After the Event

After The Event

BY

T.A. Williams

To Mrs. Thompson

For making what a young boy thought was impossible,
              possible.

To My Mother

For showing me the joy in visiting new worlds. Here is
              one of               our own.

The Event

The power went out.

             
Alec had been knocking on sandman’s door when his world was plunged into darkness. He felt his youngest sister, Alya, asleep on the couch next to him with her head in his lap, while his brothers Ben and Joseph were in their rooms asleep. Slowly he attempted to move without waking Alya and probably would have been successful if it wasn’t for the ear-piercing scream that erupted from their apartment hallway.

             
Alya immediately stirred. “Alec, what’s that?”

             
His eyes had started to adjust to the darkness and he saw her sit up and could make out the fear showing in her eyes. “Stay here Ally, I’ll check it out.”

Ben stumbled out of his room, hair in disarray, with Joseph, barely half the size of Ben, following close behind.
“Ben, watch them I’ll be right back.” Ben’s eyes were as wide as saucers but he nodded and Alec opened their front door.

             
The scream doubled in sound as the barrier of the front door was removed. He peeked through the hallway and his eyes could make out their next door neighbor, Mrs. Finch, standing over her husband who was lying motionless on the hallway floor. Her eyes darted around in a panic but stopped when she caught sight of Alec.

             
“Please you have to help me, he just collapsed I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Alec made his way over to Mr. Finch and just stood there.
He was just 16 years old, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do in this kind of situation. He had watched TV shows where someone performed CPR but he didn’t really know what steps he was supposed to take.

“Please hon, do something.” She pleaded.

              “I’ll call the police.” Alec ran back inside his apartment and nearly tripped over Alya standing in the doorway. “Alya I told you to stay put,” he turned his attention to Ben. “Get her and keep her inside, something is wrong with Mr. Finch.”

             
Ben’s mouth was hanging open in a stupor. “What happened to the lights?”

             
He didn’t answer Ben because he didn’t know. First thing was first, he needed to call 911. Alec scrambled to find their phone in the darkness of the apartment. He reached onto the counter and knocked over several objects before he felt the familiar contour of his cell phone. He picked it up, attempted to dial, and was met by more darkness. The battery couldn’t be dead it had close to a full charge before he laid down for the night. He rushed over to their landline phone and picked it up, silence.

             
Mrs. Finch’s screams filled his ears once again. “Please someone call 911 I think there is something wrong with his pacemaker.”

Joseph grabbed hold of Alec’s pants and clung to him.
“Alec what’s going on? I want mommy.”

             
Alec looked down at Joseph and couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t give him what he didn’t have. She was gone and they were left with him. There should have been someone else there with them, but just like when he was younger that person was nowhere to be seen.

             
Ben walked over slowly with a strange look on his face. “What’s that sound?”

             
It took Alec a moment before he could make it out over Mrs. Finch’s sobs. The sound was coming from outside. He walked over to the window overlooking the city and the sound got louder. At first he thought it was because he was walking closer to the open window but he soon realized that whatever it was, it was getting closer. His eyes never left the window but he gently peeled Joseph off of him.

“Stay here little man.”

The sound went from barely noticeable to
ear-deafening before he took more than a few steps. He got to the window overlooking the city and there wasn’t a single light in sight. The city was completely cloaked in darkness. As his brain attempted to register this fact a large object plunged from the sky into the heart of the city. He didn’t remember the blast throwing him back across the room, he didn’t remember the broken glass cutting into his face, but for as long as he lived he would never forget the image of the 747 right before it hit the ground and filled the dark city in a fiery light.

After The Event

It was the gunshot that finally woke him up, or the two gunshots to be exact. Not that he had been asleep, at least not in the literal sense, but he had been ignoring the obvious.

             
The day after the power went out he had tried going to the nearby grocery store. As to be expected it was packed with people trying to grab as much food as they could fit into their carts. He didn’t expect the power to be out for very long but with their refrigerator out he needed to get some can goods to hold them over.

The whole time he was in the store he
remembered feeling like everyone was on the verge of panic. Everyone moved with a purpose while before they seemed to just be going through the movements while they played on their cell phones. He had remained calm, filled up his shopping basket with just enough can goods to last them for a few days and headed towards the checkout lanes, and that was when he got a glimpse of just how bad things were going to get.

The lines stretched out in all directions and none of them were moving.
The sound of arguing came from every single one of the checkout stands and they were all similar. Whatever had knocked out the power had also taken the ability of the stands to take debit and credit cards. Grant stood there realizing he only had a few bucks and was in the same boat as the majority of people there.

