Page 93 of The End of the World As We Know It
Dad, Russell, wasn’t much for attending Sunday church services—it was the one morning his work schedule allowed him to sleep in—but he was a faithful husband and devoted father. He coached his daughter’s softball team and taught Tommy how to field grounders and hit a curveball at an age when most kids were still batting off a tee. When he had time off from the sheriff’s office, he loaded up the bed of his truck and took the family on fishing and camping trips, as well as their annual weeklong vacation at the beach each August. Russell was a simple man. He didn’t drink. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t gamble. He was perfectly content to spend his evenings eating dinner with the family and making his own fishing lures at the workbench in his shed while listening to the Red Sox game on the radio. Every other Thursday night, he bowled in a league with friends from theneighborhood. He wasn’t very good, his average hovering around the 107 mark, but that did little to diminish his enjoyment.
Daughter, Jennifer, was two years older than Tommy. An honor roll student in school, she was a cheerleader in the fall and ran cross-country in the spring. Summers were spent at the pool and playing softball. She had a steady boyfriend (a nice enough fellow named Herb Cavanaugh, whose teammates on the junior varsity football team called “Pizza Face” on account of his struggle with acne) and a part-time job at the Scoop and Serve ice cream shop on Main Street. Jennifer was a pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair cut short into a bob and eager blue eyes that made her appear younger than her age. She was a voracious reader and enjoyed writing poetry. She was interested in astrology, and there was a stack of library books on her nightstand devoted to the subject. More than anything, she wanted to go to college to become a veterinarian. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d had a habit of bringing home stray or injured animals and nursing them back to health. Even now, her favorite book wasThe Story of Doctor Dolittle.
Tommy, who was tall for his age, and Jenn were often mistaken for twins when they were first introduced to strangers. Thick blond curls spilled over the boy’s forehead, framing a lean face highlighted by inquisitive blue eyes, full lips, and a prominent chin. His mother often embarrassed him in front of her friends by claiming that he looked like a matinee idol. He hated being the center of attention and usually made a quick escape from the room. Despite the rising popularity afforded him by his natural good looks and superior skills on the baseball diamond, Tommy was a loner by choice. He preferred long solo hikes in the woods to overcrowded weekend parties; reading science-fiction paperbacks in the backyard hammock to rowdy bonfires and school dances; and sitting alone atop the one-hundred-and-forty-foot water tower in the heart of Bennington to pretty much any other public activity.
Tommy couldn’t remember the title of the novel—it had been a loaner from the library, its tattered dust jacket a spiderweb of Scotch tape, that he’d read the summer he turned twelve—but he often found himself thinking about his favorite scene. In the midst of a worldwide alien invasion, the teenage protagonist of the book climbed atop a water tower located on a hillside in his small midwestern hometown and watched in terror as the arachnoid-looking space creatures made their approach from a nearby forest. Trees splintered and crumpled in the aliens’ wake, flocks of panicked birds darkening the sky. The earth beneath the tower trembled as the invaders drew closer. Power lines were ripped free from their poles and lay writhing and sparking on lawns and roadways like a legion of angry serpents. A gas station caught fire, the trio of pumps out front exploding one after the other.BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!Fingers of flames reached fifty and sixty feet into the sky—and still the aliens marched on. Even after all this time, Tommy could still picture every last detail inside his head. It was almost as though it had been a scene in a movie he had watched at the drive-in instead of a handful of pages he’d read at bedtime.
Several weeks later, after returning the book to the library—it was seriously overdue by that point and cost him nearly fifty cents in late charges—Tommy finally worked up the nerve to try to climb the water tower that was located only a half dozen blocks from his house.Trybeing the operative word here… because that initial attempt had ended after only two or three minutes of climbing and, at most, a thirty-foot ascent. He hadn’t lost his nerve at the last moment and chickened out, nor had he been caught by a member of the sheriff’s department and ordered to come back down. His hands had simply gotten too sweaty and his fingers had begun slipping off the ladder’s metal rungs. So, in the name of common sense and caution, he’d quickly aborted the mission, only to return several days later, wearing a pair of leather batting gloves he’d found at the bottom of his equipment bag.
And wouldn’t you know it, that minor adjustment did just thetrick—providing him with an ample grip to make his way up the ladder with the speed and agility of a spider monkey. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but you get the picture. There’s no one quite so determined as a twelve-year-old boy with a head full of dreams and not even a speck of fear of death.
Once he’d reached the summit of the tower—resisting the overwhelming urge to look down as he climbed—he’d discovered a surprisingly spacious welded steel platform waiting for him. Measuring nearly fifteen feet in length and almost as wide, the metal deck provided a breathtaking view of the town below, while also leading to a guardrail-protected catwalk that encircled the crest of the tower like a silver crown.
