by Connor Mccoy
“I have three kids in that house. One of them is just three. If something happens to me and Pat, who’s going to take care of them?” The man shook.
“Or what if they get sick?” He then turned toward Sheryl and Jacob. “You’ve got to think of the rest of us!”
And with that, Rodney turned and ran back to his home.
“Damn him,” Stone said.
“I agree.” Tran tucked his hand under his arm.
But as Rodney disappeared inside his home, Tom didn’t voice a similar sentiment.
A candle in his hand, Tom walked the halls of his home. The doors of his kids’ rooms all were open. With no electronic air conditioner operating, air circulation had to proceed through open windows and doors. Having been without air conditioning for more than a year, Tom didn’t mind. Besides, the weather was mild, making for a pleasant night. There was only the occasional wind blowing through a window, making his candle flicker.
He peered into Charlie and Dominick’s room. Charlie always slept with the covers on him, while Dominick slumbered without them, usually because he got so hot at night. Sometimes he didn’t wear a shirt. Tonight, Dominick slept on his side. The boy seemed a little more comfortable. Perhaps after losing so much weight, his body’s metabolism had settled.
Sam and Irvin were in the next room. The two couldn’t be more dissimilar. Sam was big, muscular. Irvin was small, not even coming up to Sam’s collarbone.
Fred and Terry slumbered across the hall. Though Fred and Terry certainly didn’t resemble each other—Fred was African American, Terry was Caucasian, the pair shared the same outgoing wit.
Tom then crept along to peek into Alice and Annie’s room. The two girls ended up paired together by default, as Kristin and Jackie insisted on their room. But so far it seemed to work fine. Alice was the most mature of their four girls and avoided conflict when possible. Annie generally spent her time around the boys.
He approached the last room. Cheryl’s soft voice wafted through the air. She was inside, speaking with Kristin and Jackie. The pair had been distraught at the Whites leaving.
Tom debated whether he should go in. He finally decided he didn’t want to disturb Cheryl. He had spent time comforting them today, but Cheryl had not. Better to leave them be.
As he marched down to the end of the hall, he couldn’t help but sympathize with Rodney and some of the other neighbors. What would he do to protect his family? If he had perceived a threat to his wife and kids, wouldn’t he do all he could to isolate that threat, wall it off, get rid of it, even if the threat came from other human beings?
He yawned. He decided to make a final check on Doctor Tran before he collapsed into bed. Quietly, he went out into the backyard, to Tran’s laboratory. He approached the tent flap. There was no activity. He pulled it open.
“Doctor?” He discovered Tran sitting in his chair, asleep.
Damn, Tom thought. When has this man had time to sleep? It occurred to him that he never had seen the doctor at rest since he had arrived here.
Then, Tran shook. “Huh?” He turned around. “Thomas. Excuse me. I suppose I truly can’t stay awake for ninety-six hours straight.”
“I hope that is a joke.”
“It is, at least since my college days.” Yawning, Tran reached down and scratched his stomach. He then noticed his scratching had caught Tom’s attention.
“Oh, that. Don’t worry, it’s not the virus. I do that on occasion, usually when I get stressed. I’m a little ashamed. I had let my temper get away from me. I went to check on your neighbors and advised them on treatment when your friend started spewing accusations. I didn’t exactly handle it well.” He exhaled.
“The problem came when he said something about Jamie Cooper. He insinuated that perhaps he or some of your recent arrivals may have tracked the virus in. Well, you probably heard my response to that.”
“I’m sure it’s just talk. They’re scared shitless. They don’t know how to explain things, so they just fall back on stupidity.”
“Do you know why Jamie left Carrollton?”
“No. He never told me anyway.”
Tran looked away. “I first arrived in Carrollton a little more than a year ago from Philadelphia, along with family and friends. We were welcomed, and we quickly became a part of the community. A lot of the town’s original population still was there. They had hunkered down during the EMP. They were spared the riots and even much of the natural calamity that came with the loss of power. Much of the town was young. There were mothers, fathers, and college kids eager to start new lives. They were confused and scared after the nuclear war, but it seemed they would be able to handle it.”
