by J. M. Snyder
“Like evil as in bad,” Ronnie pointed out. “Somehow I don’t think the mother will go for that.”
But Court warmed to the idea. Evel, he liked it. “This is a new world now,” he said, twisting the radio dial and listening to the whine of static. “We’re no longer confined to the names we used to use before. No more Jennifers or Davids or Johns. We can reappropriate words and use them to describe ourselves instead. Like Evel—with two E’s—or, I don’t know, Pencil or Schoolbus or Sky.”
“Sounds like hippie names.” With a small cloth, Ronnie oiled the gun’s firing mechanism. “What’s wrong with John? I’ve always liked that.”
“You never call me it.” The only people who ever called Court John had been his mother—who had always saved his full name for when she was really mad at him over something—and his wife, Jeanine. Even then, it’d been a private thing between them; like everyone else, she called him Court in public. Now that both women were gone, the name didn’t seem to apply to him any longer. “I’m going to drop it. I’m just Court now. One word, like Cher.”
For a long moment, Ronnie concentrated on cleaning his weapon, and Court tried to think of something else to say. If not about names, then about a different subject, anything really, just to get Ronnie’s attention turned back onto him. Maybe ask about Sumter again, or make another remark about the baby, or mention the condoms tucked into his front pocket…
Before he could come up with something, though, Ronnie said softly, “I like John.”
A shiver ran through Court, and he pressed his lips together tightly to keep from grinning. He hoped he sounded nonchalant when he said, “Fine, call me John, if you want. I don’t care.”
Ronnie flapped the cleaning cloth in Court’s direction. “Nah, I’ve known you too long. I can’t just change how I think of you now.”
A short while later, Court turned off the radio. “Hear that?”
Ronnie’s hands froze in the act of reassembling the gun. “What?”
“Nothing.” Court grinned when Ronnie rolled his eyes and went back to work. “No, really. Nothing. No screaming. You don’t think…”
With a lazy shrug, Ronnie said, “That or someone gagged her.”
Court scrambled to his feet, but Ronnie was faster. Like schoolboys, they jostled to be the first out of the tent, each pushing the other back, Court laughing as he tugged on Ronnie’s arm to keep him from taking the lead. They went through the flap together, Ronnie’s hand flat on Court’s stomach in an effort to keep him back. As they burst into the clearing, they saw Bree exit her tent, happiness dawning on her face. She looked past Ronnie at Court. “Is it here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing as Ronnie’s fingers dug into his ticklish belly.
As if in affirmation, a startled wail rose from the trees. A baby!
Bree fell in behind Court with a giggle. “Oh God, I’m so excited.”
To be honest, so was he. A baby meant not only could they survive, but they could continue. The virus hadn’t won. They could rebuild, and go on.
Some of the other women had set up a medical tent not far from the rest of the campsite. Ronnie led the way, not quite running, but keeping ahead of Court nonetheless with his long strides. Bree’s short nails scratched Court’s back before finding purchase in his shirt. He gripped Ronnie’s arm tightly, aware of the contact of skin on skin and not wanting to relinquish it so soon. As they neared the tent, another wail rose, and with it, cheers inside.
Just outside the tent flap, Ronnie stopped so suddenly, Court bumped into him. He felt Bree pull at his shirt as if to hold him back. “Adam?” he called over Ronnie’s shoulder. “Sounds like you guys are making a baby in there.”
The flap opened and Adam stepped out. The latex gloves he wore were streaked with blood; more gore splattered the front of the apron he’d worn in a vain attempt to protect his clothing. There was a fleck of blood on his glasses, high up on the left lens, probably out of his line of vision. It was perfectly round, and Court stared at it with fascinated dread. “Is it alive?” he asked.
Ronnie shot him an exasperated look. “Can’t you hear it?”
Behind them, Bree asked, “Boy or girl?”
Before Adam could answer, Ronnie waved that aside, irritated. “Is it healthy?”
Now the glasses came off. Adam lifted the bottom of the apron to wipe them and seemed to notice the blood for the first time, so he put the glasses back on. From the tent, the baby’s wail broke into a jagged, phlegmy cough. Adam’s face crumpled at the sound. “Hear that?”
