Countdown to Extinction

Countdown to Extinction

By Giana LaSpina

    Ten. I’m just clocking out to go home when my cell phone emits a terrible emergency tone, at the same time the PA connected to the company laptop does. It’s a sound that I only associate AMBER alerts and emergency weather bulletins with, so, fearfully, I walk out of the break room clutching my phone. My coworker, Dave, who is the youngest after me at 19, locks eyes with me and hustles over.

    “What is happening?” he whispers into my ear. “This is not a good sound.”

    No sooner does Dave finish speaking to me than a loud, static-y voice comes over the sound system. 

    “WE INTERRUPT YOUR DAY TO BRING YOU NEWS ON AN IMPENDING EMERGENCY. ALL CITIZENS MUST GET TO A SAFE LOCATION AT ONCE. THE FOREIGN ENEMIES OF AMERICA HAVE THREATENED NUCLEAR WARFARE AGAINST THE UNITED STATES. AGAIN, GET TO A SAFE LOCATION IMMEDIATELY.” 

    With a final burst of panic-inducing static, the scratchy voice cuts out with a click. Dave and I look at each other, fear reflected in each other’s eyes.

    “I have to get home!” I nearly shout. “My mom- my sister- the cat- I have to go.” Impulsively, I reach out and hug Dave. “If I don’t see you for a while,” I say by way of explanation. “Bye!”

    I run out the front doors of the art store, whizzing past my manager, who, looking panicky and scared, is casually taking money out of the till. I stop dead in my tracks and jog over to him.

    “Hey,” I bark at him. He looks up, startled, and drops the cash. Surprisingly, he only looks a little guilty.

    “Give me some of that,” I snap at him. My manager, Jeff, shakes his head. I sigh once, loudly.

    “You know what, Jeff? I have a mom and a sister to take care of. You have yourself. In case there is nuclear warfare, I need money to take care of them because I sure won’t have a job, now, will I? NO. So stop fooling around and give me that cash, pronto.” 

Silently, Jeff opens the register and I clean it out, taking a total of five-hundred and sixty-two dollars and nine cents. I also pick up a paintbrush I’ve been keeping my eye on for a while. 

“Just in case I get bored,” I tell Jeff, who merely nods.

Nine. 

I run the whole way home, barely stopping to catch my breath. If I can make it home, I can get mom’s car and take Rachel to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. Finally, I make it to my house and jam my key in the front door lock. For a few brief, scary seconds, I have to jiggle the key around until I hear the click of the lock sliding open.

I throw the door open and chuck my backpack onto the floor in the entryway. I don’t hear anything coming from the house, and I automatically assume the worst.

“Mom? Rachel?” I yell, advancing through the house, clutching one of my mom’s prized silver candlesticks. Not surprisingly, when I turn the corner into the living room, I find them on the couch, glued to the TV.

“Mom?” I say cautiously.

“Shhhhhh, be quiet,” she says, and the three of us stare at the television screen. My brain seems to be underwater, and through the murkiness I can barely make out the words coming out of the anchor’s mouth: “United States… responds… in retaliation… dropped soon.”

As the horror sets in, I cover my mouth with one hand, as Rachel whispers, “we’re all going to die.”

“No.”

The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I’m not going to let any of us die, even my mother, who is next to useless.

“Rach, get a jacket. We’re going to the grocery store to fight housewives for doomsday supplies.”

Rachel runs to get her jacket, and I step into the kitchen, finding what I want with my eyes. Quietly, I walk over to the knives and grab a large, sharp meat cleaver, and a big bread knife. My mother, who hasn’t moved from her position on the couch, opens her mouth to tell me no. I stop her before she says anything.

“You won’t do anything. It’s up to Rachel and I to do this.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, Rachel comes downstairs. I hand her the bread knife and open the front door.

Eight.

I had grabbed my mom’s keys to her Dodge Durango that she hardly ever drove. As we approached, I unlocked the doors and we got in. The ride to the grocery store was mostly silent. Rachel was attempting to find news on the radio, but all she could find was static on most stations. Finally, she found a fifties station, and I batted her hand away when she tried to change it, telling her that oldies were better than static. For the final block to the grocery store, we had to listen to Buddy Holly sing that “That’ll be the day/ that I die.” How fitting.

The grocery store by our house looked untouched, mostly because that was the Kroger that everyone forgot about. There were quite a few cars in the parking lot, but that was less than half of the parking lot. I shut the car off, and we got out. I put the keys in between my fingers and held up my knife. Looking at Rachel, I ask: “Ready?” to which she replies, “Nope. But let’s do it anyways.”

Seven. 

