Impetus (2 page)

Mick was m
idway into the building when he noticed it: a red box lying on the ground, one with the word
open
written across the top. He smiled.
What a nice surprise.
He must have missed it on the way out of the shelter that morning, when the dim light had been even dimmer. The kids hadn’t left him a treasure box in quite some time, years probably. This one was larger than the others they used to leave for him. He’d figured the children had outgrown such things. They were, after all, teenagers now.

He turned the box around in his hand, looking at the vibrant red paint that coated the
exterior and feeling something shift against the sides. The paint job was thorough, much more so than the scribbles of crayon they’d used to decorate their other treasure boxes. He thought about opening it. His curiosity had been sparked. In the past, the kids typically left him items they found lying around: bottle caps, sticks, glass. Anything they deemed to have some kind of worth. But he figured it was best he checked in first. He had been gone longer than usual. No need to worry anyone.

He opened the
brown leather satchel he had hanging over his shoulder and put the box inside.

He
followed the worn path through the rest of the cluttered room and approached a door beneath a dangling Exit sign. A single red and partially frayed wire held the sign aloft, refusing to let it fall for reasons apparent to only it. Mick pounded twice on the door with his left fist and waited. A minute later the locks clicked open from behind the door, three in all.

“
Welcome back,” Sarah said as the door opened. Her skin was grimy and worn from the present-day trials they all went through, but her beauty refused to be masked beneath it. She had pulled her long brown hair into a loose ponytail that hung freely over her right shoulder, exposing her high cheekbones and sculpted face.

“
Thanks,” Mick said. “How’s everything here?”

“
Same as always,” she answered, turning to walk back down the flight of stairs. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Sarah
had worked for the local news as a field reporter before Colossus. A shooting here or a multicar crash there were what she’d mainly dabbled in. Not out of desire, as she would later tell Mick, but from a need to climb the proverbial ladder to a better job. Mick used to watch her on the six o’clock news on the nights he didn’t have to work late. He’d always appreciated her zeal for reporting. She just had a knack for it, as if she was born to do it. She had found out only days before Impact that her request for the open investigative journalist spot at Channel Seven News was approved and she was about to move up in the ranks. Sarah would finally be doing what she’d always dreamed, what she had worked so hard for.

Then the rock
s fell, and everything changed.

Sarah and
Mick turned left through another metal door at the base of the stairs.

“
Hey, Sarah,” Mick said as he felt his way forward. It seemed awfully dark. More so than usual. The cheap aluminum furniture usually reflected enough light to navigate.

The single kerosene lamp that
had been noticeably absent flickered on in the center of the room and revealed three more of his seven roommates huddled around it.

“Happy birthday!”

Mick
couldn’t help but smile. He was surprised by both the gesture and the fact that the group had pulled something off without his knowledge.

“
I forgot it was my birthday,” he lied.

Rather, he
’d chosen to forget. Turning fifty had seemed a harrowing event back when the world was somewhat normal. Now it just meant he had spent another year surviving, not living. Mick peered to his left in the dull glow the lamp provided. At least another year older had brought with it another year with them.

“
Happy birthday, Dad,” Nate said, reaching out and hugging Mick loosely, closer to a pat than a hug. Even with the breakdown in society, his son still had the right of every young man to distance himself emotionally from his father. Mick did not take offense. He was happy that some things did not change.

“
Happy birthday, Daddy,” Kathryn said, shuffling past her twin brother and pushing aside a beautiful shock of bright-red curly hair; tendrils darted away in every direction like bottle rockets frozen in time. She kissed Mick on his cheek and hugged him tight.

Her hug
was different than Nate’s. It was solid and heartfelt, filled with a love that was exuded through her embrace. Mick felt her heart beat in rhythm with his and her breath on his neck. Not to say that Nate didn’t feel the same way. Mick knew he did. But Kathryn was not ashamed to wear her feelings for everyone to see. Mick’s simple hope was that she would stay that way forever. Though he doubted that very much. Like her brother, she, too, would soon become captive to the chemical changes that puberty brought. Because even in such a depressing world they still found ways to be angst-ridden teenagers, forgetful of all but their own issues. Mick certainly did not blame them for it. In fact, he was glad to know some form of normality still existed.

“
Thanks, you two,” Mick said, smiling.

They
were his everything, two colorful flowers blooming against the odds in a place that had become so adverse to growth. There were times when he almost wished the twins had not been born. Not for any other reason than to spare them the hardship of life in the new world. But the selfish side of him could not even entertain the idea of an existence without their bright lives in it. His life would have ended many years ago had they not been there to drive him past the doubt.

Forced
to raise them by himself since Impact, Mick was proud of who they had become. He frequently thought of the stories his father would share with him whenever he complained as a child; the stories of how his father walked to school ten miles each way, sometimes in a blizzard, sometimes barefoot, sometimes both. Or how “in his day” kids did what they were told without question. But his father’s day, as well as Mick’s own, had been easier times to go through childhood. Mick could not imagine growing up in the world that his children would inherit, if they inherited anything at all.

