After: The Shock (8 page)

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Marina
was crying.

Not
out loud, which would have disturbed him. They were safe, he was pretty sure of
that, as safe as anyone could be these days. But still Marina’s sniffling and
small grunts unsettled him. He couldn’t show it, though, not with Rosa about to shatter.

Jorge
Jiminez let his face harden into a mask, the same expression he wore when the
boss man, Mr. Wilcox, ordered him to shovel llama manure into the flower
garden. Jorge liked the llamas, even though one would occasionally spit in his
face. He liked them a lot better than he liked Mr. Wilcox.

He
even liked the poop better than he liked Mr. Wilcox.

But
now the
gringo
was dead, and so were the sixteen llamas. Jorge had been
outside when the flash occurred, his wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over his
eyes. The llamas collapsed almost instantly, and so did Barkley, the loud
border collie that constantly pestered the animals. The chickens barely paused
in their scratching and pecking, though, so Jorge thought it must have been
some strange sort of gun, although he couldn’t figure out how a gun could kill
so many animals at once without making a sound.

But
then his mind jumped immediately to Rosa and Marina, and he dropped his shovel
and bolted for the tiny mobile home at the back of the property, which was
tucked behind a thicket of Douglas firs so that it couldn’t be seen from Mr.
Wilcox’s house. His wife and child hadn’t noticed the flash of light. Rosa was
stitching a patch on the knee of a pair of jeans and Marina was sprawled on the
floor, coloring in her big book of princesses.

That
had been over a week ago.

They’d
moved into Mr. Wilcox’s house two days ago, and although Jorge instinctively
sensed it was safer, he wasn’t even sure what the danger was. After all,
everyone else seemed to be dead.

“Maybe
we go to town to see,” Rosa said. She sat at the fine oak table, uncomfortable,
a glass of water perched in her hand as if she were afraid of leaving spots on
the finish.

“I
told you, the truck doesn’t start,” he said, as if explaining to a child.
“Neither does the car, and neither does the motorcycle.”

He
didn’t mean to say that last word with such anger. He didn’t mean to say it at
all. Such a word was bad luck in times like these.

“What
if we walk?”

“We
could do it in a day. Marina can’t walk that far, so we’d have to take turns
carrying her.”

“I
can, too, walk that far,” Marina said, her voice was cracked and strained. “I’m
not a baby.”

Her
English was very good, better than Rosa’s and almost as good as his. Jorge had
taken classes at the community college because he knew he’d never see Baja, California, again. Even though the silver mines of La Paz had paid a fair wage of 200
pesos a day, the United States offered the kind of wealth a man needed to raise
a family. Like many of his migrant countrymen, he’d planned to work for a year
or two and return, but there was always a bill to be paid first, or paperwork,
or some legal obstacle.

Luckily,
Mr. Wilcox offered employment year round. In the spring, there was gardening,
and in the summer, the crew mowed grass at various gated subdivisions built by
the boss man, and in fall, they cut hay and prepared for the Christmas tree
harvest. In winter, Mr. Wilcox dispensed a list of repairs around the property,
which Jorge had once heard him brag consisted of “nine hunnert acres of East Tennessee’s mountain heaven.” All year round was the task of shoveling of manure:
chicken manure, llama manure, pig manure, horse manure, and, once when the
septic tank was clogged, people manure.

This
week, there had been no shoveling. If one didn’t count the graves.

“No,
you’re not a baby,” he said to Marina.

“Maybe
we walk to the neighbors’ house,” Rosa said, glancing out the window.

The
closest neighbor was half an hour’s walk, even with a nine-year-old. Jorge
wasn’t afraid of the distance. He was afraid of what they might find when they
arrived.

