Apophis Read online

  I scrambled out the door at the end of the hallway and made my way down the scaffolding of stairs that clung to the side of our house like an overgrown ivy plant. The snow on the steps seeped through the material of my wool socks, but I didn’t care. I was used to the cold and the wet by now. When I reached the bottom step, I could see smaller footprints in the snow ahead of me. The steps were close together as if the person responsible had tiptoed quickly across the backyard.

  It was dark outside; the days were getting shorter everyday. I didn’t need the tracks in the snow or sunlight to find my way to the unattached pole barn. There was usually an old clothesline that ran from the house back to the storage shed. My grandmother used it to dry laundry. The wet clothes would freeze on the line and she’d bring them back inside to thaw before returning the clothes to the laundry line to start the process all over again. The real reason for the laundry line, however, was to help us between the shed and house in case of a blizzard. If there was ever a whiteout, we could use the line to guide us back and forth. I felt for the line, instinctively knowing where it should have been, but only grasped air. The line was gone. Cut, I assumed, by the bandits. They’d probably thought it was a homemade alarm system or a booby-trap.

  Even though the laundry line had been cut, its existence had been more precautionary than necessity. I had lived in this house and this yard all my life. I could have probably found my way back to the pole barn blindfolded. The pole barn had been on the property when my parents had bought the house a few years after they’d gotten married. Over the years it had become dilapidated from ill use, but I loved it. It had been my place to escape to when I needed to breathe. I had often “run away” to the barn and lived there for a weekend until I got bored of myself. I’d always imagined that one day I’d fix it up and make it a more livable space, but I’d never really had the time or the ambition during high school to follow through with that plan.

  I followed the footprints all the way to the pole barn. The door was usually latched with a heavy padlock that was so rusted it didn’t quite close all the way. Even though it no longer locked, my dad said it kept the honest people honest. The lock was gone now though, but the two oversized swinging doors were still shut tight. The backs of the doors were insulated with thick, pink foam boards that my dad had cut down to just the right size so the doors always stayed shut tight together. I knew it was just my grandma inside who’d removed the lock, but I still wanted to be careful.

  Cautiously, I pulled open one of the doors, just wide enough so I could slip inside. The pole barn had few windows, and it was even darker inside. I held my breath as if the steady inhale and exhale might give me away.

  “Sam?” My grandma’s voice broke through the silence.

  “Gran? Where are you?” I called out.

  She stood to her full height and stepped out from behind my father’s riding lawnmower. Like me, she was still in her pajamas. Her eyes were wide, like an animal that had just been cornered.

  “Is it just you? Where’s Mom and Dad?” I worried aloud.

  “They must still be in the house.”

  I started for the door, intent to go find them, but my grandma clamped her hand on my shoulder. “Just wait a few minutes,” she instructed. “They’ll be here soon enough.”

  My shoulder sagged and I hung my head, but I did what she told me to do.

  My grandma sat down on the lawnmower and sighed. “Why couldn’t they just leave us alone?” she murmured.

  “Are you sure it’s bandits?” I asked. “Maybe Dad’s just testing us, seeing how fast we can get back here?” It was a long shot; even though my father was a careful man, I couldn’t imagine him doing something as elaborate as this.

  My grandma sighed again, but said no more.

  I began looking around the inside of the barn, searching for something I could use as a weapon. There weren’t too many items inside the shed besides the lawnmower and some other now-obsolete gas-run machines, but I knew there had to be something. On one wall hung my father’s tool collection. I grabbed a hammer from its hook and experimentally hefted its weight in my hand. I could probably smash someone’s skull with it I decided.

  My body snapped to attention when I heard the unmistakable sound of snow crunching beneath heavy boots. Someone was in a hurry and they were coming closer. I ducked behind the lawnmower where my grandmother continued to perch. I wanted to hiss at her to hide, but I didn’t want to speak for fear that whomever was outside would figure out we hid inside. Our footprints in the snow threatened to give us away, but they’d have no way of knowing if those were old prints or freshly made.

  I clenched the hammer tight in one fist and waited. My calves started to burn from being crouched and tense. I sucked in a sharp breath when both doors swung open and a tall, broad-shouldered figure stood in the doorway.

  “Samantha?” It was my father. He stepped fully inside the pole barn. “Mom?”

  I sprung out from my hiding spot. “Where’s mom?” I demanded.

  “She’s not coming.”

  I stared at my father. My eyes had adjusted to the dark by now and I searched his face. “Why not?” His words didn’t make any sense to me.

  My grandmother slipped her arm around my waist. “Was it the bandits, Brandon?”

  He looked away, blinking rapidly. “She went downstairs to get a drink of water. She must have startled them.”

  The arm around my waist tightened. I still didn’t understand what he was trying to tell us.

  “Is she in the crawl space?” I naively asked. We didn’t have a basement; not too many homes did because of seasonal flooding, but my father had built a kind of panic room in the narrow space beneath the house that could be accessed from the kitchen.

