by Jack Hunt
“Oh right, you a baseball player?”
He got this amused look on his face. “I’m studying sports management at St. John’s.”
He walked in and took a seat in a chair just across from the bed. She kind of wanted to tell him not to because she was already feeling awkward about the whole encounter, never mind the fact that she had no idea how she looked. She had images of cuts all over her face, and her hair resembling a hobo’s. She raked at it with her fingers and just as Ella was about to say something the nurse came back in with some water. The nurse cast a glance to Gabriel and then set the cup down.
“I see you have finally met.”
She stood there with a grin on her face for what felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds. “Well, if you need anything else, just let us know. Oh, your phone is at the front desk. It will be given back when you are discharged.”
The nurse exited the room and closed the door behind her. When Ella groaned as she reached for the glass, Gabriel crossed the room and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said before taking a few sips, ever aware that he was watching her. She wasn’t sure whether to be creeped out or amused. Recognizing the awkwardness of the situation she asked him why he had stuck around.
“So how come you’re still here?”
“Well I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Do you usually do that for women?”
He smirked. “Only the ones that are left stranded on the side of roads.”
“Do you know what’s going on? I mean, with this flu outbreak.”
“Right, that has really thrown a wrench in the works. My family lives in Manhattan on the West Side. That’s actually where I headed after dropping you off.” He sighed a little. “We got word things were getting pretty bad and so we all left the game and headed back. I can’t get to them because they have quarantined a huge section of the city. I tried to speak with the officers but they wouldn’t listen. They just kept telling us to stay back and listen to the radio or TV for an update.” He went over to the remote and turned the TV on. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, it’s fine.”
He looked distracted as he focused on the news.
“So do you live there?”
“No, I have a room at the university. I live on campus but by the looks of things, people aren’t sticking around the university.”
He paused and looked up at the screen, she followed his gaze and saw images of chaos that had erupted inside the isolation area.
“Folks aren’t taking it well.”
“Would you?” he asked.
“No. I guess not.” She thought of the years she had grown up around her father. At times, it felt like she was in isolation. While other parents might have been nervous about their child straying too far from home and getting snatched by a sicko, her father was worried about a different kind of sicko coming into contact with her. All of which meant she rarely had friends around because that only made her father anxious. Her childhood was anything but normal, and yet she learned to deal with it. It just wasn’t easy. As she looked at the people arguing with police on the TV, she knew what it felt like to be isolated. It wasn’t so much being quarantined as it was being kept from friends, loved ones and their homes.
“So were you on your way home when you had the accident?”
“Kind of, I’m studying in Queens at the police academy.”
His eyebrows raised. “Oh, looking to become a cop?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“That’s a whole lot of ‘kind of,’ you don’t sound too clear.”
At first she took offense to what he said. He seemed a bit brash, possibly full of himself.
“What’s it to you?”
“Sorry, I was just meaning… ah forget it.”
“My father lives in Clayton, New York. He wanted me to head back. We have a cottage on an island in the St. Lawrence River.”
“Oh nice.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
She berated herself inwardly. She must have sounded like a complete idiot. Perhaps he was right. She hadn’t been very clear about whether or not she wanted to join the police, and returning to Clayton wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do either. Her father at the best of times was paranoid, but now he had to be going berserk.
“And your mother?”
“She works for the CDC.”
“Really? So she would know what’s going on, right?”
She nodded her head and he must have picked up the fact that she knew more than perhaps he did. He turned his attention away from the TV, which wasn’t giving any clear updates, only displaying fearful images.
“So that’s why you are heading to your father’s cottage?”
She hesitated before replying. “Yeah.”
“How bad is this?”
“Um.” She looked down at her hands before meeting his gaze again. “If what my mother is saying is accurate, very bad. People are dying and it looks as though they haven’t been able to contain it in Atlanta.”
“What?”
“The containment barrier was breached by people on the inside.”
“So infected people got out?”
“Seems that way. Yeah.”
“Shit.” He pulled out his phone and began texting someone.
“Are all of your family in the containment zone?”
“No, my sister lives in the UK but my mother and father are in there. Do you know if they have found a treatment for it yet?” He glanced up from his phone, hanging on every word that came from her mouth.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Ella didn’t want to ask who he was texting as she figured it was either his parents or one of his friends.
“Do you know what it’s like out there? Are they bringing the sick into this hospital?”
“If they are, I haven’t seen any.”
“The doctor mentioned they were busy with new admits.”
Gabriel gave her a concerned look. “They better not be bringing them in here. If they are…”
“You think you can do me a favor, can I use your phone? My father is going to be worried out of his mind. Oh, and would you mind checking with the front desk and finding out if they are taking in people with the flu, because if they are, we need to get the hell out of here.”
Gabriel handed over his phone and said he would be back in a few minutes. As he slipped out of the room, she made the call. She rubbed her eyes as it rang.
