Mass Extinction Event (Book 2): Days 9-16 (22 page)

Epilogue

Twenty years ago

"Mother?" Sara says, stepping cautiously into the dark room. "Mother, are you awake?"

She waits for a moment, listening to her mother's shallow breathing. At least the old woman is still alive, although that's not saying much: having been sick for so many years, Sara's mother has been bed-ridden for so long, her skin has begun to grow into the sheets. Sara has tried to keep her clean, but the job has proven too difficult, and now she merely brings food and water, and empties the bed-pan.

"I made soup," Sara says quietly, making her way across the room. She places the tray on a small table by the bed, before looking down at her mother's sleeping face. "I hope you like it," she adds, wondering whether she should try to wake the old woman. Finally, realizing that it's better to let her sleep, she turns and heads back to the door.

Turning back to look at her mother's sleeping form, she waits for a moment, as if she's expecting the old woman to wake up.

"Father's angry today," she says quietly, with tears in her eyes. "He's on the warpath. I don't think... I don't think you should get up for a while. Stay here. At least he won't come up and hurt you."

When she gets to the top of the stairs, Sara pauses. She can hear her father shuffling about downstairs, and she knows that if she doesn't go down soon, he'll come stumbling up to demand her attention. Every day, she fantasizes about killing the old man, but she knows she could never do something so cruel. For one thing, she believes God has a plan for her; for another, she worries that by killing him, she'd be bringing herself down to his level of sin and degradation. Taking a deep breath, she makes her way downstairs, bracing herself for whatever fresh spite and torture the old man might have in store.

"Where have you been?" he asks, pacing back and forth in the kitchen.

"I took soup to mother," she replies nervously, keenly aware that he seems more agitated than usual. The old man's moods seem to change with the weather, and right now he seems to be building up to a particularly violent storm. "She... She was asleep," Sara continues, "so I left it by her bed."

"You think your mother should be forced to endure cold soup?" he asks, stopping and fixing her with a look of pure malice. "After everything that woman has done for you, can you think of no better way to treat her than by taking cold soup to her room? Is that your idea of a good daughter?"

"I thought -"

"Your place is not to think!" he shouts, his voice seeming to shake the walls of the dilapidated old wooden house. "Your place is to be a good daughter! Your place is to think of others and serve your family with humility and respect!"

She opens her mouth to reply, but her whole body is trembling with fear. "I'm sorry father," she says eventually, her voice sounding weak and small. "You're right. I should have woken her -"

"Woken her?" he sneers. "Your poor mother tosses and turns all night, plagued already by your insolence and lack of care, and now you think that when she finally gets to sleep, you should go into her room and wake her? Have you no care, girl? Do you not think about the comfort of others?"

"What should I have done?" she asks timidly.

"What should you have done?" He pauses, before finally a cruel smile crosses his lips. "What should you have done? I shall tell you." He starts walking around the kitchen table, heading slowly toward her. "You should have been born with a better head on your shoulders. You should have grown up with some degree of sense and intelligence. You should have developed compassion and understanding." Reaching her, he pauses for a moment. "You should have waited to warm the soup until you were sure your mother was ready. Would one or two extra trips up and down the stairs have been so arduous? Are you really so lazy?"

"I'm -"

"Go to the basement."

"Father -"

"Go to the basement."

She feels the fear start to tighten in her gut. She knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that the basement is the worst form of punishment that her father can ever throw at her. Still, she also knows that any attempt to delay things or to plead with him will only make the situation worse. Like a condemned soul approaching the gallows, she turns and starts walking toward the door at the opposite end of the kitchen.

"Father," she says suddenly, turning back to face him. "Let me put it right. I'm sure mother hasn't been disturbed yet. I can make everything okay."

"Get moving!" the old man shouts, pushing her against the wall and then giving her another shove toward the door.

"I'm sorry!" she shouts.

"You'll stay down there until I'm comfortable that you've learned your lesson," her father continues. "Perhaps it will take just a few minutes for enlightenment and reason to enter your soul. Perhaps it will take days, or weeks, or years. Perhaps it will never happen, and your wretched little corpse will fester and rot until the end of times. Regardless, you shall receive no sustenance from either your mother or myself. The Lord will see fit to provide any and all nourishment that you deserve."

