Winds of Change (8 page)

Obviously the threat of dying wasn’t enough
to scare Kenneth and Jake Weaver. They were still goofing off when
they came through the door. However, they stopped at the sight of
their father crying. Undoubtedly, it was something they had never
seen. I’m sure not many people had.

Soon, all three of them were kneeling in
front of Vera Weaver’s body, spilling their tears onto her
still-warm skin. Although it seemed pitifully inappropriate, we
stood there and watched.

Chuck, it seemed, was the only one of us who
kept his wits about him. In the ensuing chaos, we had all forgotten
about the broken glass doors that the Weaver boys had destroyed.
Even now, the atmosphere was probably seeping into the store. Who
knew how long it would take to reach us?

“I know this isn’t a real good time to bring
this up, but we’ve got to find something to seal the doors,” Chuck
exclaimed, running a hand through his thinning blonde hair.

None of the Weavers looked up from Vera’s
body. All of them, Jesse in particular, were probably regretting
the way they had treated the matriarch of the family while she had
been alive.

“Leave them,” I said. “They won’t be any help
to us right now.”

“The longer we wait, the more likely it is
that we’re going to die,” Chuck reminded us.

“The supply closet,” Steven said. “We can
probably make it there in time.”

Both of them rushed out without another word,
knowing that time was of the essence.

They returned a few moments later with a
couple of boxes of garbage bags, some tape, and a bagful of
discarded cleaning rags. Immediately, we went to work, plugging the
space underneath the door with plastic and rags and sealing it all
up with tape. It was a pitiful defense against biological
contagion, but it was all we had. At that point, I was hoping that
this was some sort of Biblical curse rather than something manmade.
Under that scenario our odds seemed slightly better. Still, I
couldn’t help thinking about the way Vera Weaver had spoken in
tongues and all the things Pete had said about angels and plagues
and the end of the world. When you looked at things from that
perspective, it became clear that we had lots of reasons to be
depressed. The fact that one of the doors to the outside world
wasn’t there anymore to keep the atmosphere out didn’t help matters
either.

“We’ll suffocate in here,” was the only thing
Wayne Richards had to say as he watched Steven and Chuck seal the
space underneath the door and around the jamb.

I spoke for everyone when I said, “Either
shut up or help.” Wayne turned his back on me, refusing.

It didn’t take us long to seal up the room.
Once we were finished, we still had enough flashlights among us to
see, but not nearly enough to make us comfortable. We still had the
snack and drink machines which was about the only advantage to
being stuck in the break room. And all of us were still alive. That
was something to be thankful for.

Nobody really said much after that. We had
said all that we needed to. There was no need to discuss the
possibilities anymore, only the inevitabilities. We were all going
to die. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

“Maybe Leland will find some way to rescue
us,” Ashley said at last.

“He’s the reason we’re in this mess,” Wayne
muttered. “Besides, he’s probably already dead.”

“I’m going to try talking to Leland one more
time,” Chuck said.

“Leland,” he spoke into the radio. “Can you
hear me? If you can hear me, please speak up. Tell us what’s going
on.”

Leland didn’t reply at first. “Something’s
wrong,” Chuck said.

Then the radio squawked, and Leland’s voice
came through. “I’m here,” he muttered. “I got dizzy and
lightheaded.”

“What happened?” Chuck asked as the rest of
us huddled around him.

“I guess I just overdid it. I’m not in the
shape I used to be. I’m fine now though.”

"How many others are there in the
restaurant?" Chuck asked.

"Eight, not counting me. They're mostly cooks
and waitresses. They're actually doing pretty well, considering. I
guess whatever’s keeping you guys alive is keeping them alive
too."

"Does anybody know what's happening?"

"Not really. But they've got their theories
just like you had yours. They are convinced that this is the end of
the world. They think this is God's form of judgment."

"I don't believe it," Wayne Richards said,
slamming his hand down on the table. “This guy is in on whatever is
going on. That’s the only reason he’s alive right now.”

“Tell him to let us speak to one of the other
survivors,” Pete spoke up.

