Cruel World

by Joe Hart

  More feet invaded the scene and a rumbling sound like thunder came from the speakers, drowning out the man’s cries. The screen went blank, and the noise stopped only seconds before an anchor desk appeared, manned by a wide-eyed woman in a blue dress and an elderly, regal man in a gray suit whose mouth hung open several inches. The man sputtered for a moment before nodding to someone outside of the view pane.

  We’re…we’re going to take a short commercial break and be back with you- His speech cut off as the camera went dark and then broke into a vibrant jingle while a smiling man climbed behind the wheel of a brand new car.

  Mallory fumbled with the remote and turned the TV off, leaving only the sound of their breathing in the room.

  “We have to bring him in,” Quinn said again, reaching toward Foster.

  The older man stepped away from him before he could touch his arm, his eyes watery and strange as he looked at him and then away. Quinn blinked and then turned to Graham and Mallory who hadn’t retreated but stared at him as if they were seeing him for the first time.

  “Did you wash your hands?” Graham asked. His accent was more pronounced, the words rounding off at their ends.

  “What?”

  “After you left his room, did you wash your hands?”

  Quinn shifted his gaze from the chef to Mallory who still clutched at the skin of her throat, pinching, pulling, kneading it like dough.

  “No.”

  “Is he any better?” Foster asked. The groundskeeper had taken another step backward and stood near the doorway, one foot actually in the hall.

  “Not that I can see. Look, we need to get him to a hospital now. If this flu is as serious as they’re saying, he needs a doctor.”

  He panned their faces, the only ones he’d ever known. They were stoic and unfamiliar to him now, changed in some elemental way as if their bones had shifted beneath their skin, only enough for him to notice.

  “What are you doing?” He asked, and his voice sounded far away. A hazy mist was gathering in the corners of the room, creeping into his vision and he shook his head.

  “We need to take precautions, cariño,” Mallory said, standing up from the couch.

  “Like what? Isolate dad? Not get him help? We need to bring him in, now. No one’s died yet. They didn’t say anything about people dying from this.”

  “The guy that grabbed the microphone said his family died,” Foster said. He didn’t look at Quinn but past him at a point on the wall.

  “He was out of his mind, and obviously not everyone is dying from this otherwise they’d be reporting it. Right?”

  They stood around him, a circle made of strangers who said nothing.

  “If you won’t help me, I’ll take him myself,” he said finally, spinning toward the doorway.

  Teresa stood there, blocking his way.

  Her face glowed in the dim light thrown by the single lamp in the corner, drops of perspiration like dew on her forehead.

  “I called Portland General. There was no answer,” she said, and tipped forward.

  Quinn barely caught her before she hit the floor.

  Chapter 5

  There and Gone

  He carried her to her room by himself.

  Graham made a move to help him, almost an automatic motion, but Quinn threw him a look and picked the old woman up without effort, cradling her like a child. She weighed no more than a bundle of blankets.

  He laid her in her bed upstairs and covered her with a thick comforter. Her teeth clacked together, the sound grating against his nerves like sandpaper.

  “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay now,” he said, his voice barely carrying past his lips. Teresa made no sign that she heard him. Her teeth continued to chatter for long minutes, and Quinn checked her mouth to make sure she wasn’t biting her tongue or cheeks. After a time her shivering subsided, her jaw slowing and then stopping like some component of a greater machine that was winding down. If this was his window to the world, Teresa and his father and even the others (their reactions), the engine that was the world was grinding to a halt. Pandemic. That word sounded too much like panic. They could find a cure, would find a cure, but how long would it take for everything to become normal again? Months, maybe years, he answered himself.

  He left Teresa’s room and walked the short distance down the hall to his father’s door. The bedroom smelled of urine, and when he checked the sheets, he found his father had released his bladder without waking. It took him a half hour to change the beddings, all the while James slept on, oblivious to his surroundings. When he offered the straw to his lips, the older man wouldn’t accept it. His teeth were ivory jail bars guarding his throat and Quinn was only able to dribble a bit of moisture into the side of his cheek. He went down to the kitchen and fetched another pitcher of ice water, making a quick trip around the ground floor to confirm Mallory, Graham, and Foster had all left. When he peered out of the kitchen window, there was a flit of light between the shifting trees that was Mallory’s home, there and gone like a firefly winking out. The house was so quiet without the bustle of the others, the silence nearly deafened him, and he had to resist the urge to turn on Graham’s iPod to break it.

  In Teresa’s room he fed her water that she drank, sputtering at first and coughing, the same grinding noise coming from her lungs as his father’s. When she was resting again, Quinn found the cordless phone in his father’s office downstairs and dialed Portland General, the nearest hospital. He waited, the line taking an extremely long time to connect, and when it did, an automatic message came on telling him that all scheduling personnel were assisting other patients and to call again later, or if it was an emergency to dial nine-one-one.

  He hung up, staring at the phone’s earpiece, listening to the quiet of the house. His fingers hovered over the buttons and then punched them, bringing the phone back to his ear. It rang once and then again, his stomach tightening with anticipation. Someone would answer, they had to, it was nine-one-one. He counted thirty-seven rings before hanging up only to call again with the same result.