Both the deck and catwalk were splattered with yellowish-white splotches of bird shit, but that hadn’t bothered Tommy in the least. Feeling as though he were floating amid a dreamscape, he’d sat at the edge of the platform, legs dangling in the open air, and spent the next couple of hours surveying the town in which he’d been born in a way he’d never before imagined. The schools, churches, grocery store, and library; Henderson Memorial Park and the post office, bank, and ball fields; Hanson Creek and the paper mill and his house on Cedar Drive with his mom’s apple-red Toyota parked crooked in the driveway—they were all there, stretched out in sun-dappled glory in front of him, looking for all the world like the miniature town his grandfather had built in his basement to go along with his electric train set. Tiny cars and trucks traversed the streets below him. Even tinier people strolled along sidewalks and fished in the creek and picnicked in the park. At some point, the wind picked up, raising gooseflesh on his arms and blowing his hair into his eyes, and Tommy thought in a flush of absolute wonder:It’s like I’m God, sitting on a cloud, looking down over my creation.
A little later, when he realized he was going to be late for dinner, Tommy climbed down the ladder—forcing himself to take his time—and retrieved his bike from the weeds where he’d hidden it. He pedaledhome as fast as he could. His mother, standing in the kitchen wearing an apron, asked where he’d been and how his clothes had gotten so filthy. Not wanting to tell her a lie, he’d quickly replied, “Climbing a ladder.” His father, already sitting at the head of the table with his napkin spread over his lap, said, “You be careful, son. You fall and break an arm and your baseball season is over before it gets started.” Tommy nodded and sat down in the chair across from him. All of a sudden, he was starving.
On the night of his father’s death, Tommy’s immediate plan of action was to bury his father in the garden, recite a quick prayer because he knew his mother would have wanted him to, and then go back inside and clean up the mess inside his parents’ bedroom.
Only it hadn’t worked out that way.
Each time he’d entered the hallway and approached the bedroom—the buzzing of hungry flies piercing his brain with a maddening symphony—his body had betrayed him. With every step he took, his stomach roiled and his vision blurred. Then the floor beneath his feet began to tilt back and forth, and he was forced to make a hasty retreat. Three separate times he’d made the effort, and all three times he’d failed. During his final attempt, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon, his hands had begun shaking so badly that he’d fumbled the bottle of Lysol and roll of paper towels onto the vomit-stained carpet. He’d left them there and fled into the backyard.
After that, he’d spent most of the day roaming around town, the hot July sun beating down on his face and neck, suddenly desperate to make contact with another human being. He’d hiked all the way out to what was left of the roadblock on the highway, but it was no use. The town was silent and still. He was alone. The last man standing. Or in his case, the last boy.
Later that night, unable to summon the energy—or courage—to reenter the house, he’d gone to sleep on an old air mattress on thefloor of the shed. When he awoke the next morning, there was a stray fishing lure protruding from his bare shoulder. One final “fuck you” from his coward of a father. The last few weeks, he’d been having weird dreams and tossing and turning most of the night. He must have rolled over on it at some point and gotten snagged like a fat old catfish in Hanson Creek. He’d needed pliers and a splash of rubbing alcohol to remove the treble hook from deep within his skin. After several minutes of yanking and twisting, it finally pulled free. There was quite a bit of blood, but no tears. Tommy was convinced that after everything that had happened, he could no longer feel pain of any kind. His heart was too numb for such luxuries.
Not knowing what else to do or where else to go, he’d wandered downtown and climbed the water tower shortly before noon—and spent the remainder of the day on the metal platform. The view hadn’t changed much since happier times, but any sense of wonder had long ago abandoned him. He’d held on to a sliver of hope that from this improved vantage point he might be able to spot someone passing through, but was once again disappointed. Other than his father—“He’s a righteous man…”—it had been weeks since he’d seen another living soul, and today was no different. As evening approached, he’d thought he spotted a plume of smoke coming from somewhere to the east, but it was just some clouds. Finally, around eight, with his stomach growling and the jug of water he’d carried in his backpack drained dry, he’d slung the .22 rifle over his shoulder and scuttled down the ladder, not really caring if he slipped and fell. With the sun setting behind him, he made his way back to the house, smeared peanut butter on some Ritz crackers, and ate his dinner out back beneath the stars. When he was finished, he didn’t even bother trying to enter his parents’ bedroom. Instead, he sat at his father’s workbench in the shed and tried to find a working station on the radio. As usual, there was nothing but static. Once again, he spent the night on an air mattress on the floor. And once again, he dreamt of the old Black woman standing in the cornfield like an ancientscarecrow, a fat orange moon peeking over her bony shoulder. As midnight came and went, the dream slipped away and he finally settled into a deep sleep.
