Rubicon Day

"Quadrant 47, Subarea 4. Routine sweep of Blithesome Drive requested. "

So began the weekly sterile form of subterfuge for Candace Blevins, Assistant Deputy Manager, Metropolitan Emergency Management Agency. Every week since the evacuations Candace used her power and fourteen years of clout and experience to ensure a sweep through this particular street in this particular neighborhood.

Candace was the passenger in the lead armored vehicle in a squadron of about five or six similarly black humvees. Her driver, youn, laconic and shellshocked, forewent small talk in favor of thrumming on his steering wheel the same notes of some unknown song that bore some secret history which served as an emergency exit amidst a raging inferno.

The sky was a maudlin mauve streaked with grey and yellow. The Evacuation Order was issued by the government almost two months ago. Deserted streets bore the detritus of hastily packed SUVs and could be mistaken for a prolonged garbage strike if not for the empty roadways.

Candace stayed behind to help coordinate the end of the Evacuation. Her orders took her right up to Rubicon Day. That was what her boss had called it. What puzzled Candace about this moniker was that it implied the moment of no going back was yet to come. She knew that the river had been crossed decades ago, that what was now looming, what hung in the air like a miasmic funeral veil, was set in motion by carelessness and greed and by treating all our tomorrows as endless credit for the deficits of today.

During the daily sweeps Candace's people and the dozens or so other squads which patrolled her city went door-to-door to check for signs of life or for anyone who ignored the Evacuation Order. First people took private vehicles, then there was public transportation to facilitate the westward exodus. Camps were created in Wyoming, Utah, vast rows of prefabricated houses and hastily arranged utilities. Her husband, Jeremy, was one of the first to leave. It had been two months since she last spoke to her husband, even longer still since she told him she loved him.

Houses demarcated with a red "X" on the front door meant two possibilities: one, that its residents had evacuated, or two, that the stragglers inside were deceased, self-inflicted or otherwise. Candace became numb to the whole process of discovering the dead.

But still people remained, unwilling to part with the comfort of home. Rarely did Candace encounter any hostility. Usually the faces which met her at the door were cordial and merely shook their heads and said "no thank you, I am staying put." The door would close and the fiction of life as normal resumed inside, even if the cupboards were bare with the supermarkets closed and the lamplights off as the electricity was shut off by the government to force people to evacuate.

Candace would spray-paint a red heart on the doors of the houses whose residents could not be convinced to leave. On weekly intervals the sweeps would check in with the heart-marked houses, just to see if those who remained were still alive. A black "X" would be spray-painted atop the red heart when no one answered the door or upon confirmation that no life remained.

The humvee turned right onto Blithesome Drive and beneath a line of leafless locusts Candace told the driver to park. Candace walked up the driveway of 471 Blithesome Drive and stood in front of the door. A red heart was spray-painted in the front, the top of the heart running across the two octagonal windows at the top of the tan wooden door. Candace knocked and waited thirty seconds. When no one answered Candace tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. She turned to her driver and pointed inside. Her expressionless driver gave no sign of acknowledging her gesture, only his fingertips drumming out his rhythm on the wheel.

Candace knew the house was empty because this was the home that she had shared with Jeremy. Inside was the history of their short and ill-fated marriage. No children, one photo on the mantel in the living room of the couple hiking in Shenandoah, a pair of pillows and a fleecy blanket folded at the far corner of the living room sofa, Jeremy's bedroom for the three months before the Evacuation. Candace could hear the metronomic click of the wall clock in the kitchen. The air inside the house was stagnant yet somehow like a living thing, the fragrances of a past life like coffee grinds on some milquetoast Monday morning or the disinfectant used to clean the bathrooms fading away like the people who used to call 471 Blithesome Drive home.

Candace had been living in the barracks with the rest of her command since the start of Evacuation. She came back to Blithesome Drive every week since then, not out of nostalgia, but rather in pursuit of a singular purpose: the locket.

