Spiders from the Shadows

EIGHT


Four Miles West of Chatfield, Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee


The sun was higher in the morning sky and the air was almost comfortable. Winter would come, humid and cutting with northern wind, but now it was early fall and there was still enough warmth to let the sun heat up the earth once it was higher in the sky. Bono and Ellie walked again together, giving them time to talk. Ellie kept up a constant chatter about the secret cake she was going to decorate, the weather, Miller, her mom, pretty much anything that fluttered through her mind. She ran ahead of him, skipped back, grabbed his hand, always moving, her mood happy, the brightness back in her eyes.

Coming across the open field toward the house, Bono was happy to see Caelyn standing on the porch, waiting for them. She looked radiant in the morning sun, her blonde hair illuminated from the back. She wore blue jeans, a light sweater, and leather boots. He stopped. He couldn’t help it. It made his heart thump to see her standing there. “Hey, baby,” he said in a rather poor Humphrey Bogart imitation. “Looks like you might be looking for a man.” He turned and flexed his biceps, nodding toward his muscled arms with an exaggerated smile.

“As a matter of a fact, I am,” Caelyn answered while seeming to pay him no attention.

Bono flexed again. She pretended not to notice. He stretched his arms above his head in an exaggerated motion, his T-shirt pulled tight against his chest. Caelyn continued looking past him. “Still looking for a man,” she said.

Bono had had enough; he ran to her and lifted her into his arms, holding her weight easily above the ground. She screamed and started laughing. “Let me down!” she cried.

“Go, Daddy!” Ellie joined in, running to him. “Look at this! Look at this. Mom, he could make you fly!”

Caelyn punched Bono on the shoulders. “Put me down, you lunkhead!”

“Not until you say it!”

“Say what?”

He kept her in the air, her feet kicking at the emptiness, completely at his mercy.

“Say it!” he laughed.

“OK, OK, let me down and I will.”

He lifted her a couple of inches higher. “Come on, Caelyn, you gotta say it or I’ll ">He reached out and touchllShe really didn’t know.keep you there all day.” He pressed his fingers into her ribs.

She punched at his shoulders again, still laughing. “Let me down first.”

“Not until—”

“All right! I love you! There, I said it. Now will you please let me down?!”

He lowered his arms, letting her feet touch the ground. “There you go again,” he laughed, “getting all smoochy on me.”

“I hate it when you do that. You make me feel like a little kid.”

He smiled. She tried to look angry. Ellie skipped around them, laughing, “Mommy’s smoochy, Mommy’s smoochy.”

Caelyn looked down, feigning anger. “See what you did? How do you expect her to respect me when you do that?”

Bono crossed his heart. “Never again. I swear.”

Neither of them believed it.

“You still feel like walking?” Caelyn asked, nodding to the open fields behind her shoulder.

“Are you kidding? Like I would pass up the opportunity to walk in the country with such a beautiful girl?”

Ellie looked up excitedly. “Can I come, too?”

“Sure, Ellie,” Caelyn answered.

They started walking, Ellie between them. Grabbing their hands, she tried to swing, but she was too big now, and even though she bent her knees, they dragged across the wet ground. The threesome approached the end of the grass. “Which direction?” Caelyn asked.

Bono nodded toward the narrow country road that ran north. “Let’s go that way,” he said, nodding down at Ellie. “It’s much less muddy.”

They crossed the gravel driveway and started walking down the road. It was strange to see the country road so vacant and quiet. Half a mile ahead, a stalled car had been pushed off into the barrow pit; behind them, far in the distance, another couple of cars lay motionless where they had died when the EMP swept across the country not long before. Sam cocked his head and listened, noting the empty silence; a hint of wind in his ear, the sound of their shoes against the pavement, their breathing, and the movement of Ellie’s polyester jacket were the only sounds he could hear. He glanced skyward. Completely empty. Looked across the fields, left and right. Not a soul or a hint of movement anywhere.

“Kind of strange, isn’t it, honey?” Caelyn said, watching his eyes and gesturing to the empty landscape all around them.

Bono slowed and then stopped walking.

“It took a while for me to get used to it,” Caelyn continued. “The first couple of days I would sit on the front porch waiting, certain that someone would show up. I’d sit there, staring at the empty road and wondering where everyone had gone. It was kind of like the Twilight Zone. No one was around. For a time I wondered if we were the only ones alive. Then I saw a couple of the neighbors walking with some people who’d come down from Memphis. They stopped to talk. That was the first time I really understood what had happened. Since then, I haven’t talked to many other people.” She thought about the violent gang and the confrontation in the field. “At least, not many who I wanted to talk to.”

