by Susan Lowry
The buzz in her ears was as loud as a chainsaw as she watched the lips part and saw a shallow breath seep from his tiny mouth. She touched his blue sleeper, hoping the solid feel of it would bring her to her senses, and out of this lucid nightmare. Her fingers slid along the fuzzy material up to the chin and over a round, blistering cheek to his fine, damp hair. She stroked him, waiting for another breath.
His lids suddenly flung open, startling her almost out of her stupor. He peered at her with stark, blue eyes as round as coins — with flecks of gold that gave them such depth, it was like gazing into the universe.
“What’s wrong with you?” she whispered. The pupils expanded with a perceptiveness that seared into her soul. But then, just as abruptly, the look flattened and the life in him was gone.
“Don't go,” she cried, sweeping him into her arms.
Chapter Three
The Rash
(January 6th, Year One, Post Apocalypse)
The agonizing pain was all Kate knew for a long while; there seemed no end to it, or the raging fever which kept her delirious, confused, and oblivious to her whereabouts. Eventually, when the storm died down, the unprecedented silence seemed so unnatural and eerie that she opened her eyes in terror, only to discover a darkness that could not be blinked away and a void in her mind where her memories had been. Too weak to move she was stuck on a cold floor drifting in and out of awareness.
As dawn approached a vague square patch appeared from behind the curtains; shivering, she kept glancing back at it as it slowly lightened to a dark navy. All she knew for certain was her helplessness to do anything about the sickness which was surely going to kill her. It seemed to be burrowing deeper into her, torturously, like an infestation of hungry insects devouring her flesh. Somehow she sensed it was best not to try to run from it — her body needed every ounce of energy if she was going to survive.
By afternoon she was calmer, but when the light hit her eyes, she whimpered from the pain, turned her head away, and stared in a daze at the small body on the floor in the corner, which frightened her; her gut muscles tightened and squeezed and — suddenly recalling this happening before — she gagged and heaved, and passed out.
She didn’t wake again until the pitch-black had returned. Sitting up, she screamed for Jon. She crawled until she hit a wall and then a crib, and finally gripping some long drapes, she pulled herself up. With her face against the window, horrified at the impenetrable darkness, she stumbled out into the hallway searching for a light switch, then flicking one up and down, sobbing.
In a bathroom, she filled her hands with frigid water and gulped it desperately. But a minute later, feeling as if she’d swallowed a knife, she fell back against the towel rack dragging the metal rod and towels down with her.
The light was coming in around the blinds. She peered with alarm at the bloody vomit beside her head. Trembling, she pulled the bath towels closer and rolled into them for warmth. Shivering but unable to move further, she closed her eyes and searched for strength.
After a while she managed to shift her weight to her forearms and knees, and began to crawl out into the hallway towards the stairs, planning to slide down one step at a time to the entranceway and then, while it was still light, drag herself through the snow so she could die with Jon.
But, as she neared the top step, something grabbed hold of her foot. She turned her head. He was on his knees too, grasping onto her with deformed hands and staring at her through swollen lids. His face was a mass of oozing, blistering sores.
“NO!!!” she screamed, “I want to be with Jon!”
With each pounding beat of her over-working heart, fiery torment shot into every nerve. She opened her eyes, groaning for water — taking note of the pillow beneath her head, and the white, down comforter over her. It was a single bed, pushed up to the wall of a tiny, spare room. She slid her feet to the floor and staggered the few steps to the other side of the room.
Screaming, she sunk against the dresser, gritting her teeth and holding her breath, barely managing to keep upright as she waited for the torture to ease. Then, slowly, she began to shuffle, in stocking feet, into the hallway. One of her boots lay up against the railing. The other one was not in sight.
She made it to the bathroom and gaped at the heap of stained towels. Her insides curdled. She didn’t want to remember any of that, it was too terrible.
