The Cure Within

Donald Rackle and Tom Rackle

Once they arrived at the old country property,with all the vehicles littering the yard along with miscellaneous parts and trailers,and the field with corn and beans growing ,John didn't want to wake the kids yet. He wanted to know if their friends were alive or dead before he woke the children. If they were dead or missing this would spare the children some of the heartache. So, he got out of the truck and surprisingly the children all stayed asleep. He approached the old trailer house and tried the door. When no one answered he became worried. Then he remembered the man he was trying to find. Donald had always loved being in his garage and honestly it was a way safer building than this old trailer house. John figured that's where they had to be, in the garage. He walked down the small but steep hill to the door to the giant metal building and he tried the door. No one answered but he refused to believe these people were gone so he tried it again but this time more aggressively. He heard Donald yelling. “ you son of a bitch if you're alive get your ass off this land you ain’t welcome here asshole!” “ Don. It's me, John. Open the damn door!” He stood there and waited. Then he finally heard the door unlocking and the door opened.There stood Donald Rackle, 45. In hand with Tomas standing in a corner with a metal bar in his hand. “Thank god y'all are alive when i went to the trailer no one answered and i thought maybe you were dead.” “ Hell i ain't dead.” John looked inside to tomas,the boy had come out of his corner and was looking to see more clearly who it was. “John? Is Samantha and them with you? Do you know if they're ok?”    “ Yeah they're fine they’re in the truck I'll go get ‘em.” SO John went outside to his truck and woke the children. They were happy to get out of the truck and go see their friends. Abigail was excited to see Donnie. The two were like peas in a pod and really close. Levi and Sam were both ready to see Tomas. The last time they visited was a couple months ago they hadn't gotten time to come back. They made their way down to the shop, when they walked in they were greeted excitedly. “ Sam I am! I feel I haven't seen you in years! I'm glad you're safe.” “ Yeah, me too. It's good to see ya’ Tommy''The two hugged, and Levi jumped into the conversation. “Hey To-mas!” “Hey dude! You still like baseball?” “yep!” Tom had noticed Sam being extra quiet, and he wondered what had made her that way. He wanted to ask, but he didn't want to make her cry or make her upset, especially not in front of her brother and sister and his dad. He decided he would ask her later, probably when everyone else was asleep. Abigail was just talking away to Donnie. She had so much she wanted to tell him and she wanted to talk to him about the events of the day. She hoped maybe it would help ease her mind a little. After a couple more hours, it had gotten dark and Donnie had pulled out all the numerous lawn chairs he kept in the garage for the kids to sleep in. They had grown up sleeping in odd little places like a lawn chair, so it didn't bother them all too much. John and Donnie stood next to each other, watching over the children and talking. “Man, all this is crazy. I mean, how is this even happening? I wasn't a fan of our government, but hell, I thought they would have some sort of precautions to prevent this kinda shit. I mean, everything went down and quick. There aint n power, no cell service. Hell, i aint even seen a car go by in hours. It's like everything just went to hell and nobody knows how to fix it.” “They were supposed to have things to stop this. It all failed, I guess. Guess it wasn't worth the money to worry about.” John and Donnie both let out a dry chuckle at that. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, each just thinking to themselves when John had an idea. “We could make this place safe. Ya know we could- we could build up some walls, we could use some of this junk you got lying around and put it to some use. We could, ummm–make ourselves a little haven here for the kids so they can live safely. Or at least safer. And we could set up an area for them to learn to shoot. They're gonna need to know how. I can teach ‘em, and teach you some too, old man. They deserve that much. We have to try for them.” “I aint old. And it ain't junk. It could work, though. Using all my stuff to build walls. We can use that crane truck I got sitting out front to pile some of them old cars on top of each other. Actually, we should move the goose necks to outline where we want our walls to be and stack everything on top of those.” “What about underneath the trailers? Those things or muertos as Sam keeps calling them, they aint smart but im sure they would crawl under the trailers to get to us.” “We would stuff all those old tires I have out back under ‘em nice and tight and if we ain't got enough just from that we could take the tires off the vehicles ‘fore we pile them on top of eachother. Use the odd and end parts I got to fill in any holes in the armor.” “Yeah. Yeah, that's what we'll do. We can start tomorrow. Maybe we can build something here.” With that, the two men went their separate ways and went to sleep. Sam had tried to go to sleep, but she was scared that if she went to sleep, then the muertos would break their temporary safety and ruin it all. She couldn't sleep, so she just sat there in her chair, thinking about everything. How did everything fall apart so fast? Just this morning, she was sitting on her bed with her sister in her house watching cartoons. Now it was nighttime, and she was keeping herself awake, running from nightmares, while sitting in a lawn chair in some old garage. She thought about her parents. Were they actually dead? Or maybe they survived somehow? Maybe they had gone home and they couldn't find their kids, so they left upset, thinking their children were dead? Maybe they were meurtos. Roaming around the streets of El Paso, looking for their next meal. Their next meal being a person. Or maybe it'd be some helpless animal. Thinking about her parents made her want to cry, but she couldn't. Like John said, they didn't have time for her to be crying. She needed to be strong and help keep her brother and sister alive. If she could never cry again, she'd be ok as long as her brother and sister were ok. She needed something to get her mind off of everything, so she turned in her seat to face Tomas. To her surprise, he was awake too, just sitting there. Tomas had been waiting for the right moment to talk to Sam about what had happened that day. He wanted to know why she was being quiet, why she was upset. “Sam? You’re awake, right?” “yeah.” “Are you ok? I wanted to ask earlier, but I didn't wanna upset you.” “I'm fine.” “Are you sure? Because you’ve been really quiet, and that's not normal for you. Sam, what happened? Why are you with John?” “My mom and dad are dead. So is Jane.” Sam said these words like it was a typical Tuesday. She had convinced herself she couldn't allow herself to be too upset about it or she would probably end up dead along with her siblings.Tom felt bad. He knew Sam was really close with her parents,her dad especially. The two did everything together and were inseparable. “Sam I'm sorry. You know you can be upset about it right.And you can always talk to me, always.” “ Yeah I know.It's just a lot and- I'm just glad we found you guys and you guys are ok.” “Yeah I'm glad you all are ok too, considering.” They didn't talk any more that night and eventually Tom fell asleep. Sam still lay awake; she just couldn't fall asleep.