The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth)

by Stark, Michael

  I poked at the fire with a stick.

  “Elsie and Daniel live just across the sound. I’m taking them home in the morning. I should be back by tomorrow afternoon.”

  I looked up and waved the glowing end of the stick. “I doubt I will come back here though. I’ll probably come up the back side and find a place to hunker down for a while.”

  No one said anything. Denise shot a questioning look at Joshua.

  I sighed and tossed the bit of wood into the fire.

  “I’d planned on coming here, and staying here. Rather than being stuck, I’m pretty much where I want to be. I’m not a doctor, but I lived with a nurse for a long time. This disease is spreading fast and killing as it goes. I didn’t come here to escape. I came here to spend what might be my last days doing something I enjoy.”

  I leaned back.

  “I had asthma as a kid. I’m a sucker for any type of respiratory infection.”

  The sudden silence that followed grew uncomfortably long.

  “We’re leaving in the morning too,” Kelly said finally. “All three of us are from Virginia. We left our truck parked on Hatteras. We’re hoping we can make it to the Cape by eight o’clock. Even if the cops shut down travel exactly at noon, we’ll be close to home.”

  She glanced from face to face.

  “Has anyone heard the latest news?”

  Elsie cleared her throat.

  “I had the radio on while I was cooking.”

  She hesitated and looked at the boy beside her.

  The sudden thought struck me that she didn’t want him to hear what she was about to say. I rose and motioned toward him.

  “Come on Daniel. Let’s go check out some of these old houses.”

  The old woman reached out and pulled him close.

  “It’s okay, Hill William. He was there. He’s heard it already. It’s just sad.”

  She pulled him over and put her arms around him.

  “I turned it on for the music. I couldn’t find any. Every station had nothing but news. They’re saying that The Fever is spreading too fast to contain. It’s in every state now, even Alaska and Hawaii. The announcer said that new estimates put the death toll by morning between five and ten thousand.”

  Her voice trailed off into stunned silence. I sat down as abruptly as I had risen. Everyone, including me, had thought it would take weeks for the disease to migrate that far.

  “The hospitals are in trouble. The infection control procedures aren’t working. Doctors and nurses are coming down with it faster than the general public,” she continued. “Not everyone is dying from it. About 40 percent survive if they get good care. That’s the problem though. There are too many people sick.”

  “This morning we heard a thousand dead by nightfall, not five to ten thousand,” Denise blurted out. “Where are they coming up with these numbers?”

  Elsie lifted weary shoulders.

  “I don’t know. The announcer said we were playing catch-up.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Devon said in a sharp voice. I glanced over at him and stifled the sudden urge step between them. He could question the reports all he wanted, but he was not going to curse her in the process.

  “It means two things,” I said and ticked them off on my fingers. “One, the reports are an estimate. No one knows how many are actually dying.”

  I let that sink in before I stuck up finger number two. “Second, people have been ill and didn’t know it. You don’t catch a bug in the morning and end up sick by afternoon with most diseases. There’s an incubation period where it multiplies. By the time you start feeling bad, your body is swarming with the infection.”

  Elsie looked old in the firelight. The flames highlighted the deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and cast her face in shadows that left her looking gaunt and tired.

  “They revised that today,” she said quietly.

  I shot her a surprised look.

  “They said it could manifest symptoms in three to four days. That’s down from a week to ten days. They said The Fever is evolving.”

  She looked at Joshua. “I don’t think you will be evacuated, at least not for a while. Police, fire and rescue, they’re expected to be swamped trying to enforce the ban. They’re not talking detention. They’re saying that anyone violating the travel ban could be treated as a mass murderer.”

  I gave the old woman a sideways glance. She caught my eye and looked puzzled. I shook my head and turned back to the fire, mentally chalking up another note about Elsie Morgan. Most of the day she’d talked like a grandma who’d never made it out of the flatlands. The words she had just spoken could have come from an English professor.

  “What does that mean?” Kelly broke in.

  “It means if you can’t get home by tomorrow noon, you might get shot for trying.”

  Tyler wiped hair from his eyes.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Elsie nodded. “I am. It’s not official policy and groups are already threatening lawsuits, but the announcer said noon tomorrow, people better stop wherever they are until they see how the ban is going to be enforced.”

  She glanced around the fire. “At minimum, you’re looking at jail time.”

  The dark-haired girl who had been so friendly earlier spoke up.

  “Well they can’t just leave us out here, can they?”

  Elsie shrugged. “I don’t think they know you’re out here. If they do, I think they have bigger things to worry about than a few people stuck on an island.”

  Wind swept at the loose strands of gray hair that had escaped from the tight bun. Firelight played across her face.

  “It’s not just here either. Countries across the world are reporting cases. Riots broke out in France and Greece today with people fighting over food at grocery stores. The world is going to be a different place tomorrow. We’ll just have to see how different.”

  Voices rose around the campfire, some in fear, and others in protest. I listened but said nothing. I had little to add. The social structures that Dad had hated appeared to be on the edge of collapse. The protections and comforts most had treated as a fact of life rather than a privilege of the society we had created, were being dismantled quickly and easily. Like most facades, what lay behind them looked significantly less inviting.

