The Island - The Final Chapters

by Michael Stark

Chapter XXIII - The Dead and the Dying

  We buried her next to Gabriel. The weather had turned cool and wet. Gray clouds swelled overhead as if the heavens sensed the somber mood below and wanted to express its sadness as well. Across the water, fog drifted in wispy fingers, adding punctuation marks to the already gloomy atmosphere. The front that had been pounding the interior of the country still lingered to the west, wreaking a watery destruction across several states. In an odd twist on needs and wants, we prayed for rain while so many prayed it would go away.

  Not everyone came. Devon and Kelly both woke that morning with the same dull red glowing in their cheeks. With two down, Elsie had stayed behind to watch over them and kept Daniel with her. Tyler stayed with his sister. Given the ferocity of the disease, I couldn’t blame him.

  Joshua and I dug the grave. Keith stood by looking numb, his face wet from both tears and the misty rain. Denise and Kate held on to him, one on either side and both huddled up close. The two of them had never seemed more than friends, but the shattered look in his eyes told me the feelings ran deeper than I had suspected.

  We had brought her out in the back of the Suburban, wrapped in her own bed sheets. Aside from the fact that dignity and tradition demanded a covering, no one wanted to wash them or ever lie on them again.

  The drive back passed in silence. I watched the rest file into the station, their steps as wooden and mechanical as marionettes being string-walked across a stage. Some of that could be attributed to Jessie’s death. According to Denise, the group had been close for years. Simple grief didn’t cover the depth of the melancholy cast over the station or the sudden lack of motivation to do anything except wait. We’d all heard the predictions, heard the numbers crunched by experts and officials. The Fever had arrived. Some, if not all of us, would die. The fact that it had shown up on the island, where no one had any contact with the outside, drove home the knowledge that no safe havens existed.

  In the scant space of three hours, I buried one person and watched two others lapse into the same lethargic symptoms that had presaged her illness. At that rate, we’d all be gone in a week.

  The day passed slow, wet, and quiet. Lunch came and went with little appetite and zero interest in the radio. The skies remained gray, spitting rain now and then, but blowing a cold and damp mist just as often. I built a fire in the woodstove to drive off the chill and fired up one of the kerosene lamps to beat back the shadows inside the station. The warmth and light did little to improve the atmosphere of fear and dread that permeated the group. I felt no better than the rest. I’d been tired from the time I rolled out of the sleeping bag.

  I drove Kate, Denise, Joshua, and Tyler out to the point late in the afternoon so they could make their daily call home and in the process, remembered that I’d forgotten to call Jayne back. I walked off a ways to give them distance and pulled out my own phone. She answered on the sixth ring, about the point where I thought the call would go to voice mail.

  Jayne sounded tired and depressed. The Fever had exploded across Eastern Tennessee in the same way it had raced around the rest of the world. I listened to her talk about it in wooden tones as if the enormity was simply too much to grasp.

  “People are dying, William, so fast that we’ve quit burying them,” she said, her voice listless. “It’s so sad. Do you remember Jeannie Franklin?”

  I struggled with the name, eventually attaching it to a plump, blonde haired woman Jayne had introduced me to months ago.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “All three of her kids are sick. So is her husband. It’s like that everywhere. Portions of Johnson City and Kingsport have lost electricity. The power company says it could take weeks to restore. The news here is so depressing. I can’t stand to listen to it anymore.”

  “Same here,” I told her. “We had our first death today. Two others are sick.”

  She fell silent for a moment. “What’s it like there?”

  I described the island, the village turned museum at the north end and the station we had commandeered. I told her about the people, avoiding the odd relationship with Denise and concentrating on the personalities instead. I told her about Elsie and Daniel where I spent more time relating how creepy the boy could be than I did describing the other people all together. She gasped when I told her how he had predicted Jessie’s death.

  Ever the practical, Jayne immediately jumped to a conclusion that hadn’t occurred to me.

  “God, I would be down there asking him if I was going to live or not,” she said as soon as I stopped talking.

  “I don’t know if it works like that,” I said, turning the idea around in my mind. “And if it did, would you really want to know? I can’t imagine spending the next week around people I know are going to die or knowing for a fact that my own time was near.”

  “So, you think being clueless is better?” she asked incredulously. “Not me. I’d want to know. Not everyone dies. The Fever isn’t an automatic death sentence. I could deal with getting sick if I knew I’d be around afterward.”

  “Could you deal with knowing you wouldn’t be around afterward?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I think I’d rather know than spend what little time I might have left wondering and worrying. It might even prompt me to get off my butt and do a few things I’ve always wanted to do.”

  “Like what?” I asked. “It’s not like you can Bucket-List your way through the next few days with a travel ban in place.”

  “Like making sure everyone I love knows I love them. Like calling up Rachel Moore and telling her I’m sorry for taking her boyfriend away from her in the eleventh grade. Like making sure when I do go, I go with as few regrets and as many happy memories as I can.”

  I pondered that thought for a moment, but didn’t feel like venturing down that path. Jayne might be able to right a lifetime of wrongs, either real or imagined. I couldn’t. The people I needed to apologize to were already gone. Instead, I brought the topic back to her.

