Channels: A Collection, page 6
Doing her best to hide her fear, Ginny helped Carolyn bring the toys into the living room to be placed under the tree. The two of them then went into the kitchen, where Ginny put a few Christmas cookies onto a plate and got them each a glass of milk. They snacked on the cookies together, both still silent, before heading up to bed.
Still feeling uneasy, Ginny asked Carolyn if she wanted to sleep in her bed, offering to put a movie on the TV for them to fall asleep to. Not wanting to put more fear into Carolyn, she did this under the guise of a special thing to do just because it was Christmas.
The two of them crawled into Ginny’s bed in their new Christmas pajamas and turned on the TV. Scrolling through Disney+, Carolyn chose Encanto to be their bedtime movie. They were both asleep before the Madrigal family began singing about how they don’t talk about Bruno.
Ginny woke up to the sound of a new movie playing on the TV. When she wiped the sleep from her eyes and focused on the screen. She didn’t recognize the movie, but it appeared to be thriller, something she really wasn’t in the mood to watch. She hit the display button to see that it was a movie from the 80s called ‘Hider In The House’. Reading the description displayed on the screen sent a chill up her spine. The last thing she wanted to watch was a movie about a man hiding in a family’s attic. She turned the TV off and looked over at her daughter, who was sound asleep. Looking past Carolyn, she could see on the clock that it was 2 am. She sighed and set the remote on her bedside table, laying back afterwards in the hopes of falling back to sleep.
She was just starting to doze off again but was startled awake by the sound of breathing. She didn’t have to turn over to know that it wasn’t coming from her little girl. It sounded like a large man. With her eyes wide open, she stared straight ahead towards her bedside table, afraid to move. She started to notice movement on the table. The TV remote looked like it was shaking or vibrating. She reached out to touch it, but before she could grab it, the remote flung itself across the room and into the hallway.
Ginny sat straight up in bed, staring out into the hall at the remote that now sat on the floor. She noticed a cold chill and the feeling of electricity in the air as she sat there. She was debating on whether or not to wake up Carolyn, but she didn’t want to alarm her.
Just then, the light in the bathroom turned on. Despite not wanting to wake Carolyn, Ginny screamed, waking her daughter.
“Mommy, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. You stay here.”
Ginny got out of bed and slowly crept down the hallway. She bent down to pick up the remote and noticed the pull string for her attic stairs was swinging around wildly. Staring at it with a dumbfounded expression, she screamed again when it dropped open, extending the fold out stairs which made a loud bang as they hit the wooden floor.
She turned to see Carolyn standing in the bedroom doorway crying.
“We let him in.”
Carolyn ran to her mother, who took her in her arms for a hug.
“Shh. It’s okay, sweetie.”
Still in an embrace on the landing, Ginny noticed movement in her peripheral. She looked down to see a man shining a flashlight in one of the downstairs windows. Her heart raced and she stood up, her hands on Carolyn’s shoulders.
“Stay right here, I’ll be right back” she whispered.
She ran into the bedroom to grab her phone. As she turned to head back to the door, she saw the shadow she had seen earlier in her rearview mirror standing in the corner. With the phone in her pocket, she ran back to Carolyn. She could hear banging on the door downstairs.
She looked at Carolyn, “I need you to stay quiet, baby. Okay? We have to hide and call the police.”
Carolyn nodded.
Ginny looked back to see the shadow figure standing in the bedroom doorway, pointing towards the attic stairs. Before she could react, she heard a window break downstairs.
“Come on, sweetie” she said, grabbing Carolyn’s hand and heading up the attic stairs.
Once Carolyn was in the attic, Ginny reached back, leaning down, and folded the bottom part of the stairs up behind her, almost falling in the process. She climbed the rest of the way up and lay flat on the floor, reaching down. She couldn’t quite get a good grip on the stairs to pull them the rest of the way up.
“Sweetie, I need to scoot up a little further. I need you to sit on my legs to make sure I don’t fall.”
Carolyn nodded and did as she was told. With a long reach, Ginny was able to grab the stairs and pull them up, securing the two of them in the attic.
Holding her finger up to her mouth in the ‘shh’ gesture, Ginny led her daughter to a far corner of the attic where they hid behind a stack of boxes. Being as quiet as she could, Ginny called 911. She could hear people walking around downstairs now, and she hoped they wouldn’t find them. The operator stayed on the line with Ginny as she dispatched police to the house.
About ten minutes later, Ginny heard a commotion downstairs. It eventually went quiet, and she heard the attic stairs being pulled down.
“Ma’am, this is Officer Vaughn. It’s safe for you to come out now. We’ve got the house secured.”
Relieved, Ginny and Carolyn both hugged the officer as they got to the bottom of the stairs. The officer informed her that two men had broken into the house. They were in the process of carrying things out to their truck when he and his back up had pulled up. His backup had arrested the men and taken them into custody. He was waiting around for a tow truck to come and take the burglar’s van to an impound.
