Night Zero- Second Day

by Rob Horner

  Somehow, she kept herself from puking. She reached back and courtesy flushed more times than she could count, anything to keep the smell from overwhelming her.

  Finally drained and with an ass chafed raw by handfuls of John Wayne toilet paper—rough, tough, and won’t take shit off no one, according to her Jim—Candace returned to her car. Even as she gassed up, she noted other vehicles racing in, passengers being dropped off at the entrance to the place with one hand over their mouths and another wedged between their cheeks like a five-fingered dam. Every one of those cars came from the east.

  She’d just gotten out of the city limits when the cramps hit again, her innards making splashing noises like a water slide dropping a four-hundred-pound fatty into a kiddy pool. She felt it as much as heard it, a rushing weight which sent her rectum from complacency into DefCon Five, all hands on deck. With barely a nod to traffic—not heavy at 4pm in Alabama but building up—she crossed both lanes and rushed down the exit for a rest stop, there to spend another twenty minutes with her ass cheeks being slow-branded by the toilet bowl.

  Sweat-drenched and starting to wonder if she might not be better off seeking a hospital rather than pushing for home, she eased her Hyundai back onto the Interstate.

  What on earth did I eat that’s playing such havoc with my insides?

  It couldn’t be the stomach flu. She never had diarrhea like this with a stomach bug, and she was more prone to those than a lactose-intolerant man was to cheese farts. Nausea and vomiting yes, but that’s why God invented Zofran.

  Thinking of the melt-in-your-mouth tabs made her remember the stash she kept in the glove box. Leaning over, she only hit the rumble strip once while fishing one of the little pills out. The medicine tasted of a cross between mint and fruit, but it settled her stomach. Now if only her ass would stop making milk like a pregnant cow, she might be all right.

  The sudden ratcheting of a low flying helicopter thundered through the air, followed immediately after by the aircraft itself, rising off the ground just a little way off the Interstate to her right. She saw it cresting the trees and wondered what lay on the other side. You certainly didn’t expect any high-profile office building or politician’s headquarters out here in the hinterlands of Alabama. Curious about the chopper, and still hoping to keep her mind occupied with anything except the burning pain in her lower gut, Candace thumbed the radio volume back up.

  “—still no word on what, exactly, was in the warehouse or what caused it to explode, but sources close to the investigation claim there is no need to worry about any poisonous chemicals in the immediate area—”

  Candace pushed the Scan button.

  “—accident in southern Birmingham which occurred about thirty minutes ago. The driver of a Jeep Wrangler lost control while exiting the Interstate, plowing through an intersection at the bottom of the ramp, injuring himself and four other people. Police have the driver under inve—”

  Scan.

  “—numerous aircraft, all hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, have made emergency stops in airports all over the south. Check with your local airport for flight delays and cancellations, and to see if any of your loved ones have been aff—”

  Scan.

  “—Bessemer police urge drivers to use secondary roads around the I-20 ramps. One helicopter has already rushed the badly-wounded driver of a blue Mustang to the trauma center in Birmingham while numerous other first responders work to secure the scene—”

  Bessemer. That was the town she just passed. It must be where the helicopter came from.

  “We repeat, a Mustang was seen tearing through the streets, running over sidewalks and knocking over mailboxes before crashing into the side of a McDonald’s. The driver, who hasn’t been named, was thrown through the windshield of the vehicle just seconds before it caught fire. Police and fire are on the scene, trying to figure out what happened.”

  A hysterical voice came on the radio, and Candace had no trouble picturing the speaker, one of those ubiquitous idiots the media always found whenever something happened in a southern town. She would be overweight, with more money spent on her hair than her health, though she probably had a better phone than Candace did.

  “—hell yeah I seen it, come runnin’ up on the sidewalk like da beep -er didn’t care who dey hit. Prolly one-a dem MAGA punks—”

  Candace had heard enough. It was just like the motorcycle rider again, a little flash-in-the-pan drama. She knew where the helicopter came from, so it held no further interest for her. The pain in her abdomen was ramping back up, sending little bubbles like fart blossoms through her guts, but she knew better than to let any of them out. No sir. Momma always told her not to trust a fart when the Trotters were in town.

  * * * * *

  She made it another thirty minutes before having to stop again, this time in a rundown convenience store off the highway in a one-stoplight flyspeck town called Greenview. The Indian or Pakistani or whatever kind of cow-loving curry-eater didn’t seem to understand the urgency of her request for the bathroom key; he just kept pointing to a sign which read Bathroom Key Require Purchase $5.00 Or More. But then she hurled. It started off at counter height—she was pretty sure some of it got on the camel fucker—before she managed to get her head down, then it just poured out—so much for the Zofran magic—but at least it encouraged him that she wasn’t faking.

  The bathroom was barely big enough for her to sit without both knees touching the walls and it smelled like a State Fair outhouse after three days of chili dogs and funnel cakes, but it suited her purposes, especially now that she didn’t need to puke anymore.

