An Interview with My Father At The End of the World

The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "a father and son in a barren wasteland"

The Plague covered the world like a sunrise in a cloudless sky. Nothing could hide from it, but we tried. Of our family, all who remained were my son, Leo, and I.

In my heart there were mere memories of hope, fantasies of some far-off fortified bunkers where my sisters and friends lived sparsely, yet untouched by the horrors of the outside. The idea was doubtful, impossible, but I never told my son so. I couldn’t forbid his dreams. He needed them and I needed him to have them.

Storm clouds loomed over the trees and broken streetlights. Although, it wasn’t the lights that were broken, but their roots that connected them to the world. Dark streets. Dark skies.

We took shelter in an abandoned hospital and it took us a day to search the entire building. We were lucky. There were none of them in the building. No infected. None. Save for the Creature we had bound to a bed in a room at the end of the hall, whose snarls were muffled under the duct tape I wrapped over his mouth.

Leo lay asleep on a hospital mattress we had lain on the floor. The moonlight revealed his weathered adolescent face, whose twelve years might as well have been a hundred, aged not by time, but by circumstance. I thought it was best to take care of the Creature before Leo woke, as if he hadn’t seen me do it countless times already.

I left the room, letting the door click softly to a close behind me. I pulled the 45-caliber pistol out of my belt and cocked it, making sure there was a round in the chamber. In my mind there was nothing left in the infected that even resembled humanity, but I still hated putting them down. We took to calling them Creatures and I made Leo repeat the name over and over again. I couldn’t let him see any humanity in them. I had to turn him into a killer, a survivor.

Although there was nothing left in their hearts but rage, no kindness in their eyes, I still couldn’t shake the fact that there had once been a person in their infected shells. Their angry blood used to flow through a mother who wanted nothing more than her child’s happiness or a child that wanted nothing more than an ice cream on a sunny day.

I walked the halls slowly, in dread of what I had to do before the sun came up, before Leo could wake and see the blood on my hands.

As the sound of my footsteps echoed through the abandoned hospital, I wondered whether I had been a good father before the world had become a nightmare. I wondered if I could still be one, so I thought back to what my father had taught me and all the questions I’d asked him and all the questions I’d never have the chance to.

This is an interview with my father that spans across 34 years of my life.

Am I going to die?

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always had a strong fear of death. I don’t know why, but I like to think it’s because I developed a strong appreciation for life at a young age. At the slightest cut, bruise or scrape, I’d go instantly into survival mode. Once, when I was four years old, my mother’s spindle of thread fell from a high shelf and landed right on my big toe. I started crying and crying, as my toe bruised black. My father got a thin needle and told me not to move. He pushed the point of the needle into the black spot on my toe and dark blood oozed out of it.

Am I going to die? I asked him, tears filling my eyes.

He laughed, No, you’re not going to die. We just need to get the dead blood out.

I stopped halfway down the hall and heard the muffled snarls grow louder and louder. Other than the room that held the monster captive, we left the rest of the doors wide open, so that whatever light the moon and stars provided could spill into the hallway. The backup generator that had once powered the hospital in times of emergency had long since died.

When the sun went down, all we had were the moon and stars to guide us in the night.

Survival in the new world meant preservation, something we’d known little of before The Plague. Every drop of water, every morsel of food, every milliampere-hour of electricity and every bullet meant the difference between life today or death tomorrow. We learnt that lesson quickly after we had discovered that the source of The Plague had been the majority of our sources of freshwater. Somehow it didn’t affect wildlife at all. They could be carriers of the infection, but for the most part, no animals experienced any symptoms of the virus, save for a few rare cases involving bonobo chimpanzees. It was as if we were a poison the world was trying to get rid of, and the antidote it created had been ferociously effective.

Were you poor?

I’d often ask my dad about The Philippines, where he grew up, and what his life had been like. I wanted to know about where we came from, how our family lived in that foreign place I knew almost nothing about. We were eating breakfast one day and he told me about how he and his brothers used to hunt birds with their slingshot when they got really hungry. I told him I didn’t believe him.

Were you poor? I asked.

Really poor, he said.

Why can’t we have a dog?

You’re too young to take care of it, he told me. I begged and I pleaded, but he knew better than to give in to my whining.

I had a dog growing up, my father went on. Actually, it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten what we used to call him. I wish I could remember. He wandered out onto the road one day and got hit by a car. Before that day, I didn’t know dogs could scream.

The car didn’t stop. They never did for so small a thing. I was the only one who saw it happen. My brothers and sisters were nowhere to be found. His hind legs were bent the wrong way and he whimpered with every shallow breath he took. He cried and I put my hand lightly on his head. Then he cried louder and I wondered if it was because of the pain or because he knew he was dying.

I walked in to one of the empty hospital rooms and stared out the window, looking up at the stars. The night sky had become brighter and more beautiful ever since our lights had gone out. When in truth, nothing up there had changed. No new planets hovered in orbit. I simply saw what had always been there, what we were too busy to notice while spending our lives on progress rather than presence.

What’s wrong?

While my father’s childhood was spent in poverty, mine was spent in luxury. At least in comparison it felt so. I never had to worry about going hungry, everyday we had food on the table. One day when I was fourteen, I walked into the kitchen expecting to hear the AM radio blasting the morning news as it always did, but instead all I heard was the pop and sizzle of the frying pan. I saw my father with his back turned to me.

His hand trembled, as it gripped the metal pan and he shook the scrambled eggs in the oil. I noticed that his shoulders were shaking as well. He was crying, just like I had as a child whenever I woke from a bad dream, only there was no bad dream for him to wake from. Tears fell from his eyes, wetting his hands and falling onto his white, oil-stained apron.