She fell silent in her memories. The sky overhead was vast, blue and empty, and the wind was pu">*******

Bono looked down the empty highway. “I think people are kind of catching their breath, you know, hiding out, hoarding their resources, protecting home court before they venture out. Some people are afraid.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the house. “Your mom is terrified, it’s pretty obvious. She tries to act brave, but that’s not how she feels. She’s becoming more and more suspicious and withdrawn. It’s understandable how she would feel that way.” He bent down, picked up a small rock, felt its round edges, tossed it up and down a couple of times, then stood and threw it across the open field. “You should have seen what it was like up in D.C. It was amazing and scary. Even now, I don’t know if I can quite figure it out. It was like everyone was instantly ready to give up. Can you imagine that? I saw people literally sit down on the side of the road and surrender, waiting to die rather than take some responsibility for themselves. It was jarring. No, it was more than that, it was shocking. I mean, they gave it up so easily. Like a bunch of helpless princesses. I mean, come on, people, are you kidding me?! You are going quit just like that? Bunch of spoiled babies. Is that the only thing you got?

“But you know, Caelyn, I thought a lot about it—and it’s funny, but I think I realized something I’d never thought about before. They didn’t give up so easily because of all the difficulties that lay ahead. They didn’t lie down and surrender because the future looked so bleak. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t the difficulty of the future that made them so despairing. It was the emptiness of the present, the meaningless of their lives, the barrenness of how they had chosen to live, detached from their families, their religion, any sense of purpose or worthy cause. Hey, dude, my iPod isn’t working. Guess I’ll lie down here and die. I mean, it was almost like that. You’re telling me my 401(k) isn’t worth anything? My Mercedes won’t start? My 80-inch flat screen got quick fried into smoke? Well, I guess that’s pretty much it for me, dudes. Mix up the Kool-Aid™ and let’s get this over with.”

Caelyn looked at him. He smirked, his sarcastic humor biting.

“You really think that’s the way it is?” she asked. “People lose their easy lives, their possessions, and that’s it, they give up? They roll over and just give up? I don’t know, honey, I think you might be underestimating your fellow Americans.”

Bono ran his hands through his hair, thinking of the hellish highway he and Sam had walked around Washington, D.C. “Maybe, Caelyn, maybe.” They started walking again. He didn’t know how much to tell her. What good would it do? He didn’t even want to think about it himself.

Ellie let go of their hands and ran before them. Bono thrust his fists into his pockets as they watched her go. “I don’t know if I can explain it very well, Caelyn, but it was pretty much unbelievable. I saw hundreds, no, thousands of people on this highway who had absolutely no idea what to do. I understand that they were shell-shocked—I mean, the people in D.C. took a double hit: first the nuclear explosion think you should go’ father, then the EMP. I understand that’s a lot to live through, but there we were, twenty-four hours after the EMP attack, and some of them were still sitting by their cars. Sixty miles to make it home. Way too far to walk. Someone’s got to help me. I wanted to shake them. I wanted to scream, ‘This is your life. Take responsibility. It isn’t over. There is hope. You can make it through this.’ It wasn’t until later that I realized how many of their lives had become meaningless and sterile, an empty candy wrapper in their hands. “Might as well check out now as later” seemed to be a common attitude. All they wanted was for the end to be painless. Geez, Caelyn, if you had seen it, it would have driven you insane.”

She pressed her lips together and glanced down the road to Ellie, who was balancing on the white stripe in the middle of the road, her hands extended at her sides. “I had a visitor a few nights ago,” she said, wanting to change the conversation. “You probably won’t remember him. Pastor Simpson. He used to be the preacher of the congregation here. We’ve met him a time or two.”

“A big guy? Kind of a down-to-earth farmer, as I remember?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Bono leaned toward her, instantly interested. “That’s good. That’s really good. What did he want?”

“He didn’t want anything, really, though he did bring a couple of boxes of dry goods. More than anything he was checking up on his former congregants from these parts.”

Bono noted the “from these parts.” His wife tended to revert to the country vernacular when she’d been home awhile. “Why did he stop at your parents’ house? How did he know that you were here?”

Caelyn thought back on the night the old farmer had shown up. She could remember his words almost perfectly. “The Spirit brought me to you,” the man in the baseball cap had said. “I was going to turn around. I wanted to get home before it got dark. But I couldn’t. I knew that someone else was out here.

“I think you prayed me to you, Caelyn. Your faith is strong enough that God was able to use even an old fool such as me.”

She considered her husband’s question. “I don’t know, babe, it’s kind of a funny story, but the long and short of it is that he found me out here. Anyway, they’re having a meeting at the church. They’re going to work out a system to check up on each other, help each other, you know, share things if we need to, see who has what, who needs what, that sort of thing.”

