A Bunch of Wild Thyme

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter I

A boy of six, thinner than he should have been, asked me for the thousandth time, “Where’d everybody go?”

Trying for patience I answered, “Bobby, please don’t ask me that again; or at least give it a rest for a while. I told you several times already, I don’t know.”

A girl of nine whose voice was thick with apprehension asked, “Do you think we’ll find food soon?”

Still trying for patience around the huge knot of a headache behind my eyes I had gotten while staring into the sun for too long I answered, “If we don’t we have some in the trunk Tiff. Don’t be such a worrywart; that’s my job.” We had been driving due east since before daybreak and the morning sun had been a laser beam into my tired, bloodshot eyes.

I heard Paul sniff the air and then point out the obvious by saying, “Dovie, the baby made another stink in his diaper.”

“Oh glory,” I mumbled silently to myself. Aloud I told everyone, “Alright, looks like we don’t have a choice, but oh well, we need to stop and give the Clunker a rest anyway and give everyone a potty break. I saw a sign that said there was a rest area coming up and it is supposed to have vending machines and security. If there aren’t any people there and the bathrooms have roll down security shutters, and aren’t too gross, we might just sleep in there instead of the car tonight. How does that sound to everyone?”

A chorus of cheers assaulted my ears and I finally understood why Mom would smile and answer why she worked with the preschool and elementary aged kids at church even though my brothers and I were long out of that age: “Because they’re easily pleased by the simplest of things.”

As I pulled off the deserted interstate and down the long entrance ramp I saw that there were cars in the parking lot; not necessarily a bad thing but potentially not a good thing either. I slowed down even further to ease through and then came to a full stop without turning off the engine in case we needed to make a quick getaway. When some crows startled away from a pile of something up on the side walk I gave a small sigh of relief and then shook my head. Not that long ago seeing a decaying DB – a dead body – would not have been reason to sigh in relief; but in this case it was. It meant that more than likely no one was around, at least no live ‘uns to peck at us the way that crow had been pecking at the DB.

“Paul you know the drill, switch places with me. I’m going to get out and check to see if anyone is around. If you hear anything you take off and just keep going. I’ll do what I can to catch up … if possible.”

Paul knew the drill all right but at ten – even a ten that was tall enough to reach the pedals on the Clunker and make it go – it wasn’t a sure thing that he’d have the discipline necessary to do what I asked. He tried to start his usual twenty questions. “What happens if …”

“We’ve already talked about all the what-ifs Paulie,” I reminded him.

Paul turned white – like he had all the times before – but crawled from the front passenger seat into the driver’s seat after nodding while I climbed out of the driver’s side window … the door wouldn’t open as the Clunker had been getting souped up to be a stock car when I liberated it from Arturo’s Auto Salvage. And – like all the times before – the Glock .357 felt huge in my hands as I went to make sure the coast was clear while at the same time feeling totally inadequate to protect us all. I took the Glock off of a dead security officer at some other rest stop way in the heck behind us the first few days on the road and have already had to use it more than once. The thing kicks like a mule and is louder than said kick landing on an empty metal shed; no, I didn’t want to be forced to use it and draw unnecessary attention but I would if I had to.

We were in luck, in less than ten minutes I was back to the car. “Paulie, pull in the handicap space. Not like we are going to get a ticket for it. You’ll need to keep the kids in the security office until I can clear the girls’ bathroom out.”

“Again?! Why can’t we use the men’s bathroom this time?”

“Because there are only two DBs in the girls’ bathroom and about six or seven in the guys’ bathroom and I’m not scrapping up anymore DBs than I have to that’s why.”

Paulie and Tiff got Bobby, Lonnie, and Corey out and moving and I grabbed Baby, Mimi, the diaper bags, carry-on, and the bag of toys. “Tiff, grab the quilt please.”

“Got it already.”

I sighed, “Thanks. Dat gum it’s like going on safari every time we get everyone out of the car.”

Paulie and Tiff looked at each other and rolled their eyes because I said that almost every single time I had to get the whole kit and caboodle of them out at the same time. The Clunker felt more and more like a clown car with each passing day; it was only supposed to seat five but we had eight in there including three car seats. Definitely not fun.

