Phenomenology

It had been happening for months, years really, our nice, safe, suburban life eroding around the edges like a rotting piece of wood. Society becoming undone more and more by a lack of resources and violently differing opinions about how to address it.

My Dad used to call it: phenomenology. Not because that's what it was, but because back when he was taking a philosophy class in college that concept baffled him. He could never understand it, just like he couldn't understand what was happening to the world in which he had grown up. The world my brother and I were growing up in always seemed... Tenuous at best, dangerous at worst.

My name is Alexander Cole, but only my Mother ever called me Alexander, and only when I was in trouble, or things were bleak or serious. I've been called Xan or Xander my whole life. It was an easier calling name, and not as formal or stuffy. My Dad hated that my Mom insisted I was named for her Father, a man my Dad always hated. Maybe that's why he never strayed from calling me: Xan.

I sat, dirty, bored, and anxious in our self imposed tomb, across from my older brother: Ryerson, named for the doctor who delivered him. He was a breech birth and damn near didn't survive, but for the heroic efforts of Dr. Ryerson. The good doctor's first name was Beberly, so my parents opted for Ryerson. Good call on their part, though the family inevitably called him: Ry.

I was eleven and half, my brother had just turned fourteen, and always let me know that let me know that those two and half years gave him profound wisdom and command over me in every aspect of my life. Neither of us had any idea just how much that concept would be tested in the hours to follow.

It had been four, almost five weeks since that horrible day, Dad had gone into town to get supplies. Mom hadn't wanted him to, she had a sense of dread that morning that my Dad dismissed as just her female intuition on over-drive, but she was right. About an hour after my Dad had taken off, we heard the sirens. Sirens that in the mid-west where we lived had always sounded the alert for a tornado, but had since been repurposed to warn of danger. Danger from Marauders. The new term for roving bands of armed people seeking food and clean drinking water, and not much caring who they had to dispatch to get it.

The threat had been real for months. Over in the adjacent county we had heard stories, horrible stories of Marauders and their victims. Usually families like us. Murdered for their food and drinking water. What few law enforcement officials that remained stretched too thin to do anything about it.

So when the sirens rang out that morning, my Mom was quick to shuttle my brother and I into this safe room. Unlike most that had been built by neighbors of ours in that decade, my Dad had seen fit to build ours away from the main house, reinforcing an old root cellar, stocking it with canned food, drinking water, a hand gun for protection, and sealing it with a steel hatch that looked to me at the time as though it had come from the Nautilus of literary fame.

I remember when I wasn't quick enough to move, I had been beating a video game that I had never gotten as far with before, she called me "Alexander" sharply. That's when I grabbed the latest book I had been reading and ran for the door.

She should've come down here with us, but she wanted to make sure we were safe and wait for my Dad to return. My brother thought it was a mistake, and that day I couldn't have agreed more with him. As tears streamed down her face, she told us to not open the hatch unless we heard her or our Dad on the outside. Then she closed the hatch. Ry turned the wheel to seal it. Slid the bolts to lock it. And it was done. We were prisoners of safety. Trapped in our survival.

On this day, or was it evening? Time... Day... Night... Meant nothing down here. As long as the generator kept the two lights we had in the safe room illuminated it didn't matter. As long as the vent to the outside air kept working we could still breathe. But on this day, things changed. That's the day we heard the voice.

I had long since finished the book I had grabbed that day, I had the forethought to have stocked the safe room with what I thought was an abundant library of my favorites, and others that I had always meant to read. Well, by now I had read them, and re-read them many times over. Ry had brought his guitar that day and had his music to occupy him, and entertain us both. My books were filled the customary heroes and villains, and like most literature the lines between the two were clearly drawn, It was that day that I learned that what constituted both were all in your perspective of the situation at hand.

The voice that came from beyond the hatch was sweet and melodic, or maybe it just appeared as though it was for two boys starving to hear a new voice, as we had long since grown weary of each others. It was a young woman's voice. She said her name was Mandy, and she knew our names. She spoke of how she and her companions found our Mother wounded in the main house. How they were trying to nurse her back to health. How she had told them how to find the hatch. And to let us know that it was okay to open it and come out to see her. How she desperately needed food and clean drinking water, that she knew we had down here. She was so convincing, at least to me.

"This is all a load of crap, Xan!" Ry barked, so sure in his conviction that it made me angry.

"But she knew our names, Ry! How would she--"

"If they found the house?! Our names are spread all over our rooms! On our school books, the bulletin board. Hell, you have yours on your door, stupid!"

"Mom's hurt. She needs us."

"After a month?! If she was hurt, she'd be dead by now! Don't be an idiot!"

"But if she was hurt. Bad, but not too bad. Bad to where she couldn't get down here, but still alive. We have to know for sure."

"Trust me, I know for sure. What's up there are Marauders that probably ransacked the house and just happened to find the hatch. They know that can't break through it, so they're trying to con us into opening it."

"Okay, what about the gun? We can open it, but have the gun ready, just in case."

"And if they're a lot of them? We only have six bullets. Dad hadn't gotten around to putting in extra ammo."

"What about Dad? If he didn't make it back from town, then Mom really is all alone."

"Will you think! Whoever this Mandy is and her gang are all liars. And Mom and Dad are dead!"

That's when I attacked him. The words had cut through me like a hot knife and my gut was the butter. My brother and I had fought before, like all brothers do, but never quite so angrily, so ruthlessly.

I was big for my age, and strong, but still no real match for Ry. I could tell he was trying to hold back but in the end he had to hit me hard in the jaw, knocking me out momentarily.

When I came to I heard Ry who had climbed up the ladder to the hatch telling Mandy there was no way we were going to open the hatch and let them in to steal all our food and water, and probably kill us.

The logical part of brain took a full hiatus at that point and I went over to the footlocker in the corner of the safe room and grabbed the gun. By the time Ry had come down from the ladder I was ready.

"Looks like they're not going away just yet." Ry said looking back up the ladder. Then he turned to look at me. "What the hell are you doing, Xan?!"

"I've got to know. Be sure. Just like I said. We open it, but we're ready with this. Please, Ry."

"Xan, listen to me. You've never fired that gun before. If the safety is off, the trigger is--"

He never got to finish what he was trying to tell me. I guess I tensed up, worried he might come at me to try to get the gun away from me. It went off. The bullet went right through his chest. Must've hit his heart as when he hit the ground his eyes were still wide open, a look of shock and sadness on his face, forever frozen that way in death.

I turned away to vomit as I started to cry, really hard. Because I wasn't just crying for what I had just done to my brother. I was crying for my Mom. For my Dad. For the hell that the past month had been down here, alive but dead all the same.

I tried to compose myself as I heard Mandy's sweet voice once again coming through the hatch. Asking me if I was okay. Telling me how she understood why my brother felt as he did, but that she was telling the truth and that my Mom needed me.

I threw down the gun. I had to hold onto that frail hope that Mandy was who she said she was, and that my Mom was alive up there. That I'd get to see her again, even if it was just to say good-bye. That were still good people in the world and some of them had found us.

I moved over to my brother, who was now lying in a pool of blood, touched his cheek, closed his eyes, let out a slight whimper any dog would have instant empathy for, and turned to ascend the ladder to find out the truth for myself.

As I unlocked the bolts and began to turn the wheel to break the airtight seal, I thought to myself that it really didn't matter anymore what was out there... It was better than in here. With all its food, water, and safety... There is living, and there is mere existence... I was tired of just having the one.

And as I opened the hatch I realized my brother had been right all along. I had come out of my subterranean stronghold hoping to find a new horizon to look out upon... Only to find a new horror to endure.