Tran reached over for a canteen and drank heavily from it. “But there was a problem. Many of the homes were built on low-lying land. A levee was being built a few miles away, but it could not be completed. The nearby water pump station was silent. The river that ran close by was starting to overflow. One bad storm could spell disaster.” The doctor shuffled in his seat.
“We knew what was coming. I chose not to settle in the southern part of the town. I had taken my family to the old part where it was higher. Then about nine months ago a storm came. It hovered over our heads, pouring water without mercy.”
Tran cringed. “Streets were covered with water. The waters reached rooftops. For so many, it was too late. Jamie, he grabbed a piece of wood that had broken off a home. He went down there, rowing with a shovel he found. He had a girl who lived in that neighborhood.” The doctor closed his eyes.
“There were very few survivors. Jamie was heartbroken. He tried to stay, but he couldn’t make a life there, not without his friends or his love. He left to seek out whatever was waiting for him in the world. I feared he never would be seen again by anyone.”
Tom was stunned. So, that was the story behind Tran’s town. “It’s amazing that they didn’t even evacuate.”
“It was fear.” Tran drank again. “Their homes were their last link to their normal lives, even if none of the electronics worked. They didn’t have to journey across the United States looking for a new haven. They wanted to stay where they were.”
Now Tran turned to Tom. “My town is dying, Thomas. The ones who are left are mostly my age or older. Your town has a lot of young people. There’s a future here. I watched nature devastate one community. I cannot let it happen again. When this is over, I want my nieces and nephews to come here and live. Perhaps they even will find people to marry.”
“I’d be honored to have your family here,” Tom said, though he hoped there would be a vibrant town to receive the Tran family.
Tom and Cheryl raised their heads. Pastor Rollins had finished the final prayer of the service. A soft wind blew through the air. Clouds had gathered, but not enough to foreshadow rain. It seemed the burial of Sheila would go off without a hitch.
Cheryl looked over Tom’s shoulder. A funeral for Waylon’s wife seemed the best course, not only to honor her life, but to provide an event for people to gather. News of the spreading cases of the disease had caused people to isolate themselves. Public meetings where more than a hundred people would gather had whittled down to a handful. And while this event seemed well attended, with about seventy citizens present, instead of gathering together in rows, they were scattered around the cemetery in small groups, usually just families. Many of them wore the masks Cheryl had passed out, or had covered their faces in cloth such as washcloths or spare shirts.
“I hate this,” Cheryl whispered, “It’s like they’re here, but they have guns to their backs. They can’t honor her properly? At least show their faces?”
Tom tightened his hold on his wife’s arm. Once again, he was caught between understanding the caution of the people on the one hand and his own anger that they were dividing up on the other. He was just glad they didn’t have working video cameras anymore. He wouldn’t want to have moving pictures of this scene.
By now Sheila’s casket was obscured by dirt. The digger
s continued spreading the earth over her coffin. The crowd was beginning to break up. However, the scene was busy for more than one reason. The groups also were being questioned. Lauren, Nadia, Sarah, Karen, Jamie Cooper and Doctor Tran, among other volunteers, were spreading out to gather important medical information. It had been confirmed that twenty people had become sick. It was time to try nailing down a pattern that might explain who was likely to contract the disease. Did they have certain vaccinations? Had they suffered from any prior neurological disease? What was their medical history, especially before the EMP struck?
Tom bristled. It was somewhat ghoulish to do this at a funeral service, but gathering people had become very difficult. Time was of the essence. This thing either could burn itself out or soon become a pandemic.
He then took notice of a covered wagon by the street curb. With heavy steps, he approached it, with Cheryl beside him. The wagon had been cobbled together out of car tires, wood and a raised cloth, making it look like an old covered wagon from the pioneer days, except with modern tires. The ingenuity of some of the citizens created transportation like this. The really sick would ride inside, pushed by their healthier loved ones, to Eagleton’s hospital.