I think all of us were a little surprised by
his suggestion, but Pete seemed to have a lot of insight into our
problem. Although I had no reason to suspect Leland Kennedy of any
sort of involvement, I had to consider the possibility.

“I’d like to hear someone else’s voice too,”
Jesse Weaver chimed in. “He could be making all of that up.”

Everyone looked at me for final approval. “Go
ahead,” I told Chuck. “Get somebody else on the line.”

“Leland, I want you to do something for me,”
Chuck said. Leland, however, didn’t reply. The only thing we heard
from that end was the sound of a woman screaming.

“Leland?” Chuck shouted into the two-way
radio. “Are you there? What’s going on?”

The screaming woman began shouting
incoherently. The radio went dead before she could finish the first
sentence, yet it was clear that she wasn’t speaking English. She
was speaking the same sorts of words that Vera Weaver had spoken
before dying.

“They’re speaking in tongues there too,” Pete
sighed. “That’s proof enough for me that God is involved in this
somehow. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I think it’s
time we started praying. Our lives depend on it at this point.”

"I don’t think God has anything to do with
this," Wayne said.

“Nobody cares what you think,” Steven fired
back. “You haven’t exactly been a wealth of information thus far.
Why should we listen to you?”

“Because there is the possibility that I’m
right.”

“There’s also the likelihood that you’re
wrong,” Pete said. “You’re ready to blame terrorists for
everything, but there’s a lot that points to the supernatural.”

I shot Pete a dirty look, hoping he wouldn’t
tell the group everything we had found out. But he didn’t look at
me.

“People are speaking in tongues,” he said,
“Matt and I found feathers in the generator. Something had
completely demolished it despite the fact that it was in a locked
room. That’s why it didn’t come on. And don’t forget what Vera
Weaver said about Alastor, the executioner.”

Jesse Weaver took a deep breath and stood up
at the mention of his dead wife. He went from a shrunken, shriveled
widower to a force to be reckoned with. Pete was a big man, but
Jesse towered over him.

“What else did you hear her say?” Jesse
grumbled.

Although the rest of us heard her tell Jesse
to change his ways just before she died, none of us, Pete included,
decided to mention it. “Nothing,” Pete said. “That’s all I
caught.”

Jesse’s face collapsed before our eyes, and
he put his hands up to hide his grief. It was like watching him
transform from a man into a shell of a man.

“She told me to change,” Jesse confessed as
he wept. “She didn’t like the man I was. She loved me but she hated
me too. Don’t you see that?”

“I’m not so sure that’s what she meant,”
Ashley Richards said. “Look.”

It just looked like an ordinary feather, but
it was so utterly alien and out of place here that it gave me
chills. I immediately looked at Pete, and he looked at me. It was
clear that we were both thinking about the feather we found in the
wreckage of the generator. This was too much of a coincidence to be
unrelated.

“Where did you get that?” Wayne hissed,
grabbing the feather away from his wife.

“I found it in my shirt pocket,” she said. “I
didn’t realize I had it until after I gave Leland that kiss on the
cheek. I didn’t think much about it until now.”

“Are you saying that Leland is to blame?”
Jesse asked.

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Ashley
admitted.

“What would an angel want with us anyway?”
Steven asked. “I’m not sure that explanation makes sense.”

“I don’t think that’s a question we can
answer right now,” I said. “I think the most pertinent question is
what we should do for a defense.”

“What can we do?” Jesse said. “Pray? Recite
The Lord’s Prayer over and over again? Say the books of the Bible
in order? I don’t know what the rest of you are going to do, but I
don’t want to make myself a sitting duck. I’m not going to let some
angel get away with killing my wife, and that’s what happened when
you get right down to it. Vera would still be here with us if the
world had stayed the same.”

“If this is happening because of God then
there’s nothing we can do,” Kenneth Weaver said. “We may as well
open the doors and walk out to our doom. It might even be better
that way. Mom’s probably doing better than any of us right
now.”

“Speak for yourself, wuss,” Jake said, giving
his brother the evil eye. “I’m not ready to die yet.”