“Jesus,” Ronnie murmured.
Bree’s nails clawed at Court’s back. “How can it still be hanging around? None of us are sick. How long’s it been since the last person died? How long—”
“The father wasn’t immune,” Adam interrupted. “May is, obviously, but her boyfriend isn’t here, is he?”
May must’ve been the mother inside the tent. Court glanced at the closed flap and listened to the baby cough again. Yes, that was the same throaty rattle Jeanie had developed at first. “God,” he sighed, dropping his head to rest on Ronnie’s shoulder. “It’s starting all over again, isn’t it?”
Ronnie reached up and patted Court’s cheek, an absent-minded gesture that made Court flush with pleasure. “It’s still running its course. We’re all safe. Right?”
“I’m not a doctor,” Adam reminded them, “but I think so, yes. We’d be coughing by now if we weren’t. But from here on out, who knows?”
Court sighed, pressing his face into Ronnie’s back. The shirt Ronnie wore smelled faintly of sweat and dirt, and Court breathed in the scent as if it were perfume. It made him feel safe, and right now, that was all he wanted. Who knew, indeed?
Mother and child stayed in the medical tent the rest of the evening. The baby’s cries tapered off, but his cough remained. Adam confirmed the baby’s gender—male—and his name—Peter, after the father. Court tried explaining to Adam his theory of reclaiming every day, generic words and using them as names, but his friend just gave him a strange look before heading deeper into the woods to wash May’s blood off his face and hands. This far south of the James River, the land was marshy with creeks and streams, and a small rivulet ran close enough to their campsite to allow for bathing and fresh water.
After a dinner of canned ham and beans, which Court supplemented with the instant rice he’d found that morning, most of the group gathered around the dying fire. Few spoke; most seemed intent on listening to the baby as they stared into the flickering flames and remembered those they’d lost to the virus. First came the cough, as the body tried to purge the phlegm building in the lungs. It would grow productive as the lungs filled with pus. Then came a low-grade fever, then dull aches in the neck and back. Migraines followed, and a sore throat, and a constant tingling in the extremities. Soon the cough would begin bringing up blood, then flecks of tissue, until finally the virus ran its course and oozed out of its victim, out of the nose and ears and eyes, out of the mouth and anus. Bowels relaxed, bladders gave way. Blood and shit and urine escaped the body like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Crashing, the doctors called it. Bleeding out.
The cough was only the beginning.
When Court stared into the campfire, he saw Jeanie’s face. Heard her voice rasp as it had near the end, felt her hand clench tightly in his. “It’s okay,” she’d said on her deathbed. He had leaned in close to hear her dying words. “I always knew…and I loved you anyway.”
I loved you anyway.
He didn’t like remembering the past. The pain, the hurt, the dying. With a grunt, he pushed himself up and stretched, then headed for the tent he shared with Ronnie. As he approached, he heard static and knew his friend was fiddling with the radio. Ducking inside, Court asked, “Any luck?”
Stretched out on his stomach on top of his sleeping bag, Ronnie wore nothing but a pair of thin boxer shorts. A Coleman lantern lit the tent’s interior, casting shadows off the taut sailcloth and draping Ronnie
’s bare back and legs in an orange glow. Ronnie’s legs were bent, his feet raised in the air. Court grabbed Ronnie’s ankles, one in each hand, and leaned his chest onto the soles of Ronnie’s feet.
Ronnie’s toes curled deliciously into Court’s stomach. “Nothing,” he said, frowning at the radio.
“Maybe we heard it wrong the other night.” Court leaned heavily onto Ronnie’s feet, letting his friend support his weight. “Maybe we had some sort of mass hallucination.”
Ronnie wiggled his feet, threatening to throw Court off-balance. “No, we heard it. Maybe they can’t transmit so far all the time, though. We should keep the radio on all night, see if we don’t hear it again.”
“In our sleep. Good idea.” The tone of Court’s voice said otherwise. “Run down the battery while we’re at it. No one’s out there making new ones, you know. Eventually we’ll use up all we can find and then what? We’ll be S.O.L.”
“We’ll be in Sumter by then.” Ronnie spread his feet a bit, teasing. “Besides, it’s solar powered. Just leave it out in the sun and it’ll recharge.”