There was a glass pushed against the far corner of the long countertop. Too bad she hadn’t known it was there, shrouded in the darkness. She filled it immediately, but drank slow, one sip at a time. Then, hobbling back toward the bedroom with water spilling over the edge of her refilled glass, she made it as far as the door to the bedroom, and then sank to her knees, heaving.
Dehydration had become her new worst enemy. She sat on the lid of the toilet, waiting for the strength to try another sip. The grout between the tiles above the tub and by her feet wriggled and writhed distressingly, but closing her eyes caused her to nearly fall over and she grasped the countertop to steady herself.
The glass of water was there beside her hand on the counter, ready and waiting. But, one mouthful sipped slowly, was all she could trust her body to handle, for now; she could not afford to vomit again, frightened and convinced she would die of dehydration. A sip would be better than nothing at all, and if that stayed down, only then, when she was certain it was safe, would she try another one. She tottered back along the hallway and with some of the water still in the glass when she arrived at the bed, where she perched on the edge of the mattress, shivering.
Unable to control the wide trembling of her hand as she tried not to spill any more of her water while placing the glass on the nightstand — she noticed, for the first time, how the skin on her hands had bubbled up like simmering cheese beneath a broiler, and she finally understood the extent to which the infection was affecting her — eating away at her flesh, from the inside out.
Easing herself down on the pillow, she grimaced, waiting for the excruciating throbs to ease a bit. Finally, able to breathe again, she pulled back the bottom of her blood-stained sweater to grimly discover the reason for such extensive pain — every inch of her was covered in a raw, oozing rash. It was a devastating sight to behold and she could barely control the gags that arose in rebellion to it, from her gut, pushing her tongue out of her mouth threateningly. Never had she been more grateful that she’d obeyed her instincts to avoid looking in the bathroom mirror.
Now, too dehydrated even to produce tears, her lids scratched into the surface of her eyeballs like coarse sandpaper, and, realizing she could not even afford the luxury of a good cry — let alone the wailing that would have been in proportion to the intensity of her horror and the extent of her pain — she nudged the cover close to her nose, a frosty mist escaping from her sighs in the freezing room. Drained of every ounce of energy and badly in need of the rest that might provide her body with a slight, fighting chance, she succumbed to her overwhelming exhaustion and quickly passed out.
The three-quarter moon’s face seemed turned away from her slightly, as if it were trying to conceal an unspeakable certainty. And the brash illumination of stars — which had congregated in numbers never before witnessed by Kate’s far-reaching gaze — sent a cold chill down her tender spine. She’d never seen anything like it in her life. But the truth was glimmering in unabashed black and white, and she blinked up at it in fear.
She turned away and peered over at the inch of frozen water that had formed over the top of her glass. With long, swollen fingers she reached out and brought it over so she could push the ice inside and have a small sip. It hadn’t seemed possible that her sores could get any worse — yet now they were fatter and denser and more deeply rooted. It seemed to be the end of everything.
But, since she was still alive — then, it had to be possible Jon could be too. She couldn’t die now, only to leave him to battle — whatever this was — alone.
It was hard to believe that only days ago, the moonli
ght had come in through their bedroom window casting shadows from the trees on their silky skin as they moved, entwined together —their bodies, like beautiful, breathing canvases. She could see Jon’s chest rising above her and smell him as his tantalizing warmth brushed her face. His eyes had met hers, teasingly, and just before they’d fallen asleep, still wrapped close to each other, he’d twirled her long hair around his fingers.
If only they had a way to communicate now. To think he was only two doors away.
“I love you Jon,” she sobbed, her gaze finding the framed photo that had fallen from the chest of drawers. It was a young woman with her hair in a bun and long earrings. Kate remembered the name, Jen, her husband Josh, and the three children that had kept them busy, cheerfully driving here and there. But now everything had changed.
