by Ellen Datlow
George doesn’t sound bitter. He sounds exhausted. The divorce proceedings have dragged on far longer than he’d expected. He’d made it clear he wasn’t going to put up much of a fight. He accepts the divorce as his fault, his problem, despite years of unhappiness on both sides of that bed. He just wants out, but Eugie’s lawyers are gouging deep, too deep.
“You go on in,” I say. “It’s still early.”
“I don’t think so,” George says, crossing to the sofa where I sit. “You are vital to my reason for going to bed early.”
He bends over, carefully balancing his glass so his whisky doesn’t slosh, and he kisses me hard.
I opened the door of the apartment to find a middle-aged man standing in the hallway. My throat grew tight and my breath lodged in the constriction. A chill blossomed on my neck and then rapidly vanished as I reconciled the man before me with the man I’d momentarily imagined him to be.
Barry Caldwell resembled his father so much that if the younger man were to slap a gray wig on his head, the two could have passed for twins, as long as you didn’t look below the neck. Whereas George’s physique had remained well proportioned and firm, Barry’s didn’t stand a chance against his indulgences and his sloth. I found it a shame that such a handsome face should rest on a body that might have been sketched by Dr. Seuss.
According to George’s description of the man, they were in all other ways quite different. Our awkward meeting at the reading of George’s will did nothing but support this notion.
“You’re here,” Barry said. His voice projected annoyance and indignation, as if I were the one intruding in his home. “We need to talk about my dad.”
My shoe sinks in the sand, sending me off balance and into George’s thick shoulder. He laughs and wraps an arm around me for support. He gently knocks the side of his head into mine, a display of affection I always found strange.
“After they found that whatever-it-is down here, I got curious,” he says. “Weird fucking things.”
“You mean the carcass that washed up last week?”
“Globsters,” George says. “They call them globsters on the news. I don’t think you can call them carcasses. No one’s sure they’re actually animals, at least not whole animals. They’re like giant tongues or something. No eyes or mouths, just large chunks of smooth meat.”
“What did it look like up close?” I ask, feeling a twinge of jealousy that he’s found adventure on his own. We’d waited a long time to be together, really together; I want to share important moments. Every one of them.
“Like I said, just a wad of pale blue meat, about the size of a dolphin. Gulls swarmed the thing. Apparently, they find globster extremely tasty. I watched for a bit, but then this group of people in blue polo shirts showed up with tackle boxes. I guess they were with Fish and Wildlife or something. They put on surgical masks and did their best to shoo away the gulls so they could get a better look at the thing.”
George’s phone buzzes in his pocket. A cold, salty gust pushes in off the gulf as he draws the phone from his jacket. He sneers at what he finds on the screen.
“Eugie has started calling again.”
“I thought she insisted all communications go through your lawyers?”
“Apparently, that only applies to me.” George knocks his head against mine again. “She’s getting nearly everything. I can’t imagine what she wants now. But we’re going to be living on peanut butter sandwiches if this keeps up.”
“We discussed this,” I say.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s just going to take some adjustment.”
“We’ll be fine,” I say.
He slides around in front of me and kisses me hard on the mouth. “I know that.”
We continue along the beach, and George barks out a startling laugh. “God, I almost forgot the smell.”
“Eugie’s smell?” I ask.
“No, though I could tell you stories.”
“Please don’t.”
“No, I mean the globster. Jesus, I’ve never encountered anything so rank in my life. It was like someone made a gas out of fish rot and seaweed and bombed the entire beach with it. I had to have been twenty yards away from the thing, and the shit got in my throat. I gagged half the afternoon.”
I released a grumble of distaste.
“Didn’t bother the mosquitoes any. The little bastards were everywhere.”
George likes to swear. Eugie had forbidden it. For thirty-two years, “darn” and “gosh” were the expletives Eugie allowed her husband. Now, he showers the world in vulgarities: another freedom of which he takes full advantage.
Without invitation, George’s son entered the apartment. He tromped through the living room like it was a hotel lobby. His presence struck me as wholly wrong. He didn’t belong among George’s things, among our things. This place was a sanctuary, and Barry was a marauding force.
He’d been calling for a week, ever since the reading of his father’s will. I had no interest in speaking with him. George had told me enough about his son, about the privileged boy who could never quite make life work for himself, to know we’d clash. I’d endured his sneers in the lawyer’s office, along with the glares of disgust from his mother. A chasm of status and finance had separated me from this aggressive tribe, but even gone, George remained a bridge, spanning the gap.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I told you, we need to talk about my dad.”
“What’s left to say?” I asked.
He knew what had happened to George. Everyone knew.
Barry walked to the table by the window and lifted the set of keys.
“Are you going to sell the place?” he asked.
“Who’d buy it? The Gulf Coast is a ghost town. People have been evacuating since … that night. I’ve alerted the bank that George is deceased. They’ll take it over and claim a loss with the government.”
“Where are you going to live?”
“Far from here.”
Barry crossed to the bedroom and pushed open the door. He stepped over the threshold and then stepped back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, outraged.
