Contagion On The World

by J. B. Beatty

“A feeling? A feeling worth risking your life over?”

  I don’t respond or wait for her permission. I run to the next house and bust into the garage, shattering the window in the door. In a quick scan, I see no toboggan. But I hear the door to the house creak open and I have a bad feeling.

  I turn around slowly, expecting to see the barrel of gun. Instead, I see an old woman. She’s shaky, maybe in her 80s. She’s wearing a parka over a robe.

  “I don’t have anything you want,” she says fearfully. “Please don’t take anything.”

  I put my hands up. “I’m just looking for a toboggan. And then I’m going. That’s all.” I start backing away.

  I hear Carrie step into the garage. “Oh my,” she says. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We’re just going.”

  “Ma’am, are you alone here?” Carrie asks her.

  The woman just stares back, lip quivering, and refuses to answer.

  “Do you have enough food?”

  The woman steps back a little. “I don’t have any I can share.”

  Carrie looks at me like I’m supposed to pick up on something obvious. I don’t. “Well, get her something,” she says.

  And I leave, returning minutes later with a large box of mixed vegetables as well as a box of hamburger patties. Carrie is standing much closer to the woman, talking quietly. I set the boxes down next to the door.

  “Okay,” says Carrie, glancing at the boxes. “We’ve got to go now because of this storm. But this should help you through the winter. We’ll check back on you as soon as we can.”

  The woman says nothing as we walk out.

  The ride back home is long and quiet after I say, “Is she even going to make it?”

  Carrie responds with, “Are any of us?”

  11→LAID FOR THEM IN AMBUSH

  All through the next day, Carrie and I drag toboggan loads of food from the garage all the way up through the forest to our hatch. We need to be done well before the blizzard stops, because it would be dangerous for us to leave a track that anyone can find.

  The work is exhausting. Grunts outnumber words.

  On one of our trips down, as we near the garage, I think I see movement. My attention is focused on a dumpster that sits next to the garage, about 10 feet from the door we are using.

  “Carrie,” I say. “Wait.” She doesn’t hear. I raise my voice and repeat the warning. She turns around and looks at me confused. I point toward the dumpster, now about 25 yards away. She hunches down, takes the rifle off her back and readies it. I do the same. The toboggan, empty, I stow against a tree. I slowly make my way to the right of the dumpster, staying low. Carrie edges forward a bit, keeping to the left of it so we have both angles covered.

  I don’t know if what we’re dealing with is zombie or healthy human—or even a piece of black garbage bag being blown around in the swirling snow. Part of me just wants to ignore it and get on with our job. We’re in a rush and we don’t have any time to waste. But there’s no leeway anymore in our world, no cushion at all. You screw up, you die. Worse yet, your companions die.

  The falling snow grows thick and obscures my vision. I slip off my glove so that I can feel the trigger better, but in just minutes my hand is feeling stiff and frozen. I leave the cover of the trees and carefully step into the angle I will need to fire—knowing all too well that puts me in the angle the intruder might need to fire at me.

  I see it huddling behind the dumpster, barely dressed. It’s back is toward me and it is waiting to pounce at the next person to approach that door. I bring the gun closer to my eye to get a clean shot.

  It all happens so fast: Carrie’s scream, movement in the woods, and my target leaps away. My shot rings off the dumpster and I chase in the direction where Carrie is.

  I see two zombies grabbing at her, mostly on top of her. The third, the one I am chasing, is almost at the scene. I aim again but can’t see a clean shot that doesn’t endanger Carrie. The snow isn’t helping.

  She’s not screaming anymore, she’s fighting as I climb up the hill and into the tree line. Finally, I am within 20 feet and I shoot the one I am chasing. He drops quickly with a dark hole blooming on his upper back.

  I take aim at the two that are attacking Carrie but I hesitate, waiting for that clean shot. The one atop her keeps at it but the second turns toward me and charges. I fire and I am sure I have hit him but he keeps coming. I try to fire again but nothing happens. A jam? He hits me in my midsection, the power of the blow surprising me. I go over on my back and find myself sliding slowly down the hill head first as this monster throws himself at my face and neck. I struggle to reach my pistol or my knife but I can barely free an arm from the struggle to keep myself from being bitten.

  I am pressed against a tree and it is taking everything I have to hold him and his teeth away from me. His strength seems almost superhuman—maybe that’s just desperation and hunger. I can feel an intensity projecting from him that is far more than I can summon. Finally, I give up on grabbing one of my weapons—I’m not making any progress. I put both hands around his neck and I squeeze. I harness all of the intensity in my soul because I know that if I fail, I die… and perhaps we all die.

  His arms flail, his face lunges at me, chomping. His breath washes over me, a horrid stew of God knows what, the stench of death. He is gulping. I squeeze tighter. I picture his windpipe and I picture my thumbs crunching into it, constricting it, shutting it down. He is no longer trying to bite, but gulping more, looking away, his legs thrashing. I hold tighter. I am only my hands now—no other part of me exists.

