Pandemic Reboot: Survivors

by Krause, J. F.

  Almost as soon as he put Alicia on the front room sofa, Mike clutched his head in pain and stumbled to a nearby armchair. Lydia knew what was happening and couldn’t bear to see what was coming next, but she couldn’t bear not to be with her dearest part of life while he went through this worst of traumas. She knelt next to him as he lost control of his body. When it was over, he lay draped over the arm of the chair gasping for his last breaths. From beginning to end, Mike had not been aware of anything around him such was the turmoil going on in his body. Lydia was numb but there was no respite for her. She heard a dreadful keening from the kitchen and saw Jason beginning what she now inwardly thought of as the death spiral. In a few moments it was over for him. She called Jesse, her older boy’s name, but didn’t get an answer. With more dread than she would ever be able to explain, she made her way upstairs to his room. He wasn’t there so she checked the children’s bathroom. Her dear, responsible, fastidious son was draped over the toilet propped up by the tub. He was gone. He would never have wanted anyone to see him vomit and had quietly found is own place to die.

  Lydia was overcome with the need to find Martin, to hold him, and to keep him safe. Running down the stairs in the last direction she saw him heading off for, she found him lying against the large Yew tree in the middle of their back yard. Aside from the telltale soup of bodily waste covering the front of his shirt, he could almost be asleep. It was only four o’clock in the evening and her world had come to an end. She carried Martin inside and tenderly placed him next to his sister on the sofa. Then she lay down on the floor waiting for her death.

  She slept and dreamt of her dear husband and children being swept away spiraling down a vast drain just out of her reach. Then she dreamed she was standing on the ledge of a skyscraper mustering up the courage to jump. It never came, less because of fear, but more because of some innate purpose she felt. Intuitively, she knew her life wasn’t over.

  Just before sunrise, she woke up, her grief was almost unbearable, but she was determined to take care of her family first. Her pragmatic nature told her that unless she buried them herself, the best she could hope for would be a mass burial or cremation, and probably not even that. Straightaway, she set about burying them in the backyard. There was nothing on the radio or the television except prerecorded news loops or station logos directing her to tune in to the prerecorded news loops. She no longer thought anyone was coming to help. After burying her husband and children, she went back to the side of the road for Jason and Justin’s mother’s body. She wanted to bury them with their mother, a woman she had never met. Silently begging the unknown mother’s forgiveness, Lydia loaded her up into the wheelbarrow her husband kept in their garage, but seldom used. In the brief time she spent with the woman’s sons she gained an understanding of their love for each other. She wondered if there were others in the family who would always wonder what had happened to them. Or maybe no one survived to remember them at all but she herself. All told, she spent over five hours at her grim assignment and hoped their shallow graves would keep their bodies from being dug up by animals.

  Finished with her self-appointed tasks, Lydia took a shower, put herself together and drove to the nearest hospital to see if she could be of assistance to someone. She didn’t understand why she was still alive, but she wouldn’t waste her life when there was something she could be doing.

  Even though traffic was nonexistent, she was stopped by an anarchic barricade of stopped cars a couple of blocks short of her goal. Walking the few blocks to Hillcrest Hospital, she was startled out of her reverie by the sudden blaring of a siren. Someone was alive up ahead and she could see the reflection of flashing red and blue lights in the windows of the hospital. She ran the last few hundred feet or so and saw a man leaning over the windshield of an ambulance. He walked around the corner so she deviated from her trajectory with the ambulance and veered in his direction. He was in a uniform so he must be there to help. Through the window of the front entrance she could see that he was a young man and that he was had a baby harnessed to his chest.

  The entrance doors slid open as she reached them surprising the young man who was genuinely happy to see her. They were both crying as they approached each other. Despite the baby extending from the man’s chest, they managed to embrace awkwardly. It didn’t matter to either of them; they weren’t alone.

