by Beth Hersant
More than anything he was just sad. He had reached the age of decline — not only when his own body creaked like a rusty spring, but when all his friends were starting to go too. His brother James had died of a heart attack. His best friend Aldis Schmidt was battling prostate cancer and then Ginny had her stroke. Now Lou was … what? Going soft in the head? And he looked at a faded picture on the wall — a family trip to Rehoboth Beach all those years ago. His kids, Patience and Wyn, stood beside Louella’s Peg and Eben. They were young and brown-skinned from the sun. And behind them, laughing at something off camera, stood Ginny and Lou in bathing suits and beach cover ups. James had one muscular arm wrapped around Louella’s waist and they looked beautiful. And healthy. And now Eben was dead and James was dead and Ginny had trouble feeding herself and Lou… He shook his head and, having had enough of these thoughts for one day, went to bed.
Louella’s grandson Sam was heading up to bed too. His mind reeled. If there had been any doubt about grandma’s theory, the evening news had laid that to rest. But at the same time, she was right. And he was hit with an odd mix of relief and worry. On the one hand, his faith in her remained unshaken. He’d watched the disbelief, the expressions of pity and indulgence flicker across Levi’s and Bib’s and Arnold’s faces. And it had scared him: the idea that grandma could be so confused. She had been the bedrock of his world for as long as he could remember and bedrock was not supposed to crumble.
But she was right — right and sharp as ever — and that in and of itself was horrifying. He tried to imagine those scenes from Cáscara playing out on the streets of Midwood. Again he hit a mental roadblock: Midwood was too quiet, too boring. He tried to imagine the little Norman Rockwell town suddenly turning into something out of Revenge of the Living Dead. It seemed impossible. But at that moment his grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table making lists of everything they’d need to get through the trouble. Because the trouble was real.
He flopped down on his bed and stared pensively at the posters lining his walls. There was a Midwood High School “Go Bears!” pennant and a poster of Marvin the Martian saying, “I will give up my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” There was a picture of the Lion King with the caption “Hakuna Mafuckit.” And a drawing of a zombie. It held a severed human hand that was itself flipping you the bird. It read, “Someone has issues…” He looked at the zombie for a long while — the gray face, the bared teeth, the sunken eyes — and wondered if this was the future.
Chapter Four
And So It Begins…
“There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.”
CDC Website, Public Health Matters Blog — Preparedness 101
“I keep looping back to PREPARATION being the key to dealing with any situation… By the way, the reference to zombies, while adding a bit of levity, refers to the inevitable event of a very lethal, highly contagious pandemic breaking out. It has happened regularly in history and it will happen again. It is not a matter of if, but when.”
Bob Mayer, The Green Beret Survival Guide
for the Apocalypse, Zombies and More
The sun rose the following morning to find Louella still sitting at her kitchen table surveying her night’s work. This consisted of page after page of lists. Her grocery list was a mile long: food, personal hygiene items, cleaning materials and first aid supplies…
“And Aleve …” she muttered as she wrote. “Antacids, Aspirin …what else?” She thought for a moment and then added ‘Booze and Cigarettes’ to the list. She’d once caught an episode of Armageddon Outfitters on the National Geographic channel. On it they advised that, in the event of social breakdown, you’d be wise to stock up on coveted items that you can use for trade.
“What else?”
She went through James’s tool collection last night and found it to be complete. She had plenty of feed for the animals and seed for wheat, alfalfa and corn ready to plant in April. She’d start her vegetables in February and transplant them out to her garden after the last frost. She needed more batteries, gasoline and firewood. She’d have Rich Ziegler come out to inspect the well for mechanical issues and recheck the water for coliforms and nitrates. She’d stock up on spare filters, water softeners and chlorine. She’d had the wind turbines (that provided the farm with power) serviced in the fall and they were fine. And she needed ammunition for James’s guns.
