too.
Not finding anyone downstairs, Gabby wandered upstairs. She felt a little weird creeping around Makayla’s house by herself, but she wanted to be caught by someone, even Makayla’s brother. She would try Makayla’s room first, though.
The door was partway closed, and the smell of the hamster cage grew stronger as she pushed it open. There was another smell, too, a smell that brought the face of the dead gas station attendant flashing back into her mind. Shuddering, Gabby went into the room. She saw a lump in Makayla’s bed and wondered what her friend was doing sleeping in the middle of the afternoon, with her covers thrown over her head. Maybe her mom had made her take a nap before the slumber party.
“Makayla,” she whispered, tiptoeing closer. “Mak, you awake?”
She poked the lump through the covers. The lump did not stir.
She prodded it again. Still no reaction.
Finally, she tore the covers off Makayla, announcing, “Rise and shine, Makay-” Gabby choked on her friend’s name. She made a retching noise, like coughing and gagging at the same time, and then she began to scream. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed, as she looked down upon her best friend, lying dead in her bed and covered in purple sores, like the spots of her magenta, leopard-print pajamas.
This time, Gabby could not hold it back. She doubled over and vomited, right there on Makayla’s pink carpet. She did not think of cleaning it up, did not see the need, for in the back of her mind, she knew Makayla’s mom would not mind, could not mind, in fact, because she was dead in another room. They all were. Makayla’s whole family, dead in this house. It was the only explanation for the house being so quiet, with both cars there.
Everyone, everywhere, was dead.
Gabby couldn’t take any more. She was no longer curious. She could not bear to look in on the rest of the Dean family dead. Holding her breath, she yanked Makayla’s covers back up and over her head, hiding her body once more, and then she turned and fled. She ran down the stairs, the first of her sobs bursting from her throat, and out into the sun. She straddled her bike once more, kicked up the kickstand, and started pedaling, though she hadn’t the faintest clue as to where she might go next.
She looked dazedly up and down the street and thought of Brock, who lived somewhere nearby, and of Colton, who had kissed her on the beach two nights ago. Brock and Colton, who were probably both dead in their own houses, whichever ones they were. Gabby did not want to find them.
The only place she could think to go, besides home, was the hospital, where her mother worked. It was her last hope; she had to find her mother. The hospital was several miles across town, further than Gabby had ever ridden or was allowed to ride, but she started to pedal feverishly, intent on getting there. She flew over curbs and straight through intersections without even looking for cars, throwing caution to the wind, because she knew there would be none. And she was right.
She was right, until she was startled by the sudden sound of screeching brakes, so startled that she toppled right off her bike and spilled onto the street, a mere few feet in front of the white Ford Escape that was skidding to a stop. She looked up in shock, and the driver’s side door was already opening, and her mother’s voice was screaming, “Gabrielle!!”
“Mom!” Gabby cried, scrambling up, not bothering to brush the gravel from her skinned knees. “Mama!!”
She ran for her mother, who was running towards her. Their bodies collided in a fierce hug, and Gabby collapsed into the relief of her mother’s arms. She sobbed into Jo’s shoulder, as Jo squeezed her in a tight embrace, stroking her back and whispering, “Oh Gabby… Gabby, thank God.”
“Everyone’s dead, Mama,” Gabby finally found the voice to choke out. “Even… even Makayla.”
“I know, sweetie… I know. I’m so sorry,” her mother whispered, her own voice shaking. “I’m so thankful you’re okay. I went home, and you weren’t there… I panicked. I must have just missed you.”
“I couldn’t get a hold of you,” Gabby sobbed. “I tried to call, but the phones are all dead.”
“It’s all right. I’m here now. We’re together; that’s what matters. We’ll go somewhere safe, somewhere where there are still people who are well.”
“Where? There’s no one…” whispered Gabby, thinking again of the empty gas station, with the woman lying so still behind the counter.
Jo squeezed her shoulders. “I have a thought,” she replied, guiding Gabby back to the SUV. “I may be wrong, but it’s worth a try.”
“Where?” Gabby sniffled, as they lifted her bike into the hatchback.
“MacDill… the Air Force base. If there’s anyone left alive in this city who knows what’s going on, they’ll be there.”
