She really did. There were dark circles under her eyes and every few minutes she would cough into her handkerchief. I remember being amazed how she had gone from being perfectly healthy two hours before to her obviously ill state so quickly. Her hand fluttered to her throat. “Yes, I think I better get going.” She gave me a hug and left.
An urgent knocking on the door of my bedroom woke me the next morning. Checking the clock, I saw that it was around six. The knock sounded again and I called out, “Yeah?”
“Isaac, Alan isn’t doing well this morning. I am going to drive him over to United General,” Eleanor said through the door. “Are you going to be alright here by yourself for a while?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied. I was old enough to look after myself for a few hours if need be. I thought about jumping up to go with them, but by the time I had decided to act on those thoughts I heard the car start up and back down the driveway. I got up anyway and wandered through the empty house. Some leftover ham and mashed potatoes provided a decent enough breakfast and I soon wandered into the living room to turn on the television. The channel it was tuned to was broadcasting a news report, so I switched it to another station, only to see the same news report. This must be big, I thought, and settled in to watch.
I saw the familiar podium with the CDC emblem, and there was Dr. Ackerman walking up to it again. At first, I thought that they might be replaying the press conference from before Halloween, but I realized this was new as soon as Ackerman started talking. A growing coldness developed in the pit of my stomach as he spoke.
“It has been confirmed that the infection, known as the Pyongyang Flu, is currently sweeping the Eastern seaboard of the United States.” As he spoke, his face was as emotionless as a stone slab. “At this point it appears that the disease only affects those people approximately 17-years old and up. Or, to be more exact, people who have passed the growth stage where both the distal end of the humerus and the distal end of the tibia are fully fused. This generally happens between the ages of 15 and 17, so people younger than that seem to be safe. We still do not know why this is.”
“What about adults?” one of the reporters shouted, briefly interrupting the press conference.
“Adults exposed to the virus have a high probability of contracting the disease. This seems to vary across phenotype or race, but, at this juncture, it is impossible to say whether people such as Native Americans are truly immune to the disease, or if it simply takes longer for them to succumb.” Ackerman held up his hands to quiet the growing murmuring among the reporters. “It is not my intention to cause a panic here. The CDC is getting ahead of this thing, and we should have the outbreak under control within a matter of days. The first case was reported yesterday, but not confirmed as Pyongyang Flu until this morning. From what we can tell so far, it spreads like a normal flu virus, so wash your hands, don’t sneeze on each other and ...” Ackerman was interrupted by a man rushing up to the podium from off-camera. The man quickly whispered something in Ackerman’s ear and passed him a sheet of paper. The CDC publicist’s face drained of all color as he read the words and absorbed what was on the paper before screwing it into a tight ball.
“What is it? What’s happening?” the same reporter from before shouted.
“CDC scientists have just confirmed that H3J2, the virus commonly known as the Pyongyang Flu, is, in fact, a man-made biological,” Ackerman said. I fancied that he had the same numb look on his face as mine when I had seen the smoking ruins of my home from the backseat of Mr. Benson’s car. “It appears to be airborne. At this time, up to 90 percent of the population of the East coast is suffering from infection, and the infection ... the weaponized virus ... seems to be moving westward at a rate of over one hundred miles per hour. At this rate of progress, every part of the continental United States will be affected within the next 24 hours. The CIA is now calling this a terrorist attack, although no one has yet claimed responsibility.”
All hell broke loose in the conference room. The microphone caught the sound of women and men crying as dozens of reporters rushed for the exits. The more hardened veterans clamored closer to Dr. Ackerman, yelling more questions, while to the left of the podium I noticed the man who had delivered the awful message coughing into his hand.
Ackerman only answered one more question, a high pitched and panicked, “What do we do?”
“Stay in your homes ... and pray to God ...”
