EPILOGUE
I can’t believe I actually went to school today, only two months after The Night of The Parents. I know the authorities are trying to get everything back to normal – but school? Needless to say, my classes were nearly devoid of students since the student body has been decimated. And the ones who did show up didn’t learn squat. The teachers, many of them parents, could barely look the kids in the eye – even the substitutes. And we could barely look at them. I know I should give them credit just for showing up, but all I could think about as I listened to them drone on was all the dead kids I saw that night.
Nothing more happened that night after I holed up in my room with Taylor and Lynda. No surprise attack from Mom and Dad, no nightmare screams from my siblings, nothing. No, wait – actually something did happen, even though I wasn’t aware of it. Sometime during the night Dad buried Marky in Squibb Park, in the same clearing where we met the other survivor kids. Dad’s not the only parent who buried a child in the park. Hundreds of parents did. I was right about the authorities being overwhelmed by the number of dead. Even with the makeshift morgues set up in schools and senior centers, there still weren’t enough places to put the bodies. So Squibb Park, like all the parks throughout the country, became an unofficial cemetery.
In the following weeks it was determined that the slaughter was indeed a global event, and that a third of the world’s children were killed. Another third were badly injured. The remaining third, the “lucky” ones, were, of course, severely traumatized. At first, everyone thought the same thing I did – that the madness was the result of a terrorist plot. Thank God World War Three didn’t break out. I guess there was still some international communication going on despite all the violence – enough for everyone to deny responsibility.
So what was the cause? So far nobody knows. The world’s scientists still haven’t solved the mystery. No surprise there: many of them were or still are parents, so they’re not a hundred percent focused on their work. The same is true of the people in all the other professions. Things are getting done at a very slow pace because most adults are still in mourning.
As for the surviving kids, they’re not so much in mourning as in a state of total fury. As a result there’s been a tremendous increase in juvenile crime – everything from truancy to vandalism to murder. Many kids still refuse to go home to their parents. Some have moved in with childless adult relatives. Others live in parks and alleys and empty lots, in makeshift kid communities called “bratvilles”, where the smaller, weaker kids are often victimized by the older, stronger ones. So far the authorities have allowed these communities to exist, probably because the police are still too overwhelmed to shut them down. But the day is coming when America’s angry, traumatized, battle-scarred kids are going to be forced to go home, for their own good.
I wish I could say there’s been an upside to what happened, but I can’t. There’s been no upside, not even on a personal level. Marky’s death hasn’t strengthened my family in any way or brought us any closer together. Taylor is a total wreck. Taking the life of another human being at such a young age and seeing the condition of his brother’s corpse have damaged him irrepairably. He hardly ever talks anymore, and he refused to go to school today, not that that really matters. Lynda isn’t doing much better. She talks to me and Mom the same as before, but she’s completely shut out Dad. And she still has neck problems. As for my parents, they’re trying their best, and I’ve forgiven them, but the fear and mistrust are still there and probably always will be. They both have a newfound respect for me, but so what? Like I said before, I couldn’t care less. Why should I? It won’t bring Marky back.
Some child -- kindergarten age, judging from the quality of the artwork – has made a chalk drawing on the sidewalk right in front of the entrance to Squibb Park, the same entrance my siblings and I used on The Night Of The Parents. It consists of two stick figures, one a girl – I can tell by the triangle skirt – the other a boy. There’s a white cloud and a yellow sun above them. Looking at the drawing I’m suddenly moved to tears at the thought of the child artist who created it. He (or she?) obviously survived the slaughter with enough intellect to create the drawing. I wonder who he is, where he is, and how he’s doing. The drawing looks very cheerful, but is it because the little artist was happy when he made it, or traumatized into psychosis?
I step around the drawing and approach the entrance. Can I actually enter the park this time? If so it will be the first time since that night. I’ve tried to go in several times before, each time with the intention of visiting Marky’s grave, but each time I froze. Can I finally work up the nerve now?
“Get off me!”
A boy’s voice. High pitched. Pre-adolescent. Angry.
Instinctively I step back from the entrance and duck behind the stone wall, out of view. A few seconds later a tall, brawny blonde man exits the park dragging a dirty, disheveled boy of about ten by his arm. There is a definite physical resemblance between the two. Father and son.
“You’re coming home!” the father shouts.
“So you can try to kill me again?” the boy replies. “Go to hell!”
A bratville boy being forced to go home – forced by the father who tried and failed to kill him. Watching them, I’m suddenly overcome with rage. I rush forward and grab the father’s free arm.
“Leave him alone!”
The father doesn’t miss a step. “He’s my son and he’s coming home!” he bellows, pulling both of us along.
“No he’s not!”
That’s when the boy makes his move. He draws up his left leg and kicks downward at his father’s right shin. The father cries out and stumbles but manages to keep his grip. The boy kicks him again. This time the father trips and starts to fall. I pull back on his arm to keep from falling with him, and as I do the boy pulls away and breaks free.
“Run!” I shout.
The boy runs right back into the park. I hold on tightly to his father’s arm.
“Let go you little bitch!” he shouts. He tries to turn and run after his son, but I hold him back. “I just want him to come home!”
“He doesn’t have a home anymore!” I shriek.
The father slaps me across the face. I let go of his arm and fall to the sidewalk, stunned.
“Yes he does! He still does, no matter what he thinks!” With that the father turns and chases after his son.
Slowly I get to my feet. An old, African American woman riding one of those motorized scooter chairs rolls by and stops.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“If you say so.” She rolls away.
I brush off the back of my pants. For a long time I just stand there, my heart pounding, not sure what to do or even where to go, until finally my uncertainty makes me start walking to the only place I know I’ll have to return to eventually – the place I used to consider home.
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