By Way of Autumn Read online

  “Know what?”

  “Larry came back.”

  “I saw him fly overhead.”

  “Word got around fast.”

  “About?” I asked, then paused. “Oh my God. What did he see, Sam?”

  “He came back and …” Sam hesitated, took a long blink, and then looked at me. “I think you need to hear it from Larry.”

  FOURTEEN – MOVING

  I was never one to take in strays, yet there I was with another child. Liam was feeling better and was loud. Tag had reached the end of his patience and just wanted to play by himself.

  “He’s not very nice, Marmie,” Tag said.

  “He’s a baby.”

  “He’s mean.”

  “He’s not mean, he’s hyper.”

  “What’s that?”

  I pointed to Liam who ran about the first floor of the house in circles. His cast held high and he screamed as he ran, too.

  “I’m getting a headache,” Tag complained.

  “Me, too.” And I was. Only I believed mine was caused by a number of things. The heat, stress from waiting on Sam to bring Larry, and I was pretty certain, I had a second stone, or I didn’t completely pass the first one. The pain in my back had returned and a knot of nausea hit my stomach.

  I kept looking out the window. More people walked down the street, from what I counted it was close to forty. My street was the direct route out of town. It was probably was what happened to Del and Mary. I hadn’t seen them and they hadn’t returned. They got the news, whatever it was and high tailed it out.

  Julie didn’t ask and I didn’t tell her about Larry. I figured why add another person to the neurotic list. When I had the facts, I’d share them. What exactly the facts were, I didn’t know. I just hoped to find them out before Josh returned. Surely, he’d find out the second he went home.

  I was angry with myself because when I was out on Mountain Road I never looked west toward the sky. I didn’t think about it. My focus was on getting that food and getting back.

  About the tenth time of trying to be inconspicuous and peering out the window, I saw Sam and Larry heading down the street.

  Not wanting to hear anymore from Julie about my going in and out of the house, I snuck out. After all, how long would it take?

  ‘What did you see Larry,” I’d ask.

  He’d answer.

  And I’d go back in.

  Larry and Sam were headed toward my walk when I stepped out and I cut them off at the pass. If people were leaving town, I didn’t want to scare Julie or Tag.

  Larry looked worse for wear. He appeared frazzled and worn out. I suppose he was bombarded with questions, and I was only compounding to that stress.

  Arms folded tight to my body, I approached them. “Hey, Larry.”

  “Tess,” Larry said. “I saw you up on old Mountain Road at that crash site today. What the hell were you doing?”

  “Was that where you looted?” Sam asked.

  I groaned and waved out my hand. “You saw me?” I asked Larry.

  “I wasn’t that high, I could spot that blue colored SUV anywhere.”

  “What’s going on, Larry? What did you see? Why are people leaving?”

  “I could only get so far west,” Larry explained. “Saw the biggest lingering black cloud I ever seen in my life. It was moving, but slow. But it was huge. Darkened everything below it. It went as far south as I could see, so I headed North, Was able to catch the end of it about hundred miles up and could see beyond.”

  “Is that cloud coming here?” I asked. “Is it weather? A storm?”

  Larry shook his head. “Wasn’t getting any electrical disturbances. It was a cloud. Debris I guess.”

  “A nuclear cloud,” I gasped out. “It’s coming then.”

  Sam held up his hand. “He didn’t say it was a nuclear cloud. But it probably is coming here. Unless the winds shift, which I doubt. It’s held back because we got some out of season Santa Ana winds.”

  Larry added, “It’s keeping that at bay, like everything else.”

  “Everything else?” I asked. “Like what?”

  Larry hesitated and then looked at Sam before he answered. “Fire.”

  “I’m sorry. What? Fire? Like wild fire?”

  “Like nothing I have ever seen. I don’t know what caused it, but it’s like one big inferno below. It’s higher than most trees and just engulfing everything in its path.”

  His words made me stumble back. “Oh my God.”

