The Garden of Darkness

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  In its own weird way, Clare thought the link between Pest and adolescence sounded logical. Adolescence had always been a bag of goodies: complexion problems, mood swings, unrequited love and now, Pest.

  Her thoughts came back to the problems at hand. It was high summer. Not a good time to keep dead bodies above ground.

  And if Clare couldn’t bury them—and she was sure the task was beyond her—she was going to have to go elsewhere. She was going to have to leave her father and Marie to the forces of time and nature, both of which, it seemed, were sublimely indifferent to Clare’s emotional state.

  But it seemed to Clare now that she could deal with the grandeur of indifference, the blind workings of the universe. This was not the time for petty gods or the Thunder-roarer; death was insidious, irrational, arbitrary; now was the time of the beetle and the worm. And, for better or for worse, because there was no one else, it was her time too.

  PEDIATRICS

  IN THOSE LAST days, before it all broke down, he left his lab to work in the wards. They all thought he was a great humanitarian, but the truth was, he enjoyed watching SitkaAZ13 close-up. The disease, under a microscope, looked plump and innocent—right before it would enter a red blood cell and, in the metaphor his mind constructed, scatter the cell’s constituent limbs while feeding off its bloody heart.

  So elegant. He wished he had developed it himself—the virus was a wonderful world-cleanser. He wondered if someone really had spliced it together, or if the virus were just a natural consequence of too many species sharing the same niches. A vampire bat sucked on a monkey and then shat on a coca fruit that was picked by a farmer. Or maybe it had gone down some other way. But it most certainly had gone down.

  The patients came in a steady stream now, and most of the pediatric patients were referred to him. He liked to look at the nurses looking at him as he developed a rapport with his soon-to-be-dead young patients. His manner was perfect; he gained the children’s confidence and then he watched them die.

  Some of them had lovely eyes.

  The waste.

  He had read the articles (and many of the articles he had written himself), and although the journals were now largely defunct, shut down by the pandemic, he knew a great deal about SitkaAZ13. Out there were pediatric patients who, although they had the Pest rash, resisted the onset of the full-blown disease. He wanted to find them. The world would soon be almost empty; it would be ripe for a new creation; that creation would come from those resistant child-patients.

  He faced a girl called Jenny. She was obviously not resistant; lesions marked her throat and face.

  “Hello, Jenny,” he said. “I don’t need to look at your file. I can see you’re a good girl, a caring daughter, just by looking in your eyes. I bet your parents are proud of you.”

  “They’re dead.” Her voice was dull, flat. “My brothers too. I had to leave them in the house—no-one answered when I called for help. They’re turning more and more dead.”

  “Admit her,” he said to a nurse. Then he turned to Jenny again. “We’ll see your parents and brothers are taken care of, but right now, we’re taking care of you. All right, honey? You’re not going to need to worry any more.”

  She looked up at him with eyes of infinite trust. He was, after all, the doctor.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The nurse was watching him closely, and he knew word about his humanitarian bedside manner would spread. Why not? All the more pediatric cases would be sent his way. And he would rifle through their folders looking for resistant ones. And among them there would be resistant ones with the elusive double recessive genes he was seeking.

  His cause was scientific. Not, perhaps, in the sense that the old world understood science. But he would build a new world. He had already purchased the place he would take all the suitable survivors he could find.

  Land was going cheap.

  When the folders came in, however, and when he looked them over, he realized he might not be able to be picky: so far, there were no resistant children at all, not at his hospital. The world was engaged in a massive dying.

  He took precautions against SitkaAZ13. He would need to be careful. They were saying now that his cure didn’t work, that the side-effects were overwhelming, but when he applied the cure to himself, he didn’t feel any side-effects at all. Odd. Maybe the side-effects were already part of his constitution.

  The hospital stopped admitting patients. As he went to the pediatric ward, he had to step around gurneys with patients strapped to them. They were in the hallways, and when he went to the cafeteria for something to sustain him, he saw that it, too, had become a staging area for SitkaAZ13 patients. He went to the vending machine for a candy bar, and there were gurneys there too. Pressed right up against the place he wanted to insert his dollar bill.

  He moved the gurney.

  “Please,” said one of the patients. “Can you get me some water?”

  He was trying to squash a George Washington into the machine’s bill receptor, and finally, after several tries, he got the machine to take it.

  “Of course,” he said.

  He picked up his Diet Coke and went back to the pediatric ward.

  He examined child patients wherever he found them, and when he was done, really no matter how sick they were, he gave them a lollipop. Most of them smiled, even if they were too sick to enjoy the candy; it was a comforting gesture, one reminiscent of the pre-SitkaAZ13 world. Like giving Scooby-Doo bandaids to little ones.

  Soon other doctors fled. As he indefatigably and patiently made his rounds, he became hospital legend.

  And, again, why not?

