Their house phone stopped working. The cell phones worked only sporadically right from the start. Overloaded circuits or lines, or whatever it is when there are too many calls at once on the cell network. The cable stopped working on the twelfth day. They can still get a few radio stations, so they aren’t entirely without news.
The general consensus is that the deaths are something to do with the sun, or the outside. Or something that’s made active by those things. No one knows anything with certainty, because the news is filled with deaths that don’t match those requirements. Even so, the sunlight is the most common element in the largest number of deaths.
So, her mother figured the night would be safer. No sun equals no death.
Of course, they’d discussed the very odd fact that both of them had been well within view of the sun when it all happened. Charlotte had been outside picking up dog toys or brushing down her horse and entirely unaware of the disaster. There’s also the inescapable fact that a good part of the planet was under the darkness of night when it happened. Women died there too. With night over the Pacific Ocean, most of humanity was concentrated in places where the sun was up, or almost up, or just setting, but even so, those under nightfall died too.
No one likes to think about that twist. It’s hard to feel safe at night when the night really isn’t any protection.
Tabitha had been reluctant to share her version of what happened when The Dying began, limiting what she told Charlotte to a minimal story very light on details. After repeated prodding, Tabitha finally laid out the entire story.
Charlotte had been glad to know what happened at the moment of The Dying, but horrified that it happened at all. She also understands her mother’s fears better after hearing it. She made not a peep of protest about her restrictions once she heard the details. She did her fair share of work covering up the windows with blankets and comforters. They even used some of the musty moving blankets stored in the attic.
The house is large and has far too many windows.
The main question remains unanswered. Why had neither of them died? It nags them. The question brings with it more questions, ones that follow behind the first and whisper that if they don’t know why they’re alive, they can still die.
Those are terrible, stressful thoughts to deal with every waking moment. Charlotte has asked so many questions about the moment of The Dying that she can almost play the event in her mind from her mother’s perspective.
Tabitha had been in their store, doing what she did every single day except Mondays. And she had been doing it in full view of the plate glass windows fronting the entire building. Sixty-five feet of windows, to be exact. Not only that, but she’d run outside when a customer had fallen, dropping her bag of sweet oats and spilling it all over the tarmac in the process.
Of course, Tabitha had run for the downed customer. She’d figured the woman fainted, or tripped, or maybe even had a stroke from carrying the huge bag. She had no way to know that customer was only one of millions.
It was only when she saw the tractor place across the road also had a shopper on the ground that she realized her newly dead customer was not an isolated event. The small, multi-shop building next door had been hosting one of their daily knitting circles. The screams reached Tabitha’s ears even through the glass of their shop and the distance of their respective parking lots. That was clue three.
Tabitha isn’t as educated as most people tended to think. Her degree is one considered easier to achieve. Her aims had been to own this store, to live in this place, and to raise a family. Complex degrees didn’t interest her. Neither was she a fan of mysteries or suspense novels. Her TV interests ran to documentaries rather than thrillers.
Yet, even she worked out the peculiar geometry of the situation in a flash.
Because she was constitutionally incapable of doing anything other than what she did, Tabitha ran across the two lots toward the screams. Brightly lit by the plate glass window, nine women lay dead amongst the overturned chairs inside the yarn shop. A single living girl, the daughter of the owner, stood there screaming.
She’d pushed the girl into action, then ran for the tractor lot. The dead customer was being pummeled in the chest by a man, presumably her husband. Shouts from inside made her look there too. A female mechanic in gray coveralls lay draped over the top of a huge machine behind the bay. It was too large a machine to fit in the garage, and it looked brand new. Two men wearing John Deere hats were already climbing the machine toward their fallen comrade.
All women. All of them. And there were only two left standing. Tabitha and that girl.
At that moment, fear had gripped her like it had never done before. Racing back to her store, she’d tried to contact Charlotte, but the cell phone circuits were overwhelmed. She tried the home number. No answer.
Blind panic hit her and she drove home like an escaping criminal, weaving around cars crashed into ditches, ignoring the diner engulfed in flames where she and Charlotte liked to eat sometimes, and generally not caring if everyone in the world died so long as her daughter was safe and sound.
She’d seemed embarrassed to share this particular bit of the tale, but Charlotte understood it then and she understands it even better now. She’s a mature girl and she knows how desperately her mother loves her. It’s her upbringing that helps her understand her mother this well, and she doesn’t regret that.
Living as they do,