  “It’s moving slow,” said Larry. “But I’m flying out again tomorrow to gauge the speed, maybe it’s stopped. Who knows? I’ll know more tomorrow.”

  My hand shot to my mouth and then it slowly lowered to my stomach. “When it happened, I saw a fire ball that took up the whole sky. I thought it was an explosion. It disappeared.”

  “Probably whatever caused it, erupted upwards then just started burning,” Larry said. “We’re guessing. We’re in the dark in more ways than one, and if that cloud gets here, we will really be in the dark.”

  “So that’s why people are leaving?” I asked.

  Larry nodded. “They aren’t chancing waiting on me and what I find out tomorrow.”

  “Then we should plan on leaving,” I said.

  “If that fire keeps moving our way. Yes.” Larry said. “I can’t see anything surviving that.”

  Upon his words, just as he spoke them, eerily it happened. Like some sort of sign. The first hit my arm, then a second smacked against my shoulder. I inched back to see what was going on, and another hit my forearm. All around me were the sounds of deadened thumps. One after another. Hitting the ground, cars and houses.

  They fell fast and furiously.

  I peered up, that was my mistake. No sooner had my head tilted back, the carcass of a lifeless bird smacked against my face. I screamed, brushed my hand over my nose and jumped back. The back of my shoe stepped on one.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Sam gasped and shielded his head. “What the hell is happening?”

  There was no answer, no explanation, no escape. Steadily, they fell by the hundreds, if not thousands. As if God Himself, declared the avian species to be instantly extinct, and in midflight they just dropped.

  It didn’t stop and for at least three minutes it rained dead birds.

  FIFTEEN – PILES

  I believed there was no way we were the only ones in town pushing dead birds off to the side. Raking them into neat piles to be collected later.

  Apparently, our section of town was hardest hit. Every neighbor that remained was outside trying to clean up the mess. It was horrifying that they fell from the sky, but even more frightening trying to determine why.

  Having their dead bodies just laying there wasn’t healthy for any of us. Especially in the heat. It took only minutes and the flies arrived.

  Larry stated he was heading into town to try to get some large black bags from the fire department. It was safer now, the uproar and chaos ended when the distribution and store were nearly depleted of supplies. Suddenly not only did people have what they wanted, they were taking it with them as they left town.

  There were a few items remaining and Sheriff Stew was closely guarding them. He’d had this big plan to save the town and I imagined his spirits were as empty as the town surplus.

  My pile of birds grew and as I wiped the sweat from my brow, I saw Tag emerge from the house.

  “Oh, whoa, look at all the dead birds.” He bent down.

  “Don’t!” I yelled, dropped my rake and raced over. “Don’t touch the birds.” I pulled his hand away.

  “Why is he dead, Marmie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why are there so many dead birds?” he asked.

  “I … I don’t know. They just fell from the sky.”

  “Did they forget how to fly?”

  From behind me, I heard Sam blurt out. “Jesus. The kid is an Einstein.”

  My mouth dropped open in offense and I spun. “Don’t m
ake fun of him.”

  “I’m not. I love Tag.” Sam walked over. “He brought up a valid reasoning. Birds navigate by magnetic pulls on the earth. Whatever is happening could have just screwed them up.”

  “But made them just fall?” I asked. “No. No, they’d fly in circles or in no order. Something killed these birds.”

  “Look at his eyes,” Tag stated.

  I peered down. Tag was squatting curiously by the body of a bird.

  “Tag,” I warned.

  “He’s right,” Sam bent down. “The legs are swollen and purple. The eyes look like their bulging out.”

  “So every bird is sick?” I asked. “Seems a bit farfetched.”

  Tag stood and walked to another bird. “His eyes are big, too,” He turned. “This one too.”

  “Stop!” While I thought it, it wasn’t my voice that called out. It was Sheriff Stew. I turned around to see him walking down the street with Dr. Stanley.

  “Step away from the birds, Tess,” Stew said. “Grab the boy and get him away. In fact …” He raised the volume of his voice. “No one touch a single bird. You hear?”

