“I don't think it's weird to appreciate things,” said Mia.
“Yeah, it's not. But this is just an old cramped basement.”
“It's that... but so much more...”
“Are you high or something?” said Damian. How could someone be this strange? It didn't make sense.
“Maybe a little.”
“A little?” said Damian, his voice not hiding his shock. “What the hell is wrong with you? What are you on?”
“Just a couple pills.”
“What? Are you nuts? Are you an addict or something? This isn't a good time to be using drugs.”
“I'm not an addict,” she said, wistfully. “I just like to take the...”
“What? Don't say you like to experience a world full of wonder... see the beauty in everything... those cliches are a little too tired at this point, you know?”
“I was going to say that I just needed to take the edge off... they're just anxiety pills... it's just that I took a couple more than I'm supposed to... I bought them from this girl at work...”
“Those things aren't good for you,” said Damian. “And now you're not useful. You're all hopped up on that shit. Come on, we've got to try to find the flashlights.”
“Oooohh,” she said, gazing in amazement at a pair of dirty old skis in the corner. “Were these your skis?”
“No,” said Damian shortly. “Come on. Can't you do anything? Even if you're on those pills, you could still try to help me.”
“I'm often more of an emotional help,” said Mia. “A lot of people tell me that they feel safe talking to me.”
“Maybe that's because it doesn't seem like you're going to remember anything.”
Mia made a strange noise, sort of a cross between a cat's purr and a little yelp.
“Weirdo,” muttered Damian, as he pushed his way through some old cardboard boxes that had been sitting there for at least a decade, making his way further back into the basement.
It was dark in the basement, and it felt completely shut off and separate from the rest of the house. Whereas the rest of the house was clean, there were spiderwebs everywhere down here.
The basement hadn't been cleaned since probably before Damian had been born. More and more things had just been continuously added to it.
Occasionally, when he'd been a kid, his mom had made him come down here to the basement with the explicit instructions of either retrieving something or organizing a small corner.
More often than not, Damian had found some way to goof off rather than doing what he'd been told.
But recently, as Damian understood it, his mom had been coming down here more and more. She'd been been doing what he'd called hoarding, and what she'd called simply gathering useful things and good supplies.
There it was. Over there in the corner. A whole metal shelf from Home Depot filled with gear. Odds and ends. There was a whole shelf full of candles and matches. Another with big tubs of what looked like rice. There was quite a bit of nonperishable food. There was even, to Damian's surprise, a fifteen-gallon tub of coconut oil.
What was it that his mom had wanted him to get? Flashlights or something like that? Surely the food could stay down here in the basement.
There were some flashlights on the top shelf, and Damian grabbed a couple of them at random and stuffed them into the pockets of his work slacks.
He was about to turn around to head back upstairs, when, off in the corner, his eye caught a dusty old mirror that had been stuck there who knew when.
The mirror was so dusty that it didn't reflect anything at all, except some vague light.
The mirror made him think about his appearance.
He moved over to the mirror, which was difficult.
“Shit,” he muttered, as he knocked over a lamp. It fell sideways to the floor, its ancient light bulb shattering on the concrete floor.
“What are you doing over there?” said Mia from across the room. She was holding a mop like a staff and had one of his mom's funny old hats on her head with an ancient fanny pack around her waist.
Damian didn't bother answering her.
He managed to get to the mirror. With one hand, he wiped off a circle of dust.
He ducked down a little and positioned his head so that he could see, craning his neck to see the veins on his neck.
Nothing. They looked totally normal. Just like the backs of his hands.
He held up his hands again, closer to his face this time.
Nothing.
They looked normal.
Not dilated at all. Not enlarged.
If he'd only still had his cell phone, he would have taken a picture of his neck. Just to be sure. And to have something to compare a later picture to.
“What are you doing over there?” said Mia, her voice still sounding very strange.
Before he could answer, she'd started stomping across the basement to him. She didn't seem to notice or care that she was walking into all manner of things, knocking them over, somehow managing to stay upright herself.
“What was that?” she muttered, as she kicked an old broken vacuum cleaner aside. It made a terrific noise as it collided with some old metal cookware that was lying haphazardly on the floor.
She was panting when she got over to Damian.
He looked at her like he couldn't believe anyone would be that strange. Or act that weird.
“What are you doing over here?” she said again.
“I guess you're not going to leave me alone until I answer you.”
“No,” she said, simply and matter-of-factly. “I'm not going to.”
She then proceeded to stared at him with her vacant eyes and small pupils.
“You know what,” muttered Damian. “You're so messed up on drugs I bet you're not going to remember this anyway. And it'll feel good to tell someone.”
As he said those words, he realized that it would feel really good to get this all off his chest. It had been eating him up ever since he'd gotten mugged. He hadn't told anyone. Not even Matt. And he'd always told Matt, if not everything, plenty about his life.
It would only get worse. If Damian kept it all inside and didn't tell anyone, he'd just go crazy with anxiety.