At four o’clock that morning, she had walked around and around the house, making notes of every vulnerable point they’d need to fortify if things got bad. Their best defense really was their location. Her farm was situated in a remote valley, away from the potential chaos of towns and cities. But even so, by sunrise she had sketched a few basic plans. Would reinforcing the doors and windows be enough? Just how bad could it get? Would it become necessary to wall in the area between the house and the barn to create one large compound? The idea of such huge changes made her feel stupid again, like she was overreacting.
“God, I’m really losing it, aren’t I?” she mumbled as she rubbed her tired eyes.
She’d talk to Alec. Her son-in-law owned Pioneer Construction and maybe he could interject a little sanity into all this.
She looked at her lists again. “So what am I forgetting?”
As if in answer to that question, her rooster crowed in the barn.
“I’m forgetting to do my damn chores.” She rose, slipped on her black rubber boots and went to see to the animals.
The news that morning was full of the New Orleans riot and the “unrest” on Cáscara. However, Midwood barely took notice. Pushing her cart up and down the aisles of Sage Foods Grocery, the snippets of conversation Louella overheard were mundane — the gossip, local. There was a great deal of discussion about the mayoral election. The filing deadline for the primaries was in early March, and incumbent Mayor Albitz had yet to confirm if he would run for re-election. Jill at Flare Clothes Boutique was planning Midwood’s first ever fashion show to model the new spring lines. And Patience had pulled over Rick Kaesemeyer last night on suspicion of drunk driving and had spotted an ounce of weed in his car.
Louella couldn’t believe it: not the bit about Kaesemeyer — of course he got busted, he was an idiot — but the fact that Kaesemeyer and Albitz and this year’s collection of lightweight culottes occupied their attention so. By all accounts, Cáscara was a bloodbath and New Orleans? It was the site of a cluster — she was sure of it. A new disease with no current vaccine had just gained a foothold on American soil. She was in the toiletries aisle now, stocking up on shower gel and toothpaste when she paused, Value 5 Pack of Colgate in her arms, and realized: Of course they don’t care. Until this moment, who the hell had even heard of Cáscara? In fact, where was Cáscara? Somewhere in the Caribbean. It seemed to be a little patch of rainforest and one rustic town in the middle of nowhere and yes, it was sad to hear that they were having troubles. Pastor Kulp would no doubt suggest a church fundraiser to support the victims of the disease and the good folk of Midwood would give generously. They would say prayers and the pastor would probably trot out his “No Man is an Island” sermon. It was the standard homily he used when trying to get his insular flock to engage with the wider world. He’d open with Romans 14:7 — “We do not live for ourselves only, and we do not die for ourselves only.” And the congregation would acknowledge, on a comfortable, cerebral level, that it had a duty to help. But Cáscara was too far away to grab them by their guts. They knew none of the victims. The violence depicted in those grainy aerial shots was hundreds of miles away and that is where plagues always happened — away. In poor countries with exotic names and brown-skinned women to wail over
the dead.
And New Orleans? Big city. Far away. And wholly divorced from the quiet valley where Midwood reposed in the snow.
But Louella had seen the virus up close, had seen it go to work on Jonathan Herridge’s face. And she wondered if that terrible event — which to her had felt like a kick in the teeth — would actually prove to be a blessing in disguise. Perhaps God had shown her that for a reason. She knew what was coming and therefore could protect her family from it. As she wrestled her shopping cart with its wonky wheels up to the register, people looked at her in surprise. The cart was crammed full and piled high.
“Good Lord, Lou,” Katie Boehler laughed as she started to ring it all up. “Are you feeding an army?”