Bono listened with even greater interest. “That’s beautiful, Caelyn. Exactly what I had hoped. That’s got to be the plan. It will work that way, don’t you think? I mean, if we can stick together on this thing, if we can work with our friends and neighbors, then things will be OK.”

She smiled at him. “I think when you say ‘if we can work with our friends and neighbors,’ what you really mean is ‘if Caelyn can work with strangers,’ isn’t it, babe? I mean, you won’t be here. And these really aren’t our friends. I don’t know any of the people around here.”

He stepped toward her. “I understand. And yes, I’m sorry, I was probably making it sound too easy. I’m just so relieved to know there are others here to help you and they’ve non-commissioned officersening the stepped forward. I was planning on going to the church to talk to the pastor before I left. I felt like I had to find someone who could watch over you while I was gone. Even better, Pastor Simpson has reached out to us. I knew the people here would be willing to help us.”

“But are they really willing? Think about it, honey. They don’t know me. They’ve got their own families, their own problems, their own worries and concerns.”

He sensed the hesitation in her voice and put his arms around her, pulling her close. “I do, Caelyn. I really do. I can’t believe that God intends for us to go through this by ourselves. He understands, they understand, that I can’t be here to help you. They recognize the challenge you will have here, by yourself, with Ellie. They recognize that I’m not off on some overseas vacation. They are patriots and they’ll want to help us.” He lifted his eyes toward the heavens as if saying a quick prayer. “It’s going to be OK.”

She watched him, then started walking again. Ellie was forty or fifty feet ahead of them now, looking at something along the side of the road, and it made Caelyn nervous not to have her immediately by her side. It was silly, she knew—there wasn’t anything up there that was going to hurt her daughter, but she was skittish now, afraid of so many unseen things. What if Ellie got hurt, bitten by a snake or a spider? What if she fell and twisted her ankle? What if she got sick? Before, a doctor or a hospital was just a short drive away, and they would take care of things: medicines, surgeries, painkillers, antibiotics, the world’s best medical care, all at her disposal if she ever needed help. But all of that was gone now. And it scared her. There were so many things to deal with that she’d never had to think about before. So she wanted to be close to Ellie. She wanted to wrap her in a tight cocoon and keep her safe until this thing had passed.

If it ever did pass . . . .

If things ever got any better . . . .

Would they? Would things ever get better?

She really didn’t know.

The emotion of the moment caught up to her and she turned suddenly toward her husband. “What’s going to happen to us?” she whispered, her voice unsure.

Bono pressed his lips while looking straight ahead. “Things are going to work out, Caelyn, I really believe they will. As bad as things appear, I still have hope.

“Some people think this is the end, that God is going to show up from the heavens with a host of angels, that the Millennium is finally here, Satan bound, heaven established here on earth. And who knows, maybe all those things are going to happen really soon. But I don’t think so. Not yet. Not right now. There are still some things that have to happen. Cool things. Great things. Maybe some more hard things, too. But I don’t think all the prophecies have been fulfilled yet.” He stopped and motioned to the empty landscape around him. “Do I think it’s going to get better? Yeah, I really do. I don’t think that we are finished, not as a people, not as a government. This has knocked us to our knees, maybe even come close to killing us, but I don’t believe our heart is gone. It’s going to be tough, no doubt. In fact, it’s going to be way more than tough—it’s going to be horrible. Lots of people are going to die. Maybe millions, maybe a hundred million, I don’t know. It will be unlike anything we’ve ever tried to imagine before. We might not be OK, not in the normal sense of how we think of things, but I think we can get through this. I think eventually we’ll rebuild.”

“But who, baby, who? Who’s going to rebuild? We don’t even have a government!”

Bono nodded slowly. “I don’t know.”

“All of our leaders in D.C. have been killed. Something isn’t right. It just feels—I don’t know, bad somehow. We’ve got no government, no infrastructure, no medicines, no food. How are we going to do it? Who is going to do it? These are the things that I don’t know.”

Caelyn waited, hoping he would answer. But he didn’t, and she turned back to the road.

Ellie was running toward them now, excited. “Look at this!” she cried. She was holding out a purple thistle, fuzzy at the bottom with tiny filaments of color bristling at the top. Deep purple. A hint of yellow. Beautiful but thorny. Bono took it cautiously. “You’ve got to be careful, Ellie, this thing has pricklies that can hurt.”

Ellie held up her index finger with childish pride. A tiny blot of crimson blood was dripping down the front. “I already found that out, Daddy.”

Caelyn took her hand and held it, examining the tiny prick. “That looks like it hurts, baby.”

Ellie pulled her hand awayt of glass doo