  The little man was still cleaning up her mess when she left, fast walking with her cheeks together like there might be more coming out before she even made it to the car. She tried to apologize as she left the key on the counter, but all she got back was a fast chitter-slurring as the attendant cussed her out in his backward scrawl language.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with her, and it was the complete indifference she had to others which bothered her almost as much as the abdominal cramping, nausea, and diarrhea. Sure, she had a little of the old South built into her bones, but she wasn’t as bad as her husband. He still called it “Martin Luther Coon Day” and cheered for any movie where some Rambo type blew up Asians or Middle-Easterners.

  She pulled back onto the highway and then…lost herself.

  It was like an out of body experience, or like falling asleep at the wheel. She wasn’t sure about the one and was deathly afraid of the other. She didn’t get into an accident or anything, just fell into a kind of auto-pilot fugue state, driving, staying between the lines, and riding a temporary wave of peace as her stomach finally settled. It wasn’t until everything ramped back up that she noticed she’d past her exit, had passed by Tuscaloosa completely, and was in the south-bound curve of the Interstate passing Fosters.

  The name of the town didn’t matter; she never made it to the exit, instead pulling off at the rest area just before it.

  Her head went floating again while she braced herself on the pot.

  When she woke up, she didn’t know where she was and couldn’t find it in herself to care.

  She had become.

  * * * * *

  Unlike some states, Mississippi has never been reluctant to call out the National Guard. Those men and women signed up to serve, after all, and it has been the attitude of every governor to give them work to do whenever possible. To do any less might cheapen their sacrifice.

  So, when Governor Bell (R) was informed that a passenger jet out of Atlanta bearing one hundred forty-seven souls had requested clearance to land in a dust-speck airport on the outskirts of Greenwood, she mobilized the nearest Guard unit to check it out. Their mission was simple: provide assistance with medical care and patient transport.

  En route to the airport, their mission changed.

  The governor received word that Greenwood wasn’t the only airport with a plane landing under the auspices of a m
edical emergency. Planes were coming down in Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and even into Kentucky and West Virginia. Every flight originated in Atlanta. And each of them had taken off shortly after the mysterious warehouse explosion on the south side of the city.

  No longer were the Guard to aid in patient triage and stabilization. Their new job was containment. Other planes were coming in. Other units were called up.

  It might be nothing. Washington was silent.

  Governor Bell remembered 9-11. When Washington yelled, foreign governments took notice. But when Washington whispered, politicians and their staffers looked for alibis and checked the balances in their offshore accounts. Contingency plans were put on standby.

  And Americans were left in the dark.

  Fast forward a few hours.

  The small Bandaid station hospital in Greenwood didn’t know about the silent quarantine. They removed four patients from the airport. One of the four earned herself a helicopter flight to Jackson. The situation in the airport went from tits up to FUBAR before the Guard arrived to lock it down. The ambulance crews returned to find a full-scale riot. The passengers attacked, injuring the paramedics.

  And a flight jockey got his weekend hobby off the ground and took off west.

  If there was ever a chance of containing the mess, it died with the first patient to roll out.

  The governor ordered an interstate BOLO for the small plane and dispatched two southern units to Jackson.

  * * * * *

  Elizabeth “Bitsy” Wallace was only six years old.

  Twenty-four hours before, the world was open to her. There were so many places to see and things to do and she had a whole life in which to do them.

  Twenty-four hours before, she was tossing in her bed, slipping in and out of sleep in the kind of restless anticipation every child remembers from Christmas Eve. She was going to get on a plane! A real plane! One that flies in the air. Mommy was taking her almost across the whole country, from Georgia to California to see an aunt she didn’t remember. Why they were going to California didn’t matter one whit.

  They were getting there on a plane!

  Take that, Suzie Stuck Up, who got to go to Disney World last year!

  Then Bitsy got sick. A lot of people on the plane got sick, and Bitsy threw up in a pretty lady’s face.

  The pretty lady was mean, so maybe that wasn’t all a bad thing, but Bitsy still felt bad for throwing up on her.

  Then the feeling bad went away, replaced by a tearing, twisting pain in her tummy, worse than anything she’d ever felt. She couldn’t stop throwing up. And even worse, she went number two in her pants. That was something only little babies did!

  The plane landed, which should have been almost as exciting as the plane taking off, but Bitsy was too miserable to pay attention. Mommy was scared, but at least mommy wasn’t sick.

  They landed in a place that wasn’t where they were supposed to be. Even a geographically challenged six-year-old knew you couldn’t get to California in less than an hour, not even if they were on the fastest plane in the world.

  The events in the airport were a haze of pain, poop, and throw up. The mean lady got really sick, a sick in the head kind of sick, and tried to hurt mommy. She did hurt a nice airport lady. Bitsy got up to help then. Somehow, she got up to try to fight off the crazy lady. Bitsy wasn’t sure what possessed her to do such a thing, but it felt right to do it.

  Some nice men in an ambulance came to take them to a hospital, and that was all right with Bitsy. They took the pretty airport lady too. That was good. The ambulance men put their stretchers side by side in the back of the ambulance. She could hear the sirens but couldn’t see the lights.

  Twenty-four hours before, the thought of riding in an ambulance as it raced down the highway with its lights flashing and siren blaring would have been almost as exciting as the idea of going up in a plane. But all she could think of was the nice lady next to her, who hadn’t said a word since the mean lady hit her with a bucket.