Two long years after Tommy’s maiden ascent of the water tower, in a brand-new world that had sprung from a nightmare, it was from that heavenly perch atop the viewing platform that fourteen-year-old Tommy first spotted row after row of black body bags lined up in the parking lot outside of Bennington General Medical Center; watched the parade of olive-green army trucks flood into town on Highway 9; scores of armed soldiers wearing gas masks going house to house, storefront to storefront, escorting frightened townsfolk to the overflow village of hospital tents that had been set up in the field behind the closed-down high school; the government bulldozers, tailpipes burping black exhaust, working day and night, digging burial pits in Henderson Park; and it was from that metal deck in the sky that Tommy felt the sting of acrid smoke in his eyes and smelled the stench of burning flesh—his mother’s yellow scarf tied snugly around his neck, covering his nose and mouth—as truckload after truckload of dead bodies were dumped into the trenches, set ablaze with flamethrowers Tommy had only seen before in movies, and eventually buried beneath mounds of dark earth.
Later, after the soldiers were gone—nearly eighty percent of them wiped out by the flu, the survivors fleeing for the Canadian border in a caravan of army trucks—what remained of the population of Bennington abandoned the makeshift tent village and returned to their homes to die. Or in some rare cases, toliveand try to make sense of what came next. There was no official count of how many townspeople had made it through those first few months alive, but the estimate Tommy overheard a deputy whisper to his father was seventy-one. Seventy-one men, women, and children were all that was left. Everyone else was dead.
On the morning of July 3—two days after he was finally able to muster the nerve to wrap up his father’s decaying corpse in a bedsheet and drag it outside into the backyard garden and bury it—Tommy opened a can of peaches for breakfast. A treat he and his dad had once saved for special occasions. Using his fingers, he ate the slices one by one until they were gone, and then he lifted the can to his mouth and gulped down what was left of the juice. When he was finished, he shoved a granola bar and a pack of beef jerky into his backpack, along with a full jug of water, a tube of sunscreen, and a pocketknife. After zipping it closed, he slung the pack over one shoulder and the rifle over the other, feeling a momentary sting when the strap rubbed against his blood-stained bandage (thanks to the damn fishing lure). Closing the backyard gate behind him, he cut across his next-door neighbor’s lawn, the knee-high grass swishing against his jeans.
He was once again headed for the water tower, but he wanted to make a stop at the library first. He hadn’t been in the mood for reading lately, but with his father gone and his days now free, he’d decided it was time to start up again. Something nice and thick, too. MaybeThe Lord of the RingsorDune.
Walking down the center of Cedar Drive, detouring around the occasional abandoned vehicle, he glanced at the houses on either side of the road. Many of the windows were boarded-up with sheets of plywood. Most of the curtains in the windows were drawn. Almost all of the front doors were marked with a spray-painted redX—verification that the home had been searched and cleared by the soldiers.
It used to feel eerie to Tommy… all those empty houses. His friends and neighbors long gone; the sound of his own footfalls deafening in his ears. But after a while, he’d gotten used to it. Just like he’d gotten used to the silence (there’d been a time when he would’ve done just about anything to hear the thrum of a lawn mower or a hot rod laying rubber on asphalt or the tinkling song of an ice cream truckcruising the block). His father hadn’t said much in the days leading up to his death, but therehadbeen some conversation.So, who would I talk to now? If a person stopped speaking for an extended period of time, did they eventually forget how to? Was that even possible?The idea bothered him very much, and without even realizing he was doing it, he began singing as he walked.
“I know I didn’t say I was comin down,
I know you didn’t know I was here in town,
But bay-yay-yaby you can tell me if anyone can…”
The song was called “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” by some guy named Larry Underwood, and in the days before the radio stations went dark, it was all the rage and climbing the charts. It wasn’t exactly the Beatles or the Stones, but it did have a catchy hook. For some reason, Tommy hadn’t been able to get it out of his head. He began to sing louder.
“Baby, can you dig your man?
He’s a righteous man,
Tell me baby, can you dig your man?”
In the beginning, news of the mysterious flu—or Captain Trips, as some members of the media had begun calling it with no real explanation—provided a constant source of fascination for a small-town kid like Tommy Harper. It was like something out of one of the science fiction novels he liked to read.
Each time a new piece of information appeared in the newspaper or on one of the television newscasts, Tommy was eager to discuss it with someone. The only problem was…who? His handful of friends from school couldn’t have been less interested if their lives had depended on it. All they wanted to talk about were the Red Sox andvideo games and what color bikini seventeen-year-old homecoming queen Tiffany Watson was wearing at the pool on any given day. His mother wasn’t really an option, either. She was a worrier, prone to cutting him off in midsentence and bowing her head in prayer every time Tommy brought up a depressing subject. His sister, Jennifer, was the worst of the bunch. Her boyfriend (“Pizza Face” to his pals on the football team) had recently broken up with her and started dating an older girl who was new to town. Jenn was devastated. If she wasn’t lying in bed, wiping tears from her face as she scribbled in her journal, she was sitting outside in the backyard with a box of Kleenex on her lap, eating ice cream from the carton and listening to sad songs on the radio. It had only been two weeks, and she’d already gained five pounds from eating away her sorrows. In her current state, she probably didn’t even know that there was a communicable disease making its way through numerous cities.
