by Anselmo, Ray
This body hadn’t been touched by anyone. He was slumped against the steering wheel of a Volvo, eyes open and jaw hanging, one hand splayed on the dashboard, the other at his side as if he’d been about to reach out and close the passenger-side door but hadn’t made it in time. And the smell was the smell of someone who’d been dead for a few days – he didn’t look like he was rotting, but the stench was unmistakable.
For once, she was glad she had a very strong gag reflex. As a child when she swallowed something she shouldn’t have, Mom would have to give her syrup of ipecac to make her throw up. It was the only thing that worked – even the finger-down-the-throat trick didn’t help. It had always been an inconvenience before. Now, though, it was keeping her breakfast in its proper place as she slowly backed away from the Volvo …
… into the Mercedes C230 Kompressor next door. Startled when she bumped into it, she turned around – and screamed.
Once she managed to silence herself, an eternity of maybe fifteen seconds later, she sat on the grass of the nearest front lawn, stuck her head between her knees and did her best to breathe normally again before glancing up at the Kompressor again. No, her eyes hadn’t deceived her; yes, that was a woman and her daughter in the front seat; yes, Mommy should’ve put her in back in a DOT-approved booster; no, that didn’t matter anymore because they were both dead …
More breathing practice was needed once her brain processed more information: yes, that was Wendy Harring, a regular customer at SBN&N whose hubby was a derivatives trader at one of the big San Francisco investment firms. And their seven-year-old daughter Taylor, always cute and bubbly when she came in the store and had a hankering for spearmint chewing gum. The Harrings were residents of Sayler Beach, not just vacationers, so she’d see them a couple of times a week.
And they were dead. Gone. Wendy would never share her discovery of a new salad recipe again. Taylor would no longer say “thank you” for a package of Wrigley’s, or skip down the aisles singing the Sid the Science Kid theme.
“Oh, God, what’s happening?” Kelly moaned.
She needed to take more time to think this through, to get her wheels back under her. She pulled out her phone and tried calling numbers again, but gave up after the third one – there was still nobody answering, not even 911. 911 never shut down – the whole point of 911 was that there was always someone there in an emergency! If no one was picking up the phones there (and it appeared no one was, there wasn’t even a busy signal, just endless ringing), then … then this was even worse than it looked. Which didn’t seem possible, but …
“Don’t. Panic,” she ordered herself. The last thing she needed was to freak out, especially since her meds were back at the Matchicks’ house. Losing her cool wouldn’t help anyone right now – not her, not anyone else.
Since her phone was still in her hand, she started checking news websites again. Nothing had changed on the AP site, so she tried Reuters, CNN, RawStory, NBC, Buzzfeed, Yahoo News. Not one of them had a post later than Thursday, and they all pretty much said the same thing – millions known dead, billions unknown, world in chaos, symptoms like flu, then tiredness and brain death. Fox News was even less useful – their last post was Wednesday, and blamed the outbreak on the current administration because reasons.
Would the international news be any better, she wondered. She racked her brain for names of organizations. Al-Jazeera … no help. Agence France-Presse, ditto. Xinhua, same. Crud, she used to know more of them, back in college, but when was the last time she had to worry about getting urgent updates from Japan or Italy? Oh, CBC … no, nothing more there either. The BBC had a post from Friday, but it only said they were currently too shorthanded to operate and were shutting down until the pandemic passed.
Kelly looked around her. Until it passed … but what if it had only passed because almost no one was left to get sick?
That was when she realized how quiet it was. She could hear birds, mostly seagulls looking for rubbish to nosh on or strafing the crustaceans down on the beach a few blocks away. She could pick out the distant chuff of the waves coming in off the Pacific. Somewhere, a dog barked hoarsely. But no sounds of people – no joggers stamping by, no parents calling their children, no children playing games, no headache-inducing thud of teenagers with subwoofers bigger than their heads and the latest Migos mixtape driving down the road …
Come to think, no one had come down the road for the last … how long had she been sitting there? She checked her phone – a half-hour at least. And not one car had rolled by, not one bike, not one pedestrian, not one senior citizen in a mobility cart. Sayler Beach had over three hundred people, not counting vacationers, in less than a square mile of space. She hadn’t seen or heard even one since she left the house – not a live one, anyway.
Could she be … nah, that only happened in the movies. It would make no sense. Except … “Well, Kel, do you have a better explanation?” she muttered.
Item one: lots of news about a dread disease wiping out who knew how many millions, and none of it more recent than three days ago; since then, silence on all websites. Item two: the Harrings and the other guy, who she didn’t know, dead in their cars. Item three: nobody picking up the phone, anywhere. Item four: no one moving around or making any noise.
Hypothesis: was she the only person left alive in the entire town?
Extension of hypothesis: was she the only person left alive in the entire world?
Head between the knees again. Maybe it was true, but she was clearly in no shape to think about it. Not that she ever was. Maybe she should go back to the Matchicks’ and get her meds. She usually took them in the evening, but if she needed a little extra help, it wouldn’t kill her to do so now. Two of them, that’s what they were for – in case of emergency, break pills.
