Suffer the Children Read online

  Run.

  The world roared in her ears as events around her speeded up and left her behind.

  Don’t stand there like an idiot! Get Josh out!

  “Ramona!” Ross shouted.

  She glared at him. He seemed to fill the horizon, blocking her escape no matter which way she turned.

  “Get out of the way!” she shrieked, and he did.

  “Mommy!” Josh cried.

  She hugged him tighter. “No. No. Not him.”

  There must be someplace that’s safe.

  The concourse emptied as people swarmed against the exits. She ran past stores filled with screaming people. A warm sensation spread across her stomach as Josh wet himself.

  Don’t stop. Keep moving. Find somewhere safe. You can do this.

  Ramona cut a wide berth around the toy store. Children lay among the scattered toys. Two men were beating each other with their fists in blind panic next to a board game display.

  She glimpsed Bethany kneeling over the body of her son. Ripping out her beautiful blond hair by the handful.

  The massive Christmas tree loomed ahead. Covered in ornaments and lit up in brilliant colors, it beckoned from its place near the central fountain.

  Behind her, another flurry of bloodcurdling screams.

  The shining star at the top called to her. It promised safety. Nobody could die near that star. It was Christmas. A king is born. Her ears filled with the roar of rushing water as she zigzagged past people clumped around the bodies of their children.

  Josh stiffened in her arms.

  “We’re almost there,” she gasped. “Hang on.”

  Her legs gave out. She sank to her knees in front of the tree and sobbed.

  “I love you, Josh,” she said. She kissed his flushed cheeks and forehead. “Mommy loves you. Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

  His eyes glazed. “It’s eating me.”

  “What is? What’s eating you, baby?”

  “Tool set,” he said dreamily, just before his face twisted into a final grimace.

  Joan

  Hour of Herod Event

  Joan loved a good thriller. Spy Master was everything she’d hoped it would be.

  The moment she and Coral had left the park, Joan began to miss her kids, but she resolved not to think about them for two hours. They were in good hands with Doug, even if he didn’t particularly want the job. Thirty minutes into the movie, she was making good on the promise she’d made herself. She’d already eaten half a tub of popcorn and had become totally immersed in the movie.

  The Iranians had planted a bomb in Washington, DC, and Hunter Talbot and his elite spy team had to find out where it was. The clock was ticking. Every time Talbot found a new lead, some shadowy figure got there just ahead of him, killed key witnesses, and destroyed essential files. All while his shortsighted superiors kept yelling at him for operating a CIA team on U.S. soil.

  Joan suspected the Vice President had some sort of deal going with the Iranians. He was an old friend of Talbot’s from the CIA, a helpful and kindly old gentleman, but she just didn’t trust him.

  “I don’t understand,” a female voice shouted from somewhere near the front row.

  Joan and Coral laughed together at one of Talbot’s one-liners.

  “How can that be?” the voice cried again.

  Joan blanched as the spell broke. One moment, she was in the action, the next, sitting in a dark, half-empty movie theater.

  The woman cried out once more while Talbot and his team scaled the facade of a high-rise building. Nobody shushed her. Either she was crazy, or something horrible had just happened.

  “What’s going on?” Coral hissed.

  Joan gritted her teeth. “I don’t know. I’m watching.”

  When Megan woke up too early, Joan would send her back to bed and then lie there with her eyes clenched, willing herself to return to sleep, even though she knew it was useless: She was awake, and she was getting up. Likewise, now that the woman had broken the illusion of the movie, Joan was having a hard time getting back into it.

  She watched Talbot drop onto the roof and pull up his ski mask, exposing his brilliant blue eyes and chiseled jaw. In the distance, the Capitol shined brightly against the night sky, so strong and yet so helpless.

  This is supposed to be where the Iranian cell is based, she reminded herself. Unless it’s another trap—

  “Please,” the woman wailed. “Please. Just tell me what happened.”

