The Disappearances: Chapter 3

The Tellurian Series Book 1

Chapter 3

Once home, I locked myself in my bedroom, curled into bed, and passed out. Seeing my husband’s empty car, the dark stores, and the quiet streets shocked my system more than I realized.

I dreamed of James. We were in bed talking, laughing, and planning the weekend when, in a blink, he was gone. He was nuzzling my neck one second, and the next, he was gone.

“Don’t stop,” I said, opening my eyes to see what he was doing. “James.”

I called his name repeatedly as I got out of bed to search the house for him. I heard him laugh each time I spoke but couldn’t find him. I told him to stop playing games, that it wasn’t funny, and that he’d sleep on the sofa if he kept it up. He continued to laugh.

When I returned to our room after not finding him anywhere, I said, “James, please stop. I don’t like this.”

Tears were pouring down my cheeks by this point. I was crying so hard that I woke myself from the dream.

Reality wasn’t any better. The room was dark, telling me it was still night. I looked at the bedside clock. It was two-thirty A.M. I laid my head back down on the damp pillow with a sigh.

I wiggled over to a dryer spot and realized I had been on my husband’s side of the bed. That explained why I had such a vivid dream of him. I flipped his pillow over and inhaled his scent.

In the futile hope that the last two days had been the dream, not the reality, I sat up slightly in bed, called his name into the darkness, and looked toward the bathroom door, hoping he’d gone to pee. When James didn’t reply, I repeated his name and sat further in the bed.

I wait a full minute for someone to answer me.

No one did.

New tears came, but I didn’t let myself fall into hysterics. I told myself the disappearances hadn’t been a dream, and I had to start dealing with what was happening.

The crying side asked the other how I should deal with it.

The less emotional side told me that I could start by getting up and getting something to eat before throwing up. I couldn’t remember when I’d eaten last, and once nausea from low blood sugar set in, it wouldn’t go away quickly. Not wanting to get the shakes of vomit, I willingly left my bedroom and went into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich and a tall glass of milk.

While I ate, I went online for an hour or two to let my food settle in my stomach. Being online and still not finding any signs of life heightened my grief, so sometime before dawn, I took a sleeping pill and returned to bed.

Hours later, I jerked awake, again feeling as if I’d overslept, which I had. I was at my father-in-law’s bedroom door before I remembered he wasn’t there. On the back of that, I remembered that no one was anywhere. I slumped against the wall to control my panic attack and gather my thoughts.

“What do I do now?” I asked the empty hallway.

No answer came.

I don’t know how long I sat there with thousands of thoughts overwhelming, but eventually, I rose and got in the shower. While I washed and smelled James’ shampoo, I desperately wanted to cry but forced myself to keep my shit together. I told myself that I’d cried enough. I could be sad. I could be scared, but that wouldn’t help me make sense of the situation, and that was what I would do. I would spend the rest of my life trying to discover what had happened, where my husband, son, and the rest of the world were, and, more importantly, if I was alone.

After dressing and eating a protein-heavy breakfast, I sat at my desk with my laptop and cell phones. I charged both phones while I cooked. No one had called my number since I’d talked to my mother the night before everyone disappeared. I’d been the only person to call my husband since he’d spoken to our son the morning of the disappearance. Seeing that Tanner had called him made me both happy and sad. I’d said goodbye and I love you to my husband before he left for work. I hadn’t been able to utter the words to my son.

I opened my social media sites on my laptop before doing the same on my husband’s phone. He didn’t do anything besides stay connected with his two brothers and their families on Facebook and follow athletes he liked on Twitter. I discovered that James had talked to his older brother, Stephen, on Facebook the morning before. The conversation was mundane and mostly about Stephen and his wife’s latest argument about colleges. Their oldest was only a junior in high school, but she wanted to attend college across the country. Natalie, my sister-in-law, disapproved.

