by Beth Hersant
“The Wellers,” Arnold shook his head. “They came charging up to the house like they were fucking possessed. Jeanie punched through the window and got my Niamh by the hair. I had to … I …”
“You did what you had to do to protect her,” Louella nodded.
“What the hell happened to you?” Bib was looking at Lou’s car with its dents and crimson splashes of blood.
“The infected hit the school.” Just saying it out loud made her cry.
“Jesus,” Bib whispered and the two women, with Mae in between them, clung to one another. Bib sniffled loudly, “You all get out ok?”
Louella nodded and wiped her eyes. “So are you coming? Bib, you can see Main Street Bridge from the top of that hill.” She pointed to the snow-covered hummock behind the house. “It’s not safe to stay here.”
“We’re way ahead of you.” Their daughter Niamh appeared in the doorway carrying a box of canned goods. “Do you have room for this in your truck?”
Throughout that afternoon they came. Some with cars full of supplies, some with only the shirts on their backs. In the end, there was Louella and Sam, Peg, Alec and Mae. Between them Levi and Patience had managed to get Ginny out. She was absolutely reeling — she just kept shaking her head and muttering, “That smell.” Wyn, his wife Josie and their twelve-year-old daughter Emma arrived and looked vaguely around Louella’s living room as if none of them could quite understand just where they were. There was Arnold and Bib (tearful at leaving her house) and Niamh and that young fellow Owen she brought home with her from college. And Fletcher made sixteen.
For a while, a sort of inertia took hold of the group. Once they sat down they didn’t want to get up again. Shock and sorrow had left them cowed; and they sat in front of the TV clutching mugs of coffee that they forgot to drink. And the news did not help. They were running this mesmerizing, scrolling list of every city that had fallen to the infection — including Atlanta. From there a spokesman for the CDC announced that they had developed an effective vaccine to keep people from contracting the disease. However, with the breakdown in infrastructure, there was at present no way to manufacture and distribute the drug on a wide scale.
“We will work tirelessly with the army to reestablish supply lines and get the drug out there,” the man was saying, “but there will be significant delays. Therefore any community that is able to develop its own stock of the vaccine is encouraged to do so at the earliest opportunity. The instructions on how to do this are as follows…”
Peg dove for the control and pressed “record.” Louella rose, went out front for the umpteenth time and stared down the road. Where was Effie and her family? Surely they’d be here by now. And Lou wasn’t the only one with worry twitching her strings. Owen called his parents in Minneapolis again and again and got no answer. And Patience sat in the kitchen trying desperately to get hold of Marie.
“I thought she’d be with you.” Her brother, Wyn, stood in the doorway.
“No. She, um, went to get her parents. Allentown was still clear but she didn’t want to leave `em that close to Philly.”
“Pat, I’m sure she’s all right.”
“No she’s not.” Patience ran a hand over her tear-stained cheeks. “How can she be? Out in the middle of all this … with nowhere to go.”
Wyn wrapped her in a hug. “Why don’t you come on in? They’re talking about how to make the vaccine on the news. It looks like we could beat this thing yet.”
It was great news — the first positive thing all day. A vaccine. From what they were saying, you could employ the same method that Louis Pasteur used when he created the original rabies shots. However that was easier said than done. Niamh, who was pre-med, pointed out that the method required daily contact with infected animals. They would have to capture and keep them. They would then have to expose generation after generation of healthy animals to New Rabies in order to develop the most virulent strain possible. Then they would have to extract it, attenuate and test it. And that was only after they managed to gather all the needed equipment and set up a lab secure enough for the job. No, there would be no vaccine today or tomorrow or next week or even next month. And in the meantime, there were more fortifications to build and they had to keep the farm going.
Speaking of which, Louella thought, I’d better get on with that. It was five o’clock and the sun had set. She needed to get the chickens in the coup and milk the cows. She pulled on her old boots, a body warmer and a knit hat that read “MHS Bears” (a hideous pom pom affair sold by the Football Booster Club last October). Despite the fact that night fell early this time of year, the moon reflected off the snow giving her enough light to see by. The air was crisp, the yard quiet. The chickens, a mixed brood of eleven birds each named after a character in To Kill a Mockingbird, had already gone into the barn and hopped onto their perches. She checked the thermometer to make sure they’d be warm enough and she shut them in for the night.
She had two cows. It was Louella’s habit to separate them from their calves every morning so their udders would be full by evening. Although the sixteen people at the farm did not know it, these old girls had saved them from the infection. They had provided them all with untainted milk. She called Rickie to her. The heifer — named for Def Leppard’s Rick Savage (Lou had eclectic tastes) — came to her and nestled her snout into the woman’s chest. Louella spoke to her gently, slipped a halter over her head, and tied the end of the rope to a post. She’d just sat down on a low stool and was about to give the udders a wash when Rickie tossed her head.
“What are you fussing for?” Lou asked. And then she realized: she’d put the halter on upside down. The chin rope rested on the cow’s forehead, pulling the knot right up into the animal’s eye. What the hell had she been thinking?