Perhaps
they would discover more people like Mr. Wilcox, whose face had been blank and
eyes staring wide, as if the flash had blinded him forever. Or more like the
Detoro family in the trailer next to theirs, with Alejandro and Sergio dead on
the floor and mother, Nima, dead on the couch. Jorge had found Fernando Detoro
in the barn, collapsed over the open hood of the tractor’s engine, his hands
black with grease. Jorge thought perhaps Rosa and Marina survived because they
had been inside, and so, that was part of their luck, but being inside had not
saved the Detoro family.

“I
don’t think we should risk leaving,” he said. “We have all we need right here.”

“But
we don’t know—”

“
Sí.
We don’t know. So we stay.”

Before
Marina, they had talked only in Spanish when they were together, but Jorge
wanted an American daughter. She would have had enough trouble because of her
skin, although her straight black hair and onyx eyes surely made the paler
girls jealous. Not that there were many paler girls around to worry about, now.

Jorge
crossed the living room and drew back the thick velvet drapes. For a bachelor,
Mr. Wilcox had put a lot of trouble into his home decorating. The front lawn
was now getting ragged, and Jorge had to shake off the itch to mow it.

Nothing
moved outside, except for a few crows perched on the white fence. Crows would
enjoy this new situation. Plenty of meat to scavenge.

Jorge
sat on the couch and stared at the big flat-screen TV. Its size was absurd,
like many of the furnishings in Mr. Wilcox’s house. Now the blank screen was a
mockery of all the things that had once played across it.

“I
should try the tractor again,” he said. “If anything runs, it will be the
tractor.”

Rosa
didn’t challenge the flawed
logic. Although they had been raised in a patriarchal culture, Jorge encouraged
her to express her opinion. He valued her wisdom. Except now, she was
frightened, and fear always hindered wisdom.

“We
will be alone,” Rosa said. Marina looked up from her drawing.

Jorge
glanced toward the kitchen pantry where he’d leaned a loaded shotgun against
the racks of wine, spices, and canned goods. “Not alone.”

“Hurry
back, Daddy,” Marina said.

“I
will,
tomatilla
,” he said, using her toddler nickname of “Little Tomato.”
“You be good for your momma, okay?”

Marina
smiled, nodded, and
went back to her drawing. Jorge wondered if she would ever go back to school,
or ever again have the normal American life he had wished for her.

He
drew back the deadbolt and paused by the front door. He wasn’t sure whether he
should be afraid. He didn’t know enough to be afraid.

Jorge
didn’t want to retrieve one of the guns from the closet, because that would
scare Marina. He fastened his work belt around his waist as if he prepared to weed
the landscaping. The machete hung from his belt as it always did.

“Lock
up behind me,” he said to Rosa before slipping outside.

The
day was bright, the sunlight made even fiercer by the amount of time he’d spent
inside. He stood on the porch, looking out between the high white columns.
Birds chattered in the trees, but their chirps and whistles were spread across
the surrounding woods, eerily sparse for late August.

So,
not all the birds have died
.

The
trees were still, and the pastures vacant. The corn swayed slightly in the
garden, the tassels just beginning to turn golden. Whatever had killed people
and animals didn’t seem to have affected the vegetation.

Jorge
stepped off the porch and walked past Mr. Wilcox’s silver SUV. The vehicle
probably cost two years’ worth of Jorge’s salary, but now it was worthless.
Jorge had found the keys in Mr. Wilcox’s pants when he’d searched the man’s
body, but the SUV was just as dead as his boss. Jorge had even swapped out
batteries with the tractor, but the engine hadn’t turned over.

Jorge
wasn’t as skilled a mechanic as Fernando Detoro, but he was convinced that
whatever had killed Fernando had silenced the engines as well.

He
surveyed the road as he continued his trek to the barn. Mr. Wilcox often had
visitors from town, fat men wearing ties who never set foot in the fields. Rosa said they were bankers and lawyers who used Mr. Wilcox’s money to make more money with
no work. Jorge wanted Marina to have that chance one day. He’d been saving cash
buried in a jar under the trailer. It was Marina’s college fund.

If
she ever went to school again.

