Affliction

by Daniels, Dottie

  “Oh shit, is that your…?” Graham started to say, leaning in to get a closer look at the screen.

  It was both of them, except that they were no longer breathing and able to smile, talk or sadly, be my living parents. I saw their listless faces and bodies shuffling slowly around the room. They were pale even by the standards of the black and white video feed. My mother, Ivy wore a button-up, long-sleeved shirt that looked like it had a large smear of blood on its sleeve. It was the shirt she always wore when she did housework as it was too big on her but she found it was comfortable. Her hair was only slightly out of place, in a loose ponytail, and partially gray as I remembered it from Easter when we all had dinner together. My father was dressed in jeans and dark polo shirt––something that told me they both were off from work that day, whenever they got infected. The video feed was slightly grainy but I could tell from the way they walked around the room they no longer acknowledged each other; instead they only paced around the medium-sized room that lacked any furniture, with the exception of a single bed and a chair that was turned over on its side. I took all of this in within a matter of seconds. I could feel Graham’s hand giving my shoulder a squeeze, but I sat there frozen, almost forgetting the phone was up to my ear.

  “I’m so sorry, my niece… Sorry you have to see them like this. You wouldn’t believe me if I only told you. This is why––no, they are why I need you here with us.” Lloyd spoke solemnly.

  My eyes blurred as the tears begin to stream down my face. I could feel my face flush with warmth as I began to wipe the moisture that flowed. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen. Emotionally, I was trapped, I couldn’t yell out, though I wanted to. I couldn’t speak. I wished that this was some demented joke my uncle and NGT planned in case I tried to leave. Hell, even my parents could’ve been a part of it just to get me to stay.

  I could hear Joel and Alec behind me but I was unable to move from the spot I was in.

  “Dude, I think those are her parents,” Alec whispered to Joel from where they were seated a few feet away.

  There was silence on both ends of the phone for almost a minute before Lloyd spoke again. Graham just kept patting my back softly, in a circular motion.

  “Your mother truly loved my brother… They were both infected by the time they came here. Jackson was worse off and clearly was going to go first. She never left his side. They both wanted to be together even after passing so we honored their request and kept them in the same room.”

  I couldn’t listen to anymore, so I just hung up. I wanted to tell him something witty or tell him to rot in hell, but it wouldn’t do justice. As soon as the phone was disconnected Graham practically picked me up by the shoulders and gave me a long and hard hug. He whispered, “Sea, I’m sorry, I wanted them to be okay.” I began to sob in his arms as the phone rang again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “He said they were infected when they got here,” I cried into Graham’s shoulder while the phone kept ringing. I took a big sniffle and wiped my nose with my sleeve. Holding on to hope for anything good was becoming increasingly difficult at an exponential rate. I slumped back down into the chair as Graham helped to guide me into the seat. I buried my face into my hands. I didn’t immediately see him reach past me nor did I object to his turning the computer monitor off, which still broadcast the live video feed of my parents’ staggering. No one, including myself, needed to see my parents deceased, wandering around, especially now that they’d become the most hated and feared group on the planet. It wasn’t possible to know exactly how long it’d been since they’d joined the masses, which were now a direct threat to the survival and future of mankind.

  “If you want to go back now, I understand. I’ll even go back with you,” I said through the palms of my hands.

  Graham didn’t rush to respond; it was almost like he waited for the annoying tone of the phone ringing to stop, which was only a few seconds later. He pulled up the second office chair and sat right in front of me. He took my hands down from my face, disregarding my potentially virus-saturated tears. “I’m not worried about what’s outside,” he calmly said as he held my hands and looked into my eyes. His brownish-green eyes were frequently able to catch my attention for any little thing he wanted me for. Usually it was for some non-critical or even romantically playful tidbit but today apparently it was for a serious pep-talk.