  Finally, a spasm; he shakes and there is something that is gone from his face, an electricity that has been switched off. I flip him off me, rolling atop him. I hear a distant gunshot. I reach for my knife and hold it above his chest. With both hands, I thrust it into him. He was already dead, but I wanted him absolutely dead. A death without doubt.

  Carrie.

  I push myself up and get on my feet. I see her sitting against a tree. Her attacker lays on the ground near her feet, the back of his head torn away. She is still holding her pistol.

  “Hey,” I grunt between breaths.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I walk closer, trying fill my lungs with air.

  “If this were a movie,” she says, panting, “I would have some great line here. One of us would.”

  “I got nothing.”

  “Same. It is just…” She takes a deep breath. “It is just so damn hard to think fast in this freezing cold.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We could use a dialogue coach.”

  “I could have used one my entire life.”

  I help her up and then grab my rifle where I had dropped it. I aim into the distance and pull the trigger. It fires just fine. “The hell,” I say.

  I step up the hill to grab my toboggan where I had stashed it. Dealing with the trauma of the attack will have to wait. We’ve got work to do.

  12→IT GOT MIGHTY HEAVY AND TIRESOME

  “A

  re you in?” asks Justin.

  “Wait. What?” I answer.

  “Have you even been listening?”

  “You know, yeah, I mean, I heard you talking. And I wasn’t ignoring you. Not intentionally. I’m just… it takes a lot of effort right now.”

  “You probably have a bit of PTSD going.”

  “Maybe. If that’s what you call it when you have to do hand-to-hand combat and have to kill a man with your bare hands. We almost died out there. And I’m about 20 hours behind on sleep.”

  “I get it. Some other time. Eat something and go to sleep. We’ve got all winter.”

  Justin turns to go and even though I’m exhausted, I feel bad. “Wait, what is it you were asking?”

  “It’s not important. Not at all.”

  “No, it is. What?”

  He looks almost embarrassed, leaning against the doorway. “I never really watched it when everyone else was watching it and
I thought now would be a good time to binge on it…”

  “On what?”

  “Downton Abbey.”

  “The TV show?”

  “Yeah, I mean, who knows how long Netflix is going to last. It’s the end of the world and all that. Could be our last chance for any fine televised drama. The PBS website is already gone.”

  “PBS?”

  “Yeah. They had this War of the Roses thing I wanted to see. Now it’s gone forever.”

  “And all the actors are probably dead.”

  “That too. We can forget going to London to catch it on stage...” He looks embarrassed again. “I’m sorry. You need to get to sleep.”

  “I’m good,” I say.

  “It’s just…” He looks away, down the hall. “Cabin fever, I guess.”

  “The winter’s just starting. We’re going to be trapped underground for at least the next three months.”

  He stares at me and I can see a trace of fear in his eyes. “I’m good,” he says. “I’ll watch something else today. Then maybe when you’re feeling better, we can watch…”

  “Downton Abbey.”

  He shrugs and nods at the same time, as in, it could be anything we watch.

  I say, “We could watch ‘The Shining’ after that.”

  Justin squints at me. “Now that’s cold.”

  13→THE BEST AUTHORITIES USES THEIR OWN BLOOD

  The prospect of three months continuously underground has all of us spooked. We all know the plotline: People under terrific stress trapped in close quarters for an extended period of time eventually succumb to insanity. Plenty of movies have been based on that.

  Justin has suggested we watch some of them, just to get some tips on what to watch out for. He also feels we need some regular events on a schedule to keep us feeling emotionally stable. The first Monday Movie Night is tomorrow. He’s showing “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

  He’s also arranged morning exercise sessions, group meals and Game Night. However, Game Night is starting to seem like a weak idea since in the entire process of stockpiling this bunker, we completely neglected to get any games. Not even a deck of cards. So, Justin is trying to improvise. He thinks Jenga will work with ammunition cartridges.

  He also feels that we need to keep our Circadian rhythms under control by adhering to a schedule that is tied to the hours of sunlight. “The problem being,” he explains, “without any connection to actual sunlight, our bodies will lose their temporal bearing and that—as many astronauts and miners have found out—can lead to illness and depression. That’s why we are going to set a curfew.”

  I know I don’t like the idea but the words don’t come to me quickly. They do to Carrie: “Screw you, you’re not my mother.”

  Justin quickly tables that motion.

  I’m not going to pile on. He’s taking care of all of Maggie’s medical needs and that is a huge undertaking. I help where I can, washing laundry, preparing meals and keeping her company. He insists he doesn’t need any time to himself, but he’s human. He needs time to himself away from that room.

  The chemo period is only supposed to last a week. It absolutely hammers Maggie. On top of everything, she needs big doses of antibiotics as well as blood transfusions. We have a few blood product packs that we got from the Traverse City raid, but probably not enough. She’s going to need a donor.

  Carrie has Lupus. Justin has HIV. So, unless we kidnap and drain one of the old guys living in the woods, all eyes are going to fall on me.

  That explains why Justin and Carrie come to my room and sit on the bed across from me. They don’t say anything and I try to ignore them while turning the pages (I’m reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). A throat clears. A foot taps.

  I can’t take it anymore. I lasted 20, maybe 30 seconds. “What?”

