As his children came closer, he was shocked to find them appearing gaunt and emaciated. Every slow, weak step his children took toward him made their pathetic condition more obvious. These children were neglected and starving. Robert was in shock and totally speechless, his mind slipping back into a hazy fog. At the bottom of the staircase, his children stopped, held hands, and stood close to one another. Robert began to feel faint, and he dropped to his knees in front of them. Tears formed in his eyes. His children were pale and looked like skeletons, with tightly wrapped, translucent skin. He reached up to touch their faces, and tried to speak, but was not able to. The shock of his children’s condition was overwhelming and when he summoned the courage to hug them tightly he felt the boney protrusions of their skeletons poke back. His arms dropped to his sides. From behind him, he heard the sound of familiar voices piercing the fog that clouded his mind. It was Kyle, Alexis, and Jim. He heard Alexis gasp loudly. Kyle and Jim were behind her.
Robert turned and saw Alexis’s eyes wide with horror. She had one hand over her mouth, and clutched the cross on her necklace with the other. She kept repeating to herself, “Oh, dear God… oh, dear God…”
Kyle knelt beside Robert and spoke softly to him. “I found this,” said Kyle, handing him the flashlight, “and it works. Your kitchen pantry is empty.”
Robert quickly looked up at his children, then at Becky, who was ignoring what should have been a happy reunion, from her spot from behind the kitchen island. Becky pretended to be oblivious to what was happening and continued to prepare the meal. He looked back at Michael, who was still wearing a large fake smile. Robert leaned toward his children, gave them each a kiss on the forehead, and whispered into their ears. “These are my friends. They are going to take you home. I will be there in just a minute.”
Robert turned to Alexis and looked up at her. “Please take them home and feed them something.” Alexis did not speak, but she gently picked up Robert’s daughter and held her carefully, almost afraid she would break the child’s frail body. Kyle held the boy in his arms, and just before he turned away to leave, he asked Robert, “Are you going to be okay?”
Robert stood up with resolve. “Yes, I just need a minute with these two.”
Kyle was the last out the door, closing it behind him.
Robert turned back toward Michael, looked past his cold smile, and locked eyes with the sad excuse for a man.
“Buddy, there’s no need to thank me,” said Michael. “You would’ve done the same for me. I know it. Everyone says such great things about you.”
“Do you know what people think about you?” Robert could feel his blood pressure rise as he began to clench his jaw.
“What are you talking about, Robert?”
“I’m not your buddy and I wouldn’t have done the same to you. If I were taking care of two small children, I would make every sacrifice to protect and feed them. Now, let me tell you what people say about you.” He clutched the flashlight so tightly that he could feel the knurling on the handle dig into his skin. “People think you’re a liar. You’re a fake and a liar.” Robert firmly pushed him in the chest with the flashlight. Michael’s chest felt soft. He noticed that Becky was paying attention to the conversation now.
“Hold it. You got this all wrong. We’ve all had to make sacrifices, big sacrifices.”
“Sacrifices!” exclaimed Robert. “What sacrifices have you made? All things considered you look like you’re doing well, maybe too well.”
The door to the garage was past the staircase, but just before the kitchen. Robert walked that direction and Becky stiffened, thinking he was coming at her. Robert stopped at the garage entry and opened the door. He turned the flashlight on and shined it into the garage. It looked like items from the various houses Michael had been constantly visiting in the aftermath, including Robert ’s.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” asked Robert.
“About what?”
“After the grid collapsed, you ran from house to house acting like a savior, but you were really seeing what you could take from people. Like I said, you’re a liar. A fake and a liar and a thief, and both of you disgust me!” He slammed the door to the garage, and a picture from one of their tropical vacations fell off the wall next to it. The glass shattered on the floor.
“You need to go!” Michael said angrily.
Robert walked into the kitchen and Becky stayed on the opposite side of the kitchen island. Her body tensed as Robert got closer. She moved over to a small kitchen drawer and reached inside, out of Robert’s view. He opened the door to their walk-in pantry, stepped into it, and shined the flashlight around inspecting all that was inside. There was a cornucopia of food stacked tall and deep, and Robert recognized a box of cereal, not yet opened, that his son had colored on with crayon before Robert had left for Montana. At the thought of his children starving next to all of this food, his temper began to flare again. He noticed his hands shaking from the anger as he left the pantry and walked back into the kitchen.
Becky was staring at him now. He noticed that she had something gripped tightly in her hands, and was trembling with fear or anger. Robert could not discern at first what the object was, but quickly realized that she was now pointing a small pistol at him.
“You can’t do it,” said Robert, stoically.
“Squeeze the trigger, Becky,” urged Michael, still in the living room.
Robert took a step toward Becky and she flinched. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll kill you,” she said, with a trembling voice.
“Oh, no, you won’t. You can’t do it. You didn’t have the guts to kill my children. Both of you just left them hidden in a room, starving, and out of your sight.”
Robert took another step toward Becky and she raised the pistol.
“Pull the trigger, nice and easy. Listen to me,” said Michael.
Robert looked directly into her eyes and said, “You can’t do it because you’re weak and a fake. Everything about you is fake.” Slowly moving forward, he pointed the beam of light at her trembling hands as they gripped the pistol. “Fake fingernails.” Still moving forward he moved the beam of light to her chest. “Those are fake, too.” He quickly flicked his wrist so the beam of light went into her eyes. Instinctively, she squinted from the brightness and turned her head away. Robert lunged forward and violently crossed her temple with the metal flashlight. She dropped the pistol on the top of the kitchen island as she fell to the floor. Becky curled into a ball and moaned in pain. Blood was dripping from her temple. Robert reached for the pistol and noticed that he had knocked out a contact lens from one of her eyes. He picked it up and held it near the candlelight. The contact was colored blue. Her eye color was as fake as everything else about her.
Michael gave Robert a glare filled with hatred and said, “You think you’re so virtuous. Where have you been? You abandoned your children.”
“Where have I been? You have no idea what I have come through to get here and what I’ve done to make that happen. You’re just a little bump in the road compared to what I’ve been through.”
Robert put the pistol in his pocket and set the flashlight on the kitchen island, turning it off to save the precious batteries. He pushed Becky flat to the floor with his boot, and dragged her into the living room, dropping her next to Michael. He spun the rifle from his back and placed the stock firmly into his shoulder.
“Are you going to kill us? You don’t have to. We can work something out.” Michael begged.
“Neither of you is worth a bullet,” Robert said, coldly.
“There’s lots of food in this house. We can split it,” said Michael, in the tone of a man pleading for his life.