  “We can’t just leave them on the ground,” I argued.

  Dr. Stanley then added. “Well you can’t touch them. Getting near them isn’t good.”

  Sam asked. “What’s going on? Is it the bird flu?”

  Dr. Stanley shook his head. “We don’t know.”

  “Seems like an awful lot of birds to just drop dead with the bird flu,” Sam said.

  “There are many types of viruses birds carry, and some that are transmittable not only to humans but from humans. It’s a chicken or the egg sort of thing right now,” Dr. Stanley said. “These birds were sick when they died. And we just got about two dozen people in from the highway that were making their way east. Most them are sick with some sort of flu. So don’t …” He looked at all of us. “Don’t touch anything until we know what is going on?”

  Fire burning out west, a looming cloud, birds dropping from the sky and sick people coming from the highway. Finding out specifically what was going on wasn’t going to be easy. There was no answer to be found. In my mind, the simplest answer was. Things were just falling apart, we were at the end, and there was nothing we could do.

  SIXTEEN - SMELL

  There were no men and women in yellow biohazard suits and masks, no one in protective gear came for the birds. Stew and Dr. Stanley didn’t want us to touch them, yet there was no answer on what to do with them.

  They were left to rot. Alone on the road or in the piles that we had gathered.

  No more news made its way to us regarding the people that came from the highway. Admittedly, I didn’t seek out answers. My focus was on my family. There was a slight dip in temperature, but the house was still really hot. Unbearable actually.

  Liam had no problem falling asleep. Julie was bored. I told her to start getting things ready to pack and go. She was unmotivated.

  I didn’t know when we’d leave, but it would be soon. The problem I had with leaving my home is we hadn’t a clue what we were traveling into. What if there was nothing east? My imagination took off and I envisioned a globe of fire and we were the only speck not in flames.

  Perhaps if I knew what caused the flames I would be more logical in my thinking.

  Where we stood there was no television, radio, internet or phones. No means to reach the outside world. It was a black vat.

  James Mason already left town with his girlfriend and his parents planned to leave in the morning. Josh wanted to stay back an extra day or two to see what was happening. As a mother I couldn’t see his parents being very happy about that. But I was glad he wanted to stay back with us. Not that I wasn’t capable of caring for my family, but in my pregnant state I wasn’t as strong as I wanted to be. Especially with my kidney stone battle, which I was feeling more as the night moved in.

  I knew it was cooler outside, but the stench of the baking and decomposing birds was too much to open the windows. Josh brought up a point.

  “You’ll get used to the smell. Trust me,” he said. “Open the windows, let some cooler air in.”

  “I don’t think I’ll get used to it.”

  “Yeah, you will. You’ll adjust, I know.”

  He must have picked up on my quizzical look. Although I didn’t try too hard to hide it, I was a bit confused by his confident statement about smells.

  He twitched his head once to the left, almost as if uncomfortable and said, “When I was deployed …”

  “Deployed? Josh, I didn’t know you were in the service.”

  “Reserves now, but yep. I was. The deployment was not a war thing, it was a police action. Let me tell you something, this weather has nothing on the Middle East. Anyhow we were on a convoy when we ran into an old mine or something. Whatever it was caused our truck to flip. One of our guys, Stanford, was hurt pretty bad. The radios weren’t working, and I stayed back while Joel walked for help. It took five days for a search party to find us. Joel never made it and Stanford he died like two hours after Joel left. The only shelter we had was the overturned truck, sitting against it. Five days in the sun …. Anyhow, as long you don’t remove yourself from it or get too far away, you get used to the smell. Even when it’s that bad.” He cleared his throat. “That’s why I said, open the window. You’ll adjust.”

  “Open the window,” I told him.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe instantaneously, following Josh’s story, I would be okay with the smell. I wasn’t. The second the foul stench blew in, my already heightened sense of smell slammed into high alert. It caused my already weakened stomach to churn and I rushed to the bathroom.

