Blood Stained Glass

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. A glimpse of the sky she could not reach and stars she could not follow. Through that window, she…

“Mommy, is her window like my window?”

“No, sweetie, I think it’s just an ordinary window.”

“Do you think she’d like my window better?”

“Yes, sweetie, I’m sure she would.”

Rachel put down the book as Jamie climbed on the pew. Following some map in his head, he sent his little finger on a grand adventure along the lead lines. Past red and orange, doubled back towards the dark blue and hanging a final right to the green grassy hill and his little shepherd boy. He traced the ridges of the boy’s white tunic and ran along the curve of his crook. As always, the journey ended with the lamb and its smooth, glass wool. The closest he might ever get to touch one. Rachel stared at the small circle in the upper corner of the bucolic tableau.

Behind the church window, the sun was setting. Nature’s pinks and oranges mixed with man-made colors, bathing her son in a dusty rainbow. Rachel curled a strand of black hair behind her ear and reached out to him. Afraid to break this beam of serenity, she stopped at the light’s edge. Closing her eyes, she imagined painting this scene with long strokes of vibrant oils, mixed just for this occasion. As she illustrated the scene, the dust motes weren’t just dancing but worshiped the little boy. They spun into a ring around his golden hair like he was their Saturn. A halo for all the world to see. Even if she was the only one that would ever see it. Rachel wiped a tear from her eye. No, she knew there were others out there. They might never meet them, stuck on the other side of icy peaks, blazing sand, or raging oceans. But they were out there. At least they were all alone together.

“It’s almost bedtime, Jamie. Go dance.”

He leaped from the pew and skipped into the old cemetery. She checked the knots in the frayed rope that kept their tarp tied to rebar stakes in the ground. No sailor would approve, but they had held during the last rain. Stepping around the partial wall, past the twisted iron hinges that used to hold an imposing set of oak doors she studied the other side and made a mental note to find a new set of ropes before these gave up the ghost. The ruins of those stout stone walls and their thick mortar, maybe the last two of their kind standing in this part of the world, made them feel safe. Protected from the wind and what little survived in the night. She knew of other places they might rest, even through winter, but this would do for now. Fewer memories, fewer ghosts. Jamie danced among cracked tombstones and broken marble monuments. Lost to age, vandalism, or the bombs, it was hard to tell. At the edge of the cemetery was a forest. Or rather, was a forest. When she was young, everything and everyone towered over her, made her feel insignificant, and sometimes told her she was. As she got older, her parents got smaller in so many ways. But the trees remained friendly giants with ever-changing crowns and thick muscular branches to hold the heavy snow. Then they lost a war they never knew they were fighting. She tried to remember. How long had the explosions gone on? Two, maybe three days? Now there was no one left to fire the weapons that had ended everything. At least she hoped so.

A few young saplings, about as old as Jamie, had sprung up between the bodies of their progenitors. Taller than her, but more immature. Their ephemeral crowns were already turning red and orange, ready to be laid down. They might have to return to the bunker soon. She stood sun’s dying rays and took a deep breath. Who knew the world would smell just a little sweeter after the apocalypse? At least in some places. They would have to go to town tomorrow. She would look for scraps and supplies while Jamie hunted for buried treasures in the broken monuments of civilization.

The light disappeared and they climbed in their sleeping bags laid out under the tarp. Rachel dreaded the coming freeze but was glad the mosquitoes had finally started dying off. Wriggling down, a reverse caterpillar, she yawned. Her heart started pounding and she reached outside her cocoon for one more thing. Grabbing the cold steel pipe she pulled it inside and held it against her chest. Her eyelids grew heavy as she rubbed her fingers along the threads. Maybe there was no one out there. Maybe there was. With this pipe, she could take out a man twice her size. Her father had shown her that.

In her dreams, Rachel relived the night her father brought them to the bunker. Professor Terrance Sterling, resplendent in his tweed jacket, rode up in his black Escalade, provided by the University, held out his hand, and whisked her and her mother away to be saved from the coming doom. But even her dreams would always call bullshit. Yes, her father had saved them. Yes, he brought them to the haven he had created and never told them about before that night. Sooner or later, in every dream, she remembers the call. She and her father were screaming over her grades and lack of ambition or future while Ava, her mom, sat quietly in a leather chair, trying to calm them down with silently pleading eyes and shaking hands. After a dozen rings, her father yanked the handset to his ear. His rage disappeared along with the blood from his face. Pale, with a brow of flop sweat, he looked from his wife to his daughter. All he said was that he understood before he hung up. He stepped towards the door, then looked at his wife. Then his daughter. Another step, another look. Pounding his hand on the desk he yelled at them to go to the car. Rachel opened her mouth and he grabbed her arms. We will argue later, he said, if there is a later. Now run to the car. Take nothing. Ava did as she was told and dragged Rachel along. The professor grabbed a black bag from under his desk and ran behind them. At least the dreams were always kind enough to eliminate the interminable, seething silence between the house and the bunker.

