The Disappearances: Chapter 5
The Tellurian Series, Book 1
Chapter 5
When I got home that afternoon, I didn’t turn on the television or boot up my laptop. Instead, I went straight to the shower. I hadn’t handled the bodies at the hospital too much. Even so, my skin felt grimy. The water heater still worked, and I took the longest, hottest shower I’d had in a long time. That didn’t seem to help much, however. Even after a good scrubbing, I still smelled the sweet, decaying odor of the bodies.
The water may not have removed the smell from my memory, but it soothed the tension in my muscles enough that I could easily crawl into bed after eating a protein bar and fall asleep. Sometime in the night, I went to the bathroom. Feeling hungry, I grabbed some yogurt from the fridge before returning to bed.
The following day, I woke early and had a quick breakfast—I would need to stop and eat a meal soon, or I’d make myself sick—and was out the door at sunrise.
Before I could get to my car, a “Tweet. Tweet” broke the silence of the morning.
“Holy shit,” I said, nearly dropping my purse.
I spun around, looking for where the sound was coming from.
“Tweet. Tweet.” The sound came again, guiding me to a large Hackberry tree at the end of my front yard. Shielding my eyes from the morning sun, I looked up into the tree and saw a tiny bird singing on a branch.
“Oh my,” I whispered in fear of scaring the bird.
The bird chirped again. Faintly, I could hear another bird off in the distance calling back to it. Four heartbeats later, a third bird called out.
That time, I laughed, and the bird in my tree flew off. It’s call of fear got the attention of the others, and the next thing I knew, the air around me filled with birdsong. The sound was music to my ears.
Not all the birds were gone, I thought. Maybe they’d sensed what happened and gone dormant or quiet until they felt it was over.
Hoping other animals had returned if the birds had, I rushed back into the house to search for my kitties.
“Coco. Mia. Where are you, my kitty-kitties?” I called as I rushed to the laundry room where their litter box was.
I wasn’t surprised they didn’t come running when I called their names. They were cats, not dogs. Cats don’t care for much of anything aside from themselves. I went to the cabinet where I kept their canned food. Their food bowl was still full, but that wasn’t a deterrent to my hope that my cats had returned. They prefer canned food to dry stuff.
The sound of my voice wouldn’t get them running, but the smell of the canned food would. I made a big show of popping the can’s lid, tapping it on the counter, and emptying it into a bowl. It wasn’t until I set the bowl on the floor that I realized the cats weren’t coming. At the site of the empty floor, my excitement died as soon as it arrived. The cats were still gone.
Sighing in resignation, I tapped the bowl on the floor just in case and called their names one last time.
Nothing came of it.
Sulkily, I went to the backyard to survey the yard in case they had escaped the house. I didn’t dare call out for my husband or father-in-law, but I did call for the cats a few times.
Next, I checked to see if my neighbor’s dogs had returned. They hadn’t.
I’d hoped the birds were a sign that the people might be coming back. Judging that their song and my movements were all I could hear, I knew that wasn’t the case. Still, I couldn’t give up hope.
“Fuck,” I said, though I wanted to scream the word.
My voice sounded a bit rough to my ears. Of course, it would be. I hadn’t spoken that much aloud in—I didn’t know how long.
“All right. Laurie, you’ve got to start talking to yourself, or you’ll forget how to speak,” I told myself as I made my way to my car. “Remember, there’s no one around to make fun of you or think you’ve gone mad.”
Because I’m not used to conversing with myself, I didn’t say another word until I got to the police station.
“Hello,” I called as I pushed open the door of a building I’d never been inside. I’d been to the courthouse to renew my driver’s license and car tags, but I’d never been inside our police station.
The place didn’t smell like the hospital. No one had died inside during the disappearances, which made sense, considering the police would’ve taken an injured criminal to the hospital instead of bringing them to the station.
The police station was a bust. The officers had password-protected their computers, so I couldn’t get into them to read emails. None of the files I found had any information about what happened the morning of the disappearances. As far as I could tell, nothing abnormal happened anywhere on the planet before the disappearance occurred.
“Could it have all happened at once?” I asked, plopping down in a swivel chair. “I guess it’s possible. It would explain why I didn’t find any reports on the incident. Who could do such a thing? How could they do it?”
