Radio Nowhere

by Lee Beard

  By mid-afternoon, Zach had deep-cleaned the entire house. After folding the laundry and taking care of the dishes, he turned on the radio and got so lost in the music that he forgot that he hated vacuuming. It was only when he heard a loud knock at the door that he snapped out of it. Zach opened the door to Connie standing at the bottom of the stairs. Her face was red and her eyes were almost swelled shut. She held a pie in her hands.

  “Hi, Zach,” she said, sniffing slightly. “What are you doing home so early?”

  “Work got canceled,” he replied. “Pandemic scare.”

  “Oh,” she said with a nod. “Is your mama home?”

  “No ma’am, I’m not sure where she went,” he replied. “I could call her if you want, though.”

  “No, no. That’s okay. I just thought I’d stop by and bring her this.” She lifted the pie slightly. “I’ve been baking a lot lately. It keeps…keeps my mind off…”

  Zach shifted on his feet. “Hey…would you like to come inside? My mom should be back soon.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, wiping a tear off her cheek.

  Zach and Connie reminisced about Oleson for an hour, in which time all but one slice of apple pie went missing. Connie tearfully recalled when Oleson brought her pie plate back to her, and how he’d actually combed his hair for the occasion. Zach then brought up Oleson’s experimental self-inflicted bowl cut – “the Bowleson” – sending them both into a fit of laughter.

  “I’m going to miss him,” Connie said softly, a small smile resting on her lips. “He was a good…a great man.”

  “He was that.”

  “I still don’t know how…he was so…” she trailed off and looked up at Zach, whose face fell. The puffiness in her face had gone down considerably, and Zach suddenly noticed how yellow her eyes were.

  “Well, I’d better get home now,” she said, yawning. “Tell your mama I stopped by, and that I’m sorry I missed her.”

  “Will do.”

  After Connie left, Zach grabbed the home phone and called his mom’s cell, leaving a message asking her to call him at Oleson’s.

  When Zach reached Oleson’s trailer, he went straight to his chair. He looked at the Map and quickly found Canadian Dave’s pushpin. He flipped the switches, and tuned to Dave’s frequency.

  “…not sure what to think, honestly. Facepage is down, Tweetser is down, hell, even my kid’s Animal Playhouse site is down.”

  “Sounds like the Feds don’t want us talking about it. Everything goes through the internet these days so why would the phones still work but not websites?”

  “Always knew something like this would happen. Me and mine are holed up in our cabin, got plenty of supplies.”

  “My family is stuck in the quarantine zone and I can’t get to them. What do I do now?”

  Zach stared at the microphone. Licking his lips, he picked up the mic. “K2OLS listening.”

  “K2OLS, welcome to the freak-out zone. Call me Al, I hate my call sign.”

  “We’re not freaking out, we’re debating! I’m Sandra,” came another voice.

  “Wait… you’re not Oleson. Who is this?”

  “My name is Zach. Oleson…Oleson died two days ago.”

  “Ah, man… I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “I think…” he paused. “I think he might have had the virus.”

  “Holy-”

  “-my god.”

  “…no.”

  Zach shook slightly. “He was fine one day and the next he couldn’t move. I found him…he didn’t look the same. They said it was natural causes, but people who just die, they don’t go all yellow and pale, right?”

  Suddenly, a new voice sounded. “VYIFRD speaking. Zach, right? I think we talked the other night. It’s Dave.”

  “Dave! It’s good to hear you.”

  “I think you may be right…We haven’t had any incidents here yet, maybe because we’re so isolated…who knows? But my brother works in a morgue in Whitehorse and he said they’ve had fifty deaths, and they happened exactly like you described.”

  Zach swallowed hard. “Do they know what’s causing it?”

  “…no.”

  “Ok, thanks. I gotta go, now. K2OLS signing off.”

  Zach spent what felt like hours scanning the airwaves and listening to what other HAMs had to say. He used the Map, putting a red flag on every pushpin that reported at least fifty deaths. It was 2:00 AM by the time he ran out of flags. He stepped back from the board, now almost completely covered in red.