Pills got her thinking about medicine, which led her back to the outbreak of whatever it was. Item five: the symptoms described in the news reports were what she’d experienced the last week, except that she wasn’t dead now. She’d recovered.
Hypothesis: she’d gotten the bug and survived it. Extension of hypothesis: other people had too, maybe even Dad and Mom and Brad. Maybe someone else in town, who was either still recovering, too scared to come out or just far enough away to not have alerted her to their presence yet. Or someone in the next town. It was only logical to think that she wasn’t the only one who’d gotten better, or that some hadn’t gotten sick at all.
But what did logic have to do with a worldwide plague happening all in a week?
She shook her head. She didn’t know enough to be sure of much beyond this being really, really bad. She needed to think this through, get her emotions strapped down and work out what to do. And sitting on someone’s lawn looking at a couple of corpses was not the way to do it, or the place to.
Plan: go back home, take a couple of pills, break out a notepad and do some serious pondering.
Kelly stood, took a deep breath and walked back to the Matchicks’, making sure not to look at the Kompressor or the Volvo – it wouldn’t help them or her. In fact, she made sure not to look in any other vehicles as well. She was feeling shaky enough already – no point in making it worse. Anyone there was either dead and couldn’t be helped, or alive and able to help themselves.
Back in familiar territory, she went to the kitchen, filled a glass of water, took it to her room and used it to wash down a lamotrigine and an aspirin. In the office, she found a yellow legal pad and a pen, and sat at Saul Matchick’s desk to get her thoughts organized, to figure out what to do next. She wrote down all her items and hypotheses, and a list of the people and places she’d tried to call. She was surprised at how long the list was, and frightened by it too – by the law of averages, there should’ve been someone at one of them, at least. Unless …
Unless things had gone completely to pieces. Unless there were too few people left to mind any of them. Unless not just the news media, but every system was abandoned.
She flipped the f
irst sheet over and started on a second. The internet was still up, even if nothing new was being posted. The electricity still worked. Water still came from the tap. But for how long? How many days could they keep going without constant attention or maintenance? She had no idea. She’d never lived in a place that didn’t have electricity and gas and running water and everything else that made modern society go. At thirty-two, she was barely old enough to remember not having constant Web access.
Hypothesis: over the next several months, maybe the next several days, all of them were going to disappear. Which meant everything connected to them would shut down. Darn near everything was electric nowadays, from refrigerators to street lights to gasoline pumps. She had a car, a little Hyundai Accent hatchback with 120,000 miles on it, and she’d filled up the tank just before she got the flu (if it was the flu and not the outbreak), but would she ever be able to fill it again? Or even use the radio?
Huh. Odd that it hadn’t occurred to her to check the radio or television, even after trying to call the local stations. If someone was out there and attempting to contact others, breaking into a radio station would be a logical way to do it. She ran to the den and turned on the big plasma TV Saul and his friends liked to watch the Warriors games on, hoping against hope.
Her hopes were soon dashed. The cable was still working, but every channel was either static or dead black. Not even the public access scroll was operating. Switching it off, she turned to – and on – the stereo and tried every frequency she could think of. Nothing but hash and crackle. Nothing. She turned it off in frustration. Darn, she shouldn’t have gotten excited about the possibility.
Okay. Thoughts processed. One more idea tried, unsuccessfully. What next? Well, she still hadn’t gotten to the store. And for her own sanity’s sake, she really needed to visit the store. She checked the time on her phone – 9:18. Had it really been less than two hours since she first called the store and no one picked up? Well, a lot had happened in those two hours. Correction: nothing had happened, but she’d found out a lot that had happened previously. Found out more than she was prepared to handle, to be frank about it.
Another glass of water gave her a minute to try and calm herself. She was going to SBN&N before she was interrupted by spotting the dead man in the Volvo. Having no better idea at the moment, she might as well head there again. It might help. If nothing else, she could confirm why no one answered her call. It was a start. It was all she had right now.
Back out the door. Back down the street. Take it easy. Don’t look in the cars. Don’t look in anyone’s window or backyard. Now was not the time to get curious, not given what she’d seen already. She felt like she was held together with Scotch tape and twisty ties – she shouldn’t push her luck.
Down the street. Here was the Volvo with the open door. She closed it. Not sure why – maybe because now it didn’t look so out of place, or out of respect for whoever the driver was, or … never mind. It was open, she closed it, keep walking toward the store, that was the goal.
She passed the Molinaros’ house and thought about stopping to check on them. She got halfway up the walk before she caught herself. If the Molinaros were … were like the Harrings and the man in the Volvo, did she want to know? Put another way, could she handle knowing that right now? She was already shaking so much she felt like she might vibrate to pieces, and she still hadn’t checked the store. If she went someplace else, at the rate she was going she might never get to work.
She gritted her teeth, backed away from the two-story house with the copper-colored trim and resumed her journey. Keep walking. Keep walking. She kept telling herself that.