  Meanwhile, somewhere out there were the resistant ones. And surely among them—he tried not to be excited, but it was a thrilling thought—were his little blue-eyed girls.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE OLD WORLD DIES

  LOOKING BACK, IT seemed to Clare that the breakdown of high-tech devices should have given her the biggest clue that nothing was ever going to be the same again. Take away electricity, and one could light candles and, eventually, get a generator going. Take away Google, take away the contributors to Wikipedia, take away all that, and one was taking away the world as Clare knew it.

  WHEN THEIR NEIGHBORS, the Cormans, boarded up their house and left, Clare, worried, texted Michael, even though he was supposed to be on a camping trip and out of reach of cell service. He didn’t answer. Next she texted Robin, who seemed distracted and upset. There was alarming news on the television about overloaded hospitals and overworked doctors.

  One day later, Clare’s friends slowly ceased to answer her texts—except for Robin. Two days later Clare’s phone was refusing to send texts at all, and the landlines were down. Robin bicycled over to Clare’s house since her learner’s permit didn’t allow her to drive alone.

  At the time, those things still seemed to matter.

  “My parents are in the hospital,” she told Clare. “Can I stay with you?” There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked drawn and grey.

  Clare’s father and Marie welcomed her. Robin had spent half her life sleeping over at the house anyway. And, unlike Clare, Robin got along all right with Marie.

  “Mom and Pop went to the hospital to get the Cure,” said Robin. “But now people are saying that it isn’t working right. The doctors wouldn’t let me stay.”

  In the morning, Clare’s father drove Robin back to the hospital. When they returned, before either of them even spoke, Clare knew that something was very wrong.

  “They died in the night,” said Robin.

  “Robin.” Clare didn’t know what else to say. She had known Robin’s parents her whole life.

  “I should have stayed,” said Robin.

  “We’re not going back,” said Clare’s father. “Robin will stay with us for the time being.”

  “They’re not releasing their bodies,” Robin said “They said there was too much chance of spreading Pest. There’re
lots of dead people in the hospital now: in the corridors, on stretchers by the vending machines.”

  “It’s a nest of contagion,” said Clare’s father.

  That night they all crouched around the television. They tuned in to Natalie Burton, science analyst for Channel 22—Clare’s favorite channel because of its Law & Order re-runs.

  “What was early this week thought to be a cure,” said Natalie, “has proven deadly: most who receive it die; those who do not, become gravely changed; they become what at least one researcher has called ‘inhuman.’ These so-called ‘Cured’ are to be avoided at all cost.

  “While mortality rates have been reported to be high, a tiny percentage of children under the age of eighteen show no signs of the full-blown virus—although they carry the Pest rash. When this scourge ends…” (Clare could tell that good old Natalie was winding up to her conclusion) “…they may be left orphaned and alone.” Clare’s father turned off the television.

  And so it seemed that she and Robin were among the resilient. Robin showed no signs of Pest; Clare felt perfectly healthy. Only the Pest rash showed that they were infected, too.

  WHEN CLARE GOT back to the house from Sander’s Hill, she went into the bedroom where the bodies were. Her father and Marie had been dead for two days. In death, her father stared sightlessly towards the ceiling. Her stepmother lay beside him. Clare wondered how long she could stand to stay in the house with the dead: they didn’t seem like her parents anymore now that they lay there, unmoving, flies taking advantage.

  Clare suddenly crossed the room and opened the window, overcome by the smell. She wanted to vomit, and she bent over the sill but then realized that she was leaning out over the flower garden. The zinnias were in full bloom, a vibrant riot of reds and blues, and Clare realized that she didn’t really want to throw up on them.

  Her stomach began to settle as she breathed the cooler air of twilight. Night was drawing in, and now the scent of the moonflowers was in the air. The evening light muted the color of the zinnias, but even in the growing darkness, Clare was aware of the garden spread out below her.

  The garden wouldn’t last; she couldn’t tend it; the weeds would overcome the flowers.

  It was a long time before she turned away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PICKING UP PIECES

  BEFORE THEIR DEPARTURE to Fallon, the electricity had gone off. No phone. The toilet only flushed if the tank were hand-filled with water, and no water was coming out of the tap. But, Clare remembered, she and Robin had been curiously unafraid.

  DEEP IN THE night, after Robin had come to stay, Robin and Clare—long after Clare’s father and Marie were asleep—took to their bicycles. They wore dark clothing and no helmets. Had there been cars on the road, they might have been in danger, but there were no cars.

  They coasted down the road. Across the street from the hospital, Robin started to slow down, and Clare almost crashed into her.

  “Look at that,” whispered Robin. They left their bicycles and crept as close to the hospital as they could without risking being seen.

  Gurneys spilled out of the emergency room and into the parking lot, and figures in surgical scrubs moved among them. Enormous lights painted the night blue-white. Even at that distance, Clare could see the faces of the patients. And she heard a sound like the gentle lowing of cattle. It took her a moment to realize that she was hearing the groans of the sick.

  By the time Clare and Robin got back to the house, the sky was getting light, and the stars were gone. Only Venus hung low in the pallid grey of morning.

