Survivor Song

by Paul Tremblay

  The ambulance rumbles to the end of Neponset and turns right onto Canton’s version of Washington Street. On the corner, the 7–Eleven’s lights are extinguished and the front window is cracked down the middle, the glass intact for now but as doomed as the calving Antarctic ice shelf. Across from the convenience store, a row of local shops and businesses is dark. Farther down the street a funeral home and its parking lot is vacant. As terrifying as the panicked mob of humanity in and around Norwood Hospital was, the quiet desolation of Canton center—whether its populace has fled, is in hiding, or has suffered a catastrophic collapse—is more disturbing and feels like a permanent condition, one from which there will be no recovery.

  Natalie says into her phone, “We’re almost to Cobb’s Corner. That means we’re really close to our house now, and getting closer.”

  Cobb’s Corner is where the borders of three towns (Canton, Stoughton, Sharon) converge, meeting at the intersection of Washington Street and Route 27. Sprawling networks of strip malls layer both sides of the street with the largest to their left, a single-level labyrinth of chain restaurants, corporate retail stores, and a dwindling number of independent mom-and-pop shops and businesses. The supermarket demarcates the rear of the shopping area, set back four or five hundred yards from the road. Cars and military vehicles are amassed in the lots closest to the supermarket. From this distance it is impossible to determine if the market is still open. Ramola is careful to not stare in that direction too long, irrationally fearing the act of her looking will attract unwanted attention to the woman driving an emergency vehicle she is not meant to drive.

  Natalie says, “I—I’m going to stop now, I think. We’ll talk again later. I promise. If I break the promise, please know I didn’t mean to. It sucks, but promises get broken all the time. Promises are like wishes. Yeah. They’re great as long as you know they won’t always help and won’t always come true.”

  Ramola says, “Now you are Bummer Rabies Yoda. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. You can edit that part out, correct?”

  “I told you Auntie Rams is the best. I love you. Sassafras and lullabies.” Natalie puts the phone on her lap, screen down. “She’s a girl, you know.”

  “I thought you didn’t find out—”

  “I didn’t. And I wasn’t getting any vibes until a few weeks ago. But now I know. She’s a girl.”

  The traffic light at Cobb’s Corner is blinking red, which it isn’t normally. Ramola slows the ambulance to a crawl but does not come to a complete stop. She speeds through the intersection as soon as she’s confident there is no oncoming traffic. Washington Street morphs into Bay Road, a much less densely populated house-and-forest-lined border running between the towns of Stoughton and Sharon before leading into Ames. Cobb’s Corner fades away quickly in the rearview mirrors, replaced by a blur of trees with red and orange leaves. In approximately five miles are Ames’s infamous intersection Five Corners and their ultimate destination, Ames Medical Center.

  Natalie says, “We’re so close to my house.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve gone a different way.”

  “No, this is the quickest. I wonder if Paul is still there, but of course he’s still there. I know he’s not a fucking zombie. But—I don’t know. Did someone else show up? Try to help him? Move him? Take him away? Our neighbors must’ve heard me, heard us. No one came to help. I hope—I hope I killed that fucking guy. He better not be doing anything else to Paul.”

  Natalie goes quiet and covers her eyes with her right forearm as they pass Woodlawn Street. As the crow flies, Natalie’s house is less than fifty meters away, close enough that someone standing on Bay Road might’ve heard Natalie and Paul’s yells and screams when they were attacked.

  A gray squirrel darts in front of the ambulance but changes its mind and returns to the road’s shoulder and its blanket of red pine needles. It rubs its front paws together, a worrier wringing hands.

  Natalie drops her arm, sighs, and twists and adjusts in her seat. “I might have to pee. I think I can make it though. If I don’t, sorry to the ambulance.” She lifts her left arm, bent at the elbow, and swears under her breath. “My arm hurts. Really hurts all of a sudden. Like a stabbing, and then burning, and a wave of numbness. Fucking ow. Back to the stabbing. Shooting up into my shoulder.”

  “I’m sure you jostled it when you climbed into the cab—oh, right, I’m explaining again, aren’t I. I’m sorry, I know your arm doesn’t feel good, Natalie. How’s that?”

  “Don’t patronize me. Actually, do patronize me. This feels like it did when the guy bit me. It’s kinda weird.” She tugs at the yellow sleeve of her sweatshirt.

  Bite-wound pain returning is a classic symptom of rabies infection in humans. Of course, normally, it takes weeks for that symptom to appear in patients. There’s no way for Ramola to know if Natalie’s arm hurts because she was bitten two hours ago or if it’s a sign of infection.

