to dial 911 as he stretched the phone cord over to where Elizabeth lay. He held the phone between his shoulder and ear and began CPR again. The line was busy. He stopped and dialed again. Busy. How can it be busy? 'Damn!' He pressed the '0' button for the operator. It too was busy. He tried again, but it was still busy.
Decker dropped the phone. He continued CPR for another thirty minutes, stopping every five minutes to try the phone again. Finally it rang. He held the phone between his shoulder and ear, continuing CPR, as over and over it rang. Minutes passed and it just kept ringing. Could he have dialed wrong? Now that it was ringing did he dare hang up? No, no! How could he have dialed 911 wrong? If he hadn't dialed right it wouldn't be ringing. Unless, unless he accidentally dialed 411, the number for information. It was unlikely, but in his state of panic, anything was possible.
He hung up and dialed again. It was busy.
It took only a moment while he dialed, but when he started CPR again he noticed something that had escaped him before. Almost an hour had passed and Elizabeth's body was growing cold. She was dead. There was nothing he could do. She was dead.
Decker sat down on the floor beside her and wept. The thought of losing her now, now that he had finally learned what it meant to truly love her, was more than his heart could bear. His muscles ached from the CPR. Outside their window the sun was rising just as it did on every other morning. Elizabeth always loved the sunrise. The clock-radio came on, and an announcer's voice started in mid-sentence, but Decker didn't hear it. He heard the noise, but that's all it was. Tears streaked his face but he didn't wipe his eyes. If all he had to offer her was his tears, he would leave them where they lay.
Soon Hope and Louisa would wake up. How could he tell them what had happened? For their sake, at least, he knew he must be strong. Still weeping, he picked up Elizabeth's body and moved it back to the bed. He pulled the covers up, tucking the blanket in gently around her. Only now did the radio announcer's words begin to pierce through the wreath of grief which encircled him.
'Reports continue to come in from all around the world,' the announcer's voice cracked painfully. 'Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe more, are reported dead in what is undoubtedly the worst single disaster in human history. The deaths seem to have occurred almost simultaneously in all parts of the world. So far, no one has any idea why this has happened.'
What! What was he saying?
Thoughts pounded like thunder in Decker's head. Thousands dead? Was this what killed Elizabeth? How could this happen? Radiation? Poison gas? But why would it kill only some people and not others?
As if in answer, the announcer continued. 'There is no apparent pattern to the deaths: Black, White, Indian, Japanese, Chinese; men, women, children… '
'Children?' Decker said out loud. 'NO!!!'
Decker ran from the bedroom. A moment passed and then a scream of anguish ascended the stairs, ripping through the walls and shaking the tiny particles of dust as they floated through the morning sunlight. It seemed like no earthly scream, such a sorrowful howl. But no one heard it. They were all dead. Decker was alone.
Decker stumbled up the half flight of stairs to the living room and made his way to a chair. Upstairs in the bedroom, the voice of the radio announcer told of the world's grief. Tens of millions lay dead for no apparent reason. In Europe it had been midday. Carnage covered the roadways as cars driven by victims of the disaster sped helter-skelter into pedestrians and other vehicles.
At least thirty commercial airplanes with both pilot and co-pilot dead at the controls careened into hillsides or fields or towns. Many who had survived the initial disaster were forced to leave their dead behind as they evacuated neighborhoods around the wreckage of trains where overturned cars spilled out streams of toxic chemicals.
Nuclear power plants teetered on the edge of disaster as technicians rushed to fill the roles of those who had died at their stations. All over the east coast of America men and women awoke to find their loved ones dead. In other time zones, where it was still night, many would sleep soundly, waking hours later to find the cold, stiff body of their wife or husband lying in bed next to them.
Decker's mind was not on the radio. The combined effect of three years of captivity, his ill health, and the sudden death of his wife and daughters was more than he could bear: Decker was catatonic, hovering in the twilight of insanity.
Hank Asher locked his fingers together, forming a step for his young journalist intern to place her foot in. Suzy Stites took the task in stride as she climbed through the kitchen window they had just pried open. As she made her way to open the front door, she spotted Decker's pale motionless form slumped in a chair in the living room. Hank Asher entered the house to the now familiar stench of rotting flesh. At first he assumed that Decker had been among the unlucky ones who had died three days earlier in the 'Disaster,' but Suzy soon determined that he was still alive.
'He seems to be in shock,' she told Asher, as she tried to get Decker to drink some water. Decker stared blankly but swallowed eagerly as she put the glass to his mouth.
Asher surveyed the situation and decided she had things well in hand. 'You stay here with Mr. Hawthorne. I'll check the house to see if anyone else is alive.' Suzy needed little encouragement to stay among the living. The smell of the house left no doubt of what Asher would find. Hank had not known Elizabeth or the Hawthorne children but his heart ached for his friend.
When he returned from the bedrooms a few moments later he directed Suzy to go around the rest of the house and open up all of the windows. 'We need to remove the death from this house. I'll see if I can find a shovel to bury the bodies.'
Asher made no effort to try to revive Decker. Even if he could rouse him, it seemed to Asher the most humane thing to do was to allow his colleague to 'sleep' through the dirty tasks which needed doing. Outside, Asher found a garden shovel and began digging a large hole for the burial of Elizabeth, Hope, and Louisa Hawthorne. It was not the grave one would have expected before the Disaster, but it was better than the mass graves at the edges of the city. Here at least Decker might someday place a gravestone.
As he was digging, Hank Asher sensed that he was being watched. Turning, he found a boy in his early teens staring at him from the next yard.
'You buryin' sumbody?' the boy asked, as he jumped the fence and came over to where Asher was working. The boy's clothes were new but dirty, as though he hadn't changed or washed in several days.
'Yeah,' Asher replied, as he went back to his work.
'I knew 'em, you know. I used to ride bikes with Louisa. I don't guess she'll be needin' the bike no more.' The boy paused for a second in thought and then continued. 'Too bad it's a girl's bike.'
Asher continued digging.
'You want some help?' the boy asked.
Asher had already worked up a sweat and the boy's offer was extremely welcome.
'I'll help you dig for ten dollars,' the boy added.
Asher was momentarily disgusted by the boy's profiteering. Instead of offering to help with the burial out of charity or perhaps friendship for Louisa, he looked at the deaths as a way to make some money. Asher decided it was better to forget about motives and simply get some help. He nodded and the boy grabbed the shovel and started digging.
'There's a pick in the shed over there,' the boy said.
Asher found the pick and two pairs of work gloves. 'Here, put these on,' he said as he walked back to where the boy was digging.
The boy put on the gloves while he rested a moment. Asher went to work with the pick.
'They all dead?' the boy asked, as Asher broke up the ground.
'Everybody but Mr. Hawthorne,' Asher replied.
'I didn't know him very good. I remember him some from when I was a kid, but then he was a hostage in Lebanon. He only got out about a week ago.'
Asher continued digging without responding and then stopped and looked up at the boy. 'Are you going to dig or just hold up that shovel?'
The boy acted as though he appreciated the reminder and went back to work on the hole.
'My dad says it was probably some kinda germ warfare or sumthin' – maybe the Russians or the Arabs.'