  The echo of the tolling line hung in his ear as he climbed the stairs again, his feet heavier than before. Fatigue swept over him, and he sunk into the chair beside his father’s bed, running his fingers over his face. He found the one smooth place on the right side of his brow that was free of imperfections. He rubbed the spot, glancing at his father’s sleeping form before staring at the floor.

  “Nope, we’re going,” he said finally, and stood. Without hesitating, he pushed his hands beneath James’s body, the frigid touch of his skin seeping through his clothes. It was like cradling a bag of softening ice. Quinn began to heave him up and off the bed, already calculating how he would get him to the garage and in the back of the SUV without stopping, when James cried out.

  It was a gasping gurgle filled to the brim with pain. The pottery shards were back, but this time they were in his voice, giving way to a scraping wail that reminded Quinn of a small animal dying in the jaws of a predator. He immediately settled him on the bed again, wincing as James moaned once more before quieting into a stilted panting. The older man’s jaw muscles flexed, and a new wave of sweat broke out on his forehead. Quinn wiped it away with a towel and watched his father, antagonizing minutes dropping away as James’s breathing slowly returned to normal, the creases in his brow smoothing like waves returning to the sea.

  He sat back, taut muscles going languid, the stress of the moment crashing down on him and then peeling away. He couldn’t move him, there was no way to do it without killing him. The way his father’s body felt in his hands, like a sack of rags wrapped around sharp rocks, he would puncture something internally simply carrying him to the door.

  Quinn moved to Teresa’s room and checked on her. She hadn’t so much as turned in her sleep, and he propped her door open to the hallway when he left. The TV called to him, the promise of more terrible knowledge almost unbearable to resist, but instead he went to James’s side and opened his bo
ok and began to read out loud again so that his voice filled the empty space in the air.

  ~

  The morning dawned bright and clear, another admission of spring in earnest. The sun rose from the eastern horizon, climbing up from the depths of the ocean until it broke free, burning away a mist of fog that had settled overnight.

  Quinn had slept fitfully. The chair was comfortable at first, but by the first light of day, it was an instrument of torture, its edges and cushions biting into him as if it were made of hungry mouths. He’d checked on his father and Teresa whenever he’d woken, dabbing their brows with washcloths and offering water, which neither of them drank.

  When he stepped from his father’s room in the early light, there was no familiar sound of breakfast being made downstairs. That was over. He would have to cook something for himself. He tried the numbers for the hospital as well as the emergency line again. Nine-one-one had the same result as the day before, innumerable tolls and still no answer, but Portland General didn’t even transfer him to a recorded message; he simply received a busy signal over and over.

  He ate a cold breakfast of cereal and milk while a pot of chicken broth heated on the stove. Balancing two bowls on a tray, he made his way upstairs when he finished eating and first spoon-fed some to his father and then to Teresa. Their jaws were locked tight in similar fashion, and he used the trick of dribbling some in the pocket of their cheeks and teeth to get a small portion of the broth down. He took their temperatures a short time later, first his father’s, then Teresa’s. After reading his teacher’s he paused, staring at the numbers blinking on the display. Walking like someone in a dream, he returned to his father’s room and retook his temp, waiting until the little unit beeped before reading it again.

  104.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Their temperatures were identical.

  Quinn lowered his shaking hand and placed it on James’s forehead. The skin was cool and moist, condensation on a thawing piece of meat. He let his hand rest there another moment and yanked it away when his fingers began to sink into his father’s skull.

  The cry that leapt to the back of his throat came out in a breathy moan. He hadn’t felt that. It had been a hallucination. Something brought on by lack of sleep and stress. Stepping forward, he leaned in and studied the area where his palm had rested.

  The outlines of his fingers were there in the skin, faint and fading but there.

  He backpedaled, nearly tripping over his own feet as he fled to the upstairs bathroom, barely making it before vomiting into the toilet. His heart banged in his ears like an angered child slamming a door continuously.

  “What the hell’s happening?” he said, before his stomach heaved again.

  When the nausea subsided enough for him to sink away from the toilet, he sat with his back against the claw-footed tub, his head resting on its curved lip. He remained there until he knew he could stand and washed his mouth out with water before moving down to the living room.

  The television screen bloomed into life, the same news channel from the day before coming into focus. A man wearing a suit that looked as if he’d slept in it stood before the camera. His dark hair stuck up on one side of his head, and he kept attempting to smooth it down as he spoke.

  -tion-wide panic has erupted overnight. The streets of Washington are full of protesters, many of them carrying weapons, firing guns, and clubbing those who try to subdue them. The death toll this morning is unknown since many of the major treatment centers have been unreachable, but we do know that those afflicted with H4N9 began dying late last night. The CDC hasn’t released a report on their efforts to create a vaccine or what the conversion of infection to death rate is at this time, but we expect them to within the hour. Early analytical reports have stated that the mortality rate could be as high as seventy-five percent.

  Quinn tried to catch the remote, but it slipped from his hand. And when he knelt to retrieve it, the strength fled from his legs and he crumpled to the couch behind him. He stared at the screen as the reporter listed off emergency centers that were still accepting the ill.