The rest area was one of the newer, fancy ones with a welcome station in it. That usually also meant a few extra amenities and upgraded goodies in the snack area and I meant to find out if this one had anything left but not until after I cleaned the bathroom. Luckily there were plenty of cleaning supplies in the janitorial supply closet and one of those hand pumps near the doggie doo run so that we didn’t have to breathe straight bleach all night.

I knew the kids were letting off some steam by running around but they weren’t being loud about it so I let them go. Tiff and Paulie knew when to stop them before they got too loud but it totally sucked that I was asking a 10 and 9 year old to do that job for me. Heck, it sucked to be 16 and playing mother to 7 orphans one of whom was an infant that was maybe three weeks old that Mimi had found in a trash can at a gas station bathroom. She thought it was a doll until it shivered and tried to cry. Crap, that was a nightmare I never want to repeat. We spent like two days there waiting for the baby to die. The kids were all crying and praying that God wouldn’t take the baby too and … just crap you know? And now the baby is like their mascot or something; only like Mom used to complain, my brothers and I would play with our pets but it was she who had to feed and clean up after them. And I’m worried I can’t take care of something so little and that it will live.

I never did find any kind of trail or body or nothing on who the mother could have been. Mother … yeah, right … biologically maybe but no other way. Poor little baby boy even had the umbilical cord and all the other junk still attached. I didn’t know what the frick I was doing but that baby’s guardian angel must have been guiding my hands because somehow or other the baby lived; but, I don’t know if he’ll have any issues or not. He’s small – hasn’t even hit ten pounds yet – and doesn’t make a whole lotta noise. On the one hand I’m grateful; on the other it likely means nothing good. Infants were never my thing and I haven’t found a book yet to tell me what a baby is supposed to be like its first few weeks. At least he is pooping now because he wasn’t doing much of that – or peeing – in those first two days. Didn’t have a bottle at the time because Corey had just started to use a sippy cup at the camp so I had to feed him a drop at a time off the end of my little finger. I finally scalded out an eye drop bottle I found in a box of kids’ cold medicine in the gas station’s merchandise area and dropped the formula in that way and finally he started using his diapers for more than modesty. Then came the Jiffy Mart that had real bottles and nappies small enough they didn’t come up to the poor thing’s ears.

As bad as things are we could be a whole lot worse off. Hard to imagine but definitely true. Especially considering what got us here in the first place.

[nancy98]

Thanks Kathy

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter II

I went to go check on the kids and found them arguing. “What?! I can’t leave you curtain climbers alone for a few minutes without it turning into the Hatfields and McCoys?”

Tiff and Paulie knew I was being sarcastic even if they didn’t exactly get the reference. Paulie answered, “The littles found a bunch of box drinks and some granola bars when they started pulling open drawers looking for something to draw with. Tiff and I told them they’d have to wait until you said it was OK to have them. They were getting tired of waiting and wanted one of us to go get you.”

I rounded on the younger kids and gave them the eye, not to scare them but to remind them of the rules with a little bit of grouchy force. “And I suppose you all just forgot that when I put you someplace you don’t go wandering off by yourself?”

Bobby complained, “But we’re hungry.”

“So am I but you don’t eat something until it has been checked out and you don’t go wandering off. And you don’t argue with Paul and Tiffany. Period. Unless you want me to lock us all back up in the car ‘cause I can’t trust you.”

That was met with a round of loud, “No!”

“Then follow the rules. They keep us safe and together. Paulie have you looked at the food?”

“It looks OK. None of it is open or mouse chewed. The date on it is next year. The juice boxes are this year but not until like later this year I think.”

“You think?” I asked.

“Some of the numbers are all mushed up.”

I know it seemed weird and a little harsh for me to be asking him the questions when it would have been faster for me to just go and look myself but Dad taught me that way – he said it encouraged critical thinking skills and it gave me experience I wouldn’t get if he and Mom did everything for me. I was trying to follow his example since I considered it about as good as it gets; besides it hadn’t hurt me any to be raised that way. Plus all those child care and development classes I took since I was twelve basically said the same thing. I still double checked behind him because ten is like ten and I didn’t want any of us to wind up with the pukes or runs because Paulie made an accidental mistake.

