Chapter Two
The Waiting Game

"Why is he taking so long?"

Diane sighed at the question, but didn't have an answer. Just like she hadn't had an answer the first dozen times her mother had asked when an hour had passed and her dad still wasn't home.

"He shouldn't be taking this long." Martha repeated. She was sitting heavily at the dining table, one elbow propped up on the scratched wood and staring out the window hard, like she was trying to make their beat-up pickup truck pull into the drive with the force of her mind. She huffed in irritation, shifting around and turning to stare at Diane. Her head was drooping a bit. She looked tired and pale – gaunt – but that had been the norm for months. Her dark hair was riddled with bright silver strands that had been popping up like crazy and her once thick braid was thinned out. She'd been sick for a long time.

"I'm sure he's fine." Diane said patiently from her spot on the couch where she was half buried by their Rottweiler. Mae was snoring loudly and sprawled over half the couch with her head resting on Diane's thigh. "It's probably just busy. You know how it gets when the power's out. Everyone rushes to the store to stock up on water and gas." She didn't bring up how unusual it was for the power to be out so long when the weather hadn't been crazy, for the cell network to be down or the fact that every time her mom called the power company on the landline it was busy.

Just like the last time she gave the explanation, Martha scowled. Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by a loud, rumbling engine making its way up the road.

"There he is." Diane all but rushed out of the family room to get out the door so she could help her dad bring stuff in. She was already out on the porch by the time he came tearing into the driveway, the old Chevy bouncing over the dips and skidding on the dirt.

"You will not believe how crazy that trip was." Her dad boomed through the open window, voice loud enough to talk over the sputtering truck. He cut the engine and nudged open the squeaky door, muttering under his breath and shaking his head. "I can't believe it. The store was packed. There had to be twenty people in line when I got there. By the time I got to the register, there were twice that many people."

Diane nodded that she was listening as she pried open the toolbox in the bed of the truck. There was a single gallon of water and a sixteen pack of smaller bottles, two cartons of cigarettes and single bag with some rice and a quarter-gallon jug of milk.

"There was hardly anything there." Dave said in explanation, scratching at his beard. "I was lucky to get what I did. Town and Country was the only place still open. The power's out all over. I couldn't even get gas."

"That sucks." Diane lamented, grabbing the water up and leaving the cigarettes, rice and milk for him to bring in. She bustled in the door, using her heel to hold it open as her dad came in behind her. They dropped everything on one of the kitchen counters, Mae bustling into the kitchen in excitement and generally getting in the way.

"Oh my god! What happened?"

Diane whipped around at her mom's shrill voice coming from the doorway to the kitchen. Martha was leaning against the door frame, staring hard at her husband. Diane followed the gaze and finally noticed the blood staining the sleeve of her dad's shirt.

"Someone bit me." He frowned. "It was the damnedest thing. I was heading back home and there was this gal just standing in the middle of the road. I almost ran her over. When I got out of the truck to see if she needed help she just charged up to me and took a bite out of my arm. She really latched on. I had to throw her off. Fuckin' tweakers."

Diane was already at the hall closet where they kept the medical supplies, grabbing some bandages and antibiotic cream. She dumped them off on the table before rushing to the bathroom to find some hydrogen peroxide.

"Oh my god!" Her mom's voice was shrill and loud. "We're taking you to the hospital!"

"It's fine. I'm fine." Her dad growled back. "It's just a scratch."

Diane knew better, knew her dad was underplaying it by a lot and was already pointedly pulling out a chair for him.

"Mouths are dirty. We need to clean it out." It took a few seconds of staring him down before he sat down, grumbling the entire time. She made quick work of unbuttoning and rolling up his sleeve, wincing at the deep, jagged chunk that was missing from the meat of his forearm. It was bleeding heavily enough that a steady stream was running down onto the table.

"I think you really do need to go to the hospital." She said sternly, knowing it wouldn't make a difference. Her dad was stubborn.

"No. We need to stay home." He took off the wide-brimmed felt hat he always wore, smoothing back some strands of hair that had escaped from his braid. Using his good hand, he started petting Mae when the Rottweiler put her head on his leg. "It's crazy out there right now. I was talking to some people when I was waiting in line – cellphones aren't working, the power's out for the entire county at least. Someone said they'd started evacuating some counties up north. We need to find a radio."

"I'll find one." Martha volunteered, slowly making her way down the hallway to the back room they used for storage. They could hear her rummaging around, something loud thudding against the floor.

"You okay?" Diane hollered, ripping open a package of gauze and twisting the cap off the hydrogen peroxide.

"Fine. Just knocked over a box. I found one! We need eight AAs."

"Check my workroom." Dave called back.

Diane turned her attention back to getting her dad's arm cleaned up, pouring good amount of disinfectant over the gaping wound. The peroxide washed away the blood enough for her to clearly see the jagged tooth marks overlaying each other – like he'd been gnawed on.

"She got you good."

"She was out of her mind on drugs."

Diane made quick work of getting the bite cleaned up, coating it with a very thick layer of the antibiotic cream and a thick layer of gauze, wrapping more gauze around his thick forearm to keep it in place. "We're going to have to keep a close eye on that."

