by Joshua Gayou
“I’m sorry for that, Lizzy,” Jake said.
“It’s okay. He had it coming.”
Jake looked at Ben and Otis in turn. “I apologize to the both of you for that.”
Ben nodded at Jake, clearly shaken by the exchange. Otis nodded to Elizabeth and asked, “Do you know any card games, honey?”
“Mom taught me Crazy Eights,” she said.
“Ben knows that one, don’t you son?”
“Yeah!” Ben said. He pulled an old, beaten pack of Bicycle playing cards out of his jacket pocket. Looking at the rest of us, he asked, “Is it alright if we play on the tailgate of the truck?” I said, “Of course”, so he took her off to the truck a few feet away, pulled down the gate, and helped her to climb up onto it. He jumped up beside her and started shuffling the deck.
“Been rough with him. Robert, I mean,” Otis said quietly. “He gets like that. I don’t know the details behind what happened to their parents but I know it wasn’t pretty. I’m not sure how strong to be with him. Don’t know what’s appropriate.”
“He’ll be a problem eventually,” Jake said. “You’ll want to get that handled or leave him behind soon.”
Otis’s heavy sigh indicated that this was a problem that had been troubling him. “Yeah,” he agreed.
Billy took a sip of whiskey, coughed, and said, “You were saying about the tents?”
“Oh, sure,” Otis said. “So, they were rounding us up, good bad, or indifferent. Not being mean about it but just making it clear that we were coming with them no matter what. Took us all down to the tent city and put us in these big old communal things with row on row of cots.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said. Otis nodded to me and lifted his cup in a little salute.
“From there, they shuffled us around some more,” he continued. “As folks within a tent got sick, they were moved out into quarantine sub-areas; sick tents within the tent city, I guess you’d call it. In time, the number of sick equaled the number of healthy, and then the ratio overbalanced the other way. It became easier for them to move the healthy into their own sub-areas. It started getting crazy towards the end. Ben and I were moved sometimes two or three times a day. The following morning, there were always more people who had passed on in the night – more people that had to be hauled out to the pits. After a while, I figured out that no one was actually working on any kind of cure or medicine to make it right. They were just playing a giant human shell game with us until there were none left to move around anymore.”
The sound of cards slapping down on the tailgate startled me. The kids giggled and half argued, half joked about who won the last round. The sound of Lizzy laughing and playing with another child helped to take the chill off the story Otis shared.
“We were in those tents, oh, five…maybe six weeks? That’s all it took for some three hundred thousand people from Albuquerque and the surrounding areas as well as another fifteen thousand Army, medical, and support staff to get whittled down to something approaching less than one percent. I have no idea how many were left when the dying finally stopped; Ben and I didn’t stay around to find out.”
Otis drained what was left of his cup and gasped. Billy offered more, which was accepted gratefully. I noticed a slight tremor in Otis’s hand as he held out the cup.
He was silent a moment while looking off into the distance at nothing in particular. Suddenly, he sat up and asked, “You folks remember the National Dispatch?”
It didn’t ring a bell for me. Billy, Jake, and I looked among ourselves and it became clear that none of us had heard of it.
“Ah, must not have circulated out your way. You remember that all the private news networks were still trying to get back up and running after the Flare? Well, they never quite had the chance to get off the ground and any traction they got was lost when everyone started getting sick. The Stars and Stripes created an offshoot service called The National Dispatch. Started using it as an interim service to deliver news updates and keep everyone informed. Nothing fancy – just basic newsprint, maybe five or six pages per issue, zero advertisements.”
“Why the name change?” asked Jake.
“Had something to do with branding,” Otis said. “I asked one of the soldiers about it in the tents. He said they were trying to minimize the appearance that the news media had been taken over by the government, which it essentially had. Wasn’t like they were being shady; the government was literally the only organization left that was capable of getting the word out.”
“Never saw it out my way,” said Jake.
“Me either,” I said. “And I was in a tent city a lot like the one you were in.”
“Well, I’m not surprised. They were down to sending copies in on pallets with the supply trucks.” Otis leaned forward and pitched his voice low. “I saw a story in one of the articles that said that some researchers thought the Plague was some kind of…uh…chimera, I think it said.”
“No shit?” Billy said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Nasty stuff,” Billy told me. “I saw something on this sometime after all the Anthrax and dirty bomb scares. One of them doctors that seemed to make his whole living dreaming up shit to be worried about started talking about these manufactured vaccines that were made from two or more different viruses. He said the process could be adapted to combine some kind of killer cocktail virus. A new kind of bioweapon. This article said it was man made?” this last question was directed back at Otis.
“Well, it said they suspected but I been thinking about it. You think of the timing of everything as it happened: first the Flare comes and flattens the power grid and, not too long after that, everyone starts getting sick.”