He’d told me right so I told him, “Good deal Lucille; everything you said was key-rect.”

Tiff giggled because she thought it was funny that I’d say that to Paulie who was a boy. Paulie just rolled his eyes but gave a pleased little smile at the praise. I felt bad for asking so much of him and Tiff but there was no way we were going to make it if I didn’t get at least a little help.

We’d been surviving on things like granola bars for a while so I knew the drill; as soon as they finished eating the kids would get jacked up, then cranky, and then crash and burn. I got out of the way and let it happen by moving the bedding we had to the bathroom which smelled very antiseptic after my thorough scrub down. There was sort of sofa thing in the security office that I took the four cushions off of: three seat cushions and one long back cushion all of which were covered in this vinyl slash fake leather crud that was meant to be easily cleaned but in reality looked three-quarters gross even though it had to be as new as the building was.

Looking at Tiff who had volunteered to help me to get away from Mimi – who was actually her biological sister – who was getting foul I asked, “Think we can make it work so that everyone gets something besides a tiled floor to sleep on?”

She looked like she was asleep on her feet just like the rest of the kids. “I hope so. I’m tired.”

I nodded feeling the same but keeping it to myself since I had to be the grown up. “OK, let’s see. Baby will be ok in that rock-a-roo thing I brought in from the trunk. You can take one of the smaller cushions. Paulie and Bobby can sleep together on the long cushion. We’ll put Lonnie on a small cushion and then Mimi and Corey are small enough that they can share the last cushion.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll grab a chair or something from some place. I can’t go to sleep yet anyway; I need to look around and see if there is more than those drink boxes and granola bars and after that I have some thinking to do.” She was too tired to even be curious.

After I got everyone settled they pretty much started to doze off. It wasn’t even dark outside yet even though it was overcast on top of everything else but they were all exhausted because of the bad diet of camp food like Luna Bars and canned junk I’d been forced to feed them the last few weeks.

“Paulie?” said getting his attention.

“Yeah?” he answered leaning against the wall like he intended to stay up with me.

I shook my head. “Just get some rest. I’m gonna be a while. You know what I gotta do.”

“Yeah,” he said again trying not to think about it. “But …”

“No buts. I’m gonna drop the door all the way so don’t spazz if you hear me coming back in or hear me breaking into the vending machines. I’m like dying for a Coke or Mountain Dew even if it is warm as the car’s dashboard.”

He said OK but I knew he’d fight going to sleep for a while yet. He wanted to help so bad, had been forced to “man up” way before he was ripe for it, but at least every once in a while I could give him a little extra down time. I was hoping it was going to be one of those times that night.

My first stop was the welcome desk to check the map to see about how far we were from Little Rock and what would be the easiest way to detour around the city. We’d already come a long, long way but there was still a long way to go. I wasn’t sure if the Clunker was going to make it where I needed to get to; I’d already almost lost a finger trying to change the belt on the stupid thing and that only happened because it pooped out right in front of one of those auto stores and the guy there was willing to trade a couple of the pieces of jewelry I’d been collecting from the DBs as we went in exchange for the belt … but his asking price for some help was too high.

Then there was the issue of fuel. I had four gas cans in the trunk that I kept filled as often as I could scrounge something to fill them with but sometimes I emptied all four and was sucking fumes out of the tank too before we found the next supply. We’d gotten real lucky thus far and never actually run out of gas but I’d learned the hard way that luck was just an illusion that tended to evaporate at the worst possible moments.

I put thinking to the side until later so that I could focus on combing through the connected buildings and then it would be time enough to do the really gross stuff.

[debralee]

Thank you Kathy. This girl sure seems to have her hands full.

[Siskiyoumom]

Thank you for the new story! The young lady sure has a lot of responsibility for such a young thing. Lood forward to the next installments.

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter III

I scrounged through all of the hidden places in the rest area and there were a surprising number of them that the public didn’t realize was there. Offices for the welcome center, space for the security area, closets for the mechanical and janitorial supplies, a break room for the people that manned the place, etc. I piled everything that even looked useful by the roll down door of the women’s bathroom. I came back one time to find Paulie and Tiff pulling stuff in.