She undid the halter and went to put it on again. Again she got in a muddle. By the light of the bare bulb she flicked on, each section of the harness looked the same. Louella had done this everyday for the last forty-three years and yet for some reason she could only stare in mute confusion at the tangle of rope in her fists. She slumped down heavily on the stool and was surprised to find that she was trembling. Her breath came in hitching gasps. And she saw Josh’s face again and that bloody handprint on her windshield. Dropping the rope, she buried her head in her hands and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes as if that would banish the images. But they would not go away. She’d killed two people today. One old man, one little more than a child. One who took care of her and one whom she’d cared for — perfect bookends for her past and future and she wiped them out within … what? … ten minutes of each other? She was crying now, so hard that she could not utter a sound and she could not breathe and her chest felt like it was on fire. As the terrible, racking sobs spasmed through her, she sank onto her hands and knees and all she could think was “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
The good news about this type of episode is that it takes a hell of a lot of energy and hence, is difficult to sustain. In a little while, she sat on the concrete floor, utterly spent, while Rickie looked down at her with wide, questioning eyes. She pulled herself to her feet and went to wash her face at the tap. As she settled back down to her work (she’d finally managed to get the damn halter on right), she remembered a passage she’d once read in a book. It was The Return by Walter de la Mare and in it he’d said something about how God had fashioned our brains to work slowly. The human mind took a hit the same way your skin does. First the blow, then the bruise. Something to that effect. She’d taken a hell of a hit that day and her hysterics were simply the mental bruise blossoming purple and black and sore. It was not her first. She also knew that it didn’t matter one iota that she’d been driven to her knees. She’d been there before too. What mattered was what you did next.
If she thought logically about it, then it was perfectly obvious what she should do. First milk the cows, put the calves in with their mothers, a
nd lock up the barn. Then she’d take her two pails in, strain the milk and get it on the stove. Then she’d start dinner and then… Then what? Just what were you supposed to do with a mess like this?
Over the years Louella had developed a theory; she called it the Delta Theory of Life and it was a pretty good one. People had a tendency to get obsessed with big moments — it was that 1988 Summer Olympics “One Moment in Time” vibe. And don’t get me wrong, those moments are important. Take motherhood, for example. After giving birth, when the doctor delivered her babies right onto her bare stomach — those were two of the most powerful, shining moments of her life. Even now the recollection took her breath away. But the relationship with her children was not made and set in those brief minutes. It was cemented by thousands of days, millions of tiny actions and words and hugs and kisses. These built up like the silt that forms a delta giving them firm, dry land to stand on. And it was fertile ground; it had produced a lifetime of good memories and of love.
And so, if the big shining moments were not the be-all and end-all of life, then neither were the big tragedies. They could rise above this and the simplest way to do it would be to silt it up with something else — something better. That was her theory, anyway. Not expertly wrought, but solid. L.R. Knost put it much more eloquently when she said: “Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”
As she bustled around the kitchen, Louella listened to the conversation in the living room. Peg and Alec were discussing ways to augment their fortifications. This was met by a harsh, mirthless laugh and then a voice that Lou didn’t immediately recognize: “It doesn’t matter how many boards you nail over the windows, we’re screwed.” It was that boy, Owen.
Both Emma and Mae started to cry at this and then many voices were talking at once. The mothers comforted their little ones; the fathers swore at Owen for his lack of tact; Patience weighed in and said that they all had an excellent chance of keeping safe at the farm and Owen maintained his opinion that “We’re fucked.”
Through all this, the group had not registered the familiar sounds of someone making dinner. But when Louella started frying bacon, the smell reminded them that they hadn’t eaten since breakfast and were actually quite hungry. They filtered into the kitchen.
Peg asked, “What are you making, mom?”
“Chicken, Potato and Corn Chowder.”
“Can I help?” Bib volunteered.
Lou nodded. “We need to set the table and put out some bread and butter and there’s stuff for a salad in the fridge. Sam, that milk will be done in a minute, will you…”
“Got it.”
A quiet bustle filled the kitchen. Louella worked quickly, deftly adding green onions, red pepper, white wine, and thyme to the main ingredients of her stew.
“We’re not fucked,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’ve got bacon!” And she flashed the others a toothy grin. “Alec, would you fish that out of the skillet and drain it on some paper towels, please? Anyway, what was I saying?” She glanced at Owen. “Oh yeah, about being fucked. Nah. We have a stocked larder, fresh water from the well, our own power source, seed to plant, a barn full of animals and Arnold has how many pigs in my storage shed?”
“Twenty.”
“Which means even more bacon. What’s that saying you have about pigs, Bib?”
“That you can use everything but the squeak,” her friend said as she laid places at the table.
“And yes,” Louella finished, as she ladled the chowder into bowls and crumbled bacon on top, “we are safe enough here that we can sit down and have something to eat.”