They raced past the old church and its permanent denizens, then through the forest on some small overgrown path. Branches scraped the side and wrenched at the mirrors. Bursting out into an empty clearing they bounced along mole hills and groundhog burrows, near the center. Professor Sterling slammed on the brakes and leaped out to lift a small rock. Rachel and her mother stepped out of the car as a metal door opened on hydraulic lifts. They followed him down and as Rachel crossed the threshold, she heard something in the distance, like fireworks, and felt the air push, sending her stumbling down the steps. The bunker door closed as a thousand trees cracked in unison and she saw the car fly away like a leaf on the wind.

After being sanitized in an airlock, they sat around a small table. Throughout the night, they felt vibrations ripple through the bunker’s metal shell like it was water. The Professor stalked around the room to tell them what is happening, without explaining what happened. He talked of grand discussions and ideas between men and how they led to unintended consequences. How none of this could be his fault. He just had an idea. And brought that idea to life. It was not his fault what others did with it. It was just an idea. But he had built this place for them, he told Ava, holding her hands. To protect them while nearly everyone else in the world who wasn’t deep underground or under the sea was swept off the board. They would survive as cities were leveled and mountains were cracked. This haven was all for them.

Rachel left to tour the bunker. She had learned long ago to ignore her father’s excuses and his prevarications to use a word from her English professor. The largest room was filled with food, water, toilet paper, and whiskey. Another room had a couple of pairs of blue coveralls hanging next to a hazmat suit and bottles of cleaning agents. In another, there was a small workshop with toolboxes, two black welding helmets, and dozens of other things she recognized from when he had cleaned out the garage. This was his man cave, she thought. There were two other rooms, one with a bed with some his books lying on it, and the other filled with random boxes and crates. She knew. She knew he hadn’t built this for them. She could see one of those coeds giggling at some mathematical bon mot in the quad being brought down here. But not her. Not her mother. If he were a King, as he often pretended he was, when not pretending to be a joint god of physics and engineering, then he would have chosen to save his mistress from whatever was going on above them. But now, he was stuck with his queen and his not-so-beloved princess, pregnant with some peasant’s bastard. Not that they knew that for a while. Professor Stirling had not thought to stockpile pregnancy tests.

Memories melded in her dreams. Time hopped back and forth. Sometimes her belly was growing, and then she played with Jamie, staring into his blue eyes with wonder. Then pregnant again while her father went out in the suit to take readings and look for other survivors. Then she and her mother danced with Jamie before he learned to walk. Laughing while they made their eyebrows dance to the music of his giggles until they heard the airlock door close. Then she was throwing up in a toilet while her father screamed at her to end it before he did. Then she closed the door on her sleeping toddler while her father threatened her little boy’s life under his rancid breath. Toothpaste had been low on the stockpile list as well. Especially for more than one or two people.

Suddenly, the time roller coaster stopped and settled onto one track. Jamie was three, and her father worried about their stockpile. He was always worried, but he ranted about it even more. He had run out of whiskey some time ago. Every day he went out in the hazmat suit to hunt for what few canned items he could find. He would be gone for hours and hours, then days, taking more and more of those dwindling supplies for his treks. And then, he was gone. Rachel was not sure when she knew he wasn’t coming back. Much sooner than her mom. Ava never accepted it. She knew in her heart he wasn’t dead. She knew in her heart that he would never abandon them. Rachel bit her tongue and let her mom believe that faulty organ’s lies.