Every child in Midwood has, at one time or another, heard the story of “Bloody Bones.” It is not an intricate tale with a complex plot or characters; it consists only of a low voice saying, “Bloody Bones, I’m on the street outside. Bloody Bones, I’m on the porch. Bloody Bones, I’m at your front door …” and on and on. With each sentence, Bloody Bones comes a step nearer — inside the house, on the first step and up to the second floor. Then Bloody Bones is at your bedroom door, in your room and by your bed. Closer and closer he comes until the narrator, usually an older sibling, screams “Gotcha!” He grabs you and you (hearing this for the first time at, say, the age of seven) just about wet the bed. Why is such a thin story so memorable? Because Bloody Bones is never defined and never described. Is he alive or dead, skeleton or flesh? Don’t know. He could be anything or all things that bump their way through the night. And he is coming. He is fate. But what fate exactly? What will happen when he reaches you? It is never said. But the dread you feel is real enough as onward he comes and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Perhaps it was the dim recollection of Bloody Bones that played on people’s minds in Midwood. Because the nightly news soon felt like a recitation of the old story. The “flu” epidemic was revealed to be in fact a mutated strain of the rabies virus. And it was spreading. Bloody Bones, I’m in New Orleans. Bloody Bones, I’m in Atlanta. Bloody Bones, I’m in New York. Bloody Bones, New Jersey and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And suddenly New Rabies wasn’t an “away” plague anymore, but one that seethed just up the road. It was in places with prosaic names like Monroeville and the women who wailed over their dead wore the same clothes as you and spoke in the same tongue.
New Orleans started to implode on the fourth of January. There were too many infected to confine to the treatment centers and the army was forced to withdraw to the city limits in one final attempt at containment. NOPD Officer Darren Wazseki had been on duty for thirty-six hours when he walked casually up to the quarantine line, pulled his service revolver and shot himself in the head. A harried-looking anchorman commented, “The death of Officer Wazseki is, sadly, not an isolated incident. His is the third suicide we’ve seen among law enforcement within the last twenty-four hours.” He paused and sighed. “I’m not reading the autocue for this. Let me give it to you straight. What we are seeing here in New Orleans is reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. Police numbers have dwindled. Many are stricken with the virus, still more are unable to reach work because of the chaos in the streets and some are so exhausted and overwhelmed that they have simply given up. We’ve had an unconfirmed report of one officer chucking his police badge out of his cruiser window as he left town. Those officers still on duty are fighting valiantly to restore order but, frankly, they just don’t have the manpower. The military presence here in New Orleans has also suffered heavy loses and has been ordered to pull back and maintain the quarantine at the city limits.” He leaned toward the camera, eyes haunted. “That makes sense, yes, but you have effectively trapped thousands of uninfected people in here … with them.”
Them. People who were terribly, wretchedly sick, were no longer seen as victims and patients; they were now the enemy who had to be gunned down. In St. Paul, a self-proclaimed “Zombie Hunter” opened fire on his neighbor’s house, nearly killing the man inside because he had “symptoms.” Those symptoms proved to be an allergy to his girlfriend’s new cat. In Carson City, a group of vigilantes stormed a hospital where three of the infected were being kept in isolation. They shot every patient on the ward. The pyre used to dispose of the bodies reminded Louella of the cattle culls when Hoof and Mouth Disease ripped through England back in 2007. In other words, it looked to her like a vision of hell.
All around the country other groups (some made up of law enforcement, some of private citizens) began to euthanize the infected. Often they waited until sick people “turned.” But not always. There was one harrowing scene caught on camera of an elderly man standing at his front door, refusing to admit the local patrol. “She hasn’t got it, it’s just the flu!” he yelled and gripped the doorframe in an attempt to stand his ground. They dragged him away, kicking and screaming, and a muffled shotgun blast was heard within the house. As Fletcher watched this particular horror unfold on his Samsung 52-inch, the old man’s bellowing sobs made his hands shake. If he watched any more of this alone, he’d soon be back on the sauce. He’d go to Louella.
