Chapter 6 – The Weight of Quiet
The sixth day began with the sound of birds.
Alex woke to sparrows chattering outside his window, their quick, sharp notes cutting through the silence. For a moment he forgot. For a moment it felt like a regular morning before everything had tilted sideways. Then he saw the boards nailed across the glass, dimming the light, and the weight of reality pressed back down.
He pulled on his boots, slung his jacket over his shoulders, and stepped into the hallway. His parents were already in the kitchen. Margaret stirred something on the stove—thin oatmeal again—while Robert sat at the table, sharpening the hatchet with slow, even strokes.
"Morning," Alex said.
Both answered in unison, "Morning," though their tones carried different weights. His mother's voice was too bright, stretched thin with forced cheer. His father's was flat, steady, as though rationing not only food but energy.
After breakfast, they divided the day's tasks.
Margaret wanted to inventory what remained of their medicine and try to stretch it with herbal substitutes from the garden. Robert intended to cut more wood and check the fence line. Alex suggested they also work on securing the basement door.
"It's just a lock," he explained, tapping his notebook where he'd scribbled weak entry point. "If someone really wants in—or something—they'll kick it down. We need a crossbar. Something solid."
Robert nodded slowly. "We'll use one of the leftover boards. A two-by-four across brackets should do."
Margaret hesitated. "But the basement's where we've stored most of the food. If we make it too hard to open, what if we need to get in quickly?"
Alex thought about that. "We'll make it so it's barred from the inside. If we're down there, we can secure ourselves in. If we're up here, it'll still slow anyone coming through."
The compromise satisfied them all.
Work began.
Robert measured and cut wood while Alex drilled into the doorframe. The air smelled of sawdust, sharp and clean. Sweat dripped down their foreheads, but they pressed on.
By noon, a thick board rested snugly across two brackets. Robert gave it a hard shove. The door barely budged.
"That'll hold," he said, brushing sawdust from his hands. "At least longer than the old lock would."
Alex made a note in his book: Basement secured.
He had started numbering tasks, giving each a little box to check. More boxes remained empty than full, but each check mark felt like a little victory.
Margaret, meanwhile, had spread supplies across the kitchen table. Pill bottles, bandage rolls, ointments, a thermometer that might or might not still work. She counted aloud as she wrote:
"Two bottles ibuprofen. Half bottle acetaminophen. Three rolls gauze. Eight band-aids. One antiseptic spray, half full…"
Alex listened as he tightened the last screws on the brackets. Her voice carried an edge he recognized—not fear exactly, but awareness of how thin their safety net really was.
"Mom," he said, "how's it looking?"
She gave him a thin smile. "Enough for a scraped knee or a headache. Not enough for anything bigger. If one of us breaks a bone…" She trailed off.
Alex wrote Medical supplies = critically low in his book. The words sat heavy on the page.
That afternoon, they tackled the garden.
The late-summer plants were still clinging to life: tomatoes with green fruit, beans curling along strings, a few stubborn squash vines. Margaret knelt in the dirt, pulling weeds with quick, angry tugs.
"We need to think ahead," she muttered. "Next spring we'll need seeds. We can't live off canned beans forever."
Robert nodded. "We'll dry some seeds from these plants. Keep them safe."
Alex crouched beside a tomato plant, careful with the leaves. The fruit was small, not yet ripe. He imagined trying to grow food from scratch when the world beyond was collapsing. It felt both absurd and absolutely necessary.
They worked until the sun dipped low, stacking weeds into a compost heap and tying up sagging plants. When Margaret finally stood, her knees cracked audibly.
"Tomorrow," she said, brushing dirt from her hands, "I'll prep the jars for drying seeds."
Alex gave her a smile. "That's a good plan."
Dinner was beans on toast, using bread from the last of the Daniels' stash. The taste was plain but filling.
They ate mostly in silence until Margaret broke it with a quiet question. "Do you think it's only here? Just our county? Or is it… everywhere?"
No one answered immediately.
Robert set down his fork. "It started somewhere. Probably the city. But things spread. News stopped for a reason."
Margaret's face tightened. "So you think the whole country—?"
Alex interrupted gently. "We don't know. Maybe other places are fine. Maybe the government's fixing it."
He didn't believe his own words, but he said them anyway. For her sake.
That night, Alex sat by the window with his notebook. The boards across the glass left only thin slits of view, but moonlight filtered through. The yard was still, shadows of fence posts stretching long across the grass.
He wrote:
Day 6 – Tasks Completed:
Secured basement door
Inventory medicine
Garden maintenance begun
Notes:
Supplies holding steady but fragile.
Fence line needs constant checking.
Mom anxious. Dad quieter than usual. Both coping in their own ways.
He tapped the pen against the paper, thinking. Then added:
Thought: The quiet is worse than noise. Feels like the world is holding its breath. Waiting.
Later, as he lay in bed, he heard it.
Not coyotes this time. Not wind.
A low, distant thud. Like something heavy falling. Then silence.
Alex froze, breath shallow. He waited. A second thud came, softer, followed by a dragging scrape.
It stopped.
He sat up slowly, shotgun in hand, and crept to the window. He peered through the narrow gap between boards.
Nothing. The yard was empty. The fence line unmoving.
He stayed there long after the sounds ceased, staring at shadows until his eyes burned. Finally, he backed away, closed the notebook on his desk, and whispered to himself:
"Tomorrow, we check the perimeter. Twice."
Only then did he return to bed, though sleep never truly came.