Like Tanner, Stephen’s girls didn’t have a Facebook page, and I didn’t know enough about Twitter, Snapchat, or any other sites that the younger crowd seemed to like so much. That meant I couldn’t track them as easily.

I allowed myself to slide down social media’s rabbit hole for hours. I tried to find anyone who’d posted after eight-thirty on the morning of the disappearances. I also looked for posts that indicated that someone knew what was happening or had seen what had happened, but I found nothing.

Hoping someone else was searching for new posts, I posted messages on my walls. Then, I proceeded to open accounts with every site I could and post on them, hoping that someone would stumble upon them. I sent messages to everyone on my friend list, texted everyone on my phone and my husband’s, and sent a massive email via my and the publishing houses’ accounts. I ensured all my notifications were on so the phones or my laptop would notify me if anyone replied.

I didn’t think about how futile everything I’d done was until I sat on the sofa, flipping through channels. More than half of them were off the air, but most weren’t, to my amazement. The channels that no longer broadcasted reminded me that the world would soon be without power. No one could access the internet, Facebook, or email at that point, so what I’d done had been a waste of time. For all I knew, parts of the world were without power at that very moment.

“Well, shit,” I said and tossed the T.V. remote onto the coffee table. “What do I do now?”

For one, stop being overly dramatic, I told myself. It wasn’t a waste of time because the electricity was still running. Yeah, it might go out tomorrow, but it might also stay another week. I planned to check online every hour to see if anything new popped up anywhere, and there was a good chance someone else was alive and doing the same thing. I mean, we were a society that lived on the internet. Someone will eventually see my posts, or I’ll see theirs if I keep looking.

Even so, I needed to start formulating a survival plan in case my situation became permanent.

I’d seen and read enough post-apocalyptic movies and books to give myself a starting point for prepping. The first question I needed to ask myself was whether to stay home and settle in for the long run or go on the road to find more people.

“I need to start dreaming of an old black lady sitting on her porch and telling me to come see her in Nebraska,” I said aloud as I paced my living room. “That would help me decide what I should do.”

I laughed a little hysterically at the reference before saying, “Nope. Don’t go there. You don’t want to be in that apocalyptic world.”

I went to the front windows and looked at my empty neighborhood for a long time, hoping something would happen.

When no clear idea came to mind, I told myself, “Before you start acting like this is the end of the world, you should be sure it is.”

“So, I’m hitting the road?” I asked.

I didn’t want to leave home. It was familiar and safe, but home lacked the answers I sought.

“You won’t find answers just sitting around here,” I told my reflection in the window.

Could I set out on my own? I wondered.

“Not yet,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s only been a few days.”

I left the window, and its view was nothing, so I went to the kitchen.

“Anything could happen in the next few days or weeks. There’s no need to rush things,” I told myself.

Saying the words aloud wasn’t comforting, not that I thought it would be. My mind spun with questions, assumptions, worries, and automatic reactions. It took me a while to force myself to calm down and return to my desk, where I opened my notebook and began making notes on the supplies I would need if the people didn’t come back, places I should investigate for answers, and options on where everyone had gone.

No place in the city could house all my town’s residents. Even if they were dead, I couldn’t think of a spot where the authorities would take them to bury them. They hadn’t burned them. The smoke from the bodies would’ve filled the air, and I would’ve seen it while I was looking for George on that first day.

That meant…

“What? What did that mean?” I asked aloud, looking up from my notebook.

“It means they aren’t on Earth,” I said, dropping my pen and leaning back, not believing I was saying the words aloud.

“Then where are they?”

“Heaven, a different planet, or a different dimension. Nowhere.”

“They can’t be nowhere.”

“But they can. There is a chance they have ceased to exist.”

“I can’t believe that. I won’t. I must find them.”

“I can try, but I must deal with the situation before me first.”

I sighed at myself and leaned over the table and my notepad.