  Later that day, Clare and Robin watched from the peephole of the door when they heard Mrs. Hennie crash out of her house, taking down the screen door with her. Mrs. Hennie went into the street, staggered for a while, and lay down. She didn’t move.

  “What do we do?” asked Robin.

  “Nothing,” said Clare. “There’s nothing we can do. She looks dead.”

  Clare wondered if Mrs. Hennie’s son, Chris, were still alive. Maybe he was watching the same scene from inside his house.

  “We should see if Chris is all right,” Clare told her stepmother.

  Marie was silent, and then she turned away from them.

  THE HOUSE IN the rolling countryside was silent now and filled with death. Clare slept in the closet of her room that night. She hung Chupi’s cage from the hanger rack and filled his feeder with seed and checked his water. Then she rolled herself up in her old blue comforter.

  She considered her situation.

  She really couldn’t bury the bodies. Not only was she too small, but the very idea of leaving her father and Marie open to the ravages of strange voracious underground things made her faintly sick.

  She couldn’t move them. So she would have to go somewhere else.

  Elementary.

  THE DAY THEY decided they would have to leave the city, the army arrived. Clare and Robin watched as soldiers came through the streets in enormous trucks. A few tanks rumbled by. All of the soldiers carried guns.

  They left leaflets everywhere. When the street was clear, Robin and Clare ran out and gathered an armful.

  The cover of the leaflets showed a woman wearing a surgical mask. From the crinkles around her eyes, it looked as if she were smiling. The text was all about entering quarantine centers and being under martial law and covering your mouth if you sneezed. And watching out for the Cured. That part was in big letters.

  Marie took one of the leaflets from them and crumpled it up.

  “The army won’t be here long,” she said.

  The army wasn’t. By the evening, Pest was among them. Perhaps it had already been among them. There were gunshots in the night. No more leaflets were distributed.

  CLARE ATE A can of peas. Then she made piles of all the non-perishable foods in the house. And after that, leaving Chupi as house guardian, she set out for the nearby cabin that belonged to the Loskeys. She had thought of going there before to find help, but she had been afraid of what she might find there. More sick people. More responsibilities. Bodies.

  But when she got there, she found that the cabin was boarded up snugly. It appeared that the Loskeys hadn’t even been up there this summer. They were probably back in the city, and they were probably dead.

  CLARE AND ROBIN stood by while Clare’s parents tried to find the BBC World Service on the radio—the television stations were all off the air, but Clare’s father had faith in the BBC. He loved the English. Finally, while he was still fiddling with the tuning, Clare and Robin went to bed. They slept late. Clare’s father woke them to say that he had finally found a news channel. The Cured were becoming more vicious. And that’s when Clare heard for the first time that all the adults who got Pest were going to die. All of them.

  “You need to prepare yourself,” Clare’s father said. But Clare wasn’t sure what that meant, and she was pretty sure that her father didn’t, either.

  CLARE FORCED HER way into the cabin and investigated. There was a bedroom and a kitchen with a well-stocked larder. Outside, there was a tool shed, and in it she found a little wagon with four wheels. It was time to make the move from the family’s summer house to the Loskey’s cabin.

  Chupi’s cage was perched on top of the first load, and he flapped against the bars as if protesting against his status as luggage. Clare used the wagon to transport clothes and blankets and matches and food and candles and whatever else came to hand. In her parents’ house, the smell of decomposition seemed to taint all their belongings. And the house was growing dark as the day became more overcast. She almost expected to see the darkness clinging to the clothing and bedding and goods when she brought them out into the air.

  CHRIS HENNIE OUTLIVED his parents. He came to the door right before Clare, her father and stepmother left, but there was no question of his coming with them—his face was flushed, and his lips were drooping. Pest.

  They wouldn’t let Chris in.

  “Do you want to sing?” Chris called out in
a strange voice. “Do you want to sing a song with me?”

  WHEN SHE NEXT reached the summer house, trundling the wagon behind her, the marigolds in Marie’s garden were beginning to close. It was time to hurry; night was coming, and Clare realized that she was going to need the power flashlight. It provided a brilliant beam of light; it was heavy; it was a potential weapon. The flashlight was in the closet near the front door, and Clare had to stand on a chair to get it. For a moment the chair teetered, and Clare realized that, if she fell and broke something, that would probably be the end.

  When she got back to the Loskey place, Clare sat for a moment while Chupi hopped about in his cage. She opened her shirt and looked down at her Pest rash. She was infected, and yet her father had bet on her survival.

  She went to the kitchen and opened a jar of pickles and chewed, thoughtfully.

  AN HOUR BEFORE the electricity cut out, a single broadcast came though on the television. Robin and Clare couldn’t know it, but this was the last television broadcast they were ever to see.

  “I am master of the situation,” a man in a white lab coat said. “All the adults are going to die except me. But if you’re alive, then you’re probably a child, and I can help you. You don’t have to be taken by Pest, now or ever. I can cure you. Once all the sick are dead, I’ll reveal my location. Tune in to your radio.”