  “You never told us,” says Carrie earnestly.

  “I never told you what?”

  “The first night I was here when we were all talking about the Zombie Flu, I mentioned that perhaps the reason we all survived is that we have compromised immune systems. That works for 75% of us, obviously. I asked you what you have, and you left the room without answering. Do you remember that? As a result, enquiring minds are wondering what it is that you do have?”

  I just don’t want to go there.

  Justin says, “It’s a matter of life and death, because Maggie’s going to probably need a blood donor.”

  I say, “Isn’t the main thing that you have a match on blood type? Who knows if I’m even her type? This entire conversation may be needless.”

  “She’s an AB. She can take blood from anyone. Lucky.”

  “Not really,” notes Carrie.

  They continue staring at me.

  “Well, what is it?” asks Justin. “We’ve shared with you. Now please share with us.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I say. They look at me in disbelief. I sit up on the bed, talking care not to whack my head on the top bunk. “I mean, I don’t know for sure, and I don’t think there’s a way I can ever know for sure. As far as I know, I’m completely healthy. Maybe there’s some tumor lurking. I doubt it. I feel fine.”

  “It’s got to be something,” says Carrie. “Unless you’re the Amazing Miracle Boy.”

  “I can run a couple of simple tests on you,” suggests Justin. “At least we’d find out if your white blood cell count is out of-whack.”

  “Fine. I’m okay with that, but I don’t think you’ll find anything. I’m completely healthy.”

  “Where were you when you were exposed?” asks Carrie. “Were you completely healthy then?”

  I look straight at her. I can’t run from this anymore. I exhale and say, “I was in the middle of killing myself.”

  “Dude, what?” says Justin.

  Carrie just looks at me very seriously. “How were you killing yourself?”

  “I was hanging myself in the closet. I had blacked out. I think I was gone, or nearly so. My sister found me and while she was trying to rescue me she hacked all kinds of flu germs all over me. She brought me back… in her special way. Mostly she was kicking me and yelling at me. A few hours later she had turned into full-blown zombie. I killed her later that night.”

  “That’s kind of messed up,” admits Carrie.

  I nod half-heartedly and say, “I don’t know if it explains anything.”

  “It might,” says Justin. “If you were near death, your body was in a state of shock. Your immune system wasn’t your only system which was flashing the red alert lights. Either the virus bounced right off you because it didn’t see you as a legit target, or somehow you developed antibodies to it. And that—the antibodies—makes a bit more sense, since you probably have been exposed to the virus dozens of times since. And you’ve been healthy and it didn’t affect you.”

  “Why would sick people be immune—or develop antibodies? That just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I agree. Virology is a fucked-up line of work. But this has happened before.”

  “Zombies?”

  “No, stupid. A flu that only killed the healthy. The Flu of 1918. It happened at the end of World War I and it actually killed more people than the war did. Millions.”

  “Serious?” says Carrie.

  “I think I saw a History Channel show on this once,” I offer. “Was probably multi-tasking at the time, so I can’t say I recall much.”

  Justin steps out and leaves us shaking our heads and wondering. Moments later he comes back, his laptop already open. “Here. Okay. This one: 20 to 40 million people… Known as the ‘Spanish Influenza…

  “This is from Stanford.” He reads: “‘In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children.’”

  “Dang,” says Carrie. “I see the similarities. The age range of our flu was bigger, though.
And maybe our flu moved faster. Two years seems like a long time.”

  Justin is skimming ahead: “It actually moved very fast. Death would often follow just a few hours after people caught it. And here it says that the mortality rate was 2.5%. Now that’s huge in statistical terms, but our flu seems like it has been hitting about 100% in that targeted age range.”

  “Targeted?”

  “Just a word. I meant the age range.”

  “Still creepy, though,” I say.

  “How did they die?” asks Carrie. “Anyone go crazy and eat their children?”

  “None of that. It turned into a super pneumonia. The victim’s lungs would literally fill up with fluid and they would drown. It was fast. That two years probably represents the amount of time the flu was bouncing around the globe hitting new populations until it died out. But once it hit, it was freakin’ fast.”

  “You know,” she says, “For a minute I kind of had that History Channel kind of response, you know? The ‘oh-I’m-so-glad-I-didn’t-live-in-those-terrible-times’ thing. Just for a minute. Then I remembered our times are about a million times worse. What, about 97% of people survived that flu? That’s pretty good. That’s T-ball compared to the game we’re playing.”

  “How novel, to think of this as a game!” I say.

  “Screw you. Everything is a game. Especially the deadly stuff.”

  “Whatever. Okay, I’ll give blood. But you probably should check out my blood first. Just to be safe.”

  “Was going to anyway, homes.”

  14→SICKLIED O’ER WITH CARE

  The other thing about chemo, according to Justin, is after the first week of it, they stop, wait a few weeks and take a bone marrow sample to see if there are any bad cells still in business. If there are, they throw another week of chemo at the poor person.

  The problem is that Justin doesn’t know if he can even take a bone marrow sample. “This special needle I got… I have to push it into her bone. Deep.” He tells me this while he slaves away at his computer, obsessively researching the process.