The Fall

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Flora was the first to speak.

"He is dead."

"No, he isn't," Jax shook his head in disbelief.

"Well, he isn't moving."

"He could be sleeping," his thirteen-year-old voice rising a few octaves.

"Come on, let's go see," Flora spoke as she climbed down the worn grey dresser that stood sentinel under Jax’s bedroom window which now became their shared refuge. Sitting at the window had become a daily ritual since the Fall. Sit, assess danger, find breakfast, make sure the doors are still locked, come back upstairs, sit some more.

Only the two of them were left. Flora, fifteen, was now both protector and mother to her once annoying sibling. Their father had left first, just a few weeks after the Fall, in search of food, and people, and information. She could still picture his hulking shadow as he stood in the front entryway, his frame blocking out most of the morning light. He always did seem larger in life, born from years of toiling wheat fields and herding cattle. He did not return.

Mother had left two weeks ago, for the same reasons. Jax still keeps hope. Flora knew better.

Jax followed his sister down the dusty curved stairwell that led to their farmhouse kitchen.

"Don't go outside," he pleaded.

"Dead people can't hurt you, Jax," Flora replied taking the large carving knife off of the butcherblock island and sticking it through the loop of her coveralls. “And besides, you know as well as I do that if we don’t hide the body the carriers will come.”

At the reminder of the carriers, Jax shuddered. About a month back, three had shown up close to midday while Jax was in the herb garden at the end of their gravel drive. One minute he was picking fresh tomatoes, the next, he was being hauled by the neck to his feet by the ugliest man he ever saw. Greasy black hair hung limply over a sour pockmarked face both pale and sunburned at the same time.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”, the man sneered causing his two equally ugly companions to laugh.

A gunshot from the porch had stopped the laughter. The oily man dropped Jax roughly on the dirt and held his hands toward the sun god.

“Beg your pardon miss,” He spoke sickeningly sweet toward the shotgun-wielding woman on the porch. “We meant no harm truly. We be just a bunch of harmless carriers in search of a little food from people who may not be in need of it anymore.”

Mother cocked the gun once more and the men scattered tripping over each other to get away from the obviously mad woman who claimed the farm as her own.

“You don’t think the carriers would come back?”, Jax asked his sister for the second time since Mother left.

“I don’t know,” Flora replied honestly. She had always thought it better to be honest with her brother rather than serve the cowardly platitudes such as, everything will be all right, and Mother will be home soon, which often served as the barrier between childhood and adulthood. Lies would not help them now.

The large metal locks clicked ominously in the silence that followed as Flora opened the back door. The wood creaked as it began to emit the morning mist from the now dangerous outside world.

“Come on, Flora, let’s go back upstairs and just watch some more,” Jax quietly argued.

“Shh.”

Once the door was open, they could see the laying man several yards across the back garden close to their dwindling wood pile. Flora knew that before long she would be venturing into the forest whether she wanted to or not.

Often she had thought about what might have happened to her classmates in the city when the Fall happened. Little to no news reached this far out. A few times in the beginning old man Pritchard from the neighboring farm would stop over and sit for long hours with Father at the kitchen table. Flora and Jax would sit quietly on the stairs hoping to catch a few snippets, but Mother had always hushed them with those soft platitudes and sent them to bed. In the darkness of night, after Jax was heard snoring next to her, Flora would recite her special prayer to humanity.

Slowly, the two began to pick their way over to the man. A festering smell radiated in the early heat of day and flies hung low around his body.

“Flora….” Jax started and when she did not respond he continued, “Flora, look……..look”.

Annoyed, she turned and looked back at her brother. His face raised an alarm in her chest. “What?” she whispered back forcefully standing roughly a foot away from the stranger. He was pointing toward the dead man’s face.

Apprehensively, Flora slid her gaze from her brother’s face to the prone form. It took a few moments, then yes, that was definitely an eye twitch. Peering closer, holding her breath she took the knife with her right hand holding it out in front of her.

Another eye twitch. “Do eyes move after people die?” Jax whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Should we stab it to make sure it’s dead?”

“It’s not an It, Jax.” Flora admonished. “What if it were Father turned up on some other poor soul’s lawn? Would you want them to stab him to make sure he was dead?” She cocked her head to the side and continued to stare at the man. Now that they were closer, she realized they misjudged his age. Flora guessed he could not have seen more than sixteen or seventeen summers and there was a large gaping wound on his left side.

“What do we do?” Jax spoke, his voice softened with guilt.

Flora scanned the yard, listening intently for several long minutes. “Go, she said, fetch the sled, I’ll search him for weapons, then we will pull him into the kitchen, and, well,” she paused staring at the not-dead, dead man, “I guess we will see what there is to be done.”

There was nothing much inside the boy’s pockets, just a few bits of string, a broken pencil, and two keys on a rusted green chain.

Out without a means to defend yourself, she thought, not very smart, are you?

Jax arrived shortly after she finished her search, blue plastic sled in tow.

“Hold it steady while I drag him on,” she instructed her brother. The smallest of gasps escaped the stranger’s lips when she heaved his body aboard. Together, they dragged him back into the house.

Once inside, Flora found it much more difficult to lift him than previously thought.

“Ugh, she cried, how much do you weigh, a million pounds?"

“Doubt that”, Jax snickered.

“Remind me to explain what a rhetorical question is to you,” she spat at her brother, familiar annoyance rising.

“Remind me to explain what sarcasm is”, he countered.

Flora shook her head. “I can’t, ugh, I can’t lift him,” she huffed, her arms wrapped around his chest pulling under his armpits. “This isn’t working!”

Jax pushed the kitchen table against the wall and splayed the tablecloth onto the floor in a mock picnic. “Here, Flora, bring him here. I’ll go grab towels, water, and mother’s sewing kit.”

I really should be nicer to him, Flora thought as she watched her brother take charge, setting off to gather supplies.

“He seems nice”, breathed the injured boy, startling Flora into involuntarily jumping back into a kitchen stool causing it to clang loudly onto the tile.

“YOU OK?”, called Jax from somewhere upstairs.

“YES”, was all she could yell back.

Flora stared into the strange boy’s now very open bright blue eyes.

“I am Michael, he spoke, And if it’s not too much trouble, can you please sew me back up; I’d like to not bleed out before I can give you your father’s message.”