“I know where you’re going,” Billy said. “I had the same thought myself. I just never had the benefit of a newspaper to back me up. Damned sure didn’t think of any kind of chimera…”
“So I figure, someone somewhere was getting up to some business in the lab that they probably shouldn’t have. Don’t even know if they were trying to make a weapon, you know? There were pharmaceutical companies and every other damned thing dreaming up all kinds of futuristic garbage across the whole country; growing noses in petri dishes and grafting human ears onto mice. All kinds of Frankenstein type foolishness. Suppose the power went out at some critical moment while they was cooking up whatever nasty shit they were working on? Suppose whatever containment they’d put together was only as good as the electricity it was running on?”
“But they would have had backup systems…safety measures.” Jake said.
“Sure. Fukushima had all kinds of backup systems and safety measures, too. Remember them?”
That shut us all up.
“Anyway,” Otis said, “the timing of it all was such that I don’t believe for a minute that the Plague was just something that popped up out of nowhere.” He drained off his second cup and declined Billy’s offer of more with a shake of the head and a “Thank you”.
“None of which helps us today,” Otis declared, raising slightly out of his chair and brushing off the tops of both legs with his hands. He settled down heavily into his chair and grunted. He giggled to himself and said, “That’s good stuff,” while pointing at Billy’s bottle.
“Well, anyway, like I said I wasn’t gonna hang around the place with Ben and watch everyone die off around us. When enough had passed on, the Army stopped trying to keep everyone from leaving. They became resigned. Their primary function became to keep the area sanitary, comfort folks as best as they could, and preserve human dignity as much as was reasonable. They were giving us a safe place to move on into the next world, see?”
I nodded. I had seen.
“I remember being surprised at that,” Otis said as he looked off toward the freeway. “You think back to all the movies and TV shows where all the zombies broke loose: what did you always see the military doing? They was always becoming some evil, autonomous junta, weren’t they? Seemed like every director or screen
writer involved in those damned things had to have that one gratuitous scene with soldiers shooting down a whole crowd of civilians – brutalizing them and whatnot. I didn’t realize how much we’d all been conditioned to expect the worst out of the military until we saw everything fall apart for real. After a while we all figured it out.”
Otis shook his head and looked back at us. I could see tears running down his cheeks unchecked. He shook his head slowly.
“They was just American boys and girls like the rest of us. They took an oath at some point to protect the rest of the civilians; they families and loved ones. When the end came and they found they couldn’t, they did their best to give us comfort and then they finally died right alongside of us. Could have left to go looking for they own families – some of them may have, I guess. I heard of a few A.W.O.L. reports. But all the ones I knew by name were all there with us and I passed by many of them lying in cots. I felt wretched and ashamed for leaving them there like that but those of them that could still speak were all saying the same thing to me as I pulled Ben past.”
Otis stopped talking and sighed. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve absently.
“What did they say to you?” Billy asked quietly.
“They said ‘Run’.”
12 – Parting
Amanda
We slept in our vehicles that night instead of the tents, due largely to our exposure and proximity to the freeway as well as our proximity to the city of Spanish Fork itself. Mainly we felt safer being encased within the hard cabs and liked the idea of being able to fire up the engines and evacuate without leaving any supplies behind. The flipside to our reasoning (I believe) was that we were also too tipsy to effectively set up the tents in the dark.
I took the first watch of the evening and, after roughly two hours, I tapped on Otis’s window to let him know he was up. My last thought before passing out utterly was to wonder how long it would take to go to sleep in a reclined car seat; I was dead to the world from that point until morning.
I was awakened by the light of the sun shining in through the Jeep’s windows and the heat that it was beginning to generate. Elizabeth was still asleep in the passenger seat so I quietly pulled on my shoes, slipped out of the Jeep, and saw to my usual morning routine.
The truck was gone; something I had noted when I first stepped out of the Jeep, but Jake was out in a chair between the Jeep and the minivan nursing a smoldering fire. The easy-up was packaged away and strapped to the minivan’s roof. I came over and pulled another chair off a stack that was leaning against the Jeep’s front bumper, opened it up, and sat down beside Jake.
“No rifle this morning, huh?” he asked.
“No. It’s a pain to always be carrying around. It’s hard to pee with it strapped to the front of me.”
“Well…yeah. I imagine it would be.” He sounded embarrassed.
“So Billy and Otis are already out there?”
“Yes. Billy took the last watch of the morning so when he was done, he roused Otis and me. Just before sun-up, that was. They went off in the truck a couple of hours ago. Shouldn’t be too long, I think. Breakfast?”
“God, please. I’m starving like there’s no tomorrow.”
“How do some eggs sound?” he asked.
“They sound fantastic. Any of that sausage left?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, walking over to the stack of chairs. Next to these were the ever present Pantry and Kitchen bins. He popped the lids off both, pulled a camping skillet out of one, and a can of freeze dried sausage and a bag of powdered eggs from the other. He read the back of the bag for a moment, grunted, and then pulled a bowl and spoon out of the pantry bin. He brought these items over to the little cook fire and went back to the bins. Retrieving a bottle of water, he closed both bins and returned to the fire.
“Never made these before,” he warned me. “Bear with me…”
He opened the bag, dumped out about a cup of the yellowish-white powder into the bowl and then poured in some water until it was all fully immersed. He began stirring the whole mixture with the spoon. After all of the powder was mixed in well enough, he began to work the spoon fast, clanging the sides of the bowl.