As the number of infected multiplied, the survivors themselves began to turn on each other. Scapegoating, it seems, is a time-honored tradition that goes hand in hand with plague. Take fourteenth century France for example: the outbreak of the Black Death was viewed in quite a paradoxical fashion. While many believed it was God’s retribution against mankind’s sins, they also harbored the illusion that the plague must be due to some human agency. Someone must be to blame. In Languedoc in 1321, the rumor circulated that the disease came from poisoned wells. Every leper within the province was burnt for the offense. The year 1348 saw mass executions of the Jews in Provence, Narbonne, and Carcassone after the same allegations were made. And a sort of witch hunt that would have made Cotton Mather proud took place in Chillon, with tortured Jews being forced to name their “co-conspirators” in the plot to poison the town.
During the New Rabies pandemic, the United States was also gripped by scapegoat-mania. It was the same old impulse, only the targets had changed. Some evangelicals declared it to be the end of days brought on by rampant sin: homosexuality, abortion, immigration, Islam. And Pat Robertson’s words were trotted out again: Sure, as Christians we should love our Muslim neighbors, “but be aware that they’re trying to kill you.” Ten mosques were burned to the ground, two of them with their congregations still inside. Seven imams were murdered, with one poor man dying horribly from his injuries after he was tarred and feathered. To wear the hijab was to make yourself an automatic target and people’s homes were vandalized — their windows smashed with hurled rocks and the slogan, “Ragheads go home” spray-painted on their front doors.
At one point the rumor spread that New Rabies was really like AIDS and hence a homosexual disease. This led to the mass lynching of twenty gay men in Texas. Gallows had been hastily erected at the foot of the Davis Mountains and black vultures had gone to work on the bodies that hung there. None of them still had their eyes. A sign had been left by the killers — spray paint, after all, is the bigot’s best friend. It read in big pink letters: “Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert.”
The hardest hit, however, were the Hispanics. The disease had originated (had it not?) on the Latino island of Cáscara. And so the tensions that had been simmering over immigration swiftly came to a boil. Miami saw the equivalent of gang warfare as white youths attacked Hispanics, who then banded together to fight back.
“It’s like the Sharks versus the Jets.” Peg stared at the television in wide-eyed disbelief as a kid, who could have been no more than twelve, smashed a brown-skinned man in the head with a brick. “It’s an absolute cluster-fuck!”
In some communities, anyone with a Spanish-sounding name was run out of town. They were the lucky ones. No one knows how many Latinos were killed throughout the country in both individual homicides and larger, more organized culls. One gr
oup calling itself “America for Americans” set up “Border Bunny Hunts.” On their website, they featured a cartoon drawing of Elmer Fudd brandishing a shotgun and posing with his foot on a dead Mexican (you could tell he was dead because his eyes were X’s). The caption read: “It’s wabbit season.”
Then in Pittsburgh, one infected family rampaged through a school playground during recess. Twenty children and six teachers were bitten. The people of Midwood could pretend no longer (Bloody Bones, I’m just up the road). The infection was on their doorstep and so at a town meeting on the fifth of January, Mayor Anthony Albitz suggested that they quarantine themselves.
“But we don’t have the infection,” a woman in the front row said.
“We quarantine the town not to keep the infection in, but to keep it out.”
“So what are we talking about here, Mayor?” Issac Stahl, owner of Country Cobbler Shoes, asked.
“There are, as you know, five routes in and out of town,” Albitz said. “I suggest that we restrict people entering the town at those points.”
Patience, as town sheriff, spoke up: “What the mayor wants to do is to place signs that divert traffic away from Midwood. And,” she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, “he wants to post armed guards at every point of ingress into the town.”
“Isn’t that going a bit overboard? I mean, who’s gonna come here?” Joseph, owner of Mueller’s Office Supplies, laughed.
“What about people from Pittsburgh?” Albitz asked.
Town councilman, Donald Eck nodded. “We know that the infected become extremely violent and with that chaos breaking out — what? — an hour and a half up the road, we are likely to see either,” he held up his thumb to indicate that this was his first point, “the infected showing up here in town or,” he added his index finger for point two, “refugees fleeing the violence.”