“I thought you guys would be sleeping.”

“We were but Baby pooped again and for somebody that doesn’t make much noise a poopy diaper can cause him to make the most noise he does and in the bathroom that is loud.”

“Tell me about it,” I said snorting. Making a sudden decision I told them both, “I think we’ll stay here another night after this one.”

Paulie asked, “Why?! Is something wrong with the car?”

“Easy Buddy,” I told him. “Nothing that I know of; it’s just that there is enough here that we can eat for another day and save the stuff we have in the trunk and still be able to cart some of it away with us, but I need time to clean out the Clunker and rearrange everything to get it to fit. Plus with the hand pump back there I want everyone to get a bath and see if maybe we can wash out some clothes and get them dry before we have to pack them up. I haven’t even popped open the vending machines yet because I gotta figure out which key in the guard room opens those security gates. I’m also gonna see if any of those cars in the parking lot have gas in them so we can top off and I don’t have to hunt up a town; I do not want to go through what we had to go through last time.”

They both shook their heads solemnly. I had killed a couple of men in that town and I don’t suppose I need to explain why. They said if I did what they wanted they would let us go. I was all prepared to go through with it and hang the consequences then I heard them snickering about Tiff and Mimi being next and how the boys might be interesting too. They were sadistic whack jobs and even though they had taken the gun they hadn’t taken my brain; a chunk out of a broken storefront window became my weapon. It wasn’t quick or clean or easy like they show in the movies but it was necessary and I don’t think my parents would hold it against me. I just don’t want to have to do it again if I don’t have to.

Paulie and Tiff didn’t really understand the nitty gritty of what the men had wanted but they had known whatever it was, it was bad and wrong. I knew one of these days they’d ask for an explanation and I dreaded it. What a sucky way to learn about sex.

And thinking of that sucky experience led me back to the beginning once again and I used it to occupy my mind while I rifled through the pockets and packs and cars of the DBs taking what I found that would be useful without weighing us down … anything was better than thinking about what I was doing. There were too many dead things these days, too many all over the place. That’s what war always turns into … dead things.


The first dead I had to learn to live with was my dad and both my big brothers. Dad had literally just completed his terminal leave and officially retired when they called him back to active duty because of his specialized training with some new high-tech, unmanned fighter drone. He didn’t fly them; he was an air traffic controller and monitored their interaction with manned aircraft.

My brothers were also in the military. Jack went into the Navy because he wanted to be a Seal. His twin, Jay, went into the Marines because he wanted to be a Green Beret. I bet they both would have reached their goals because they were determined and committed as all get out. That’s about all they had ever wanted to do. Instead neither one of them lived to be old enough to drink legal here in the States. Totally sick, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

I call Paulie my brother but he isn’t, at least not technically or legally if it comes down to it, even though he’s lived with me his whole life and always called my parents mom and dad. We were also born with the same last name and a lot of the same genes. Paulie is what is politely called a “whoops.” He is my paternal uncle’s “outside child” that was the result of a one night stand while he and my aunt were separated.

Uncle James was fifty-six when Paulie was born – almost twenty years older than Dad – and it was a huge mess back then but not worth explaining all over to a stranger. Suffice it to say that the woman that gave birth to Paulie wasn’t fit to scoop poop in a poodle factory and Uncle James sought and won custody of him before he was even born. But on that same day Uncle James had a heart attack so he asked our family to take Paulie in. Only when the time came that Uncle James had mostly gotten his health back and said he would take him back Mom and Dad didn’t want to give Paulie up.

In a way it was a relief for Uncle James, who though wanting to do the right thing, just wasn’t up for being the full time parent of an infant; especially with him and my aunt still in marriage counseling. So in the end while Uncle James was left on Paulie’s birth certificate as his biological father but he was never really more than an uncle, the same way he was to me. Aunt Lou – Uncle James’ wife – learned to love Paulie but it was a whole lot easier to love him as a nephew than it would have been to raise him as a son; at least that is the impression I always got when listening to adult conversations I wasn’t supposed to be listening to. This comes into play so keep it in mind.