"But father -"

"Don't argue with me," he continues. "Don't try to defend yourself, or claim that you're being ill-treated. I've given you enough chances, my girl, and you've thrown them back in my face. Do you not understand that you're a miserable failure?"

As she reaches the door and stares down into the bare basement, the girl is suddenly filled with a sense of horror. She has been locked down there many times before, and she has always feared that one day he might leave her too long, or die before he can let her out. Although she tries to free her mind of foolish thoughts, she can't shake the fear that one day she'll die in the basement, alone and freezing.

"I can't," she says, her heart beating faster than she's ever known before. Turning, she sees her father's cold-hearted stare. "Father, I can't!" she says again. "I'll do anything! I promise, I'll be a better daughter, but please -"

"Wretch!" he shouts, pushing her down the steps.

Landing on the hard concrete floor, she lets out a cry of pain as one of her fingers is snapped. She holds her breath and tries to ignore the pain, but soon it's pulsing through her body.

"I hope you'll see the error of your ways," her father says from the doorway. "I hope that, given time, my only child will understand the wickedness of her own heart. Make no mistake, though. If you fail to understand the nature of your sins, I shall have no hesitation when it comes to your fate. I would rather let you die down here, than allow you to raw breath anywhere else. Do you understand?"

Sitting up and examining her broken finger, she tries to ignore the pain. The bone has been cleanly snapped, however, with a small, ragged piece poking out through the bloodied flesh.

"I asked you a question," her father says. "Do I have to take my belt off and beat an answer out of you?"

"I understand," she whispers, before realizing that she needs to speak more loudly. "I understand," she says firmly, "but..." Pausing, she suddenly realizes that perhaps God is testing her in a different way, and that death might be a warm sanctuary from the harshness of the life she has endured for eighteen miserable years. "I will never apologize to you," she says finally. "I will wait for
you
to realize the wickedness in
your
heart, and I will wait for you to understand the nature of
your
sins, as I see them so clearly in front of me right now."

"Are you so keen to let Satan speak his words through your mother?" her father asks.

"You are the Devil himself," she replies, desperately hoping that he might finally lose his temper and end his life. All she wants now is a quick death, with as little pain as possible. "No Christian man could do the things you do," she continues, "and I would rather die and pass to the next life, then provide succor to a foul beast who just happens to be my father."

The old man stares at her for a moment.

"I have faith that you will see reason," he says eventually, taking a step back and swinging the door shut.

"And I have faith that you will one day suffer the same misery that you have visited upon me," she replies calmly. "I have faith that God will one day grant me the opportunity to make you see the error of your ways."

Getting to her feet, she looks across the basement and realizes that there's no way out, no chance of escape. She also knows that her father will never set her free. Her only hope is to spur him to come back down and kill her quickly; otherwise, she knows he'll leave her to starve.

"Satan is in this house!" she screams at the door, hoping to goad him into killing her. "Satan walks through these rooms and takes the guise of a vain and pompous old fool!" She hears her father's footsteps above her. "I have seen the face of Satan," she shouts, "and I have seen the face of my father, and they are one and the same!" She waits for him to come back down, but finally she realizes that she hasn't yet said enough.

"Kill me!" she screams, banging her fists on the low ceiling. "You coward! Get down here and cut my throat! If you think I'm so evil, kill me!"

She waits, but all she hears is silence.

"Father!" she screams. "I dare you! Come and do the Lord's work! End my life!" Finally, collapsing in tears, she crawls over to the far corner and curls up into a ball. "Please," she whimpers, "kill me. I beg you. Come down here and end my life, so that I might pass on to the next world." She waits, but there is no sound from above, and all she can do is sob and hope that the end comes soon. She still believes, however, that she'll be free of her father's influence eventually, even if this freedom doesn't come until after her earthly body has failed.

"Dear Lord," she whispers, "grant me escape from this man." She pauses. "And... grant me the opportunity, one day, to make him see the true horror of his cruelty."

Day Fifteen

Prologue

One year ago

"Knock knock," says a voice over by the door. ""Patricia? You decent?"

"No," I reply, sitting at my desk as I go through the files for a couple of my patients. "You can come in anyway, though."

The door creaks open and John's smiling face appears. "So I was thinking that maybe you and I could go and get some lunch together." He pauses, as if he's waiting for a reply. "On me, of course. Think of it as a kind of peace offering."