  “Oh, come on,” Joan said. The movie was officially ruined.

  Coral whispered, much too loud, “Should we go help her?”

  A man hurried down the aisle with a flashlight. Joan and Coral watched him pass.

  “That must be the manager,” said Coral.

  “He’ll take care of it.”

  A cell phone rang in the dark. Then another. Joan chuckled as the distractions piled up. “Somebody does not want me to see this movie.”

  The manager stood in front of the projection screen and waved his arms. “Excuse me!” he shouted. “There’s an emergency. You all need to exit the theater in a very calm and orderly fashion!”

  On the screen, Talbot leaped as the wall behind him exploded in a hail of gunfire.

  “They’re kicking us out,” Coral said.

  “It’s probably nothing. It’s always a false—”

  She blinked as the lights came up. Moments later, the film stopped.

  A woman shrieked into her cell phone. “Nobody’s dead! Nobody!”

  “What the hell is going on?” Joan wondered.

  “I’m going to call Earl,” Coral said.

  A couple hurried past, rattled. There were several women crying in different parts of the theater now.

  “I, uh, think I’ll call Doug,” said Joan. She fished her phone out of her purse, activated it, and waited for a signal. Her heart pounded.

  “Damn it,” said Coral.

  “Earl’s not answering?”

  “The lines are jammed. All circuits busy. Oh God, this is not good.”

  “Let’s take this one thing at a time.” Joan called Doug’s cell. “I got a ring!”

  “Oh good. Doug’s there with Earl. Ask him about Peter and Joey.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  Doug’s voice: “Joanie?”

  “Doug? I’m so glad I got you. They’re telling us to leave the theater. Some kind of big emergency. Do you know anything?”

  She sucked in her breath. Doug was crying. She forced herself to breathe. “I’m coming straight there. Just tell me the kids are okay.”

  “Joanie . . .”

  “Listen to me. I said I’m coming there.” Her voice was shaking. “I just need to hear the kids are okay before we leave.”

  Coral watched her with large, watery eyes, her hand over her mouth.

  “They’re gone, babe.”

  Rage burned in her chest. “What do you mean they’re ‘gone’? What does that mean?”

  “Oh my God.” Coral began to cry. “Ask him about Peter and Joey, please! I need to know they’re all right!”

  “Wait, Doug.” Joan covered her exposed ear with her finger. “I still don’t understand. Tell me what happened and that they’re okay.”

  “They’re not okay! They’re gone!”

  “What happened? What did you do?”

  “They’re dead, babe. They’re gone. I tried. I really did.”

  Her vision blurred with tears. “What are you saying? I went to a movie.”

  “We all tried, but we couldn’t save them. We couldn’t—”

  Joan screamed. Coral was shouting at her and trying to hold her shoulders. Joan lashed out, scratching her friend’s hands and drawing blood.

  She made it halfway up the aisle before she blacked out.

  II

  Herod’s Syndrome

  THREE

  Ramona

  41 hours after Herod Event

  Ramona wandered her home like a ghost.

  Josh
was in his bedroom, tucked into bed. His presents still sat under the Christmas tree. His shirts, socks, and underpants went uncollected in the dryer. The remains of his breakfast rotted on a plate on the kitchen table.

  At last, tired of wandering her house searching for something that wasn’t there, she returned to her bed and curled into a ball under the blankets.

  From the day Josh was born, Ramona feared the worst would happen. She’d imagine him dying of accidental suffocation or violent collision, and blind terror would rip through her.

  Now that the worst had come, she was surprised by how little she truly felt. She’d expected a giant outpouring of grief, not this mindless implosion.

  Sometimes she sensed a dull ache in her heart and other times, nothing. Just a general numbness. She felt she could chop her finger off and not even notice.

  Maybe this is what they meant when they said a part of you died with the person you loved.

  She remembered driving for hours after leaving the mall. The hospitals were surrounded by cars and thousands of screaming people carrying dead and dying children in their arms. She called 911 repeatedly but got nothing but a busy signal. The air filled with the wail of sirens.

