My dad had his face plastered to the rounded screen, the entire time we were at Brian's hiding out. We barely made it there. I remember the panic and pandemonium. I remember the way he dragged me through the woods, yelling at me to hurry up; we needed to get to Brian's. We had left it too late. A tidal wave was coming and we needed to get to high ground and cut through the woods to Brian's. He screamed and I tried to run, but my legs hurt.
Once we made it to the bunker, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fight the urge to watch the news. It was so scary, and yet, my eyes wouldn’t leave it.
The same news lady was on everyday. I knew her voice better than my own. "We have passed the point of needing blood donations. The public is safer to stay inside and wait it out. Rations and remaining inside, are your best bet at this point. Right now, on the Western seaboard, we believe there to be at least one million cases of the Dengue fever that is sweeping across America. That number is reported cases. We do not know the exact number, as many people are trying to stay home and fight it out." Her face was tired, and the makeup didn’t hide the pain in her eyes. Her perfect brown bob was shiny and clean. She was the last clean person I remembered, before the breeder farms.
I was already dirty when I watched her on the news in Brian's bunker. I glanced back at Dad. I didn’t like the way he nodded, like he was part of the conversation with the news lady. He looked crazy when he looked at me and said, "We leave soon, kid. When the panic is over."
I nodded and hugged my knees in tighter to my body. I looked back at the news lady. Her dark-blue eyes were glassy. I imagined she knew something, but couldn’t tell the rest of us, like how bad it all really was.
She swallowed hard and continued. "In other news, Japan has again been hit by several strong earthquakes. They are ranging between 4.3 and 7.5. As we all know, the Dengue fever is considerably worse in Asia, so this couldn’t come at a worse time for them. Several small tidal waves have already hit Alaska and Northwestern Canada. Power outages and flooding have been bad along the Northwest Coast. Canada is suffering through its own earthquakes. The famous Hot Springs Island in British Columbia is dry. The hot springs are gone. In other news, New York and New Jersey are still underwater from the mass flooding that’s left over from the hurricanes this season." My stomach sunk.
Brian turned the TV off and we sat in the bunker in silence. Dad had been saying it would happen. He had been saying it for as long as I could remember. All the names I'd called him inside my mind, started to make me feel bad. I remember thinking bad things about him as he dragged me along the hillside, yelling at me that we needed to get to high ground. The highway was blocked and another tidal wave was coming.
Brian left the bunker a lot. He turned the handle and opened the sealed door in the ceiling. It made a noise like Granny's Tupperware did. I could imagine the outside world. The news images were horrifying, but I would still see it the way it was when we came into the bunker. Only Brian and my dad got to leave. The only fresh air I got, was when they cracked the door open to leave. The cold wind shot down the ladder. I would get goose bumps and feel excitement every time.
I hated the bunker. We ate canned food and dried food and watched the small TV. The panic was all just the way Dad said it would be. The news footage was scary—looting and bombing and countries at war. Everyone blamed each other for the Dengue fever. Then they all started bombing areas to kill the sick, who weren't dying from the fever. It seemed like it would never end.
But then it did, when the TV stopped working. When the power and the water turned off, we sat in the candlelight and spent the days wondering and imagining. What was it like out there?
The day we left the bunker was a bad day. The TV hadn’t been on for two weeks. The last thing I saw was the President making a speech and crying. I missed half of it. I was sleeping. That's all there had been to do in the bunker. I woke to Dad packing the jeep and the bunker door opening.
When we got into the jeep, Dad told me and Brian his plan, again.
He was as impassioned telling it the hundredth time, as he had been the first time. "So we'll cross the freeway at the Green Mountain exit and take the back road till we get to the base of the mountain range, where the cabin is. It's a day's hike up then. There is an old farmhouse there at the base of the mountain that the cabin is on."
I was so tired of the plan. I was so tired of his voice. I could scream with frustration. The only thing getting me by, was a copy of a book I found, called Twilight. I'd read it three times in the bunker, always wondering if she ever got what she wanted?
I gripped the thick book to me in the jeep and held back the screams that clogged my throat and left me breathless.
Dad looked back at me, "When the people who live at the farmhouse die off, we can go and see what they have. Farmhouses always have the best stuff. Canning and dried foods, and not to mention, the best survival supplies. Ropes and shovels and extras of everything. Remember that, Em. It's us and them now." I had heard it so many times, I could have choked him. There were moments I hated him.
