by Pike, JJ
They were close enough now to see. She wished they weren’t. The raccoons took off as she stood, scampering into the undergrowth, all cute and deadly. Don’t mess with raccoons. They’ll take you down and mess you up something fierce.
Sean joined her, whistling under his breath. “Gross.”
Hedwig wished they could cut the rope that held the dead man aloft. In another dimension, where MELT had never been released, she would saw through the rope, hold him so he didn’t crumple as he fell, and wrap his body in what remained of his uniform. Then she would take the shiny, medals on his chest and place them in his hand so he’d know someone got it. He’d been valiant, brave, rewarded for taking chances for his fellow man.
She longed to dig a deep hole; deep enough that the animals couldn’t gnaw on his face anymore. His eyes were gone. His nose hung to one side. His cheekbones were sticking out of the flesh that hung from his face. But there was no touching dead things. Not now. Not ever. Whoever he was, he was going to have to swing in the trees and be stripped to the bone by the carrion seekers.
“Do you want to say it this time?” They took turns praying for the dead.
“Lord. Into your hands we commend his spirit.” Sean turned and walked away.
She dialed up her connection to God. He nodded. A happy-sad look on his face. Was that what God looked like when you were called home? Sad that your life was over but glad to have you back?
“I don’t know if this was a good man who was punished for the wrong reasons. Or a bad man who was punished for the right reasons. But he’s dead and it’s awful and I’d like there to be no more deaths, please.”
God nodded. Didn’t say anything. She knew what it meant, though. Good or bad, He wrapped them in His grace if and when they asked for His mercy.
Hedwig brushed away a stray tear, not sure if she was crying for the dead man or God or something else.
She trotted after Sean. The rustling of the leaves at her back told her the raccoons had been lying in wait. They hadn’t even bolted. Just paused their feast while the walking-talking humans with the exploding fire-sticks invaded their repast.
Let it go, Hedwig. Concentrate on things you can control.
Jim and Betsy's property—with its never-ending stash of pre-plastic goodies—was to the right, less than a mile over the rise. The Everly’s property was straight ahead. Well, it wasn’t a property so much as a burnt out series of holes in the ground. Barb had made that piece of land her home.
Barb had never said how she had single-handedly dug a pit twenty feet long by twenty feet wide by two feet deep and turned it into her home. Or where found she’d the logs that were her walls. Or how she’d secured a roof of woven reeds so high in the trees. It wasn’t like the dogs could climb up there and help her. The massive leaves that made up her outer walls were stitched together with bark and magic and kept the rain out and the heat in. Her place was well-ventilated; had a perma-fire that spanned the center of her pit; and was festooned with dried and drying herbs and spices, mushrooms and wild onions, fistfuls of garlic and once-leafy greens. She’d made it through the winter; outtalked and outwitted bikers, gun runners, looters, and the military; showed no signs of the disease; and was still rescuing dogs (cats, birds, iguanas, etc.; in short: anything that had been domesticated and left behind). She was the ultimate survivor and would outlive them all. Even if the platoon had made it to her encampment she’d have set her pack on them and run them all the way to the Canadian border. She’d be fine. They’d get to her soon enough.
Sean was dead still at the top of the rise looking down toward Jim and Betsy’s place. The plan was to head in there on their way back to the mines. There was still viable stuff in the house. Viable meaning pre-plastic and pre-polyester goodies. Knowing old people and having access to their attic had pretty much saved her new family. Without those supplies they’d all have been running around naked.
She crested the rise and joined Sean, whose mouth hung open. The hole in the ground where Jim’s garage once stood knocked the breath out of her.
Hedwig realized she’d been waiting—hoping it would never happen, but still actively waiting—for Jim’s garage to implode or explode or slide into the earth of its own accord ever since Aggie had told her about the MELT-infected bodies they’d stashed in there. But knowing it was coming and actually seeing the devastation were two completely different animals.