“How long are you supposed to stir it?” I asked. The whole thing seemed dubious to me; it became runnier and runnier as he stirred it. I was expecting the mixture to thicken up and look like eggs at some point but it just stayed watery.
“The instructions just said to beat the eggs. It suggested using a mixer or blender but since we’re short of both, I figure I need to just smack it around for five minutes or so.”
I settled in to watch that transpire. He was already breathing heavy.
As expected, he stopped halfway through to let go of the spoon and shake out his arm. “Here, let me take that a bit,” I offered. He passed the bowl to me with a “Thanks” and went to go get a little camping grill to set across the rocks encircling the fire. I worked the spoon for another few minutes before giving up and saying, “These aren’t getting any thicker…or any more mixed for that matter.”
“I think you’re right,” he said looking into the bowl. “Oh well; in for a penny, in for a pound, right?”
He deposited a dab of oil into the skillet, swirled it around inside, and placed it over the fire. I offered him the bowl, which he took and upended into the skillet, stirring the result with the spoon as he passed the empty bowl back to me.
Two things happened at this point: the mixture began to take on an orange tint and the texture looked nothing like improving.
“I think it’s getting worse,” I muttered.
“It is doing that…” he said.
I began laughing as he struggled with the mixture. “Are we really going to eat this?”
“Oh, I think we must try. Look how far we’ve come.”
This comment surprised more snickers out of me and I struggled to respond. “But what if…whoo! What if we end up shitting ourselves to d-death?”
I was done in by this point, laughing like a mad idiot. Jake stoically continued to stir the concoction with his spoon, smiling his serene smile. Occasionally, he would lift up a spoonful to smell and give me a thumbs-up, which sent me off laughing again. Over time, however, the eggs went from looking all wrong to looking maybe okay. The smell coming from them was more than okay.
“Hey,” he said. “Maybe this is coming out right, huh?” The eggs were starting to fall over each other appropriately as he stirred.
“Well don’t just stand there, man, throw in some of that sausage!” I urged. My stomach was beginning to growl painfully.
He smiled and did so. He cooked the whole thing for a little while longer before he pulled it smoking from the fire and dumped it all onto a plastic plate. He divided the pile, spooned one half onto another plate, and passed it to me along with a fork.
We sat there facing each other in two chairs looking down at our plates. I finally said, “Well, are you going to try it?”
“I’m a little afraid to. Shitting myself to death sounds like a horrible way to go.”
“Don’t start that up again,” I said while suppressing a fresh round of the giggles. I lifted the plate up and breathed deep, taking in the aromatic heaven. The smell was too good to ignore, so I shoveled in a mouthful.
I’m not going to pretend that the stuff tasted exactly like eggs ought to taste but it was certainly close enough that my eyes rolled back in my head and I moaned involuntarily.
“Good?” asked Jake.
“Oh, man. All it needs is a little Tapatio.”
“Yeah, think we have some. Hang on…”
“If you find any, you’re my new bestest friend,” I called to his back.
When he returned he said, “No luck, unfortunately. There was just this Pico Pica stuff.”
I held my hand out. “It’s not the same but it will do fine in a pinch - you can still be my friend. Thanks!”
“Sure thing,” he said and took a bite from his plate. He coughed and
looked up surprised. “Wow! That’s not bad.”
“Right?”
I wolfed half of my portion down before I realized what was happening. I stopped suddenly, thinking about Lizzy.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jake.
“I should save some of this for Lizzy.”
“No,” Jake said. “Eat it all if you’re still hungry. The best thing you can do is keep your strength up. You can’t protect her if you’re starving. I can make more for her.”
What he suggested went against years of conditioning on my part but it made sense. We ate the rest of it in silence, enjoying the feeling of the cold morning air and hot food in our bellies. That’s one of the things I always appreciated about him; he didn’t insist on small talk. He was just perfectly happy to sit quietly in your company if that’s what the situation felt like. I asked him about that once, in fact, and he said that he always thought of small talk as “one of those needless constructs we all inflict on each other to reinforce the idea that we belong”.
He opened up the bag of powdered eggs again, poured double the previous amount into the bowl, and said, “You want to wake the others? I’ll get some more going for them all.”
We were all finishing up by the time Billy and Otis returned in the truck (even Robert, whose attitude went from sullen to confused when Jake handed him a plate of food with a “good morning” and a smile – he’s always been pretty easy to forgive most things for as long as I’ve known him). I saw there were a few more gas cans than before in the back of the truck and suspected that the morning excursion was successful. They were stacked precariously on top of all the other gear, tools, and backup supplies, shifting around as the truck rolled towards us over the dirt.
Billy parked the truck nose to nose with the Jeep and they both hopped out to come join us. “How’d you do?” Jake asked while whipping up a fresh batch of egg snot in the bowl.
“Really good,” said Billy. He sat down in a chair by the fire and looked over at what Jake had going. “Oh, you got the eggs figured out, huh? Nice.”