She sat at the edge of the bed, testing her strength and staring at her boots. The pain was deep in every bone as she hobbled toward the dresser, but some of her stamina had returned. Delicately peeling her stained top away from the scabs on her breasts and over her head, she slipped on the cardigan she’d found in the top drawer, and zipped it up, shivering.
After a few minutes she sat on the bed, guiding her boots onto her feet, groaning. “It’s time,” she said bravely, and stumbled to her feet gasping at the pressure against her scab-encrusted feet.
She hobbled down the hall to the window that faced the street and peered out at a sweeping arena of untouched snow. The cars were completely buried and there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere. She pulled her sleeves over her fingers, beginning to turn toward the stairs; but she suddenly stopped — her gaze was stuck on something.
“I thought you weren’t real.” She let out an unsteady sigh, and inhaled deeply. Shuffling through the door, she stared at the tiny corpse in the corner of the room for a moment and then, stepped over to it, bending down for a closer look.
There was a rash — clusters of small red dots — but, nothing remotely similar to the mess that was still festering all over her body. His quick death must have been the reason — there hadn’t been time for the sores to develop. It seemed like she had been fighting for her life for an eternity, but it hurt to think he’d even suffered a fraction of that pain.
But she wasn’t going to cry. Sobbing over him was not going to help. If she really wanted to survive this, there was no room for useless emotion; too much sentiment would only derail her. She peeled some adhered strands of hair from her cheek and hobbled away.
Her hand was on the rail and she was about to step down the staircase, when she turned back to gaze at a bedroom door. There was much more she’d been avoiding, and it would be wrong to leave, without facing the truth. She slowly walked over and peered into the master bedroom, where Josh lay, just inside, sprawled out on his back.
He looked like a monster, his face unrecognizable, and the skin so swollen and marred with pus-filled eruptions that she couldn’t even find his features. He’d lasted almost as long as she had, probably in and out of consciousness, delirious like she’d been. Yet, Josh had done his utmost to rescue his family and Kate, who was certain if she’d been allowed out in the snow that day she would be dead. She wondered if he’d put her in that bed and covered her up too. She couldn’t remember.
Jen’s arm hung over the side of the bed, and beside her, beneath the covers, there was a mound. Kate didn’t want to look. Instead, she gazed out the window past the set of half-buried swings, to a familiar maple that was at the back of her own property. She had swung on its branches as a child.
Returning to the bed, she finally pulled the blankets back. Beside their mom were two little girls. She couldn’t leave them like that. Despite her swollen feet, she wobbled down the hall to the baby, lifted him in her arms, and carried him back, placing him beside his siblings, and then covering all of them.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Josh, spreading a quilt on top of him.
Her boots clunked on the wood as she descended the stairs and went along the hall in search of her coat. For a while she rested on a kitchen chair holding her stomach and groaning. Then, pulling down a hat and some mitts from the shelf in a closet, she dressed for the outdoors and stepped outside.
The fading light felt harsh on her eyes as she held the railing to the porch, stumbled down the snowy steps, and began to slog through the high drifts. It seemed a long way back. By the time her cottage was in sight she collapsed, breathless in the snow.
She gazed down her long driveway, at her big front veranda, the stained-glass window with the Christmas wreath over it, and the string of lights around the doorframe. There was just a little ways to go before she could see Jon again.
Chapter F our
Husband on the Couch
(January 10th, Year One, Post-Apocalypse)
“Jon?”
The screen door slammed behind her. Her view to the red couch at the back of the house was partially blocked from where she stood in the dining room. She gazed at the bottom half of his legs, his blue jeans and gray socks, unable to bring herself to move any closer.
Instead of going to him, she wobbled over to the nearby table, sat in a chair, and shoved her art supplies out of the way, so she could lay her head on her arms. Several pieces of drawing charcoal rolled from the edge of the table, clinking as they landed.
She was no longer Kate. Only a ghost of herself had returned home — a ghost that needed her husband.
