Sarah

She felt the cool, smooth metal in her hand, pressed tightly with white knuckles against her palm. It was all she had. That little locket represented all that she once knew. Her life that was before NOW.

“No, Sarah, hand me that one; the one with the fine tip.” Sarah’s dad gently coaxed. She loved assisting her father when he painted in his little studio in their sprawling Texas ranch sunken into the rolling hill country. “Yes, that one, thank you sweetie.” He said with a little wink and a smile thrown in her general direction. Beauty was a big part of their lives and Stewart Harrington was always quick to point out all the aesthetics and small nuances of everything around them. “Now, look what happens when I push and twist the brush. Presto!” he exclaimed as his face lit up with joy and accomplishment, they both giggled, and he bent over to give Sarah a quick kiss on the top of her head.

Life was good. It had been over two years since they lost their wife and mother in a senseless car accident caused by a drunken truck driver. It took a lot of adjustment for the two of them and a lot of healing in which they turned to each other and formed the kind of relationship that is stronger than life itself. Sarah seemed to encompass all the beauty and spirit that her dad so passionately embraced. Her demeanor was light, she was fluid and graceful, she reminded her father of a butterfly dancing over the wildflower painted hillsides that surrounded their house. He loved her so completely that his heart seemed like it would literally burst when he sat watching her. His weathered lips would curl up in a grin carving deep lines in his hallowed face…he referred to them as his Sarah marks. The two of them would take long walks together and talk, they would discuss, in great detail about what they would see, what they would hear, how certain things made them feel. Sarah missed her mom, but the sadness was leaving because of the great bond that the tragedy had forged with her dad. She was learning to cope with the death and more importantly learning to embrace life.

It was on one of these lengthy strolls when she was presented with the little heart locket. Her dad slowed to a stop at a picturesque, moss covered pond and sat on a fallen live oak that was almost carved by nature to be a bench. “Come here Sarah, I want to give you something”, Stuart said as shades of amber emotion filled his deep lined eyes. “What is it daddy”, Sarah asked concerned with the sudden sullenness that she saw in her dad. They had become so entuned with each other that body language was as recognized as the spoken word with them.

“I want to give you something”, he stated as Sarah slowly took her seat next to him. He opened his calloused hand and just stared at the shiny object that it held. The locket looked misplaced in his large, dirty hand. “This was your mothers. She wasn’t one much for wearing Jewelry, but she carried it with her everywhere she went, she was never without it.” His big hands were too much as he began to try to open the delicate heart and Sarah gently reached over him to assist. She pinched the little lever at the top of the locket and tiny springs popped it open. “The picture on the left is me and your mom shortly after we met. It was taken in Galveston, on the beach, I can still hear the seagulls…” Stuarts eyes were fixed on a dragonfly, perched on a cattail on the other side of the pond, he wasn’t really seeing this, he was seeing his beautiful wife dancing in and out of the waves so many years ago. A single tear started to roll down his left cheek. “The picture on the right is of you and your mom. The first picture taken of both of you after you were born. She was so happy. She loved you, and me, so completely.” Stuart closed his eyes tight to break the bittersweet trance he was in. He turned his head to Sarah, she looked up at him from the two tiny pictures and saw the emotion, her heart became heavy, and her eyes began to swell. “I know she wanted you to have this, she had planned on giving it to you on your wedding day, that is the day I gave it to her, it was empty at the time, she added the pictures and she always held it dear.”

Sarah seized her dad around the neck with both arms, she held him tightly and he sobbed into her shoulder. This is the first time he had cried in front of Sarah. He always tried to remain strong so that she did not worry about him, she had too much to deal with after her moms’ untimely death. Stuart quickly gained control and separated from her vice like grip. He hunched back over with his elbows on his knees and tried to locate the dragonfly, it had long since departed. “Keep it for her sweetie, I think there is room in heaven for a heart shaped locket, you can give it back to her then.”

Stuart died shortly after. He was among the first wave of people that succumbed to the illness. THE ILLNESS was what it was generally called. Virus was not appropriate and was also used ad nauseum in the first international pandemic. Some called it THE FLASH because of the rapid rate that it spread and the sea of bodies it left in its wake, it was also known by some as the red drop because of the telltale blood drops from the eyes when someone was first affected. There was not time to rally a political response or armies of “experts “to spew their theories. Everyone knew someone that had died from this or was currently dying, and the overwhelming fear led to mayhem. Most media outlets stopped broadcast within two weeks of the first round of reported deaths. Jobs and normal decorum almost instantly became obsolete.