One night, on the cot Ava had moved next to the airlock, keeping vigil for her lost love, Rachel curled up around her. In the dark, Ava whispered that her Terrance was dead. Rachel pulled that paper-thin body in tight and laid a hollowed cheek against her mother’s. The lost woman’s tears spilled out and she let her own tears mix in. Not for the father she had lost long ago, but for the mother that had always cared for her. The next morning, when the automatic lights came on, all her tears were gone when she realized her mother had passed. A lack of food. A broken heart. There would be no autopsy to find out. Rachel wrapped the body in the sheets they had just slept in. Red-eyed, she rolled her mother up in a roll of plastic and packed her away in the room she had shared with her husband. Then Rachel scraped the bottom of an oatmeal tube for Jamie’s breakfast and cut up an ugly carrot her father said he had found by the side of the road. She took a swig of water.

Rachel opened her eyes and grasped her pipe. Still there. Looking over at Jamie’s sleeping bag, she watched it rise and fall as the sun spilled its first light through the little shepherd boy watching over them. She climbed out and wrapped herself in the down jacket she had been lucky enough to find on one of their last trips. It didn’t even seem to be too moldy. She jiggled her little boy awake and made a full bowl of oatmeal for the two of them, something she never thought she would be so grateful for. Time to head into town.

Over a quarter mile away, they could hear the buzzing hurricane of flies where the old grocery store used to be. Even six years later, they had enough putrid food to build a voracious army. The bombs might have done away with a generation of them, but the next one had been waiting in the wings. They needed surprisingly little and made whatever they were given go a long way, for a long time. Rachel peered at a small burst of reflected light in the eye of the hurricane. She tapped her leg with the pipe. Spitting on the ground, she walked away from the mesmerizing flurry of little bodies.

When Rachel had first come up from the bunker, she had worried about decaying bodies strewn across the old roads or decorating what used to be front lawns. But other than the occasional skull or femur, she rarely found anything. As if the skeletons had been pulverized along with the homes they had lived in. Flesh and muscle were worn away by insects and the seasons. Jamie kicked away bits of siding and moved small chunks of rotted beams, on the lookout for hidden bits of color that might signal a new toy. He was hoping for a small plane, something his mother had described. He was sure he would know it when he saw it. Rachel looked for better rope and any more rebar the bombs had liberated from concrete slabs. Canned food would be a bonus, shore up their stockpile, but normally their discovery just heralded an outpost of the fly army. She would check the University garden for any last vegetables, and maybe find some insect larvae to dry out for snacks. Search for anything else her father might have been squirreled away there, too.

She tried to remember what the town looked like before, but brick homes and three-story buildings seemed like fever dreams after half a dozen years. The destruction always reminded her of helicopter shots on the news of towns ripped apart by tornados. Everything flattened and spread out in jagged pieces. But here, there were no people climbing over the wreckage of their lives. Nobody looking for lost pets or photo albums. Nobody for the cameras to catch and show just how lucky you should feel not to be them. Just flies and cockroaches wondering where their meal tickets went. Sometimes Rachel felt as if a cockroach was following her, nostalgic for the days of mass-produced trash. Sometimes she felt like a cockroach, poking through all this detritus, churning up bone white dust and who knows what kind of fungal spores. She found an old radio and turned it over in her hands. Maybe she could find some batteries. She liked the white noise and the one in the bunker had been broken a long time.

Every so often she stopped to watch Jamie clamber over old roofs and dance a little jig around the sea of light shining on the pavement from broken car windows. He could do so much damage to himself, but he’d been cooped up long enough. And a little pain reminded you of how precious life is when the life you knew was gone. For Jamie, this was a better life than he had ever known. No recycled air, no death threats spat out in whispers between clenched teeth. No half-lidded eyes staring at every single bite you took like it had been ripped from a more deserving mouth. Rachel and Ava never left Jamie’s side for fear that her father would one day become the kind of tyrant he thought he was.

Rachel wrung the neck of her pipe and listened. The little finches were making a comeback. Blue Jays and other birds that she would never know the name of. Little brown and gray ones, too. Maybe she’d let Jamie name them, then they would write it down to make it official. Rachel massaged her temples and cocked her head to the side. The buzzing. That constant droning. Black noise. So loud now, drowning out the sweet songs of their fellow fliers. She hoped Jamie wasn’t antagonizing them again. She walked toward the angry cloud and saw it. Him.

Standing amidst the flies, arms stretched out, preaching to his pestilential flock, was a man. Turning in a slow, deliberate circle counter to the cyclone, light reflected off the black welding helmet he wore. He wore dark blue coveralls that were faded, worn at the elbows, and covered in dark stains. Rachel raised her pipe and closed her eyes for just a second. He was still there when she opened them again. Arms still raised, the man stared in her direction. Then, with a wave, he called her over to join his other parishioners. Rachel ran.