  They round a curve, and ahead on the right is the Crescent Ridge dairy farm and its locally famous ice-cream stand. During the summers, from noon to evening closing time, queues are fifteen-to-twenty people deep at any one of the eight service windows. Now there are no lines, no cars in the parking lot (the front of which is paved, the back lot is dirt), and no cows lazily grazing in the fenced-off fields and meadows.

  A skinny dog emerges from behind the ice-cream stand and patrols the blacktop. Its chest and belly fur is white; brown and reddish fur color the back and legs. The tail’s length and bushiness is outsized, exaggerated, as though a child drew it.

  “I hope someone hasn’t lost their dog,” Ramola says.

  Natalie says, “I think that’s a coyote.”

  The animal’s face is more vulpine than a dog’s. Fur is matted and rough. Ears are pointed, sharp triangles. Ramola says, “I think you’re right,” without ever having seen a coyote in person.

  The coyote is less a confident, vigilant predator canvassing the area than a confused animal listing and wobbling through repetitive arcs. Tail and shoulders are drooped. Legs tremor and shudder. Neck telescopes the weary, swaying snout, hovering parallel to the pavement. White, stringy drool leaks from its mouth.

  Natalie asks, “Why are you slowing down?”

  “I’m not,” Ramola says, but a quick look at the speedometer reveals her speed has dropped to 25mph. She presses the gas pedal and the engine grumbles.

  The coyote explodes into a sprint, one it didn’t look to be physically capable of only a second ago. Its gait is graceless and without rhythm, legs moving of their own accord, heedless to what the other legs are doing, as though running is ancillary to the goal of repeatedly smashing paws against the pavement. An inefficient tornado of movement and momentum, the coyote careens toward the road.

  Natalie says, “Holy shit, holy shit. Don’t hit it, don’t hit it . . .”

  Ramola jerks the ambulance into the opposite lane. The sudden shift of the vehicle’s top-heavy weight wants to sway them farther left and onto the shoulder and someone’s front lawn. Ramola maintains control and their current velocity. She cannot slam on the brakes, as rapid deceleration would dangerously tighten the seat belt around Natalie and her belly. She squeezes the steering wheel and winces preemptively, anticipating impact with the animal but hoping for a miss.

  The front grille noses ahead of the charging coyote. She gives the ambulance more gas, aiming to surge past without the creature mashing into them. It’s running so quickly it appears to be bouncing and rolling, a tumbleweed in a gale-force wind. Ramola loses sight of it, dreading the sickening thump of the tires rolling over the animal.

  There’s a loud, jarring bang as the coyote broadsides the ambulance, just behind Natalie’s door. She yells, “Fucking fuck!” and recoils from the door but then presses her face against the window, mumbling indecipherable commentary or judgment.

  Ramola doesn’t slow, doesn’t stop, and pilots the ambulance back into its proper lane.

  Natalie, still looking out the w
indow, says, “I can’t see it. Is it dead?”

  Ramola checks her mirrors. Reflected in the large rectangular passenger side-mirror, the coyote is a lump of writhing fur, flailing more limbs than its four, before flipping onto its paws. It opens and closes its mouth rapidly but if it issues cries or calls, they can’t hear any. As the coyote’s reflected image diminishes in the expanding distance, it limps after the ambulance, following the center yellow lines.

  Ramola says, “It got up and is loping after us.”

  “Jesus. If I go full rabies, please don’t let me launch myself into ambulances.”

  “That would be inadvisable.”

  Natalie turns away from the window, lifts her phone, looks at it, puts it back down, as though confirming it is still in her hand.

  Despite knowing it’s impossible for the sick and injured coyote to keep up with them now at 45mph, Ramola watches for a reappearance of its scraggly form, checking the mirrors in a clockwise pattern. After looking at the fourth and final mirror, she decides to spin through the circuit one last time. Then she checks them again.

  Natalie asks, “You see something back there?”

  “Making sure it’s gone.”

  Natalie says, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you might want to slow down a little bit. Whole bunch of curves ahead. Coyote Cujo won’t catch us.”

  “Sorry.”

  As though on cue, the ambulance lurches too fast through a dip in the road, giving Ramola that dropped-stomach, roller-coaster sensation. She slows to 30mph. Bay Road narrows and winds, following a typically New England path that was trod before pavement and town planning. The surrounding forest grows thicker, the houses more infrequent. The northeastern border of the expansive Borderland State Park is less than a mile ahead on their right. Thigh-high, lichen- and moss-colored walls of stacked stones run along both sides of the road for stretches before randomly turning and disappearing into the woods. The walls are a holdover from the 1800s. Farmers would clear the impossibly rocky soil and used the stones to build over 100,000 miles of walls throughout New England.