Her dad gave no acknowledgement to that, but she wasn't sure if that was because she was trying to 'baby' him or because her mom had finally come back with a small rectangular radio and a half-pack of batteries.

"I only found four."

"I'll get some." Diane offered, helping her mother sit down at the table before heading through the kitchen and to the stairs. Upstairs, it took her ten minutes to scrounge another four AA batteries out of her sister's room, knowing Abby wouldn't mind having her secret stash raided.

Back downstairs she popped the batteries into the blocky radio and angled the antenna towards the window. It was a dial tuner, so it took some time before she got it to one of the local stations she knew.

It was mostly static, but she got it to clear up by moving the radio right over to the window, sticking the antenna out through a hole in the screen in time to hear, "…is in effect for the state of Missouri. All residents are encouraged to make their way to the nearest safe-zone. Refuges have been set up in St. Louis, Jefferson City, Springfield, and Poplar Bluff. This is not a test. Please evacuate to the nearest safe-zone immediately. A state-wide evacuation is in effect for the states of Missouri." The message ended and was replaced with that god-awful tone she'd only ever heard when they were testing the emergency alert system.

She stared at her parents, and they stared back blankly as they listened to the message repeat itself.

"Well, that was informative." Her dad snorted. "Find another station, something that'll actually tell us what's going on."

She quickly did just that. But every station she tuned in to was broadcasting the same damn thing. Nervously, she turned down the volume on the message and sat down at the table with her parents. "We aren't going anywhere. Abby is going to come here. You know she will."

Her parents only nodded.

"We've talked about this before. If something goes wrong, we're all supposed to meet back here and stay together. She's the only one out of the house right now. She'll come home and we'll figure out what to do when she gets here. She might have a better idea of what's going on." She wasn't sure who she was trying to convince more, her parents or herself.

For a long time, they sat at the table and simply listened to the radio play the same thing over and over.

"I do have a little fuel set back." Her dad broke in. "I could get the generator running for a bit. Just enough to get the well pump running so we can fill up some containers with extra water."

Diane was immediately on her feet. "I'll see what I can find to fill up while you do that."

Dave pushed himself up from the table, grunting and bowing forward in pain with a hand on his back. He waited for it to pass before heading out to the garage. Diane wasted no time rifling through the kitchen, pulling down pitchers and big mason jars from up in the cupboards. There was an empty milk jug she could use and a near empty soda bottle she quickly dumped out. She could see her dad walking across the driveway towards the garage.

"This has to be about those terrorists." Martha came into the kitchen with a couple of reusable water bottles, setting them on the counter. She had to lean there for a while to steady herself.

"You should go lay down." Diane said quietly.

Her mom ignored her. "They've probably gone and blown up a substation or something. I've been saying something like this was going to happen. It's been getting worse for weeks."

Diane tuned her mother out, finishing her search for more water-tight containers. Whatever was happening was serious, if there was a state-wide evacuation. They didn't evacuate people for power outages.

"I'm going to find something we can fill up to use in the toilets." She disappeared into the laundry room, finding an empty laundry-soap container that hadn't made it into the trash. There was also an empty kitty-litter jug and she snatched that up as well. She poked her head out the door to check where her dad was. The garage door was open, and he was pouring fuel into the generator.

After that it didn't take long to get a good stock of water. It wasn't much, not in the long-run but it was enough to last them a few days if they were careful with it. Dave was certain there was enough fuel for a couple hours if they were only running the well pump.

After that, there really wasn't much else to do. Martha finally went to lie down after she almost fell down. Diane had to help her into bed and she was out like a light within a few minutes. Her dad was in the living room, sprawled out in his recliner and he'd moved the radio to his side table. He was flipping through the whole range of stations and having no luck finding anything other than the same message that had been playing since the start.

"It's FM only," Dave growled. "Piece of shit. We got another one that does AM too?"

"I'll look." Diane told him. "We also need candles."

She ended up looking by herself, shifting through moldy boxes and drawers in the back room. It was stuffy in the back room and her hair kept slipping out from her hair tie and sticking to her forehead. She found a few candles stashed back there, those stupid scented pretty ones that were carved into shapes and given as chintzy gifts. They were a good find now, icing on the cake because they had a good stash of the cheap, regular candles as well. She did find another radio, but they certainly didn't have enough D-cell batteries to get it going. There might have been a couple in one of the Maglite's but she was also certain that saving the flashlights was going to be more important.

Her dad was sleeping when she came back out, head leaned back and mouth hanging open. He was snoring slightly and there was a coat of sweat on his head. It was a bit warm in the house, so Diane deposited the candles on the kitchen table and opened the other window. Then, she clicked off the radio so her dad wouldn't be disturbed while he was resting and slipped back into his workroom where the house phone was.

