I is for I Would Do Anything for Love
Introduction to “I is for I Would Do Anything for Love”
Again, the teenagers.
And so this is how the world ends...not with a bang, but with a #2 combo with a Sprite, no ice please.
* Reader’s note: Contains strong language and/or adult situations.
The world ended on a Friday.
That’s not exactly true. It started to end on a Friday. It took a couple of weeks to finish ending.
But this is what happened on that first last Friday.
Robert had gotten home from work a little earlier than usual, and so it was still light outside when he saw the thing hit in the backyard. He could see it from the kitchen window; it wasn’t much bigger than a baseball, black and gray and still smoking. He stepped out the kitchen door; the smell was strong and awful.
He remembered that Dave from work had found a meteorite on vacation one year, and the local college had given him a few hundred dollars for it; something about rare minerals and first-hand evidence about the creation of the solar system. Or something like that.
He put his handkerchief over his nose and reached down to touch it. Even though it was putting off some smoke, it wasn’t hot. He picked it up. It was heavy, very heavy for its size.
He was two steps back to the house when his hand began to blister and pain shot up his arm. He screamed and fell to his knees. The rock dropped to the grass.
It wasn’t made up of rare minerals. It was medical waste from a cloaked ship that was floating high above the planet. It was something the ship had wanted very very very badly to be rid of, because it was very very very bad.
His wife Marlene heard him scream and ran outside. She knelt down next to him and reached out for him with both hands. Her fingers swelled up and the agony crawled up to her shoulders.
They helped each other into the house. They tried washing their hands; the water only made the pain worse. Marlene noticed their old terrier totter into the kitchen, take one deep breath, and keel over stiff. There was a squawk from the corner; the parakeet was laying in the bottom of its cage, twitching.
Robert managed to stop his own hands from shaking long enough to call 911. He must have sounded frantic enough that, within three minutes, three patrol cars and a paramedic truck screamed up the street.
Sheriff Lozano himself responded. He had been in Iraq with Army Special Forces, trained and experienced specifically in areas where chemical weapons were expected. There couldn’t have been a better man on the scene. Just from Robert’s disjointed description, he knew what had to be done, and he knew who to call. Even before he had his car at Robert and Marlene’s curb, he had the feds on the phone, and had a promise of immediate response. Unfortunately, immediate response meant two hours. He had to keep it contained for two hours.
He did everything that could be done to keep the contagion inside the house. Almost.
He sealed off the street with a car on each end. He sealed off the house, with yellow tape across the front yard gate. His first month in the top job he had requisitioned two hazmat suits, and now he had them pulled out of storage; he put one deputy in a full suit at the front door and another at the back door. He instructed Robert by cell phone to close all the windows, turn off the air-conditioning, close the fireplace flue, and not send any water down the drains; they would have to use buckets instead of the toilet. He thought he would probably lose this poor family, but he would stop it here.
And he almost pulled it off. Almost.
But Sheriff Lozano was not a married man, and Sheriff Lozano didn’t have any kids. If he had, he might have thought differently about Jasmine, Robert and Marlene’s 15-year-old daughter. Or about Thomas, her 16-year-old boyfriend.
Jasmine had heard all the sirens outside, heard her mother yell up the stairs for her to stay in her room and close the doors and windows. Another parental crisis. And they would tell her there was too much drama in her life! And like they had to tell her to keep her door closed. Really.
Her phone buzzed; a text from mom. Spelling even worse than usual; how hypocritical. Something about a quarantine and everybody had to sit tight.
Sit tight on a Friday night. Uh-huh, really. She was supposed to see Thomas tonight, and a little quarantine wasn’t going to kill her plans. She had made lots of trips down the trellis from her window, but tonight there was a guy in a bright yellow outfit standing down there. She needed a plan B.
Plan B involved dropping her cat Lucinda Arcana out the window on top of the yellow guy. It was hard to tell who was more scared, the guy or the cat; after a few seconds, the cat ran one way and the guy went the other. Before the guy was out of sight, around the corner of the house, she was out the window and down the trellis.
As she hopped the fence that bounded the empty lot behind her house, she noticed that her hands were hurting. A splinter from the trellis? She made her way out to the alley and under a streetlight; her hands were swollen and puffy and even in the dark they didn’t look the right color. She was probably allergic to that new face scrub mom had brought home; couldn’t she ever get the kind she wanted and not the kind that was on sale?
She didn’t even notice in the dark when she nearly stepped on the body of Lucinda Arcana.
Thomas was where he said he’d be, two streets over on Jefferson, waiting in his brother-who-was-in-Afghanistan’s jeep. He asked what all the sirens and helicopters were; she shrugged and said something clever about suburban soap opera. He drove to the end of the block, where the pavement and the streetlights ended. They reached for each other. Somewhere in the back of his head, he thought she smelled kind of funny, but that wasn’t very important at the moment. She felt like something was happening to her fingertips; damned face scrub!
They didn’t have long; there was time for her to do him, not enough time for him to do anything for her. He had to get to work, late shift. Could he drop her somewhere?
She wasn’t feeling great at all; maybe at Candace’s? Friday there was usually a party at Candace’s, and Candace’s parents were never there. So he dropped her there; the cul-de-sac full of cars and the loud music told her she’d guessed right about the party. A party would make her feel better.
He was a little short of breath now, himself; maybe it was that perfume or whatever it was that Jasmine was wearing? He felt a little dizzy. He thought about calling in, but he needed the money. Besides, that new girl Christy was working tonight.
He barely made it to his shift, working the counter at the Taco Fiesta on a busy Friday night.
