The Apocalypse

Chapter 3

Sarah

Danville, Illinois



Sarah's cart shimmied to the right, while one of the wheels thumped with every rotation; that little bump ran up her arms and right to her head where it pulsed in a dull ache.

Why don't you just get another cart?

She knew the answer. It was the same reason she had only dropped hints to her daughter instead of just coming out and stating plainly exactly how upset she was. Sarah Rivers didn't like to make waves...nor even ripples, like returning a cart. Some of her friends thought of her as a pushover, and she wouldn't have argued the point.

“Hey look at this,” Brit said, grabbing up a tabloid as they took a turn near the front aisle. She was a bright and sunny girl of sixteen and like her mother was strikingly beautiful. Unlike her mother, however, she was more than a little gullible. She held the tabloid up for her mother to see the headline. “Zombie monkeys are invading India. That's messed.”


Sarah smiled. It was thin and forced, but it was what the situation called for and Sarah was always very aware what every situation called for. “It's probably not real,” she said.

Brit looked closer at the tabloid picture and replied, “You don't know that. Maybe they have, like, Mad-cow disease or something.”

The thin smile stayed in place and to it she added a little shrug, as if Brit's theory was actually possible. They turned up the next aisle and Sarah swept her blue eyes past the soup cans, Brit was the soup eater and it didn't make sense to buy more if she was leaving. Instead she grabbed up four cans of French-cut green beans and a tin of fried onions, thinking they would have green bean casserole for dinner that night.

“Again?” Brit asked, eyeing the beans.

“You're the vegetarian,” Sarah answered. She wasn't a good cook to begin with, but when her daughter had announced earlier in the year that 'Meat was Murder', her limited skills were really put to the test. “Just be happy that you won't be getting Mad-cow by eating my casserole. Though, I think only cows get Mad-cow disease; not humans or monkeys.”

“You don't know that,” Brit said again; it was a phrase she used frequently when talking to her mother. She held up the tabloid and tapped on the picture. “Maybe this is what happens when a monkey eats a cow that has the disease.”

“Do monkeys eat cows?” Sarah asked—and was JFK really an alien, as the next headline suggested? She didn't ask this, though she wanted to. It would mean more waves and with her daughter on the verge of moving eight-hundred miles away to live with her father, Sarah was afraid to make even the tiniest of ripples.

However with a teenage girl even the smallest ripple could be made into a tidal wave. “Of course they don't, duh!” Brit said, rolling her eyes. “But, you know, they like eat anything a tourist will throw their way. McDonalds and shit like that.”

“Brit, we're in public,” Sarah said in a whisper as she looked about, ready to unfurl an apology if anyone had overheard the word.

The girl breathed out loudly as though it was an effort to exhibit the least manners, “Fine: stuff like that. You don't know.”

Sarah didn't know, though she thought she did.