Jamie, his back to the army of flies, dug out a small green car and smiled. His rainbow collection would almost be complete. Wrapped in his other hand was a small silver necklace with a butterfly. A gift for his mother. No planes, but he would just have to search for new treasure spots. He heard the pounding steps and started to turn. The car flew from his hand as his mother yanked him off the ground. He cried out for his prize and begged her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She yelled at Jamie not to look behind them. So he did and saw the sunlight glare off a black metal helmet. In a world flattened by explosions, there are few places to hide while you are running. Rachel knew that she just had to get them back to the bunker. They would be safe. Nothing could enter there. She held Jamie tight and tried to ignore the burning in her legs while she sprinted around dead tree trunks and under the low branches of their progeny. Starting across the field, she stumbled and dropped Jamie. Cursing groundhogs, moles, and other fellow survivors of the surface wipeout, she picked him back up and stumbled over their leftover burrows. She typed in the code for the bunker, which her father had been kind enough to leave behind, and closed the door behind them.

“Mommy, why were we running?”

“I saw someone.”

“In the flies?”

“Yes, you saw him too?”

“Maybe. But I dropped my car.”

“We’ll get it later, sweetie.”

“Okay. I’m going to get some food.”

Jamie hopped down the stairs and into the main area, looking for snacks. Rachel stared at the door. Waiting. There was no window in the door. No way to keep a lookout. No way for others to look in. All she could do was sit and imagine the man in his welding helmet, stepping across the open field, arms out wide. And then, what? Sit down and wait for them? Pry them out like an oyster?

Knock. Knock. No, not a knocking. A cracking. As if someone were trying to smash thick plastic against the thick metal door again and again.

Rachel stood up, her pipe at the ready, gripped like a small baseball bat. Nothing. Jamie came up the steps.

“Did you want a sandwich?”

“No, sweetie, thank you. Why don’t you go play in your room, and close the door?”

“Okay.”

He ran down to his collection of cars, balls, and bits of dinosaurs. Rachel walked backward, step by step. Never taking her eye off the door. She laid down the pipe on the table and grabbed her mom’s old cot and stuck it by the entryway, readying for a new vigil. She sat and waited. Hours passed. Jamie got more food. Jamie played on the cot near her. Jamie jumped around the room like a frog. Jamie started to nod off against her on the cot and she took a few harrowing moments to place him in his bed and close the door before racing back. Soon, her own eyes betrayed her and she slumped against the wall.

Crack. Crack.

Rachel jumped from the cot and raced up the steps. Her heart was racing. Sweat poured down her face and she felt ready to throw up.

Crack. Crack.

She turned and took a step down.

Crack. Crack.

It came from behind her. She ran to Jamie’s room, where he lay asleep on his cot, hugging a tiger bereft of its stuffing.

Crack. Crack.

The workroom. There’s no way he could be in the workroom. No one had been in there for years. The lock was still on the door. She grabbed the key hidden in her room. Dropping the lock to the floor she flung the door open and jumped in, weapon at the ready. A flash of light in the corner of her eye. She swung and connected. Heard the crack of thick plastic and turned on the light. Her father’s extra welding helmet was fractured at her feet. Rachel sat on the floor and held it. She understood now.

“Screw you, Dad.”

She tossed the helmet aside and laid it out on the cot. For nearly three years her mom had held vigil before she finally died of the broken heart her father had left behind. Throughout their entire marriage, she had worshiped him. He had loved her too, once, but she knew too many intimate details. Too many of his mistakes. Like most gods, he needed worshippers willing, not just to overlook all of his failures, but with whom he could pretend they never happened. She forgave him every mistake, every trespass against her and their bed. And how does he repay her? By leaving her behind.

Rachel closed her eyes and fell into the dream she knew was waiting.

Rachel stared at the nearly empty shelves and empty jugs. They had stretched things as far as they could with what meager offerings her father had brought back before he disappeared. He had warned them again and again, not to go up without the suit. Because he was the man, he said it was his job to take care of them, to provide. So only he left the bunker. Now, her mother was dead and her son had been born in this metal coffin, raised in it, but she was damned if he would die here too. She put on a pair of coveralls and one of her father’s welding helmets. This was useless, and she knew it. Even though she hated science, mostly because her father loved it, sometimes a placebo was better than nothing. Besides, it made her feel a little bit stronger. She waited for Jamie’s afternoon nap and went through the airlock and up into the outside world.

