by Deyo, Jason
She was prepared for his high temperature. It was higher than it had ever been, but she had a plan. Like her many other triumphs with fevers, she was going to pump him full of medicine, alternate Tylenol and ibuprofen, make chicken noodle soup, and bathe him with a cool washcloth. He was so warm she planned to put him in a cool bath.
This was different. She didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t sure how to battle a chill. Running her hands through his cold wet hair, she felt the top of his head again. “You’ll be ok. Everything is going to be just fine.” She said the words, but deep down inside she was scared. She didn’t know if what she was saying was true.
Amelia turned toward the door and began to yell but then stopped herself, not wanting to disturb her son. She got up and walked over to the edge of the doorframe. “Could you get me a warm wash cloth?” She hollered down the steps and then immediately returned to Jimmy’s bedside.
Jimmy’s pillow had a large yellow halo of perspiration surrounding his head. Amelia placed her hand on his wet head, debating whether or not to change his clothing or even change his pillow. “Do you want something to drink? You want some water?” Her son didn’t verbally respond, but he squinted his eyelids shut tight, as if her words were painful daggers to his head. Yellow liquid leaked from his eyes as he squeezed them shut.
“Are you cold?” Amelia asked. He wasn’t shivering and his lips weren’t blue. “Do you need anything?” Amelia felt hopeless. He wasn’t responding to her and she needed to do something. She could not stand not knowing how to help when her only son—her only child—was in obvious distress. She grabbed his comforter and was about to pull it up over him, when something under his sweat-soaked collar caught her attention.
She gently pulled the small collar away from his wet skin. Just like the old man, thick black lines were visible under his pale skin. Black fluid now flowed through his veins. Keith entered the small bedroom with a warm cloth as Amelia stretched his collar from his thin neck. “How’s he doing? Any better?” Keith asked, wondering what his wife was looking at.
Not saying a word, Amelia gently lifted Jimmy’s shirt. Black veins covered his stomach and reached across his chest. There was no order or direction to the maze of veins, and they appeared to be actively spreading.
“I don’t know what to do Keith.” She looked up staring into his light green eyes. “He’s so cold.”
He knelt down next to her and felt his son’s stomach. “He was burning up a couple minutes ago.” His mind raced as he tried to think about what they could do. Jimmy was wet from his high fever, but now his skin was moist and clammy. “Lets get these clothes off of him.” He sat Jimmy up, not waiting for his wife to respond. The fabric of his shirt clung to his body, making it difficult to remove. Amelia went through his drawers and pulled out his favorite blue fire truck pajamas.
Jimmy let out a groan of pain and discomfort from being handled, but Keith was determined to get him out of his wet clothes. “Sorry buddy, but we got to get you out of these. We’re going to get you into something dry and warm buddy.” He knew his son was very ill and prayed he was going to snap out of whatever this was—and that it wasn’t whatever the old man had.
Jimmy began to feel agitated as they struggled to put his clean pajama shirt on. Keith placed his hand on the bed and felt the sweat on his sheets. It had felt as if someone poured a class of water over them. “Could you grab some towels?” he asked. Changing the sheets would be too difficult in his current condition, but they could create a layer of towels to separate the sodden sheets from his fresh pajamas.
“We need to get water in him, but he won’t drink. I’ve been trying.” Amelia raised her voice in what could have been perceived as frustration, but was mostly fear. Keith looked at her without responding, but he didn’t have to. Amelia knew he didn’t have any answers.
Groaning again and now pouting, “Get off me,” Jimmy said in a quiet demand. Keith held him up by the shoulders, supporting his weight to prevent him from lying back down. His small son arched his back and yelled in a burst of strength that shocked him. “Get off me! Get off me! Get off me!” he screamed. The scream was a combination of a high pitch whine and a deep growl that sounded more demonic than anything that could come from an eight year old. At that moment Amelia came running with an armful of random towels. Jimmy began to stretch his mouth.
Keith held onto him and watched as he started to recognize the similarities between his son and the old man. “It’s going to be okay buddy.” The words came out of his mouth, but they were weak and unsure. Recognizing he didn’t sound convincing, he tried again. “It’s all right bud.”
He reached to take one of the towels from Amelia, but she walked past him and laid it flat onto the bed. She flipped his pillow, so his head would not rest in the wet halo of perspiration.
Keith and Amelia shared a quick look of concern and began to remove his shorts. It was just as difficult to remove his shorts and underwear, but they managed to put the matching set of pajama pants on him.
“Keith?” She looked at him scared. She wanted him to say something that would make her feel better, but he looked just as scared as she did.
Keith grabbed her by the hand and guided her out of the small room. Standing outside of Jimmy’s door he said, “I don’t know what to do.” She didn’t respond, but hugged his large frame.
“Sorry it took me so long to come up, but I tried to call the cops.” Keith said.
“Cops?” Amelia asked, confused. “Why?”