“Just wanted to see the place,” he said. “Dad never had me over. Not once. That’s not right. A family all split up like that. It’s a nasty thing. Bad business, all of it. I’ve stopped by a few times this week. You were never here, or you weren’t answering the door. Whatever. Just wanted to see it. It’s not bad.”
“The bank would probably give you a good deal on it.”
He chuckled. “Nah. My wife and I moved in with Mom. Beautiful house. Incredible house. My boyhood home. Of course, Mom’s under a lot of stress right now. Real bad. Dad’s will was a shock to her. To everyone, really.”
George had left substantial assets to me. One evening after we’d first moved in together, he’d set me on the sofa and performed a presentation, regarding the contents of his will, as if he were attempting to sell the proposal to a board of directors. The numbers shocked me, as they represented a financial security I’d never imagined, but even before George delivered the caveat-“The divorce is going to change all of these numbers dramatically.”-I recognized his bequest, while sweet, was fundamentally symbolic. He wanted to show me how important I was to his life.
Even so, he’d been a responsible man. A good man. He hadn’t been neglectful of his family.
“He accounted for both of you in his will. In fact, he was extremely generous.”
“I’d expect you to see it that way. Of course you would.” Barry’s tone was critical. It was harsh, and more than ever, I wanted him out of George’s home.
I wake in the early morning hours, startled and terrified to find George bent over my side of the bed. His face hovers a few inches from mine, and from his throat, a guttural and explosive chant emerges as if he is denouncing me in a violent foreign language. I roll away to George’s side of the bed. The sheets press too hot against my skin. His attention follows
. Blank eyes. Hardened expression. Growling and grinding words that have no place in civilized language. I say his name. Shout it. Beg him to snap out of whatever nightmare he is attempting to vocalize, but the chant continues for another full minute.
Then, his posture changes, and he is standing tall and rigid. His arms rise above his head as if he’s celebrating a touchdown and his feet stamp–left, right, left, left, right.
By the time his eyes clear and his face slackens, I am in tears. I don’t know if this is a stroke or dementia or some mental instability that stress has ignited, but it scares the hell out of me.
His eyes grow focused. His features soften. He stands upright and scratches the back of his head and says, “Hey, that’s my side of the bed.”
I didn’t want to talk about George’s estate, not with his son. George had made his last wishes clear. Even his lawyer, who was not above editorializing–making his own displeasure with George’s late-in-life behavior known through head shakes, shrugs, and shaded provisos–admitted that the will was a binding document. Though he did comfort Barry Caldwell and his mother with the word “Contest,” on more than one occasion.
“When did Dad get sick?” Barry asked.
“About a month before … before the beach,” I said.
“So, he spent a month just dancing around this place?”
“That’s not how the virus works,” I said, wishing I could think of a chore to accomplish, so that I could busy myself rather than stand before Barry’s arrogant gaze. But I’d already packed everything of value, at least everything I valued. Despite a compulsion to throw the man out on his ass, I didn’t. He’d been tracking me with a purpose, and until I knew what it was and how to address that purpose, I’d endure him. “It was sporadic. I only saw George in seizure a couple of times.”
Barry retraced his steps to the bedroom and then paused by the fireplace. He looked at the pattern of wrought iron vines on the screen and the mesh wires joining them. Then his head cocked to the side so he could peer at the bedroom door. “And you’re not worried?” he asked.
“Worried? What more could happen?”
“I’d be worried. I’d be shitting myself. You could have caught it.”
“It’s not a cold, Barry.”
“Yeah, but they’re saying it can be sexually transmitted, right? A bunch of reports. Lots of ’em. They’re coming out all the time.”
For a moment, the lie achieved its goal. Steel shards of panic jabbed my neck and abdomen. But the deceit held only a transient power. I’d been thorough in my research.
“And it’s not like you’d know you were sick unless someone told you,” he continued. “The victims never remember their seizures.”
He eyed me with a blatant fabrication of concern and stepped closer to the fireplace. I allowed him a moment to enjoy his petty jab, seeing the remarks for what they were. A tormentor’s lies. A fiction he hoped would infect and linger and sting. It was the shitty move of a bested bully.
When he turned to face me, he was smirking. Perhaps he was attempting a sympathetic smile. Perhaps not. Wolves often looked as if they were grinning as they circled prey.
“Thank you for your concern,” I said. “But your father and I fucked a lot, Barry. I didn’t catch anything.”
Barry’s taunting smile disappeared. His eyes clouded as his mind attempted to process information I imagine it had struggled to deny, or at least disregard as an irrelevant abstraction. Unfortunately, his befuddlement and my satisfaction were both momentary.
“It’s funny, right?” Barry asked, the grim smile returned to his lips. “How they were all synched up?”
“Excuse me?”
“The way they all danced at the exact same time, even though they were spread out all over the city? Hell, all along the Gulf, as far as anyone knows. It’s like someone pushed a button and bang, all these people dropped what they were doing and got their grooves on. You have to admit, it’s kind of funny.”
