Sundown

A short story

Peter looked up at the darkening sky. He wondered if the rain would fall before the sun dipped below the horizon. Water beaded on the glass of cold lemonade and dripped onto the glass table next to him, making a ring. The air was humid but not uncomfortably so. The breeze coming from offshore kept both it and the heat from being too much to bear. Still, he was so hot and thirsty. 

The only thing he knew for sure was that he wouldn’t be alive to see the sun pass out of sight or the clouds unload their burden. None of them would be. The sound of kids playing on the nearby playground, swinging in the trees reminded him of better days. Jason and Ailene would have been playing in trees like that, once upon a time. They weren’t around anymore.  

He took a sip of the lemonade. It was just the right balance of tart and sweet. Balance was everything. The world had been in balance for years. One side couldn’t destroy the other without risking being destroyed themselves, for decades that was enough. Then it happened. No one was sure if it had been an accident or if someone just got tired of the constant waiting. Jason thought it may just have been Mother Nature wiping the slate clean. 

“Can I get you anything else, honey?” Gayle asked from the screen door behind him. Her sweet voice held just a hint of sadness. She had been a beautiful bride and even now, twenty years later, he had never been tempted to look at another woman. Those had been twenty very happy years. As happy as anyone could ask for, but grief came for us all in the end. 

Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

“Maybe a refill.” He held his glass aloft and swirled the cloudy liquid, ice tinkling against the tumbler. He set it back down and listened as she approached. There was a little bit of a stutter in her step. She had drunk at least one glass of lemonade already. She didn’t fall, though. 

Gayle filled his glass and sat the matching pitcher, decorated with sunflowers and bumblebees, on the table between them. Then she took her seat and raised her filled glass to her lips. She hummed and smacked her lips. “That’s good.” She looked out at the ocean in the distance, tears tracing the planes of her face.

They had come to this little island, hundreds of them, in boats of all kinds, trying to outrun the virus. Some thought that the same wind that brought the sailboats brought death. Others believed that an infected person made it through the cordon, tests be damned. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. It killed you quickly, that was the only mercy. Once you began to spike a fever you had thirty-six, maybe forty-eight hours. Those last hours were filled with torment and madness.

He was so thirsty. Everyone was. They all had it now. The playground was empty of children. There had been no sounds. He shook his head, knowing it had been a fever-induced hallucination. The children were the first to die, one way or another. He closed his eyes and drank deeply of the lemonade. It hid the bitterness well. This would be quicker than dying of fever. 

He put down his glass and reached out his hand. Gayle took it in hers and together they watched the darkness come.