Road Trip Friday Challenge

It was supposed to be, “The baby’s crying…” but it came out as a rasping croak. Jon tried to blink his eyes and realized that dried mucus had cemented them shut. He lifted his hands to his eyes carefully rubbed away the goo. Able to see again, he looked to his left and was surprised to see that his wife wasn’t there. His mind raced. “If she’s up, why isn’t she getting the baby? He’s been crying for awhile, hasn’t he?”

As he reached down and threw the blankets back to get up, he made another startling discovery. He wasn’t fat. True, he’d never been morbidly obese, but he’d been more than pleasantly plump last time he’d checked. Trying to swing his legs out of bed was incredibly hard and it took him a long time to balance. Glancing out the window, he realized it was almost evening, not morning at all. He hobbled toward the baby’s room and nearly collapsed when he found his wife.

She was face down in the hall right next to baby’s door. Something about her posture made him suddenly terrified that she was dead. Her pulse was there, but seemingly weak. Baby Michael was still going strong, so Jonathan “Jolly” Rogers bent down and tended to his wife Anna first.

He had began remembering details as he had nursed his wife back to consciousness and checked on all of his children. While Baby Michael had been the most vocal, his wasn’t the only small, empty tummy in the house. Jon’s two daughters had been in an exhausted sleep in the basement bedroom. When Abigail and Claire woke a few hours after dusk, they tapped on the wall in what Jon realized must have been their method of signaling their mother.

On his way through the kitchen with crackers for the girls, his flashlight spotted a newspaper cover he didn’t recognize. True, papers weren’t what they had been when he was growing up on the farm, but he still liked the old fashioned feel of turning pages instead of scrolling down the screen. This paper was dated April 5^th. One of his last solid memories was of Anna bringing him a cracker with a candle on it for his birthday on March 28^th. The cover of the paper had two huge, red words on a solid black background. It read simply, “The End.”

After delivering the girls their crackers and some Gatorade from the closet, Jon read them some of their favorite Bible storybook. Claire asked the inevitable, “Daddy, did God make everyone sick?”

Unable to muster the normal in depth analysis he preferred to give his daughters, he simply replied, “Yes sweety, he did. We all deserved it too.”

“Because ‘All have sinned?’” asked Abigail.

“Yeah,” began Jon, but he couldn’t manage enough strength to finish his explanation. “I’ll tell you more later.” He knew that his daughters would bring it up again. They always remembered the hard questions. “We need to get ready for a trip girls, do you think you can pack for us like you did last summer? Except, this time I want you to do it with no help from Mommy.”

“Yes, Daddy,” they replied in unison.

Jon suddenly realized how scared Abby and Claire were. They would never have answered so quickly and obediently normally. “Do you girls want to get started now?”

They nodded together without even checking with each other.

“I’ll get you flashlights, you girls wait here.”

“I won’t be afraid of the dark while you’re gone, Daddy,” volunteered Claire. “The lights don’t turn on any more, but I don’t need them.”

“Yeah, she’s got me to hold on to!” giggled Abby.

His daughter’s giggle had almost made things seem normal for a moment. But, things were never going to be normal again. He managed to round up two more old flashlights and replace the batteries. Thank God for buying in bulk. He pulled down a suitcase from the basement closet and delivered it to his eldest children. He could feel the strength returning as he used his muscles again for what must have been the first time in at least a week.