Suffer the Children Read online

  We’re all alone now. Look at us. Packed in here like sardines, but we might as well be miles away from each other.

  One of the mourners sent up a keening wail. Then others joined in, the urge to scream washing over the congregation like a wave, filling the enormous space with the heartrending sound of their grief—

  Get out of here NOW.

  Joan rushed out the doors and stopped on the church steps, taking deep breaths. She’d left just in time. She’d been about to join in. It would feel so good to lose control, but once she started, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop.

  In any case, she’d learned something valuable. There were no answers to be found in there. Just unyielding horror. Emptiness.

  A bearded man in a long black coat stood smoking near the chain-link fence at the edge of the congested parking lot. She passed him on the way back to her car.

  “Pastor Gary?”

  The man stared at her. “Hello, Joan.”

  “I didn’t know you were a smoker.”

  “I quit when Jane was born,” he said. He took another drag.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “We lost them all. All three.”

  “Nate and Megan are gone as well.”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  “I was at a movie when it happened,” Joan confessed.

  “And you feel guilty about that?”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  “Let me tell you something. It might give you some perspective.”

  “Please do.” She listened closely.

  “My youngest died on the stairs. He was always getting himself hurt, and I found him lying there in this little”—his voice cracked—“this little tangle of arms and legs. The first thing I felt was irritation. The first thing I actually thought was, What did you do to yourself now?” He glared at Joan, his eyes wet and fierce. “What kind of father am I to think that? To feel that?”

  She recoiled. “That’s awful.”

  “That’s guilt. What you feel is something else.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “We’re all sorry, I guess. Did you come for a service? We’re not doing anything formal today, as you probably saw. People are free to use the church for whatever they need.”

  “No, I came to see you.” Joan thought her request seemed petty now. The man had the loss of his own children to cope with. “We’re taking Nate and Megan to the burial ground tomorrow night, and Doug and I will be hosting a wake at our home. I was wondering if you might come over and say a few words. I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

  Pastor Gary dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “It’s all right. I figured you’d be too busy.”

  “I’m not busy at all. I just don’t want to do it. I really don’t want to do anything, to be honest.”

  “Oh,” said Joan, surprised.

  He lit another cigarette and coughed. “Please don’t take it the wrong way. I always liked you. I mean, you came to church every Sunday to listen to my sermons. What a different world it was only a few days ago, right? There was so much to believe in. We had no idea. No idea at all.”

  Joan nodded. The truth was she didn’t know which was more like a dream, the past or present.

  “When you get home, you should look up the Kübler-Ross stages of grief,” he told her. “That’s what I was trained to use as a pastor to provide comfort. I could tell you a little about it if you want.”

  “Please. I’d like to hear it.”

  “When you’re ready to process what actually happened, you will likely try to deny your own suffering. Understand? You might decide to get mad about it and blame yourself or others. You may try to bargain with God, offer blood sacrifices and burnt offerings or whatever. But God created death as well as life and will deny your request. You may become depressed, which is of course the active process of grieving, and that’s good, but grieving isn’t the goal. Accepting your loss is. That’s the final stage. All the other responses are normal as long as they lead you to acceptance.” He shrugged. “That’s what I used to say to people in the congregation when they lost a loved one, Joan. I hope it will help you and Doug.”

  It was like getting a swimming lesson from a drowning man. The loss of a child was bad enough for any single person to bear, Joan knew. But to know it had happened to everybody was even worse. There was nobody who could comfort you. Everywhere you looked, you saw your own pain reflected in somebody else’s face.

  “I think what I really want to know is why this happened.”

  “You mean why God allowed this to happen. And you think I might know. Honestly, I was hoping maybe you could tell me. It’s all I’m thinking about. Any ideas?”

  “No, not really,” said Joan.

  “We all just want to understand. As human beings, we need to come to terms with it. The thing we have to acknowledge is not all miracles are good. Some miracles are evil. God allowed His own son to die, but it was for a reason. It was a sacrifice. Why did He allow our children to die? Maybe we were wicked and God wanted to punish us. But what did we do that was so bad? Seriously, why did God feel He had to come down and do just about the worst thing He could do?”

  Joan felt compelled to answer, as the man was now glaring at her. “I don’t know, Pastor.”

  “Remember how the Egyptians wouldn’t give up the Jews?”

  “You mean, in the Book of Exodus?”

  “Exactly. God inflicted nine plagues on the Egyptians. He turned their water into blood, and still they wouldn’t release the Hebrews. He threw hail and darkness and wild animals at them, and still they said no. Then God did a simple thing. He killed their firstborn children. The next day, they let the Jews go.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “So if we did something wrong—if this is some form of punishment—how do we get right with God again?”

  Pastor Gary burst out laughing so hard that Joan took a step back. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe next time, God will come down here and tell us what He wants instead of expecting us to guess, and murdering our kids when we’ve guessed wrong.”

  Joan touched her face as if he’d slapped her.