  It wasn’t any better in there. We were rationing water and had one good flush a day. The second I lifted the lid, I was exposed to the day’s waste and I added to it when I up heaved every bit from my stomach.

  A burning sensation seared across my stomach to my gut and I fought the wrenching. My stomach, wanted to win that battle, twisting and turning and pushing.

  I fought it and won.

  My system calmed down, I poured a gallon of water into the back tank and flushed.

  There was a gallon of clean up water on the floor, I poured some in my hand and splashed my face.

  “You okay?” Josh asked from the other side of the bathroom door.

  “Yeah.” I replied with a gag.

  “Here.” The door opened and a shirt extended in. “No disrespect to Jeff, okay, please don’t take it that way. I grabbed one of his tee shirts, and doused it with his cologne. It’s ripped so it’ll tie around your face. Like an outlaw from the old west.”

  I could smell the cologne as soon as he extended that shirt into the powder room. Then I didn’t smell the cologne, I only smelled Jeff.

  “Give … give me a moment,” I took the shirt and closed the bathroom door.

  Instantly, right there at that moment, my heart broke. My throat tensed up and the muscle spasms carried to my jaw forming a huge lump in my throat.

  I had thought of Jeff, but I also had been trying to be so strong. The second I held his tee shirt in my hands and brought it to my nose, I collapsed. Back against the door, I slid down to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Jeff.” I whispered at such a low level, my voice cracked and disappeared every other syllable. My mind drowned in a silo of guilt. Why didn’t I tell him I loved him before I left? Why didn’t I tell him, despite everything, I still cared? He tried so hard to keep our marriage alive and I never returned anything to him. It took until he was no longer in my life for me to realize how wrong I was, selfish. How much I did love my husband. It was too late. He left that day never knowing... “I’m so sorry.” Not wanting anyone to hear me, I brought his shirt to my face and on that bathroom floor I muffled the sobbing for my lost husband.

  Sobs that just didn’t want to stop.

  SEVENTEEN – SWEAT

  After what seemed an eternity in that bathroom, I pulled myself together, spl
ashed my face again and opened the door to find Josh was seated a short way from the bathroom.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Just had a moment.” I sniffed. My nose was clogged from crying, smelling wasn’t that much of an option. Still, Jeff’s shirt hung like a thick scarf around my neck and close to my chin.

  “You’re allowed, you know.”

  “I’m allowed to...what?”

  “Have a moment. It’s okay.”

  “Thank you. But my family doesn’t need to see me having moments.” Just as I finished saying that I saw Tag at the end of the hall.

  “Marmie, tell me a story, please.”

  Josh stood. “I will. I know you go visit Sam for the hour.”

  I was about to accept his offer then I noticed Tag. His hair was soaking wet from sweat. “You know what? Maybe Tag would like to visit Sam with me tonight.”

  Excitedly, Tag nodded.

  “I can tell you a story there,” I said. “Josh, are you going home? Or staying.”

  “I can stay with Julie a little if you want.”

  “Please, thank you.” I walked to Tag and extended my hand. “Let’s go. Sam will be so happy to see you.”

  “You think it will smell there?”

  “I think it smells everywhere.” Holding Tag’s hand, I looked over at Josh, mouthed the words, ‘Thank you’ and walked from the house.

  As soon as we stepped out we were pelted with that smell. I took the shirt and placed it over Tag’s mouth. We headed down the walk when my next door neighbor, Bill called out.

  “Evening, Tess,” he said, standing in his front yard with a shovel.

  “What’s going on, Bill?” I asked.

  “Berch died, don’t know what happened.”

  Berch was their retriever, a good dog, so friendly with a calm demeanor. Having been over ten years old, he was a huge part of Bill’s family and life. It was sad news.

  “The dog died?” Tag asked sadly. “Aw.”

  Bill nodded sadly. “Maybe it’s for the best. The heat probably got to him. So, what are you doing up this late, young man?”