  “Oh, God,” he swallowed hard, mouth dry. “It’s an epidemic…”

  Chapter Nine

  On the Road, TX

  Thursday, Week Three

  Of the original passengers, only nine re-boarded the bus. Most spread themselves out so that each person had a couple of rows between them, except for Gina and Louis, who took the back row again. By late-afternoon, the heat had put half of the passengers to sleep with the other half staring vacantly out the windows.

  “What do you want to be?”

  Gina snapped out of her daydreaming and looked to her right. Louis was looking at her intently, bottom lip sucked into his mouth, patiently waiting for a response.

  “What?” She asked.

  “When you get older, I mean. What do you want to be?” He blinked rapidly. “Everyone’s got that one thing they wanna be, right?” Gina frowned slightly. “…or at least they did when they were younger?”

  “I don’t know,” she said finally, picking at her fingernails. “I mean, when I was a kid…” she trailed off, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Yeah?” Louis looked at her hopefully, giant eyes focused like search lights on her.

  “When I was a kid…I wanted to be an animal doctor.”

  “Ooh!” He said giddily. “Dr. Gina, veterinarian extraordinaire.”

  “No…it’s silly.” She said flatly.

  “No it’s not! You’d be great at it.” He smiled.

  “I think I mostly just wanted to be an anim – a veterinarian because I’ve always loved animals.” She absentmindedly reached down to pet Hank as she talked. “I always wanted to have a lot of them and love and take care of them so nothing bad would happen to them. Once I found this baby bunny-” she stopped cold as the memory of the rabbit she tried to rescue came back to her. She’d managed to hide it for three full days until Dirk found it under the porch, and then…she felt herself sink down into the seat and her body went numb as the memory sucked her in.

  “Are you okay?” Louis asked. Gina’s chest tightened and her head began to pound. She felt like she was on fire. Suddenly, she felt something cold and wet nudge her hand insistently. Hank whimpered, put his front paws in her lap and licked at her face, bringing her out.

  “Do I need to call someone?”

  Gina glanced at Louis. He frowned, wringing his hands.

  “No,” she said. “I just…what…what do you want to be?”

  “I want to work with alternative energy sources. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine!” She snapped. Louis sat back a little. “I’m fine.”

  They sat in silence a moment before Louis spoke up quietly. “I’m sorry for pushing you, I didn’t mean to go somewhere off-limits.”

  “It’s okay,” she said after a moment, “Thanks for apologizing. What do you mean ‘alternative energy sources’?”

  Louis brightened up. “Like hydroelectric and wind power and solar! I find it fascinating. I’ve even got my own solar charger, see?” He pointed to the other side of the aisle. Stuck to the window was a small black box with a cord running into his backpack on the seat. “It powers my devices. It’s really handy!” Gina nodded. “So,” Louis yawned and glanced ahead at the other passengers, lowering his voice. “Do you think anyone on the bus could have the virus?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Around midnight, Gina was still awake. The “what ifs” were back, and angrier than ever. Sh
e shifted to look out the window, careful to not disturb Hank’s head in her lap. The dog had taken Louis’s seat when he’d moved to the other side of the bus earlier to sleep. Images of the incinerated house flashed in and out of her mind. She imagined that by the time anyone noticed the smoke in the clouds and called on it, there would be very little left for the local police and firemen to salvage. Maybe there’d be only the collapsed shell of a house. If she was lucky, the sheriff would find the bottles and cigarettes and automatically rule it an accident. If she was even luckier, the police might be just lazy enough to forget she ever existed.

  A sudden rumbling from the right side of the bus knocked Gina out of her thoughts. She glanced up and noticed the bus veering onto the highway’s textured shoulder, heading straight for a metal guardrail. Alarmed, she looked to the driver’s seat and saw him slumped against the side window.

