Aftermath

Elouise and Arnold Fletcher moved at a steady pace, carried on a current of humanity, Arnold traveling with the impatient, stiff legged gait of a general suddenly and unexpectedly relieved of duty, Elouise limping on one broken shoe.  

Arnold clutched his “Go” bag, in one hand and kept the other planted in the small of Elouise’s back, not so much to support, as to propel her. She limped along, clutching her large, pink cosmetic bag.  

Some people ran past them, some sat staring blankly, a few stood forming human blockades, making it necessary for others to step around them, and Elouise saw one unfortunate woman crawling along the formerly Magnificent Mile.  

Most, in the sea of humanity in which the Fletchers were included, walked at a pace that signaled both their fear of encountering more of the unspeakable ahead, and the horror of the unthinkable the left behind.

Elouise was a city girl, born and bred, she was accustomed to crowds. But this was not a crowd, it was a…she frowned, unable to think of a word that could adequately describe the mass of bodies swirling, standing, sitting, existing around her. Bodies, living, breathing bodies were simply everywhere, and the noise, Heaven help her, the noise was deafening. People shouted, people cried, people mumbled, cursed, screamed, prayed.  She wanted the terrible din to stop, but it went on, and on and she thought she would go mad before she enjoyed, again, the kind of blessed silence she took for granted before the world, at least the portion she occupied, went terribly, inexplicably, off track.

Apocalypse was the word that surfaced in Elouise’s mind the instant Arnold pulled her out onto the street, and APOCALYPSE continued to flash in her mind, on and off, on and off, like a broken sign since their journey into this surreal version of hell began.

Arnold hustled her out onto the sidewalk, or what remained of one, and pulled her more than a block before, like Lot’s wife, she had turned to look at their home in time to watch all eighteen stories collapse into a sink hole and simply disappear.  

She turned then, and as she turned, the heal of her shoe broke. She walked nearly another half block before she worked out that it was her legs, not this portion of pavement, that had lost equilibrium and still she walked, another two or three blocks, before she mentioned the damaged shoe.

His response was, “Humph,” which she took to mean, “That’s your problem, Elouise, not mine.” And so, she limped on with her anger, at him, and her panic over the unknown, building. She tried not to look up, did not have to, to know that her world was in shambles.   She could see, with her eyes downcast, blacktop and concrete that were cracked and, in some places, heaved into blockades too tall to climb. Debris, some identifiable, some not, was strewn about as though an enormous tornado lifted a landfill and dumped it in their city. Water flowed, from somewhere, and though she knew the source was likely damaged water pipes or fire hydrants, Elouise entertained terrible and frightening images of Lake Michigan tipping on its side and releasing the contents of all five of the Great Lakes onto the streets of her city.

Elouise sniffed and took a deep breath, too deep. She coughed, having inhaled too much of the smoke from the fires that seemed to rage everywhere. She could see smoke, black and thick, curling around corners and imagined it drifting over rooftops, smudging the sky. No sense, she thought, wondering what was on fire, or what fed the flames – it didn’t really matter. Where smoke was absent, a greenish haze hung in air, as though an awful new form of fog enveloped the city.

No one knew, or at least no one they encountered thus far, admitted to knowing, precisely happened and there was not a single Civil Servant in sight, from whom she can demand an explanation. 

Something she intended to complain to the Mayor about as soon as she was able to access a telephone. E-mail would not suffice.

A tall fellow in an unfashionable goatee and unsightly ropes of greasy hair sprouting from the back and sides of an otherwise bald head, insisted that the world had ended and invited Elouise and Arnold to pray for deliverance. They declined the offer and he moved along, shaking his greasy hair and muttering about eternal damnation.

A woman Elouise thought she recognized from the elevator at her Chiropractor’s office, stood on an overturned box of some sort, shouting about cults and plots to overthrow the government. 

Elouise was annoyed to note that the moment of revelation, the moment she understood that life as she knew it ended, was fixed on a mental loop that played itself over and over in her mind, quite against her will because she very much wanted to forget those moments filled with anger, resentment, confusion and fear. She was standing in the center of her living room, hand over her heart, hearing the noise of those blasted emergency notification sirens, but not actually computing their meaning, when Arnold ran, actually ran from his office shouting, “For Heaven’s sakes, Elouise, what is that racket?” And, in her mind’s eye, she can see herself, brows furrowed, lips pinched, staring at him for a long moment before she squawked, “Racket?” sounding so much like a plucked chicken that the memory made her flinch, each time it replayed in her mind. 

“Well, go find out!” Arnold shouted. “I was in an important conference, and the call just stopped.”

Before she could respond someone, somewhere, began shouting; the sound blared through their apartment as though a loudspeaker had been installed without their consent. The voice declared the city a disaster area and issued orders to evacuate promptly. Anyone failing to evacuate promptly, the voice promised ominously, would be ‘held to account.’

