wake up world, it's time to die
April 30, 2004
We had each been assigned a long, flat piece of hard foam wrapped around a piece of plywood. It was large enough that the more nimble of us could stand or sit on it and — if the wind and sea cooperated — move around, if only on a limited plane. Each of us had a bag of dried meat, fruits, nuts, water pills and aspirin — trail mix for modern man. My mother had a small radio, Adam had a blunt-edged knife with a needle point, and I had nothing, having lost it in a violent surge a few hours earlier. We had all been equipped with a waterproof cellular phone, but Adam had lost his in that same surge. After that, we learned how to tie things to ourselves using strips of cloth torn from our pants.
I was lying on my board, face to the darkening grey sky, when my mom’s radio found a signal. A static-filled signal punctuated by bursts of ethereal profanity drifted into my ears: “The — FUCK, there have been, uh, ok shit, I just got a call from my brother and they’ve fucking started to SHOOT. You… you know how…” The signal faded again as we descended into a crest between house-sided swells.
“What does that mean?” my mother asked me.
“It means we need to get out of here soon. It also means that maybe this will all be over soon,” I replied.
She looked at me with a frustrated sigh. “We just got here,” she said.
I nodded.
“Wait here,” I held my hand up and gestured at the surrounding area. “I’m going to take Adam to find a place to weather this out.”
“Be careful with him.”
We used Adam’s knife to cut a small hole in a corner of each of our floats, through which we threaded the length of vine. With only three floats left, we formed an awkward triangle with each of the rectilinear floats extruding in a seemingly arbitrary direction. The formation caused each float to sway on a sixty-degree arc, though slowly enough for it to be unnoticeable.
Our phones rang simultaneously. We looked into each other’s eyes and pressed the “Accept” buttons.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Cookies!” came the reply.
“What?”
“They”re throwing COOKIES.”
“Hey cool, bring me some,” I joked.
“For real? Aight dog, just a sec.”
There was a long pause, white noise and the gentle shuffle of moving water the only transmitted sound. I glanced up to see my mother holding her phone in front of her, waiting for the oscilloscope on its display to indicate voice.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Jeff is in ‘nam,” she said.
I bit my lip. “No, Mom, he’s just a few miles away.”
“He’s not going to get that job now.”
“What job?” I asked.
“McDonalds. He was going to be manager.”
Jeff was her brother.
“Mom, let me listen to your phone. You can listen to mine.”
“Ok.”
We traded phones. Putting hers to my ear, I heard the same thrumming of particles my phone was returning, but with an added layer of what sounded like machine gun bursts. The oscilloscope wiggled ominously.
My mother took the phone from her cheek and said, “Someone keeps saying cookies.”
“Yeah. It’s Dan.”
“Oh.” It was all the explanation she needed.
“Where did Dad go?” I asked.
“Took your sister to find a place to go.”
I sighed and turned my head to look at the sky. It was getting lighter now, not because of the sun but from the water below us glowing brighter as the phosphorescent krill floating around us released their stored energy. Our world faded in and out as the soft blue light was alternately increased or decreased, rising and falling with the swells.