My mother was a sweet woman and strong in her own way; you can’t really be a career military man’s wife without being strong because the life tends to chew some women and marriages up and spit them out in pieces. But losing Dad and both my brothers so close together in the first weeks of the war broker her; mentally and physically. It was hard for me to watch much less fully understand. It was also hard on Paulie who started having all sorts of issues with his beginnings that he’d never had before; issues that messed with his self-esteem. Personally I was confused about how I was supposed to feel.

Dad had raised me a certain way – with the real understanding of what it could mean being a soldier. I’d heard him have those same talks with Jack and Jay a bunch of times growing up trying to make sure they understood what the life they were choosing really meant. We were also raised in church so I wasn’t supposed to be afraid of death, knowing that it wasn’t the end but only a transition. I was supposed to understand that I’d see them all again and things would be even better when we reunited. I was being raised so that I was supposed to understand a lot of things but it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t sure I did and that I missed them and couldn’t even pretend that they were TDY and would be back eventually. They were gone from this life forever and I had a fragile mother and messed up little brother on my hands to take care of instead of someone taking care of me.

Part of me was really angry and it might only have been that anger that got me through that first month of waiting for all three bodies to be returned, making arrangements for the memorial service in Tampa where we’d lived for so long then having them shipped to the family cemetery in Bear Springs for a grave side service for the family up there. That’s when Mom decided to drop the bombshell that we would be moving to Bear Springs permanently to live in the old house where Dad and Mom had intended to retire to after Paulie had finished school.

Well didn’t that just put a tear in everything I had planned for my immediate future but Uncle Roe – my mother’s brother that now owns my grandparents farm except for the acreage where the house Mom inherited sits on – explained that it was for the best, that Mom would have family around to help get her through the long rough patch she was going to go through. Back to Tampa we went where we sold off what we wouldn’t need, packed up what we would, decided what to do with Jack and Jay’s belongings most of which Mom couldn’t bear to part with, said our good byes and then drove back to Bear Springs. I was fifteen but had been driving on the sly for a couple of years. Mom was just oblivious so when our extra driver backed out at the last minute I drove the rented moving van with Jack’s truck attached to a pull along and loaded front to back with what wouldn’t fit in the van while Mom followed behind in her car that was loaded with Paulie and what all we would need until we could get unpacked. I was honestly worried more about Mom’s state of mind than I was about driving the van with the pull along. All I wanted to do was get to Bear Springs and try and make something of our new life.

And our new living arrangements would have all worked out well except for Uncle Roe’s wife who was a witch, except switch out the w for a b. She was his third wife and I swear he would have been better off to have stuck with all the trouble he got from the first two combined than take on this woman and her messed up kids. But not only did he marry her, he adopted her kids though I never quite learned to consider them cousins the way I should have.

Aunt Frankie (as in Frances but she thought Frankie was cuter) was a Drama Queen. The woman could have taught it as an Olympic sport and was teaching her daughters to live the same way. Two of the three already had children but weren’t married. Jude – her son from her first marriage – was halfway salvageable when he wasn’t with his friends getting drunk and cutting up. The third daughter, Faith, was my age and was mostly Ok except she had a chip on her shoulder as big as Gibraltar and lived by the one-up-manship rule; since I could live with her always having to be the best we for the most part got through the day without bickering. Uncle Roe and Aunt Frankie had one kid together to complete the his, hers, and theirs family; Reynolds was Paulie’s age and I could have kicked his tail every day and never hoped to make a dent. I swear Jude drunk and at his worst was easier to deal with than Reynolds at his best. Aunt Frankie claimed Reynolds had Asperger’s, ODD, OCD, ADHD and a whole slew of other things known by their alphabet name but I had worked with kids that had all those things and none of them were as butt head mean as that kid is.

None of that compared though to the fact that Aunt Frankie was jealous of Mom for some unfathomable reason. She just couldn’t get over the fact that people loved Mom and felt so bad for her for losing her husband and two sons in such tragic circumstances. Add into that the government was giving us the runaround about survivor’s benefits and such and oh my Lord you would have thought that Mom had broken Aunt Frankie’s favorite toy – which apparently was the pity and attention that people used to give her for how awful Reynolds was.