Inside this car, Waylon slept. The man had no idea his wife was being buried today. He briefly had come out of his delirium not long ago, but could utter only one or two words at a time. It wasn’t clear he could understand much. He hadn’t even known his wife had died. Since then he had been asleep, possibly in a coma.
A middle-aged man’s shadow crossed over the covering. Byron Bianchi, one of the hospital workers, stood by the wagon like a sentry, a mask covering his face. He had a friend who also was infected but had made it to the hospital a day earlier, so Byron had volunteered to push Waylon to the hospital. Lauren’s preparations, plus the hard work of the hospital’s dedicated staff, had paid off. Tom remembered when that hospital was filled to overflowing with townspeople who had been injured during a fierce rainstorm. It was a near disaster. Today, the hospital had been outfitted with supplies from the NATO supply tents and the goods from Adelson.
Still, if this thing became a full-blown pandemic, that small hospital building still couldn’t handle the hundreds of people who might seek refuge there.
Tom looked from Waylon to his handler. “See you around.” He couldn’t say anything more. Lauren and her staff would do all they could for him, but in all likelihood, Waylon would be joining his wife in the next day or so.
It wasn’t long after they left Waylon that Cheryl started quickening her steps. Karen was speaking to a tall man. The man was arguing with her. Then Karen fell back as if something frightening had crossed in front of her. Cheryl broke into a run, but Jamie Cooper had reached her first, holding her and keeping her from falling over.
“I’m…I’m okay.” Karen’s panting, however, seemed to belie her words.
“Are you all right?” Cheryl asked, “I saw you panic.”
“He just got a little too close to me. I’m fine. I know it’s all right.”
Meanwhile, the argumentative man brushed past Cheryl and Karen and jabbed a finger in Cooper’s face. “Good, you’re the person I really want to talk to! You’re isolating the sick from the rest of us, right? Putting them all in the hospital?”
“We are not making anybody go anywhere,” Cooper said, “They can go to the hospital if they want, but the sick still can stay in their homes in the quarantine.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t seem to be helping. More and more people are getting sick. You’ve got to do something.”
“I believe this lady was trying to do something before you screamed at her.” Cooper’s features hardened.
“What, by asking me these chickenshit questions about shots I got when I was five?”
“It’s to help us figure out who might be next.” Tom came to a stop and got right between the man and Cooper. “Maybe if you got certain vaccinations, you actually might be immune to this thing. We don’t know, and you’re not helping by acting like an asshole.”
“Oh yeah, the great Thomas Criver.” The man chuckled.
“Hey, did you know my neighbors packed up and hit the road yesterday? They were my friends for ten years, and now they can’t stick around because we’ve become Death City.” He then eyed Cooper. “I find it more than a little shitty that we’re being told what to do by people who haven’t lived here until a few months ago.”
Cooper did not flinch. “I was welcomed here. I worked hard to gain your trust.”
“Then you better do something.”
“Or what?” Tom asked.
The man hesitated. He didn’t seem to have an answer. Perhaps Tom had caught him in a bluff. Finally, he just gave up and left. That didn’t make Tom feel any better. People who wanted action would take it in their own hands sooner or later.
Chapter Ten
Karen finished the ballot count. “Conrad Behr is the winner with thirteen votes. Theodore Lopez is second with five.” She shrugged. “That’s all we could get.”
Cheryl sighed. “Even going door to door.” She paced along the post office’s council table.
“I thought it would get more people to at least come out and do something.” Her hand fell to her hip. “Damn. Only eighteen people.”
Since Simon Terrell had resigned his seat on the council, Cheryl had hoped holding a quick special election would do more to unite their community, even if it was for the small district that Terrell represented. It had taken the hard work of people such as Nadia and Karen going door to door to spread the word. Even after all this, they could get only a handful of citizens to put a mark on a piece of paper. They feared anything they touched could give them the disease.
