by Beth Hersant
At the Weller Dairy Farm, where the milch cows sheltered in the barn from the biting wind, the bats descended. Silent as ghosts, they hopped from one beast to the next. It was a moment of terrible irony. The infection had finally come to Midwood, not with a bang, but with a whimper, not with the shriek of ravening hordes, but with the papery flutter of wings and a plaintive lowing in the byre.
Two days later Rick Kaesemeyer and Abel Nuss, who’d signed on at Weller’s as hired hands, came in for the evening milking.
“So what did she say?” Rick asked as they herded the cows up to the carousel.
“She’s meeting me at the Tombstone tonight and,” Abel pointed his fingers at Rick in the shape of two cocked pistols, “she’s bringing a friend.”
“Oh shit, you’re not setting me up with some dog, are you?”
“I don’t know, is Cindy Wilson a dog?”
“Cindy Wilson? … Cindy Wilson?” And Rick cupped his hands in front of his chest to suggest enormous boobs.
Abel smiled and nodded. “You’re welcome.” He bent down behind a cow to attach the milk claw to her udders. “OUCH!”
“What is it?”
Clasping a hand to his shoulder, Abel backed away. “Bitch kicked me!”
The son of George Nuss was an apple that had not fallen far from the tree and so out of sheer spite, he planted a vicious kick on the cow’s rump. It was the first of many kicks and slaps that evening. The stock, usually placid and cooperative, were obstinate as hell. It took twice as long to get them hooked up to the machine. Of course it would be this way: with Candace and Cindy waiting for them at the bar, of course these fucking cows would have to act up.
“What the f—”
“What is it now?” Abel called over to Rick.
“This one sat down!” Rick pointed to a black and white Holstein that was drooling heavily.
“Don’t be dumb. Cows don’t sit.”
“Look man, she’s on her ass!”
Abel joined Rick to gape at the animal. He hated this fuckin’ job, but he knew what was normal and what was not. And this shit just wasn’t right.
“Well,” he stared at the cow uncertainly, “get her up and let’s get this over with.”
Finally every tit was hooked up to its tube and they could hear the clicking toggle of the machine as it sprang to life. The milking machine is a wonderful invention. It used to take half an hour to milk one cow. Multiply that by the thirty-two head in the herd, each needing to be milked twice a day, and you can see just how much manpower it required. With the machine, however, you could milk them all in three minutes. And it was a good thing too; the old girls stamped and pawed at the ground. Despite the fact that their udders were full and milking should have been a relief, they did not want to stand still for it and kept trying to back away from the carousel. Normally quiet, they uttered low, rattling sounds that sounded more like moans than moos. In this tense atmosphere, three minutes seemed like a very long time indeed.
As he pulled the suction tubes off of the final cow, Abel said, “Hurry up and settle them down, I wanna get outta here.”
Habitually the two men split the jobs. Rick guided the animals back to the barn, replenished their hay and topped up their salt and mineral feeders. The water tank heater was on the fritz again and so he’d have to take an axe and break up the sheen of ice on the water trough so the cows could get a drink. Meanwhile, Abel was supposed to put the milk through the pasteurizer and start sterilizing the equipment. He fiddled with the controls on the machine. The boss wanted UHT milk because it would last longer. That suited Abel just fine because it took all of three seconds to do. The problem with doing a job you hate is that you’re not overly particular about doing it right. The setting for ultra-high temperature milk is three seconds at 290°F. He programed the time in all right, but flubbed the temperature. Barely looking at the display, he set the pasteurizer at just 110°F with a few indifferent taps of his fingers. That’s only a little warmer than the milk was when it came out of the cow. The men cleaned up the equipment, stored the milk for next day’s delivery and then headed into town. Candace and Cindy would be waiting.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the cattle ranches of Brazil were hit by peste de cadeiras or “the plague of chairs.” Farmers found their cows sitting in the fields. The cause? Rabid vampire bats. They fed on the cattle, thus infecting them with the virus. As the disease took hold, a sad paralysis set in. Their hind legs collapsed beneath them, forcing them into that unnatural sitting position. The paralysis then spread, working its way up the body until the poor brutes could not even draw breath. Thousands of animals died that way.
New Rabies had a similar effect on livestock populations and so within a few days, there wasn’t one cow on the Weller farm that was still up on four hooves. And the unpasteurized milk? That was the real ticking time bomb. It was loaded with the virus which, at its current storage temperature, had an active shelf life of about a week. It was delivered to the town and distributed amongst its people.
By the thirteenth of January a lot of people in Midwood had come down with the flu. Obviously this caused quite a stir. John Wyndham put it well in The Midwich Cuckoos when he said, “I’ve never worked in a fireworks factory, but I know just what it must feel like. I feel at any moment that something ungoverned and rather horrible may break out and there’s nothing one can do but wait and hope it doesn’t happen.” The first cough, though not particularly dramatic as coughs go, sounded like a death knell to the townspeople. The first rise in temperature on a thermometer’s digital display, although only by a degree or two, was enough to take your breath away with fear. Old Doc Rhoads took the bull by the horns and summoned every person with symptoms (no matter how minor) to the hospital. Then he and Mayor Albitz called a town meeting.