  “I can’t begin to put myself in your shoes right now… To find out like this … I’m sorry about your mom and dad. I don’t know how they felt about this place but I know they’d want you to have the best chance to live now, especially now that they can’t… I’m not going back, neither should you. Our plan should remain the same.”

  I heard everything he said. I took it to heart remembering all I knew about his deceased parents who departed when he was in college, suddenly in a boating accident. He was not present when it happened and yet similarly, he experienced the same sort of instant, tragic loss that I now was forced to absorb. As of now, he and I had another connection, an unfortunate similarity, which made me uneasy. Even though I saw death frequently on the job, a person in my career learns quickly to build a buffer, a way to prevent you from taking your job home with you. All the faces you see that were sometimes lifeless, at other times in shock or pain––either way, in need of your services, the crying and moaning, the smell and sight of blood. Nothing can prepare you for seeing your loved ones in that same manner.

  “I don’t want to lose you too, here or out there. It’s bad enough my parents are gone… Maybe I haven’t given my uncle and the lab here a chance.” I began to cry again as soon as I said the words parents and gone in the same sentence. To see them so disconnected and un-human even though they still physically looked like the people I loved and would’ve gladly traded my life for, a hundred times over brought an overwhelming possibility that the plan I had was over my head.

  “We can always come back if things don’t pan out over at Princeton. As you can see from all of this I’m pretty positive they wouldn’t turn you away,” Graham said, bringing up a very valid point. Who says we have to stay anywhere for extended time? Last I checked I wasn’t convicted of a crime and confined to any one spot for any length of time.

  “Man, that is so sad,” Joel said.

  I looked over at him but said nothing.

  “No seriously, your dad was a nice guy. I didn’t think he was infected or anything when they arrived here. I checked in their car myself. I remember him from the other families because he said he was the brother of one of the guys in charge. He offered to come back and help us out with building and structural improvements, you know, to make sure things were safe around here,” Joel added.

  That was exactly the kind of man my father was. Though he was often seen as introverted to people who didn’t know him, however, he was always willing to be helpful whenever he could pitch in. To know they drove here, possibly in an absolute panic wore down on my heart and reiterated the sadness of the untimely end they came to.

  “We keep going,” I confirmed, simple as that.

  “Let’s do it, then,” Graham said as he patted my leg and got up to walk toward the wall where the keys to all of the vehicles in the garage hung. He started naming off the makes of cars according to what he saw on the key rings. “We have Honda, Chevy, Acura, Pontiac, ooh Mercedes…”

  “We’re taking the Caddy,” I replied, referring to my uncle Lloyd’s Cadillac CTS-V. If I remembered correctly, he owned the newest model year. It was a brief topic of conversation this past fall when he replaced his three-year-old CTS, affirming that business was good in regards to his career at NGT.

  Graham by now was easily able to confirm with Joel its place on the number one knob where the keys hung was in fact Lloyd’s car, that along with the visible multi-colored Cadillac emblem on the keys and keyless remote. He took the keys down from the knob and after pausing for thought, grabbed three additional sets of keys from the knobs nearby.

  “For the
diversion,” Graham said as he marched back around Joel, Alec and my chair on his way out of the office door. I got up to follow him but was immediately struck down by a surge of pain, which instantly brought on cold sweats. The phone began to ring for the third time, which met the end of both my patience and kindness. After pausing to deal with the sudden onset of pain, before I knew it I answered the phone with a curt, “Will you give us a minute!” and hung the phone back up while Davenport was in mid-sentence. I buried my face back into my hands, sitting there waiting for the intensity to settle down before I remembered the black bag by the doorway. While I waited, the tears began to fall, yet again as I reverted back to the thoughts and memories of my mom and dad. The pains that I’ve been feeling, they too must have felt. I could visualize my mother trying to comfort my father as he went through repeated, physically painful attacks of what I knew, all too well. My mother would endure the same, perhaps on her own in the end with my father far gone in a coma.

