Just Gone

[7] The Evacuation

This is a flashback chapter, it focuses on the last day Toby had with her dad. This kind of helps to understand of toby and her dad (if anyone even cares about him) And it may answer any questions you might have about the two. If not . . . well I did a shit job.

I casted the part of Toby's dad as Robert Knepper (the picture above). If any of you have seen prison break you'll know he does a great southern accent and is great at playing an antagonist. 

4:07 am

I shot up from my bed grabbing my throat as an attempt to quiet the scream. I was panting, everything around me came into view as my eyes began to adjust. I placed a shaky hand over my mouth, realizing how loud the scream might've been.

I had always had trouble sleeping, nightmares were never anything new to me. But lately, they'd been happening more often, almost every night. They seemed to wait for me behind my eyelids, waiting for me to close them and lose consciousness before they took over my mind.

I guessed it had something to do with the TV. Daddy was never one to watch the news, but the last couple days, that was all that was on. People seemed to be acting weird, I didn't understand a lot of what they said, but I understood virus. And they seemed to use that word a lot. Virus and dead were the most common words.

People were getting sick, a lot of them. The virus made them act weird, violent, it made them want to kill people. The people who were sick, attacked the ones who weren't. A lot of people were dying, I understood that as well. In my opinion, it was the virus that killed you, whether you were infected or not.

Even the people who weren't infected were getting violent crazy, especially the cops. In Daddy's words they were 'desperate'. We were watching the TV together, and on the news cops were shooting at the sick people. Once, one of the cops had wrapped his arm around the sick person's neck, trying to pull him to the ground.

"They're gettin' desperate," Daddy had said. "Lettin' them get tha' on TV. Ain't thinkin' no more."

"Get what on TV?" I asked.

"Shootin' in tha open like tha'. An' tha's a choke-hold righ' there, i's illegal. Cops can't do that."

Another thing that was announced on the news a couple days before was that all schools were closed 'until further notice'. That surprised me, but didn't effect me much. School wasn't something I cared for, I didn't understand a lot of what the teachers would show us. Daddy said it was a waste of time and didn't care if I went or not. So I didn't go often.

Sometimes, I wanted to go but the other kids didn't like me and I didn't like them. They played mean tricks on me a lot, I may not have liked them but I never threw their backpacks in the trash or fill their desks up with wrappers and garbage.

After a few minutes of staring at the door, waiting for the sound of his stomping and yelling, I had begun to calm down. Did he not hear me scream?

I threw the worn out sheet I used as a blanket and got up. I opened the door and creeped quietly down the hallway. Strangely enough, I hadn't heard Daddy's snores like I usually would.

I stood by his door and listened for a moment. When I still didn't hear anything, I went to the living room to look out the window. I knew better than to go into Daddy's room.

When I looked out the window, I saw that our car wasn't there. I was relieved but at the same time confused. When did he leave?

It wasn't anything new to find he wasn't home. When Daddy left, he would sometimes be gone for hours, sometimes a couple days. I never knew how long he would be gone until he came back.