Life
was tough enough for him to deal with, and he was a grown man with knowledge of things well beyond his children’s years. It was difficult for him to intuit what went through his kids’ minds at times, what they thought and felt knowing that hope had left them to salvage their own futures so many years back. His children had been robbed of their chance to enjoy growing up. To hang with friends, go to parties, do well in school so they could do well in life. Their lives were spent wondering if they had enough clean water to drink or diesel fuel to last through the ever-growing winter season. It didn’t seem fair. None of it did. But despite it all, Mick was determined to give them the best future that this horrid world could provide. He would find hope, wherever it had disappeared to, and wrangle it back by its neck if it was the last thing he did.

Laurel shifted from out of the darkness like a shadow. The speck of a woman squeezed Mick tight
ly. “Happy birthday, old man,” she said as a smile spread across her face. “It’s about time you got back. We’ve been waiting.”

Mick looked down to his left at Laurel.
“This is your doing, I take it?” She was an old soul with knowledge and understanding beyond what any thirty-five-year-old should know. She had also been a registered nurse before Colossus, which made her a god among men.

L
aurel grimaced slightly, more of a knowing grimace. “Actually, Mick, it was your children’s idea. I told them you wouldn’t want a celebration. But you know how they are.” She nodded toward the kids, who smiled back.

He knew quite well how his children were. And he was sure this was not their doing. He loved
the twins, and they loved him. But he was sure Laurel was simply trying to make the teens look good and him feel better, both of which he appreciated immensely.

When times got tough
, which they so often did, and everything seemed beyond repair, Mick simply closed his eyes and thought of Nate and Kathryn. They reminded him that life was what you made of it. There would always be peaks and valleys. Though the peaks seemed rare nowadays and the valleys stretched for miles and miles.

Mick
looked around the room and thanked those there with a warm smile. He had seen Greg on the way in, but that left two of their group unaccounted for.

“
Sandeep and Chester are in the back taking inventory,” Sarah said as if reading his mind. “They’re missing a can of beans.” She rolled her eyes. “Chester thinks they miscounted. Sandeep thinks something nefarious is going on. You know how those two can be.”

“
Like an old married couple,” Mick said, followed by the tiniest of chuckles.

He
’d brought his children to the shelter shortly after the world began to crumble from within. This was his extended family now. They had their quarrels like any family would, but they also watched out for the other, cared for the other’s well-being.

“
Did you see anyone out there today, Daddy?” Kathryn asked. “People, animals, anything?”

Mick
could see in her eyes that she wanted him to say yes, wanted him to tell her that the sky had cleared and people had begun their migration back to rebuild what had been lost.

“
Not today, sweetie.” He smiled halfheartedly as he removed the rifle from his shoulder and leaned it against an old metal desk near the door.

Unless it was g
ood news, which it rarely was, Mick kept the finer details of his outings to himself. They lived in an adult world full of adult things. There was no hiding that. There was no time for a kid to be a kid. But he refused to subjugate his children to undue stress until it was absolutely necessary. They did not need to know about the gunshots and how they seemed to get closer each day. Nor did they need to know about the howling he’d heard last week a few blocks from the shelter. Or the myriad other things that were better left untold. When and if an emergency arose, and he was sure it eventually would, he would deal with it then. Until that time, Mick resolved to paint as bright a picture that he could on the sullied canvas they had been forced to create a life on.

Mick leaned against a support pillar.
“Are you both finished with your studies for today?”

Kathryn and Nate nodded at the same time and in the same manner
as only twins could.

“
What subject did Sandeep teach you today?”

“
History,” Nate said dejectedly.

Math was Nate
’s strength. He seemed to truly enjoy it, often making a game out of solving for
x
and
y
. It was just how his mind worked: computer-like and step-oriented. But Nate detested history, which, ironically, happened to be Mick’s favorite subject in school. He still loved it. History held better times in its grasp.

Mick
turned to Nate. “I keep telling you—”

“
I know. I know,” Nate said, cutting him off. He then furrowed his brow, what Mick could see of it beneath his hair, and said in his best impersonation of his father, “You can’t move forward without knowing where you’ve been.” His voice traveled the road of puberty, crackling as it went.

“
It’s true,” Mick said, smiling at his son’s impression. He was getting better at it. “Besides, you need to be well-rounded.”

N
ate scoffed. “I still don’t get it, Dad. Why, exactly, do I need to be well-rounded? It’s not like I’ll be applying for jobs anytime soon. I should be out there with you. Not stuck around here all day.”

Nate was right.
What better way to teach him than for Mick to show him firsthand? But in Mick’s mind, Nate would never be prepared to venture out with him. It was safer around their building. He could get hurt out there, or worse. It was a state of mind that Mick knew he would eventually need to change. It did neither of them any good to use yesterday’s standards as a crutch. For now, though, he was perfectly content with Nate learning about better times and broadening his horizons. He would protect his children from certain aspects of reality for as long as possible. That was his right as a father.

Kathryn,
who casually leaned on the table, piped up. “You think you know so much, Nate. The world can change. Sandeep is always teaching us how society will find a way to rebuild from its ashes. It’s happened before. It’s bound to happen again.”

“
Keep dreaming,” Nate said.

To which Kathryn resolutely replied,
“I will, thank you.”

Mick
could not help but to smile. Kathryn exuded an admirable eternal optimism, just like her mother. Mick loved that about her. Even though it was naive to think the world would truly ever improve. The devastation was too vast to ever go back to how it had been. Nothing could change that now. But her attitude was a bright spot among all the gloom. And to squelch that seemed like a disservice to them all.