The Last Invasion
Chapter Five
Grace was on her knees, her forehead down on the basement carpet. “Thank you Jesus. Thank you my Lord. Thank you for seeing fit to test your servant so. You know, O Lord. You know. You know how terrible this is. Thank you for keeping us alive another day longer.” She kneeled in that position motionless, unable to pray anymore out loud.
Everyone was sick. Some worse than others. It had been the water. They finally ran out of the cases of bottled water and diet 7up and had to use the old stale water in the rain barrels outside. They tried everything to make it drinkable. They boiled it and attempted to distill it by using pots from the kitchen and filtering it through coffee filters, cloth and anything else they could find, but it wasn’t enough. Metty was the sickest and Grace was expecting her to die at any moment. She lay on the floor a few feet away. Only prayer had been keeping her alive and it was clear that she was now letting go. They had been hiding down here since the Red Chinese came and only been able to survive due to Brice Simmons, the director of Empower Care.
“May God bless you Mr. Simmons” Grace whispered, “God showed you years ago and you paid attention. God wants these good folks to live and you listened to the Lord and had provisions stored. Stored for us. Thank you Jesus.”
Across the room lying on a cot, Brice Simmons didn’t hear Grace praying. He had a fever of 103 and the bucket beside him was almost overflowing. He had nothing else to donate to it. He was half in and half out of consciousness.
Through his delirium, he wondered how long they could hold out. As it looked now, the bad water would kill them before the Reds. He should have thought more about water filtration and a proper distiller. But, he had no idea that any crisis would ever be like this. A week at the most. He never imagined that the utilities would be completely shut off. If he lived through this, he would never complain again about being snowed in.
Brice lifted himself up a little to look around the basement to see how everyone was doing. Grace was on her face praying. She had thrown up a coupled of times but seemed to have no fever. Her care for all never slowed down. Mattie was laying there dying. Rory had reverted to an infant and was sucking his blanket. Carlson, Rory and Charles were the least sick and had the finger-paints scattered everywhere. All three of them were covered in paint, being unsupervised at the moment, and Rory had obviously put some of the blue in his mouth. Papers covered with finger-paint were spread everywhere. Rory was dipping and painting, looking like Van Gogh painting starry starry night, Carlson was sloshing paint out of the bottles randomly everywhere and Charles was using a Popsicle stick to draw designs into the painting he had already finished. In one way, he wished Sarah was here to help. She had gone home after only spending a few hours on her shift that night nearly six weeks ago. “It was probably the best thing for her to do,” Brice mumbled, “I hope she made it.”
That awful night of the invasion, Brice had been stuck here after the terrible earthquake when the roadblocks went up. He couldn’t sleep and happened to be awake and watching TV when the Chinese vaporized Washington. His inner voice strongly told him what to do. If he hadn’t gotten around those police roadblocks and made it to the office that night, the Reds would have found them by now and they would all be dead. He had managed to shred all the documentation in the office concerning the group-homes and make it back here in spite of the road-blocks. Why hadn’t he gone home? Perhaps he couldn’t face an empty house and something about Grace drew him like a mother hen. The Reds would not be able to find any of the homes now, as long as everyone stayed out of sight. At least for awhile. All records of their addresses, phone numbers and their very existence was turned into confetti and burned that horrible night in the furnace. He prayed that at least some of the others were surviving somehow, but there was no way to know. He was so glad they had stocked up regularly since Y2K over a decade ago. These dear folks were certainly no threat to the Reds. But he knew that they considered such people to be less than human and not fit to live. How much effort they would spend trying to seek them out, he didn’t know. Thank God for this country and the Americans that saw fit to take care of such unfortunates. If for that reason alone, he was proud to be an American.
But, then he recalled what Grace had once told him. Director Simmons, look at this place. Look around you. You know, in Kenya we have no such places at all. But we don’t need them. If a person is born retarded or becomes developmentally disabled or injured or ill, or if mama or papa get old and sick, all the siblings want to be the first to take them into their own home and care for them. It is considered dishonorable not to do so among the people in my country whether they be Christians, Moslems or Kikuyus.
“Oh dear Grace, he barely whispered as he lay back down, “it is such an honor to have an angel here among us.”
Chapter Six
Chp. 1 : Chp. 2 : Chp. 3 : Chp. 4 : Chp. 5 : Chp. 6 : Chp. 7 : Chp. 8 : Chp. 9 : Chp. 10 :
Chp. 11 : Chp. 12 : Chp. 13 : Chp. 14 : Chp. 15 : Chp. 16 : Chp. 17 : Chp. 18 : Chp. 19 :
