“Ma’am? I was wondering if it would be okay to use your telephone? I just wanted to call my son, see if he’s alright,” Ben said respectfully.
“Absolutely. Come own in, come own in.” She waved them in and the five of them were herded like lambs lured to slaughter. “I’ll take—what was your name, sweetheart?”
“Uh, Ben. Ben Ackerman.”
“I’ll take Mr. Ackerman to use the telephone. Otis—you and Floyd show our guests where they’ll be staying.”
“Yes, Momma.”
“Such good boys,” she muttered, waving Ben on.
Ben nodded to the rest of the group. The rest of the group nodded back, wishing him luck. Then he turned, following the elderly woman as she limped her way down the hall, into the kitchen.
The smell of fried chicken entered his nostrils, his stomach calling for it in a series of gaseous rolls of thunder. The old woman must have heard it.
“Poor thing. Ya’ll must be starving.”
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t think any of us have eaten since this whole thing began.”
“I’ll fix ya’ll the best fried chicken ya’ll ever had. Popeyes ain’t got a thing on old Mae Barker. Ya’ll can take that to the bank.”
Ben chuckled at the old woman’s quirkiness. She seemed sweet. The southern grandmother he never had. “I can’t thank you enough for taking us in,” Ben told her. “You’re a mighty fine woman to be doing such a good deed.”
“Oh, stop it. Ain’t nothin’ but a little southern hospitality where I’m from, that’s all. Anyone over here’d do tha same damned thang.”
“I doubt that very much,” Ben said. “You from the south then?”
“What gave that away, I wonder?” Mae Barker asked. “The accent or the home décor?”
Ben glanced around the kitchen. “Little bit a both, I suppose.”
“Born and raised in Alabama. Moved to Pennsyl-tucky after the boys’ Pa passed away.”
“Sorry to hear that, Mrs. Barker.”
She shushed him. “Call me, Mae. And don’t be sorry. Calvin Barker was a cheating, lying, yellow-bellied son-of-a-beech anyway.”
Ben chuckled.
Through the doorway entered a girl no older than one of Ben’s high school students. She was wearing skin-tight jeans, tattered and holey by design. Her hair was braided into pigtails. She was wearing an old, stained tee-shirt, raggedly severed at the shoulders and beneath her tiny breasts, exposing her midriff. Ben could see she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it.
“Bobbi-Jo, what in tarnation! Go put some dang clothes on for goodness sakes!” Mae Barker yelled. “We got company.”
Bobbi-Jo turned around, spotting Ben.
“I’m Bobbi-Jo,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Sure is glad to meet ya!”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Ben said, adverting his eyes from her scant wardrobe.
“Ben and his friends will be staying with us,” Momma Barker explained. “Why don’t you go help your brothers get them… situated.”
“Sure thang, Momma,” she said. “I hope to see you around, Mister Ben.”
Ben nodded as she bounced out of the room.
Once she was gone, Momma Barker shook her head. “I sincerely apologize for that. I want you to know I’d never let my daughter leave the house that way. No sir.”
“I believe you, Ma’am.”
“Kids these days.”
You have no idea, Ben thought, thinking about all the dress code violations he had seen at school over the years, never reporting a single one of them.
“Well, there it is,” Momma Barker said, pointing to the telephone that rested on the kitchen table. “Guess I’ll give you some privacy. Holler when yer finished. I’ll send Floyd to show you to your room.”
“Thanks again.”
The old woman nodded, hobbling toward the hallway.
Ben removed the phone from the receiver, raising it to his ear. Dial tone brought tears to his eyes.
“Ya’ll goan be down here,” Otis told them, opening a door, revealing a staircase.
“In the basement?” Brit asked, sounding surprised.
“Well, sheet. Better down there, than out der wit the dead folk.”
Brit exhaled, realizing he was right. “Okay, fine. Let’s do it.” She looked to her mother, then her sister.
“At least we’ll be able to get a full night’s sleep,” Victoria said.
“Great! Follow me,” Floyd said. He descended into the dark. “Watch yer step. Light switch is in tha cellar.”
Brit followed. Her mother was behind her. Emily gripped her mother’s hand as they walked into darkness. Josh wanted to be the last to go, but Otis insisted. Hesitantly, he followed Emily and Victoria. As the steps creaked beneath his feet, uneasiness fell over Josh. He felt Otis’s overpowering presence behind him and he instantly felt trapped. You’re just paranoid, he thought. It’s just the drugs fucking with you. It had been a while since Josh felt normal and until now, he thought he was handling the strange feelings the withdrawals tossed at him quite nicely. Now he felt panicked, claustrophobic, like there was another person inside of him trying to writhe his way out. He almost turned around, wanting to push the overly-excited brute aside and scramble toward the exit. But then the lights came on, and Josh felt more at ease.
That was, until he exited the staircase and found his feet on the concrete floor. He stared around the room in a haze of confusion. He heard the girls gasp collectively. Josh felt his jaw slack, his mouth open. He rotated, trying to make sense of it all. He saw the decently-spaced basement was fenced in sections, from the floor to the ceiling. It took him a moment to realize these were cages, with locks on them. Dog kennels perhaps, although the Barker’s weren’t keeping dogs down there.
“What the fuck?” he babbled, stupefied.
A familiar voice answered on the second ring. Ben’s heart pumped so rapidly that he thought it might explode. Despite their past differences, Ben was glad to hear her in that moment. “Hello?” she answered, her voice groggy and half asleep.
“Melissa…” he said.
“Yes?” There was a pause. “Who is this?”
“It’s Ben.”
There was another pause and for a second, Ben thought she was going to hang up. He was about to open his mouth to tell her not to, when he heard the name he hated so much. “Benjamin?” she asked. “Holy shit, Ben? Is that really you?”
He wiped the tears away from his eyes, swallowing hard, trying his best not to cry too much. “Mel, is Jake—is he… alive?”
There was a deep sigh on the other end of the line. “Ben… he’s… Ben…”
Ben swallowed hard. Oh God…
“Jake is fine. He’s sleeping in his room as we speak. Ben—are you okay?”
“No, I’m pretty far from okay.”
“We’ve been watching the news. Everything they say…”
“I know it’s fucking crazy.”
“Ben, New York City is on fire. The whole city is burning to the ground. Other cities, too. We thought… We weren’t sure if you made it. We were starting to prepare for the worst.”
“I’m alive.”
“Where are you? Are you still in Jersey?”
“No… I’m…” Ben noticed some mail sitting on the counter. He thumbed through it. “I’m in Cold Creek, Pennsylvania.”
“How far is that from Pittsburgh?” she asked.
Ben heard another voice ask her who the hell was calling at that hour. At first he thought it was Jake, but the voice was too deep. Melissa told the voice that it was Jake’s father. The man sounded astonished that Ben was still alive. Disappointed too.