The arguing grew louder and louder until a gunshot shut everyone up.
The shot echoed through the store making it sound twice as loud as it normally would and for a few seconds there was only silence as everyone’s minds tried to reconcile what had just happened. When the young female clerk screamed out in pain and fell over, the building erupted. The man who had shot her fled with his shopping cart and not a single soul attempted to stop him. Some ran outside ahead of him, others ran deeper into the store, while the rest stood there dumbfounded, Grant was one of the dumbfounded.

As the existing clerks fled most of the people still standing in the lines took their food
and escaped the store, while others continued to stand in place either unwilling or unable to process the current situation. Grant had walked calmly through the existing lines out of the store into the chaotic parking lot and into his van. He placed the basket full of canned goods into the passenger seat, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. It wasn’t until he was halfway home that his hands started to shake uncontrollably and he had to pull over to collect himself.

He should have realized then, but he was still in denial.

They sat in their powerless apartment day after day waiting for the power to come back on and day after day they remained in the dark. It wasn’t until Grant heard the second gunshot that he realized things weren’t going to get better anytime soon.

When he looked out the window he saw a group of people pulling grocery bags out of a car
that was sitting crooked in the roadway. He wasn’t sure which of them fired the shot and was convinced, based on each of them running in opposite directions, that they had not been working together. A teenage kid got out of the driver’s seat and stumbled a few steps before he collapsed on the street. Grant watched as a puddle of blood slowly formed around the now still body.

It was only then that he realized things were going to get worse, not better.

Now he found himself driving to the middle of nowhere with a van full of kids he had previously abandoned and all he could think about was her, and how she would have known what to do

             
“How much further?” Ben asked from the passenger seat.

             
Grant glanced over to the passenger seat and tried to give Ben a reassuring smile. He couldn’t believe how big he had gotten. In the back the youngest boy, Joseph, was wrestling around with his youngest and only daughter Alya, while Alec sat quietly to the side looking out the window.

He had been gone over two years and they had all changed so much.
The last time he was around Alya she was an uncoordinated little toddler who repeated everything he said, now she was six years old and her own little person. Joseph was just two years older and was easily the quietest of the group. Since he had been back he didn’t think the boy had put together more than three words at a time. Ben, who for the last hour had been sitting next to him with the biggest Cheshire cat grin, made up for Joseph’s lack of words. Grant could tell Ben thought this was going to be some grand adventure.

Then there was Alec in the backseat.
The boy was straddling the line between child and adult at nearly 17 years old. He had seen both the best and the worst of Grant, unfortunately Grant had more bad then good in his past. There was a time when Alec had been just like Ben. Always hanging all over him and believing everything was an adventure. Now all he could see in the boy’s eyes was mistrust, and he couldn’t blame him.

             
“Ow, Ally get off.” Joseph yelled from the back seat.

When Grant glanced in the back he saw Alya sitting on Joseph’s head.
Before he could say something Alec shot Alya a look and she sheepishly got off. Alec then returned his attention to the passing landscape. While physically Alec was still a boy, mentally he was a man. The rest of Grant’s children looked at Alec as a father figure.

Grant was in over his head.
It was bad enough when he got the call saying that she hadn’t made it. Knowing that the one person in his life who had always been there for him, no matter how bad he got, was gone forever had left him in shambles. Then he had been hit with the realization that the only person his children had left was him. He hadn’t, and still wasn’t, ready. Then the power went out.

“What are those people doing daddy?”
asked Ben.

Grant followed Ben’s eyes and saw a small shopping center off the road.
A common sight in this area but what wasn’t common was that it was being pillaged. People were swarming throughout the buildings like ants, crawling in and out of the windows and knocking each other over to get in and out with the items they were taking. Society was breaking down.

Before he turned back to the road he saw it.
He had learned his actions and choices were the reason his life fell apart, and he was also aware that there was one place that always helped push him off that cliff. In the middle of the shopping center was a liquor store.

Thirsty
.

The window was busted out and it appeared empty.

There could still be something hidden in the back.
If I could just find one bottle that will be enough to help me get through this. I could park on the far side, they would be safe there, and then I could just run in real quick grab the bottle and run out. No one would notice and-

“What’s wrong dad?”

Grant snapped back to reality and saw the worried look on Ben’s face. “Nothing. Its, it is just dangerous out here.”

He looked in the rear view mirror and saw Alec staring at him.
The boy knew what he was thinking. Grant couldn’t meet his gaze and turned his attention back on the road. He had grown up in the middle of the country in a house just a handful of miles outside a small town. The place had sat abandoned after his father passed a few years back. Grant had been meaning to sell it but had never gotten around to it. If they could just make it there then they could wait until everything returned to normal. As they continued down the road he searched for some comforting thought or ray of hope but turned up empty. He was all they had left now.

Thirsty.