  Anna Hartman would have been at her high school when the students were sent home, but her parents had insisted that she and her younger brother stay home for a couple of days when the government closed the airports. They were both lawyers and kept abreast of events affecting their lives. Anna’s brother Todd was happy to skip school but wasn’t about to be cooped up at home with his sister. He promptly went two doors down to his friends Simon and Dex’s house. They were fraternal twins but didn’t even look like they came from the same family. Like Anna and Todd, their parents went to work while insisting the boys stay home.

  Anna was ok with Todd stepping over to his friends’ house. It would be his lookout if their parents found out. She wouldn’t tell on him, but she wouldn’t defend him either. She didn’t believe they would be too upset since it was in the neighborhood. She knew her parents were a bit worried, but obviously not enough to stay home themselves.

  The time alone would allow her more time to work on her high school senior project for school. Anna wanted to be an agronomist or perhaps a marine biologist or she might study dance. She wasn’t very focused yet on which of her interests she would pursue. As it was, she was writing her paper on the changing climate zones and weather patterns in California and their possible impact on the agriculture industry. She didn’t have to do any actual research; it was more a review of existing research and had to cover at least two or more different curricular disciplines while demonstrating her command of written research forms. She had gotten permission from her advisors to combine botany, meteorology, and economics, hence the emphasis on California’s agriculture, weather, and business. She was almost finished with it even though it wasn’t due until the first week of March. Her school was almost half Asian of various backgrounds and half white with a smattering of African-American and Latinx mixed in. The Asians kids at her school lived up to the stereotype and were super achievers. Of course, so was everyone else, including Anna, and, surprisingly enough, Todd.

  Sitting at her PC Anna got a text from her mom saying schools were closing and she was glad Anna and Todd were home. Her own office was closing so they were heading home as soon as they took care of a couple things. With traffic, they expected to be home in about forty-five minutes. So much for a day to herself she thought. Anna decided to check the news sites and see what was going on around the country with regard to this new superbug.

  Information about the virus itself was scant but some of the blogs were describing really scary scenes across the country. Paris and London were ghost towns according to one blogger who had it from a friend of a friend sort of thing. New York had shut down just like Los Angeles and San Francisco. There were reports of people literally dropping dead in the streets, even here in California. As she was reading, she was getting the sense that the Internet was grinding to a halt as far as new information was concerned. Several news feeds hadn’t posted anything new for over an hour.

  She took a break to let Todd know their parents were going to be home soon. Her text to him came back as undelivered. After resending it with the same results, she stepped over to their neighbor’s house to let him know in person. The front door was wide open which seemed a bit odd. Calling into the house before entering, she heard gross noises coming from the upstairs game room. That’s where she expected them to be playing some warfare game so she ran up the stairs and stopped dead in her tracks. There in the hallway, Todd and Dex were leaning over Simon who was lying on his back in a pool of gross smelling vomit. Her first thoughts concerned how were they ever going to get the carpet clean, and the odor was going to linger for days. Then she saw the blood. Her stomach heaved a
nd for a moment she was afraid she would be adding to Simon’s mess.

  Sensing someone behind him, Todd looked up at her with a horrified expression. “I think he’s dead!” was all he could get out.

  Anna staggered against the wall barely stopping herself from screaming. Nothing was registering at first, and then her big sister responsibility clicked in and she moved to his side to see what she could do. As part of her school required community service project, she was a nurses’ assistant’s assistant at the local hospital five hours a week (most weeks). She actually knew how to administer CPR. From the looks of things, Todd or Dex had already been doing that, and it hadn’t worked. She joined them as they stared transfixed at the first actual dead body any of them had ever seen. Dex was beginning to weep over his twin when he suddenly seemed to lose his balance and fell against the hallway wall. Todd put his arm in front of her and said quietly “That’s what happened to Simon”. Seconds later, Dex grabbed his head and moaned softly at first but becoming louder almost by the second. Then it seemed like a fire hose was turned on in his mouth, only it wasn’t water, but a fantastic amount of gore. He would heave for a few seconds and then stop just long enough to breath before doing it again. By the fourth or fifth upchuck, the contents had turned to mostly blood.