Officer Vaughn helped Ginny get the electronics the men had stolen back into her house and helped her tape some cardboard over her broken window before he left. She thanked him profusely until the moment he left.
Once everything was settled and Carolyn had astonishingly fallen back to sleep, Ginny realized that the uneasy feeling that had weighed on her since they stopped at the cemetery earlier that night had gone away. She wondered if Carolyn had felt the same relief.
A few days later, when Carolyn was in school, Ginny took the day off work and drove back to the cemetery. Not knowing who, or what had followed them home from there, she found a bench near the middle of the cemetery and laid a floral arrangement beside it. Sitting on the bench, she took a deep breath and spoke.
“Whoever, or whatever you are. Thank you.”
She felt the wind blow through her hair and took it as a message received. Whoever the man was, he had saved them from danger.
Drink Before The War
I knew today was the day. I could feel it before I went to bed last night. I’m pretty sure my wife, Jenny, knew too. It was as if there was something in the air, an overbearing sense of the end coming sooner than we thought. I woke before she did, and I could see the sense of dread all over her face as she stirred from sleep. She looked at me, concerned.
“What’s wrong, Travis?”
“Do you hear that?” I asked as she sat up.
“Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. The generator is off.”
“Fuck. You think it was an EMP?”
I nodded. “Probably. That propane tank was full when we came out here. No way we’ve burned through it all already. Not with the way we’ve been conserving.”
The electricity had been out for a week now, but the generator had kept us going until this morning.
“Do…” Jenny began, pausing, afraid to finish her question. “Do you think it’s time?”
I nodded. Tears began forming in both our eyes.
The road that led us all here began shortly after the last election. A promising new leader stepped in and took his place. His campaign was full of promises and ideas that seemed to unite both political parties for the first time in decades. We were all filled with a newfound sense of hope and peace. Little did we know what was going on behind the scenes.
Over the course of the last four years, he’d managed to not only piss off some of the more powerful nations of the world with underhanded attacks, but he also alienated us from our allies. Talks of an upcoming war quickly arose, and the nation went into a panic.
Once the news broke that an attack on our country was confirmed, the shit really hit the fan. Riots broke out in the streets, people started killing themselves en masse, and crime rates skyrocketed. Jenny and I quickly decided to stock up on food, pack our things, and take the kids out to our vacation cabin in the mountains.
Not wanting to raise panic, we told the kids there was another pandemic. To us, this seemed like the best explanation for them. We came out here in 2020 to get away from crowds and society during the Covid pandemic. My son, Josh, was old enough to remember this. However, my daughter, Paige, was too young to remember, though she knew enough about it from stories we had told her.
Jenny and I spent the first week at the cabin doing our best to hide our shared state of panic from the kids while occasionally taking turns going back to the bedroom and listening to radio broadcasts with updates of what was happening. For that whole week, we held on to the hope that some sort of peace could be made, but every update seemed to pull us further and further from that hope.
At the end of that first week, the one radio station we were able to pick up out here went silent. At first, the lack of updates sent our anxiety through the roof, but over the course of the second week, we found not knowing to actually be a bit easier. There really was bliss to be found in ignorance.
There was a series of bad thunderstorms that hit about halfway through the second week. Jenny and I kept flinching at every thundercrack, thinking each one was a bomb or drone strike. Our panic increased when we noticed a man emerging from the woods towards our cabin. He looked to be in his early twenties and didn’t look as though he’d been walking terribly long. He was soaking wet from the rain and carrying a large backpack on his shoulders.
Not knowing his intentions, I quickly rushed out the door to approach him.
“Daddy! You don’t have a mask!” Josh yelled from the doorway.
I turned to see Jenny urging the kids inside and closing the door. Worry was painted all over her face. Even when I turned to face the man again, I could feel her watching me from the window.
“A mask?” the man asked.
“We told the kids it was another pandemic. Didn’t have the heart to tell them what was really going on. At least not yet.”
The man nodded, “I’m sorry to disturb you and your family. I rented a place out here for vacation last year. Figured it would be a good spot to hunker down. Headed out this morning hoping to find one that was empty, by my car ran out of gas a few miles back, so I walked the rest of the way. I promise I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, there’s a few more vacation cabins down the road. One of them is bound to be empty.”
As soon as I said that there was a loud crack of thunder, and the rain seemed to pick up its intensity. I could see the desperation in his eyes.
“Give me one minute,” I said, holding up my pointer finger before running back to the cabin.
Jenny opened the door before I even made it up onto the porch. “What’s going on?”
“He’s just looking for a place to stay. I’m gonna drive him to one of the other cabins. Hopefully, we can find one that’s empty.”
“How do you know he’s not-”
“I think he’s fine, hon. He apologized for disturbing us and was about to start walking again.”
“Take something with you in case he tries anything,” she said, running into the kitchen to grab a knife. I followed her into the kitchen and threw a few canned goods into a plastic grocery bag before grabbing the knife she was now handing me. With a laugh, I stuck it in my pocket.
I kissed her before grabbing the keys and going to the door. “Love you guys, and I’ll be back soon.”