“Dad.”
“Ella. Oh my god, I nearly had a heart attack when I got your messages. Are you okay? Are you still at the hospital? Do you have any injuries?”
In his typical fashion he bombarded her with far too many questions all at once.
“Look, I’m okay. A little banged up, and I have a fractured wrist but nothing too bad.”
“When did they say you could leave?”
“They didn’t. They want to keep me overnight.”
“You can’t stay there. It’s too dangerous. Things are spiraling out of control fast and I don’t want you getting stuck behind some fence.”
“That’s only in Manhattan.”
“Yes, for now, but if the situation inside there goes the way it has in Atlanta, and by the looks of what the TV is showing that looks pretty likely, you could get caught up in it. Besides, who knows if they are dealing with the infected? This isn’t some run-of-the-mill flu they can treat with medicine. They don’t have a cure for this. Symptoms don’t show up for at least fifteen hours, and when they do it looks like the common flu, high fever, sore throat, sniffles and so forth. People are dead in under a day.”
“Listen, I’m going to leave here as soon as possible but my car is totaled. I don’t have a way to get back.”
As she was speaking, Gabriel came back into the room. He took a seat across from her and was listening intently to the conversation. Did Gabriel think that she was the only person who could give him a clear answe
r about what was actually going on, and how dangerous it was?
“I… could… well…” Frank muttered.
“I know you aren’t going to drive here, Dad. I wouldn’t expect that,” she replied knowing how hard it was for him just to do the shopping.
“I can drive you,” Gabriel chimed in.
“Hold on a sec, Dad.” She placed her hand over the receiver and looked at Gabriel. “What did you say?”
He cleared his throat. “I have access to a vehicle.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. Heck, I don’t even know you.”
He stood up as if preparing to give some convincing speech. “No, I understand, I would probably turn it down as well but I just thought I would throw the offer out there. With them quarantining off a section of the city, the university has told people who live outside the city to either go home, or stay. I don’t have anything else to do, and well, the parents of one of my buddies live up north. So he would probably be heading that way, and…”
She could tell he was reaching for some reason, any reason.
“Why?”
“Like I said, you are obviously in a dire situation and well, you appear to be the only one who knows what the fuck is going on around here and from the little I’ve been able to glean from my mother inside the quarantine area, it’s not improving. She wants me as far away from the city as possible.”
She got back on the phone with her father. “Can I get back to you?”
“Sure, just don’t take too long, okay?”
“You got it.”
Once she got off the cell she handed it back to Gabriel. He leaned forward to take it, and then she realized she had done the one thing that he father had always warned her against. Using someone else’s phone. According to him a phone held ten times more bacteria than a public toilet seat. She recalled her father telling her about how a man had contracted Ebola after he stole a phone. Whether or not it was true was neither here nor there. What was done was done.
“You haven’t had any flu symptoms in the last twenty-four hours, have you? Or been around other people who were sick?”
He took the phone and shook his head. “No, that’s not to say that one of us hasn’t been infected at the baseball event. You know, you have to shake hands with the other team so who knows what got passed on.” He looked at her dead serious and then started to chuckle a little.
“It’s not funny.”
She was starting to sound like her father. Oh, that would have been the worst, to end up like him, holed away in some apartment in Clayton fearing every interaction.
“Yeah, I guess not.”
“Did you find out if they’ve taken in anyone who’s sick?”
Again he looked as if he was trying to stifle a laugh. “It’s a hospital, Ella. That’s all they take in.”
She closed her eyes, nodded and exhaled hard. It kind of was a stupid question to ask.
“Look, um, let me get in contact with Tyrell, and find out if he’s thinking of heading up that way.”
“Tyrell?”
“The guy whose parents live north of here.”
“Anywhere near Clayton?”
“I’ll find out.”
“Gabriel, you don’t have to do this. I mean, I appreciate what you did but it’s…”
“Strange?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
He got up and left without saying anything further and she kind of felt the awkwardness of the moment cover her like a blanket. She didn’t know this guy from jack. For all she knew he could be a mass murderer, a rapist or one of the infected. The problem was she didn’t have a ride and she was pretty damn sure her father wasn’t coming. She glanced up at the TV. She could barely hear it but the images and ticker across the bottom revealed enough. There was talk about public transportation being shut down after a woman outside the containment zone had been reported showing advanced symptoms. How many others had slipped through the cracks? Realistically how could they know who was infected if the initial symptoms didn’t show up for at least fifteen hours unless they contained everyone? That wasn’t even going to be possible. From what was being reported on the news, they had only managed to close off a small section of Manhattan using fencing, trucks and shipping containers.
