And then she passes out again.
30
A second day passes in the same haze of sickness and fatigue. On the third day, she is finally able to lift herself out of bed. As soon as she moves, though, she wishes she were back asleep. Her clothes, the sheets, and the mattress all smell like garbage. The smell of urine and shit that she has been able to avoid due to her aging senses finally fills her nose, but instead of being caused by her Blocks is produced by her. There is no way to know how many times she dirtied the mattress while she was asleep.
How ironic that I spend my days changing everyone around me, and now no one is around to help me when I’m filthy.
She remains there, on her back, thinking. The less she moves while she formulates a game plan, the less of a mess there will be to clean up. There is no point to getting out of bed right away just to distance herself from the filth. She has been lying in it for two days; what is another couple of minutes? There is no shame, nothing to be embarrassed about. No one is around to see her predicament or to judge her for remaining in her own excrement.
It’s important to make sure her equilibrium is back. If she were to dart out of bed too quickly, she might become lightheaded and fall flat on the concrete. She props herself up on one arm. The room is not spinning in circles; her vision seems steady.
She looks around the gutted gymnasium, tries to think of the best course of action for her Blocks. The nutrient bags all have the same regulator, meaning they will all provide each Block with the same steady amount of nutrition day and night. Looking down at her own bag, she sees it is nearly empty, meaning that in the two days that have passed, the Blocks have only been without food and water for maybe eight hours. Twelve hours max.
The priorities she comes up with, in order, are: get food and water for herself so she can regain her strength and function properly, determine the living from the dead, refill the nutrient bags of the living, get herself cleaned off. After all of that is done, she can worry about getting the dead Blocks to the incinerator. The luxury of not having the living in beds next to the dead will have to be put on hold for a while.
If she tries to do any more than this, if she tries to work around the clock until everyone is cared for again, she will relapse into a bedridden mess. Her body is weaker than it has ever been. She is used to hobbling to get from one place to another. She is even used to arthritic fingers and not being able to taste much of the food she eats unless she adds a spoon full of salt to it. But she is not used to feeling utterly and completely feeble in her old age. This is how people die without realizing they have deteriorated away to nothing. Her dry mouth, her dirty clothes, the nutrient bag still connected to her arm, all remind her she is no longer the young person she used to be.
Maybe life starts the first time you understand your own limitations and is measured by the ways you exceed those boundaries.
The stench of shit reminds her that she needs to start moving.
The living Blocks, however many are left, won’t be repositioned and cleaned until the following day, maybe not for two more days. It depends on how much she can manage before she needs rest. It also depends on how many of her Blocks are dead and how long it takes her to transport each one to the incinerator. By the time she gets to caring for the living again, four days could easily pass. She has no idea how long it takes for bedsores to develop or for maggots to harvest from within shit-filled diapers. Hopefully, it is longer than four days.
She fills a glass with water, drinks it, refills it, and drinks that too. From the food processor, a bowl of soup is generated. It does not have much taste.
How did Daniel deal with his frailty and with the overwhelming responsibility he surely faced? Did he accept his fate, his age, his weakening body? Did he resign himself to defeat? Or did he fight the way Morgan fought until she got sick? Is his body lying on the floor in the Los Angeles group home, where he finally crumpled in exhaustion, never to get back up? Toward the end, was Daniel forced to sacrifice a couple of his Blocks for the well-being of the majority, or was his un-doing that he tried to force everyone to keep living until there was too much sickness and suffering to recover from?
Are the things that are happening to her the same things that happened in Los Angeles, Houston, and New Orleans? Did the group home in Los Angeles finally go quiet when Daniel worked himself to death? Did the final group home in Houston incur a mass starvation after the final caretaker there went to sleep one night and never woke up again? Did the caretaker at the New Orleans group home fear this possibility so much that she took matters into her own hands by burning the entire home to the ground before taking her own life?
She pushes these thoughts from her head. They are not helpful. After getting food and water for herself, she walks through the four quadrants. It’s worse than she feared.
There are dead bodies everywhere. Some died with their eyes and mouths open, giving them the appearance of being frightened as life left them. These are the bodies she finds herself looking away from. Others died with their eyes closed, as if they were aware of what was happening and had resigned themselves to not being saved. To these, she apologizes.
A surprising amount of the dead are already grey, a series of grotesque sculptures aligned in rows. A few of the bodies, still with rosy flesh, trick her into thinking they are still alive. It’s only when she feels for a pulse and meets the resistance of rigor mortis that she knows there will be no heartbeat. These are the bodies that make her shudder. She is used to touching these people, but touching a wrist or fingers that are locked in the freeze of death always makes her yank her hand back. It’s not something she is proud of. On the contrary, she apologizes each time it happens.
The pungency of shit and death and sickness are everywhere. So pervasive is the stench of human excrement that she cannot tell which Blocks need to be changed and which merely released whatever waste they had when they died.
She can use the forklift to transport dead bodies to the incinerator, but removing a corpse does not erase the smell of death. If only the food processor could make something resembling air fresheners. For the first time in a long time she is thankful for still having good eyesight while the rest of her senses faded away.
