I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid. I had the whole box set of the paperbacks, which sit now on the shelves of my classroom library, dog-eared and falling apart and collecting dust, I’m sure. There are no children left to read them. It’s a shame… when we left school for spring break, my Amanda was almost done with “These Happy Golden Years.” She’ll never be able to finish…
Anyway… I remember reading those books and trying to imagine what it must be like to live in isolation on the prairie, a whole day’s travel from any town, hundreds of miles from the only place I’d known as home, with only my family for company. No electricity, no running water, few toys, and lots of work. It sounded impossibly hard, and when I really thought about that, it made me appreciate the comparatively easy life I lived.
I was a tomboy as a kid, but never the outdoorsy type as an adult. I was content indoors, with my books and my movies and my computer. I loved the show Survivor, but not even for a million dollars would I have wanted to rough it for thirty-nine days, away from everything and everyone I knew.
I never asked for this, but here I am, playing the ultimate game of Survivor. The days have started to blur together, but according to our calculations, it’s Day 40. If I were on Survivor, I’d be a millionaire by now. Ha. I wish this would turn out to be some crazy, epic reality show… one big joke on us all, that everyone I know was in on. Sounds like something FOX would have greenlighted, doesn’t it? I wish…
So much for a million dollars. Money is meaningless now. Most things are. All that matters is our survival, me and these people who have become like my family. Here we are, living in isolation, hundreds of miles from home, with only each other for company. Our lives are more precious than ever. Nothing about them is easy anymore.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
9:00 p.m.
It was dark and quiet inside the Elliott house. Gretchen, the lone occupant, lay curled on the couch in her shorts and camisole. It had gotten stuffy in the house with all the windows shut and no air conditioning, since the power had been out all day. Near her on the coffee table lay a flashlight, her cell phone, a carton of melted ice cream, and a glass of lukewarm wine.
When she’d realized the power wasn’t coming back on, Gretchen had decided she might as well indulge in what would go bad before it did. She’d eaten as much of the ice cream as she could before it turned to soup, for once not worrying about her weight or the havoc it might wreak on her digestive system. She’d opened the wine while it was still chilled, though she had never been much of a wine drinker. Shawn had brought the bottle home for Valentine’s Day, but they’d ended up drinking wine coolers instead.
Now the bottle of wine was half gone, and Gretchen was half drunk, which suited her just fine. The effects of the alcohol made it easier to relax, to sleep, to empty her mind of worry and let it go blank and numb. She’d been drifting in and out for a couple of hours now, pulling herself out of a groggy haze just long enough to check her phone.
The battery would last two more days, at least, so for now, the phone still beamed her the time. But service had been down all day. She kept checking for bars in different locations around the house, but it was no use. The phone was as good as dead. She and Shawn didn’t have a land line, but she supposed those were down, too, along with the power.
Everything was dead. And from the sound of it, everyone was dead, too.
Shawn had left her a message in the night. A much deeper sleeper than he was, she’d slept right through it and awoken in the morning to find it on her voicemail.
“Gretch, it’s me. I hope you get this message; I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have phone service. The power’s already out in Baltimore; we’re running off back-up generators here at the base.” Her husband’s voice dropped to a hush, and he spoke rapidly, as if he were afraid of being overheard. “The situation’s gotten worse. People are dying, and we’re no closer to finding an antidote. I’m worried we’re already too late. Whatever this thing is, it seems to be a hundred percent lethal.”
A pause; he seemed to realize he’d said too much and backtracked. “Listen… I’m not telling you this to scare you; I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m keeping myself safe, and I want you to stay safe too. Stay inside, like I told you, and wait for me. If we don’t make a breakthrough in the next twenty-four hours, I’m coming home to get you.”
Another pause, perhaps to make sure she’d understood. Then he added, “At some point, self-preservation becomes the priority. Remember that. I love you. See you soon.”
The message cut off there. Gretchen had listened to it a dozen times since; she knew it by heart. “If we don’t make a breakthrough in the next twenty-four, I’m coming home to get you.” She checked the time again. Just after nine p.m. Eighteen hours since he’d left the voicemail. At what time would he give up and decide to leave? And with the east coast crippled by illness, how long would it take him to make it home?
If he gave it the full twenty-four hours, he wouldn’t leave until early morning. But if he’d been up all day, maybe he’d get some sleep first. And if he couldn’t fly, if the airports were down, he’d have to travel by car. Any way she sliced it, she couldn’t expect him until tomorrow, likely late.