And when Aunt Frankie wouldn’t do anything about Reynolds picking on Paulie I finally had to take matters into my own hands. First I talked to Uncle Roe about it and all he flat out said was that what Paulie needed to do was knock Reynolds on his butt and teach him that he wouldn’t be a good candidate to be bullied. Well that was a whole lot of no help. Reynolds was easily twice Paulie’s size; heck, Reynolds was almost as tall as I was and weighed more and all of it bully mean. Then I took my pride in hand and went to Jude who surprisingly did make an effort to keep Reynolds in check– when he was around which wasn’t all the time as he was twenty-one and working the fields of whoever could pay him in cash or barter. That caused a flap between Jude and Aunt Frankie who then blamed my Mom for saying something.

“No Aunt Frankie, Mom didn’t say anything I did. It was either try and do something in the family or I was going to go talk to the Youth Pastor for some help.”

“You wouldn’t embarrass me like that!”

Feeling pressured I told her the unvarnished truth. “Yes ma’am I will if that’s what it takes.”

And didn’t that float like a sack of stones in the middle of the Atlantic. Mom was getting more and more depressed and everything was at sixes and sevens. I finally told Uncle Roe that it looked like it was going to take more time than we had expected for things to settle down and that if he didn’t mind I was going to call Uncle James and see if we could go for a visit to get Paulie out from under for a while.

Uncle Roe to his credit said, “Don’t sugar coat it Honey. I know the kids are giving you a hard time. If Paulie was like you they’d probably ease back but the way that boy is, it’s like blood in the water for sharks. I’m about to set my house in order here right quick and it might be best if you all took a vacation so I can get-er-done. Them girls is going to have to get their baby daddies to support ‘em … that’s the cost of a roll in the hay. I ain’t funding their freeloading no more. Jude is finally outgrowing his idiot years, same as I did at that age, and might be worth something if I take an interest. He seems to enjoy the work so I’m gonna see if he won’t settle down and help me more here at the farm since Butch and Clewis seem to prefer working the oil fields in North Dakota. Faith is all set to go off to school next year which should keep her busy and out of trouble less she messes up with some boy though I’m thinking not as she seems to … well, never mind about that as that is a worry for another time. That just leaves Reynolds and I just don’t know what to do with the boy. If I send him off to a military school, likely between his grades and his behavior he’d just get sent home again and I’d be out all that tuition money. There’s a new program opening up at the state hospital where we took him those two times he got out of hand. I talked to his psychiatrist and she seems to think he is a good candidate for it. Now it will be just a matter of talking his momma into it.” I wanted to say good luck with that but didn’t as he was probably already thinking it.

So I made the call to Uncle James and he said of course so we drove – actually I drove while Mom slept most of the way – out to Orofino, Idaho where Uncle James and his wife moved after he’d retired from his architecture firm that he’d been a partner in for a long time. We lived in this little guest cottage and Mom seemed to perk right up.

Aunt Lou was fine with it for about three weeks but when my adult cousins came to visit bringing their kids who then raised the old scandal she started getting stressed out. Mom was back with it enough to notice and played nice and asked her if she minded if that we cut our visit short because we needed to look for work and there wasn’t much to be found in a place like Orofino.

Mom had always been good with the diplomacy end of thing and the way she phrased it saved face for everyone. Uncle James was so grateful that he hooked us up with some people he knew back in Phoenix where they were all from and we had housing and interviews almost before we knew it. Dad hadn’t been gone half a year and we were already on our third move.

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter IV


I liked Phoenix, I liked it a lot – the weather, the people, the architecture – it was all just really cool. And Mom was so much better that she was able to get a job in a church preschool program with a reference from Aunt Lou which was nice. It wasn’t quite the responsibility she had had at the one back in Tampa but she wasn’t exactly starting at the bottom either which was a boost for her self-esteem. And when Aunt Lou told some of her and Uncle James’ friends (aka rich business associates) that I was childcare certified in two states (Florida and Tennessee) and was willing to do the same work in Arizona I just about had more work than I could accept. I also developed another stream of income by cooking for people because apparently it was too hard for these busy folks to cook but too expensive to eat out every day. I got paid good money for cooking regular, every day food - about equal to what I was making babysitting - but with less time and effort invested in it.