  As soon as I was able, I went directly to the bag to get a syringe of the anti-viral along with the Demerol. I clutched them both tightly in my hand as I saw Graham drive by in one of the sedans. I peeked out of the doorway in time to see him park it close to the extra wide garage door. He got out and jogged to another car nearby the door where with the keys in hand, he unlocked it, started the engine and parked it too, next to the first sedan. He did this a third time with a pickup truck before he jogged back to the office where he grabbed the bag and my hand as soon as he saw the syringes out.

  “I’m guessing you need a minute to take those while I figure out how to get us both in the car and that garage door open without getting shot.”

  “I don’t want to take this and be out of it—not right now. It hasn’t even been three hours yet, the pain just came out of nowhere,” I said. Confident I might regret doing so, I placed the syringes in my zip pocket for later, praying there was a later.

  “We can help you both and open the door, if you’ll un-tape us,” Joel interrupted.

  “It’ll be in your best interest if you and Alec stay out of it,” Graham insisted.

  “Look, the remote button to open the garage is right there on the wall. If you open it now you can forget about getting to the car in time or getting out of here. I’m sure they are blocking the exit from the other side but you won’t see how blocked it is until the door is open. Bottom line: you need our help,” Alec argued.

  By now, Alec was irritated by this whole incident. I was too. They were right but it was impossible to tell if they were trustworthy. For all I knew they probably had another gun somewhere as I would expect them to be armed. The two of them could be simply waiting for an opportunity to get to it and flip things around. It was a scenario my uncle would be the happiest with. Davenport could just come right in, ruin our plans and probably kill Graham just to make a point. I started questioning Joel because if we were to release either of them––it would be him.

  “How do we know we can trust you, Joel? It’d be too easy to just grab the weapon they designated to keep in this area in case of an attack and use it against us. Joel, I want to trust you. Graham and I want to get out of here so you guys can get on with your jobs,” I said as the pain was starting to wear off on its own. This made it much easier to further plead my case to him.

  “Without telling you too much, I’ll inform you that we don’t have anything that belongs to NGT so they have no right to keep us here against our will—no right at all! It’s bad enough my parents are now dead and I know for a fact that I’ll die here too if I stay any longer,” I continued, wiping sweat from my brow. Graham saw the distress I was experiencing and stood by my side, rubbing my back.

  Joel lowered his head for a moment, to think.

  “There’s another gun––loaded, right inside where the fire blanket box is, over there. If I didn’t want to help I wouldn’t have told you that. The quicker you guys try and get out of here the sooner we’ll be out of harm’s way. You guys have your reasons for wanting out––whatever they are, that’s your business,” Joel said. Alec nodded too in agreement as Graham rushed over to the fire blanket box that was right by the entrance to the office. He opened the lid to the red box with the highly visible white letters. Inside was a silver semi-automatic handgun with a spare loaded magazine.

  “Can you handle this?” Graham said, handing it to me after looking the pistol over and checking that the safety was on. I said nothing as I nodded and accepted the firearm, which was heavier than I remembered.

  I held the gun in my hands, switching the safety off and on again, squeezing the grip while trying to recall everything I learned about firearm mechanics and safety during my visits to the range years ago. The gun was a thirty-two caliber, smaller than Graham’s forty-caliber but effective nonetheless against a dead one or anyone with a well-aimed shot to the head.

  My goal was not to be intimidating so I placed the gun on the desktop behind me. Joel was right. He didn’t have to mention the pistol so it was now my turn to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “We need to get going. I trust you want us out of here so I will cut you lose,” I said as I looked around for scissors, which happened to be on the desk, in the corner by the wall. I started to cut Joel free, beginning with his legs, when the phone began to ring yet again. Instead of answering it Graham went to the office doorway and looked in both directions. I apologized to both Joel and Alec who by now understood that only Joel would go free. I told Alec to sit tight––he would be freed as soon as we got out of there. Once Joel was unbound I returned to the desk and scooped up the gun, making sure Joel could see I was in possession of it. He seemed unfazed by my gesture; instead he went to look out through the office window onto the vehicles––perhaps more interested in what Graham had done the last few minutes.

