The Hell Season Read online

  The soft sound of his tennis shoes on the hard linoleum floor echoed hollowly throughout the room as he approached the counter and laid his umbrella on top of it. On the floor behind the counter were two crumpled police uniforms. “Hello?” Thomas shouted, not really hoping for a response and not getting one. “Anybody here?” A seemingly impenetrable steel door was set into the wall to his left. He approached it and pulled on its handle. Locked. He banged on it with his fist a few times. Again, no response. Across the room was another door, this one not quite as imposing with a small window set into it. Unlocked. A room waited beyond with a number of desks and a couple rows of chairs. Papers and folders lay scattered across the tops of a few of the desks. And an empty uniform lay draped across a chair behind one of the desks. There were no people. Two more doors here led into men’s and women’s bathrooms. In the ladies room a dark blue skirt, white blouse and a pair of sandals lay in a pile on the floor. Still no people. Frustrated, Thomas grabbed the clothing and headed back outside. Obviously, there were no answers to be found here. He sighed in frustration. What now? The fire department? The hospital? The latter was closer, only a few blocks away.

  Five minutes later Thomas and Dana were circling the five story hospital building, passing the emergency room before parking near its main entrance. This time Dana, now dressed in the clothes Thomas had found which seemed to fit her well enough, insisted on exploring with him so they huddled under the umbrella together until they were inside the building. Again, there was power here. Another generator, Thomas assumed. To the left was an information desk. To the right the entrance to a gift shop. Set into the wall straight ahead were three sets of elevator doors. Thomas walked over and pressed the button next to the middle set of doors. A few moments later there was a ding! and Thomas and Dana stepped through the opening doors. They took their time exploring every floor, calling out, asking if anyone was there. Empty sets of clothes were found in nearly every hallway. Most of the beds had hospital gowns laid out on or below the covers. Along the way Dana found a sink with running water which she used to cleanse herself more thoroughly of the blood still clinging in spots to her body and matting her hair.

  On the fourth floor, they finally encountered another person.

  “Nurse?” came the voice from one of the rooms near the end of the left wing’s hallway. It was a weak voice, a thin, dry voice. An old voice. “Anyone?”

  The room was like most of the other patients’ rooms throughout the hospital. About fifteen feet on each side. White, tiled floor. A window with the blinds closed. Two chairs. A nightstand with a lamp on it next to a twin-sized, adjustable bed. On the bed lay a man who was seventy years old if he was a day. An IV tube ran from his left arm over to a plastic bag filled with some clear fluid hanging from a metal stand on wheels. The small TV up on a shelf in the corner of the room was on, its volume down low, broadcasting nothing but static. The man’s eyes were wide with either fear or concern. Thomas could understand either emotion.

  “Nurse?” asked the old man again.

  “They’re gone,” said Thomas as he and Dana entered the room.

  “Gone?”

  “How are you feeling?” asked Dana, all bedside manner.

  The old man shrugged his thin shoulders. “Pretty good. Tired. Where is everybody? It’s so quiet. How could they just leave me here? This is a damned hospital.”

  “We’ve come to get you out of here.”

  Thomas gave her a look.

  “What?” said Dana. “We just can’t leave him.”

  “No, I guess not,” said Thomas with a sigh. “I’ll go look for a wheelchair.”

  “You’re not taking me anywhere,” grumbled the old man. “Who the hell are you people? I want my doctor.”

  Thomas left Dana as she went about the task of calming the old fellow. There were a couple of wheelchairs down at the nurse’s station in the fourth floor lobby. Two sets of nurses’ uniforms and a set of doctor’s scrubs lay discarded on the floor there. By the time Thomas got back to the room, Dana had the old guy sitting with his bony legs hanging over the edge of the bed.

  “His name is Gerald,” said Dana. “He was brought in for observation. Irregular heartbeat. Says he’s fine.”

  “I am fine.”

  “His clothes are in there.” She pointed toward a closet door. Thomas grabbed a shirt, some shoes and a pair of pants for the old guy. Then he and Dana waited outside while he changed out of his hospital gown.

  A few minutes later, Thomas was wheeling Gerald toward the elevator doors, Dana at his side.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “I guess we should check the last floor. Then we can go by the fire department. After that…” Thomas just shook his head.

  They didn’t find anyone else inside the hospital. It was still raining outside when they left. Thomas pulled the car up over the curb and under the awning before the hospital’s entrance. There, he and Dana helped Gerald into the back seat. The wheelchair went into the trunk. Then they made the five minute drive over to the fire department. Nothing there but empty uniforms and a couple of trucks looking forlorn and abandoned.

  When they were done there, Thomas drove around aimlessly for about half an hour. Some streets were impassable due to cars suddenly bereft of their drivers blocking the way. “What the hell,” muttered Gerald from time to time. “What’s happening here?” Thomas and Dana said nothing for a while.