Smiling on the assembled company, the doctor said, “Midwood’s got the flu — normal, mundane, seasonal flu. It is not the New Rabies.”
There was an audible exhalation of relief from the crowd.
“But how do you know that?” Katie Boehler asked, her eyes damp with grateful tears.
“Because the disease doesn’t just spontaneously occur. You have to catch it from somewhere. No one here has been attacked. I’ve looked over every patient and there isn’t a mark on any of you — not a bite, not so much as a scratch. How could you have gotten it?”
“There are other ways to get it,” a voice from the back piped up. He cleared his throat awkwardly, “Sexual contact, that kind of thing.”
“I have a patient in traction with a broken femur and four kindergarteners who have the same symptoms. They’re not sleeping around. You have to understand that I fully expected to see a lot of you in with just these symptoms because it is cold and flu season. Hell, I’ve got a touch of it. So please set your minds at ease. You all know the basic things to do while we wait this out. Everybody should try to get some rest and up your intake of Vitamin C. For those of you with asthma or other respiratory conditions, keep an eye on it. If you feel like the bug is settling on your chest, come and see me. Does anybody have any questions?”
There were none — that pronouncement of normal illness was all they needed to hear.
“As you can see,” Mayor Albitz chimed in, “nothing in this town has changed.”
Patience stared glumly at her boots thinking of the burnt-out Zimmerman place. A helluva lot had changed in Midwood. But no one else was thinking of that now. They were just happy to be in the clear. As the townsfolk shuffled out, coughs echoed from every corner of the hall.
After the meeting Louella popped over to Levi’s house. She hadn’t visited Ginny in a while and had a couple of hours before she needed to be back at the farm. Levi’s wife, Virginia, had suffered a stroke seven months ago and her recovery had been slow and difficult. Gradually, her balance and coordination had improved. She could swallow now and, more or less, h
ad regained control of her bladder. But she was never quite the same and she knew it. She was on Fluoxetine antidepressants and seeing a counselor for that talking therapy to try and come to terms with it all.
When Louella arrived, Ginny grasped her hand. “I heard what Doc Rhoads had to say.”
“Yeah,” Louella nodded. “It’s good news.”
Virginia shook her head. “Doc Rhoads isn’t Doc Rhoads.” The woman’s grip, though still weak, tightened as she clung to Louella. She looked, Lou realized, absolutely terrified.
“Honey, it’s ok,” Louella soothed.
“No it’s not. The doc and the mayor and Katie and all the rest of them — they’re not who they are.”
“Lou, can I speak to you in the kitchen for a minute?” It was Virginia’s son, Wyn, the veterinarian who looked after Louella’s animals.
“I’ll be right back, Ginny.” Louella wriggled her hand free. “We’ll sort it out, ok?” She joined Wyn in the kitchen, “Wha—” she began, but Wyn raised a hand to silence her until he could shut the door.
“All the craziness lately is really taking it out of her,” he said quietly.
“It’s a strain on everybody.”
“Yeah, but she’s convinced that our friends and neighbors are … I don’t know … like pod people.”
Louella could think of nothing to say to this.
“I took her up to the hospital this morning and they’ve diagnosed Capgras Syndrome.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a delusion where you start thinking that the people you know have been replaced by imposters.”
“She’s hallucinating again,” Louella nodded glumly. She vividly remembered visiting Ginny in the hospital shortly after her stroke. The poor woman was shouting at imaginary cows in her room, distressed because they were bumping into the equipment and tracking mud onto the nice, clean floor.
Wyn sighed and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “It should decrease over time, but it is just horrendous to watch her regress like this.”
“Ah hell, so much of life is two steps forward, one step back.” Louella gave the man a big hug. “We’ll get her through this.”
“Listen, I have to hit the pharmacy to pick up her meds. Do you mind sitting with her while I go?”
“Not at all.”
And so Wyn kissed his mother and she smiled at him as he searched for his car keys. When he was finally gone, she sighed in relief.
“Right,” she turned to Louella. “They don’t believe me, but you will. You saw this coming so you’ll know,” she was nodding hopefully at Lou.
“What, honey?”
“I’m not crazy. This isn’t like before.”
“Ok,” Louella nodded. “Lay it out for me. Why do you think that Doc Rhoads isn’t Doc Rhoads?”
“I’ve been getting out more, seeing more people lately, trying to get back to normal. Well yesterday, Levi took me to Kacee’s for lunch. As hungry as I was, I couldn’t eat. There was this …rancid smell in the place, like spoiled meat. It damn near made me sick. But Levi didn’t smell a thing! So then I thought, ok, maybe my nose was acting up again.”
“Your nose?”
“Yeah, right after the stroke everything smelled like burnt rubber. That lasted about a week.”
“But it went.”
“Yeah, but ever since I’ve been really sensitive to smell. God, Patience came over the other day and wanted to use our Scotchgard to treat a new pair of shoes and the smell, Louella, was just overwhelming. She sprayed them outside, but the smell through the open back door was so …” she struggled to describe it. “I couldn’t breathe.”