  What if she died? What if she died because she tried to stop the mean lady from hurting Bitsy?

  She was strapped down to the stretcher with belts crossing her legs, waist, and chest, but her arms were free. During an all too brief moment when the pain in her insides relented, Bitsy reached a tentative hand across the gap, her right arm barely long enough to touch the woman’s left. She tried to lay a finger on her, wanting to offer some comfort, but the ambulance hit a bump and all she managed to do was graze the back of the woman’s wrist with a fingernail.

  Bitsy’s mommy was always on her about her fingernails. I swear we just cut these two days ago. Did Daddy buy you those fancy fingernail steroid vitamins again?

  The question always made her laugh, then she’d sit still and let Mommy trim them. They forgot to cut Bitsy’s nails before the plane trip. Bitsy hoped she hadn’t scratched the lady too badly.

  Before she could try again, the pain returned. Bitsy imagined her guts like a wet washcloth with someone using both hands to wring it first one way, then the other. As water ran off a twisted cloth, so too did fluid run out of her, joining the drying mess already staining her underclothes.

  The doctors in the hospital tried to help her. They poked holes in her arms and took tubes of blood. They sent warm liquid through a vein and ran her whole body into a large donut that whirred and hummed. In the end, they pounded on her chest and sent jolts of electricity like snakes of ice through her body, but it didn’t help.

  Bitsy was dead.

  Then she wasn’t.

  Now she was become.

  Twenty-four hours before she was Mommy’s angel and Daddy’s little girl. She liked unicorns and fairies, adored Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and dreamed of getting a Nintendo Switch for Christmas.

  Now, she walked down the streets of Greenwood, Mississippi, holding her mother’s hand. The image they portrayed wouldn’t be considered odd at any other time, except they were out in the middle of the night and one of them had on an open-in-the-back gown with nothing underneath to cover her tiny bottom. Behind them the small hospital descended into a place of the dead, as other become tore from room to room, transforming those who could become and killing those who couldn’t.

  Mommy was also become. Bitsy had changed her.

  But there was a difference between them.

  Bitsy was something more than mommy.

  She didn’t know how she knew it any more than she could explain why it should be. It simply was.

  Bitsy was more. Bitsy was the leader. What she bade, her mother would do. As would most become. She knew that, too.

  There was sense of her father, somewhere to the east.

  There was a drive to spread, to make more become.

  And there was a need to settle, to coalesce the become into a form of society never seen in the history of the world.

  All of this she must do.

  But first, she had to find her father. He was becoming. He would become more, just like her.

  It shouldn’t have been possible for her to resist the instinctive drive to settle. Defense came with numbers. Strength came with numbers. The ability to overpower another’s defense came with numbers. Whether bacteria, virus, or thinking man, this simple truth was known to all.

  But blood was thicker and, for now, she was able to hold instinct back and seek the man she loved above all others.

  So they walked, heading east on route 82, entering a little town called Browning.

  In a rural place like this, the sidewalks rolled up at dusk and nothing opened before nine a.m. There would be a crosshatch of people. Farmers who still rose with the sun living side by side with city workers who wanted to sleep in country air, commuters who might rise just as early in order to start their daily trek. Most of the crossing streets had numbers instead of names, 105, and 171. A small convenience store tucked behind a long driveway proclaimed Lu’s Food Market in darkened letters. Even the gas pumps were turned off.<
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  Just past Lu’s was a store selling construction equipment, and beyond that was a place Bitsy remembered well. The white G on a blue background signified Goodwill everywhere in the country. Twice a year, usually before her birthday and Christmas, Bitsy was asked to collect toys and stuffed animals she no longer played with. Mommy would go through her drawers and remove clothes she’d outgrown. Together they’d make the short trip to their neighborhood Goodwill, where a polite old man who couldn’t talk always smiled at Bitsy through the back windows of their car. He’d take the heavy boxes out of the trunk and give mommy a slip of paper, though Bitsy had no idea what it said. Maybe it was a thank you note. Maybe he wrote out a bunch of them every day to hand out because he couldn’t talk. Mommy smiled at the suggestion, but said his name was Mr. Franks, and he lost his voice box when he got cancer in his throat. Mommy explained there were a lot of people in the world, even in their own city, who didn’t have enough money no matter how hard they worked. Those people would come to a place like Goodwill where they could buy some things which might not be brand new but were a whole lot less expensive than what was available in the regular stores.

  The Bitsy who’d become didn’t care about money or the lack thereof. She remembered the explanation in the same dispassionate way a computer opens a file in a folder. It was information there for the taking, without context or recalled emotion.

  It was a place where there would be clothes.

  Bitsy had on only a hospital gown, and mother’s clothes were stained with all manner of foul liquids.

  Instinct drove her to find clothing which wouldn’t occasion comment.

  They would also need to eat soon. All new become needed to feed. But their new state of being was one where feeding would be far less frequent.

  None of the other become from the airport or the hospital had rampaged this way. That would change, probably within the next day. They were content to roam the hospital and surrounding area.