It was quiet. Distant bird song rode on the wind, but nothing like the cacophony she was used to. Her father hadn’t lied, the forest was gone, but a new one was struggling to replace it. The air smelled of wildflowers and insects flittered from bloom to bloom. There were bees, but it felt like so few. She wandered around the field and then walked past all of the dead logs, and found the remaining walls of the church. Found the little shepherd boy and his lamb.

She walked through the old town, past the flies, and near the University. Past huge chunks of Corinthian columns and the curved stone of former arches and their lintels. There she found the garden. It was overgrown but flush with vegetables and fruits. She picked off a fresh red tomato and bit into it, letting the juice run down her chin. Lifting the leaves, she found melons and strawberries. Rachel could not believe her luck that such a thing could still be growing. Then she saw the thin fabric covering some of the crops. And the tall trellises that never could have survived the explosions that destroyed the Ivy League walls. Then she saw the gray-haired man, without a hazmat suit, digging in one of the beds. Thin and wiry, but not starving. She knew what starving looked like. From the bed nearest her found a metal pipe being used to hold up some small vining plant. She yanked them both out and padded up behind the old man.

He turned and recognized his old helmet. Standing, he wiped his hands on tattered pants and sat them on his hips. “I assume that’s you, Rachel. I wondered how long it would take one of you to leave. It was a test, you see? I needed to make sure you were ready to live in this new world. It’s hard but doable. I’ve built another shelter. It’s not too bad, even in winter. I can make enough room for Jamie. I assume the boy is still alive. I don’t think you would have come up here if he wasn’t. I’ll need to apologize to your mother, but I think she’ll forgive me. She always has.”

Rachel swung the pipe and knocked him to the ground. The blood splattered back onto her coveralls. Another swing and she could barely see through the visor. Another, and he stopped moving. She sunk to her knees and pulled the bloody plant from her pipe, cleaning it in the process. She wiped the blood-stained glass with the back of her sleeve and stared at her father’s body through the dark red smear. Throwing the helmet aside, she ripped off the coveralls, shedding her father’s blood. She still had no tears to give. Looking around at the garden, she knew she would have to harvest it soon and she would bring Jamie to help. Rolling the body onto the coveralls she started to drag it away, stopping to gather her strength with every yank. She kept looking back at the gory head and stuck the helmet over it. No need to see that face again. Crack, crack the helmet sounded against the cement and rocks. She had not buried her mother, at least not yet, and she was damned if she would bury the man who abandoned them all and didn’t even have the decency to die. Or all least move very, very far away.

She marched up to the army of flies, held her breath, and dragged in her offering. They accepted. Pipe in hand she hiked back to the bunker and got Jamie. For the first time, she brought him out into the real world. The light hurt for a while, but soon he pounced upon everything. He found a ladybug and stared at it for an hour. Tracked ants to their homes and built up tiny dirt condos for them. Smelled every flower and swam through the tall grass. This is what so many people missed. The sheer wonder of a child just learning about the world for the first time. Not worried about how they’ll get ahead, who’s doing better than they are, and how they’ll get rewarded. She sighed. It was true, survival was going to get in the way of all that, but she would do her damnedest to make sure it lasted as long as it could.

Rachel woke up and checked on her son. She ruffled his sleeping head and headed out of the bunker and into town. The army of flies rested, bivouacked among their hoard of decay. She stood at the edge, trying not to disturb them.

“Apparently, I need to make my peace. So here it is. Goodbye. I hope you’re not waiting around for an apology. Because you don’t deserve one. I’d wait for one, but they were never your forte. In my charitable moments, I think about how you were just another human being who always wanted more and ended up taking it away from everyone. Most other times, I just hate you for what you did to Mom. How you talked about my son. My child. So, one more time, goodbye Professor Stirling. I hope that wherever you are you’re finally getting what you deserve.”

She heard the drone of little wings grow as the light of the day warmed the dark mass. She tossed in the pipe, near the helmet, and walked away as the flies were startled into flight. She grabbed up a piece of rebar. Not as good, but it would do for now. She woke Jaime up and they headed to the church walls, running through the fallen leaves, laughing and singing. They took a moment for her little lamb to touch his, bathed in the light of the sun and her joy.