I looked at the desk I was sitting at and around at the nearby ones. One person proudly displayed a photo of their daughter at the Space and Rocket Center. I stared at the picture for a long time.
For the first time since that morning, a thought popped into my head that I hadn’t had before. The absurd thought caused me to laugh and sit bolt-upright in the chair.
“It couldn’t be. Could it? There was no such thing. I mean. I never believed we were alone in the universe, but surely that’s not what happened here. Why would they bother?”
I flipped through the papers on my desk for a second time, looking for reports of people claiming to see strange things in the sky. They might give me locations to visit for clues if such reports were present.
“Why would they take us all?” I asked myself, stepping to another desk. “Did they want our resources? Surely not. We’ve nearly used up this planet.”
I found nothing on that desk or the next.
“With everyone gone, though, nature can take over quickly,” I countered during my search. “The birds from this morning are proof of that.”
“But they could be a sign that whoever or whatever had taken everyone was gradually returning them?”
“Maybe, but…”
“It doesn’t feel likely,” I countered my thought.
“No. It doesn’t,” I replied to my comment.
Great. Now, I’m holding full conversations with myself. This wasn’t good.
Aliens were as good a theory as any other I’d had about what happened to everyone. However, I couldn’t figure out the point of abducting everyone. Unless… Yet, that didn’t make sense.
If it were aliens, and they wanted our planet, why leave me?
I didn’t doubt that I wasn’t the only human left, even though I had no proof at the time, aside from the dead bodies at the hospital.
Why didn’t they take us all? The deceased would’ve been easier to disappear.
Yet, their bodies remained.
“Unless those people died while the aliens attempted to take them, and the beings just decided they weren’t worth the effort.”
I leaned back in the oversized office chair and looked up at the ceiling in contemplation.
“That kind of made sense,” I eventually said. “As much sense as any of this made. I wasn’t dead or hurt when the disappearance happened. At least, I didn’t think I had been. So, how or why did they miss me?”
I thought back to what I’d been doing that morning. Nothing special. I wasn’t hiding or sleeping, nor had I been unconscious.
“They couldn’t have missed me. I was out in the open, just like everyone else.”
I didn’t know whether to feel left out or lucky they left me behind.
“I don’t want to think about this anymore. I have trash piling up,” I said, pushing away from the desk I was sitting at and leaving the station.
My next stop was the home improvement store for the burn barrel and other supplies. It was the largest and creepiest store I’d been to since the disappearances.
Wandering around a small pet shop hadn’t made me feel alone, nor had the hospital, despite its size. The hospital had actual people, dead ones, but still, people, and the pet shop had live creatures.
Walking through the home store’s aisles, I thought, That reminds me. I need to stop at the pet store again and feed the animals.
The vastness of the home store made me anxious, and my nerves made me rush through my shopping. I forgot things, but the store wasn’t going anywhere. I could return when I felt calmer.
Afterward, I stopped by the grocery store nearest my house to pick up food. Since I had the truck and there was no sign of life other than myself and the birds, I started the slow process of stocking up on supplies in preparation for whatever came next.
I didn’t know if I would stay in my home forever, but I didn’t plan to go elsewhere anytime soon. Eventually, I’d need to look for survivors, but I didn’t think I would until I knew my family wasn’t returning.
The smell inside the grocery store wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. Little had rotted with the power still on, but what had gone bad had started to smell. I’d have to be careful with fresh foods and the like. Even with the store’s frigid air preserving them, they’d only last for so long as would the stuff in the coolers. The canned and boxed foods and the items in the freezer would last longer.
I had a deep freezer in the basement that stayed empty now that Tanner wasn’t living at home. I’d stock it full of things I could freeze to help them last longer—bread, sandwich meat, frozen fruit, chicken, and sausage. I even grabbed milk. I wasn’t sure one could freeze milk, but I would try it.
I didn’t bother too much with dry goods for obvious reasons.
After gathering the groceries, I perused the non-perishable aisles for toilet paper, medicines, and cleaning supplies I would need soon. For the time being, it looked like I could run out and grab whatever I needed whenever, but I felt better knowing I had stuff on hand.
Once I’d overloaded the truck with supplies, I returned home to put it away and have a late lunch. I rested for a bit after my meal. I tried not to think about what was happening. I tried not to think about the future either. If I were the only person on the planet, humankind would be doomed. Even if I wasn’t, we were doomed if there weren’t women younger than me among the survivors.
