What Really Happened: A Memoir from the Apocalypse

Chapter 1: A Turtle and a Gun

June 2013:

As we sat in the dark living room, the light that shone from the tv strained my eyes. I counted the bricks on the fireplace over and over again, going back to the first one whenever I finished. The oddly shaped ones, or the ones that were half-filled, frustrated me. I stroked my baby doll's curly blonde hair. Phoebe was silent as she stared at the tv. She held onto the dark green blanket that hugged her knees.

"Once again, you're tuning in to ABC 11 Eyewitness News. Brian let us know before the break that five-hundred-thousand people have gotten sick from the virus that is still being investigated. Numbers are increasing, but I'd like to assure you that the government will get this under control as soon as possible. However, it is crucial, for both you and your family's safety, to stay inside your houses unless absolutely necessary. This is a high-risk situation."

Phoebe sucked her tears back into her head. Mom held her hand against her back and reminded her to breathe.

"They're saying it's safe in DC. How are we going to get there?" I asked.

"We can't get there. We're staying here. Everything will be fine," Mom said.

Dad swung in the rocking chair and looked up from his phone. "We wouldn't get there even if we tried. Military vehicles are how people get to DC. One's not coming here."

"Can't we call some place to pick us up?" I asked.

"It's not a taxi. They're more concerned with their own city than anyplace else," he said.

My foot fiddled with the notebook on the coffee table. Inside of it were the pros and cons of each of my middle school options. Mom gave it to me, and acted like the choice was mine, even though it never was. As my toes flipped through the pages, it started to feel useless.

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I've always hated Sunday mornings. The day was filled with its own type of sorrow, almost as if it was its own emotion. The sun shined through the ugly striped curtains in the kitchen. Mom made pancakes, which became our weekend ritual. I asked her to spread peanut butter on mine.

Dad stormed down the stairs. "North Carolina's a danger zone," he said.

Mom flipped the pancakes on the griddle. "We know that, Chris."

My fork clashed against my plate as I laid it down. "We really need to go to DC."

"We can't!" they yelled in unison, waving their hands.

"But we can't stay here! It's not safe!" I normally froze whenever they'd yell, but I stood my ground.

Phoebe whimpered like a dying kitten.

"I'm sorry for yelling. But with a seven-year-old and an eleven-year-old, we can't make it there," Dad said.

I rolled my eyes, annoyed that we were the ones made out to be the problem.

"Mama and Papa have generators. We'll go there at around 4:00," Mom said.

"How long are we going to stay there?" Phoebe asked in between her tears.

A moment of silence passed and my parents looked at the floor.

"Probably a while," Mom said.

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I laid stomach-first on the pink flower comforter on my bed. I scrolled through Mom's IPad that she loaned to me and researched the virus. A part of me was afraid to look; but a bigger part of me wanted to make sure that there wasn't a scarier truth out there that our parents were hiding from us. That they weren't sugar-coating anything. I clicked on a website that ranked every state in the US from safest to least safest. They listed North Carolina as the twenty-third safest state. That was about half. It wasn't safe enough.