In the Aftermath: Burning of the Dawn Page 2

  “Decent likeness.” Clarissa commented. The monster was drawn from the side view; it was on all fours with its large head looking back at the viewer. The claw on the tail was open and the little, pointed stinger stuck out in the center.

  “Freaky,” said Vita. “I hope this kid didn’t actually see this thing in person.”

  “No way,” Maria replied. “He or she must’ve seen a picture of it somewhere.”

  “Maybe they did,” Clarissa spoke while folding the drawing closed and dropping it atop the remnants of a small bed. “It was probably drawn long ago.”

  “I remember hearing them,” Vita spoke as she, her sister, and her mother exited the child’s room. “That awful purring… I still hear it in my nightmares.”

  The girls passed through the cluttered living room making their way to the door from where they’d entered. Vita followed her mother and sister, but as they left the house she waited behind. She had left the rowing oar she’d found earlier leaning against a wall. A melancholy sentiment stirred within her as she silently stared at the old oar. Vita wanted to take it with her. She had no use for it and there was no way it would properly fit into her car, yet it felt wrong for her to just leave it behind. Eventually, she turned away from it and spoke to herself, “There’s no sense in bringing it with me.”

  Maria and her mother returned to the car. Clarissa got into the passenger seat up front while Maria rummaged around in the back looking for something to occupy her time while her mother rested. Soon Vita returned as well. Clarissa opened her eyes and looked over to her daughter standing outside her door. The young girl stood quietly suppliant with rowing oar in hand. Clarissa cracked a faint smile and asked, “Why do you have that?”

  “I don’t know,” Vita answered. “I found it in the house and it just seemed really depressing to leave it there like that.”

  “I admire your sentimentality, my daughter, but we can’t bring it with us.”

  “I know, I just didn’t wanna leave it in that house. I’ll put it by the road; maybe someday somebody else will find it and put it to good use.”

  Maria watched her mother and sister converse from the back and then remembered something. She reached down into the pouch on the back of her mother’s seat and retrieved an orange, plastic ball. “I have an idea,” she said. “We’ll put that oar to good use right now!”

  Maria stood her ground in the middle of the field eyeing her sister about thirty feet ahead of her. Vita, too, stood solidly with the oar over her right shoulder. Slowly, she lifted the oar off of her shoulder and tightened her stance. “All right, baby,” Maria yelled to her. “Here comes the pain!” Maria reared back with the orange ball in hand and then hurled it towards her sister. Vita swung the oar around with impressive power, but her accuracy was slightly off. She only nicked the ball, which then deflected behind her. The awkwardness of the oar threw her off balance, causing Vita to perform a full pirouette before balancing herself by planting the oar into the ground. Maria found humor in this odd swing. “Hah! What the hell was that? You trying to revive the ballet?”

  “This thing is weird!” Vita yelled back. “That was my practice swing anyway.”

  “Oh okay, that was practice… throw me back the ball and let’s see if it’s made you perfect yet.”

  Vita had changed out of her shorts and into pants to help avoid the petulant, overgrown grasses and weeds. The oar was also used to create a couple of provisional clearings for the girls to move around in with a little less obstruction. Both girls were veteran baseball and softball players, but it had been a long time since they last played. The bright, orange ball was easy to spot in the tall grass. Vita retrieved the ball and tossed it back to Maria. While her sister prepared her batting stance, Maria took notice of a patch of clovers nearby. She plucked one of them out and tucked it in her hair above her ear. “For each petal on the shamrock this brings a wish your way;” Maria sang. “Good health, good luck, and happiness, to you, for today and every day.”

  “Shut up and pitch, you lunatic!” Vita retorted.

  “Okay.” Maria prepared her pitch and threw the ball to her sister for the second time. This time Vita hit it well. She slugged the ball into what would have been leftfield. Had the girls been using a proper baseball or softball it would have been a very admirable hit, but the lightweight, plastic ball did not travel very far. Maria was fine with that, as it meant less travel time for her to retrieve it.