If he told Matt or his mom, however, he didn't know what would happen. What he feared most of all was that they would become angry with him. Angry for exposing the whole group to the virus. Potentially.
Damian was scared that his own mother would throw him out of the house if he admitted what had happened.
“You're not going to tell anyone, are you?”
“No,” she said wistfully. “I'm not going to tell anyone anything.”
“OK,” said Damian. “Here it goes. You know how I was mugged?”
She nodded but her eyes didn't show any recognition. She was already pretty messed up on the drugs. Pretty out of it.
Perfect. Just what Damian wanted. To technically tell someone, but not actually communicate the idea to them.
“Well,” he said. “I lied about it...”
“You lied?” she said, her voice child-like and reproachful.
Damian paused. He almost didn't continue. But then he decided to go for it. “Two men attacked me,” he said. “And one of them... he had his hands on me... I could clearly see the veins in his hands... and they were big... and I mean big... definitely not just normal... he was definitely infected.... but I mean...”
“The guy who attacked you was infected with the virus?” said Mia, repeating the words back to him in a hollow way, as if she didn't understand their meaning.
Still, having the words come back at him felt like an attack.
Damian felt like he had to defend himself.
“It's not like everyone gets infected,” he said. “I mean they don't even have that kind of data out yet... but if it's anything like other viruses, then it's not anywhere near 100 percent of the people that come in contact...”
Damian found himself trailing off.
Mia was sil
ent, but she watched him with her big eyes. She didn't take her eyes off him.
“I mean, what do you think? You think I like possibly exposing my mother and my friends to a deadly virus? No, not at all. But what choice do I have? I mean, at some point, I've got to look out for number one, right? That's me, and no one else is going to do that for me. Not even my own mother. So I mean, yeah, I'm putting you all potentially at risk. But it's really not that bad. It just depends how you look at the whole thing. Trust me, the first sign of enlarged veins on my hands, I'm out the door. I'll leave you all behind. And that means that if I do have the virus, you won't all be at risk for contamination...”
Damian was interrupted by his mother's voice. She was yelling from the top of the dark basement stairs. “Damian!” she was shouting. “We need you up here. Now! Bring the hatchet!”
“The hatchet? What?” he called back.
But there was no answer.
A hatchet? What did she want a hatchet for? Why did she sound so urgent?
“We'd better get up there,” said Mia. “She sounds upset.”
“Sure,” Damian said. “But you're not going to tell anyone about what I said, are you?”
“Of course not,” she said, her voice light and lilting.
“Good,” said Damian. “Because I don't think they'd understand as well as you did.”
Damian made his way towards the base of the stairs, grabbing an old rusty hatchet along the way.
He knew that it was true. If his mother or the others found out that he'd possibly been contaminated, he'd be in big trouble. He didn't know exactly what they'd do, but he didn't want to find out.
He was sure that it'd all be fine. How could he really be contaminated? There was just no way.
But, despite his best efforts to convince himself that everything was OK, Damian didn't feel like everything was OK. His body felt on edge, and kind of shaky, as if he had low blood sugar. His heart seemed to be beating much faster than normal in his chest, but for some reason he was keenly aware of each and every beat.
“Come on,” said Damian, holding out his hand for Mia as he took his first step up the dark, rickety basement staircase.
11
Matt
“What are we going to do?” whispered Judy.
They were standing on either side of the dining room window. The curtains were drawn, and they both had their ends of the curtain pulled a little ways back so that they could see outside to the street.
“We're not going out there, that's what we're doing,” whispered Matt.
“What's going on?” said Damian loudly, appearing behind them.
“It took you long enough,” hissed Judy. “Did you get the hatchet?”
“Yeah,” said Damian, tossing a rusty hatchet casually onto the dining room table made of fine wood. “What the hell did you need this for anyway? It's not like we're going to be chopping wood.”
Mia, who was standing behind him, started to laugh uncontrollably.
Matt and Jamie exchanged looks, both their eyebrows raised.
“There's someone out there,” whispered Judy. “You need to be quiet, Damian. This is serious. We need that hatchet. It's a weapon...”
“A weapon?” sneered Damian. “You've got a gun, don't you? And Matt has one too.”
Matt and Judy had already compared notes on their firearms. Matt was, to be frank, quite impressed that Judy was a gun owner. Not to mention the fact that he was impressed with her choice of firearm.
Matt, not having spent much time with Judy and Damian together before, was somewhat shocked at how Judy interacted with her son. She came across as a no-nonsense woman, but with her son, it was clear that she had a very high tolerance for his antics and annoying habits.
If anyone else, for instance, had come in and talked to Judy like that, they likely would have had hell to pay. Anyone except her own son, that is.
“This is serious,” hissed Matt. “We heard a siren. Thought it was a police siren. But then we saw the car... just a regular beat-up old sedan. They're inside the house next door...”