I turned sixteen right after we moved to Phoenix and while Mom was quite a bit better she still was kind of in outer space when she wasn’t working; I don’t think she even realized I wasn’t going to school but was taking just enough virtual courses to graduate on time. I look older than I am so no one pitched a fit. All people wanted was someone who would work under the table for cheap, not draw attention, and who they didn’t have to worry about bringing the militias down on them – in other words someone that didn’t get the profilers nosey.

Actually I did get stopped a couple of times because of my looks but it was no big deal to whip out my passport and Arizona driver’s license that proved my citizenship six ways from Sunday. And being sixteen they couldn’t even make a fuss about me not being in school. The reason some people gave me the hairy eyeball was that one of my great-great-great grandmothers was Hawaiian while her husband was a red-headed Irish sailor. When she died real young, her only son was raised by his father here in the States. Mom was an ash blonde, Dad had dark auburn hair, and Jack and Jay took after both of them and were identical strawberry blondes. Paulie is a true red head just like Uncle James. I was like the reverse of the red-headed step child – my hair is tar black and I have slightly almond shaped eyes with dark skin – everyone assumed that I was the one that was adopted; it was a hoot to watch their faces try and come up with something polite when they found out I wasn’t.

The only thing about my personal appearance that I didn’t like was the fact that I had inherited the freckle factor. Only my freckles weren’t cute. When I was out in the sun too much I would tan really dark and then have these almost black freckles pop up in inconvenient places. I’ve learned to live with it but if I could change anything it would be that I would still tan, just without the mud spots.

As time went on we were doing fine and working through our grief the way Dad and the boys would have wanted us to. Paulie was thriving in the private school that went with the daycare that Mom worked at. Mom didn’t cry herself to sleep every night, just every third or fourth night. And while the survivor’s benefits were still in limbo on some pencil pusher’s desk up in DC some place, all the life insurance policies had been paid out so we could pay off bills including the funeral and moving expenses that we’d put on the credit card. Money was tight but at least there was money for the offering plate, food on the table, shoes on our feet, and a roof over our head. The duplex we rented was on a decent and quiet street and the neighbors weren’t too bad either. All in all things could have been a lot worse … then they did go that direction.

A lot of kids and people got sick at the church were Mom worked and where we had started attending services. The same was true of the attached private school that Paulie went to. Mom was one of the first to fall ill. The church school wasn’t the only place that was hit; several places in that general area of twon that had nothing to do with the church also seemed to be ground zero for a cluster of sick people. Then they found out what had happened was that someone had poisoned the SRP water treatment facility that serviced that section of the metropolitan area; it was some kind of waterborne viral material though they didn’t know what it was at the time.

It happened so fast. Mom’s kidneys were the first major organ to fail and then it was like dominoes after that. Paulie was one of only a small handful of kids from the school that hadn’t gotten sick. I came out of my shock that night to find that Phoenix wasn’t the only city that got hit. Phoenix was shut down, there was panic in the streets, the hospital staff didn’t know what to do with us; we couldn’t stay where we were yet they couldn’t send us out into the night to face the violence out there.

That’s when the feds stepped in. I would find out later that apparently they had had some idea of what was coming, just not where or how widespread it would be; they had thought they were prepared, they were wrong. In the meantime while they were figuring out just how wrong they were, they took Mom’s body for “autopsy” and hauled Paulie and I off to a special quarantine facility where they tried to separate us into congregate living facilities by age and sex. That lasted about forty-eight hours and after that the staff just gave up and let families figure out some way to room together so long as it didn’t cause a problem for administration.

About two weeks later some administrative type, cold and uncomfortable talking to someone obviously not an adult, handed me a small box.

“What’s this?” I asked her.

“Are you or are you not Dovie K. Doherty?” she asked by way of answering.

Not liking having my question answered with a question I answered her back with one just to be a pain. “Didn’t I already answer that question?”