  The girls took turns pitching and hitting for about an hour before returning to the car. They sat outside in the grass for a spell while playing cards with the money Maria had acquired from the old house at the end of the field. After that, the sisters lay leisurely on an old quilt that they had placed in the tall grass. All the while their mother slept. The twins watched as small, dark clouds wandered across the sky.

  “I wonder if it’ll rain.” Vita stated as she used her fingers to comb away some stray twigs from out of her long, black hair.

  “I hope not,” Maria answered. “It makes it humid.”

  “I like the rain. It’s calming in its own mysterious kind of way.”

  “I like it, too, but not enough to deal with the mugginess. It makes my body all sticky and sweaty and nasty… blah! I could handle it okay if I could take a bath when I wanted one, but sitting in the car all day – that gets a whole lot of gross.”

  “I guess, but if we got a nice, cool breeze afterwards then it wouldn’t be so bad. That would be pretty sweet actually.”

  “Not as sweet as sugar,” Maria declared. “How I long for those wondrous, glorious, processed, little packages of complete unhealthiness. Sure, they may rot my teeth and make me fat, but oh how they soothed my obscene soul!”

  “I’ll admit, a cookies and cream candy bar would be really nice right now.” Vita added, still wrestling with the debris in her hair.

  “Even better, a slice of strawberry cheesecake!”

  “Nah, I don’t know; they get runny in warm weather.”

  “I don’t care, I want my strawberry cheesecake!” Maria exclaimed, adamantly. “Seriously, I would throw a bag of kittens over a waterfall for just one little bite.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Hey, don’t judge me. You have your little shower fantasy; let me have my cheesecake.”

  Clarissa soon awoke from her short sleep. She could hear her daughters nearby and she could clearly see the quiet world around her. All seemed well; nothing out of the ordinary. She checked the time on the car’s digital clock; it read 15:15 – a quarter after three. It was time for them to leave. Clarissa stepped out of the car and stretched herself thoroughly. Her daughters were quickly on their feet; ready to continue on in their journey to wherever they might end up. All items that were removed were promptly returned to their places in the vehicle, with one new addition: Vita’s oar was tied to the solar panel’s box upon the car’s rooftop. Clarissa took her place in the driver’s seat, with Vita in front with her this time, and soon they were off down the lonely road again.

  The old house at the end of the field was left behind. If the girls had decided to examine the house’s unsightly kitchen they would have discovered another door. This door led back outside to a little trail that led down an embankment. At the bottom of the embankment was a disheveled conglomeration of clothing shards, a pair of shoes, a wristwatch, a broken necklace, and a few scattered human teeth. It was the final remnants of the family that had once occupied that old house at the end of the field.

  The road remained empty as Clarissa drove on for about an hour more. She was not sure of her exact location, but she surmised that she and her daughters were within twenty-five to thirty miles of Lake Erie. They had driven through a few small towns, but their names were unknown. Much of the road signs throughout the country had been torn down or destroyed by malevolent scavengers in an effort to confuse unsuspecting travelers and to make them easier targets. It worked well, but the scavenging brutes soon found their hunting grounds being challenged by an
invading foe: the Sayona, an even more vicious brute. Northwest Pennsylvania was desolate for the most part. Most of the scavengers had fled east to higher ground in the Appalachian Mountains or further west in an attempt to fortify their numbers. All major urban settings were the preferred residential grounds of the Sayona. Some people tended to congregate around the shores of Lake Erie. Friendly or not, Clarissa wanted to avoid them as best she could. She had entertained notions of heading west with her daughters, but that was a very dangerous journey. Priority-wise, the safety of her daughters came before all else. An incident six months prior had strengthened that maxim and Clarissa had been wandering the Pennsylvanian countryside ever since.