No, I didn’t have to admit that. There was nothing funny in the primal choreography, not even when it was set to the Benny Hill theme song.
“You know, one guy went missing. Disappeared. Everyone thought he was dead but he showed up a couple days later,” Barry continued. “He wanted attention. He was a lonely old guy. Real lonely. Pathetic. And he figured he could climb on the bandwagon and suck some sympathy out of his family. Cruel thing to do. Nasty thing.”
“George didn’t need anyone’s sympathy.”
“No,” Barry admitted, “but maybe he needed something else.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying, but if you have doubts, you can speak to the police. I provided all of the information on George’s behavior and his recent medical history to them.”
“Yeah, his medical history,” Barry says. “Well that’s a funny thing. I spoke to his doctor. He hadn’t seen Dad in months.”
The window is open, allowing a salt-scented breeze to wash over our bodies. I’m on the bed, and my heart still races from exertion. George’s head rests on my belly, facing away from me. He gets his hair cut once a week and the horizon of silver drawing along the deeply tanned neck fascinates me with its precision. His stubble pokes agreeably on my skin as he turns his head to kiss my stomach.
He draws a finger from my navel to my cock. “You’re sticky,” he says. This makes him chuckle.
“Don’t forget the neurologist tomorrow.”
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he says. “I was sleepwalking.”
“You were doing more than walking. And stop that.”
“No,” George mutters, now drawing patterns in the semen on my belly. “I’m playing.”
“You’re a strange man, George Caldwell.”
“Probably.”
“This is serious.”
“Maybe.”
“You could be sick.”
“I’m not.” He stops tracing circles in the fluid on my skin.
“Look, I know it’s frightening. No one knows exactly what this illness does long term, but you have to accept this. We need to explore treatments. You can’t hide behind denial.”
“This isn’t denial,” George whispers. “This is fucking survival.”
“You think you have a better chance without medical attention?”
“Sweetheart, if Eugie finds out about this, it’s over,” George says. “This isn’t some crap like West Nile. This affects the mind. It affects my behavior. I’m not actually divorced yet, which makes Eugie my next of kin. She would be able to have me declared incompetent and then take over my life. And even if I lucked out and found a judge who took the divorce into account, Eugie would just recruit my kid. The doctors don’t know enough right now. Yes, maybe it started with those things on the beach, but if there’s any doubt, they could attribute all of my actions for the past year or years to this.”
“The courts would never …”
“One judge, sweetheart,” George says emphatically. “All it would take is one bible-clutching judge to make the decision, and believe me, this town is swimming in them. They could take everything. They could take me, and I am not going to spend the last years of my life playing with crayons in an institution. I want to be with you. I want our life.”
“I had no idea.”
“You’ve been spared the barbarity of the privileged. Why do you think I asked to see your doctor and not mine?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“My doctor is part of Eugie’s circle. My lawyer is part of her circle. These people play dirty, and nothing brings them together faster than the opportunity to destroy a life. So, I am not sick. I do not have the Gibbet Virus. I’m of perfectly sound body and mind.”
“George asked to see my doctor.”
“Interesting,” Barry said, as if he were a detective whose suspicions were being realized.
“He had it,” I told Barry. “After his first seizure, I insisted he see a doctor. He asked to see mine. I have the paperwork. I ha
d to file it with the police. This was before the CDC even had a webpage about it, though by this time, they had a less ridiculous name for the sickness: Gibbet Virus.”
“Because of that island.”
“Yes. But no one knew anything. They don’t know much now.”
“They’ve connected the virus to the unidentified masses that have been washing up along the coast,” Barry said. “Mosquitoes are feeding on the things and spreading the disease like they do with West Nile and Zika.”
I didn’t correct him, not even his mispronunciation of Zika. Barry’s information was old.
In the weeks following George’s first seizure, I’d used research as a shelter from concern and ultimately grief. I had pages and pages of information about the virus, the globsters, and the Emergence in manila folders packed into my suitcase. Video clips and online articles choked my laptop’s hard drive.
The CDC had tracked the virus’s path from the globsters to the gulls that fed on them. The virus was metabolized by the gulls, where it incubated in their blood streams. Then mosquitoes entered the vector, transmitting the virus from birds to human beings. But while they could trace the virus’s path, they had no idea how it worked.
What kind of infection created spontaneous spasms that looked more like tribal choreography than epileptic fit? What kind of disease caused the afflicted to chant an ugly and indecipherable language at the top of their lungs? What sickness summoned thirty-seven people to the water’s edge, where they waited to die?
The earliest visual evidence of the Gibbet Virus I can find precedes the Bermuda incident by a month. I sit at the dining room table, gathering information, staring at the screen of my laptop.
The video clip was shot in Cuba. Two men sit on the hood of a vintage ’62 Plymouth, smoking cigarettes and smiling. One looks into the sky and says something in Spanish. The other breaks up laughing and slaps him on the shoulder. In the background and far to the left of these men, a woman in a pale blue dress stomps the concrete of a recessed doorway. Shadow engulfs her, washing out the specifics of her face, but the familiar, violent jig is apparent through the gloom.