For the Blocks that still seem healthy, she refills their bags and tells them she will be back soon to finish caring for them. For the ones that are already dead, she marks an X on one of their hands and continues on to the next bed.
Only sixteen of the fifty Blocks are still alive. Three of these appear so weak that bringing them back to health might be more torture than simply letting them die.
With her headcount done, with the nutrient bags of the living refilled, she powers up the forklift. One by one, the dead are transported to the flames, bed and all. The work takes longer than she thinks it should. Only half of the dead are gone, into the incinerator, by the time midnight comes around.
The last thing to go in the incinerator that night is her own bed. It would take more energy to change the mattress and sheets than it would to simply burn the entire cot. She can put a blanket down on one of the spare beds and sleep there. The days of being picky are gone.
The last thing she says before going to sleep is, “I’m sorry.” She says this to those still living. And then, “I wish I could do more, but for one night you’ll have to be stuck around the less fortunate.”
For once, her Blocks are not talkative. Not a single one of them offers a reply.
The next day she transports the rest of the dead to the incinerator. With only a couple of hours left in the day, she begins cleaning and repositioning the few Blocks who have survived with her. And when she grows weak and needs a break from repositioning bodies, she sits and enjoys some food and water.
Everywhere she looks, there are pitiful reminders of what used to be an organized group home. Quadrant 4 is no longer four neatly aligned rows with four Blocks in each row. There are no more rows in quadrant 4 at all, only three bodies scattered like a misaligned constellation. Qu
adrant 3 only has five Blocks.
She considers reorganizing the remaining beds into neat lines, one final quadrant of survivors. It would offer a semblance of the life she once knew, maybe even fool her into being able to believe that life can continue as it had before she fell ill. But she knows this act would only be for aesthetics, would be wasted time and needless energy. And so, because of this, there are large patches of bare concrete between each body. Instead of looking like they are part of a group, each Block looks like it is slowly floating out in space, carried in random directions by other stars, by black holes, by whatever invisible forces control everything that is happening all around them.
31
A storm approaches. Its wind sounds like a plane’s engine, like a great jumbo jet must be parked right outside the group home. But instead of taking her to safety, the booming noise ensures she is trapped.
The roof whines against the wind’s force. The sheets overlap so that if one goes most will go. The design is intended to prevent minor leaks and to ensure the roof lasts as long as possible. Unless, of course, an entire panel is torn away. If that happens, most of the roof would fly apart and so much water will be channeled into the room that she will have to flee with whatever supplies and Blocks she can transport. She either won’t get wet, or a flood will wash them away. There is no in-between.
It rains for two days straight. It thunders too, but this she barely acknowledges compared to the downpour of water and the force of the wind. She fears looking out the windows. If the streets are flooded, if the weeds are drowned under a newly formed lake, it’s a matter of time until water starts rushing in. If water doesn’t start coming down through the roof, it will surely come in under the doors. She will have to decide if she sticks it out with her Blocks, knowing full well that none of them will survive the sickness and mold that will get them, or if she will pack what little she still calls her own and head for the nearest suitable place to live by herself.
If it weren’t for the power generator, ensuring she doesn’t have to try caring for the remaining Blocks without any lights or air conditioning, they would be lost already. She would be bumping into cots until her shins were purple and she was limping everywhere she went (more than she limps already). Without music echoing through the giant room, she would be forced to hear her own feet shuffling across the floor, would have to acknowledge how loud her breathing is just from performing simple chores all day.
For two days and two nights, the rain and wind sound like they will surely wash the gym away.
This is it, she thinks, preparing herself for the end.
A splattering of water showers down on random parts of the gymnasium floor where the metal sheets are briefly lifted by the wind. The gust subsides, though, and the roof settles again. The structure remains firm.
Eventually, the rain recedes. Only after she looks up and sees sun pouring through the clouds does she allow herself to look outside at her surroundings. Further down the road, the streets are flooded. A cat, separated by an impromptu body of water from the kittens it has left inside a gutted warehouse, lets out long cries. The kittens inch to the edge of the factory, their little paws almost touching this new lake that has appeared out of nowhere, each young animal wanting only to be back with its mother. But the adult cat will not risk swimming to her kittens, and the kittens cannot force themselves to step into this world of water that they know nothing about, no matter how much they want to suckle and be comforted and warm. The only thing they can do is cry.
Morgan closes the door and returns to her Blocks. She knows suffering is everywhere, that life was like this before the Great De-evolution and will continue to be this way after she is no longer here. But to see the suffering, to see animals, her and her Blocks included, that want nothing more than to get along as best as they can, only to be tormented by loss and anguish, is too much sometimes.
Maybe life begins the first time you understand the magnitude of suffering around you, and ends the last time you witness that sorrow.
It has only stopped raining for an hour before drops of water begin tinkling against the metal roof once again. Another storm already. And within seconds of those first drops, another barrage begins pouring down on the city. She does everything she can to get the thought of that cat and her kittens out of her mind. The worst part will be in the morning when the meowing has stopped and she knows the mother cat had to leave her kittens to die. That’s exactly why she shouldn’t have looked out the window in the first place.