  After passing through a few small towns that showed little prospect of supplies, Clarissa finally decided to stop at one of them. This town’s prospects were not much better than the other towns’, but Clarissa could not afford to be too selective, especially now as her supplies were beginning to run low. She stopped the car at the end of the town’s main street. Shops, bakeries, and restaurants lined both sides of the road. There were a couple of cars on the street, but by the looks of them they had been there for quite some time… their tires were also shredded. The sporadic clouds in the sky had gathered together and could now be heard threatening a storm in the not-so-distant distance. Clarissa exited her vehicle with her shotgun at the ready; her daughters followed her lead. Maria still had her gun and Vita promptly retrieved her knife. The Hannigans spent roughly twenty minutes walking around the town together making sure there were no conspicuous signs of other people in the area. During their inspection, something in the yard of one of the residential homes garnered Clarissa’s attention. She walked across a knocked over picket fence, into the yard itself, and over to a dead tree. Cones and pine needles littered the surrounding area. This tree was as tall as any of the other trees in the yard, yet every bit of this one’s bark had been stripped away.

  “What is that?” Maria asked, following closely behind her mother.

  “It’s a pine tree.” Her mother answered as she reached down to investigate a few slivers of torn off tree bark.

  “Right,” Maria said, looking at all the cones and pine needles around her feet. “But what happened to it?”

  “It’s been skinned,” Vita answered. “And it’s not the only one.” Vita pointed down the street to where more suburban pine trees were partially or completely stripped of their bark.

  “Come on, girls,” commanded Clarissa. “Let’s hurry up.”

  Clarissa and her daughters returned to the main street in town. Their plan was to quickly inspect each building one-by-one in a search for anything that could be useful to them, or to see if the building could make for a decent place to possibly spend the night. As they were walking back towards their car to start their search, Clarissa heard the sound of a door being opened. She turned to see a man exiting one of the buildings, a furniture shop, with two young children at his sides: a twelve-year old boy and an eight-year old girl. Clarissa’s response was fast and fierce.

  “Don’t move!” Clarissa screamed as she raised her shotgun to her shoulder and took aim at the strangers on the sidewalk. Neither Vita nor Maria had seen or heard the family exit from the building; the sound of their mother’s verbal assault momentarily staggered both of them. Clarissa took a few steps away from her daughters and towards the man and his children. “You come any closer and I will blow you into fucking pieces!”

  The man hastily, yet cautiously, put his hands into the air as both his children dove for cover behind him. Although the man was tall and bulky, nothing about his demeanor was especially menacing. He was in his late forties and decently dressed; he did not appear to have any form of weaponry in his current possession. As Clarissa walked up on him he attempted to speak to her.

  “Whoa! Wait! Wait a minute,” he appealed, with little success. “Please, I don’t mean any harm, I don’t have any weapons. It’s just me and my kids; we just…”

  “I don’t give a fuck!” Clarissa interrupted. “You move – I kill you. You understand that?!”

  “Please, ma’am.” The man pleaded as he dropped to his knees. “I’m not going to harm anyone; I’m not going to do anything, but please, just stop pointing that gun at my children.”

  Unfaltering, Clarissa stood in her position. Her daughters, now roused from their temporary shock, edged their way closer to their mother. Maria had her pistol drawn, but she did not aim it at the terrified family currently being held under her mother’s vigilant aim. Both daughters did their best to restraint their fears; they knew their mother would not hesitate to kill this man, and maybe even his children, if he deviated at all from her demands. Clarissa spoke again.

  “I will not risk my children for the sake of yours – never! If you move at all, I will kill you all.”

  “Okay,” The man replied; he began to cry. “No one’s moving.”

  “Please lady,” The man’s daughter spoke in a soft, frightened voice. “Don’t shoot us.”

  “Mom…” Maria beseeched to her mother. Through both fear and sympathy she, too, was near to tears.

