by David Smith
I went to the front windows and looked out. There was an obviously government issued car sitting on the shoulder of the highway at the front of the yard. They were watching, waiting for him to come home.
I sat in front of the computer for most of the night, between bouts of lying awake in bed and pacing around the house in the dark, looking out every window. Just before dawn I made coffee and brought two cups to the men in the black car, just to let them know they weren't fooling anyone. They were startled when I knocked on the window but were more than happy to take the coffee.
As I was walking back up the hill through the yard, my Dad, your grandfather, drove up pulling a trailer full of lumber. He stepped up onto the porch the same time I did and just looked back and forth at the front of the house with his hands on his hips.
"I guess you've got a lot of questions." He said. I just nodded. "Let's go inside."
He was over a foot taller than me and looked like a grizzly bear dressed like a farmer. At fifty-five he still had a full head of hair and shoulders that could carry a pyramid of grandchildren.
"Honestly, you wouldn't believe what he told me if I told you. I don't know if I believe it myself but I didn't have anything to do today so I figured I might as well do what he asked."
"What is it Daddy? What's going on?"
"Well, short story even shorter, there's a new weapon, some kind of virus. He said it's going to sweep across the country and there's probably nothing anyone can do about it. He begged me to come board up the house, stock up on as much food and water as we can afford and stay here."
"Board up the house? Like for a hurricane? How is boarding up the house going to stop a virus?"
He shook his head. "I'm afraid to tell you." He said, looking at the floor then looked up at me. "You're gonna think we've both gone crazy."
"You're about to board up my house and lock me in for God knows how long. I don't see how I could think you're any crazier than I do already. You know I've always been the dutiful, trusting wife and daughter so whatever this is, I think I've earned the right to know."
After a long pause and a deep sigh he spoke. "Okay. If you really want to know. He said there's a virus, it kills the victim in a few hours but they don't stay dead. They get up and kill others and that's how it spreads."
"Wait. You mean like zombies? Like in the movies?"
"What movies? Hell, I don't know. You know I don't watch movies."
I just stared at him. "I can't believe I'm asking this but do you think he's crazy or is this real?"
"I tell you one thing, those guys in that black car out front sure seem to think he's pretty important and they ain't from no mental hospital."
While Daddy was boarding up the house I went to Walmart to start stocking up on supplies. Driving through town was surreal, like I was in some parallel universe where the world was crumbling around me, where death was waiting around every corner but looking through a window into a world where everything was business as usual. Watching people; the car ahead of me, the car behind me, people walking in and out of the gas station and cars passing on the other side of the road in such an orderly fashion, I started to feel that the last day and a half had been some horrible dream and everything really was okay.
Walking into Walmart really helped. People were saying excuse me when they almost ran into each other's shopping carts while others ignored one another and stood in the way, staring at the shelves for far too long. No one was fighting to the death over the last gallon of water. There were the usual lines in the aisles of people politely waiting behind the elderly, obese or otherwise disabled in motorized carts, holding back the urge to dump them out into the floor and trample them underfoot. It was just like any other day and I almost convinced myself to abort the shopping mission. Seeing everyone behaving so normally, it started to sink in that nothing was happening and I was buying into some paranoid delusion, like one of those doomsday preppers that I saw on TV and always made fun of.
I made it all the way to the front door and shoved my empty buggy off to the side before stopping myself. I stood for a moment, looking at everyone coming and going and thought, what if he wasn't crazy? What if all these people really were just mindless, careless, naive cattle, heading ignorantly to the slaughter?
This was when Carol Humphries grabbed my arm. She was a loudmouth hen from my Sunday school class; a woman with the wrong shade of makeup and too much of it, costume jewelry she always tried to pass off as Tiffany, age inappropriate sparkly crap on her fingernails, and a hairstyle like a female gospel singer. She always seemed so fake and annoying but made you think she was really good hearted, deep down, when you knew she was pure evil, deeper down than that.
"Hey girl!! You look like you've seen a ghost. You alright?" She said and hugged me. She was forty-something and liked to act as if she was the mother of everyone she met. She had been that way even before my Mother died. She used to babysit me when she was twenty-something and I was almost ten and she treated me the same now as she did back then.
Seeing her in Walmart with so many others who looked just like her, I realized 'Yes, I'm not just being paranoid. They really are that ignorant, and willfully so.' So I got my shopping cart and filled it up till cans were almost falling off the top every time I hit a bump.
When I got home, Daddy was sitting in the porch swing, pointing with his last three fingers while holding a glass of iced tea between the index and thumb and the two government men had their coats off, their sleeves rolled up and were hanging plywood over the front windows. Daddy always had a way with people. I think it was a combination of his larger than life stature, his outgoing personality and his sheer willingness to make people feel uncomfortable and impose upon them. He was always able to keep people guessing as to whether he was just a big softy or if they should be afraid to cross him.
