“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, dear. I hope you feel better soon ... No, no, don’t worry about it, perhaps you can get up to visit before New Year’s. I’m sure he’ll understand ... Get some rest and eat some soup; chicken noodle helps your body get over bugs. Love you, too. Bye, John.”
Eleanor looked tired as she put the phone down, but when she noticed me, she perked up. I knew it was just a front.
“That was John,” she said. “He’s feeling a bit under the weather and won’t make it tonight. Amy texted my cell phone a half-hour ago though, and she should be here any minute.”
I felt a small loss now that John wouldn’t be coming. I really liked him. From the little pieces of information that the Fosters had given me, I knew his struggles had been far rougher than mine before he had come to live with them. That he’d turned out to be such a good, well-adjusted person and had the opportunity to go to college was a testament to the Fosters.
I went and looked through the dining room window after I’d finished cleaning up the wreckage of the unwrapping. Snow had started to fall. It was the first snowfall of the year and the weatherman had not predicted it.
It looked like there was going to be a white Christmas in Fort Carter, Rhode Island after all.
I dutifully lowered my head and clasped my hands as Alan said grace. At that time in my life I was angry with God, but not completely ready to give up on the idea of his existence. The meal had been prepared with expectations that John would be there as well, so there was more than enough food to go around – ham, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, pumpkin and apple pies for dessert. It was a veritable feast. Given the things I’ve eaten just to stay alive in the weeks since that day, I almost feel bad about taking that meal for granted.
The conversation around the dinner table was merry, with Alan, Eleanor, and Amy all laughing and reminiscing about the past. At one point during the meal, my mood had taken a turn for the worse. Rather than making me feel better, being reminded of the family gatherings that I remembered so fondly actually made me feel down. Amy glanced over at me.
“Why don’t you show me the presents you got after dinner?” she said, putting her hand on mine. “Mom said that you got a drone! I’m jealous, they never got me anything so cool.”
I shrugged.
“It’s just a toy.”
Amy was nice enough, but she was older than John, in her mid-20s, and always seemed more like a visiting adult than a potential sibling. I ate a few more bites but found that the food had begun to lose its taste. I could tell that one of my mopey moods (that’s what Eleanor called them) was about to hit me hard. These bouts of unhappiness were less frequent since I had been living with the Fosters, but I had not completely left them behind.
“May I be excused?” I asked, looking up at Alan.
“Sure, take your plate to the kitchen,” Alan said. “Don’t let yourself get too down in the dumps though, mister. Later this evening we are going to go caroling around the neighborhood.”
“Okay.”
I got up and picked up my plate.
“Is he still depressed?” Amy asked quietly as I went into the kitchen.
I heard the question, but not the reply.
We never did go caroling that night. When the time came, Alan was feeling much worse than he had been that morning and had developed a fever to go with his sore throat and cough. Amy said she was beginning to feel sick too.
Before she left, she came up to my room to look over my presents and chat in an attempt to cheer me up. It was nice of her and I appreciated it, but it was an awkward, stilted conversation.
“You look terrible,” I said with typical teenage bluntness, during a particularly long pause.
She really did. There were dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there just two hours ago and every few minutes she coughed into her handkerchief. I remember being amazed how she had gone from being perfectly healthy to obviously ill so quickly. Her hand fluttered to her throat.
“Yes, I think I better get going.”
I held my breath as she gave me a hug and left.
4
An urgent rapping on my bedroom door woke me the next morning. The clock on my bedside table read 5:58. I sat up, as another series of heavier raps cut through the sleep fog in my head.
“Isaac!”
“Yeah?”
“Isaac, Alan isn’t doing well this morning. I am going to drive him over to United General,” Eleanor called through the door. “Are you going to be alright here by yourself for a while?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied, managing to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I was certainly old enough to look after myself in an empty house.
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 more news. In fact most stations were broadcasting breaking news.
This must be big, I thought, and settled onto the sofa, remote in hand.
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.
My breakfast felt heavy in my stomach as I listened intently.
“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. We still don’t 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, cover your mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing and stay away from crowded areas as much as possible...”
A man in a rumpled suit rushed up to the podium from off-camera, 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 before screwing the paper up into a tight ball.
“What is it? What’s happening?” the same reporter from before called.
“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 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, the latest estimates are that 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, every part of the continental United States… in fact the entire continent of North America, will be affected within the next 24 hours. The CIA isn’t y
et calling this a terrorist attack, but, and this is purely speculation on my part, all signs are pointing that way.”
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 been released here ... 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 out 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.
Eleanor and Alan returned in the early 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 a bed sheet.