  Clarissa held her aim. The distress in her daughter’s voice was perceptible, and the cruel reality of what she was doing to this family was not lost on her. This man and his children meant nothing to Clarissa, but savagely executing them like mere vermin was something that would haunt her daughters forever. Besides, this man was obviously not a threat. “Merda!” Clarissa muttered to herself. She then slightly lowered her weapon and then spoke to the man, “Just stay where the fuck you are until we’re gone.” She stepped back a few paces to where her daughters stood. In her native tongue she commanded the twins to return to the car, and they did so accordingly. When her daughters reached the vehicle, Clarissa began to make her retreat. She stopped nearly halfway there and called back to the man, “How did you get here?”

  The man, still kneeling on the pavement and now holding his daughter, looked up and answered, “We drove; we’re from New York…”

  “You still have your vehicle? It still works?” Clarissa inquired bitterly.

  “Yes, it does.” He answered. “It’s parked in an alley down the road.”

  “I suggest you leave here then… it’s obviously not very safe.” With that Clarissa continued on to her car. Vita and Maria had heard the conversation and looked to one another in confusion regarding their mother’s departing words. Clarissa entered the car, started it up, and was swiftly on her way.

  All three girls sat quietly as the town faded away behind them. Maria was sitting up front with her mother again. For a while the young girl stared aimlessly out the window, but eventually she spoke, “Dio, mamma…”

  “What is it, daughter?”

  “That’s the first people we’ve seen in months,” she answered. “And we’re probably the first they’ve seen in a long time, too. That poor man, he only wanted to talk to us… I don’t think he meant any harm.”

  “I don’t care what he wanted and I don’t care what he meant,” Clarissa replied in a cold tone. “I will not trust anybody outside of this vehicle. We cannot trust people, Maria; you more than anybody should know that.”

  Maria did not reply; she returned to quietly gazing through her window. Vita sat silently in the backseat. She wanted to speak, yet no words would come to her. Vita sympathized with her sister, but at the same time she wholeheartedly agreed with her mother. She missed people, too, but they also frightened her. Vita also held a growing fear regarding her mother. Clarissa claimed to fear people – Vita did not believe that. That fear had long turned into hatred and both her and her sister feared that it was only a matter of time before their mother killed somebody, again.

  The man breathed a little easier as soon as Clarissa’s car was out of sight. He was still on his knees holding his daughter, Sophie, when it softly began to rain. His young son, Joseph, came out of hiding from behind him as the town was left desolate once more.

  “What was wrong with
that stupid woman?” Joseph implored. “Crazy bitch was gonna kill us right here!”

  “She was just scared.” His father answered. His father’s name was Louis Doniphan. Louis was from upstate New York; there he worked as an automotive sales representative for many years. He had a wife, Marie, but she was killed in the early days of the war. He and his family had entered Pennsylvania for the opposite reason to why the Hannigan family (whom they had just met) had stayed: the Doniphan family was looking for other people.

  “Scared? She was psycho,” cried Joseph. “I told you we should’ve stayed inside.”

  “Why was she scared of us, daddy?” Sophie asked, still trembling in her father’s arms.

  “She thought we were bad people.” He answered. “She just didn’t know who we were, that’s all. She didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “That’s a bunch of crap!” Joseph imparted. “If her kids weren’t with her she would’ve killed us all.”

  “That’s enough, son. We don’t know anything about that woman; who she’s met and what she’s been through. A lone woman like that, all alone with two daughters, it probably hasn’t been easy for her. She didn’t hurt us any, she didn’t want to take anything of ours, she was just protecting her children.”

  Joseph made no immediate reply. He walked out into the road and into the now steadily falling rain. Still physically shaken, he looked back and forth down the street as if fearful of Clarissa’s return. He was partially fearful, though in an odd sense he also wanted her to return. The Hannigans were the first people outside of his family that he had seen in a long time. He also knew that there were greater dangers out there, and that Clarissa was wielding a very impressive weapon that she seemed to know how to handle. Louis put his daughter back down onto her feet and stood slowly from his kneeling position. He called to Joseph.

  “Come on, let’s go back inside now.”

  “What do you think she meant, dad?” Joseph asked. “When she said it wasn’t safe here?”