  “An even bigger question has been bugging me, Joan. The question is: Why did I bother? I thought, because we worshipped Him, that He liked us. But now, after witnessing all this? Call it blasphemy, but I’m starting to think He never really liked us. So I wonder why we wasted our time. I wonder why I bothered. My whole life is a waste.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” she told him, close to tears.

  “Of course you don’t know. Neither do I. We’ll just have to keep on guessing.” He dropped his cigarette into the slush at his feet and lit another. “Or stop trying altogether.”

  Doug

  50 hours after Herod Event

  Doug drove the big U-Haul truck off the highway and onto the dirt road that led to the children’s burial ground.

  The soldiers at the checkpoint waved him through. The truck rumbled over the rough ground. Inside, sixteen bodies lay cocooned in black bags.

  Nine stops today. Nine homes with screaming mothers and angry fathers looking for somebody to blame. They’d decided to give up for the day after somebody took a potshot at them with a rifle from a bedroom window.

  Doug nipped at his flask and shook it. Almost time for a refill. “We’re just about done here. You coming back tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tom. “Jesus, I really don’t.”

  Doug nodded. Nothing more needed to be said.

  He continued driving at high speed, careless of the risk. The truck topped a rise and the fields beyond spilled into view. Big yellow construction machines performed an awkward ballet across the scarred landscape, followed by drifting clouds of dust.

  “It’s huge,” said Tom, moved at the sight.

  “They’ve been at it since last night.”

  “Oh, Christ. Look, Do
ug.”

  The government had run out of body bags. Hundreds of bodies lay in neat rows on the frozen ground, covered with a dusting of quicklime.

  Tom wiped his eyes. “It’s horrible. It’s like the end of the world.”

  The end of the world. Doug remembered how he used to worry about that. Electromagnetic pulse, peak oil, asteroids, superflu, you name it. He kept emergency stocks of food and water in his basement just in case his family had to live off the grid for a while.

  They drove into the works. Construction signs flashed in the distance. Bulldozers fitted with single-shank rippers tore into the frozen, compacted soil. Excavators lurched in their wake and dug trenches five feet deep and three hundred feet long. Army five-tons, U-Hauls, refrigerated trucks, and pickups rolled along with little puffs of exhaust, stopping to allow men in hazmat suits to jump off and unload body bags into the trenches. At each finished trench, bulldozers pushed hills of earth to cover the dead.

  He drove toward a bustling village of trailers and vehicles. Doug pulled up next to several men in orange vests and hard hats warming their hands over a fire burning in a metal drum and rolled down his window.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he called.

  The men looked at each other and shrugged.

  “I’ve got a full load,” he said. “Where do you want them?”

  “Over there’s fine,” one of the men said, pointing vaguely. “You’ve got to register the load first.”

  Doug turned to Tom. “Back in a minute.”

  He used to worry about taxes and making ends meet.

  He got out and waited in line at the door of a trailer. Inside, the bald giant behind the desk checked the ZIP codes in his pickup area and told him he was in the wrong place. In the next trailer, a teenage girl typed the information on his forms into a computer set up next to an overflowing ashtray. Doug lit a cigarette but quickly put it out; it felt hot and stuffy in the overheated space. The girl cursed as her computer froze. Behind him, the line of impatient drivers continued to stack up. The general lack of competence in this massive, thrown-together operation didn’t inspire confidence that the children were being properly mapped for later retrieval. He’d have to remember himself where he’d put Nate and Megan.

  Cold air filled his lungs as he left. He stumbled on the steps.

  I’m wasted, he thought.

  Which was strange, because he didn’t feel drunk at all.

  He used to worry about somebody breaking into his house when he wasn’t home.

  He found Tom sleeping when he got back, curled into a ball against the door, practically sucking his thumb. Doug honked the horn to wake him up.

  “Shit,” said Tom, wiping drool from his cheek. “I’m still here.”

  Doug drove into the works. A man waved at him with a pair of glow sticks and pointed at another man in the distance, who directed him toward a freshly dug trench. Cold wind blasted him when he opened the door.

  Two workers were waiting for them there, looking dirty and cold to the bone. Jack, a fiftysomething with leathery skin and a slim, athletic build, and Mitch, an overgrown teenager with a mean face.

  Doug used to worry the government was going to take his guns.

  “We’ll unload the truck and hand off the bags to you guys on the ground,” said Jack. He squinted at Tom. “You’re looking a little pale, brother. You all right?”

  “I just hadn’t expected so many.”

  “We’re getting forty thousand at this site alone. You’ll get used to it.”

  “No, he won’t,” Doug growled.

  Jack shrugged. Doug handed him his flask, and he and Mitch each took a long pull.

  “Wish I’d thought to bring something,” said Mitch.

  “When you’re old enough to drink, you can,” Jack told him.

  “I’m not a kid. Or didn’t you hear? All the kids are dead.”