What’s wrong? I asked, my voice as uncertain and afraid as I was.

Are you ok?

Never in my life had I seen my father cry. It was like finding out that super heroes could bleed. He didn’t answer for some time.

It’s my mom, he said, his voice shaking. She’s in the hospital. My mom she — she had a stroke.

Not knowing what to do or say, I asked, Are you ok? A stupid question.

Yes, yes. I’m ok, he said, hurriedly wiping his eyes, as if he had forgotten he was crying and didn’t want me to see. But I saw, and never would I forget.

When Leo was just six or seven years old, he told me he wanted to jump off the roof of our house and fly. I laughed and told him that if he believed in himself and worked hard, he’d be able to do anything one day. I realized minutes later, after hearing a crash in the backyard, that I should have chosen my words more carefully. Half the neighbourhood had heard his cries and his mother had been furious at me. Leo had broken his leg, trying to jump from our roof onto the trampoline. Although it could have been much worse, it took days of grovelling and a few promised home renovations for her to smile at me again.

I watched her as she sat on the foot of his bed before the surgery. She told him that bones grew stronger after being broken. He had never undergone any type of surgery before and had been restless and scared in the moments leading up to it. In truth, so was I. Although I knew it was a common low-risk procedure, I worried about everything that could possibly go wrong.

Even though she was still angry with me, she hugged me and I held her while we sat in the waiting room. It was then that I realized although I was a decent parent, she had been the rock on which our family was built. A few words from her was all Leo had needed to be brave and believe that everything was going to be ok. The warmth of her touch was all I ever needed to believe the same. Losing her had left me broken, and had left a hole in Leo’s heart that I could never fill. When we lost her, I wanted to jump off the roof myself and fall into oblivion.

When’s the flight?

Should board in about thirty minutes, my dad replied. First generation immigrants had an odd sense of home. There was the home they were given and the home they had chosen.

For my parents, the home they were given was in some far-off land across the oceans, and the home they had chosen was in Winnipeg, Canada, home of the cold winters and the land of endless opportunity. However, all that meant to them was a minimum wage higher than the Philippines’ $2.50 per day for the average worker.

Whenever my father spoke of visiting The Philippines he always referred to it as going home and that always confused me. Had we, out of a need to be supported, taken the homes of our parents away from them? For a better life, was always their answer when I asked why they had chosen to move, but it had always hurt me to know that the one difference between my parents’ given and chosen homes was money.

When it was time for my grandma to board, we walked over to the gate and stood around her wheelchair in a half-circle. Mother to eight of us and grandmother to ten, she sat expressionless and we stood still and quiet, wanting the moment to last forever. I was the first one to break the silence. I stepped forward and bent down, hugging her softly, with my arms wrapped around her chair, afraid that she’d break if I held her too tightly. I kissed her on the forehead and said, I love you, grandma. I backed away, my eyes never leaving her.

Everyone else followed suit, some hugs lasting longer than others, some kisses on the cheek, some tears. Then suddenly she began to cry, sobbing out loud like a newborn. She hadn’t spoken a single word, nor made any sound louder than a grunt in almost two years. After her stroke, we always doubted whether she remained conscious of the world around her, but all our doubts were crushed by her cries.

She knew.

We all knew the truth that none of us wanted to utter out loud — that this was the last time we would see her. That this was our final goodbye. We stood stunned and saddened, but when I turned to look at my father he was smiling. He walked up to her and stroked her head. It’s ok, he said. He was happy, happy that she was still here and that her mind had not yet gone. Happy that she was here for us to say goodbye.

Unable to stall any longer, I walked over to the closed door at the end of the hallway. Twisting the handle, I opened the door and closed it behind me. If my father had taught me anything in life, it was to be strong, because he was one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. Sons look up to their fathers, and every day of my life I’ve worried about falling short.

I walked over to the Creature and stared at him.

He snarled and I gently tore the duct tape off his mouth.

He jerked his head forward and snapped his teeth at me. I stared at his bloodshot eyes, remembering the man that had once lived in this body, the father that sat in the stands at my basketball games and in the pews during my high school graduation. The father that told me I could be anything and do anything.

I love you, I told him, hoping some piece of him heard me behind those angry eyes. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the times I cried at night. I’m sorry for my unrelenting stubbornness and all the fights we didn’t need to have. I’m sorry that I took for granted the strength and sacrifice it took for you to raise me.

Did I do OK?

His answer was a snarl behind bared teeth.

Were you proud of me?

He shrieked and growled.

Are you still there?

He snapped his teeth at me and I had to pull my face back, a single tear fell from my wet eyes onto his bloody nose.

I picked two pillows up off the ground and pushed them against my father’s face, and he squirmed while I smothered him. I brought my pistol up and dug it into the pillows, making sure the barrel lined up with his forehead. His last wish was that I not let Leo see me do it when the time finally came.

I’m sorry.

I pulled the trigger and the pillows suppressed the blast.

From our room at the other end of the hall Leo couldn’t have heard more than the sound of a light pop. The writhing stopped and I collapsed over my father’s body, letting myself cry. After a few moments, I heard movement behind me and turned with my pistol raised. Leo stood in the doorway.

Dad? he said, still disoriented from his sleep. Are you ok?

I lowered the pistol and stepped toward him, trying to block his view of his grandfather’s corpse.

Yes, yes, I’m ok. I said, hurriedly wiping my eyes, hoping he hadn’t seen.

But he saw, and never would he forget.