  The rain continued to fall—so much blood, where did it all come from?—but the thunder had stopped. They saw only a few other people as they cruised about, each of them acting rather strangely, no doubt due to their exposure to the rain. Or maybe it was the fact that they’d awoken to find their entire world so suddenly and dramatically changed. Or quite possibly they’d been deranged to begin with, who could say? There was a woman lying on her back in the grass near the side of the road, moving her arms and legs back and forth as if she was making snow angels. Another man stood near an intersection in a suit and tie bellowing incoherently through a megaphone. And yet another man stood hugging a streetlamp as if it was his anchor to the universe. They saw no children.

  It was about twelve in the afternoon when they arrived back at Thomas’s house. First they’d stopped by Dana’s, confirming that her family had not returned. Gerald asked if they could go by his home to check on his cat. It was located in the next town over. “Maybe later, if the rain lets up,” said Thomas who’d suddenly had enough of driving around in that awful storm.

  Once inside his house he shouted the names of his wife and children. No response. And by now, he wasn’t really expecting any. Dana went upstairs to take a shower. Thomas helped Gerald over to the couch in the living room. Then he went into the kitchen, pulled a beer out of the fridge and used it to wash down a couple of the pills he’d been carrying around in his pocket.

  He stood there leaning against the counter next to the stove for a while, staring at some of the random photographs and childish drawings stuck to the refrigerator door with magnets, trying to make some sense of what was happening. There was always the possibility—and it was the most pleasing explanation—that this was all just a dream. A very strange, very bleak, and very realistic dream, to be sure. But for some reason Thomas didn’t think so. It didn’t feel like a dream at all. Everything seemed too real even considering the unexplainable phenomena that had capsized the reality he had always known. Only currently unexplainable, he corrected himself. Because there had to be some sort of explanation, no matter how bizarre, for what was happening. Didn’t there?

  He was on his second beer when Dana came into the room. Her hair was wet, hanging long and straight down over her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of black pants and a blue shirt she had picked up at her house. Over the sound of the rain tapping at the kitchen window Thomas thought he heard snoring coming from the living room.

  “Gerald’s dozed off on the couch,” said Dana. “He should probably still be in the hospital. Who knows if he really is alright
? And at his age… What will we do if he gets sick?”

  Thomas didn’t know. Add it to the many other unanswerable questions swirling through his mind.

  “Care if I get one of those?” asked Dana, motioning toward the beer in his hand.

  “Help yourself.”

  They stood there, not saying anything for a time, drinking their beers. The medication and the beer on an empty stomach set in on Thomas leaving him with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Certain emotions, in particular the ones he really didn’t want to deal with at the moment—the fear and the sadness, first and foremost—were muted, kept at a distance, were completely manageable for the time being. And that was just fine with him. He was adrift here. If life was a river, flowing along from the moment of one’s birth to the inevitable end, then this morning he’d entered a section of rapids and the oars he’d been using to guide his little boat had been torn from his grasp and pulled down into the depths of the waters beneath him.

  He looked at Dana. She was leaning against the counter opposite him, next to the sink, the blood coated window and its square of red tinted light directly behind her, framing her shoulders and head, giving her the appearance of a portrait as she stood there. And what would this particular painting be called? Madonna in Red possibly. Or When All Is Lost. She raised the beer to her lips and he could see that her hand was shaking. Her eyes met his and held them. She blinked and a tear ran down her cheek. Now her lips were quivering. Woman on the Edge, he decided was a more appropriate title. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the bottle of valium.

  “Here,” he said. “This will help.”

  Instead of taking one of the pills she came to him, pressed her face against his shoulder and started to weep openly. “What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice muffled and choked. “Oh, Jesus, what are we going to do?”

  He put an arm around her, held her like that for a long time, his thoughts going to Julia and the kids. Yeah, what the hell were they going to do? Another question with no immediate answer.

  *

  The rest of the day went like this:

  Thomas got the portable radio from the closet in his and Julia’s bedroom, down from the shelf where he’d gotten the handgun earlier. He spent about half an hour dialing back and forth through the stations, hearing nothing but static, before he finally gave up and left the radio on the kitchen counter. He drank steadily from the twelve pack of beers in the fridge and when those were gone he started making mixed drinks out of the rum he kept in one of the kitchen cupboards and the two liter of cola in the fridge. The refrigerator’s interior was getting steadily warmer. He knew the food inside wouldn’t last more than another day or so unless the power came back on which he had a strange feeling wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. A quick inventory of the kitchen cupboards revealed that there wasn’t all that much in canned or dried food to be found there. They would have to make a food run within the next couple of days. The idea of leaving the house caused him no small amount of worry even through the altered state of consciousness he was currently experiencing.

  Dana spent most of her time looking after Gerald who dozed on and off throughout the afternoon. At one point she brought him a bowl of cold canned soup which he complained about but managed to eat most of anyway. She helped him to the bathroom and after he was finished walked him back to the couch and made him as comfortable as possible. About an hour before nightfall she took a shot of vodka from another one of the bottles kept in the kitchen then grabbed the umbrella and set off through the rain toward her house. Thomas asked her not to go but she said she had to. “What if they came back?” The desperation was evident in her eyes. He watched her from the porch as she crossed the yard and walked down the street, convinced he would never see her again. But he did. She returned about an hour later, carrying a blue suitcase in the hand not holding the umbrella.