I switched off the television and went to the kitchen. Picking up the phone, I dialed Eleanor’s cell number and waited impatiently as it went through to her voice mail. “Eleanor, I just saw on the news that the Pyongyang Flu has come to the country ... they are saying that terrorists are spreading it around or something. Are you and Alan okay?” I managed to stammer out before the phone beeped again, ending the voice mail.
Not sure what else to do, I hung up and then immediately dialed the number for Margaret, the social worker who had placed me with the Fosters. Once again, it rang through and I got a message saying that she would be out of the office until January 2nd.
Hanging up the phone, I went back to the fridge to cut off a bit more ham. I felt lost and alone. All I could think about was the grainy video of the feral children in North Korea and hoped that it wouldn’t get that bad here.
Eleanor and Alan returned early that afternoon. She had not been able to get him in to see a doctor at all. The Emergency Room had been swamped long before their arrival. I helped her move Alan, by this point weak and delirious with fever, to their bedroom, where she laid him down and covered him with warm blankets.
“Run to the freezer and bring me the ice pack,” Eleanor said. “I’m worried that his head’s getting too hot.” When I returned with the ice pack, she placed it in a pillowcase and set it across Alan’s forehead. “Oh, Alan,” she whispered. “Please don’t leave me.”
She sat by his side for a while and then, after he’d fallen into a fitful sleep, she went to the living room to watch the news. If anything, the news had gotten even more horrific since I had turned it off that morning and we learned that the Chinese government was now admitting responsibility for the attack and claiming all of North America by right of conquest. The other nations of the world were protesting mightily, but the threat to them was obvious and they appeared afraid to make any real moves to help America for fear of the H3J2 virus being turned on them, as well.
Watching the sniffling and coughing reporters, we did learn a bit about the virus though. The disease affected nearly all adults exposed who were not of ethnic Chinese origin and its fatality rate was a staggering 96 percent. Those few that did survive were generally left as vegetables, with permanent brain damage as a result of the prolonged, high fever that was associated with the infection. It seemed that the body could produce a previously unknown antibody to fight the disease, but it only did so from a few specific locations, all of them yet to be fused areas of bones such as the tibia and the humerus. By about age 16 though, all of those areas had fused, and the body became incapable of producing the specific antibodies.
Those who had been exposed to the infection at a young age would have the antibodies and be forever immune to the virus. Those who had not, faced almost certain death. The professionalism and bravery of the reporters, reporting while sick, knowing that they were most likely going to be dead within the next few days, left an indescribable impression on me. I plan to fight with every last ounce of my being to stay alive, but I sincerely hope that when the time comes and I must face death, that I can do so with as much courage as those reporters did during Hell Week.
Alan died around midnight.
Eleanor lay down with him on the bed, her head on his shoulder while she cried. I stood and watched for a few minutes, then went to my room and sat on the bed, arms wrapped around my knees while I listened to her sobbing through the walls. It was happening again. I had finally started to feel like I belonged and now my new family was being torn away from me just as surely as my real family ha
d been. If anything, this was more painful because it was happening slowly ... I knew what was going on, but I was powerless to stop it. Eleanor was sick too, she was trying to hide it from me, and doing a pretty good job of it, but I had noticed. Within a day, two at most, I was going to be alone again.
An hour and a half later, the sobbing stopped. At first, I thought she’d fallen asleep. But then I heard her in the closet. The closet of their bedroom backed onto the wall of my room, so I could hear her quite clearly as she rummaged around. It sounded like she was tearing the closet apart and I wondered what she was hunting for. Several minutes later the sounds stopped. A period of quiet followed, and then BOOM! I jumped and then wrapped my arms tighter around my legs.
The house fell into a deep silence as I sat on my bed with tears running down my face until the morning light was shining through my window. I wanted to go and check on Eleanor, but knew what I would find, with the same certainty that I had known about the fire trucks almost two years earlier. I finally got up the courage to go into their bedroom. I found her slumped across Alan’s body. There was a red mist-like spray on the walls and headboard of the bed where they lay, and Eleanor’s arm hung off the bed, limp and lifeless. Near her open hand, on the floor, there was a short barreled revolver.