It would never be a “good thing” that Jim and Betsy were dead. She assumed they were; otherwise why hadn’t they come home to take care of Bryony; she talked about her Uncle Jim more than she talked about her dead mother. If they’d seen the cars jumbled together, sticking out of the ground—wheels gone, paint stripped, windows fallen in, upholstery eaten away leaving the sad iron bones of the once-resplendent cars exposed to the elements—they’d have been majorly bummed.
Hedwig took the map from her top pocket, added the hanged man, and scratched out the garage with a series of Xs. Aggie would know what that meant.
With MELT so close and so active they had to slow their pace and keep their eyes on the ground.
She hadn’t seen a single dog and she couldn’t smell Barb’s usual herb-y rabbit stew.
The wind is coming from behind us, that’s all, she told herself. Barb is cooking up something for us right this minute. She would have heard the patrol coming long before their boots made a sound in the leaves. She would have hidden in the semi-sunk tent-home-thingie that she’d built on the land the Everlees had once called home.
And, anyway…
God wouldn’t let Barb die.
And if He did…
If He had…
Her stomach flipped sending jets of acid up her throat. She grabbed Sean and pulled him away from a dip in the ground. It was new. Probably an animal burrow. But what if MELT had made it from the garage into the well water or the stream out back of Jim and Betsy’s place and, from there, out under the entire property? What if they were walking on MELT right this minute?
No, that was dumb. There would have been more decomp if MELT was in the groundwater. Animals would have crawled to the surface trying to escape the inevitable. If the whole compound had been infected there’d be more carcasses.
Not just the human pile.
There’d be possums and raccoons and rats and mice and…
Oh, shoot. If the raccoons were eating the hanged man, were they about to get infected? Or had he died of something other than MELT? People did. It could have been treason or sedition or going AWOL. The Army killed so many of their own…
He could have been swinging for weeks…
The worst was not knowing. What was that meme? The one about Schrödinger’s virus? You had to assume you were and weren’t infected; were and weren’t a liability; were and weren’t about to die. She’d have given anything to be doing just that—thinking it through while laughing at memes—instead of creeping toward the death of someone she’d come to love.
Barb wasn’t old enough to be a grandmother, but she felt like that, sweet and knowledgeable and safe.
Hedwig’s gun dug into her back. It was a sign. She trusted her gut these days. If her sixth sense said it was time to draw her weapon she’d do it without hesitation. She tapped Sean and gestured at his .45. His eyebrows went up, but he did as he was told.
The noise came after they’d both drawn. A wail. Human. Probably. It was high and long. Almost a scream.
Screw safety. If Barb was still alive they could save her.
She ran. Hard. A look down every three paces careful not to trip a wire and bring something tumbling down on her head. Barb had rigged the perimeter of her home so she’d at least take a few invaders out each time they trespassed on her land. Hedwig had to trust He would guide her steps. The blood pounded behind her eyes and in her ears and all over the places that made her sweat and panic and imagine the worst.
Barb dying. Barb in agony. Barb being eaten by raccoons.
The last few hundred yards stretched out.
Barb had made her home in the thickest copse of trees on the three properties right at the bottom of what had been the Everlee’s garden. It put her close to a water source but gave her cover.
The screaming hadn’t stopped.
Neither had Hedwig. She fought her way through the heavy, wooden door and into Barb’s tent in the woods.
Aggie stood at the far edge of Barb’s makeshift living room screaming, her face streaked with tears. “They shot her.” She covered her mouth with her hand. To no avail. The noises kept coming out of her. “Why? Why would anyone want to hurt Barb?”
Barb was on the ground, her head propped on her beloved KC’s side. In a tableau that defied logic, scores of her beloved dogs sat in a circle around the woman who’d saved them. They were standing watch. Not barking or lunging or snarling. Just watching. Lexie, the heeler mix, stood apart from the crowd over by the door flap. She hadn’t made a peep when they’d come in. So much for being a guard dog.
