Anders had to be in her sixties. She was thin and small, with a pale face and graying black hair. She was a veterinarian. Barring any extreme medical emergencies, we now had a doctor in the house.
We held weekly meetings and assigned different duties, even the children in the hotel had jobs to do, and we tried to hold things together. Some people were adapting. Some were utterly useless, unable to adapt to a world that was too far gone.
The power never did come back on, and after a few weeks the water stopped running as well. That was a bitch. Now we had to ration water, and had begun stockpiling our supply by raiding nearby stores for bottles until we realized all the office towers around us were vertical gold mines. On almost every floor of every building we found at least one of those big five gallon bottles in or near a water cooler. Food was less of a problem, for now. There were more than enough packaged foods in nearby shops and offices to sustain us.
We didn’t have many weapons. There were a total of three guns, an indication of just how far anti-firearm legislation and sentiment had gone in the Bay Area before everything fell apart. Most of our weapons were blunt force weapons. Pry bars, axes and baseball bats were the most effective.
At least once a day helicopters passed over the city or hovered over the bay. We tried any number of ways to signal them and thought we had failed.
We had tried contacting any authorities using two-way radios, an emergency radio found in the basement of the Palace and even the police radio Haise had been wearing, as Randall had taken it along with his gun, but we received no responses.
With no power, we had no way of knowing if TV stations were transmitting. we charged only a few smart phone batteries with the hotel emergency generators and used them to monitor the web If the internet was still up and running none of the cell towers were operational or they had been shut down, because we never got any signals.
Local AM and FM radio was just a sea of white noise.
Our only reliable source of information was a radio Renfield had constructed. It was a small unimpressive plastic box. I asked him where the microphone and speaker were and he told me he was a QRPer. He began throwing a lot of jargon at me. Most of it went over my head but what it boiled down to was this; on the roof of the Palace, via relayed messages, he could communicate with anyone, anywhere, given enough time. He was using the CW band and communicating in Morse code. I thought that was a thing of the past, but he told me that before things fell apart there was a growing number of amateur radio enthusiasts who were returning to the roots of radio communication, building very low-power radios and perfecting their performance. The battery-powered clear polycarbonate cube filled with electronic components soldered to a circuit board became known as Renfield’s Box. It was an effective, yet slow means of communication.
After two weeks we gave up trying to hail any emergency services or government agencies through second or third parties. If they were out there, they were ignoring us.
Sitting on the roof of the hotel with his radio and a pen and notepad, the radio chatter Renfield captured confirmed that the San Francisco area was a quarantine zone. No one was going in or out of the city. Anyone trying to leave the city by crossing the bay and landing a boat in Marin or the East Bay would be shot on sight as the authorities now assumed that anyone living in the city was a carrier of the disease.
Looking down from the roof, Renfield never saw anything on Montgomery Street aside from the stealthy movements of a stray gray and white cat as it weaved between the abandoned cars.
There wasn’t much news outside the Bay Area beyond rumors.
It was said that Manhattan had been leveled, or cleansed, by nuclear weapons. It was said that grin drives were being undertaken by National Guard units all across the plains and down into Texas. The infected were being rounded up like cattle, corralled into large groups and then sprayed down with gasoline and burned alive, which was considered the most cost-efficient method of dealing with them. It was said that nuclear power plants had melted down in Japan, France, and Southern California. It was said there was no longer a centralized government in the United States. All of this information was second hand. Rumor. Supposition.
No one said anything about exploring treatments or vaccines or immunization.
When the technology that united us across great distances and left us more and more isolated from each other than any other time in human history failed, human contact became an essential once again.
There were groups of survivors like us in Seattle, Cheboygan, Dover and New Bedford, people trapped by geography, by lines of water or fire or soldiers, people trapped in gathering places for grins.
More and more grins were appearing in the city. We had a group of fit young men and women who called themselves the Wrecking Crew. The two teams of five went out on hunts, killing as many grins as they could, and they always returned with the same news. There were more of them out there. They were coming up the peninsula to downtown San Francisco. No one knew why.
Haise never came back. Randall finally admitted, in clipped sentences, that he had accused Haise of being a fraud who was playing at being a cop. They had argued, Randall had taken the gun and fired one shot into the ceiling to scare Haise away.
Benjamin was dating Marisol Morales. Her sister Soledad was sharing a room with a mean looking young man named Ed Mariano, who was the head of the Wrecking Crew.
It took us a while to realize that a man who had joined us was a pimp, trading out the favors of his women for whatever he needed.
One of those women was Rose Lubisch. Rose was only eighteen. She was trying and failing to hide the fact that she was pregnant. We had assumed that Kalife Montagne was her husband. He wasn’t.
When we heard this news I wanted to throw the man out. Jillian told me to wait and see what happened. She was hoping Montagne would change, would help out and pitch in and become part of our little community. She always hoped for the best in people.
Rose rarely spoke, and she followed Montagne around the hotel the same way Clyde followed Randall.
I decided I’d take Jillian’s advice and wait.
Rose was the second woman I failed. The first was Jillian.
* * * * *
“How about I suck your cock?”