By the afternoon they had every window on the bottom floor boarded up and all the food and television moved upstairs and into the attic. There were two dormers on the roof facing the front yard and one of these was now the only way in and out of the house. Daddy was standing by his truck with the two agents, still with their sleeves rolled up and each drinking a beer.
"And this is what you do for hurricane season?" One of the agents asked.
"That's right." Your grandfather answered.
"But there's not even a hurricane coming."
"Yet." he said and took a sip of beer. "Better to get it done before than to be rushing around trying to get ready the week of."
"Doesn't seem any of the neighbors agree." The agent said, his eyes narrowing into an interrogating glare.
Your grandpaw met him eye to eye with the same look and held it for a moment. "Their loss."
The agent broke eye contact, chuckling under his breath and shaking his head then took the last sip out of his beer. He then nodded to the second agent who had been watching this exchange quietly, his eyes moving back and forth from the one to the other, and they went back down the driveway, through the yard and got in the car.
As the sun set that evening and the cicadas sang, it was like any other late spring evening, as long as you were out on the porch and not in the stale darkness of the boarded up bottom floor. Because of this, I didn't go in till after dark and when I turned on the television it had already begun.
It was immediately recognizable to your grandfather and I because we already knew, but to the rest of the world it was just a random act of violence. Some guy had attacked and injured three people on an international flight just before it had landed in New York and been detained by an air marshal with the help of a few passengers. Because it happened on an international flight and was a Muslim man, it automatically became the focus of political arguments and media attention. It was the same argument that had been going on for years, the same that had gotten the President elected then assassinated two years earlier and had given the government just cause to pass the religious liberty bill.
He died in custody, which made it
even more of a controversy. It was proven later that he had died of fever but the media and the Muslim community was so convinced for so long that it was police brutality or neglect, they didn't notice the spread of the virus until it was too late. So, many of the first killings went unreported. Plus, Apple, that was a phone company, released a microchip that could be installed into your head that same day so the news didn't report anything but that for a week. It wasn't until the city's morgues opened up and these things started walking out that anyone even noticed.
On the second week of sitting in the dark, waiting to hear from your Dad, I woke up to the sounds of sirens on the TV and a reporter screaming as he was torn apart by a mob of the infected dead. They cut the feed and went to strictly aerial footage after that. The entire island of Manhattan was like a war zone; mobs of living and dead roaming the streets, the dead eating the living, the living fighting back and sometimes killing each other in the confusion and hysteria, police and firefighters overwhelmed or non-existent, buildings on fire all over the city. On the other side of the Hudson River, military vehicles and troops were scrambling to the bridges and tunnels just to contain it all but no one crossed over to help. Finally, the outbreak had their full attention.
Two weeks into it, there were no signs of real life, just oceans of dead bodies walking aimlessly like grazing cattle. You could hardly see the streets in places, there were so many of them. Every tunnel and bridge out of the city was blown up except for one at the north end of the island and that's where the military stationed everything they had. They called it the gauntlet; from one side of the bridge all the way to the other were military vehicles and troops. Video from the choppers still showed the streets, even in Washington Heights, full of the dead. There were a few here and there, sitting and scraping the last bits of flesh from bones and some lying trampled underfoot but most were just shuffling through each other like currents crossing paths in an ocean.
There was non-stop coverage of this for the next two days while, in the corners of the screen, various politicians, analysts, scientists, economists and any other type of professional person they could find gave their opinion. They talked, mostly, about the possibility of nuking the island and even started evacuating everyone within twelve miles.
Watching them standing so still all throughout the city or wandering back and forth, up and down the same streets day after day, it was as if they may never even be a threat to the rest of us. But all it took was one accidentally wandering up onto the bridge, and one soldier putting one shot from his rifle through its rotten head to get the attention of the rest and show them the way. In every part of the city they started moving collectively. Washington Heights followed after the one on the bridge. Hudson Heights and Upper Manhattan followed Washington Heights. Harlem followed Upper Manhattan and was followed by the rest of the city. Every street in the city was flowing north like rivers, filtering together down to Broadway as the island tapered at the north end. They wound their way around the entrance loops and up onto the bridge like a raging river being swallowed into the earth, gaining speed and volume at every merging traffic lane.
Every news outlet in the world was going live with the same footage at the moment the gunfire started. There was one distinct shot then a sound like an F-5 tornado as every gun that could fit on the bridge, or in the water next to it, or in the air around it went hot simultaneously. As a continuous wave of dead bodies pushed closer and closer to the barricade, they continued to fire. Rows of them were cut down, the rows behind them stumbling over them, pushed forward by the power of the hundreds of thousands behind them. Blood filled the bridge, collecting and pouring out of the drains, raining down over Fort Washington Park and into the Hudson River like red faucets. The battle went on for two hours, bodies heaped up on the bridge till they overflowed and fell limply, head over heels, over two hundred feet, splashing into the water below. More dead climbed over and some fell with them. I could see as the sun got higher, half the river turning red with blood and flowing south.