It belonged to her great-grandmother and was silver and heart-shaped with little floral etchings around the edges.

When Candace's mother had given her the locket on her wedding day, she clasped her daughter's hands and said, "take this locket and know you will be loved always." As she hugged her mother Candace thought about the moment she’d pass the locket to her future daughter. But three years later the daughter never came and her beloved mother was dead from a sudden heart attack and the locket was missing, not in the jewelry case where Candace would keep it and now the cause of Candace's weekly mission in returning to her former home.

First she started in the bedroom, overturning the mattress and box spring and crawling across the floor. The spare bedroom, the bathroom, all were left in disarray and Candace opened every drawer and threw every rug and pile of clothes.

On the third week Candace tried the basement, Jeremy's man cave of sports memorabilia and a plush black leatherette sectional. She ripped apart the cushions, half in search of the locket, half in anger of her husband, but no locket. Jeremy had surprised her a year ago for her birthday, the last time the locket went missing for any period of time. When it suddenly reappeared at her birthday dinner for two downtown, Jeremy revealed the locket, "refurbished" with the message "With Love, Jeremy" engraved on the inside.

Candace was furious. How could he do this to her family heirloom without her permission? Jeremy did a lot, she soon found out, outside of her purview, and the evening home after dinner was just one skirmish in a protracted cold war of incompatible people whose amour fou had extinguished at the first mention of "mortgage" or "children," if it ever existed at all.

She knew she had about fifteen minutes before even her vacuous driver would grow suspicious. So she worked meticulously. Today she tried the kitchen, opening every drawer, fumbling through the junk drawer crammed with take-out menus and used batteries. It must be here. She wore the locket everyday and returned it to her jewelry case every night. But it was not in the box-- she had already checked it three times-- and now the case rested smashed and upside down at the base of the stairs, its final resting place after Candace had thrown it from the top of the stairs.

Her search in the kitchen proved fruitless, so she closed the door behind her and walked back to the idling humvee.

"471's still not moving, let's go on," Candace said as the driver pulled away to continue today's sweep.

After five minutes it was the driver who broke the silence. "Ma'am, why do we keep coming back to 471? I don't think they're evacuating."

Candace was surprised by her driver's sudden curiosity but she already had her response prepared. "They're family friends. I am working hard to convince them to leave."

"OK." The driver didn't say another word for the rest of the sweep, and when she learned the next day that her driver had shot himself in the head the night before while in his barracks, Candace had a new driver whose suspicion regarding her repeat trips could be staved off with little effort.

A week later Candace stood with Incident Command to hear the morning briefing. The Incident Commander, her manager, stared blearily at the dozen or so Assistant Deputy Managers.

"Well folks, just a week left to go. Rubicon Day. Then we can all go and join our families out west."

This remark was met with silence..

"All right, let's go. Last few sweeps remaining." Candace and the rest of her colleagues dispersed and resumed the sweeps.

Her new driver was a young woman with beautifully braided hair and a rounded, moon-like face which gave her a childlike quality.

"Where to, boss?"

"Quadrant 47, Subarea 4. Routine sweep of Blithesome Drive requested. "

So set in motion Candace's ninth and final trip to 471. As their humvee pulled to the curb beside those same lovely lonely locusts, the driver asked, "do you want me to join you on this one?"

Candace stopped mid-exit and turned back, somewhat surprised, "uhh....no, I got this, thanks. Better stay here just in case anyone steals the ride."

"But...ma'am, there is no one left."

Candace, irritated, gestured emphatically to the red spray-painted heart on the front door of 471.

"There, see, see? Life. LIFE. Stay with the humvee in case anyone's last dying wish includes grand theft auto." And with that remark Candace slammed the door behind her.

Every room and every square inch of the house had been searched. No room, no space was left unscathed. Candace's rended house bore no resemblance to her home. Today's search would be even more frantic, because there could be no next time. Today was it.