I stepped outside, closed the door behind me, and gestured toward the car as I pushed the unlock button on the key fob. The man ran to the passenger side and let himself in.
“Thanks so much, man. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Well, I couldn’t just leave you out here to walk in the rain, and I couldn’t exactly let you stay here with us,” I paused, “no offense.”
“None taken,” he said with a laugh. “Name’s Eric, by the way.” He held out his hand.
I returned the gesture, “Travis.”
We sat quietly for a moment before I pulled out of the driveway and onto the gravel road. It was him that spoke up first.
“This was a good idea, you know. Bringing your family out here. Some bad shit is coming really soon.”
“How bad is it out there?” I asked, gesturing outside.
“You don’t even want to know. The whole country has gone mad. People trying to escape, trampling each other at the border. Even places like this probably won’t be safe for long. I just couldn’t stay out there anymore. We’re all… We’re all fucked, man.”
“I just hope it’s quick. You know, whatever happens. I don’t want my kids to suffer.”
“I can’t even imagine. For your sake, I hope so, too.”
I paused a few miles down the road at the mouth of the neighboring driveway. In the distance, I could see lights and what looked like a car sitting in the driveway.
“Figured they would be here too. They practically lived out here anyway.”
Eric nodded, and I continued driving. It was another mile or two before I reached the next driveway. As we turned up and approached the cabin, I was relieved to see that it appeared empty.
“I think we have a winner.”
“Thank god,” he said with a sigh of relief. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this.”
“Let’s make sure you can get in first,” I said, putting the car in park.
We both stepped out of the car and approached the front door. Eric tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. We both looked around the porch, the wood creaking beneath our feet as we checked beneath the floor mat and flowerpots lined up along the rails.
Finally, I lifted a large stone beside one of the pots to find a key sitting below it. I handed it to Eric and ran back to the car to grab the bag of canned goods I had brought for him. When I returned to the porch and stepped inside, I was surprised at how desolate the cabin was. It was dusty and looked as though nobody had stayed there for years.
“It ain’t much, but it’ll do,” he said.
“Here,” I said, handing him the grocery bag. “We couldn’t spare much, but I wanted you to at least have some food here.”
Tears began to form in his eyes as he took it from me. “Again, I can’t thank you enough. I hate that I disturbed your family in a time like this.”
“It’s really no problem,” I said as I turned to head back out the door.
“Wait. I, uh, have something for you… if you want it.”
I turned back to find him digging through his backpack. He pulled out a small burlap bag and handed it to me.
Taking it from him, I pulled out what was inside. It was a capped syringe full of a yellowish liquid. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Some sort of concoction. It’ll… it’ll bring things to an end quicker if needed. Some folks started making it when everything started going to shit.”
“Poison?” I asked.
“Essentially, yeah. Put it in a drink or some food. That should be enough for your family if you decide you… you know. Want to end things before they get ugly.”
“Were you planning to use it?”
“If it came to it, yeah. But after what you said in the car, not wanting your kids to suffer… I figured you might need it more than I do.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting that kind of weight to be dropped on me when I brought him here.
“How will I know when to use it though?” I asked.
He shrugged, “I wish I knew the answer to that. You might know when it’s coming, and you might not. Just figured you might want the option.”
“But what about you?”
“I’m sure there’s something in here I can use if it comes to it. I’d rather you have it. Especially after helping me today. Consider it my ‘thank you’ for proving to me that humanity isn’t completely dead yet.”
I drove back to the cabin with a heavy heart. I agreed with Eric that it could possibly be a good alternative, if necessary, but I didn’t even know how to approach the subject with Jenny. I was sure she would agree with me, but I knew she would hate herself for it. In the same way, I hated myself a bit for having even taken it from him.
I talked to Jenny about it after the kids were in bed later that evening. Just as I thought, she agreed but felt a huge pang of guilt for it. We decided together that if it came down to it, we would inject it into two of the chocolate candies she had made for the kids and give it to them. Then, we would wait out the end together, hand in hand, without having to watch our kids suffer in the process.
It was at the end of that second week when the power went out and the generator kicked on. We did our best to conserve power as much as possible, a task made easier by the fact that the warm summer weather hadn’t hit yet.
With the power out, we knew it was just a matter of time, so we spent the week as though we were on vacation. We played games with the kids, both inside and outside. We also watched movies together and even spent a few nights camped out in the living room together like we did when Josh was little. We just piled up couch cushions, pillows, and blankets in the middle of the living room and slept on the floor. They both seemed to really get a kick out of doing that. To them, it was roughing it.
It was as if we all forgot the reason we were there, at least for a few days. Jenny and I still had a sinking feeling in our guts that would never go away, but it subsided a bit, and we were able to enjoy our family, at least until last night.
We had just put the kids to bed after a few rounds of Candyland, and it felt as though a switch had been flipped. I was struck with a gut feeling and knew I would have to use the gift Eric had given us soon. That feeling was amplified this morning when I woke to find the generator had stopped running.