“Run to the freezer and bring me the ice pack,” Eleanor said. “I’m worried that he’s getting too hot.” When I returned with the ice pack, she put it in a pillowcase and placed it on Alan’s forehead.
“Oh, Alan, please don’t leave me,” she whispered, and kissed his brow tenderly.
We sat by his side for a while and then, after he’d fallen into a fitful sleep, went to the living room to watch the news. If anything, the situation had gotten even more horrific since I had turned it off that morning. We learned that the Chinese government was now admitting responsibility for the attack and claiming all of North America by right of conquest.
Not terror then. War.
The other nations of the world were protesting loudly, but the threat to them was implicit 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 except for - it was rumored - those who were of ethnic Chinese origin. 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, those areas had fused, and the body became incapable of producing the specific antibodies, ironically dubbed the ‘Funny antibody’.
Those under 16 or 17 exposed to the virus had the antibodies and would be forever immune to the virus. Those who did 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 hours, 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 if the time comes and, I will face death with as much courage as those reporters did during Hell Week.
5
Alan died around midnight.
Eleanor lay down with him on their bed, her head on his shoulder while she cried. I hugged them both and then stood and watched helplessly for a few minutes before going to my room. I sat on my bed with my arms wrapped tightly around my knees as 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 had been. If anything, this was more painful because it was happening slowly and even though I knew it was happening, I was powerless to stop it. Eleanor was sick too. She was trying to hide it, but I knew that 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 rustling in their closet. It backed onto the wall of my room, so I could hear quite clearly as she rummaged around. Actually, it was less like rummaging and more like she was tearing the closet apart. I wondered what she was hunting for. Then the sounds stopped.
Several minutes passed and believe it or not, in my sitting position I began to doze off.
BOOM!
I jumped, startled by the bang. When I realized what it meant, I wrapped my arms tighter around my legs.
The house fell into a deep silence as I sat with tears running down my face.
At some point I lay down, pulling blankets over me. I slept deeply and dreamlessly until the morning light was shining through my window. I finally got up the courage to go into their bedroom, knowing with the same certainty that I had known about the fire trucks almost two years earlier, what I would find.
Eleanor was slumped across Alan’s body. There was a red mist-like spray on the walls and headboard of the bed and Eleanor’s arm dangled off the mattress, 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. Then, moving closer, I saw the neat, 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 didn’t go any closer.
I tried calling 9-1-1, of course, but I was greeted with a disconnected message. There was no signal at all on Eleanor’s cell so I used the land line to try calling John and Amy several times each. There was a dial tone, but only empty air after I dialed their cell numbers.
I put on my coat and went next door to the Moorcock house; they had always seemed like good neighbors and I knew they would help if they were in any state. Nobody answered the door. Crunching back across the snow-covered lawn I looked up and down our street. There was no movement at all and, despite looking like a winter wonderland, the familiar neighborhood landscape felt sinister and full of secrets. I picked up my pace and bolted the front door once I was back inside.
I decided I would just have to close Alan and Eleanor up in their bedroom for the time being and deal with them later. After shutting their door I headed into the kitchen, pondering my situation.
There was plenty of food left over from Christmas dinner and in the pantry, and the gas and electricity were still on too. The rarely used fireplace had a good stock of kindling and logs, and altogether, I guessed I could last a good month if I had too. Surely the authorities would get a handle on this disaster in that time?
The TV channels started going off the air that afternoon, with most of them completely off air by New Year’s Eve. There were no fireworks that day. No big ball dropped in New York City. No one celebrated the turning of an era. America had fallen.
It was a lonely few days. I read books. I tried the phone hundreds of times. I slept a lot and ate a lot more than I would normally through sheer boredom.
It was on January 1st when the last news channel still on air reported that the Chinese army had begun landing on American soil. The Chinese government broadcast statements on radio and TV, welcoming the children of America as citizens of New China and promising re-education and adoptio
n into the new world order but Tom Dallard, the last news anchor doing live broadcasts from his station in Boston, told of Chinese soldiers rounding up the children of New York and Baltimore and other major cities and forming them into work gangs to clear bodies. He backed up these claims with a snippet of cellphone footage smuggled into his TV station.
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, he was one of the 4 percent.
He kept on reporting to the last and on January 2nd, alone in an empty studio, talking to the one camera that was focused on him, 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 and 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 complete 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 signifying the end of the America I had known.
I sat staring at the screen for a long time, feeling sick to my stomach. Tom Dallard, in my mind, was the last great American hero, and he deserves to be remembered with the rest of them.
Hell Week Page 3