Hedwig fell to her knees. “Where? Where is she shot? Is she alive?”
Aggie pointed, but she was so far away she could have been pointing at Barb’s leg or chest or whatever.
“Hush now. Don’t you be making a fuss.” Barb’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it was a voice. Alive. Telling them off. Wonderful.
Hedwig scanned the woman’s body but could see no blood. “Aggie, help me.” She looked up but Aggie was gone. Darn it. That girl and her disappearing act. What was her deal? No one needed that much alone time.
“There.” Sean pointed at Barb’s arm. It was bandaged. So, not a new wound. Good.
She hunted for Barb’s pan, filled it with rainwater from the barrel outside the door, and held it to Barb’s lips.
Barb drank. “Over there…” She lifted a finger and pointed at Willy, the Jack Russell who was part circus dog and part ratter.
“Move, Willy.” Hedwig knew where Barb kept her meds. Safe in the ground. She shifted the little dog and wiped away the topsoil to reveal a small box. She took it to Barb who flipped it open and felt about, eyes closed, until she found a sachet. It smelled like earth and rot and violets and something pungent Hedwig had never come across before. “All of it? In the water?”
Barb laughed. “Only if you want to get me high. One pinch of the yellow powder. In warm water. Not boiling. One sip at a time.”
Hedwig administered the medicine and waited, her guts in convoluted knots, her friend Sean fussing with the dogs, her soon-to-be-sister-in-law Aggie in the wind, and Barb phasing in and out.
In and out.
In.And.Out.
CHAPTER TEN
YEAR ZERO, DAY SIXTY-EIGHT
The days are cold, but the nights are colder. If my calculations are right, it’s November. We’ve been on the move for three months, but we’re only averaging a mile and a half a day.
I have come to the conclusion that I made the wrong call. I’ve amassed no useful data and made no contribution to the science. Maybe Michael’s right. This is a pointless mission. We should be out west, with the uninfected, making a difference (whatever that means).
DAY SEVENTY
Hoyt graciously invited me to join him on a briefing call. Part of me wishes I hadn’t.
DATA POINTS. The conversation was wide-ranging, repetitive, and didn’t follow a plan as far as I could tell. I’ve tried to recreate the session as best I can, though it might be more useful to organize these data points into actionable items and see where that takes us:
The gyres in the Atlantic are holding MELT’s eastward progress at bay. The North Atlantic Garbage Patch is estimated to be hundreds of kilometers wide with a density of 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometer.
MELT has reached Canada and there are unconfirmed reports it may have reached Iceland.
The “small donut” approach (to containing nuclear power stations and other places that contain hazardous chemicals, waste, etc.) is under review. It’s not clear that it’s viable.
The EU is sending their garbage out to sea. The debate about whether to feed or starve MELT has not been resolved.
There’s no vaccine or treatment.
There is a second wave.
MELT requires plastic to survive. (This suggests the “starvation” method is the only real solution, right?)
The human body is full of plastic. It is not excreted (as we had once hoped).
The only people who are KNOWN to have survived the infection are Angelina (patient zero) and General Hoyt. This explains why they’re so eager to airdrop sheets of plastic. They’re keeping their specimens alive. (NOTE TO SELF: Are we all specimens?)
MELT has killed an estimated 12 million Americans. That’s just an estimate. I’m guessing it’s higher. How can they know who made it out of New York and who didn’t? Ditto the surrounding states.
The conversation about how much plastic is in the human body lasted for over an hour (mostly because Christine was attempting to drill down into the numbers), but the most recent study was years out of date and while there was a team working on “how to rid the human body of microplastics and nanoplastics” they ALL agreed that results would be years in the making.
I raised the issue of immunity but was shut down.
Colonel Livio advised that we were being re-routed (again!) because of “a collapse.”
I argued (pretty forcefully) that we were serving no useful purpose. If we can’t contain Indian Point (and it seems clear to me we won’t be able to approach it ourselves) SURELY they should be focusing on MELT containment given that there are hundreds of nuclear reactors across the United States.