“So what?” said Damian, strolling over and jostling his way into the position that Matt had taken by the window. Matt stepped aside, giving Damian room to pull the curtain far back.
“Don't do that,” hissed Matt, taking the curtain from Damian by reaching around his back. “We don't want them to know we're in here.”
“What's the big deal? The cops have some business next door. Doesn't concern us, right?”
“Not right,” said Matt.
“At first we were worried that they were going to try to take us somewhere...” said Jamie. “... evacuate us like they did to Mia and me in our apartment, but then we realized that they're not likely real cops.”
“They didn't have any uniforms on,” pointed out Judy, still peering out her little slice of the window.
“So what?” said Damian. He sounded annoyed, and Matt couldn't see why he'd be so annoyed at all this. “What's the big deal? There are some undercover cops next door. Someone tell me how it affects me, or else I...”
Damian was interrupted by a loud, forceful knock on the door.
“Police,” came the deep male voice. “Open up!”
Everyone stared at each other with looks of shock on their faces.
How had the man outside gotten to the front door without Judy and Matt spotting him through the window?
“Why didn't we spot him?” whispered Judy.
“I don't know,” whispered Matt.
“I'll get the door!” said Mia, speaking brightly and loudly. She sounded excited at the prospect of having company.
“What the hell's wrong with you?” hissed Damian. “Help me. Grab her.”
Jamie grabbed her roommate and held her close to her body. “What's the matter with you? You didn't take pills again, did you?”
“She's on drugs?” said Judy.
Matt didn't know what to make of Mia, but he knew that he couldn't deal with the situation right now. Not when there was a more pressing issue at the front door.
“Everyone stay in here,” he said. “I'll handle this.”
Matt's mind was running through the possibilities as he made his way to the door.
When he got there, he approached the peephole as quietly as he could. He was well aware of the possibility that this wasn't a real cop. He was also very aware that a bullet could pierce this door easily. He didn't want someone to know that he was on the other side of it.
He looked through the peephole.
A man in plain clothes stood there.
The man had a peculiar face. Long hair hung in curtains around it. He had about a five days' growth of a beard.
There were acne scars on his skin, and eyes that were sunken deep into his face.
One of his front teeth was visible and noticeably blackened.
This didn't look anything like a cop.
Not the kind of cop that Matt had seen before, anyway.
But then again, undercover cops were often chosen for the simple fact that they did not look like cops. That, and because they had the other skills needed to perform a highly difficult and dangerous job.
Matt stepped carefully and quietly away from the door. He stood against the wall, so that none of his body was in front of the door.
“Who's there?” he called out.
“Police. Open up.”
“How do I know you're real a cop?” shouted Matt back.
There was a pause.
“Open up!” The voice was commanding. Authoritative.
Maybe it really was a cop.
“I'm going to need your badge number,” shouted Matt. “No offense, but these are dangerous times.”
There was a long pause.
“I don't have to provide that.”
As soon as Matt heard those words, he knew that the man wasn't a cop.
Matt's hand went to his Glock. His fingers wrapped around the handle. He moved his shirt with his left hand and drew th
e gun with his right hand.
His finger rested on the trigger guard.
It felt strange to have the gun in his hand. Good, but strange.
He'd had the gun for quite a while, and he'd been to the range with it many times.
But in all honesty, he never thought he'd have to use it. Not in real life.
His life, after all, had been a good example of a normal modern life. His food had come from a store. It didn't have to be hunted. His possessions were purchased in a store. Everything was sterile. Hygienic. Pristine. There was no physical danger. Not in the normal modern world. Not in Matt's.
But that seemed to be changing.
The world was turning.
Violent, dangerous people were coming out of the woodwork, coming out from where they'd remained hidden in the shadows.
Matt didn't know who this guy was on the other side of the door, but what he did know was that he didn't have good intentions.
Matt waited, expecting to hear the man saying something else. Perhaps shouting some more commands. Or maybe knocking on the door.
But instead, he heard a metallic scraping sound.
What was it?
“He's got a crowbar,” shouted Judy from the other room.
“Shit,” muttered Matt.
He didn't know what to do.
But he did know that a man with a crowbar could easily get that door off its hinges and opened. It wasn't a particularly sturdy-looking door.
The scraping sound increased in volume. It sounded so close.
Matt's heart was racing. He knew he had to do something.
His grip on his Glock tightened. There was sweat on his palm, but the handle's grip was good, and the Glock didn't slide.
“Do something!” came Jamie's voice from the other room.
She was right.
Matt had to do something.
12
Mark
It had been less than a day ago when Mark's luck seemed to have run out for good.
Less than twenty-four hours ago he'd been coming out of a bender, miserably hung over, unable to sleep, wondering if he should finally put a bullet in his temple and get it all over with.
His eyes had been bloodshot. His gut had hurt, and his memory of the last two weeks had been incredibly foggy.
Escape the Virus Page 9