  Both Todd and Anna had backed up almost to the stairs while this was going on. Dex collapsed on the floor, and shortly after, his chest stopped it’s up and down movement indicating that he’d stopped breathing. Anna and Todd just stood there not moving. As the shock wore off, they looked at each other and simultaneously moved to Dex’s side to check for a nonexistent pulse. Dex had spewed what seemed to be his actual guts out. Moving carefully, Todd stepped away and offered his hand to Anna as she navigated her way past the two bodies toward the stairs. Getting to the bottom of the stairs, they turned as one for the front door and onto the sidewalk in front of the house. Both of them reached for their cell phones and called 911 almost mirroring each other’s movements. Both of them got the same circuit busy signal. Without a word, they ran to their own house nearby.

  “Is that going to happen to us?” asked Todd when they reached their front door.

  “I don’t know. Is that the disease do you think?” was Anna’s response. “I wish Mom and Dad were here.”

  “Me too. Maybe we should go onto the back patio in case we get sick. I don’t want to make a mess like that in the house. Mom would kill us.” Todd missed the irony of what he’d just said.

  “I don’t think she’d have to. But let’s get a couple of wastebaskets to barf in. Big waste baskets.” Anna was already grabbing the kitchen wastebasket as she spoke.

  As they sat on the patio, neither felt like talking about what had just taken place at Dex and Simon’s house. Shock was setting in and they yearned for the security of having their parents at home. They waited expecting to fall victim to the viral infection any minute. After an hour or so, Anna asked Todd if he was thirsty as she got up to go back into the kitchen for a bottle of water. Todd came with her and started making a sandwich for himself.

  “Want me to make you a sandwich?”

  “No, I don’t think I could hold it down.”

  “When do you think Mom and Dad will get here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m starting to worry. They said they’d be here a couple hours ago.” Anna suspected the freeways were clogged with people leaving work and going in every direction. Their parents worked about twenty-five minutes south, and they had said they would leave soon. Even if they had to take surface streets, they should have been home by now.

  After his sandwich, Todd and Anna decided to check the news on the TV, but all they got was test patterns and announcements to turn to Channel 3 for a public service announcement. All Channel 3 had to offer was a series of pronouncements about schools, nonessential offices, and other facilities being closed until further notice. The messages looped continuously, never changing. The radio was much the same.

  Together, because neither one of them wanted to be alone after what they had gone through, they moved to Anna’s room and sat down at her computer. Nothing had actually changed since that morning. The news posts weren’t being updated at all. Neither of them thought this was because the government had shut things down, at least not on purpose, and after what they had seen at the twins’ house, they began to wonder how many people were left anywhere.

  Todd suggested going to one of the general forum sites he knew of. Anna wasn’t surprised he knew about them, or even that he visited them, but she knew her parents wouldn’t approve. This was just another occasion when Todd pushed the envelope and she kept it to herself.

  “How did you get past Dad’s censorship program?”

  Todd answered her with one of his “do you really need to ask” looks. Todd was sixteen and already knew reams more than either of their parents could ever hope to know about computers. Anna, while not in Todd’s league, was light years ahead of her parents too.

  Almost immediately, it was obvious that in the last two hours, no one had participated in the forum. That is except for one lone individual. Someone named Cynthia was asking if there was anyone out there. Without a moment’s hesitation, Todd typed in “I am.” After a few seconds they got their first reply.

  Cynthia: Who are you? Where are you? Are you alone?

  Todd: Todd. North Orange County, California. No. I’m here with my sister but no one else. Where are you? Are you alone?

  Cynthia: San Luis Obispo. I’m here with just my mom. Everyone’s dead around here. All my friends died today. It’s awful.