Having kids my age wasn’t unheard of or impossible, but it wasn’t ideal. The risk of congenital disabilities and complications during pregnancy and delivery rose. Not only that, but I didn’t want to have another baby. I wanted my son.
My husband and I hadn’t wanted children, so finding out that I was pregnant with Tanner was a shock. Afterward, James had a vasectomy. We love our son. We raised him the best we knew how, and he turned into a lovely young man, but I wasn’t the mother type. Nor did I like having another being relying so much on me. I didn’t enjoy having to schedule my life around him. Don’t get me wrong, I did it and didn’t make him feel unwanted, but having kids wasn’t part of our plan.
I liked watching him play sports or curl up on the sofa for weekend cartoons. I attended school plays and all the other things he participated in. However, I was also selfish, mostly wanting to read on the weekends, sleep in, stay up late, and come and go as I pleased.
I wouldn’t give Tanner up for the world or change anything, but I was also glad he was an only child and happy to have a quiet house after he moved out.
To my knowledge, Tanner never knew how I felt.
All that seemed petty as I sat alone in my house, but it didn’t change how I felt. I hoped that the future of humankind didn’t sit on my shoulders.
Okay, so that’s a lie. I’d do my part. If possible, I’d have more kids. I’d raise and love them, but I didn’t want to.
That train of thought depressed me, and I told myself I needed a thought change, so I set up the burn barrel outside. The instructions said to ensure I placed the barrel in a clearing to prevent sparks from catching something on fire, so I erected the barrel on the road. Of course, I didn’t put it in the center of the road. I put it close to my curb, but not close enough for sparks or debris to reach my grass.
The barrel had a lid that would help prevent sparks from flying, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The last thing I needed was to burn down my neighborhood.
Although the barrel I picked up had legs to keep it off the ground, I used bricks to give it extra height and stability. Next, I put a small bag of trash—all burnable items, the rest I would have to carry to the dump, but that could be an every-two-weeks trip—in the barrel and set it ablaze. I hadn’t used too much kindling, so I couldn’t burn too much at once. The small load let me ensure I had a fire I could control.
I almost forgot the fire extinguisher while I was out shopping. Luckily, I saw it on a shelf as I neared the exit.
We had one in the house, but I wanted one that would stay outside with the barrel.
While my trash burned, I sat in a lawn chair near the barrel, reading a book and resisting the urge to get out my laptop. I’d check my social media sites and email before bed, but right then, I needed to relax and not think about the world around me.
Once the fire in the barrel died, I went into the house and had supper. Afterward, I showered to remove the smell of smoke from my skin and crawled into bed with the laptop to see if anyone had replied to my messages or posts.
No one had.
The news sites stayed the same.
I was alone.
Despite that, I decided to send another message to everyone on my friend’s list and make another post for my social media pages. In my post, I wrote about what happened those first few days, including finding my husband’s empty car and what I found at the hospital and police station. I also didn’t add my theory that aliens might be behind the disappearances. Nor did I include my location. Yes, I wanted to know that I wasn’t alone, but I also didn’t want a pervert or crazy person showing up at my doorstep.
The smoke from the burn barrel would draw attention to my location, which I hadn’t thought about then, but I had to take the risk. Besides, if I were lucky, the survivors it drew to me would be decent people wanting to survive and figure out what was happening, not assholes bent on claiming the world for themselves.
James would laugh at how bent out of shape I would get over a book I was reading with such a character. Someone always saw devastation as an excuse to take what they wanted, enslave people, and be a dick when they should be working to rebuild the world. I couldn’t comprehend that mindset. I never understood bullies, rapists, or dictators. The world in their heads, which they think exists or should exist, never worked out in their favor, and they just fucked things up for the rest of the world. Not only that, but they all eventually fell, usually due to a horrific death.
I finished my post, begging someone to contact me soon before the internet went down, the power went out, or I went insane. After I hit “post,” I surfed a bit, listening intently for the notification ding to signify that someone had responded, but no one did.
Sometime later, I shut down the computer and curled up under my blankets with a glass of wine and a paperback. I’d only gotten ten pages into the romance before I had to set it aside. I’d picked up the novel, thinking it would be a light, happy read and nothing that would remind me of what was happening in my world, but the story only made me miss my husband. Tears burned in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I’d cried enough.