I heard enamel grinding then her nostrils flared and her lips got all pinched up. “Those,” she said pointing to the box. “Are the remains of a Malissa K. Doherty. If you do not wish to claim them …”

She reached for the box and in my shock all I could do was back away from her holding the box like it was a bomb. She came at me twice with a slightly sadistic twist to her lips the second time until her co-worker said, “OK, it’s obvious the kid understands now. Leave her be.”

She turned to give the man a bored look but didn’t say anything aloud, only laid a sneer on him that would have done the Ice Queen proud. She looked at me, made a check mark on her clipboard, and then they pushed the cart out that held about three dozen little boxes like the one I held, and then continued on their way.

They stopped handing those boxes out a week later. They wound up having to collect as many as they gave away. Paulie and I treated that box with the same respect we would have treated Mom had she actually been there in spirit. It followed us through every move forced on us and right now is inside a bag at the bottom of my back pack.

During our tenure in that facility neither Paulie nor I ever got sick though we watched a bunch of other people in there die around us. Then they figured out how to test for immunity which they dubbed “T--” or what they called T Double Negative. Sure enough Paulie and I were both T--. There were variations on the immunity level such as T-, T-+, and T+-. I still don’t know what the negative and positives correspond to except they have something to do with amino acids and proteins and DNA. I do know that only roughly ten percent of the population here in the States is “double negative” based on factors that align closely to racial and ethnic hereditary lines.

It is when people noticed that that things started to get interesting. Who the virus attacked began to get a lot of play in the news and gave some clues to the origin of the virus, or at least the mindset of its creators. Pure European whites were almost universally susceptible to the virus to one degree or other, meaning greater than ninety percent of them had no built in genetic immunity. The same was true of most racially pure black African people. People of the Middle East swayed back and forth between the double negative and the positive or double positive. Jewish ancestry was just as mixed though leaning more towards the positive rather than any negative yet managed to have a lower mortality ratio for some unknown reason. But when it was really examined it was noticed that people of Asian descent leaned much more towards the double negative. That meant that Paulie and I had most likely inherited our immunity from Dad’s side of the family through our GGG grandmother.

The one people group that was almost universally immune were the Koreans who were genetically about as far from Africans as you can get. Eventually someone did admit that there had been some suspicion that the North Koreans were monkeying around with WMDs, including biowar substances, but it never got beyond a suspicion because everyone thought they were too inept to actually pull it off successfully. Wrong. Especially as it was found out that the Chinese had been helping them. Which of course just took things to a whole ‘nother level.

The war became a no-holds-barred brawl of worldwide magnitude. Three months and the globe was a great big seething mess of death and destruction along both political and racial lines. Then something caused a brief lull in the fighting. That lull turned into a pause. The pause lasted long enough for people to get a really good look around and they got scared. The war got put on hold while governments tried to secure their positions and the support of their citizenry. The war wasn’t forgotten but everyone was taking the time to lick their wounds and prepare for another round when the bell rang which everyone expected it to do sooner rather than later.

During that time is when the civilian population started going bonkers. No battles on TV to keep them glued to the graphic horror, no cause to keep them pacified and pliable. Their minds became occupied with what was – or was not in the case of food deliveries – going on immediately around them. Double negatives were viewed with part suspicion part envy. We were classified, tattooed, chipped, used to test vaccines, and then warehoused. Through it all I was able to keep Paulie and I together and along the way I just picked up the other kids except for Baby. We stayed separate from the adults who seemed to be a mixture of anger and panic 24/7; they tended to lash out at the least provocation. We had a small apartment area to ourselves and I made sure we stayed there. If we needed something like food or hygiene items I would slink down to the medical offices after the adults were all in bed and requisition them from facility staff who were more than happy to have us self-segregate since it made their job easier.

Eventually I noticed fewer and fewer staff around, fewer and fewer cars in the parking lot that was visible from our windows. I knew things were getting shaky and then one day there was a riot down in the adult wing, a fire that had me scared to death that we were going to get fried alive, then *poof* all of the adults were gone, including all of the security and medical staff.

[Deena in GA]

Great start! I look forward to seeing where this will go.