Monk - Hells Children

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John

F ourteen-year-old Jack Ferris shoveled another scoop of dirt onto his moms grave. Two feet to the right was his dads shallow plot, dug weeks ago by his mom while she still had the strength.

He leaned on his spade and surveyed the work through eyes red from crying. Neither grave was even close to deep enough, but he doubted if such things mattered anymore. The world had gone to hell, it liked it there, and it wasnt coming back.

Love you Mom and Dad, he said.

Jack grabbed his coat and the .40 caliber pistol resting on it and climbed the short flight of stairs to the deck of their modest corner townhouse in Centreville, Virginia. Standing there in his t-shirt, breath steaming in the frigid November air, he scrutinized the road that looped through the neighborhood. Nothing to see but a row of cars on either side covered with leaves from months of sitting idle. Well, that and a Volvo the Asian kid five doors down had plowed into a tree. That was yesterday. Jack hadnt seen the crash, but hed heard it. Scared him to death. Hed run out with his pistol thinking it was the food gang coming to make a go at the house. Instead of the food gang, hed seen his neighbor climb out of the car, fall down, get up, and then stumble out of sight.

Jack hadnt bothered to check if he was all right. What would be the point?

All the townhouses in their row of eight had sliding glass doors. The neighbors door two units down had been smashed in long ago. After that, Jack and his dad had boarded up their own door using fencing from houses where people had died. Theyd run the boards vertically, allowing only a narrow opening to get in and out.

After a last look around, Jack slid the door open, then carefully stepped over the dark towel stretched over the floor like a mat. Lurking beneath it were three boards hammered through with about fifty nails.

Months ago, in noble acceptance of their looming deaths, nuclear workers everywhere had preemptively shut down reactors. Weeks later, the coal plants followed when nobody was well enough or willing to work. With the electricity out going on two months, the house wasnt just dark, it was cold. About forty degrees.

Jack tried to imagine the small kitchen without his mom standing there in her apron doing three things at once. His dad should have been sitting in his leather recliner reading out loud from whatever hed picked up, regardless if anyone was interested. Thats how hed beencouldnt enjoy something unless everyone was involved. Both parents had been Jacks world in ways other kids could never understand. And though hed known since his seventh birthday that theyd die one daybecause theyd told him sothat knowledge didnt ease his pain one bit.

Jack grabbed the flashlight from the stainless steel island and stalked angrily through the living room. With barely a glance at the boarded-up windows, he went upstairs to yet more shuttered darkness, in search of the rest he needed but wouldnt get in that too-quiet house.

In the beginning, when his parents stopped going to work for fear of getting sick, theyd guessed rightly that trucks would stop delivering food to the supermarkets. Theyd further assumed desperate people might take from others if it meant their families could eat. As the Sickness raged, it quickly became obvious the quarantines were useless. In the end, the news people on TVvisibly sick through their heavy makeupas much as said so. Everyone got sick, but only kids ever recovered, and only about twenty percent. Thats how it worked. Adults and the older teenagers wasted away over a course of weeks and months, and then they died.

The electricity lasted a little longer than the newscasters, whose final broadcasts turned bleaker and bleaker. Scientists had learned a little bitthe Sickness was a metabolic disease that attacked the mitochondria in cells, interfering with their ability to turn fuel into energy. But though they got better at describing in detail the effects of the disease, they never found a cause. No pathogen or poison had been discovered, leading one flustered contributor to refer to it as a curse, and not a virus.

As the adults disappeared, gangs of kids emerged, going door to door demanding food from those too sick to resist. In response, Jacks parentsstill in the early stages of the diseasehammered up the boards, established a watch rotation, and made sure all three floors had a gun: rifles upstairs, and pistols on the main floor and basement. An emergency hoard of beans and rice kept them fed while most of the world slowly died from not just the Sickness, but starvation.

If only the Sickness had killed in a week, the adults would have left behind a world of packed supermarkets and pantries. But the disease could take months to kill, and the food disappeared.

Pounding on the front door shook Jack from his troubled doze. He knew instantly who it was, but peeked out his parents bedroom window to be sure. Standing in the street facing the house was a group of teenagers ranging between twelve and fifteen years old. There were also three cars and a yellow Humvee that hadnt been there before. Each boy or girl was armed. One of thema tall, redheaded boyhad a carbine of some kind slung around his neck like a Marine. Probably an AR-15, like the one Jacks dad had. Serious firepower.

The redhead cupped his mouth and shouted something.

Jack unlatched the window and raised it all the way up.

The boy shouted again: Hey! In the house! He reached through the window of one of the cars and honked the horn.

Some laughed at that. Some didnt.

The boy was so big, it was amazing hed survived the Sickness, unless he was just a really large fifteen year old. His voice carried a sense of confidence and power, and his friends seemed to defer to him in their body language. It also helped that he had the coolest gun.

Jacks father had taken him deer hunting four years straight, the last time a year ago. Hed let Jack bring down a buck of his own on his tenth birthday and then made him field dress it. Shooting the older boy with his dads rifle would have been the easiest thing in the world. The thick boards over the windows were spaced for concealment and protection while allowing a clear view of the front yard and street. If he shot him, the rest would scatter, and hed be safe. Sooner or later, though, standing watches alone with no sleep and trying to guard two entrances would take its toll. Also, he wasnt sure he was ready to kill someone. Not in cold blood. Which was why hed decided to leave. With the burials concluded, hed hoped to slip out early tomorrow, start fresh, but there was zero chance of that now.