“No,” I said. I was holding a clipboard, one hand braced against steel shelving.
A grin had broken into one of the basement storerooms. The Wrecking Crew had found it and killed it. Jillian and I were taking stock of the many supplies that had been gathered and stored in the room. The room was a mess, and the job was dull, but it gave us some time alone, something we had far too little of these days.
Jillian leaned forward and breathed on my neck. It was a thing she had always done and it drove me wild. Her lips might graze my skin when she did that, but for the most part it was her breath, soft and hot and immediate.
“Come on, Louis,” she whispered, her voice as soft as her breath on my neck. “Let me get your motor running, then we can go for a ride.”
The tone of her voice and the look on her face got to me. “Well,” I said, getting as hard as a rock as she gave me her lopsided grin and got down on her knees. “Okay.”
She unzipped my fly, reached into my pants for my cock, and then laughed. I was so hard she couldn’t get me out of my pants, so she loosened my belt and pulled my pants down. I wasn’t wearing any underwear. Underwear was just one more thing to wash, and we had to wash most things by hand since the power went out; the generators were put to more important needs, like heat and light.
“Mmmm,” she said. Her tongue flicked over the head of my cock and I felt that familiar and always-fresh jolt of sexual electricity race across my skin. I nearly dropped the clipboard and grabbed the steel shelf to steady myself.
My left hand slipped in something, and the very last shred of my consciousness that hadn’t been pumped into my prick wondered about the slick substance on my fingers.
I looked down at Jilly, she was righ
t, I wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck . . . and I glanced at my hand.
I had a handful of vibrant green snot.
Jilly was taking me into her mouth, working her way along the length of my cock, and that point of contact was now the center of the universe.
Jillian pulled back, stroking my cock and smiling up at me, her smile growing wider, and wider, until it was a horrible rictus.
The smiler sickness was transmitted by body fluids, all fluids, blood, saliva, snot and semen. We didn’t know that at the time, although Dr. Anders was methodically working her way toward that conclusion with the limited resources at hand.
Jilly showed us that we were all at greater risk than we realized. Until then, we had only been concerned about blood, and before Jillian and I went into the storeroom to take inventory, every inch of the space had been checked for blood. When I asked later about the grin that had broken in, the men who had found it and killed it said it had been coughing and sneezing like it had a bad cold, which wasn’t unusual for a grin.
We didn’t know.
We didn’t know then that any liquid medium could sustain the parasites and was as dangerous as a loaded gun. I had a handful of it, which meant there could be more in this space. The snot was only half-congealed; it was almost fresh and most likely came from the grin that had broken into the storeroom.
I was immune, and I had no idea why. Jillian was probably not immune. If I had known one touch of any fluid left behind by the grin could infect her, I would have gotten her out of there.
“No,” I said again. This time the word almost a sob, and the fact that my genitals were right in front of her and were easy targets was the furthest thing from my mind.
“Jilly,” I said.
Her smile had become extreme. I could see her molars and her gums as her lips pulled back in the classic rictus created by the horrific tightening of facial muscles, a clear sign that she had been infected while we had been taking inventory.
I watched everything that was my wife fade from her eyes. Her intelligence, her humor, her deep love, and her immeasurable will. She was gone and a thing was left behind, a hungry thing that was holding on to me, opening its mouth and biting down on my erection, drawing blood, drawing a scream from me.
I was still holding the clipboard. It was one of the old-fashioned metal ones, a steel sheet designed to take a beating. I brought it down on her head. It didn’t hurt her at all, but it startled her enough that she disengaged from my cock and snarled at me.
I punched her in the face and broke her nose, releasing a heavy flow of blood and snot. When the parasites really dig in and start reproducing in a human body a lot of snot and saliva is produced, a healthy medium for the transmission of the parasites from host to host.
I turned to run, and immediately tripped and fell, forgetting that my pants were still around my ankles.
I rolled onto my back as Jillian lunged on top of me, one hand grabbing my prick and one clawing at my face. How many times had she climbed on top of me before, gently touching my face and my cock as she prepared to ride me? It was a position favored by both of us.
I shoved her head back with one hand, avoiding those snapping teeth. I knew I was immune, but she could tear my throat out, or chew off my fingers, and I still had plans for them. With my other hand I slashed at her throat with the steel edge of the clipboard. The edge wasn’t sharp, but her throat was soft. I should know, I kissed it often enough. The clipboard cut her, a small cut.
She lunged again and I slashed at her again, and then I rolled on top of her, my still hard cock pressed between us, how many times had we laid like that before, and then I raised the clipboard, gripped it with both hands, and used it to hack off my lovely Jilly’s head.
I was cold, shivering so violently I could hardly hold the clipboard. I ejaculated as I was beheading my wife. I pulled up my pants, sat beside her, and cried.
Most people would say I killed a thing, a dangerous, mindless thing. In my mind, I had murdered my wife, and that was the moment things changed for me. I was the same after the parasitic outbreak as I was before it began wiping out humanity. I wanted to hide in quiet and comfort. I hid from the world in my stories before the outbreak and afterward I hid in the Palace from the mindless, hungry grins wandering the streets.