The mood lifted somewhat over dinner. For all the lofty thoughts, the philosophies, the ideas and theorems and creativity of the human mind, when it comes right down to it, we are creatures ruled by our stomachs. The state of your belly, whether empty or full, will determine your mood, color your outlook and affect your concentration. That is why Louella hit them first with chowder and then with ideas. From her seat at the head of her crowded table, she could see an old wooden sign hung on the wall by the refrigerator. James gave it to her for her birthday one year. The words “Hatching Plans” were painted over the silhouette of a chicken.
“I saw it and it just reminded me of you,” he’d said at the time and gave her a squeeze. “Does your mind ever switch off?”
The answer was no, not really. And it was time to kick it up a gear.
“Alec,” she said between bites of butter bread, “what’s left on our list for the Stage 1 fortifications?”
“As you know, I’ve bricked up the front windows and walled in the yard between the house and the barn. I still have to tear down the front porch roof, reinforce the door and hang the brackets for the crossbeams.”
“Ok then, that’s tomorrow’s job. In the meantime, we can barricade the door with furniture and post guards for the night.”
Niamh, who hadn’t registered the changes they’d made to the house, stared in shock at the bricked up kitchen window. It really hit her in that moment that her mom and dad and Lou didn’t expect all this to blow over. “You really think we’ll be here for a long time?” she rasped because her throat had gone painfully dry.
Louella nodded. “I think things are in a hell of a mess and it’s going to take time to sort it all out. In the meantime there’s stuff we can do to get through this.”
Fletch was smiling at her knowingly. “What do you have in mind?”
“We divvy up the jobs. Wyn, I need you to get your mother settled. And then I’d like you and Niamh to go over our medical supplies and make a list of what else we’re going to need. Peg, Mae, Josie and Emma, would you find everyone a bed or a mattress or cot to sleep on and start thinking about long-term accommodation. Alec, Patience, Fletch and I will go over this place and map out what fortifications we need to work on next. On that point: building materials…”
“Doc Rhoads had contracted me to build his retirement home. It’s just,” Alec jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “over in the next valley. I’ve got everything we’ll need at the site.”
“Ok,” Louella was nodding. “We draw up the plans tonight and hit the site tomorrow morning for supplies.”
“What do you want me to do, Gran?” Sam asked.
“I need you, Bib, and Owen to take an inventory of all the food we’ve got and then start calculating how long it’s gonna last us.”
“And me?” Levi asked.
“I’d like you and Arnold to sort our weapons and ammo out and,” she nodded toward Mae, “make certain it’s all out of reach of little fingers.”
“I should tell you now that I won’t be here to take that inventory,” Owen said.
Everybody at the table gaped at him.
“Why?” Niamh asked.
“I’m going home — I’ll pack up and head out after dinner.”
Niamh laughed nervously. “That’s — that’s ridiculous! You can’t!”
“I have to go check on my parents.”
“You’re parents are in Minneapolis! Didn’t you tell me that’s like a thousand miles away?”
Louella leaned her elbows on the table and massaged her temples. A thousand miles. This afternoon she barely managed to drive six blocks to get out of Midwood. A thousand miles was just…
“That’s suicide,” Arnold spoke her thoughts out loud.
“I’ll be fine.”
“In that ancient Volkswagen Jetta of yours? Are you kidding me?” Levi asked.
“Listen, this is my decision and I don’t think that things are nearly as bad as you …”
“I shot two of my neighbors today,” Arnold said quietly. “How many did you have to go through, Louella, just t
o get the kids out of town?” Arnold looked at Louella hoping she’d chime in. She didn’t answer; she just went slightly green and pushed the remainder of her dinner away.
The boy continued, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m going. I’ll load up the trunk and …”
“With what?” Louella asked quietly.
“Huh?” Owen looked at her, confused.
“What are you planning to load into your car?”
“Supplies.”
“Supplies,” the old woman nodded. “From my farm?”
“Well, I …”
“Has it occurred to you that maybe I want to keep that here to help us survive?”
Owen blushed furiously, but he plowed ahead anyway. “Surely you can spare …”
“What?” Louella snapped. “We don’t even have a complete list of what we’ve got yet.”
“If I stayed, you’d feed me, right? You’d end up giving me more than I’m asking for now!”
“Yes!” she shot back. His tone was getting her riled and it actually felt good to get mad. She went with it. “If you stay, I’ll feed you. I just have a slight problem with taking a trunk-load of food and throwing it the hell away!”
“How is giving it to me throwing it away?”
“Because you’re going to die out there and the supplies will rot.”
“Oh I’m gonna die?” He was on his feet now. “And you base that on what?”
Louella crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “If you have car trouble, do you know how to fix it?”
“What?”
“Do you know how to siphon gas? Or use a gun? If you have to go off road, do you know how to navigate? Do you possess any survival skills at all? It’s the dead of winter, can you even make a fire? And yes, Owen, are you prepared to kill people in order to survive? If you have any illusions about what it’s like out there, then go and take a look at the blood that’s splattered all over my truck. That blood’s from two of my friends who were trying to eat my grandchildren!”