“I had that man pinned down, trying to get him to relax before I let him go and he just stopped fighting. I thought everything was going to be okay, but when I let go… he just laid there. I checked to see if he was all right, but he wasn’t breathing. Some of our neighbors saw the whole thing.”
“You can’t know for sure. How do you know?”
“I touched his neck, right here,” He touched Amelia’s neck beneath her jaw. “There was nothing. I searched for a while, feeling for something, but nothing happened. I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
“What did the cops say?”
Keith pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed 911 again to show her the busy network message that appeared on the screen. “I tried a couple of times.” Keith put his phone back into his pocket. “I was listening to the news on the radio and this is not only happening here. The same thing is happening all across the country. They called it a pandemic.” Keith widened his eyes, not really knowing what a pandemic was, but understood it meant something serious. “They described the warning signs of this sickness or virus. They’re not really calling it anything because I don’t think they know what it is. I don’t think they have any idea what’s going on.”
“What are we supposed to do? We can’t take him anywhere now. We should have gone straight to the hospital.” Amelia started to speak quickly and in a nervous pitch. “You shouldn’t have listened to the news.”
Keith pulled her in toward him again, but she halfheartedly fought it. He tried again and she submitted to him. She softly began to cry. “Amelia,” Keith said into her ear, “the hospitals are filled to capacity and many of the doctors and nurses are leaving.”
“Doctors just can’t leave! They take an oath to help everyone.”
“The doctors have families of their own; they’re leaving in plain clothing because people are assaulting them as they leave. The hospitals aren’t opening the gates to let any more people access the parking garages or lots. This is where he has to be right now. The best place for him is here with us.”
Amelia didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to feel. “What are we supposed to do?”
Keith thought about the other things he’d heard on the news and considered what he was going to tell Amelia. He apparently thought about it for a while because she repeated her question in an effort to get some type of response from him. No matter how he said it or replayed it in his head, no amount of wordsmithing was going to make things sound acceptable to h
is wife. “We are supposed to leave him in his room. We’re supposed to lock the door and keep him in there until the authorities come.”
“What authorities?” Amelia was taken aback by this comment. “Why? The phones don’t even work. What authority is going to come? No one is coming.” She was angry and even more confused than before. “What’s going to happen to my little boy?”
“I don’t know.” Keith scanned his brain for the right words, for the right thing to say, but drew a blank. Tears welled in his eyes. “He may be sicker than we know. They are saying the people who are sick could be contagious and prone to violence. We saw it at Calico and with the old man.”
“Our son wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said defensively.
“You need to see this for what it is.”
Amelia didn’t let him continue. “I do see it for what it is. This is your excuse to finally get away.” She pushed away from him.
“Away from what?” Keith held onto her wrists tightly, stopping her from moving. “Weren’t you listening to the radio? The reporters described a scene from a hospital in South Carolina. This isn’t only happening here babe. This is happening everywhere. They said people who were pronounced dead by doctors are coming back to life. People scream and praise God for bringing their family member back, but once they came back, or to life or whatever you call it, the person would go crazy. They would attack their own family members. The dead covered in blankets on gurneys in hospital hallways started to rise and attack the people closest to them. They say a young man was pronounced dead at the scene, still wearing his grocery store uniform, was pushed in on a gurney, rolled off, and then started pouncing on people like an animal. Those were the words used by the reporter. Pouncing on people like an actual animal.”
“You know where you want to go! You’ve been looking for an excuse for a long, long time now and this is it!”
“I’m not going anywhere. That is what is going to happen to our little boy. Our little boy is real sick. I’m just saying we need to close and lock his door.”
Just then they heard a sigh come from inside Jimmy’s bedroom. Amelia wrenched her hands free from Keith. Jimmy lay with his mouth and eyes slightly open.
Keith and Amelia immediately knew their son had passed. They felt their stomachs drop and their hearts rise into their throats. Amelia fell to her son’s side crying and squeezed his body. She moved to his face and kissed the side of his cheek. She let out an ungodly wail.
Keith began to sob hard. All thoughts of closing and locking the door became afterthoughts. His son was dead and he did not know how he was going to cope. He wrapped his arm around Amelia and cried. He looked at his son and into his lifeless eyes.
Jimmy’s eyes were normally the same color as Keith’s; a natural light green, but now they took on a dull greyish blue. Keith began to think about the symptoms discussed on the radio. Some of the symptoms had already appeared, such as excessive perspiration due to a high fever; the skin dulling and becoming pale and bouts of extreme anger and mood swings. The last symptom discussed was just starting to appear; the eyes begin to change to a dull grey, and the pupil takes on a light shade of blue.
Keith put his hand on top of his son’s head and ran them over his eyes, gently closing his eyelids before Amelia could see them. He said a silent prayer. God please take my son. Please see that he has a seat with you. God, I don’t talk with you very often, but you know where my heart lies. Please see that Amelia and I make it through this. After his prayer, he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “We need to close this door and keep him in here until the news tells us what to do.”
Amelia shrugged his hand from her shoulder. “We don’t need to do anything.” She began to wail into her son’s chest.