No answer.
I asked, point blank, what we were doing and why our orders were to “continue on” but all I got was “we’re mapping the line.”
Let’s talk about that for a moment. General Hoyt is a good man, but he’s already chock-full of MELT so you might argue that he’s one of the walking dead. I understand why HE thinks this might be a good use of his skill and/or last days on the planet. He’s okay with walking into the hot zone to see whether there are live patches, working out how to shore those up, deciding where to take action wherever they’re going to take action (once someone pulls their finger out and comes up with a way to stop this thing).
I don’t know that I am okay with walking toward my death.
And as for Christine Baxter, while VERY annoying, she is one of the world’s leading authorities on MELT. Surely she should NOT be put in harm’s way?
NOTES TO SELF:
Tuskegee (syphilis).
San Quentin (testicular transplants; goats, hogs, pigs, humans).
San Francisco (poison fog experiments).
University of Iowa (radioactive iodine, pregnancy).
These are just off the top of my head. There are thousands more.
CONCLUSION: We’re the rats, this is the maze.
The diary ends here. Alice Everlee and her dog disappeared on November 23. They haven’t been seen in the two weeks since. While I appreciate what she was trying to do (keep an account of our progress), I’m disheartened to find myself the villain of the piece.
What’s interesting is what she’s MISSED.
The vaccines. It’s all about the vaccines.
But she was right about one thing: We’re lab rats. Our own government is using us to determine whether their MELT vaccine is working. The mystery of it is: I no longer seem to care.
Michael Rayton, December 6, 2021
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARCH 2022
Triple-H had picked the smallest domicile available in Wolfjaw Down when they were handing out residences because, in his own words, “Ain’t no one ever going to put up with Triple-H long enough to shack up with him.”
“Anyone home?” Jacinta stood in the doorway, unwilling to enter in case his latest exhibition involved interactive pieces (tripwires, dangling surprises, things that go “boo” when you least expect them to). It was a good thing he was at the end of the corridor and his nearest neig
hbor several feet away. The smell. It wasn’t rank, exactly, but it was headed in that direction.
He reared up out of the darkness and stood at the mouth of his cave, filling the doorway. “Hunter Hensworth Higgs, Triple-H, at your service.”
Jacinta had to do a double take. Even by his standards, Triple-H had pushed the whackadoo boat out. He had on his usual Stetson and cowboy boots, but his long, swishy, Doc-Holliday-style coat was hung with a hundred fishhooks. He pointed at his chest. “This is romaine. Charis Erlichman gave Triple-H that the day before last. It has shriveled, but Triple-H remembers it in its prime.” He leaned forward and whispered. “Triple-H can’t tell you why she came here, because that would be telling and Triple-H never tells, but let’s just say, she got what she came for.”
Jacinta scanned the coat. Were they all bits of food? No, there was a scrap of something else—fabric maybe? leather?—she couldn’t tell what.
“It’s the going rate.” He waved his hand up and down his coat. “You want something from Triple-H, you offer up a token of your appreciation or affection.”
Jacinta patted her pockets. The bar of chocolate. Forbidden, even for her. She couldn’t pull it out in the corridor. It would signal that this was a high-stakes conversation and she didn’t want that. She could feel eyes following her wherever she went and Triple-H’s hole in the wall home was no exception. “Could we step inside, H?”
“Triple-H, please.”
“Sorry. Yes. Could we go inside, Triple-H? It’s a private matter…”
“You pay the piper before you cross the river. That’s the way it’s always been. What if you get to the other side and you don’t like what you see, eh? Not Triple-H’s problem. Payment for services rendered before services are rendered, sorry.”
They were wasting time. She felt the clock ticking away in the back of her mind. She dug her hand into her pocket and retrieved the bar of dark chocolate and stuffed it into his hand.
Triple-H’s face lit up. “Now we’re talking.”