TEN
The seriousness factor had just gone from zero to sixty in a matter of days. After he filled in Kate on Ella’s accident, she had given him the third degree about collecting her. When he finally got a phone call from her, he was beyond relieved and yet he knew they weren’t out of hot water yet. She was miles from home, and holed up inside a bacteria magnet. Who was that voice in the background? He’d heard some guy offering to drive her. He wasn’t sure what was worse, knowing that she was liable to contract infection from one of the hundreds of patients walking the hospital hallways or having her talking to some guy. He’d always been protective of her growing up, probably a little over the top but for good reason — he was her father and that was his job. Watching her head off with her mother to New York was hard enough but facing this situation was too much.
The boat bounced up and down as he guided it into the harbor. He could see Sal, Gloria and their two young kids standing at the far end of the dock huddled together to stay warm. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of summer, down by the water there was always a chill in the air.
The motor spluttered as he killed the engine and tossed a line to Sal who missed it, and it fell into the water. He couldn’t help notice how distracted he was by folks in the parking lot. Before Frank allowed them on the boat he wanted Sal to confirm that none of them had been near anyone who’d been sick for the past twenty-four hours. Even though they nodded, he still wasn’t satisfied. The very notion of bringing anyone back to his sanctuary who could possibly be infected but not showing symptoms made the hairs on his arms stand on end and his skin crawl. He’d given a lot of thought to it before he left to collect them. They would be confined to the back section of the house for the first forty-eight hours just until he could be sure they weren’t infected, then they would be able to join the rest of them whenever he managed to get Ella back. He brought with him disposable coveralls. Even though they were far too big for Sal’s kids who were under the age of ten, he still wanted them to wear them. He told them to stay back as he tossed the coveralls onto the dock. They slipped into them and then donned face masks and gloves before they gingerly stepped down into the boat and he instructed them to go to the front end. To anyone looking on it must have been the weirdest sight ever. Gloria was giving Sal a funny look but the kids seemed to love it as they loaded their suitcases onto the boat. It reminded him of the way Ella used to be when she was a child. He’d made all his weird rituals seem like games until she got to an age where she figured out her friends’ parents didn’t walk around with masks on, or clean their hands constantly, or avoid everyone in the family if they were sick. Any time Kate or Ella showed even the faintest sign of a cold, he would pack a bag and head over to the cottage. He knew it made no sense in his mind but he just couldn’t process it any other way.
“That’s it, good. Now what the hell is up with you, Sal?”
“Have you listened to the local radio over the last few hours?”
“No, I’ve been keeping an eye on the developments in Atlanta and Manhattan.”
“A large fight broke out at the supermarket today over food. Seems the news is spreading and people are beginning to feel on edge.”
Frank brought the engine to life and was steering it out when he saw a family racing down the dock, calling out to them.
“Frank!” Sal tried to get his attention but he purposely ignored him. The last thing he wanted was to have another group of frightened people asking for help.
“Hey!” a man called out to them.
Just keep going. Keep going! he told himself.
Sal leaned towards Frank, and Frank gave him the eye. The one that made it clear that he had better ta
ke his seat. As much as he didn’t think Sal was infected, he had no idea if his family was or if he’d contracted it while going to collect them. In his mind, they were playing Russian roulette with his life right now. Any one of them could kill him.
He powered the motor and the boat smoothly soared over the building waves as the voices of the family behind became faint. All the way, Sal and Gloria stared at him as though he was some criminal, some insensitive prick. And maybe he was but this wasn’t something to mess around with. He wasn’t in the business of hospitality on an ordinary day, but when a pandemic was spreading across the land he sure as hell wasn’t looking to be charitable. A choice to help someone was like flipping a coin. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the outcome could go either way. Right now he needed to stay alive, for Ella, for Kate, for himself. If that meant being perceived as a jerk, so be it.
They never did find out what the strangers wanted but upon reaching the island, Sal told him that he had seen families loading up vehicles with luggage throughout the town as though they were about to leave for a vacation, and he’d overheard that particular family asking a fisherman if he would take them over to Grindstone Island.
“Perhaps they can catch a ride with Butch and his inbred family,” Frank muttered as he walked past a very somber-looking Sal. Gone was the confidence he usually had, he knew as well as Frank how dire the situation was becoming. They were only just beginning to hear reports of fights, it would get a hell of a lot worse than that before this was over — if it would ever be over.
GABRIEL HAD BEEN GONE a long time. Ella thought that perhaps she had pissed him off with what she’d said. In that time her father had called the hospital wanting to speak to her but she was trying to hold him off as long as she could. Right now she didn’t know what to do. She was torn about the offer from Gabriel. Hell, she didn’t even know his last name. It made sense to have her father come down but she knew him too well. While he would venture into Clayton, masked up and darting between people like he was playing a game of dodge ball, there was no way on god’s green earth she was going to be able to convince him to drive five hours or more to pick her up. That would have been like asking him to jump off the lip of a volcano into the fire. Of course over the years Sal had worked with him in order to get him to go further and further out but it hadn’t come without its fair share of trouble.