I knew what she had done, but my mind refused to accept it. “Eleanor?” I asked, stepping forward into the room. “Eleanor ... Mom?” There was no movement. Moving closer, I could see the small, perfectly round hole in her temple. A small amount of blood had leaked out of it and down the side of her neck, matting her shoulder length hair in a dark clump. I wanted to turn back, to run away, but I found myself stumbling forward instead, moving around to see Eleanor’s face. Her eyes were open and glazed.
I tried calling 9-1-1, of course, but there was no chance of getting through. I also tried calling John and Amy several times each, but only got busy signals. I went next door to the Moorcock house, they had always seemed like nice neighbors, but nobody answered the door. Finally, I decided I would just have to close up Alan and Eleanor in their bedroom for the time being and deal with them later. There were enough leftovers from Christmas dinner and canned food in the pantry to last me a solid two weeks. Although I hoped that it would not come to that.
The TV channels started disappearing that day, with most of them being completely off the air by New Year’s Eve. There were no fireworks. No big ball dropped in New York City. No one celebrated the turning of an era. America had fallen. It was on January 1st when the last news channel still on air reported that Chinese soldiers had begun landing on American soil.
The Chinese government had issued a statement welcoming the children of America as citizens of New China and promising re-education and adoption into the new world order. But Tom Dallard, the last news anchor I ever saw doing a live broadcast, told stories of Chinese soldiers rounding up the children of New York and Baltimore and forming them into work gangs to clear bodies. It was apparent that we were to be nothing but slaves to these new overlords.
Dallard was one of those few non-Chinese people who seemed immune to the infection, whether that was because of a genetic defect or because he had been exposed to a similar enough pathogen when he was younger, who can say? He kept on reporting to the last, alone in an empty studio, talking to the one camera that was focused on him. I was watching him at the end, as he spoke stoically over loud banging and the sound of breaking glass. It was distant but getting closer every second.
“... and so America ... children of America, time is running out for me, but know this. America is still the home of the brave and it can again be the land of the free. Where you can, band together, find places to hide from the invaders. Live to fight another day. Avenge your parents any way that you can ... look out for each other.”
There was an even louder crash and Dallard flinched, somehow looking noble and brave even with the uncharacteristic three day growth and rumpled, unwashed clothes he wore.
“This is Tom Dallard, sign-”
I sat there with my heart beating hard in my chest as two Chinese soldiers tackled Dallard from his chair before he could finish his sign off. One hit him viciously over the head with his rifle butt and then they bent over and dragged his unconscious figure out of view. For the second time in a few days I heard a loud gunshot, this one seeming to signify the end of the America I had known. I sat staring at the screen for a long time, a sick feeling in my gut. It was January 3rd. Tom Dallard, in my mind, was the last great American hero, and he deserves to be remembered with the rest of them.
January 3rd was also the day I realized I was going to have to fight to survive, and to perhaps do things that no 15-year old kid ... no kid at all ... should have to do. It was the day the first looters came to the neighborhood. It had been at least two days since I had seen anybody else in our street. This had not really surprised me because most of the people around the Fosters were older couples, their children already grown and gone.
I was flicking through the channels on the television trying to find anything at all when I heard the rumble of a car engine. I ran to the window and peered through a crack in the blinds. I saw a red Toyota pickup truck cruising slowly down the street. For a moment, I thought about running out and waving them down, but something stopped me. I watched it through the blinds instead.
They went around the block twice before stopping in front of Judge Petersen’s house; it was across the street and two houses down. The doors opened and three people got out, two looked to be adults. One was obviously sick, stopping just after getting out of the driver’s side to lean across the hood, coughing. The third figure was a boy, my age or maybe a year or two younger. I was shocked to see all three had long guns clutched in their hands. I didn’t know that much about guns then, everything I knew about them came from television and movies, but I recognized that the two younger figures carried double barreled shotguns and the one held by the coughing man was a rifle.