  Gina instinctively threw her seatbelt on and wrapped her arms around Hank’s middle. Before she could yell to the driver or other passengers, the bus smashed through the guardrail, throwing her forward against the strap. She glanced to her right and saw Louis pinned by his seatbelt. His head was drooped against his chest, eyes closed. As the bus careened off the road, Gina ducked her head down over Hank, squeezed her eyes shut, and held onto him for dear life. THUD. The bus hit a ravine and rolled, flipping completely. Hank yelped as the whole world turned upside down. Gina tensed every muscle in her body to keep from being flung about. The dog cried out and struggled as Gina tightened her grip on him.

  When the bus finally stopped moving, Gina opened her eyes. She was suspended upside down by her seatbelt, and her neck hurt. She immediately set the struggling Hank down on the new floor above her head, who ran down the aisle barking. He stopped to sniff and paw at one of the other passengers who hadn’t had her seatbelt on and was now lying face-down on the floor. Gina ducked her head and tucked herself into a ball as best she could before unhooking her seatbelt. Thump! She landed square on her spine. Groaning, she rolled over. There she saw Louis, dangling limply by his seatbelt. Blood dripped from his open mouth and his arms hung down above his head, swaying slightly.

  “Louis!” Gina went to him and grabbed his shoulders. She unhooked the seatbelt with some difficulty and tried to catch him as he hit the ground. When he was laid out, she dropped to her knees next to him. “Louis, can you hear me?” She gently slapped his face. “Come on…” She watched his chest, willing it to rise. It didn’t. She sat back slowly and stared numbly at him. The face that was so full of happiness earlier that day was expressionless. His characteristically rosy cheeks were deathly pale as blood continued to leak from the corner of his mouth.

  Suddenly, sirens echoed in the distance. Gina’s heart pounded. Police. If the police found her as the only survivor, there would be questions. Gina clambered quickly to her feet and ran down the aisle, stopping only to grab her duffel off the floor where it had skidded to. She carefully stepped over the woman lying in the aisle, her boots crunching on the glass from the shattered front window. She reached up and pulled the lever to open the door. Hoisting Hank over the shattered glass, she hopped out of the bus. Gina looked around wildly for an escape. A single car had pulled over on the highway, and the driver was on the phone but not watching the bus. The bus had stopped skidding a few yards from a sloped valley, and Gina could just make out a road at the bottom. She put Hank on the ground, grabbed his leash, and took off running down the hill.

  Chapter Ten

  Isherwood, PA

  Millie awoke suddenly. She was lying in her own bed, with no recollection as to how she got there. She sat up slowly, joints popping. She rolled her neck and stretched everything that ached. She grabbed for the lamp on her nightstand, but just knocked it onto the floor. She picked up the watch on her nightstand and moved it closer to her face. 11:20.

  “Dad?” She called, throat dry. Water, she needed water. When she slipped out of bed, her knees gave out immediately. Thud. “Ow…” She grabbed at the bed’s baseboard and managed to pull herself to a wobbly stand. She carefully took a few weak steps toward the bathroom door in the corner. She held onto the sink for dear life and flipped on the tap, bypassing the plastic water cup and sticking her mouth directly under the stream. When she finally had her fill, she turned back to the door.

  “Dad? Are you home?” Maybe he’s still at work, she thought, moving through her room toward the hallway. The house was dark and quiet, despite it being in the middle of the day. She flipped the hall light switch, but the light didn’t come on. She frowned at it and continued into the living room. “Hello?”

  After checking the kitchen and home office, Millie circled through the rest of the enormous house on the hunt for Dad. She made her way back down the hall and knocked on the always-closed door to her father’s room. “Dad, you in here?” She turned the knob and pushed the door open. Instantly, the smell of mothballs and Old Spice struck her nose. The room was dark, the only light coming from under the closed blinds on the far wall. Like in the hallway, the light switch didn’t work. As her eyes adjusted, Millie saw him lying asleep in bed. At eleven? Millie thought to herself, the man never sleeps past eight, especially not on a work day.