“You’re a trooper,” she tells one of her resilient Blocks, patting him on the shoulder.
To another, she says, “I’m glad you’re still here with me,” and lets her hand brush over the woman’s shin as she walks past.
Everywhere she goes, she tells each person how glad she is to have them around. But no amount of endless banter with her Blocks can get the sound of those sad cats out of her head.
The rain keeps falling.
32
She blinks back into consciousness, realizing she must have been asleep. It’s the middle of the night. She knows this without looking at her alarm clock because the moon is past the highest set of windows in the top corner of the gymnasium. In a couple of hours the sun will be making its way across the horizon.
When she awakes in the morning, she rubs the sleep away from her eyes, moves out of bed, slowly, gauging what part of her body may not want to move that day. There is a sense of resigned determination at how the day must be spent. But every time she wakes in the middle of the night, she is immediately scared. Her jaw is clenched. Her eyes have a panicked intensity.
For once, her body is not sore. And this is one of the indicators she has learned that tells her if she is dreaming or if she is awake; ironically, it’s only in her nightmares that her body doesn’t feel like it’s approaching one hundred years of life. Knowing she is dreaming does not keep the fear from descending upon her. She waits for a voice to call out from across the room and threaten her. Her heart quickens. She looks for a shadow moving toward her in the dark. Her head is throbbing.
Her eyes settle on Rachel, her veterinarian Block in quadrant 3. She is sitting up in bed, staring directly at Morgan. The first instinct that crosses Morgan’s mind is to tell Rachel that she is doing her best, that it wasn’t her fault she got sick and so many Blocks died. No words arrive, though. She is mute again. Her body won’t obey any of her commands. This is why she is terrified.
How long has Rachel been staring at her? Why, she wonders, do the Blocks, when they gaze at her, have such hatred in their eyes? Isn’t it obvious that she is trying her best? For God’s sake, she nearly died in her bed just a few days ago. What else can she do? She doesn’t want to be remembered as a mass murderer. Can’t they see that everything she has done has been with good intentions? She has never wanted to hurt anyone.
Rachel’s eyes tell her that anything she might say to defend herself is pointless. The way the two pupils stare her down tells Morgan just how meaningless her life is to this Block. Less than meaningless. Worthless. The eyes say everything. If Morgan needed help, Rachel wouldn’t be there to provide it. The vet spent her entire life caring for animals abandoned by owners migrating south, but she won’t waste any concern on a piece of trash like Morgan. Never before have a pair of eyes shown such hatred.
She wants to ask Rachel why such hostility exists. If she is given a chance to explain herself, she is sure Rachel will understand. After all, Morgan spends part of each day refilling Rachel’s nutrient bag and cleaning up after her. The Blocks she has had to transport to the incinerator were sent there just so people like Rachel can keep living. Words would make everything better. But she cannot speak.
Please don’t hurt me, she begs to no one but herself. If she could, she would yell the words so they echoed to every living thing in Miami.
Rachel glances left. Looks right.
She isn’t looking for witnesses, Morgan thinks. She’s looking for a weapon. She’s looking
for something to cut me with, something to beat me with.
The possibilities are endless. Even in something as vapid as a group home for Blocks, there are countless ways to murder someone. Rachel could use something as simple as Morgan’s own pillow to smother her. Unable to move, to defend herself, there’s nothing Morgan would be able to do but hope she dies fairly quickly. Or maybe Rachel would take a washrag and force it down Morgan’s throat until she’s gagging on her own vomit. Maybe Rachel will fill a nutrient bag with cleaning chemicals and let Morgan feed off of it until her organs shut down. The forklift, the very one Morgan uses to carry each Block to their cremation, might be used to run over both of Morgan’s legs and arms. With all four extremities crushed, she would lie on the concrete, helpless, in agonizing pain, until she died.
There are so many ways she can kill me. Please, God, help me.
Rachel moves. It’s a slight movement, barely noticeable in the dark. It looks as though one hand is by Rachel’s neck, one finger extended. There it pauses. She is still staring, ruthlessly, at Morgan, still sitting on the edge of her cot thirty feet away from where Morgan is lying.
Is she holding a finger to motion for silence? Is she mocking me for not being able to scream? Is she telling me she’s going to slash my throat?
She has no idea what the gesture is supposed to signify, but she can tell from its owner’s eyes that it can’t mean anything good.
Please stop, Morgan wants to scream, but no noise comes from her throat.
A series of clouds move in front of the moon and the room becomes even darker. Now Morgan can barely see Rachel at all, can barely make out her outline in the shadows.
Is she moving? Is she going to get up and come this way? Please, no.
She gasps for air. Just thinking about all the ways Rachel might kill her makes it difficult to breathe. Her chest is burning. She wants to yell, “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. It kills me to do it.” But there are no words.
The Hauntings of Playing God (The Great De-Evolution) Page 14