  When the protests finally subsided, Elsie looked at me.

  “Will you see us back to the boat, Hill William? We have an early start in the morning.”

  I nodded, and went about gathering up the leftovers from dinner. There wasn’t much. The ham had been reduced to little more than a bone. I stuck it in the plastic bag Elsie had used for the bread, thinking I would use it as seasoning for soup or beans. The rest amounted to a few spoonfuls of green beans and a sliver of the bread she had baked earlier.

  Tyler nodded when I held up the bowl so I scraped the last few bits into his plate.

  “You get that flashlight out of the boat?” I asked Daniel when we were loaded up.

  He fished it out of a pocket and held it up.

  “Good,” I said, “why don’t you take point and lead us back.”

  We left them still huddled around the dying fire. If it hadn’t been for the houses looming in the background and the colorful jackets so common among campers, the scene could have come straight out a movie that targeted early man, circa about 10,000 B.C.

  Daniel raced ahead. Elsie let him go, keeping track of him by the flashlight bobbing in the distance. Her gait, though still spry, had lost its earlier enthusiasm.

  “I’m not liking this wind, Hill William. A north wind in these parts can turn ugly.”

  I kept walking. Northeasters had a long and well-deserved reputation along the Outer Banks, but it seemed too early in the season to me. Then again, I hadn’t grown up here. She had. Arguing with her would have been like discussing monetary policy with an economist. I had no ground to stand on in either debate.

  “They had a man on the radio. He almost sounded loo
ny,” she said suddenly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said the Fever is intelligent, that it’s fighting back and picking some of its victims.”

  I rolled my eyes, the motion completely lost on her in the darkness.

  “And they gave this guy airtime?”

  “I said he almost sounded loony. If what he’s saying is true, we don’t stand a chance. No one does.”

  “Come on Elsie. A disease is nothing more than a collection of organisms that your body doesn’t like. I’m sure that twenty years from now, doctors will talk about evolutionary pressures and all, but intelligent thought?”

  I stopped and turned toward her. “Be serious. It would have to be a collective intelligence, a thought process shared by trillions of tiny little bugs. That’s not possible.”

  She kept walking. I sighed and picked up my pace to try and catch her. Ahead the light had come to a standstill. The meeting with the others had taken place no more than a quarter of a mile from my camp. I’d expected the boy to stop at my tent on the way back, but the light looked wrong. It stood off to the right and closer.

  “It is evolving. You heard that today when they talked about having to strap people in their beds,” she said stubbornly when she heard me closing in beside her. “It’s gotten worse. The news this evening was full of doctors and nurses being attacked and in some cases, killed by their patients. It’s like the Fever is trying to wipe out the people who can fight it.”

  She looked sideways at me. “And the incubation period dropped. I’m telling you, this isn’t like any sickness we have ever seen.”

  “What it sounds like, is armchair science. I wouldn’t put too much faith in it,” I told her. “More than likely people see it that way because doctors and nurses are on the front line. It’s like a war. Casualty counts come from the front, not the rear.”

  She acted like she wanted to say more but she had seen the light grow still as well. She quickened her pace. I stretched out mine to keep up. We found Daniel standing near the old graveyard. The beam of the flashlight shot through the tombstones, highlighting some, leaving others standing in eerie silhouettes.

  The boy stood as still as the slabs of rock reaching up from the ground. I pulled up short and settled deeper in my jacket to ward off the cold. Elsie hurried over to him.

  “What are you doing, Daniel?”

  His head came up suddenly as if the sound of her voice startled him.

  “I’m looking at the new graves.”

  I followed the beam of light to a bare stretch of ground. Chills climbed up my back.

  The old woman pulled him to her and led him away from the cemetery, angling off toward my campsite. I followed along behind them, past the tent, through the twisted maze of wood and weeds, and out onto the little beach. We walked up to the dock silently.

  I made sure both were settled in and took the flashlight before I headed back to the tent. The sight of the massive pile of firewood I’d pulled in earlier played under the tight beam as I approached. Despite the growing cold, I had no desire to build another fire. More than anything, I simply wanted sleep. Whether I would get any, I didn’t know. Every episode with Daniel seemed creepier than the last. The tent beckoned with thoughts of a warm sleeping bag. At the same time, the graveyard loomed across the way, hidden by the darkness but too close for comfort. I finally gave into the weariness and ducked inside.

  Despite having stripped down in cold air, warmth came quickly inside the sleeping bag. I fell asleep with wind tugging at the tent, pondering over gloomy images of scrounging for water and food in a diseased and dying landscape. Fortunately, no dreams came.

  Unfortunately, the wind did. I woke at some point with the tent flapping in earnest. Nearby, trees swayed and shivered, the leaves rustling against each other in a long, hissing sigh. Two hours later the rustling had turned to a roar. The tent, battered by the rising wind, shuddered and lurched. The corners where the stakes were driven had pulled drum tight. I slid over to put my body against the side straining to stay in the ground. The temperature had dropped past chilly into cold. I burrowed deeper into the sleeping bag and pulled the top around my head.