The Kroger, for all that there are maybe thirty people in here, is mass freaking chaos. There are boxes everywhere, and bags of chips disemboweled, strewn across the floor. There are overturned grocery carts by the door. I flip one over, and Rachel does the same. 

“All right. We have to be organized. We’re on the right side of the store so we work from right to left, got it?” She nods her understanding.

“This is all refrigerated. We will get some milk, but no eggs, and no cheese. No meat. I don’t want to attract animals if the power in the house goes out. Now let’s go.”

Quickly, we run through the refrigerated area, picking up a few gallons of milk, some microwave meals, a few frozen pizzas. On impulse, I grab a pint of ice cream. We hustle to the dry goods section, starting with chips. We get tortilla chips and salsa, then go to the candy aisle. I grab a lot of dark chocolate but bat Rachel’s hands away from the ultra-sweet things, telling her dark chocolate will be better for us. We finally work our way to the canned goods section, where we fill the entire bottoms of both carts with canned vegetables, fruits and spaghetti. When we continue further down the aisle, we find a woman, waiting with her arms crossed, brandishing a knife of her own.

“Give me that cart,” she snaps.

“No,” I snap back.

She raises the knife and steps forward to cut me, but Rachel jumps in front of her, holding her knife aloft. 

“If you step any closer, I will take your hand off. Now get away from us!”

The woman backs away, breaking into a run.

“That was brave, little one,” I tell Rachel. “When I was fourteen I wouldn’t have been able to do that.” 

We continue down the aisle and get packs of bottled water, and I dump vitamin and protein mixes into my cart. We make it through the food, opting to get dehydrated fruit instead of fresh fruit, and plenty of crackers and bread. I begin to dump protein bars into my cart and clear out the stock. Finally, we make it to the toiletries aisle, where people are. I see two women fighting over a box of Band-Aids. Others are just trying to figure out what to grab. There are a few men standing in the aisle, so after Rachel and I load up on pads and tampons, I pick up a nearby box of pads, opening them.

“Watch this, Rach,” I whisper, before chucking the box at the men. As soon as it hits them, it spills open. Without fail, all of them freak out and yell, running away. We continue down the aisle, getting Band-Aids, gauze, alcohol wipes, peroxide and rubbing alcohol, face and baby wipes, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and toilet paper. We fill Rachel’s cart up before deciding that it’s time to go. We’ve spent enough time in here, and my stomach is telling me it’s almost time for dinner. 

Six.

We make our way to the cashier at the front of the store, only to find that no one is there. It seems to be that all of the cashiers at the Kroger have run off, much like I did at my work.

“Well, what do you know, sister. They all ran away. Get some candy bars, and a magazine if you want one. I doubt anyone will care.”

We waltz out of the store, shopping carts full, to see that someone, probably the angry knife woman, scratched our car.

“Darn,” I say. “Good thing Mom never leaves the house. She’ll never know.” 

I unlock the car and we begin loading the groceries in. It takes a while, but we decide to throw all of the light stuff in the backseat, and all of the heavy things in the cargo area here in the back. Once we get everything loaded, I push my cart across the parking lot, towards the doors. It makes it about halfway before wobbling and falling over. A wheel falls off and rolls back to us.

“Good enough,” I say, and we get in the car.

After driving the now-wrecked roads, we finally make it home. In the hour and a half-ish that we were getting supplies, the rest of the world decided to riot. We pass three car wrecks, and one car that someone decided to set on fire. There are debris everywhere, and what would be a fifteen-minute drive takes us thrity minutes to get home.

Once we finally pull up to the house, we get out and load our arms of stuff. The front door, which I left unlocked, is nudged open by the two of us, and we dump all of the stuff on the kitchen floor before going out to get the next armful of stuff. Four loads and twenty minutes later, the stuff is inside, the car is shut and locked, and the door is deadbolted.

Five. 

            The whole time we were out getting supplies, my mother never moved from her position on the couch. She watched us come in four different times and never moved. She won't go out of the house at all. The leading theory that Rachel and I have come up with is agoraphobia, because she won't even go to the doctor.

             After we close the refrigerator, Rachel and I quietly walk into the hallway, where our mother can neither see nor hear us, so we can formulate a plan.

             "I know we just got food," I whisper to Rachel, "but should we leave, and go somewhere else?"

            "Where would we go?" Rachel whispers back to me. "They're going to hit the whole country. And what about Mom?"

            "What about her? We can go to the mountains east of here, between Tennessee and North Carolina. We can… break into a cabin in the Smokies or something. And we can bring Mom. We might have to carry her, but we can get her there." 

    “She won’t leave the house,” Rachel hisses. “And I won’t leave her alone.”

