Author's Note: Title shamelessly borrowed from Simon & Garfunkel's song. Thank you to Jaimi-Sam and Molly Webb for the suggestions and quick look.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
We fly in, save those we can, help to pull out those we couldn't, and fly home.
This, though? This is the part we never see.
The part where a house lies dark. Empty. A house that had been a home only this morning, where a young girl played and a baby cried. Where a wife kissed a husband hello when he came through the door at the end of a long work day, and where a husband made love to his wife and whispered comfort to her after a long day of caring for their children.
A house where nothing stirs, because its family won't be coming home.
I blink to cover the sting in my eyes as I get out of the rented car and walk slowly up the front sidewalk. It's a nondescript house, really; nothing special on a street that looks like many other streets here in Ohio. Dark brick walls, a completely square build. A basement with small windows at ground level. A brown wood front door. A yellowish street lamp bulb hiding beneath a cloudy plastic cover is changing the reality of the colors, but I know it's not the night that's muting them.
It's as if I've tainted an entire rainbow palette with enough gray that no matter what strokes I lay across the canvas, it will always remain dark.
As dark as this house.
I reach the steps leading up to the front door. There are eight. I count them and count them again. Eight. I wonder if the little girl ever fell down them when winter iced them over. I wonder how many times the father shoveled this front walk. Pulling my coat collar higher, hunching my shoulders, staring up at the door, I wonder why I'm here.
But I know why, and close my eyes against the memory that won't be kept at bay.
"V…V…Virgil?"
"Yeah, sweetie."
"I-I…m-my mommy and my d-d-daddy and m-my little b-br-brother, th-th-they're sss…sleeping?"
"Yes, Tessa." The lump in my throat made more than two words at a time impossible.
Her broken, bloodied body was ice cold to the touch, crushed in the concrete rubble that had once been a five-story, twenty-screen theater in a complex that boasted more entertainment in six city blocks than could be found in any other Midwestern US city.
And more death, after the bombs had exploded.
I couldn't save her. I knew it the moment I'd picked my way over her dead mother holding a dead baby, only to find her encircled in her father's arms. No one in this theater had survived except a little girl whose hair color couldn't be told for the blood that covered it.
I grip the peeling black iron railing at the side of the stairs and take a step up. Then another. But the images refuse to recede.
No one had survived but Tessa. And then…no one at all.
"W-w-will you f-f-feed my Giz-Giz—Gizmo until w-we g-g-go h…home, V-V-V…Virgil?"
"Who's Gizmo?"
Scott via my wristwatch communicator signaled that the disaster area was now being called a recovery effort.
Little Tessa, lying here alone, in pain, unable to understand why her mommy and daddy and baby brother wouldn't wake up, for six long, cold hours. And all because someone thought the best way to get their grievances noticed was to kill thousands of innocent men, women and children.
I feel anger well up inside me as I reach the top of the front stoop. Grief combined with rage at the sheer senselessness. And it's more than just this house, this family, who will not be seeing some or all of their loved ones return. I slide the key I took from Mrs. Morton's purse, that Tessa insisted I take, from my pocket. Curse my shaking hand. Turn the key in the lock. Wonder how many times the Mortons did the very same thing.
"G-G-Gizmo's my k-k-kitty." Tears rolled down her face, making tracks in dried blood as I watched her eyes droop. "P-Please, p-p-please feed him."
She'd lost consciousness, only to rouse a few minutes later and tell me about the key. She made me promise, her lower lip quivering. Couldn't have been more than eight years old. Would never see her ninth birthday.
"I promise, Tessa. I promise."
And so I'm here.
Dad had made calls, Johnny had hacked server files. Between them they found out the Mortons had no living relatives outside their four-person family. And I knew the moment John relayed this information, and Dad confirmed it, that I had to keep my promise to Tessa. On the edge of death, a death that hadn't been at all necessary or deserved, her thoughts had been of her pet.
I walk inside, find a light switch to the immediate right of the door and switch it on. I hear the refrigerator humming further along but other than that, I hear only silence.
What had the walls heard that they would never hear again?
I scan the living room. It's so small. So well lived-in. Toys litter the floor and the room's three-person couch. One of the toys is a doll left where Tessa dropped it. I think it must be some one of the Disney princesses or something, not like I can tell one from another. I stoop to pick up the blonde-haired, blue-dressed toy. Something moves out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head, remaining in a crouch, and see him.
A little white kitten with gray spots. He can't be more than a few months old. He peeks around the corner of the dark rose couch, wide yellow eyes staring at me. I'm an intruder. I'm not his family. I'm not his little girl.
I'm the one whose arms his little girl died in.
I sat there cradling her head and shoulders in my lap as Scott approached. His hand on my shoulder spoke more words than any voice could. An eerie silence had settled over the once grand Shipman Entertainment Complex now that local police and firefighters had decided there was no one alive to rescue.
Even if we'd lifted the concrete from her, she wouldn't have survived. I know it. I can tell by Scott's eyes once he surveys the scene that he knows it. Gordon approaches, looks, bows his head and walks away.
We saved eight people from a subterranean parking area; the only area that had withstood the multiple bombs that exploded at the height of Saturday shopping, dining and matinees.
I don't know what the Mortons came here to see. I don't know if they'd seen it already or were in the middle of watching it when disaster struck. I don't know anything about them other than the fact that they were people who should've been home tonight.
But they aren't. Only Gizmo is here. The little tiny kitten who peeks, stares and then bounds up to me and right into my hands, where he seats himself upon my palms and gazes at my face.
In a moment of madness, I think He knows they're not coming home.
When he lets out a wailing meow, I know he knows.
That stinging in my eyes threatens to become more and so I swiftly stand, tucking the tiny warm body to my chest. Right where his little mistress died mere hours ago.
I can't bring myself to look at any other part of the house, not even to search for Gizmo's food or dishes or maybe a pet carrier. I shouldn't even be here. But I'd promised Tessa, and so I place the key from Mrs. Morton's purse on the small, well-used coffee table and turn to go.
As I walk out of the house, lock the doorknob and pull the front door shut, Gizmo cries in my arms. It's a mournful sound, a mewling that doesn't stop.
He knows. I don't care what anyone says about animals, Gordon's right. They do know. They feel exactly what we feel. They can love, they can hurt…and they can cry.
I shush him, stroke his little forehead and move down the front steps. One day soon, strangers will come here to figure out what to do with all that remains of a small family. A home will have the contents belonging to its once vibrant, living, loving owners removed to make way for another.
When I reach the front sidewalk I turn to look up at the plain, dark, square house. Don't worry, Tessa, I think, wondering if she can hear me wherever she is. I'm going to take care of Gizmo for you. I promise.
I swallow over that damnable lump that's appeared in my throat again and note once more that here, on a nondescript suburban street just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, it's deathly silent.
Even Gizmo's quieted down.
The sound of her scared, broken, gasping voice asking me to take care of her most treasured friend.
The sound of air gurgling through the blood in her lungs as she drew her final breath.
The sound of my brothers speaking with their set jaws and sad eyes as I told them what I was going to do before we went home.
The sound of a sleeping town at midnight.
The sound of a family who is never coming home.
The sound of silence.