“Jon,” she said, trembling, “Jen and Josh, and even their poor little children have died. Dad was going to call an ambulance for you, but I — I guess nobody came.”
She breathed out a long, shaky sigh. “The electricity’s still out… and not a soul answers their phone. No-one has even tried to clear off their car — not one of the neighbours.
“I got sick too Jon… and things are not looking good.”
She stared ahead of her through a glistening tear that had appeared in the corner of her eye, and sniffed, unable to lift her head. The familiar cottage air drifted to her nostrils: smoky wood, oil-paint drying on canvases, the pot of soup on the stove — and there was a trace of something else blending in with the sour odour of her long, vomit-clumped hair, which lay across the table.
She wanted to die right then and there, so that she’d never have to make another decision again. Finally at home, she wished to be somewhere else. Her emptiness was unbearable.
The air whistled in and out of her nose and she held her breath for a few seconds to listen to the silence, praying that her ears would pick up a noise out on the street, or in the distance, just, something.
“Jon?!” She abruptly sat up, and held herself stiff, waiting for a response. “Oh, I thought you were—”
She staggered up from the chair and stood for a second, gazing over at him. Then she began to walk through the dim cottage, thinking that it would be dark soon. At a pile of logs on the hearth, near the edge of the couch, she stopped and peered down at Jon’s face.
Then she dropped down on her knees. “I’m back sweetie.” His silence was like a nasty insult that stung to her core.
The numbness that followed was more endurable. His skin hadn’t been affected like hers, just a slight rash — not even as visible as on Jen’s baby. That made sense.
But then, she gaped at him in astonishment. His chest — it was rising and falling. “Oh Jon, you know I can’t do this without you,” she whimpered.
She touched his cheek. Her hand recoiled and she glared at her trembling fingers as if they had betrayed her. How could he be so cold, and breathing at the same time?
“I’m going to build you a fire sweetie, that… should help. Jon?”
Wringing her hands, she waited. She squeezed her index-finger until the tip of it was red, slid the salty fingernail between her teeth and bit down.
“I—I can see you breathing.”
How could his chest be moving — when she couldn’t feel any warm air seeping from his nostrils or parted lips? She stretched out her long, shaking fing
er and placed it on top of his eyelid, which felt firm, and unyielding — like ice. She slid it up toward his brow — gaping at his deep brown irises, which had been so incredibly sensitive, and full of life.
“Oh my God!”
She guided the lid back down, letting her head drop like a dead weight between her shoulders.
“What am I going to do now?”
She did not want to face another freezing night alone. Pacing back and forth, she pressed the phone to her ear, the coiled wire stretched across the kitchen, and as the flames of two candles distributed their flickering light around the room, she slammed the receiver back down on its base, screaming, “Fucking hell!”
With sticky blood oozing from her scabs and seeping into the cracks of her fingers she dragged three of the logs Jon had stacked on the hearth into the fireplace, stuffed newspaper into the gaps beneath the wood, and staggered back to the kitchen for the matches. She lit the paper and watched the crackling flames grow.
Then she pushed the recliner close to the heat and collapsed into it for a while, gazing into the blaze. Eventually she pulled off her boots, and still clenching her teeth, delicately guided on some soft slippers. She brought a couple of heavy blankets back from the bedroom, put the recliner back so she could stretch out, and lay in a daze, listening to the hissing of the logs as the flames consumed them.
The embers were still glowing beneath the grill. She blinked at them and then gazed over at the glass doors that led out to the yard which was still deep in shadow touched only by a hint of dawn. Her gaze soon shifted to Jon.
She stared at his subdued features, unable to take her eyes off him, mesmerized by the steady up and down motion of his chest. It continued as the sun rose above the horizon and in the revealing light it was too much for her to tolerate any longer. She struggled out of the chair and nearly dropped back down from the pain, gripping the back of it, and then, after the initial agony had subsided, with the blanket wrapped around her, she shuffled towards him.