“So your sense of smell has returned to normal; I mean you’re not smelling things that aren’t there. But every scent you do come into contact with is just really, really strong?”
“Yeah, like right now you smell like you’ve got way too much perfume on.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Anyway, I’ve wandered off the point here.” Ginny shook her head as if to clear it. “I was in Kacee’s and there was this terrible smell of … rot. And then I realized that the smell wasn’t coming from the food, it was coming from the waitress.”
“Which one?”
“Barbara Yeakle. She smelled really ill, the way you’d expect … I don’t know … an animal with gangrene to smell. Louella, you smell like you — a more intense version of you, yes — but you’re you. Barb didn’t smell …” She paused.
“What?”
“… human.” She sat silent for a while. “And she’s not the only one. The town is full of that smell now.”
Chapter Six
The Fall
“Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.”
Traditional Nursery Rhyme
“hard be hard’nd, blind be blinded more, that they may stumble on, and deeper fall.”
John Milton, “Paradise Lost”
In truth Louella wasn’t certain if Virginia’s brain altered her perception of reality or if she really was picking up on an objective difference in people. Either way, Ginny was clearly terrified and living in a sort of carrion world that was patently horrible. The medicine that Wyn went to fetch seemed to help. It was an antipsychotic drug called clozapine and it made Ginny very drowsy. But whether it banished her fears or just knocked her out so she couldn’t talk about them anymore, Louella didn’t know. So what should she make of the information Virginia had given her?
Peter Diamandis noted that “Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise.” That pretty much described Lou’s state of mind. She was hyperalert for any signs of trouble and Ginny’s assertion that Midwood smelled of rot did nothing to calm her down. But then later that same day Mae came to her in tears. The child asked if all her friends who had the flu would turn into monsters and try to hurt them. Honestly, what the hell do you say to that? Sure, honey. Yeah, it might just be the flu, but the world is such an incredible cluster-fuck right now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they turn into raging cannibals and try to eat us. Really, how long can our luck hold out?
Instead Louella scooped the girl up in her arms and repeated what Doc Rhoads had said: that lots of people get the plain, normal old flu this time of year and that you need to have some contact with the infected to get New Rabies.
“But the town is sealed off. No one has brought the infection in,” she soothed.
The doctor’s logic was indisputable. New Rabies doesn’t just magically appear — it follows a traceable chain of infection. And it made perfect sense. The trouble was that Ginny’s idea tapped, not into those circuits of the brain that processed logic and facts, oh no, it went straight for the limbic system. That primitive part of our brains helped us survive when the world was “red in tooth and claw” and it was screaming at her now. But should that voice be heeded? Should she listen to the ramblings of a woman with significant brain trauma? It was then that Louella’s own logic kicked in: she was internally debating something that was not hers to decide.
“Quite a few teachers at the school are off with the flu,” she later told Peg. “They’ve asked me to come in and help with Mae’s class. The question is: do you want her there at all?”
Peg bit her lip. “What Ginny said is disturbing, but there’s no reason to think the infection has actually gotten in.”
“No, there hasn’t been one reported attack.”
“So then the question becomes: do we go with the logic or the fear?”
“I know,” Louella nodded. “I know that there should be nothing to worry about and yet I’m paranoid as hell.”
“And yet is it right to pass that paranoia on to a five year old? Shouldn’t
we try to give her as normal a life as possible?” Peg considered the matter a moment and then said firmly, “She should go into kindergarten on Monday. But you’ll be with her, right?”
“Oh yeah.”
Two days later Louella drove into Midwood. The town was quiet. There were far fewer cars on the road than you’d expect for a Monday morning and there were plenty of places to park on Main Street. Bernhard’s Auto Repair and Filling Station (Levi’s garage) was brightly lit and had an air of business as usual. But Prudential Insurance, Country Cobbler and the Law Offices of Kohr and Myer were dark with “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs hanging in the windows.
Mae sat in the back of Lou’s pickup, singing along with David Seville and the Chipmunks — “The Witch Doctor” song. Every time the damn thing ended, the girl chanted, “Again! Again!” and Louella would hit the back arrow on the CD player. If I have to listen to “Oo-ee-ting-tang-walla-walla-whatever” one more time, she thought, I’m gonna have a frigging aneurysm. Sam, in the seat next to her, dealt with the annoyance by listening to thrash metal through his earphones and drumming absently on the dashboard. Finally they arrived at the school and Louella hopped gratefully out of the car.
“Don’t forget your bag,” she smiled at Mae as the child unhooked her seatbelt. She handed Sam his lunch and watched him head off to class.
Due to high levels of student absence, Principal Snyder had decided to combine the morning and afternoon kindergarten classes into one session. Out of the fifty-two kids in Mae’s year, only nineteen showed up. Louella spent the morning doing arts and crafts with them while Edna Hinkle, the first grade teacher, popped in at regular intervals to see if she needed any help.
As the morning drew to a close, Louella sat them all down on the carpet for story time. She grabbed the book of poems that was propped against the leg of her chair and opened it to the marked page. Today’s offering was “When the Green Gits Back in the Trees” by James Whitcomb Riley.