  “Any sign?” asked Thomas, already knowing the answer.

  She just shook her head, came in the house and set her suitcase on the dining room table. Inside were a couple changes of clothes and as much canned food as she could fit in there. It might last them another couple of days. “There’s more if we need it. About twice that.”

  By nightfall Thomas was good and drunk. He sat on the recliner next to the couch where Gerald had returned to his snoring. A candle he had found burned on the coffee table.

  “They’ve got to come looking,” Dana was saying from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, the light from the small flame dancing across her face. “Come see what happened. The army. Marines. National Guard. Hell, I don’t know. Someone.” She was halfway through a mixed drink of her own. Her words were starting to slur together. “They have to…”

  Just before Thomas drifted off into unconsciousness he realized that something was missing, some sound that seemed to have always been there. However, in actuality, it was a sound that had only been there for most of one day. It’s just that it was the worst and longest day of his life. The sound of blood pattering on the roof and tapping at the windows. It had stopped. Silence had settled over the house. The storm was over.

  At least for now, thought Thomas through the fog of Valium and alcohol that had enveloped his mind. At least for now.

  Then he slept.

  And he dreamed.

  He was with Julia and the kids. They were at the beach. It was a weekend. Crowded. The sun shone down out of a cloudless sky. It was a perfect, beautiful day. He was sitting on a towel watching his family play in the water. Not very far out.

  “Daddy, daddy, come play with us,” Jenny shouted. She jumped about, splashing and laughing.

  “In a little while,” Thomas said. Julia looked at him and smiled. She looked so beautiful in her bathing suit, the water just deep enough cover her knees. No, not far out at all. Then there was the wave, ten feet high, coming from out of nowhere. He didn’t have time to even shout a warning. The wall of water broke over his wife and children. As the water receded from the shoreline there was no trace of them whatsoever. He jumped to his feet yelling for someone to help, anyone, please help! Looking left and right, he turned in a full circle and realized that the beach was empty. He was alone. Completely and utterly alone. That’s when he heard the laughter, deep and gravelly, so loud that it shook the ground upon which he stood. He looked up at the sky, at the sun which now had a dark spot in its center like a pupil, meandering red lines radiating outward like capillaries. He knew he shouldn’t be looking at it, that doing so for too long would blind him. But he couldn’t look away. The laughter went on and on.

  “Why?” he shouted, not even exactly sure what he was asking. “Why me?”

  The great eye in the sky blinked and everything went black…

  Thomas came out of sleep with a gasp, like a drowning man coming up for air. It was still dark outside. Quiet. His head was pounding. His mouth tasted like something had died in it. What a terrible dream. Standing unsteadily from the recliner where he’d dozed off, he saw the old man sleeping on the couch in the light from the candle which had burned nearly all the way down. And on the floor lay Dana, curled up on her side, hugging her knees to herself, mumbling something incoherent in her sleep. Just then Gerald started talking too, a few words coming through quite plainly: “Forsaken” followed by “What have I done?” It seemed that Thomas wasn’t the only one suffering from bad dreams.

  Dana had gotten a blanket for Gerald earlier and now it was Thomas’s turn to get one for Dana. He grabbed one from the closet in the hall across from the master bedroom, stumbled back down to the living room and covered her with it. After that he went back up to the bedroom, kicked off his shoes, removed the gun from where it was still stuck down the front of his pants, set it on top of the dresser, then collapsed onto the bed next to where Julia’s nightgown lay. He pulled it to him, inhaled deeply of its scent, thought of all the good times—and the occasional not-so-good times—that they’d had over the years. A groan escaped him from somewhere deep inside. He couldn’
t believe he’d lost her. And the kids. Refused to allow himself to believe it.

  Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow I will find them.

  And once again he slept.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tuesday, June 22

  I’ve never considered myself a very religious person. Sure, I was raised religious. Baptist, if you must know. Northern Baptist, if there is such a term. Pennsylvania, to be more precise. Suburb of Pittsburgh to be even more exact. I went to church pretty much every Sunday from the ages of six to thirteen or so. Went away to the church’s summer camp a few times. Had fun there, at the camp, not the church so much. But then again, church isn’t meant to be fun, now is it? Not even for kids. Can’t really remember a whole lot about it now. A lot of fear of ending up in Hell. A lot of worrying about not being able to find the people I loved down here on Earth after I ended up in Heaven. A lot of praying for the things I wanted: A new bike. A pet dog. My mom to give up smoking. That kind of thing. I don’t recall exactly when or why it was that I stopped going. There just wasn’t a real need for it in my life I guess, even at a young age. I’ve always been more of a “seeing is believing” kind of person. I had really gotten into science as a youngster. I enjoyed the lab courses throughout junior and senior high, the whole hands-on approach of it. There was something really cool about seeing the laws of science come to life right there beneath your fingers. Makes me wonder at times how the hell I ended up as an accountant? Chalk it up as another one of the great mysteries of the cosmos, I suppose.