“I agree,” I said. “We’re obviously alive for
some reason. Maybe it’s God’s will that we stay alive.”

“Maybe we’re the instruments that God is
going to use to bring down this angel,” Chuck added.

“And maybe you’ve been sniffing too much
diesel fuel, Rambo,” Jesse said.

“Mom believed in God,” Kenneth Weaver
interrupted, drawing a hard look from his father. “Maybe we should
too.”

“It didn’t do her a lot of good in the end,”
Jake reminded his brother. “She’s dead.”

“You shut up,” Kenneth said, smacking his
brother in the face with his open palm. “Don’t you talk about Mama
like that.”

“Stop it! Both of you,” Jesse Weaver roared
like an injured bear. “I don’t want to hear anything else about
your mother right now. We’ll remember her later when we can pay
proper respect.”

“Maybe your sons are right,” Ashley said
timidly. “Maybe trust in God is what we all need right now. It
certainly couldn’t hurt.”

“You’ve got my vote,” I said. “In fact, I
think we should start to confess. If there is some divine
intervention going on here, it might not be a bad idea to get all
of our sins out in the open so we can ask for forgiveness. I’m sure
some of the dead wish they would have gotten that chance before
they turned into a pile of salt.”

We all looked at each other for a moment,
wondering if baring our souls was the best course of action at the
moment. Chuck was the first to speak.

"I stole some money from one of the registers
last week," he blurted out. We all looked at him in amazement.

"What are you talking about?" Steven asked
him.

"I want to confess my sins and let you judge
whether or not I'm fit to go outside. I want to know if I genuinely
stand a chance of surviving once I walk out those doors."

“None of us are fit to judge that sort of
thing,” Steven replied. “We’re no better than you. I’m sure there’s
something in everyone’s past that they’re ashamed of, something
that would be better told to a priest.”

“I’m sure there are some things we all need
to get off of our chest,” Pete added. “It doesn’t bother me to hear
any of this.”

“I certainly won’t think less of anyone for
confessing,” Ashley said.

“This is a complete waste of time,” Wayne
grumbled, moving away from his wife. I don’t think anyone heard
him. Everyone else was too busy filtering through the memories of
the things they had done and deciding what to tell and what to keep
to themselves.

And then we began to talk.

One by one, we opened up about our sins,
spilling our guts to the world with the hope of staying alive.
Jesse Weaver admitted to spending his wife's prescription money on
beer and gambling. Steven admitted to cheating on his first wife.
Ashley Richards confessed to running into someone else's car at the
grocery store and fleeing the scene of the accident. I told them
all about all the times I used to shoot cats at the city dump for
fun. The Weaver boys perked up when I mentioned that. It was clear
that they were guilty of that as well. The only one of us who
didn't confess was Wayne Richards. It was clear he still thought
the whole purging process was foolish.

"Don't you have something you want to get off
your chest?" Chuck asked him.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "You obviously
believe that this is God's punishment for the wicked. What makes
you think that there will be any mercy shown to you?"

"Ever heard of a little thing called
confession?" Jesse Weaver spoke up. “My wife may have been a lot of
things, but she wasn’t stupid. This is something she believed in. I
didn’t want to believe it myself at first. I guess I’ve done so
many bad things in my past that I was scared. But I feel better now
that I’ve gotten some of my secrets out in the open. I don’t feel
like such a terrible person now that I’ve heard some of the things
the rest of you have done. We’re all human, and we’ve all made
mistakes. Of course, maybe you’re better than the rest of us but I
don’t think so.”

It was surprising to hear a man like Jesse
actually stand up for something that didn't have to do with
boozing, gambling, or women. But the fear of death will change
people sometimes. We found that out the hard way.

"What if you die, Wayne?" Ashley asked him.
"Are you that confident that there is no God and no heaven?”

Wayne made a face that was equal parts fear
and indecision. He chewed on his bottom lip as if to keep the words
from coming out. “There’s more to it than that, Ashley, and you
know it.”