  The men laid out the bodies in a neat row along the lip of the trench. Jack announced a break while they waited for the clergy to come and read over the dead. He produced a tin of Red Man, and he and Mitch each put a plug in their cheeks. They stomped their feet to keep warm. Doug lit a cigarette and stared at the bodies in the bags.

  Tomorrow night, he would bring his own children here. After the wake that Joan was putting together. He would lay them in a trench just like this one, and the bulldozer would come and blanket them with cold earth.

  Despite the warmth of the bourbon in his blood, he shivered.

  He used to worry about losing his job because of side-loaders.

  “What do you do for a living, Tom?” he asked to pass the time.

  Tom started. “What?”

  “I asked what you do for a living.”

  “I work in the Office of Economic Development. We help corporations come and do business in the county—site selection, permitting, tax incentives, and so on.”

  “Economist, huh?” Jack asked him. “What do you think is going to happen with the economy? With the children being taken and all that?”

  “Well, I’m not a real economist, but I did study economics and political science in college.”

  Mitch smirked and spat tobacco juice onto the ground. “College, huh?”

  Tom ignored him. “We’ve got serious problems ahead. Think about all the industries serving kids. Toys, books, TV networks. Movies, breakfast cereal, clothes, car seats. Schools, teachers, pediatricians—jeez, the list goes on and on. They’re all basically out of business. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars, a big chunk of the GDP right there. There’s going to be a massive recession.”

  Jack looked humbled. “I guess we’re in for a bit more trouble then.”

  The clergymen arrived in their orange safety jackets and respirator masks. Covered in dirt, they stood in a row over the line of body bags and muttered the words that consecrated the burial according to their different faiths. Trying to make this terrible place holy.

  Tom went on as he warmed to his subject. “That’s not even the half of it. There’s going to be at least a twelve-year gap in student enrollment in all schools and colleges, in workers contributing to Social Security, in new people entering the workforce. Think about how many geniuses we lost when Herod’s struck. Kids who would have grown up to cure cancer or make a better lightbulb.”

  The clergymen left. Doug nudged him with his elbow, and they hopped into the trench.

  Doug used to worry about the economy.

  “Shit,” said Jack, shaking his head. “Any advice?”

  Tom shrugged. “Buy stock in liquor companies.”

  “Very inspiring,” Mitch said as he and Jack picked up and lowered the first body. “They should have you speak at the vigil tomorrow night.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “What do you think, partner?” Jack asked Doug.

  “It don’t matter what I think,” he answered. He laid the first body onto the frozen ground. “The world’s gone to shit. It can’t get any worse in my book.”

  Tom snorted. “It can get a lot worse—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean—”

  “Look at where I am, Tom. Look what I’m doing. I lost both my kids. How much worse could it possibly get for me? What else can be done to me that hasn’t already been done?”

  Tom shut up, looking paler than ever. Doug accepted the next body and laid it to rest.

  He used to worry about whether his kids would go to college.

  A gunshot rang out across the frozen field. Doug peered over the top and saw men running toward the next trench over.

  “What happened?” said Tom.

  “My guess is somebody wanted to be buried with his kids,” Doug told him.

  He used to worry about whether his children were safe.

  “Holy shit,” said Mitch.

  “Damn,” said Jack. “I guess this sort of proves your point, Doug. Don’t it?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t listening. He took off his gloves, unscrewed the c
ap of his flask, and tilted his head back to take a long burning swallow.

  For the first time in days, he smiled. “Here’s to you, guy.”

  Doug didn’t have anything to worry about anymore.

  FOUR

  Joan

  76 hours after Herod Event

  The wake began at six o’clock.

  Nate and Megan lay on a table in the living room in their Sunday best. Their slack faces glowed pale in the light from the fireplace. Major paced and whined under the table until Doug put him back in his kennel.

  Joan had arranged a series of photos at their feet. Megan prancing in a princess costume. Nate after a game of shinny, grinning and flushed. Megan as a baby, giving Doug a toothless smile. Nate asleep in his crib. A smiling Joan holding both kids on her lap on Christmas morning. So much had already happened in their short lives, so much had been captured in memory and in pictures, and Joan wanted to share as much of it as possible.

  She’d worked hard and now took pleasure in how everything looked. The only thing out of place was the Christmas tree, which stood near the front window with its lights off. She hadn’t had the heart to take it down.

  Her parents had come, as had her brother, Jake, and his wife, Sylvie. Aunts and uncles and cousins. Joan offered sandwiches and made sure everybody’s drinks stayed filled. She felt her nerves bleeding out. This was it.

  Tonight, she would mark her children’s passing and later join the rest of Lansdowne at the vigil while Doug did his part and put them in the ground. Tomorrow, she’d have to begin to really process what had happened. The prospect terrified her.

  She poured herself a gin and tonic and sipped it. She found it comforting to have her own flesh and blood in the room. Dad had Doug pinned by the fireplace. Doug hadn’t shaved, but he’d put on a black suit and tie with a clean white collared shirt. He slouched and swayed on his feet. He’d been drinking. She should have been furious but found she didn’t really care.