A loud bang came from the front of the house. Keith looked up in surprise, but Amelia kept her face against Jimmy’s chest. He wanted to investigate, but was torn between leaving his wife with Jimmy or seeing what made that noise. His concern about what might be out front pulled him away from his family. He needed to know if he was going to have to defend his home.
“Em, we have to leave.” He rubbed her shoulders lightly, but she didn’t budge. “We can’t be here when he gets up.” She shrugged the shoulder he was touching and slinked away from his hand.
He reluctantly left to investigate the noise, and headed to the master bedroom. Pulling the curtain back from the window, he saw his neighbor examining the bumper of his blue sedan. It looked like it had just been rear-ended by a white hatchback.
Keith’s neighbor lived three houses down and (according to his license plate) was a retired fire chief. They never talked other than to say hello or to wave politely as they pushed their lawn mowers across their lawns.
After studying the damage to his sedan, his physically fit neighbor turned his attention to the man sitting in the white hatchback. The former fire chief moved with a sense of urgency and instinct. He tried to get the man’s attention, knocking on the window at first, and then trying to open the door. “Sir, are you ok? I’m a Georgia-certified first responder. Can you open the door, so I can help you?” It sounded rehearsed as if he practiced this spiel multiple times in his bathroom mirror.
From Keith’s angle he was unable to tell what the man inside the hatchback was doing, but by his neighbor’s demeanor, he believed he was unconscious. After a few moments, the driver’s door opened. The gentleman didn’t get out of the car, and Keith could see his neighbor kneel down to talk with him.
Keith heard a loud scream and saw the former fire chief step back from the car. The driver began to scream furiously, as if he were in extreme pain but trying to speak at the same time. He sounded a lot like the old man Keith had restrained earlier.
His neighbor fumbled with his phone and stepped backward, creating some distance between himself and the man. The man stepped out of the car, holding his hand to his head. Keith could see blood on his fingers. He dabbed his hand to his head a few times, looking at his fingers to study the degree of damage to his forehead.
The retired firefighter hung up and began to dial again. After trying and appearing to get no response, he put his phone back into his pocket and approached the young man.
The driver stumbled around his car, clearly disoriented, now facing Keith’s direction. He was able to see the large gash right in the center of his forehead from where it must have hit the steering wheel. Blood poured down his face. The man began to panic. Keith knew from watching MMA fights that forehead cuts bled more than most other cuts, and therefore he probably wouldn’t need more than a few stitches.
The driver was a young man wearing baggy denim jeans and a tight white shirt. He was thick with muscle. The young man turned unsteadily to face the fire chief. The chief moved closer with his hands up in front of him in a helpful yet submissive manner. The driver kept touching his head and examining the blood on his fingers. Now he began to scream. Every time he touched his head and examined his fingers he screamed something unintelligible and showed the chief the blood on his hands.
The fire chief kept his hands held out to try and calm him, but the young man was inconsolable. Keith could see he was saying something to the man, likely pleading with him to take it easy or to sit until help arrived. A loud screech suddenly came from down the street.
Keith and the chief turned in the direction of the sound. The old man Keith had held down earlier shambled toward them. The old man started walking as though he felt dizzy, caught his balance, and walked faster toward the two men circling the vehicle. The walk soon became a jog, and then an all-out sprint.
The fire chief looked at his house and thought about how to get home while also keeping a barrier between himself and these two. He thought he could get on the opposite end of the cars and keep a barrier between them until he could get to his home. The bloodied young man never turned his attention from the chief, seemingly uninterested in the screeching old man. As the chief moved around the white hatchback the young man grabbed him. The ch
ief tried to break free of his grip, but the young man punched him in the face.
The fire chief had been hit on many occasions in countless altercations. Many of the altercations were with adrenaline-fueled drug addicts he was trying to save. It was always surprising for the passed out druggy he was saving from a burning building to wake up and see Darth Vader standing in front of a wall of fire. It generally didn’t lead to pleasantries like, “Wow, thank you for saving my life!” The tousles generally began with screaming, hollering, and a lot of flailing. This young man hit him square in the jaw, which made the fire chief see stars and fall to the sidewalk.
In an instant, the young man stood over him and grabbed his shirt collar with his left hand and struck him again with his right. Another screech sounded, this time coming from the other direction. Three figures ran toward the fire chief and the young man from in between two houses across the street from Keith. Two of the figures looked like teenagers who just got home from school—one still had a backpack on, the other teenager wore a soccer jersey and shin guards. The third one looked as if he had been on the losing side of a very violent confrontation. His clothes were ripped and blood covered most of his body.
The incoming old man tackled the chief’s offender. The old man bit into the young man’s back causing him to scream. Keith knew it must have been a deep bite, because the voice that echoed down the street was one in extreme pain. The young man tried to get up, but he was weighed down. He rolled onto his back just in time to avoid another bite from the gnashing jaws. The old man fought ferociously. He used his hands to pull him closer while the young man repeatedly punched the old man in the face in rapid succession.