When the mob made it through the first barricade, all hell broke loose. It was like a medieval battle. Soldiers were fighting with anything they could get their hands on. Others, who were not yet in the midst of the melee were panicking and still firing, killing dead and living alike. Once they made it to the second barricade, all hope was lost for most and they turned and ran and kept running. Those who ran from that battle probably ran until the day they died. Those who didn't run, died right there when they blew the bridge.
It was estimated that almost one million dead were put down on that bridge. I think the way they estimated this was that when the last bullet was fired, the last living man torn apart and the first wave of dead set foot in New Jersey, the mob still covered over half the island.
All the experts were still speculating about what this actually was. Were they actually dead? What caused this? What should be done about it? They pulled information from the only reliable source, science fiction, and blabbed on uselessly, fulfilling every notion of the almost prophetic books and movies they quoted.
The dead rolled through the country like a tidal wave preceded by hysteria, mass suicides, riots and looting. The eastern seaboard became a war zone as the military, the police and militias comprised of the few remaining armed citizens fought back. The more they fought back though, the more they lost and the more the numbers of the dead grew. It took over a month for them to reach Atlanta and that's when things here really started to get out of control. As the war raged in Atlanta, infections and murders were already being reported as far as Birmingham. People here were already starting to fight over food, water, guns, building materials. The police and Sheriff Department had their hands full but they were still trying.
Just as it was being reported that the main wave was crossing the Alabama/Georgia line, one of the Homeland Security agents knocked on the wall of the house. It was the younger one.
"Y'all okay up there?" He called out over the sound of police sirens passing on the highway.
Your grandfather answered him, stepping out onto the roof. "Good as anyone can be right now, I guess."
"We've been called back to Jackson. I just wanted to thank you for your hospitality before we go."
I stuck my head out the window. "You're leaving?"
"Yeah, we've been recalled. I guess they finally realized there are more important things to do. I just wanted to say thank you."
"You done? We gotta go." The slightly older one barked. The whole time they had been visiting with us, he had been much quieter, reserved. He seemed to resent the rookie's presence of personality or, what he would probably call, absence of professionalism.
"You sure that's the best thing at this point?" It was your Dad. He was thinner than I remembered on that night two months earlier; leaner, tougher looking. It almost scared me. He had walked right up out of the woods behind them and they never heard him. When he spoke, the younger one was startled and your grandfather laughed so hard he almost fell off the roof. The older agent froze then turned his head slowly. "It's alright. I mean you no harm. I just want to be left alone to protect my family."
The agent turned his head a little more to see if he was armed. "If you'd have come out of those woods five minutes ago, I'd be taking you with us." He paused and I could feel the tension between them building. "Best of luck with all this." he said with a harsh sincerity then walked away, the younger one following.
"Hey," your Dad stopped them. "If you've got families, I suggest you go to them."
"I don't." The older one said as he stopped but didn't turn around. "I have my country and my orders, just like you did." And he started walking again.
"They're not gonna stop it this way. You've got to know that by now." your Dad said, calmly insistent.
"Thanks for the coffee, Mrs. Sampson." was all he said as he disappeared around the side of the house.
Daddy lowered the ladder down for him and we spent the next month in the attic.
Earl
y one morning about two weeks into being up there we heard a parade of sirens speeding by that must've lasted ten minutes. By noon, the war had reached us.
Constant gunfire echoed for miles around, accompanied by frequent explosions. We stayed in the attic though, your Dad leaning his back against the window sill, looking over his shoulder at the passing crowds of corpses while your grandfather looked out the other one. He made me look out the back window one time; said he didn't want it to come as a shock if we ever had to make a run for it.
There were ten or more dragging their feet, making their way through the back yard and an endless stream of them following. They were every kind of people; rich and poor, young and old, men and women, all dead for anywhere from a few hours to about three months. I even saw a few I recognized, people I had seen around town my entire life and had never chanced to meet them or know their names.
The crowd passed us right by though like a river flowing around a rock that wouldn't be moved. We only whispered for several days and made sure not to silhouette ourselves in the windows and even though we could hear some of them dragging their feet across the front and back porch, not one tried to get in.
Eventually the gunshots stopped. During the day, the noise wasn't too noticeable but at night it was a different story. I don't know if it's the temperature or the darkness or a difference in pressure or humidity but, at night, sound carries so differently. In the calm, in the dark, I could hear everything; their clothes rustling slowly, their feet dragging across the grass, even their bones creaking and popping at the joints. It was like there was nothing between us and them and I was so thankful every time the sun came up so I could get some sleep. But even then, there was the smell. It was so strong, like a dumpster full of dead animals and the heat in the attic made it worse. It was more than a smell. You could actually feel it when it hit your lungs like there was rotten guts, physically, in the air, making it thicker, heavier.