The first thing I needed to do was stockpile water, medicine, toiletries, and the like. When the electricity stopped working, the toilets would stop flushing. The plumbing might still work if I added enough water to waste. I’d also need a way to bathe. The river was too far away to make a daily trip, but I had to keep it in mind when I ran out of water.

I wasn’t on any permanent medications, but I should stock up on what I might need and find a book on herbal remedies. As the available meds expire, I’d have to consider planting an herb garden.

Next, I would need canned foods and seeds, though I’d focus on eating perishables first, as they would go bad quickly.

My fridge and freezer weren’t full of food, so I had to load up as much as possible from the grocery store. After that, I’d need to eat the boxed stuff before the rats, mice, and bugs got into it.

My home was too big once it was just me, giving me plenty of room to store stuff.

On a new page, I started mapping out the house and deciding which rooms would house which supplies.

At one point in my planning, I stopped and burst out laughing. Soon, my laughter turned into a large sigh, and I put my head in my hands while simultaneously shaking it.

“What am I doing?” I asked.

I ran my hands through my hair and looked at the binder full of notes.

“This is ridiculous,” the more practical side of myself chimed in. “For all I know, everyone will come back tomorrow. Then, I’ll feel silly for taking such drastic matters so soon. I need to calm down and stop reacting. I need to think.”

I took deep breaths and tried to slow my thoughts.

The world had only disappeared two days ago. I didn’t know what happened, which meant people could return just as quickly as they left. No, I couldn’t put off stockpiling forever because I’d run the risk of desperately needing supplies and being in a situation where I couldn’t get them. I might be too sick to get meds during a snowstorm or run out of toilet paper with a stomach bug.

Granted, it was spring in the south, so the chances of it snowing hard enough and sticking around long enough for me to get stuck in it was next to zero, but if the world could blink out of existence the way it had, anything was possible.

“Okay, so I’ll pick up a few supplies each day while driving around looking for people,” I said, turning to a new page in my notebook to start a less detailed to-do list.

“Tomorrow, I’ll visit the police department and the hospital to learn what I can. While I’m out, I’ll pick up a few items.” I continued aloud as I wrote down a list of supplies I knew I was low on, like toilet paper, milk, yogurt, and coffee creamer.

With a plan in mind and my head racing with possibilities of what had happened to the world and what would happen, I made myself a grilled chicken salad for dinner. Once I ate, I resumed searching the internet for other survivors.

Hopefully, I’ll at least be able to connect with someone before we lose communication, I thought.

After searching and finding nothing, I began watching how-to videos on YouTube and researching everything I could, from sewing on a button to milking a cow. I also researched how to work a C.B. radio when we lose power. I reviewed instructions on how to dig a latrine and put up an outhouse. I dreaded that necessity, but the day was coming. I studied how to stitch up a wound and set a broken bone. I watched videos on how to clean, load, and fire several types of guns and how to prep my kills.

Next, I reviewed what fruits and vegetables I could grow in my area and what time of the year I needed to plant them. I printed schematics for building a greenhouse, a chicken coop, and pens for different animals. I wasn’t looking forward to becoming a farmer, but food would become an issue in a year or so. Most canned vegetables and the like could last past their expiration date, but they began to lose their nutritional value and taste as they did so.

I printed as much information as possible until I ran out of paper and grew tired of looking at the screen. I saved the rest as documents on my laptop. Again, I didn’t want to put too much effort into the project just in case I woke up the following day to find everything the way it should be. Still, I couldn’t risk waking up the following day without internet access and losing all the information available. I knew libraries were a fountain of information, but with so much going viral, I worried I wouldn’t have access to everything I needed at my local library, which was small and poorly funded.

With blurry eyes and a slight headache, I eventually put away my laptop and went to bed. James’ scent was fading from the sheets. That didn’t stop me from rolling onto his side and burying my face in his pillowcase. As I drifted off, I told myself to spray his side in the morning with his cologne. It wouldn’t smell exactly like him, but it would be close enough.