  Whatever had happened, it’d happened everywhere, to everybody.

  The frantic voices on the radio confirmed it. After a while, she turned it off. Then she pulled over and screamed until she had nothing left.

  With nowhere else to go, Ramona took him home.

  Dead weight, his arms and legs dangling like a puppet’s.

  By the time she washed him, dressed him in his pajamas, and tucked him into bed, his face had gone rigid. The rest of his body soon followed. Stiffened like a block of wood.

  His flesh had turned pale, but he was still a little warm. When she kissed him after tucking him in, she tried to pretend he was still alive.

  “Good night, Josh,” she said. A part of her still hoped he might wake up. He didn’t.

  The next day, he began to smell. She closed his door, but it didn’t help. Soon, the entire house smelled like him. She turned the heat down in the hope of slowing the decomposition process.

  Time blurred after that. Now the clock read 7:03. Monday morning, or at least she thought it was. She tried once again to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Santa giving the dead girl to her crying mother.

  “No,” she moaned. Not again.

  She didn’t want to relive it yet again.

  Tool set, Josh had said dreamily, just before his face twisted into a grimace.

  The truth of this world is people love you, and then they leave. Ramona never knew her mother, who’d died giving birth to her. Her father had died of a heart attack when she was nine, and Pam, her stepmother, emotionally abandoned her after that. She thought she’d found happiness with Josh’s father, a young attorney named Shawn, but he’d left her to raise Josh on her own.

  Now even Josh was gone.

  Hunger drove her out of bed. She entered the kitchen in a daze and found Josh’s cereal in the cupboard. She sat at the table staring at the bowl and wondering what came next. The phone rang, reminding her she’d been doing something important. Slowly, her hand reached out, picked up the box, and poured some cereal into the bowl. The phone stopped ringing. Minutes later, she opened the carton of milk. It smelled iffy, but she poured it onto the cereal.

  The chair next to her, the one in front of the plate with its rotting breakfast, sat empty. She stared at it for what felt like hours, filled with longing.

  We’re going to see Santa today, right? he’d said.

  “That’s right, little man,” she said aloud.

  She couldn’t pretend, but she could remember. She remembered everything.

  I’m going to tell him I want a Bob the Builder tool set. Do you think he’ll bring me one?

  “If you’re good, I’m sure he will.”

  I’ll be good.

  The doorbell chimed.

  The memory dissipated. She recalled what she’d been doing. She spooned cereal into her mouth and spit it out. The milk was fine. She just hated soggy cereal.

  The doorbell chimed again. Insistent knocking followed, making her flinch. Ramona shuffled to the garbage can on bare feet and dumped the entire bowl, spoon and all. She went to the cupboard, pulled out a fresh bowl, and sat and tried again.

  The knocking wouldn’t stop.

  She found herself standing in front of the door.

  “Who is it?” she called.

  “It’s Ross. Ross Kelley.”

  She opened it. Ross filled the doorway, holding bags of groceries. His handsome face lit up at seeing her. She dully stared back at him, seeing him through a fog.

  “Hi, Ramona. I’m so sorry for your loss. I am really, really sorry.”

  She continued to stare at him.

  “I thought you might need some groceries. Can I come in?”

  He gave her a long hug at the door. He was warm, but otherwise, she didn’t feel a thing. Her arms stayed at her sides. When he let go, Ramona turned and shuffled back to the kitchen to sit at the table. She dipped her spoon and let the soggy cereal drop back into the bowl with a plop.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “I brought milk, coffee, bread, eggs, some lunch meat,” he said as he emptied the bags’ contents onto the counter. “A bunch of different things. And this.” He held up a white rose. “I’ll put it in water. You have no idea how hard it is to get flowers right now, but I got the best of the bunch.”