When I cut off Jillian’s head, when I murdered her, I changed. I no longer wanted to hide. Now I wanted to fight back, to destroy every one of those smiling grins out there. I wanted a war and I had nothing to lose— except Jillian’s legacy, her kindness, everything she had worked so hard to preserve.
I didn’t want to take charge. It was thrust upon me. People saw Jillian and I as the leaders of our group of survivors, then depended on us for the final word despite a number of committees Jilly had been creating to get feedback from everyone on everything we proposed so our every action was supported by the majority.
But they looked to me to lead them . . .
* * * * *
What we have learned, firsthand and through radio reports from other survivors is this—
There are three ways one can contract the smiler sickness. Grin attacks are the primary mode of transmission, accidental contact with any body fluids constitute secondary transmission, and tertiary transmission is catching the disease from flies.
The bug, giardia motivus, is a parasite. It isn’t anything made by man or mutated by some freakish whim of nature. It is a living thing that very well may have been around for millions of years before its path crossed with ours.
With Dr. Anders’ help we learned almost all bodily fluids could transmit the disease. The parasite can survive in any liquid medium in the human body, except urine. We began saving piss in large containers, and used it to wash down anything a grin came in contact with. It was too late to save Jillian, but that knowledge would save others. I tried to take some comfort in that.
Once parasites enter the skin it takes them only a few minutes to reach the brain, where they begin interfering with motor functions and take over a body that becomes nothing but a breeding ground and a delivery system to nurture the parasites and spread them to other hosts.
The parasite multiplies, and drives the host to bite or tear at the skin of other suitable hosts. Then the grin bleeds, vomits or spits into wounds to pass on the parasite. Unlike the zombies or scary movies grins do not eat the living, they just . . . ravage them. An open wound is a better medium for transmission, of the parasites, the closer to the brain the better, so grins will tear at faces and throats.
A telltale sign of infection is a rictus smile. The disease is called the happy bug or smiling sickness. The life span of the infected is unknown, but it is thought the parasites feed on their hosts slowly, creating a desiccated corpse-like creature that can still be mobile and dangerous for a time depending on the physical fitness of the grin at the time of infection.
The infected are not zombies in the traditional sense. They are deranged, their higher brain functions destroyed by the parasites that guide them. The parasites also carry unidentified bacteria that cause a host of diseases, including something similar to leprosy, killing the nerves and making the grins nearly invulnerable to pain. Real zombies, if they existed, would decay after a month and be no threat. The grins are alive and hungry. They are not immortal, but while they live, they are a constant danger.
The parasites were first transmitted by the common housefly. The flies are immune because they build immunity as larvae.
Renfield ate maggots. I was eaten by them, or at least the diseased and possibly gangrenous flesh of my facial wound was after I was attacked by the grin on the Golden Gate Bridge. Both of us were immune.
What our group needed now was a doctor or a biologist, anyone who could help us work on a cure, because there was one waiting to be discovered.
* * * * *
I took Jillian’s body down Market Street and across Justin Herman Plaza to the Ferry Building. She was wrapped in plastic, and a clean white
sheet. I slipped her into the bay and a current carried her away from me. I wanted to do it alone. Benjamin and Randall came with me.
We killed two grins on the way there and five on the way back. Most of them were older, and in bad health, even for the infected. One was a child, a little boy of about ten years old. His upper lip was crusted with snot and the mange-like itch had driven him to rub a raw red hole through his t shirt and the flesh over his collarbone. His hands were bigger than they should have been, and his fingernails were hard claws.
When he saw our obvious distress Randall said, “I’ve got this one.” We walked past the thing that was once a little boy and heard Randall behind us, beating it to death with a steel pry bar.
When we got back to the Palace Hotel, Kalife Montagne was standing in the lobby and screaming at Rose Lubisch, a slender brunette who was hugely pregnant. He was a huge black guy with a gold grill, and he towered over her.
“You stupit fuckin bitch, how could you go and get knocked up? You know how much trade I’m gonna lose when that pussy’s out of commission? I got a good mind to slap the—“
He didn’t get to finish. I slammed the flat on my sword into the back of his head and he went down. While people I knew and many I’d not yet gotten to know stood and watched, I grabbed one of Montagne’s wrists and dragged him out onto the street. He didn’t fight back; he only recoiled in horror as I shoved him outside. My face had that effect on a lot of people. I came back into the hotel and locked the door.
“That man doesn’t come back in here,” I said, to anyone listening.
Rose looked terrified.
“Everything is going to be fine,” I said.
* * * * *
The next day we heard a commotion in the street outside the barricaded doors. Certain rooms and suites had been designated lookouts. I went up to a first floor room with Benjamin and looked down into the street. Montagne was there, with a group of people who looked like the troublesome rabble you only see in bad movies. These people were filthy, some injured, some deranged, some angry, angry at us, safe inside the Palace, or angry at the world in general. The crowd was only about thirty people, but they looked like hard cases, people who had been surviving all this time under conditions far rougher than life inside the hotel.
4POCALYPSE - Four Tales Of A Dark Future Page 24