“Yeah, well,” Court grumbled. “It still might break.”
Court stood up to avoid falling between his friend’s legs. But God, what a fall. He looked down at the boxers covering Ronnie’s thin ass and resisted the temptation to accidentally “on purpose” fall anyway. Playful, like. Just to be funny.
Before he could, Ronnie prodded him with one toe. “How’s the baby?”
“I don’t know. It ain’t my kid.” Court turned away, his back to his friend, and began to strip out of his clothes. “When do you think we can start moving again?”
“The baby will slow us down.” Ronnie’s voice was low, suddenly intimate, and Court suspected his friend was watching him undress. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder and check. If Ronnie wasn’t, Court would be disappointed. But if he was…
If he was…
Court pulled his shirt off over his head, then unzipped his jeans and shucked them down his legs. “If it has the virus, it isn’t going to be an issue much longer.”
“Hmm.”
More moan than word. Court grinned to himself as he felt Ronnie’s hot stare on his backside. Like what you see, big boy? You know where to find me.
Only one sleeping bag away, all night long.
Chapter 3
Sometime in the wee hours of dawn, Court woke. There was no slow ascent out of his dreaming self to awareness—one moment he was asleep; the next, he was not. He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness of the tent, waiting. Was something out there?
Behind him, Ronnie muttered in his sleep. His sleeping bag rustled as he rolled over, then Court felt a heavy arm wrap around his waist. Ronnie tucked his head against Court’s back and snuggled close, pulling Court back against him. It wasn’t the first time Ronnie had sought out Court’s warmth in the night, and as Court felt his friend’s breath flutter against his skin, he prayed to God it wouldn’t be the last.
A low burst of static caught his attention, and his gaze flickered up to where the radio rested, just beyond his pillow. They’d turned it down to almost a whisper before falling asleep, and in the faint light cast from the dials, Court realized he could see a little bit of his surroundings. His pillow, at least, and the shadow of Ronnie’s beside it. The pale stretch of tent immediately above the radio. The crumpled wrapper from one of Ronnie’s granola bars, which he’d have to remember to toss out in the morning if they didn’t want bugs crawling all over the place.
The static spiked again and Court reached for the radio, careful not to move too much and disturb Ronnie. The arm resting across him was a weight anchoring him in the moment, and he wanted to hold onto it for as long as he could. Bringing the radio closer, he pulled it down into his sleeping bag and held it against his chest. His ears strained to hear something, anything. His left thumb caressed the dial, finessing it to find just the right wavelength…
More static, then: “Sumter…snerk! bzzt reee!…medicine, and electricity, and supplies…SZZT…disease-free. If you can hear this, come…”
Court lost the signal and eased the dial back in the opposite direction, but he didn’t hear anything else. Against Court’s back, Ronnie muttered his dead wife’s name, and curled his fist in the waistband of Court’s briefs.
The baby died during the night.
Court woke to a painful wail piercing the air. He stirred, surprised Ronnie’s warmth was gone, and rolled over to find his friend’s sleeping bag empty. The wail continued, cutting through the morning stillness and piercing through Court’s head. He felt the first throb of an impending ache behind his right eye. His voice sounded cottony when he spoke. “Ronnie?”
No answer, but that horrid wailing drowned out his words. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Ronnie?”
The wail broke into jagged, heart-rending sobs. “No, no, no,” Court heard amid the tears.
Sudden fear gripped him—Ronnie! Vaulting from his bedroll, he scrambled into his jeans and snagged the same shirt he had worn the day before. Then he hurried from the tent, tugging the shirt over his head. “Ronnie!”
The shirt obscured his vision, but he felt a familiar hand catch his elbow as he stumbled from the tent. “Right here. The baby’s dead.”
“Shit.” Court shrugged the shirt down, then smoothed it over his flat stomach. “What? When?”
“Last night.” Ronnie rubbed Court’s arm, then dropped his hand. Court fought the urge to grab it and slap it back into place. Without the touch, he felt cold and alone. “Adam says it was the virus.”
“It isn’t that fast.” Court glanced around, eyes wild, but the mother was hidden somewhere—the medical tent, maybe—and he couldn’t find the source of the awful cries. Then Ronnie’s words sank in and he stared wide-eyed at his friend. “It can’t work that fast. Can it?”