  There were none in the state of Maine.

  He thumbed the power button and let the room fall into silence. A gentle breeze nudged the windows and he looked outside at the cerulean sky, unblemished, the pine trees swaying gently. How would the sea look today? Aquamarine or cobalt or maybe gunmetal gray. The Atlantic never seemed to be in concurrence with the weather. It was its own dominion, independent of the sky and breeze. How would it be to get in the skiff and sail away across it? Let the waves and wind take him where they wished. Forget the broken sounds from his father and Teresa’s lungs; forget the freezing, damp of their skin beneath his fingers; forget the quiet air of the house with no one speaking.

  A sick, ratcheting cough came from above and he turned toward the stairs, listening to the brittle grinding sound that shouldn’t have been coming from a person. Teresa, it was Teresa.

  Quinn ran up the stairway taking the treads two at a time and rushed into her room. The old woman was on her side, shaking and shivering with each cough, curling in on herself like a dead leaf in a fire. He knelt at her side, throwing an arm over her thin shoulders, trying to brace her without really knowing what else to do. She hacked long and painful, her breath sounding like it was full of sand and gravel. Eventually she had nothing left, and she sagged, rolling slowly onto her back again. He gently sat her up enough to prop two pillows behind her sweating back, and when he eased her against them, her eyes were open. They were bloodshot and pain-ridden, but clearly seeing him.

  “Are you okay?” she wheezed.

  Quinn deflated, his air coming out in one long breath.

  “You’re asking if I’m okay? Yes, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The cold?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Good.” Teresa closed her eyes and was able to breathe deep without succumbing to another coughing spell. He brought the glass close to her face, offering the straw to her. She shook her head.

  “Not thirsty.”

  “You have to drink; you’re sweating buckets.”

  “How’s your father?”

  “The same, still sleeping.”

  “The others?”

  He hesitated. “They’re fine.”

  She nodded, her hand sliding toward his over the blankets. He took it.

  “I left him,” she said after a time.

  “Who?”

  “My son. You asked me the other day if he left me. He didn’t; I left him.”

  Quinn frowned and waited. Teresa’s chest was rising slower than before, but her fingers were strong in his own. When she spoke again, her voice was lower than a whisper, the sound of the wind in the pines.

  “His name is Jeffrey. I was twenty when I got pregnant. Second year of college and his father was a married man, though I didn’t know it at the time. When he found out, he threatened me. Said that if I told anyone who the father was, he’d find a way to remove me from school. Said he’d keep me from getting in anywhere else that I applied. He was a man of power and was kind up until that point.” She turned her head to the side, toward the window. The shades were open and the sky was still the seamless blue, unstitched by any clouds.

  “I wanted to teach so badly, you see. It had been my dream since I was a little girl. My first teacher’s name was Mrs. Felling. She was beautiful and kind and had such a way with us kids. She could get us to do anything, learn anything, and that’s a real gift. Many teach but few are teachers. I was so young and stupid and scared. I knew I couldn’t raise a baby on my own. So when he told me that he’d keep me from becoming what I’d always wanted, I made a decision.”

  Her grip on his hand tightened and she shifted her gaze back to him, her eyes clouded with memory and something else, grief.

  “The couple that adopted him were from Boston. He was a truck driver and she worked in a bank. They couldn’t have child
ren of their own but wanted them desperately. We agreed on a name for him the day he was born and three days later I said goodbye to him forever.”

  Despite the sheen of sweat that coated her face, he could spot the tracks of her tears easily. They ran down the grooves that time had worn in her cheeks and disappeared below her chin.

  “It was the biggest mistake of my life, one I never got over. He’s out there somewhere and I hope he’s safe. The last I heard he was a father himself with two children of his own, grandchildren that I’ll never meet. And I don’t deserve to meet them.”

  “You can’t say that,” Quinn said, his voice thick. “That’s not true.”

  She coughed again, but it was feeble and the fit lasted only seconds. She appeared further away somehow, more distant than she had been moments ago even though neither of them had moved.

  “Then I came here and you were my light all these years. You were such a good student, so smart. You’re the son I got to raise as a second chance. You’re ready for the world now. Don’t be afraid. The fear…” she wheezed again, not a spasm at all but a constriction within her that didn’t allow her to speak. “…it’s a thief. It steals from us if we let it.”

  “You need to rest. Here, have some water.” He tried to retrieve the glass from the table but she held his hand fast.

  “Don’t let it steal from you. Don’t be afraid…” Her voice drifted and he saw the ocean in her eyes, a wave receding from the beach that didn’t return. “…my son.”

  The fingers within his hand were brittle and very dry. The shine of perspiration was gone and her mouth hung open a little, her last breath escaping without any effort to draw another.

  “Teresa,” he said, already knowing somewhere inside where all truths are told that there would be no answer.

  He rose and placed a hand against her lined cheek. Her skin was warm again, like that of floorboards resting in a setting sun, the heat draining along with the light. Words came from his mouth but he didn’t know what they meant. They sounded alien to him, a language he’d never spoken before made of broken syllables amid sobs that twisted his insides into a plucked guitar string.