All day, as she’d sat and watched the hours tick by, Gretchen had tried to rationalize with herself this way, telling herself there was no reason to worry yet. She’d give Shawn another day, maybe two, before she’d worry about him. Not that she would need to. He’d be home, like he’d promised, or if he did make a breakthrough, he’d find a way to send word to her, knowing her tendency to overthink things. Exactly like she was doing then. But trying to rationalize her fear away wasn’t very effective. She still worried.
The worst part, she realized, was the lack of contact. She’d tried to call Shawn back immediately after listening to his voicemail, but by then, her cell signal was already gone. Service had been down all day, as she guessed it was up north, too. She couldn’t call Shawn in Maryland any more than she could call her family in Indiana. She couldn’t even call her friends from school, who were her only real friends in Atlanta. The isolation, the lonely feeling of being cut-off from everyone she loved, was terrifying.
In the modern age of technology, she’d never been more than a phone call away from her family and friends. Now, without a working phone, without the internet, without electricity of any kind, she understood what it must have been like to have lived before all those things were invented. She imagined she was a pioneer bride, alone on the prairie, cooped up in her soddie while her husband was away, fearful of wild animal attacks and Indian raids and all the calamities that could possibly keep her man from coming back home to her.
This reverie carried her away from the dark, empty house for a few moments, but then she was back, lonely and anxious as ever. Still, it gave her a thought. “Maybe I’ll try reading again,” she said aloud. There was no one around to hear her talking to herself, and the sound of her voice – the sound of anything, really, besides her own uneasy breathing – was oddly comforting.
She had tried reading throughout the day, but all she had to choose from were the books on her shelves, books she had already read, and none of them had held her attention. Now she went to the bookshelves again, searched for a moment, and then pulled down a tattered paperback, one of the oldest on the shelves. It was her mother’s favorite book, an old pioneer romance called “A Lantern in Her Hand,” and she’d borrowed it once in her young adulthood and never remembered to return it, taking it with her as she moved around the country with Shawn. It panged her heart to flip through the yellowed pages and think of her mother, but she carried it back to her spot on the couch and settled down with her flashlight to read.
It took her three tries to get through the first page. Try as she might, she could not focus. Her mind kept wandering. She couldn’t shut off her own thoughts long enough to put herself into the story. Sighing, she closed the book, not bothering to mark her place. She was only on the page two.
She got up from the couch and paced around the living room a few times before making her way to the front door. She did not open it, but instead leaned close, peeking out the small pane of glass in its center. She could see outside, into the street. The streetlights were dark, as were all the houses. No porch lights were on, no lamps lit. She didn’t even notice the faint glow of a flashlight or flickering of a candle in any of the windows of the houses across the street.
The only source of light to illuminate the dark night was the moon. It was full, and its glow beamed blue-white light down onto the street, casting shadows of the trees and lampposts. Among these, she could see the lumpy shape of something lying on the sidewalk. The something was a someone, her neighbor. She didn’t know his name, only his face, which she’d smiled at when she’d seen him jog by from time to time. He’d been lying there, dead, since she’d gotten up that morning and first looked out. She knew he was not alone. There were no others on the street, not that she could see, but she was sure there were behind closed doors, filling the beds of the dark houses across the street and on either side. With nothing else to do, she’d been looking out all day, like the guy in that movie Rear Window, and she’d seen no signs of human life. Not one.
Maybe her other neighbors were just doing the same thing she was: hiding. But with no curtains moving, no lights flickering, no doors cracked open for impatient dogs to go out, she suspected there was a more sinister reason for the stillness in her neighborhood. It didn’t ease her fears any.
Reluctantly, she backed away from the door and returned to her book, clicking the flashlight back on. She forced herself to concentrate this time, saying every word aloud in her head, trying to picture the descriptions and actions in the words, those and nothing more. She sipped at her wine between pages, and eventually, she began to relax again and let the story draw her in.
Gradually, her eyelids grew heavy, and her head nodded forward, towards her book. Yawning, she set the book aside and turned off her flashlight. It was nearly pitch black in the house, with only the faint glow of her cell phone and the moonlight through the windows to see by. Of all the things that scared her, though, the dark was not one. She padded to her bedroom, relying on memory and feel to avoid running into things, and crawled into bed.
As she lay curled beneath the top sheet, hugging a pillow, she savored the fuzzy feeling in her head from all the wine and how it seemed to absorb all her thoughts before they could go on too long. Unable to stay on any one train of thought for more than a few seconds, she quickly drifted off and was asleep within minutes. Dark, silent, and still, her house joined the others on the block.