Scary thoughts filled his mind. The virus morphing into a different bug, changing its molecular structure, decreasing its incubation time first, and then what? Mutating into something they had no immunity against? Something that could kill off the rest of them?
Ronnie must’ve seen some of that in Court’s crazed expression because he shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’s that. The baby was just too young. He was born sick.”
“You’re sure it isn’t changing, then?” Court asked, as if Ronnie would know.
Ronnie nodded. “I think we’re fine.”
Court relaxed, finally exhaling the breath that had caught in his throat at Ronnie’s first words. “Jesus. So now what?”
With an almost imperceptible shrug, Ronnie said, “We move on.”
The mother’s cries punctuated his understated delivery. “With that?”
Another shrug, this one slightly more pronounced. “We’ll see.”
Court spent the day packing up their meager supplies. Once it would’ve taken him months to pack everything he owned in anticipation of moving, but now all he owned could be condensed into a small backpack. Two pairs of jeans, including the pair he wore. A handful of underwear, some undershirts, a few T-shirts, socks. The only shoes he owned were the sneakers on his feet, and with winter on the way, he’d eventually have to snag something heavier to wear over his arms, but summer still sweltered this time of the year in Virginia, and if they were heading farther south, he thought he wouldn’t need to worry about a coat, or even long sleeves, for another couple weeks, at least.
How long would it take to walk to Sumter? He wasn’t sure. Immediately after Jeanie had died, Court enlisted Ronnie’s help burying his wife in the back yard. He dug up her azalea bushes, as much as he hated to do it, but the soil there was well-tended and rich, easy to move. While Ronnie had shoveled the earth into a neat pile beside the bushes, Court had sewn the bed sheets into a shroud around her. Before he closed the seam up over her face, he tucked their wedding photo in with her, gently laying it on her chest. Then he slipped off his wedding band and tucked it into one of her still-clenched fists. He didn�
�t hear Ronnie come upstairs, didn’t realize his friend was even in the room with him until he felt Ronnie’s hand caress the back of his neck. The warm touch reminded him that, though Jeanine was gone, he remained. Somehow, miraculously, he was still alive.
Ronnie had carried Jeanine’s body because Court had been too emotionally drained to lift the dead weight. Down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door, into the garden. Gently, Ronnie laid Jeanine into the ground, and Court struggled back tears. He hadn’t deserved so good a woman. He didn’t deserve to be the one left standing as Ronnie began to refill the grave.
Court hadn’t bothered to pack up the house. He wanted to leave, put it behind him, move on if he could, but Ronnie wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily. They packed two large suitcases, but very little clothing—Ronnie raided the cans in the pantry while Court sat at the foot of the stairs, head in his hands, staring at nothing and feeling the same. He let Ronnie choose what to keep and what to leave behind, and when Ronnie took his arm, pulling him to his feet, Court let his friend lead the way next door to Ronnie’s own house, which the virus hadn’t decimated.
Now, in the woods, Ronnie left the packing to Court, and something told him they would be moving on soon. He’d told Ronnie what he heard on the radio in the night—what he’d thought he heard. It’d been on the tip of Court’s tongue to ask if Ronnie might’ve woken at some point, and did he maybe remember wrapping his arms around Court’s waist during the night? But in the end, Court stuck to the phantom message from Sumter and kept the rest to himself.
When all their belongings were secured in their backpacks, leaving only the sleeping bags to roll up and stow and the tent itself to disassemble, Court stretched out on the tumble of blankets and stared up at the shadows of tree branches and dappled leaves playing off the roof of the tent. At some point, the mother’s wails had stopped, but he wasn’t quite sure when exactly that had happened. Were they burying the infant’s body now? Saying a prayer over the recently turned soil to commend the tiny soul into God’s hands? Court remembered standing beside Jeanine’s makeshift grave, mind blank, unable to think of anything to say on her behalf. In the end, it’d been Ronnie who said a short prayer of deliverance. Closing his eyes, Court could still hear his friend’s soft voice on that hot day in early August. “Thank you, Lord, for this woman, who took good care of Court here and loved him so much.”