  My father looked back at us. Even with only the moon streaming through the small barn windows to illuminate his features, I could see him working the muscles in the back of his jaw. “She’s dead, Samantha.”

  If it hadn’t been for my grandmother’s silent strength, I would have collapsed onto the floor, for sure.

  “We have to go,” my dad said, not looking at us. “It’s just a matter of time before those animals come out here looking for supplies.”

  “We can’t go. We can’t leave mom,” I choked out. “We have to get her.”

  “Samantha…” My grandmother’s gentle voice called me back to reality. She turned back to my father. “Where can we go?”

  “My deer shanty,” my dad said. “It’s a few hundred yards into the woods. There’s less of a chance they’ll come looking for us out there.”

  He opened up a large cabinet in which we kept extra supplies like coats, boots, and our emergency backpacks. We had left the house in such a hurry that none of us had jackets and only my father had on shoes. He grabbed three backpacks from their hooks and handed one to each of us.

  I pulled out a dry pair of socks from my emergency pack. Mine were soaked from walking through the backyard without shoes. I still had on my pajamas – flannel pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. The emergency pack had one of those high-tech, sweat-wicking thermal outfits, but I assumed my father wouldn’t want to wait for me to change into a different set of clothes. I opted for pulling snowpants and a jacket over my pajamas.

  I think I was functioning on autopilot. Everything was happening too quickly. I couldn’t even be sure this wasn’t all just a bad dream. But I wasn’t that lucky. This was happening. Bandits had broken into my house. Bandits had killed my mother. An unexpected sob bubbled up my throat and was out of my mouth before I could shove it back down.

  My dad shot me a hard look. “You have to be quiet, Sam,” he admonished.

  I clamped my mouth shut and bit down on my upper lip, but managed to nod my understanding. I knew we weren’t out of danger yet. There would be time for grief and mourning my mother later.

  “Stay close and try to step where I step,” my dad instructed when both my grandmother and I were ready to go. “It’ll make less of a tra
il in the snow. I’ll sweep away our footprints later.”

  We obediently followed behind my father as he left the familiarity of the pole barn and started out into the dense woods behind our house. I used to play back there nearly every day in summers when I was young, but I hadn’t visited my old haunts in years. I kept my eyes trained on the ground and did my best to step in the snowy imprints my father’s boots made. My grandmother trailed behind. I could feel her holding onto the back of my emergency pack like I was a helium balloon she was afraid might float away if not properly tethered.

  The deer blind was a wooden box, painted dark green, that sat on a wooden platform about seven or eight feet from the ground. My father had purchased the kit a few years ago when he’d taken up hunting as a hobby. Secretly I thought it was more of an excuse to get out of the house like an outdoor Man Cave. He’d never killed anything. He just sat out there for hours on weekends. I would have loved using that thing as a tree fort during my adolescence when I was quick to climb trees and slow to care about makeup and boys and training bras.

  The inside was bare besides a canvas camping chair folded up in one corner and an old metal coffee can that looked every bit the cliché of items to be inside a deer blind. There were narrow rectangular cutouts just at eyelevel that dotted the perimeter of the shanty. Even though the blind had a weatherproof roof and a door that shut tightly, a thin layer of snow had accumulated on the ply-board floor, collecting in the corners like miniature snow drifts.

  “We can’t risk using a light,” my father whispered wearily. He sounded like he was running on empty. “This thing would light up like a lighthouse. You’ll have to set up your sleeping bags the best you can without it.”

  My grandma brushed away at the light snow covering, and it scattered in the air like the white puff that adorns a mature dandelion. “Don’t forget your sleeping pad,” she told me in a low tone. I nodded numbly.

  She unrolled her foam pad on the ground and set up her sleeping bag on top. Even though there was no heat source in the blind and the windows had no proper glass panes, it would be better than sleeping in a tent on the frozen ground. I must have still looked shell-shocked because she pried the padding from my hands and set up my makeshift bed for me.

  “Brandon,” her gentle voice coaxed my father, “give me your pack and I’ll set up your bed.”

  My father hovered near one of the window cutouts. “I’m fine,” he rasped, now peering out into the night.

  “You should try to sleep,” she encouraged.

  “I’m fine,” he intoned more firmly. His arms went around his broad frame and he hugged at his torso.

  Despite the shock of the night, or perhaps because of it, my eyes began to feel heavy.

  I clenched my backpack to my chest, a kind of safety blanket, before finally allowing myself to close my eyes, hoping to find rest. But the howl of the unforgiving wind beyond the protective covering of our hidden shelter caused my body to tense even more rigidly than it had been before.

  “Try to get some rest,” my grandmother urged from her sleeping bag beside me. “Things will feel better when the sun is up.”

  I didn’t believe her. Not one little bit. I shut my eyes and focused on the fading image of my mother.