    Grrrrr. Leave it to my sister to be loyal to someone who’s done nothing but give birth to us.

    “Besides,” she continues. “It’s seven o’clock at night. We won’t be able to get that far East even if we leave right now!”

    She’s right, of course. Just as I open my mouth to retort, my mom interrupts us.

    “Girls,” she calls. “Come in here a second.” She sounds desperate, and a little confused. No more than usual, though.

    We wander into the living room where she is seated, still on the couch. Her large brown eyes are clouded with confusion and fear. Glassy-eyed and slack-jawed, she stares at the television, where the national news is still going. Rachel and I glance over, then sit on the couch by her, flanking our mother. We look up at the screen, and I can register enough to hear, “All cities shut down. Military presence already established in every major U.S. city. All citizens are to remain indoors with doors locked.”

    As the meaning dawns on me, all perspiration I was feeling, all the spit in my mouth, even the liquid in my eyes, it all vanishes. I feel like a human prune as hopelessness settles itself comfortably on my shoulders.

    The government has stopped us from leaving. They’re containing us.

    We’re rats trapped in a cage.

    Four.

    As the clock on the mantel chimes eight, I find that all of the liquid is back in my body; more so, even, than there should be. I’m crying openly, something I don’t do often, and I suddenly feel like I am going to pee suddenly. I run to the bathroom and lock the door behind me. I do my business and wash up, then sit down on the edge of the tub.

    I’m silently sobbing, rivers pouring down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth. It’s a bad crying jag, full-out ugly crying, but I think I can give myself a pass when I’ve been condemned to death with no input on the matter.

    When I’ve wound down I hear a quiet knock at the door.

    “Go away,” I choke out. My voice is all raspy and gross.

    “Let me in,” my mother says. Shocked, I obey. She sits down on the edge of the tub next to me and wraps her arms around me. For a long, quiet time, she holds me while I sob into her shoulder.

    Three.

    When we finally break apart, I realize it’s well into the nine o’clock hour. I wipe my tear-stained face with the back of my hand and whisper, “What are we going to do?”

    My mom looks at me and tells me, gravely, that she doesn’t know.

We walk out of the bathroom and I hear rumbling. Rachel takes one look at me and says:

    “Tanks. And planes. It’s the Army, the Air Force, and the cops. They’re keeping us bottled up.”

Silently, I look out the window, wishing they would drop the bombs on us already. My mom senses my despair and says, “Well, why don’t we eat? We certainly have enough to spare.”

She follows us to the kitchen, where we sit at the table, per her instructions to us when we walked in there. We sadly watch her making grilled cheeses for us. It really sucks that it’s only when faced with certain death that our mother comes back to life, revives herself to care for us.

    Mom finishes the grilled cheeses and sets them on plates.

    “Let’s eat something, okay girls?” she asks, right as the power goes out.

    Two.

    Rachel gasps as our world goes black, and I suck in a breath.

    “Oh, dear,” our mother frets, a blacker blob than the rest of the night. “I’ll be right back, let me go get some candles.”

    She leaves, shuffling through the house, and I can hear Rachel (I hope) feeling around on the table.”

    “What are you doing?” I ask.

    “I’m looking for- aha! Got it!- I was looking for my grilled cheese,” she explains, just as my mother appears, holding a lit candle. She looks ghostly, the flame casting shadows under her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. That’s what we’ll look like when this is all said and done, I guess.

We finish our food in silence, and then the lights come back on. I leave the candle going- I like how it looks. The clock slowly moves past each number. And here we are, at eleven o’clock waiting on doom.

    One.

    The house next door has started blasting music, and it provides a welcome distraction. It’s the neighbor’s kid, who’s a metalhead. He has this vest with all these patches on it. No doubt he’s wearing it now, with names like “Municipal Waste” and “Megadeth.” None of it makes sense to me and I can barely read some of them. Cool guy though. Very nice neighbor.

    I lay my head down on the table, and my mom places a hand on each of our backs. Silently, we sit there until 11:30, listening to the music. We migrate back into the living room and sit on the couch, silently panicking. Rachel gorges herself on candy and goes to the bathroom to puke. We listen to her, and decide to go in for moral support. We must have waited with her longer than we thought, because when we were done comforting her, the countdown began.

    Ten…

    Nine… my ears perk up because I realize what’s going on.

    Eight… Mom is next to realize it.

Seven… we look at each other over Rachel’s head.

    Six… Rachel, always last to know, hears the sound of counting.

    Five… she raises her head, realization dawning on her.

    Four… Mom draws us in for a hug.

    Three… “I love you guys,” I tell them.

    Two… we huddle in the tub, tucking our heads between our legs.

    One. 

    Happy New Year. Bombs away.