  “Dad?” She moved closer. “It’s after eleven, sleepyhead. It’s long past time to start the day.” She opened the blinds slightly, just enough to let in enough light to see by. “Also, let’s get some air freshener in here STAT.” She chuckled lightly and turned toward the bed. Millie gasped and fell back into the window. Her father’s face was sunken, his skin wrinkled and leathery. “…Dad?” She reached across the left side of the bed to put a hand on his face. It was cold. Her heart pounded audibly in her ears. She felt his stiff neck for a pulse. Nothing. “No…” She took a step back, shaking her head. “No, no no no. This isn’t- this-” She began to shake uncontrollably. “Daddy, please wake up!” She pleaded, not daring to touch the still form again. “Da…Dad, please!” She screamed at him, knees buckling.

  This wasn’t, couldn’t be real. Any moment now Millie would wake up from this nightmare and Dad would be there, singing along to the car radio or burning pancakes or telling her a story he made up on the spot. The room was spinning, spinning… she collapsed into a ball on the floor and retched, a guttural wail escaping her dry lips. She sobbed hysterically into the carpet for hours, until there was nothing left in her.

  When she was finally able to lift herself off of the floor, Millie stepped numbly out into the hall. She glanced into her room, eyes glazed. There, tacked up on the corkboard behind her bed, was a sheet of notebook paper. She moved closer and saw the unmistakable physician scribbles. The lighting was too dim to make out the words, so she took it into the living room.

  My dear Millie,

  I’m so sorry. I fear you’ll never have the opportunity to read this, but I need you to know that I love you more than anything. You’re my whole world. I only wish I could have done something to save you.

  I’m dying. Everyone is. They couldn’t do anything to stop it because it’s unstoppable. There hasn’t been a single person admitted to the hospital that hasn’t died or gone into a coma from this unknown virus.

  I estimate that I have about twelve hours left before the catatonia sets in. Already my muscles are beginning to spasm and fail on me. I don’t want to die in this house, but I also don’t want to leave you alone. You’ve already lasted longer than any of the other patients, so I can’t help but hold out hope that you might pull through. Though, at this point, I wonder if it’d be better if you just stayed asleep.

  It’s absolute chaos on the streets. As I predicted, the message from the President only made the people panic and try to run. There have been countless car wrecks, nearly all involving people falling asleep at the wheel. They just don’t seem to get that there’s no outrunning whatever this is.

  Honey, if somehow you pull through this, please be careful. If you survive, others will too. And while some will be good people, many won't. You’ll have to be very di
scerning, but I have faith that you’ll make the right choices. Use your strengths to your advantage. Be careful, stay safe, and don't ever give up.

  I’m so tired. Guess I’ll curl up with a good book and wait.

  I love you so much. Never ever forget that.

  Dad

  Millie slowly re-read the letter three times. There hasn’t been a single person admitted to the hospital that hasn’t died...chaos on the streets… Sitting motionless on the couch, she was suddenly aware of how deathly quiet the house was. "What do I do now?” She asked the room hoarsely, stuffy nose muffling the words. If you survive others will, too... Millie looked to the front door.

  *

  The streets of Downtown were jammed with cars and their deceased passengers. The tall buildings lining Main Street looked on wearily as Millie numbly passed them. Some of the store windows were broken, the insides ransacked. One of the buildings had a minivan jutting out of it. Millie looked into one of the car windows and saw the remains of an elderly woman still strapped into her seat glassily staring back at her. She turned away quickly. As she made her way down the empty sidewalks, the eerie quiet that blanketed the town made her feel incredibly lonely. A canister of wasp spray she snagged from her garage hung limply at her side as she stepped over an overturned newspaper stand. Dad kept a shotgun in his closet but Millie had been too afraid of it to try and carry it with her. Passing a shadowy alley, she wished she’d brought it anyway. What if I run into some crazy person who tries to kill me? What if the bodies reanimate while I’m out wandering around? “Stop thinking like that,” she told herself, carefully crunching on the glass from the corner pharmacy’s shattered front window. Suddenly, something clattered to the floor inside, setting her hair on end. She spun to face the window.