***
Pounding woke me out of a sound sleep - what felt like minutes later. It was still grey when I woke, but the sun had come back up, so I must have slept through the night. I looked around, feeling disoriented, and cold. My body felt stiff and foreign to me, which made sense when I looked around and took stock of my surroundings. Like the toddler, I had fallen asleep outside on a lounge chair.
“Who’s banging on the door?” I heard a male voice say. Rock. His voice was coming from behind me. I turned my stiff neck, rubbing it with my hand to try and loosen my sore muscles. My fingers were having trouble functioning, but when they made their mark it felt hard and dry. The air, I thought, pulling my hand away quickly.
“I don’t know - I’ll go check.” Another male voice. Tad. Then footsteps tracking through the house to the front door.
Slowly I stood up and stretched. Man did I drink too much yesterday, I thought, taking in the overall damage to my body as I moved slowly inside, feeling like a slug doused in salt.
“Are you Tad Sanders?” I could hear a smothered male voice saying. When I got to the front door there was a policeman with a gas mask on, standing there, clipboard in hand. He didn’t look happy.
“That’s me sir, what can I help you with?” Tad was leaning on the doorway, rubbing his forehead. He must have a hangover too, I thought, taking up station across the door jam from him, leaning against the opposite wall.
“We need to do a person count. The island is being evacuated. I’m checking to see how many people are here so we know which shelter to send you to.”
“Shelter.” Tad repeated, looking over his shoulder at the open back door, taking in his surroundings like he’d just woken up at the front door, instead of wherever else he had just come from. He shook his head to clear it.
“We have five total. Four adults and a three year old,” came Joan’s voice from over my shoulder. I turned to look at her, expecting to see the same old friend from last night, but she looked different to me. What’s going on? I wondered, pushing myself off of the wall.
“Do we have time to pack?” I asked, standing in front of him, arms crossed, hip jutted out cockily to the side. I wanted to look like I meant business. Instead I think I looked like an angry ten-year-old.
“I can give you five minutes if everyone goes and grabs their things now”, he said, picking up the radio clipped to his waste band. “We’ve got four adults, one child,” he said, depressing a button to speak.
“Hey - how is your radio working and ours wouldn’t?” Rock’s voice was behind me. I turned to look at him. He was looking a little blue.
“You okay Rock?” I asked, turning to him and putting my hand to his forehead. He pulled away abruptly from my touch.
“Just a headache,” he said, softening towards me, as if to say sorry for pulling away.
“You guys need to hurry, we shouldn’t have you outside without masks on at all,” the police officer said.
A scream pierced the air - making us all cower. Joan’s high-pitched words were traveling towards us in spasms of pure terror. Not a word intelligible.
There was maybe a second’s lag and then everyone, including the policeman, was running towards the troubled Joan.
In the back yard we found her. She had thrown herself over a lawn chair - the very one that her daughter had fallen asleep on the evening before. I could see Kara in my minds eye curled up in the fetal position, her wild curls mostly covering her ashen face, thumb securely fastened in her mouth. I knew what had happened.
Joan’s words were slowing, becoming more intelligible. “Wake up. Wake up baby.” By now she had sat up partially and was shaking the child, who resembled a rag doll in her lifelessness.
“She’s dead,” I whispered, hand over my mouth as I backed away, bumping into Tad. His hands went to my shoulders, holding me in place, keeping me from running away, as surely I would have done. My first dead body.
The policeman and Rock had pulled Joan from Kara’s lifeless body. Rock was holding her with extreme effort - she wanted to go back to her baby and was uttering word after word of broken sentences saying so.
Meanwhile the policeman was doing vital sign checks on the little girl, performing CPR, calling in on his radio that there was a fatality at 2351 Milton Place, Brick house with white trim, manicured yard, RV in the drive.
I heard all of this through black out curtains it seamed. As if I was hiding from my parents as I had done as a child, not wanting them to find me and punish me for writing on the wall, or cutting up the bed spread, or exploding a can of shaving cream.
All of this was playing out before me like an old B movie. And all I could do was shake.
Stand there and shake.