  Todd: I’m 16. My sister is Anna and she’s 18.

  Anna: Hi Cynthia.

  Cynthia: Hi Anna. I’m 15. Just call me Cindy.

  Will: Can I join in?

  Todd: Sure. How are things with you?

  Will: I’m in Denver. It’s really cold here and I’m alone. Everyone’s dead.

  Now that they had made some contacts with each other, the small group of teenagers exchanged information. They shared cell phones that had actually started working again now that there were no overloaded circuits. They also managed to identify a few other survivors not just in Orange County but also two more in Denver and another in Bakersfield. There were others scattered across California and the rest of the country. Most were high school students, but a couple were in college.

  While most of the forum members were kids, there were a few adults in the mix. Gradually, a few new participants came on line, and it was clearer and clearer that they were living through a catastrophe of gigantic proportions. As they shared thoughts someone suggested checking hospitals to see if there were any survivors there. Since it was already dark now in California, it was even later in the rest of the country. People began signing off to get some sleep promising to be back on their computers tomorrow.

  By now, Todd and Anna were desperately worried about their parents. The last cell phone calls to them had gone through but were unanswered. Texts were being delivered but weren’t being replied to. 911 instructed them to call back. After all they had gone through today, they were exhausted and Anna was finally ready to eat, just not very much. They both decided to have soup with another sandwich for Todd.

  Much later, after the deepest conversation they had ever had with each other, they both went to bed. Sleep didn’t come easy to either of them, but when it did, they slept hard and long. Anna woke first at around 10 AM. Immediately after discovering their parents hadn’t come home during the night, she was on her cell phone trying to reach them. This time she went straight to her mother’s voice mail. Her dad’s phone rang several times before his voice came on telling people to leave a message. She cried for a while and then decided to check on Todd. She found herself praying he was still alive.

  Entering his room without knocking, a distinctly forbidden act for both of them, she saw he was stretched across his bed still in his clothes from yesterday and still breathing. Without thinking she was across the room and hugging him to he
rself. Todd, after a moment of confusion, responded with the same sense of relief.

  “Mom and Dad aren’t home and they still aren’t answering their phones.”

  After a pause, Todd nodded his head and said, “I don’t think they’re coming home, Anna.”

  As a response, Anna hugged him even tighter. “I’m going to get cleaned up. We need to eat and talk.”

  Todd nodded his agreement. Both of them went about their morning cleanup, and then they met downstairs in the kitchen. Todd pulled out some cereal and pop ups while Anna made two cups of coffee for them.

  “We probably should do some shopping as soon as the stores open again.” Even as she said it she knew that wasn’t how things would work from now on.

  “Do you think there’s anyone around here, you know, that is still alive?” Todd asked.

  “Yeah, probably. Let’s check out that forum group of yours. Maybe there’s someone closer than San Luis Obispo.”

  Checking into the forum, Anna and Todd discovered there were already a couple dozen people in the discussion. They ranged all across the country with most participants aware of at least one other person in their vicinity. Some talked of all of them trying to get together while others were still having trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that most people were gone and nothing was going to be like it was before. How to locate other people was also a major topic of discussion. The idea of checking in at a hospital was the most popular idea and several people decided to take a break and do that.

  Anna and Todd talked for a few minutes before deciding that he would stay at the house in case their parents made it back and continue talking to people on the forum while she went down the hill to Hillcrest, the closest hospital to their house.

  Leaving the house was difficult, but it also gave her something to do that was positive. She got into the family SUV and pulled it out of the garage. The streets around their house were pretty quiet, but La Paz Boulevard was usually somewhat busy. Now it was devoid of traffic unless she included the cars that seemed to have just stopped in the middle of the road. Driving was a little tough because of a couple accidents along the way. The worst was that there were people still in some of the cars, and there were bodies lying next to some of the others. She realized that the drivers had just had a moment to stop and maybe open the door before being overcome by the sickness.