The first theories started speculating that it was a continuance of the last pandemic, that either people that got the vaccination or the ones that did not, were the whole cause of the current issue. Crowds formed in the beginning, huge blood strewn riots, people pitted against each other, demanding answers, and getting none. The crowds started to turn to the houses of government, but most all the politicians were self-preserving or were dead from THE ILLNESS themselves. The rate of fatality was catastrophic, and the world’s population was cut by two thirds in the first four weeks.

The skies were dark and ominous the morning Sarah found her beloved father crumpled on the kitchen floor and her life as a young girl was now completely over. Her attempts to get any first responders to their isolated location failed, either no one answered, or lines were simply dead. Consumed with grief and fear Sarah turned on the TV, that they seldom watched and looked in horror at the images shown when she did locate a channel that was broadcasting. Bulldozers pushing mounds of bodies into huge ditches, planes flying overhead, trailing clouds of some sort of gas or chemicals, the skies seemed dark everywhere not just where Sarah was. There were no voices and the footage appeared to be running on a loop, ending with a character generation that read: BEWARE! STAY AT HOME! DO NOT GO OUT! IF YOU SEE BLOOD IN YOUR EYES, YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD!

Horrified Sarah ran to the kitchen and tentatively turned her dad over so she could see his face. There was a stream of blood where she had seen tears only such a short time ago. Her hand involuntarily covered her mouth stifling a gurgling scream. What was happening? Why was this happening? Where did life go all the sudden? Her questions were many but there was no time for that, she had to plan, she had to help her dad, maybe he was not dead, maybe there was something to this that she did not know.

Sarah hooked the winch cable of the Polaris to the ropes she had tied around the blanket that she wrapped her dad in and dragged him to the UTV. His stiffening body bumped against islands and doorways on the way out and Sarah leaned forward and threw up violently. She was too small to carry or even drag her dad but had to take him with her no matter what. She struggled to get him into the back of the vehicle, but determination and adrenalin made it possible. She looked back and examined their house. She somehow knew it would be the last time she would ever see this beautiful place and she choked back tears. She, like her dad, had to be strong now more than ever.

After loading a few provisions, some water and canned soup, her useless cell phone, and a change of clothes, she got behind the wheel and started the decent into civilization as she once knew it. The road was strewn with a disarray of vehicles, some abandoned, and some occupied with human shells. Some were parked, some were crashed and still smoking from fires that had long since burnt out. It reminded her of an old Godzilla movie she had watched after the monster reigned terror on a city. Nothing made any sense to her. The skies remained ominously dark, yet with no rain, no wind, no thunder, no lightning. She craved these things, she craved anything that appeared normal…in the distance she heard the screech of a red-tailed hawk, and this comforted her until she heard the second screech of this majestic bird choke off, like it had been stopped midflight. Her resolve hardened and she hammered forward.

Navigation would have been difficult in a regular car or truck, but she was able to slowly weave her way down into the town that she knew, the town she grew up in. She had driven on this road countless times with her parents to school or to church or to go out to eat and a movie on family night. This little town had always been comfortable for her, she felt secure here and these people were kind and had been so supportive after the tragic end to her mom. She gritted her teeth as she passed the last turn before viewing the town.

It was gone, not really gone but just not all there….

Where was the town courthouse? That was always the first thing you saw. There were extremely low clouds, or mist over the center of town and she wondered if this was obscuring her sight, playing tricks on her eyes. No. It was gone, and the darkness increased as she stopped and viewed this horrifying spectacle. She knew it was still day, yet it seemed to get darker by the minute.

The roar of a low flying jet screamed overhead, and she looked up, she couldn’t see the machine but saw a cloud, a plume fall eerily over all she viewed. Thick black sewage began to poor from the bowels of the earth. Sarah reached deep into her pocket…

She felt the cool, smooth metal in her hand, pressed tightly with white knuckles against her palm. It was all she had. The darkness approached her from earth and sky there was a single audible click as the heart shaped locket hit the concrete below her feet, the little spring clicked, and it sprung open. Sarah looked down at the tiny pictures and wondered it there was a place in heaven for a tiny heart shaped locket….