  He winced at the smell. Ramona watched, helpless, as he cleared Josh’s plate into the trash. He sniffed again, puzzled that the smell was still present.

  “Wow, it’s cold in here. Aren’t you cold? You could make Popsicles.” He turned up the heat.

  Ross was destroying her museum. Stop it. Leave.

  “Why are you here?” she asked him.

  “I was with you when it happened. I still can’t believe it did happen. It’s like being in a nightmare. The world will never be the same.”

  She said nothing.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I wish I could have done something. I was thinking maybe I could help you now.”

  “You’re sweet, Ross,” she said. “Really. But your help is the last thing I need right now.”

  “I’ve been worrying about you. It’s not healthy being alone at a time like this. Don’t you have anyone?”

  Ramona glanced at the phone, which had rung unanswered on and off for the past few days.

  “Just go,” she said.

  “Ramona. Let me help you. Please.”

  He really wants to help, she thought from far away. It was an attractive idea.

  She thought of her best friend ripping her hair out at the toy store. Bethany had Brian to console her, but Brian couldn’t bring Trent back any more than Ross could resurrect Josh.

  Attractive, but pointless.

  “This is not about what you want,” she said. “It’s about what I want. And I don’t want you here.”

  Ross hesitated, his expression filled with self-doubt.

  “You need help, Ramona.”

  “Get. Out. Of. My. House.”

  “Oh. Wait. I’m just trying to—”

  She clenched her fists. “GET OUT!”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “All right, okay. I’ll leave. I’m sorry.”

  She followed him to the door. “What did you think you were going to do? Boss me around and ask me if I was all cried out yet, and then I’ll snap out of it and won’t be sad anymore?!”

  Ross paused at the door to put on his coat, his face reddening with confusion and anger. “All right, Ramona. I was trying to help and screwed up somehow. I’m an idiot, okay? I’ll leave you alone now.”

  “Really? Are you sure I can handle that?”

  He opened the door with a loud sigh and stepped onto the porch. Ramona noticed the walk had filled with snow since Saturday morning. She wanted to yell at him some more; it felt so good to be angry. It was good to fe
el something.

  It didn’t last. The anger dissipated as rapidly as it had come, leaving her hollow again.

  Ramona thought of the endless, empty day ahead of her.

  “Wait,” she called after him.

  Ross stopped at the sidewalk. “What?”

  “Don’t go,” she told him. “Please don’t go.”

  Doug

  42 hours after Herod Event

  Otis called Doug on Monday morning to offer his condolences.

  “This is the worst tragedy, Doug. We’re all in shock.”

  “Sorry about your grandkids,” Doug said. “How are you holding up?”

  “One day at a time. My daughter’s a mess. The whole thing is too horrible for words.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Doug didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Well, I appreciate you calling.” After a long silence, he added, “Something else on your mind, Otis?”

  “Actually, there is. It’s kind of hard to say.”

  “Why don’t you just say it.”

  “Well, I hate to make things worse for you, but I need to ask you to come to work today.”

  “Go to hell,” Doug said, and hung up.

  Moments later, the phone rang again. He answered it and said, “Otis, don’t make me come down there and beat the living shit out of you.”

  “Just hear me out for a second.”

  “I’m not picking up any trash today, you son of a bitch.”

  “It’s not—”

  “I’m grieving for my kids!”

  “It’s the bodies, Doug.”

  “What?”

  “The bodies. Somebody has to pick up all the bodies.”

  Doug blinked. Then he set his jaw. “No way. It’s a job for the mortuaries.”

  Otis snorted over the line. “Brother, there ain’t enough mortuaries in the world to handle this.”

  “The hospitals then.”

  “There’s ninety thousand kids in our county alone who have to be picked up.”

  Doug said nothing. The number rang in his brain like a bell.

  He glanced at the door to the garage, where Joan had laid out their kids and wrapped them in plastic. A dead body could be stored for up to five days, he knew. After just a few days, it started to rot, even at very cold temperatures.