  “How have you been feeling? You sound tired.”

  “I am tired,” Jayne replied, “but overall, good. Tomorrow may be a different story. After seeing what’s happening here, the only thing you can take for granted is that you can’t take anything for granted. The Fever may disappear tonight. We all may die tomorrow. No one knows.”

  “Why wait?” I asked her. I’d learned that lesson with my father. “You shouldn’t need a death sentence to tell people how you feel about them.”

  She fell silent.

  “I guess you’re right. Okay, let me tell you how I feel about you.”

  “Hang on a minute,” I told her. “I need to check the number I dialed to make sure I called the right person. Is this really Jayne? The standoffish, run away the instant feelings start working their way into words, woman I’ve known for the past couple of years?”

  “You have the right number,” she retorted sharply. “And don’t go getting an ego on me. How I feel about you, William Hill, is grateful. You and I would have made a lousy couple after a few years together. We were too complacent with each other. But, you were exactly what I needed when I found you. You let me have my space. You cared about me and maybe even loved me a little. You listened to me. Finding all of those things in one person at the right place and the right time in life is a blessing.”

  “I think,” I said slowly. “That we were exactly what each other needed. I was tired of fighting. You were tired of being hurt. I think we were two weary people who found they could share a ride back to sanity.”

  We talked a while, until I looked up and saw the others waiting on me. I felt good after I hung up with her. It wasn’t the full of energy and laughs kind of feel good, but the kind that starts somewhere down deep in your soul, the kind that leaves you feeling as if you were right with the world. In many ways, the good feeling also carried a sense of sadness. Jayne and I had never spent much time on the phone together. Walking back to the Suburban, I knew I might not ever speak to her again.
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  Denise seemed tense on the ride back. I found out later she hadn’t been able to reach her parents. Where Kate and Joshua looked depressed, Tyler’s face carried a sense of determination. He headed back up the stairs the moment he walked in the door to check on Kelly. The sight gave me some hope. For months, one of the few known facts surrounding the Fever hinged on the fact that constant care provided the best chance of surviving it. While the odds still were not good, Kelly would have her brother and he would be with her start to finish. He would do everything he could to keep her alive. Kelly might be stuck on an island far from the society that had raised her, but in reality she was no closer to the hospitals that would refuse her entrance. She had, in many ways, the best care available at the moment.

  Devon had Kate. If I were choosing between the two when it came to providing care, I’d opt for Tyler in a heartbeat. The tall blonde had some startlingly good looks. But, after the scene in our impromptu operating room, I’d rather have medical care from someone with a stronger stomach.

  Once the group had dispersed, I hunted through the cabinets until I found Mr. Johnny Walker, mixed up a lemonade chaser from the Country Time can and motioned Elsie toward the front porch. She followed me out carrying a new pack of cigarettes.

  “How many of those have we smoked?”

  She glanced down at the pack in her hand. “Two.”

  She slipped into a rocking chair and eyed the bottle in my hand.

  “You ain’t gonna get drunk on me, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I might get a buzz, but drunk? The idea of puking my way into a sickness that will leave me bloated and dead doesn’t hold much interest.”

  She lit a cigarette and blew smoke out into the gloom. Water dripped in the downspouts. Wet weather usually brought at least a trickle, but the misty drizzle came across more like a super wet fog than rain. I turned to the ocean, looking out over gray swells that looked as moody as I felt.

  “I’ve been thinking about talking to Daniel.”

  “About what?” The old woman said sharply.

  I looked back to find her glaring at me, her face like a wrinkled mass of stone.

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Hill William, I am not going to put up with you dragging that boy through a bunch of questions. You hear me?” She raised a finger and shook it at me. “He’s too young. I don’t want him feeling like a freak.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” I said quietly, but firmly. “I’m not trying to be mean and have no desire to bully anyone. But, if I choose to ask him, I damn well will whether you or anyone else in this house likes it or not.”

  I paused and nodded at her hand. “And if you don’t settle down, this conversation and your input are over.”

  Elsie leaned back in her chair. “Well, it don’t sound like I have any input anyway.”

  “Sure you do,” I told her. “You can tell me why it’s a bad idea. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good one. That’s why I brought you out here, to talk - which is not, mind you, letting you bully me either.”

  Anger played across her features, but she could tell I had no intention of backing down. If Elsie knew anything, it was how to work people. She seemed to know exactly the right words to say, regardless of the personality on the other end. She knew when to fight and she knew when to walk around a hard place in the road. I waited for her to start circumventing me. It didn’t take long.

  “What good will it do? Damn it, Hill William, be rational. We all could be dead in a week. What good is it for us to know?”

  “But, we won’t all be dead, will we Elsie?”

  She stared at me, her face impassive. “What do you mean by that?”

  I shrugged. “The day we met, you knew why I had named my boat Angel. It wasn’t a guess. You even gave me good, logical reasons why you knew. I bought the story too, like a fish, the whole hook, line, and sinker routine.”

  She spread her hands wide.

  “So?”