And finally she was standing in the little parking lot. Around the corner were the sliding glass doors of the entrance. Would they be locked? Or still working, having never been shut down before everyone … she felt tears welling up and willed them back. No, she had to be strong. Regardless of what was going on, she had to keep it together, because if she fell apart, she might not get herself reassembled again. If the world had gone to Hell, the last thing she needed was to break down.
She swallowed, went around the corner, walked toward the doors. They slid aside like magic, open sesame, just like it was a normal Monday morning and everything was fine. She looked to the left, and there was Ganj, slumped over the counter but clearly not taking a nap – he looked boneless. And sitting by the soda fridge, leaning against it like a puppet with strings cut, was Bilbo – Bill Phelan, who got his nickname naturally due to his short stocky build, hairy feet and passion for Dungeons & Dragons.
Kelly froze except for her head, which turned as she scanned the area. Nobody else. Nobody alive. No one but her. And there was just the slightest smell of decay.
SHHHHHHH! She jumped as the little sprinklers in the produce section kicked on, keeping the lettuce and celery and kale damp and fresh. Food no one would buy again …
Her feet started moving without her even thinking. Down the main aisle, checking each section. No one. No one. No one. No one. No … NO!
Of all people, it had to be Rose Li and her year-old son. She’d collapsed face-first in the pasta and canned goods aisle. Tiny Chun was still seated in the cart, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle, his mouth open in a silent wail.
Kelly sprinted from the store, fell to her knees outside the still-working doors, and wept and screamed until she couldn’t anymore.
3
SEARCH
It took about ten minutes for Kelly to stop making noise, and another ten for her to stand. Exactly how were you supposed to act when everyone around you was dead? No class or seminar ever covered that scenario. She pictured Cillian Murphy wandering through London in a hospital gown in 28 Days Later, and realized he didn’t have a clue what to do either until he ran into another survivor. Though if Noemie Harris came around the corner with a machine gun, she knew she’d lose it all over again.
Besides, if she was going to start taking life tips from movies, she was probably screwed before she started.
She needed to get her emotions out of the way as much as possible and deal with facts. She knocked the bits of gravel off her pants and took a deep breath. Fact: everyone in the store was dead. Everyone she’d seen so far this morning was dead. Fact: there were all those reports about a pandemic and lots of people dying. Fact: she was not dead. That was an important one – she was still around, still breathing, still standing in the parking lot.
That brought her back to the earlier hypothesis: if she was alive, someone else was too. Sayler Beach had a few hundred people, and at least one – her – had survived whatever this was. So two could’ve, right? Or four, or ten, or … who knew?
Not her, but it would be a good idea to find out, wouldn’t it? Yes, it would. How?
Okay, that was tougher to answer, but she had a car with a full gas tank, and Sayler Beach was not large. It wasn’t a city, it wasn’t even really a town. It was a “census designated place.” She could go around all of it in an hour or two while … yelling or something, no, there had to be a better way to do this. Think, Kel … she needed to make some noise, get the attention of whoever might still be stirring.
Oh, that might work. Her coworker Sarah was politically active, often going to San Rafael or San Francisco on her days off to protest. And she owned a bullhorn. She could borrow Sarah’s …
But that would mean going to Sarah’s place, a rental house she shared with LaSheba and Vivi Fifi and two other girls. (Young women, really. Once Kelly passed thirty she’d started thinking of any woman much younger than her as a “girl.” Ageist, but whatever.) If Sarah was dead too – and given Ganj’s first message about her going home sick from work, that seemed likely – she’d have to deal with that. Was she prepared to deal with it? Seeing Ganj and Bilbo and the Harrings and the Lis and the guy in the Volvo had really done her in – twice, in one morning.
Emotions, take a seat. She’d need to deal with it eventually, and getting it over with seemed like a good idea.
She’d go to Sarah’s, see what had happened to what she thought of as “the party of five” (and boy, could they party!) and either ask to borrow her bullhorn or just borrow it, depending on whether there was someone to ask. Simple. Straightforward. Go.
She went, back up the street, away from the store. Past the Molinaros’ …
Once again she found herself heading up their walk toward the front door. You know, she really should check on them. They were in town at last check, and she did work for them, and she considered them friends, just like she considered her coworkers friends. Before anything else, she should look in on them – even if it was probable that she wouldn’t like what she found. She felt obligated.
She hesitated, though. It would not be pleasant if she found what she expected to find. But nothing about this was going to be pleasant – people were dead. No yippee skippee about that. Nothing had been pleasant since she first left the house that morning. But she could still do it. It was A Thing She Could Do, and one she thought she ought to.
Standing there, she pulled out the notes she’d scribbled before, then a pen, and started listing all the people in town she’d want to know the fate of above all others. The Molinaros, obvs. Sarah and LaSheba and Vivi and their roommates. Ravinder – he shared an apartment with Bilbo on Ensign Drive. Pablo Amendola, the volunteer firefighter she’d dated for a few months before they discovered they bored each other silly, but they were still friendly. Chandra, who worked at the Spinnaker Inn – didn’t she live in the same complex as Rav and Bilbo?