"There's no need for a peace offering," I reply, turning to the next page in Mrs. Ormiston's file. "Anyway, the best peace offering you could give me right now would be to let me get on with my work. I'm drowning in a sea of paperwork."

"Everyone needs a break," he replies, walking over to the desk. "You're gonna go crazy if you just sit there all day, Patricia. Come and have lunch with me. We'll go to that place down the road. You'll be away from the surgery for half an hour, maximum." He pauses. "For my sake? Can't you at least give me the opportunity to make up for being an ass this morning?"

"You weren't an ass this morning," I reply, before realizing that there's no way he's going to drop this until he thinks he's forgiven. "You just pushed a little too hard," I add, looking up at him. "You didn't see things from my point of view, and you treated me like an idiot, but it's fine. I'm a big girl, and I can get past it. What I can't get past is this pile of paperwork. I have to go through it all, and if I don't get it done during my lunch break, I'll have to stay late tonight. If we sacrifice having lunch together, we might actually be able to have dinner together for once."

"You know what I dream of?" he asks tentatively.

"What?" I reply with a sigh.

"A day when we have lunch
and
dinner together." He pauses. "That's my vision of an ideal marriage. Hell, breakfast too. Do you think we can ever manage that? Breakfast, lunch and dinner together, as a family."

"We're not a family," I reply, unable to hide the irritation in my voice. "Family implies more than just a husband and wife, John."

"We'll get a dog."

"I don't want a dog."

"Cats, then."

Sighing, I sit back and try to work out how the hell I'm going to get him to understand my point of view. "Is it so weird," I continue after a moment, "for a woman to not want to have children?"

"No," he replies, "I just..." He pauses again, and I can see that he's struggling. "It's a little weird not to mention such a life-changing decision to your husband a little earlier."

"I should have told you before we got married?" I ask. "So you could decide whether you still wanted to go ahead?"

"Patricia -"

"You're right," I continue. "Okay? You've got me. You're absolutely, 100% right. I should have told you. It's dumb, but at the time, I didn't think it was a big deal. You'd never mentioned wanting kids!"

"I thought it was assumed."

"It's best not to make assumptions about other people," I point out. "Most of the time, people don't fit into the neat little boxes you want to impose on them."

He stares at me for a moment, as if he doesn't know what to say. I can tell that he's hurting; until this morning, I never realized that John was so desperate to have kids, and now suddenly I feel like some kind of evil monster who's come along and told him that he can't have his dream. The truth, though, is that I've never, ever wanted to have children. Maybe that makes me selfish, maybe it even means that there's something wrong with me, but I can't change the way I feel, not even if my marriage is at risk. I'm not gonna squirt out a kid just to put a smile on John's face.

"You're still standing there," I say after a moment, "staring at me with those puppy dog eyes."

"Will you definitely be home for dinner?" he asks.

I nod.

"Definitely?"

"Definitely."

"I'll make something special," he continues, with a defeated smile. "It'd be good to be able to unwind and relax and -"

"Talk?"

"Talking's good," he adds. "Right?"

"It depends if you're talking because you're having a good time," I reply, "or talking because you're trying to change someone's mind about something?"

Walking around to my side of the desk, he kisses the top of my head before turning and heading back over to the door.

"I'll be home around seven," I tell him.

"I'll have dinner on the table at eight," he replies.

Once he's gone, I take a deep breath. Tonight is going to be hell. There's no way that John's going to just accept my decision this easily; either he'll bring it up over dinner and try to pressure me to change my mind, or he'll take a more drawn-out approach and try to nudge me toward the idea of children. I love him, but the guy's about as subtle as a brick to the face, and I'm starting to realize that he's more caught up in the idea of having children than I ever anticipated. I'd like to believe that we'll get through this difficult phase and that, eventually, we'll carry on as normal. The truth, though, is that I think maybe there's no way back from here.

Opening a drawer in my desk, I take out the packet of cigarettes I stashed away a few months ago. I open the top and look down at the one remaining cigarette. I've been telling myself to save the last cigarette for an emergency, but although I'm tempted to light it up right now, I finally manage to overcome the urge and, instead, I put the packet away. Closing my eyes, I try to relax. Things are going to be okay. They
have
to be okay. John has to accept my decision eventually. Everything's going to be fine.