  I woke again near dawn. Atop the sound of the wind snarling in the treetops came the booming crash of surf pounding the beach. I rose and headed down the little path, emerging on the strip of shoreline that had been so placid the day before. Night still clung to the sky, but not for long. Off to the east gray crept up from the horizon. I couldn’t make out the point or any details past strips of white surging across black as whitecaps crested and broke. High clouds scudded across the sky, obliterating stars only to release them seconds later. Off to the left, Angel bobbed at the dock, her shape an indistinct white blob.

  The wind had switched directions, veering off to the northeast. I cursed under my breath. Wind could be as much of a predictor of weather as looking at a satellite image. We had a low pressure bearing down on us. The abrupt change in wind speed overnight indicated a strong difference in the pressure gradient. In simple terms, it meant rain and lots of wind. Depending on what lay farther out at sea, the storm could last days. Or it could pass within a few hours. The only thing I knew for certain was that we were not leaving the dock under cover of darkness. I needed to see what we were facing. That meant waiting for sunrise another hour away.

  The deteriorating weather also meant that even if we could leave, I would miss the deadline for travel. I wouldn’t take the same route back and that meant adding hours to the transit time. The thought of going to Atlantic didn’t bother me as much as the idea that I might not be able to leave it again. I couldn’t dock with Little anywhere in sight. If I did, I would most certainly be detained. Given his mood the last time I’d seen him, being detained might turn out to be the best of my options.

  I looked again toward Angel. No lights glowed in the cabin windows that stretched down her side. If Elsie had been awake, she would have been busy cooking breakfast and making coffee.

  A gust of wind, maybe fifty knots strong, buffeted the cove. I had no reason to wake them until I could see the ocean and the inlet. I also had no reason to sit outside until the sun came up. Had I been alone, coffee would already be perking on the stove. With nothing to do but wait, I headed back to the tent.

  Nearly two hours later I crawled outside for the last time to a gray and ugly sky. Back down on the shoreline, the water carried its own nasty scene. Plumes of white froth shot up across the thin finger of island at the point. Across the inlet, swells running four to five feet raced through the passage joining sound to ocean. The wind tore white caps from the tops of them and pushed them into curlers when they closed in on shallower water. I wasted no time cutting across the point to look at the ocean. The best chance Angel had was running across the edge of the sound, through waters known for their turbulence in bad weather--so well known that locals had dubbed that particular stretch as the washing machine. Even then we would be navigating sandbars in wild water, and hunting the channel back to Atlantic.

  We could do it. I had a better chance of being struck by lightning than I did finding a spot on the odds meter that didn’t point directly between shitty and stupid, though.

  Metal clanging against metal came from the direction of the boat. I’d heard that particular sound dozens of times on the trip with my father. Elsie or Daniel had just set a pot or pan atop the stove inside the boat. Craving coffee, warmth, and needing to talk to them both, I took off for the dock.

  I called out as I approached the boat. With the tarp stretched out over the cockpit, neither would be able to see me coming. I had no desire to either startle them or walk in on Elsie still in her nightgown.

  Her voice sounded muffled and distant when she answered.

  “Come on in, Hill William.”

  I climbed aboard at the point where the cabin joined cockpit, easing aside the tarp and stepping down into the cockpit floor. Elsie sat on the starboard bunk, wearing sweat pants, sweatshirt, and sneakers.
She sipped from a steaming cup. The smell of fresh brewed coffee filled the cabin. Daniel still lay burrowed inside his sleeping bag on the port bunk.

  She pointed to the stove. A frying pan sat on one burner. Dad’s old coffee pot sat on the other with a tiny yellow flame licking around the base. The heat it gave off felt good after a cold, windy night under the stars. Even turned down to the lowest setting, the old kerosene stove had the cabin at least twenty degrees warmer than the air outside.

  “I hadn’t got around to starting breakfast yet. The coffee’s ready though. Pour yourself a cup. See how you like it. This is from my store.”

  To the left of the stove, my father had installed two sections of galley rail. One ran down the sink top, forming a shelf on the side. Above it he had built another shelf, again using galley rail around the edge as a lip to keep the items stored there from sliding off when the boat heeled. I’d stored coffee cups on the upper shelf. The bottom one held salt, pepper, and creamer, along with a dozen other small containers.

  Most of the cups had company logos emblazoned on them from my corporate days. I’d learned early on to generate goodwill by buying up small items from clients. Back at the house in Tennessee, another shelf in the cabinet held a couple dozen others. My bedroom closet also had a box sitting in the corner full of company T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts, most of which still had the sale tags on them.

  I poured a cup, and made as if to sit back in the entrance way, using the cockpit floor as a seat. Elsie however motioned for me to move farther back. She followed me outside, carrying the blanket from the bunk. She shivered and pulled it around her shoulders as she sat. I started to ask why she wanted to sit out under the tarp, but that question vanished the instant she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She held it up in her wrinkled old hands and pulled one free.

  “I think you lied to me,” she said.