  Natalie prattles on about Coyote Cujo and how it should check its ambitions, downsize to leaping at compact cars or motorcycles, leave attacking ambulances to rabid rhinos or rabid circus elephants. There are elephants at the Southwick Zoo maybe thirty miles west, and Natalie hopes those fuckers are on lockdown.

  They pass the torn-up carcass of a raccoon in the opposite lane, supine on its back, paws clenched into black stones, stomach and chest flattened and red. Ahead on the shoulder, another animal, what appears to be a dead opossum, its body seemingly intact. From Ramola’s drive-by vantage there is no way to determine if the opossum is the victim of an accident, animal attack, or has succumbed to the virus.

  Natalie sighs as though annoyed with her own ramblings, picks up her phone, presses buttons, and says, “Hi, did you miss me? Ah, fuck this.” She hits more buttons and slams the phone down into her lap. She says, “This sucks. This all sucks. Fuck.” She pauses and then asks, “This might sound totally random, but do you know what movie I hated that everyone else loved?”

  “No.”

  “City of Men. No wait, Children of Men. I always mess up the title. The one where the world was fucked because no one could have babies anymore but Clive Owen finds one preggo, blah, blah, blah. I mean, fine, I guess it’s a well-made movie, but women as incubators to repopulate and save the world is bullshit, you know?”

  Trying to elicit a smile from Natalie, or even better, a subject change, Ramola says, “I like Clive Owen. He was wonderful in Gosford Park.”

  Natalie ignores her. “Paul loved it, of course, and would randomly text me pics and GIFs from the movie. He thought he was so funny. Which, he kinda was. When we decided to try getting pregnant I told Paul there would be no Children of Men bullshit for us. If the world was falling apart—more so than it already was—he had to promise I was more important than the kid. I had to live. If anyone needed saving, or whatever, it was me first. He thought I was joking. I mean, I was, but I also wasn’t.”

  “I take it you both promised that your relationship would remain as important—”

  “Ha-ha! No, just me. I made him pinky-swear I would always be most important, and if it came down to it, he’d save me first. He wasn’t happy about it, but he did it—” Her voice cracks, tears are close but she doesn’t give in.

  Ramola stares ahead. The winding road narrows further; the forest closing in on them.

  “He wanted me to swear back that I’d save him.” Natalie coughs, the sputtering noises transforming into weary, heartbreaking laughter. “I wouldn’t do it. I rubbed it in his face. I told him there was nothing I could do, once I was a mom the kid would always come first, isn’t that what everyone says? Oh, he got so pissed and tried to take back his pinky-swear, but you can’t take it back. Those are the rules. You can’t take anything back.” Natalie pauses. The pause becomes three deep breaths. “And here I am; the fucking incubator.”

  “No, Natalie—”

  “Paul and I tried to save each other today. We both tried. We fought hard. We really did. But we failed.”

  “That’s enough! No more! I can’t imagine what you went through and I know you’re suffering and frightened—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say it.”

  Ramola has to say it, even if she knows deep down it isn’t true. “But you are going to live, and so is your child. We’re going to arrive at the new clinic in less than ten minutes and they’re going to help and take care of you.”

  Natalie says, “Wow. I can’t believe you yelled at me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you deserved it.”

  “No, I love it. But you’re either a liar or, as we know to be true, a terrible jinx.”

  Ramola clucks her tongue and waves a dismissive hand, oddly aware the I-give-up gesture is one her mum frequently employs.

  Natalie says, “Gosford Park is meh, by the way. A movie about rich British assholes.”

  “Now you’re being a prat.”

  “The characters aren’t rich British assholes?”

  “They are; however, that’s the point of the movie, isn’t it. Are there any other films you’d like to besmirch?”

  “Where do I begin—oh, hey, you see that? What are they doing?”

  Ahead, on a short stretch of straightaway, is a side street on the left. Two people wearing bike helmets, bulky backpacks, and dark hooded sweatshirts ride BMX bikes, pedaling furiously toward Bay Road. They cut the corner, darting between a giant fir tree and an undulating stone wall. They dump their bikes and packs, and they crouch behind the stones.

  Ramola slows as the ambulance pulls even with the side street, eyes only for the huddled bike riders.

  Natalie yells, and a large white blur smashes into the ambulance’s rear. Their back end slides right, as though hydroplaning, and Ramola initially turns into it. The ambulance rumbles along the brush-filled shoulder, which slows them down and allows her to wrest some control. She cuts the wheel, turns them back toward the street, and pumps the brakes. The back end remains rooted to the shoulder though, and as they come to a surprisingly smooth stop, the front grille and windshield faces across the street at an almost forty-five-degree angle.

  The two women share a moment of blinking stares.

  Ramola peels her hands away from the steering wheel and asks, “Are you all right?” She does so quietly, as though afraid of the answer.