He
entered the two-story barn. Jorge had lied to Rosa. The tractor had no hope of
starting. The engine was in pieces, the radiator removed, spark plug wires and
hoses arrayed on a greasy drop cloth.

“Willard?”
he called.

On
the day of the deaths, Willard White had been mixing chemicals to spray on the
shrubs. Willard was the only one whose body hadn’t turned up, and Jorge wanted
to be sure his family was alone on the farm. He also didn’t want Marina stumbling across a decomposing corpse.

Perhaps
Willard is as afraid as I am. Perhaps he is hiding.

Willard
was a local man, a
gringo
, even if he was unkempt and smelly. He also
talked constantly, which is why Jorge couldn’t imagine him hiding for days.
Willard ranted about “my old bitch of a wife, Bernice,” “the guddam
government,” “guddam sun in my eyes,” “my bitchin’ back acting up again,” “that
cheap bastard Wilcox,” “guddam milk thistles taking over the pasture,” and a
long litany of life’s constant miseries.

Jorge
checked the barn stalls, where a row of horses whinnied uneasily. Mr. Wilcox
liked to show off his horses, even though he never rode them. Horses were a
luxury, taking valuable pasture and providing no food in return, unlike the
cows and chickens. But Jorge liked the horses, because they treated him as an
equal, unlike the men.

He
patted each on the nose and promised them grain. Unlike the llamas, they had
survived the sun sickness.

Jorge
entered the cluttered tack room, where Willard liked to take breaks and drink
brown liquor called Old Grand-Dad’s. Metal trash cans full of sweetened grain
stood in one corner. Harness dangled from one wall, and a row of saddles were
perched across three sawhorses. One of Jorge’s duties was to ride the horses
once a week to keep them all trained and in shape, but the leather gear was far
from broken in.

The
shovel Jorge had used to bury the people was hanging on the wall, along with
axes, crosscut saws, sledgehammers, chains, animal harnesses, pulleys, fan
belts, loops of twine, and all the other tools needed to operate the farm.
Jorge couldn’t be sure, but the bags of chemicals and the backpack sprayers
appeared untouched.

Thud-dunk.

Something
had fallen overhead, up in the hayloft.

The
suddenness of the sound kept Jorge from calling out. If it was Willard, the man
would have heard him and responded. The barn was large but open, and sound
carried well under the corrugated tin roof.

Jorge
kept perfectly still, his heart leaping in his chest.

Nothing
to fear. Everyone is dead
.

Another
heavy sound came from above, as if someone was dropping sacks of feed.

Jorge
eased out of the tool room, careful not to let the door creak. He headed for
the loft stairs and climbed, gripping the machete. Dust motes spun in the open
windows like tiny insects. His ascent startled a chicken, which squawked and
exploded from under the steps in a blur of feathers. It must have been nesting
under there. Jorge wouldn’t trust those eggs, not with everything dying.

A
rough, wooden-planked door waited at the top of the stairs. When he reached it,
Jorge didn’t lift the rusty hasp that was held in place by a bent ten-penny
nail. Instead, he leaned forward and peered through a crack in the planks.

Willard
White paced in the middle of the loft, weaving and wobbling like he did after a
quart of Old Grand-Dad’s.

But
Willard wasn’t muttering or singing the way he would if he were drunk. No, he
wasn’t talking at all, which was the first sign that something wasn’t right,
because Willard never shut up.

As
Jorge spied through the crack, Willard staggered between the stacks of hay
bales, plastic water barrels, and sacks of cracked corn like he was looking for
his bottle. He stumbled into a loose pile of hay and fell onto his face with a
soft
thump
that shook the floorboards. That was the cause of the sound.
Willard must have fallen twice before.

Despite
his uneasiness, a wave of relief washed over Jorge.

Maybe
this is a different kind of drunk. At least he’s alive
.
We aren’t alone.

Jorge
lifted the nail and swung open the door.