From where I crouched behind the blinds, I saw the sick man waving toward the Petersen house, prompting the other man and boy to walk up to the door. The boy tried the handle and when he found it locked, he stepped aside for the man who kicked it open with one strong kick. They went inside. Maybe 10 minutes later they came back out, each carrying a large black garbage bag, filled with whatever they had looted from the Petersen’s. They trotted back to the pickup and dropped the bags in the bed. The sick man pointed at the house next door to the Petersen residence and the other two went off again. They were getting closer.
A feeling of fear shot through me, what if they came to my house ...? I didn’t know what they were looking for, money, jewelry, or just food and supplies, but given the fact that they were armed, I was worried about what they might do if they found me here. Just as worrying was the idea that if I somehow hid and they didn’t find me, what would I do if they took all the food? One thing I knew for certain was I’d have a better chance against armed men if I was armed myself, so with gritted teeth I slipped away from the window and headed toward Alan and Eleanor’s bedroom.
It had been a week, and a smell like that of spoiling meat hit me as I opened the door. I tried not to look at my foster parents as I stood at the threshold of the darkened room. To say I was creeped out would be sugarcoating it and, for a second, I almost turned around, armed looters or no armed looters.
In the end, I took a deep breath and crossed the room. Still avoiding looking at my dead foster parents, I bent and reached out for the revolver on the floor. When my forearm brushed Eleanor’s cold, stiff fingers, I squeaked in horror and snatched it up as I jumped away from the bed.
With my heart thumping, I turned to leave the room when my eyes fell upon the open gun case sitting on the dresser. It was lined with foam cut out in the shape of the gun and had another rectangular cut out which contained a box marked “Remington .38 SPECIAL.”
I pulled out the box and opened it. It was full of extra bullets. Grateful, I slipped it into the pocket of my gray
hooded sweatshirt before quickly exiting the bedroom and going back to the front window.
Although it had seemed like an eternity, my trip to the Fosters’ bedroom had been brief enough that the man and boy had not yet returned to the truck. I watched the sick man as he slumped against the front fender of the pickup, his body again wracked by coughs. I wondered vaguely how much longer he’d last, certainly not more than another day.
I know it might seem horrible, me thinking about the life of another person in such an abstract way, with no real sense of pity, but survivors adapt and one of the first things that seems to go is compassion. The way I looked at it, the previous couple of years had stunted my empathy toward my fellow human beings, so maybe I already had a leg up on the other survivors.
The man and the boy returned to the truck and, to my horror, I saw the sick man point in my direction. Not at me, of course, but at my home. The other man, I could see now, wasn’t a man at all. He was perhaps only a few years older than me, maybe 16 or 17, but large for his age. He and the boy started across the snowy lawn toward the house. Time had run out; I had to make my decision.
I stuck the barrel of the revolver through the blinds in the direction of the truck and pulled the trigger. There was no time for hesitation or second thoughts. The handgun bucked in my hands so bad I almost dropped it and the report was far louder than Hollywood had led me to believe, leaving my ears ringing. I expected the window in front of me to shatter, but it didn’t. The bullet made nothing more than a jagged little hole as it passed through. I saw the sick man leaning against the fender jerk and grab at his thigh and scream.
I hadn’t been aiming at him, I hadn’t been aiming at anything in particular, but my round had hit him nonetheless. I saw him sliding to the road holding his leg, and then the world exploded.
The window I had just shot through shattered above me, the blast ripping through the blinds. Luckily, the blinds themselves protected me from the majority of the flying glass. I dove for cover behind the sofa as another bang sounded and another large hole was blown through them. I thought about shooting back, but didn’t want to expose myself, so I just laid there watching the front door with the revolver at the ready. I heard the man I had shot screaming and calling to his partners.
The After Days Trilogy Page 3