  +++++

  CHAPTER TWO

  I woke up the next morning from a dreamless sleep. The past few hours had been nightmare enough; my overly active imagination didn’t need to help. Sunlight streamed through the open-air windows of the deer blind. My grandmother quietly snored beside me, but except for the rhythmic sound of her sleep, everything else was silent. I used to hate the chatter of birds outside my bedroom window when all I wanted to do was sleep in. Their absence was now just another thing about the world after Apophis that I had once taken for granted. More so than the cold it was the quiet of a technology-free world that had taken the longest to get used to. Without the constant drone of the television set or the sound of highway traffic in the distance or the dinging alarms of smartphones or even the gentle hum of a refrigerator, the world had gone silent.

  My father was slumped against the same wall where he’d been standing when I’d finally fallen asleep. I wondered how much sleep he’d gotten, if any. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and when the wooden frame creaked with my movements, his head snapped up in my direction. He held a finger to his lips, indicating that I should remain quiet. He pointed to my grandmother who lay beside me in her sleeping bag, sleeping soundly despite our primitive surroundings and the chill in the motionless air.

  He jerked his head toward the deer blind’s door. I followed him outside and climbed down the wooden ladder until we reached the ground. He stretched his arms above his head and tilted his head at an angle until I heard a distinctive popping noise.

  “Are we going back?” I asked him.

  He frowned and straightened up. “Back?” He echoed the word as if he’d never heard it before.

  “To the house. To take back what’s ours.”

  “You and what army, Samantha?” my father countered. “They have weapons and they have numbers.”

  “We can’t just leave Mom there.”

  My father closed his eyes and pinched at the bridge of his nose with two gloved fingers. “It’s dangerous,” he husked.

  “You’re really okay leaving her there with bandits?” I demanded angrily. I knew I should be more cautious and keep the volume of my voice low, but I was overcome with emotion. “With those monsters?”

  “Of course I’m not,” he snapped back at me. “But I have to keep you safe. Your mother is gone, Sam. I can’t risk you and your grandmother by going back.”

  “Can’t we just go and see?” I asked, feeling an uncharacteristic whine creep into my tone. I felt so raw, so defeated. And I missed my mom. “Maybe they left. Please, Dad. I need to see her for myself.”

  My father’s mouth was tight, lips pressed into a fine white line. Finally, he nodded. “Fine.”

  “I’m coming with, too,” I heard my grandma drawl. I looked up and saw her peering over the edge of the deer blind.

  My dad’s shoulders slumped. I knew he hated being outnumbered.

  +++++

  We took our time traveling the few hundred yards back to the house. The night before our movements had been hurried and hushed. Now we stepped cautiously, cringing at the sound our boots made crunching through stale snow. Above us the sun was high in the sky. If bandits were still in our house, we wouldn’t exactly be sneaking up on them. But my dad was right – how could a banker, a senior citizen, and a 20-year-old girl ambush a group of armed men?

  When the forest gave way and we were back in our backyard, I was relieved to see the house was still standing – the bandits hadn’t torched it. The pole barn hadn't fared so well. It had somehow collapsed upon itself. My dad kicked at the rubble and cursed under his breath.

  “Why would they have done this?” my grandmother asked. She stooped and picked up the old rusted lock that had once kept the honest people honest.

  “Because they can,” was my father’s reply. His voice was high and tight. “Laws mean nothing if there’s no one around to enforce them.”

  “Well, there’s no sense standing out here and freezing,” my grandmother’s sage voice cut through the cold, thin air. “Let’s go survey the rest of the damage.”

  The three of us walked to the front door together. The snow leading up to the front stoop had been trampled, crushed beneath the repeated falling of heavy-booted footsteps.

  I touched my father’s elbow to get his attention. “What’s that?” I asked quietly. Someone had spray-painted a giant X on the front door. It reminded me of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when the National Guard had marked houses.

  My father’s face relayed no emotion. “Probably so they know they’ve already hit this house – that they’ve wiped it clean.”

  “All of our supplies?” I asked, eyes wide. “You think they took them all?”

  “Look at the snow,” m
y dad said, nodding toward the ground. “The snow banks have been flattened like they had a sled.”

  I thought about the mountain of canned food and the barrels of essentials like sugar and flour and rice that we had managed to squirrel away in preparation for the Frost. It seemed an impossible task. It was gone? All of it? An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

  “I’ll go in first,” my dad announced. “They could still be in there. I’ll let you know if it’s safe.” The hardened look on his face visibly softened. “Are you sure you want to see her, Sam? I could, I don’t know…” He stumbled on his words. “Move her? I don’t want that to be your last memory of her.”

  “I need to see her,” I re-emphasized my earlier plea.

  My father gave me a curt nod of understanding before disappearing through the front door. My grandmother sat down on the swinging bench on the front porch and patted the empty space beside her. I took the seat next to her and we sat there together, swinging in silence. We didn’t talk, and I let myself get lulled by the rhythmic sound of the bench’s squeaking chains.

  I remember vividly my first and only funeral. My grandfather had died of a heart attack while shoveling snow. To my eighth-grade self, he had looked so strange in his open coffin at the public viewing – unrecognizable in the suit I hadn’t realized he owned, with his pale skin and pink cheeks fresh from the undertaker’s heavy rouge. But his mouth was the worst – oddly pursed and puffed up like a dog with a ball.