  “I was gonna turn on the brights, maybe try and blind ’em,” Graham said to Joel.

  “Yeah, I would say have the engines running too, just so they can’t tell which one you’re in,” Joel agreed.

  They both nodded at each other. Graham being a gentleman extended his hand to shake with Joel’s. Joel reluctant at first, obliged and said there were no hard feelings. He glanced at us both and said he hoped we’d make it to our destination. It was my turn to apologize and thank Joel and Alec as I gave them a quick nod. I grabbed Graham’s hand with one and the black bag with the other as I followed behind him out of the office door. Joel followed behind us as he said he’d wait until all the engines were on and we were safely in the car before he’d flip the switch to let the door up. In the growing distance between the office and where we were going, I looked back as I heard the phones around us ring in unison. Graham led us to the number one parking spot. There sat a clean, two-door, metallic-black Cadillac coupe that, even in its grungy confines, looked like it fell out of a magazine advertisement. From our side approach, the slightly tinted windows revealed an equally dark interior. The car lit up slightly as Graham hit the keyless entry button and let go of my hand. On a normal occasion, even the slightest car enthusiast would take note of the pristine exterior and even more, sleek and cozy high-tech interior such as the upgraded Recaro leather seats. Neither of us took the time to admire the vehicle as we both slid in, closed the doors and Graham started the car.

  I tried to sit as comfortably as I could with a gun at my side and with no luck I slid the gun into the pocket of my hooded jacket. I sat the black bag on the floor mat of the backseat behind me. We sped past the office where we saw Joel standing, acknowledging us from the doorway.

  Graham pulled alongside the pickup truck on the end, which by now formed a semi-circle where he hopped out to start the engines of the other cars. He started with the sedan lined up on the opposite end. I could see him from where I was, fumbling a little to adjust the headlight settings to their brightest before he got out, closed the door and went to the next car to do the same. I refused to just sit there while he did all of the work so I got out and headed for the pickup truck t
o follow. I could see Graham’s disapproval when he saw I was out of the car. I would welcome the discussion about it later, when we were somewhere safe.

  I stumbled a little but beat him to the pickup truck where he shook his head and mumbled, “You just won’t sit still, will you?”

  “No sir,” I replied as I turned the engine on. The pickup hesitated but turned over on the second try where then I searched the dash and steering column for the switch to turn on the bright lights. Graham was leaning in to help but we both heard yelling coming from the direction of the office. Both of us looked in time to see Joel in the doorway with his hands cuffed around his mouth yelling for us.

  “Hurry, they’re coming in!” Joel repeated twice before we understood.

  The side door that we came through, the one I managed to put the bolt lock on, started to vibrate forcefully with loud, repeated thuds. The metal on the door was thick, most likely steel reinforced, which made it heavy, but it was very possible that at any second the lock would give and there would be only air between us and Davenport’s promises of taking us down. Graham extended his hand to me as I scrambled to get out of the car. We both took off to get back to the Cadillac that thankfully, Graham left running. He yelled back to Joel for the go-ahead before closing the car door and turning on our own headlight setting to bright and putting the car in drive. Although the inside of the car was well insulated from outside noise, the vibration could be seen from where we were. It stopped, however, at the same time the garage door lifted, slowly exposing our view to the outside. I saw at least two pairs of black boots scramble across the wide entryway as the door lifted up to knee level before they were out of view.

  The bright lights must’ve temporarily confused everyone on the outside because by the time the door raised completely, all movement ceased. With the exception of one of the heavy duty pickup trucks parked along the side of the road, the area was cleared in all directions across to the tiny service road to the brush where Graham and I hid earlier, which was intensely lit up now from all the vehicle lights. We both ducked down as far as we could in an attempt to not be seen while the engine ran slightly below its normal idle in drive.