Her cellphone wasn't working, no matter how many times she dialed Abby's number. It wouldn't dial out when she tried to call her cousin either. She tried Abby on the landline and got some prerecorded operator message about the call not being completed as dialed. She tried her cousin's cellphone again with the landline and got the same results. She tried calling her aunt and uncle's home phone and it just kept ringing. It never went to the answering machine. That meant they didn't have power either. They didn't have one of the older, plain phones for their landline, just those remote phones that wouldn't work if the power was out.

Diane stared at her phone screen for a few minutes, just staring at the time. It was just getting to be 5:00. Abby was supposed to work until then, but if things were going crazy there was no way she'd stay at work, right? She ought to have been home already.

She couldn't help the tears that were building up on her, no matter how hard she blinked. What if she wasn't okay? What if – she had no clue what was going on out there, what kind of trouble her sister could be in. What if she didn't make it home?

"Honey?" Her dad's voice croaked and she jumped. It took her a minute to wipe away the tears and take a few breaths to try and calm herself.

"Yeah dad?"

"Could you bring me some water?"

Diane watched him for a few minutes, watched the sweat that was actually dripping down the sides of his face by then. It wasn't that hot in there.

"One second." Instead of going to the kitchen, she headed for the bathroom. The thermometer was in the medicine cabinet and her father was surprisingly docile when she insisted on checking his temperature. A couple minutes later the little electronic beep went off and she took the thermometer to the window so she could read the little digital screen.

103.2 was one hell of a fever.

Immediately, she went to the freezer and grabbed up some frozen vegetables and the ice trays that were starting to melt. The ice was still mostly solid and the vegetables were only barely starting to get mushy. She wrapped the veggies up in towels until there were three little cold packs and took them back to her dad. One went behind his neck and she made him shove one under each armpit. Some ice went into a glass that she topped to the brim with water. Another went into a mixing bowl. She mixed in enough water to make it kind of soupy before taking those out to her dad.

"Drink as much as you can. It'll help get your core temperature down a bit. I need to take your boots off."

He took the glass of water, sputtering and choking a bit as he sipped it while Diane worked on the laces of his boots. It was tough to tug them off his permanently swollen legs, but she managed to get them free and peeled off his socks. She nabbed a few washcloths from the linen closet and started dipping them in the ice bowl, soaking them in the frigid water and laying them across his skin. His fever needed to drop fast.

He'd only sipped a little of the water and the glass was tipping in his hand. Diane righted it, helping him to drink some more. "As much as you can."

Dave did as he was told.

Watching closely, it was apparently his breathing was too heavy, the collar of his shirt was soaked and she was ninety percent certain that it was sweat and not the water from the makeshift ice-packs.

She didn't know what to do.

Stumbling to her feet, she nearly ran to get back to the phone. Shaking fingers dialed 9-1-1 and she held the receiver up to her ear. The prerecorded voice told her that all operators were busy and to please wait. Another minute and the same thing happened. Then again. And again. She didn't actually count how many times she listened to that prerecorded robot voice, wasn't sure exactly how long she was waiting but it was starting to get dark outside and there was still no answer.

"Fuck you!" She swore into the phone, slamming it back down into the receiver and going back to her dad. There was no help out there. She was on her own.

Her dad was still, his breath rattling in his chest and he wasn't responding.

"Dad? Dad?" She scrambled for the thermometer, had to pry his mouth open so she could take his temperature again. It was the longest two minutes of her life while she waited for the beep and belatedly rushed to get some candles lit so she'd be able to read the results. She'd gotten the third one lit by the time she heard the tiny beep. Holding her breath, she pulled it out of her father's mouth and angled it so she could read it by candle-light.

106.9.

"Holy shit. Holy fucking shit!" She screamed, going in a frantic circle. She had to do something, she had to get his body temperature under control. His brain was probably cooking. She upended the mostly melted ice water over him, yelping as it splashed back on her. Her dad didn't even flinch at the shock and she sobbed. She bolted back to the freezer, finding anything that was still hard and icy to the touch and dragging it back to the living room.

"Diane? What's wrong?" Her mom's voice was groggy, like she had just woken up.

"He's dying. H-his fever – it's too high. I can't get it down."

"Call an ambulance!"

"I tried! You don't think I tried! I was on hold for ages and when I came back he was up to 106. He's- I can't- I don't know what else to do!" She was shoving half-frozen vegetables into his shirt, his pants, anywhere she could get them. A rock-hard pork roast got wedged behind him and soon there was a second pair of hands helping her, shoving anything remotely cold into contact with his skin.

"Honey." Her mom's voice was timid. "I don't – is he still breathing?"

Diane snatched up a candle, holding it over her dad where he was perfectly still in the chair, lumpy with freezer food and sopping wet. She stared hard at his chest, holding her own breath. She watched, she waited.

She had to breathe long before she gave up watching, waiting. His chest didn't move. There was no rattle in his chest, no air coming out his nose or mouth. She felt around his neck, but no matter how long she searched there was no pulse to be found.

"He's – he's dead." Diane whispered, her hand still pressed against her dad's neck, fingers still searching. She was shaking, the hand holding the candle unsteady and hot wax was splashing down on him. On his dead body.

Martha wailed and Diane watched through burning eyes as her mother collapsed into a heap of violent, wracking sobs.