Something in the Air, Submission 8 by Brian Zook

The Nicaraguan sun was just about to set when Daniel arrived in Chinandega in his dusty Jeep after a long day of avoiding potholes. As he approached his home village, he noticed an eerie emptiness. Not even the occasional stray dog scrounging in the roadside garbage.

“That’s strange,” he thought. “Usually around now there are at least a few people out and about. And who was that asleep on the sidewalk back there?”

He made his way down the cobblestone streets to his parents’ house. As he turned the corner onto his old street, he noticed a pair of legs sticking out the front door of a neighbor’s house down the street.

“Huh. Carlos must have passed out again after one too many beers,” he thought. “Poor Juana, having to deal with that drunkard of a husband.”

Daniel finally got to his parents’ house, parked the Jeep across the street, and made his way to the front door. His parents were expecting him, along with his sister. So where were they and why weren’t they answering the door?

He located the spare key under the flower pot and made his way into the house. Then he saw his father’s lifeless body slumped in the living room sofa. Frantic calls for help remained unanswered. He ran to the kitchen to call for an ambulance, only to find his mother and sister lying on the floor, their lifeless bodies frozen in an embrace. Nobody answered the local emergency number.

“What the heck is going on?” he muttered.

He ran to his neighbor’s house next door for help, only to find that all in that family were either on the floor or in their beds, dead. He ran to the neighbor across the street. Again, their lifeless bodies were in various places around the house. From the relative warmth and limpness of the bodies, he could tell that none of them had been dead long.

Suddenly he felt mildly nauseous. He could tell there was a ever-so-faint odor in the air that he couldn’t quite place.

“That’s it,” he thought. “It must be the volcano spewing something in the air again.”

He tried not to take deep breaths as he ran out to his car to get his cell phone to call his girlfriend in Managua, but he could tell the nausea was getting worse. As he opened the door to the car, the nausea overtook him. He lost consciousness with his arm outstretched for his cell phone.