  I took a sip off the Johnny Walker bottle and let the smooth burn slide down my throat. The whiskey hit bottom and radiated outward. Maybe I would get drunk. The feeling had to beat the dead-tired weariness eating at my body.

  “So, it was all bullshit. Every time Daniel opens his mouth, you wrap him up in your skirts and whisk him away.”

  “He’s different, Hill William. People treat him like he’s crazy, like what he has is catching.”

  “I’m sure they do,” I said as I reached for the bottle again. “He’s creepy. Every parent or grandparent wants to protect their children. But, you have a special interest in Daniel. It goes beyond the fact that he’s your grandson.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped.

  “Yes, you do Elsie. And I think that interest comes from being called weird and strange yourself. You can identify, as the more sympathetic people like to say. I thought about it all afternoon.”

  I took another hit off the bottle. The whiskey went down smooth and easy. I chased it with Country Time and wondered why, in days when we could send a rover to Mars, we couldn’t make fake lemonade taste a little better.

  “The clues have been staring me in the face for weeks. I’ve just been too preoccupied to notice.” I said when I looked up. “You knew the reason I’d named the boat Angel. You were adamant that I wait another day before heading down south. You knew what was about to happen with Denise.”

  I took another sip of whiskey and let the burn remain this time instead of chasing it away. “You’re just a lot better at masking it than he is. So, rather than asking him, I’ll just ask you. Who is going to live, Elsie, and who is going to die?”

  I felt sorry for her in a way. The woman might be spry and interminably energetic, but she was eighty-two. I’d been raised to respect my elders. Forcing her into a corner felt about as good as splaying my fingers out on a cinder block and smashing them with a hammer. I’d reached my limit, though. I was tired of the sly smiles that left me feeling like I was bumbling along in the dark and the constant diversions over Daniel.

  She opened her mouth to reply. I held up a finger to silence her and reached for the cigarette pack.

  “Keep in mind,” I said as I shook one free, “if you want to go round and round in circles, I’ll hunt Daniel up and have a talk with him. I’m not going to play any more games, Elsie.”

  I lit the cigarette and sucked the smoke deep. Like the whiskey, I could feel it dispersing through my body and wrapping calming fingers around my nerves. We sat that way for a while, smoking, looking out over a gray ocean threatened by a thickening fog. The next step belonged to her, not me. I’d explained myself as clearly as I could.

  When she finally spoke, she looked broken and sad. The two people in life you never want to see reduced to tears from your actions are the very young and the elderly. I might have won the battle, but the price left me feeling, as my ex would have put it, like a real bastard. I’d never understood that particular point from her. I suppose one could be a pretend bastard, but in the math of simplification, once the adjectives had been crossed out, what was left was simply a bastard.

  “I’m not as good at it as the boy.”

  The cigarette had dwindled to a small stub between her bony fingers by the time she spoke.

  “I’ve never seen things with the clarity that he does. For me, the process is like standing too close to art done by a bad impressionist. The details are thick and blurry and making out the big picture is usually impossible,” she said and ran a hand tiredly across her face.

  She leaned over and dropped the butt into the bucket of sand.

  “I can tell you who I think will live. I can’t tell you who will die because the difference between the two is not black and white. I’ve already talked to Daniel. What he sees is not certain either.”

  “When he foretold Jessie’s death, he said ‘ghosts,’” I reminded her. “The implication there is more than one.”

  Elsie’s face twisted into
a wry smile.

  “A lot of people have died on this island, Hill William. There are plenty of ghosts here already.”

  “We’re not talking about them,” I said, prodding her back on topic as gently as possible.

  “No, we’re not,” she conceded. “There are two people and three ghosts. I don’t get sick. Neither does your girlfriend. I felt so sorry for Jessie. She was a good girl, that one.”

  “Who are the ghosts?” I asked, ignoring the reference to Denise.

  She waved toward the upper level of the station. “Devon, Joshua, and Jessie.”

  “And everyone else?”

  “I don’t know. For me, that’s where it gets blurry. Daniel calls you shades. He says what he sees are people, ghosts, and what looks like a shadow where the rest are concerned.”

  “Even himself?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, what the hell does that mean?”

  She threw her hands up. “It’s not like I have a book of interpretations to go by. I don’t know. I think it means you can go either way. But, I could be wrong. This is not like looking at a picture book with captions underneath all the portraits.”

  I felt like throwing my own hands up in frustration. “So, really what you’re saying is that for most, we’re right back where we started. Neither of you have any idea.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” she pointed out. “You’re not a ghost. I don’t know what the shade thing means.”

  I chewed on that thought for a minute.

  “What else does he see?”

  She looked sad.

  “A lot of death, a lot of destruction, wars, fires, people dying even after surviving The Fever.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, trying to bite back the sarcasm and failing. Everything about the day had me irritated, from Elsie’s vague, walk around the bush way of dealing with Daniel, to the odd feeling in the pit of my stomach that came and went, leaving me feeling fine one moment and like I needed to lean over and puke the next.

  Elsie rubbed a hand across her mouth. “That’s not the worst part, at least not for me. He keeps seeing a rock, a big flat rock laid out like a tablet on the ground with writing all over it - not words, but pictures and marks he’s never seen before.”