As she tried to understand what being ‘held to account’ might entail, she saw Arnold stomping across the room to the window, pulling back the curtain, gazing out, and losing all color in his face an instant before his knees gave way and he collapsed to the floor. For one mind-bending moment, she thought her husband of thirty-three less than perfect years had suffered a heart attack or a stroke but before she could react, he stood, pale and shaking, and said, “Put your shoes on, Elouise and bring a bag.”

“A bag of what?””

    “Now, Elouise,” he bellowed. “We must leave now!”

     She stepped toward the window, wanting to see what caused the unflappable Arnold Fletcher to panic, but he grabbed her arm and steered her toward the bedroom he vacated, in favor of creating “personal space” for himself, more than a decade earlier.  “Put some shoes on. Grab a bag and meet me at the front door pronto.”

Under other circumstances, she would have argued, but there was something so definitive, so commanding in his tone, she nearly swooned. This was the man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with a lifetime ago, this was the man she married for love. 

She obeyed, went to her shoe closet, but honestly, choosing an appropriate pair of shoes takes time, under the best of circumstances. So, she stood, steeped in uncertainty, feeling confused…uncertain…frightened…intrigued…and more than a little annoyed over being rushed, when Arnold shouted, “Come!” from the front door. 

Exasperated, she grabbed a pair of shoes and a bag and obeyed.

Now, here they were, plodding along the ruins of what had once been a quite lovely city, with no clear idea of where they were going or what they were going to do, and she felt miffed.

“I cannot believe you allowed this to happen!” Elouise huffed as she limped beside her husband.

Arnold stopped abruptly, causing a man in a hideous Hawaiian shirt to plow into him. The man cursed, raised a fist, lowered it, and shuffled away.

“What in the world can you possibly mean?” Arnold asked, his face red with irritation.

“I’ve always been in charge of things in the house.” She used her, I sound reasonable, but really, I gotcha voice, the one that would almost certainly lead to an argument, but she carried on, almost hoping her next statement would start an argument. “Things outside the house have always been your responsibility. How did you let this happen?”

“There was an apocalypse, a cataclysm, a disaster, darling,“ Arnold replied in a surprisingly calm voice. “Which is why we are out here, on the street, walking with the dredges of society.”

“Everyone is walking, Arnold. “How would anyone drive in all of this?” Elouise swept a raised hand outward to indicate the carnage.  “By the way, you will fire Henry, as soon as you find him, won’t you? There is simply no excuse for the man running off, as he did, leaving us stranded.”

“What was he supposed to do, carry us on his back?” Arnold sniped.

“He could have helped with my bag,” Elouise said.

“The world is ending, Elouise, and when I told you to grab a bag, the first thing you thought of was your make-up case? What could you possibly need lip shadow and eye stick for?”

“Don’t be a fool, Arnold. If you insist on discussing cosmetics, the least you could do is use correct nomenclature. Included in my case are eye shadow and lipstick. And, you said, ‘grab a bag’. If you had been more specific…

Arnold sighed and ducked as a large man in a bright yellow jacket ran past, waving his arms and shouting, “What is going on? Someone tell me what is happening.”

Elouise shook her head and limped to a park bench that was, miraculously, vacant, and intact. She sank down and removed the broken shoe from her foot. 

      Arnold stood beside the bench watching her, arms akimbo.

      Elouise crossed her legs, leaned over, and began massaging her sore foot and ankle.       

“What are you doing?” Arnold demanded, thoroughly exasperated by his wife’s apparent inability to fully appreciate their position.

“I’m resting,” Elouise replied. “I cannot be expected to walk endlessly on a broken shoe. We are going to have to find a store.“

“A store? Do you actually believe we are going to find an intact store of any kind, much less a shoe store?”

Tears welled in Elouise’s eyes. “Well, we have to do something, Arnold. You can’t expect me to continue walking in a broken shoe.”

       Arnold Fletcher drew in a long, deep breath and blew the air out slowly before sitting down next to the woman he had promised to love and cherish until death parted them forever. He placed an arm around her shoulder. The move was so unexpected, that Elouise pulled away and stared at him, a what is this all about frown creasing the corners of her mouth. 

“Put your shoe back on, darling,” he said, in a tender tone of voice he had not employed when addressing his wife in a decade or more.

Elouise nodded and bent to replace her shoe. She sat, doubled for a moment, shoulders heaving, tears streaming down her face.

Arnold Fletcher reached over and patted his wife’s shoulder gently as he gazed at the pandemonium surrounding them.

“I’m frightened,” Elouise said softly. 

Arnold stood and helped Elouise to her feet. They stood, for a moment, gazing into one another’s eyes and then he opened his arms and she fell into them, grateful for the comfort of his embrace.

“I’m frightened too, my dove,” he admitted.

     “What are we going to do?” she mumbled into his chest.

     “We’re going to find you a pair of shoes,” he said. “And then we’ll decide how to proceed from there.” He smiled and said, “We’ll take things one step at a time.”

Elouise smiled gratefully and nodded.

Arnold reached for his wife’s hand and they moved forward, into their new unknown.