Page 11 of The End of the World As We Know It

“I just got a call from your grandma. Your daddy’s dead. He died about thirty minutes ago. The Tripps got ’im. Your grandma’s sick, too,” she said with no more emotion than if she’d been announcing the death of a mosquito. She began to cough again. Her eyes were yellow where they should have been white, with livid red capillaries forming a road map all over them. She still hadn’t uttered a word about her dead son.

Talik’s mouth dropped. The tears he’d shed for his brother were now joined by a fresh volley of tears for his deceased father. “Dad’s dead?”

“Yeah, he wasn’t worth shit nohow,” his momma said.

“Momma! Momma, Malcolm’s dead!” Lawanda cried.

“Yeah, I can see that. Y’all come on out of there before y’all get sick, too.”

That was all she said. No words of comfort or sympathy. When Talik walked past her out of the room, he could have sworn he saw a smirk on her face. She shut the door behind them, then started back down the stairs.

“Dad’s dead?” Lawanda asked her momma.

“That’s what I said, ain’t it?”

“Ain’t you gonna call the ambalance?” Talik asked.

“For your daddy? Ain’t nobody worried about his ass.”

“For Malcolm!”

His mother paused on the stairs and turned her yellow eyes on Talik. She still wore a slight smirk that was half scowl, but her eyes were far away, the way they sometimes looked when she smoked too much weed. “You hear what’s going on outside?”

Talik listened. Screams and gunshots, breaking glass, and angry shouts drifted in through the thin walls. It sounded like a full-scale riot. Either that or a war.

“Folks is goin’ crazy out there. They’s lootin’ and killin’, prolly rapin’ folks, too. Ain’t no ambalance comin’ in here. Just leave ’im where he at till all this blows over. And don’t go in there. Y’all stay in your sister’s room.” She began coughing again, then staggered a bit as she turned around and started back down the stairs.

Talik turned to his sister and saw the worry in her eyes.

“Is Momma sick?” Lawanda asked.

Talik nodded. “I think she might be. She’ll be all right, though.”

“Is she gonna die like Malcolm?”

“I said she’ll be okay.”

“She actin’ strange, though.”

Talik nodded again. He looked down the stairs, where his mother had reached the bottom. She turned and looked up at him, smiled and winked. Talik couldn’t think of a single thing anyone should be smiling about right now.

“Come on, Lawanda. Let’s go in your room.”

Talik didn’t know what was going on, but something was definitelyoff with his momma. He locked the door behind them. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Malcolm said about Mother Abagail’s warning.

The Walkin Dude is here—in this house.

A shrill, agonized scream sang out, chasing chills up Talik’s spine and raising goose bumps. He looked at his sister, whose eyes were wide.

“That’s Tonya!” she cried out as she raced to the window.

Talik followed quickly behind her. They opened the window and peered down into the street. There were so many people out it looked like a block party. They were breaking windows, kicking in doors, dragging people out onto the sidewalk, running out of homes with TVs, game consoles, whatever cash they could find, and whatever women they could grab. The attacks seemed random. Some homes were left untouched, while the house just two doors down was ransacked. A few were now on fire. On the pavement just below them, their neighbor Tonya was being stripped naked and beaten. Moose and Diesel, two known killers who were members of the Junior Black Mafia, seemed to be leading the horde of looters and vandals, directing the carnage and mayhem. They were attacking Tonya like two hungry jackals.

Tonya was their sometimes babysitter, but was still a kid herself, just barely fourteen. Too young for what those two violent thugs were attempting to do to her. Moose had his massive hands on her blouse, ripping it open and tearing it in half in the process, exposing the teenage girl’s budding breasts. She clawed his face and tried to kick him in the balls, receiving an uppercut to the gut in response. The girl dropped to her knees on the hard pavement and fell over onto her side, curling into a fetal position, dry heaving. Talik could hear Moose laugh. Diesel stepped forward and began kicking and stomping her. His size thirteen Nikes came down hard on Tonya’s ribs and the side of her face, knocking out several teeth and smearing her nose across her face like brown Play-Doh. Blood began to leak from her ears and nose as Diesel stomped her skull into the sidewalk.

“They’re killing her!” Lawanda yelled.

Talik put his hand over her mouth and pulled her back inside, hoping Moose and Diesel hadn’t seen or heard her and that theirs would be one of the homes overlooked.