Candace desperately opened every drawer of the broken jewelry box at the base of the steps. After a minute it was less a box and more like a trailer home torn apart from a tornado, her frenzied figures the substitute for the destructive winds.

Every open drawer next to the toppled bed stand and bureau was scoured for the locket. It was not there, it was still not there.

Everywhere else yielded no result, her hands wet from reaching into toilets and inside the drain at the bottom of her shower and the kitchen sink.

It had been more than fifteen minutes, it may have been an hour. Her chastised driver no doubt was too sheepish to disobey her superior and knock on the front door to ask if she needed help.

So she took the opportunity to open the backdoor which led to her treeless, muddy backyard.

She crouched at the little plot of soil used for growing tomatoes in the summer and dug, furiously, in vain, her hands, her pants caked in hoarfrosted mud.

After a minute and no locket she stopped and looked up at the sky and wept. Mauve had given way to the sickly, sulfuric yellow and the sky bore the first signs of the coming malaise. Candace wiped her eyes on the only clean portions of her sleeves. After a minute or so to collect her thoughts she reentered the kitchen through the backdoor and went back to the humvee.

"Are you OK, ma'am?" asked the driver as she saw her superior muddy and wet.

Candace tried to calm herself down in front of the driver. "Uhh...yes, yes. No progress. They needed a hand with something in the backyard, that's why I was longer, sorry, I, um...let's just go."

"OK" and so the driver continued on with the final sweep.

At the end of the day Candace was back at the barracks and lying atop the made bed as a gentle rain tapped harshly against the hastily erected canvas roof. There were space heaters but she was cold and there was little diversion in the nighttime and the rest of her colleagues were quiet and did little socializing.

Tonight, however, there were android phones atop everyone's beds, including Candace's.

"Messages from out west. Loved ones. You're going home soon" the Incident Commander declared to everyone seated for dinner in the common area of the barracks.

Candace knew it would be Jeremy in the saved video message. She wasn't sure what his message would be, or if she even cared what he had to say. But she still clicked Play.

Her husband had let his dark beard grow. He sat unsmiling and his eyes darted away from the camera and back.

"Hi, uh, Candace, they, uh, asked us to put together these video messages for the brave men and women back East that are still working on the evacuation. I, uh, am happy to do it and I, well, I know things have been a challenge between us lately and I know we have been apart but --"

As he was about to finish his sentence somebody off camera grasped Jeremy's hand. It was a woman's hand, the nails painted a cherry red.

A soft voice from just off camera said, "Jeremy, please, it's OK you don't have to do anything for her anymore."

The woman leaned closer to the side of Jeremy's face and gently kissed his cheek. Around her neck was the silver heart-shaped locket that had once belonged to Candace's great-grandmother.

"Thanks, baby," and as Jeremy was about to resume his sentence, Candace clicked exit on the video and powered off the phone, quietly, gently, her head resting against her pillow. Outside it was still raining.

Just before midnight Candace snuck away from her barracks and walked covertly to the adjoining parking garage which contained the civilian vehicles of Candace and her colleagues.

She clicked the remote for her car twice and her sky blue FIAT 500X lit up and rumbled to life. An 8:00 PM curfew was imposed by the city government months ago but with nobody left and no one to patrol the streets Candace felt confident that she could depart the parking garage undetected.

Her SUV glided down the unlit empty roadways as her little turbo-charged engine emitted the only chirpy, cheerful noises Candace had heard for a while. Jeremy hated the little Italian crossover and made fun of her cutesy little car. But she found joy in this little blue FIAT and even now as she made the familiar turn on Blithesome Drive a smile crept on her face and remained up until she pulled into the driveway at 471.

Candace walked up her driveway and stopped in front of her front door. In her right hand was a spray paint can. Black paint.

Before entering 471, Candace stopped and drew a big, black X aggressively across the red spray-painted heart on her door.

"Rubicon Day," Candace said and she closed the door behind her.