But the fact that they replaced Simon without a major fuss was progress. It had to be. This town was holding together. They were learning to do so. Cheryl knew from her time overseas how countries were when they were unstable. The infighting, the factions, the anarchy. She vowed not to let their new community come apart like that.
She turned back to Karen. Seeing her friend lifted her spirits. “Hey.” She approached Karen. “At least you put your all into this.” She grasped Karen’s shoulders. “You went out there and you fought to make this happen. I’m very happy for you.”
Karen smiled a little. “I was a little scared. I didn’t like the idea at first. But Nadia promised to go with me.” Her smile widened. “But I think Jamie really was the one who got me going.”
“Really.” Cheryl nodded. “Is it just me, or does Jamie always end up in the conversation sooner or later?” The fact that Jamie Cooper wasn’t in the sorting office at the moment made it easy to talk about him.
“You think so?”
“You also have a way of always looking at him when he comes in and leaves a room.”
Karen chuckled. “I-I didn’t notice.”
Cheryl looked over Karen and lowered her voice, making it gentle after all the kidding. “You think maybe it’s happening for you?” After balling up her fist, she held it to her heart.
Karen shuffled in her sneakers. “Sometimes, I think so.” She bit her lip.
“A few weeks ago, I fell asleep. I was working in the gym, getting it cleaned up. I woke up. I panicked. I was afraid something may have happened to me.” She shook briefly.
“Then I saw Jamie. He said I had been asleep for four hours. He had watched me that whole time. He said nothing happened, I just slept.” She then pressed her hand to her lips. “Then he said he could empty his bucket now that I had woken up. He didn’t want to leave me, so he peed in it. I’m glad I didn’t wake up to see that!”
Cheryl laughed. “That’s devotion!”
Karen twirled her leg. “Since then, I never was scared when I was around him. I felt like I always could trust him.” Her smile faded. “I know a lot of people are worried about him. He hasn’t been here long. Some people think he brought the virus.”
“That’s crazy,” Cheryl said, “It’s just talk.
When this thing is over, they’ll know how stupid they were to say all that.”
Karen nodded. “Cheryl, maybe my head’s still scrambled after all I’ve been through, but I do want to be with him. What do you think?”
Cheryl stiffened. “Why now?”
“Maybe I’m afraid I’ll get sick, too. I don’t want to die without…” Her throat caught. “I want to be with somebody and not have it…”
Cheryl took Karen’s hand. “I know. It’s good you want to be with a man again. But do you want to do it because you’re scared, or because you love him? If it isn’t love, you could be doing a lot of damage to yourself.”
“I don’t know.”
Cheryl released Karen. “I think I know how to get this off on the right foot.”
Jamie Cooper waited at the door to the diner.
“Feeling okay?” Cheryl whispered to Karen as the pair approached the diner entrance.
“I’m okay, just a little nervous.” Karen’s brown leather shoes made soft footfalls on the parking lot asphalt as she approached Cooper. “Okay, maybe I’m a lot nervous.”
“Relax.” Cheryl walked closely beside her. “He’ll treat you like a princess, I know it.”
The pair approached the shadow of the diner. It soon would be evening. Cheryl quickly had arranged this little “date” between Karen and Cooper to break the ice between them. She also had lent Karen her brown shoes, blue khaki pants and a dark red jacket for the evening.
She leaned into Karen’s ear and whispered. “Don’t worry, I am with you every step of the way.”
Cheryl also had volunteered to act as a chaperone in case Karen’s nerves failed. There still was no telling how Karen would handle being in a man’s company for so long, even if it was one she completely trusted. The human body, when traumatized, can lash out in unexpected ways.
C’mon Karen, I really hope this works out for you, Cheryl thought. She wanted this to work. It would be another victory over those NATO bastards. It would show they couldn’t steal Karen’s happiness forever.