Brian looked back at me and tried to smile like he always did, trying to make me feel better. Dad never sugarcoated anything. He wanted me to know the worst. He always wanted me ready.
Brian disagreed. He wanted me to be a little kid. But I had never been a kid. I'd always been more.
Sometimes they fought about me, like a mom and dad would. More than my mom and dad ever did.
I would never forget Brian's face, as he tucked my hair out of my face, and gave me a small sucker. He always had candy. It was red. I didn’t really like red, but I took it anyway.
He grinned, "It'll be fun at the cabin, kid. Lots of things to do there."
I rolled my eyes, "Fun? My iPad, iPod, DSI, Xbox, and even that stupid eReader, Granny gave me, are all dead. What fun is there? I've been to wilderness camp every summer for five years. I know what there is to do at a cabin. It's never been fun."
Brian laughed.
My dad eyed me up in the rearview window, "Em, you know those things are part of a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Your generation is soft, weak. One day you'll thank me for all that camp. I can tell you now, no other girl your age has been going to camp since she was five."
I scowled, "I know." And I did. The other girls at camp always thought I was weird. They had been sent because the other summer camps had filled up and their parents just needed somewhere for them to go for a few weeks. I, however, was almost able to teach the stupid courses. Shooting with a bow and a rifle, setting traps, first aid, and everything else. My favorite thing was when we learned how to make a bow and arrows.
Dad went over the map one last time before we drove away from the bunker. I looked back once and missed it instantly. The place I hated all those weeks was gone, and in its place was the unknown.
The jeep could drive over everything… logs, broken roads where the bombs had dropped, bumps Brian told me not to look at, everything. I covered my eyes and peeked through my fingers.
There were cars and trucks and vans and people everywhere when we got to the freeway. People had been hiding out in the beginning, but when the food and supplies started to run out, they fled the cities. Everyone ran.
The panic was over by the time we left the bunker. What was left, was unimaginable. The road was broken everywhere and lined with burned-out vehicles. A huge, burned-out jet plane sat in a field next to an old house. It looked like a skeleton but burned badly. I couldn’t help but wonder, if anyone lived.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to drive through the city. The freeway was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine the city. Brian lived in the country, in a small town on the outskirts of a city. He bought the house because it had an already-built bunker from the Cuban Missile Crisis.
As we drove, we passed people straggling along the roads in small clusters. They looked broken and half dead. It looked like a movie.
"Every one of those people probably has the fever, Em. You gotta remember that. Every one has potential to kill you now. It's us and them, Em." The more things we saw, the less annoying his voice got. I gripped the book to my chest. His voice was calm and haunting. Like a narration to the things I was seeing.
"The water is going to be sick for a long time where the bombs were dropped. The fields too."
The tear-stained and filthy faces of the people we passed, made me feel scared and sick. I'd never felt smaller. I wanted to curl into myself, and hug my knees and rock, but I couldn’t stop looking at them. Cars turned over. Burned-out old trucks. People carrying children and bags. People dragging suitcases on wheels. People holding hands and pulling each other along. People.
"Look at them. They're fools. They still group up," he pointed at a small group.
I saw a man with blood-shot eyes, and I knew from the pictures Dad had shown me, that he had the fever.
The man looked at me. His blood-shot eyes seemed like they saw everything inside of me, all my fear.
A little girl, who looked like she was my age, was walking alone. For a moment, I swore I knew her. She looked lost. She turned in a circle and cried and no one helped her. They walked by her and ignored her. Just like we did. When we drove by my eyes met hers. She waved her arms and for a small moment, I swore she screamed my name. Her lips formed it perfectly. Her eyes stopped feeling self-pity and became impassioned. She chased the jeep. But we drove by anyway.
It was us and them.
We got stuck behind a huge crash. A trucker had jackknifed, and between the huge eighteen wheeler and the trucks and cars, we couldn’t get through. We turned around and went back.
Dad and Brian fought. I ignored them and pretended to sleep.
I could hear the others outside the vehicle. I could hear their screams and the crying as we slowed down.
"They're taking the women. Look at that," Dad whispered, trying to hide his voice from me, but I could hear him.
"No doubt looking for healthy females. It's just like Doctor Fitzgerald said it would be," Dad sounded smug and scared at the same time. His whispers scared me. I held my breath.