by Maira Dawn
The deadliest flu virus known to man.
The 1918 Flu Pandemic killed fifty to one hundred million people, making its victims suffer. Within hours of feeling the first symptoms of extreme fatigue, fever, and headache, many victims turned blue. The blue shade could become so pronounced that it was difficult to determine a patient’s original skin color.
Patients often coughed with such force they tore their abdominal muscles. Lungs filled with so much liquid, they would suffocate to death. Foamy blood exited their mouths and noses.
To this day, no one knows why the flu virus suddenly mutated into such a deadly form. Nor do they know how to prevent it from happening again.
This is the story of that possibility.
What would life be like?
What would you be like?
One
After Today
Skye's face paled. The broadcast's warnings echoed through her mind even as the terrified voice on the radio faded away. A hostile mob of rabies-infected people scoured the streets of Colton looking for the healthy, and they headed her way.
The disease escalated faster than anyone predicted. They said we would have a year, at least six months. Skye's heart drummed against her chest. We had three.
A fresh wave of fear pulsed through her. She had little time, and for a moment, the notion paralyzed her. The sharp ticking of a clock rang through her head. Skye stepped one way, then the other, unsure of where to begin.
They're coming! The screaming thought spurred Skye into action. She tore through the spacious rooms of her house, her heart tapping out a rhythm as fast as her feet. The events of the last couple of months pounded through her head.
Skye's mind spun like a Tilt-a-Whirl randomly speeding through everything they needed. Clothes... toothbrush... sleeping bags... food.
She halted at her bedroom door and scanned the room. There it is. Skye grabbed her moss-green backpack and rushed into the walk-in closet. From her dresser, she pulled jeans, shirts and other essentials shoving them into it.
Her thoughts shrieked for her to hurry while a low voice in the back of her mind berated her for letting fear get in her way, causing her to delay. It could have all been done, should have all been done.
Skye covered her mouth to hold in a cry. I might have just procrastinated myself to death.
Her bare feet slapped the cool, gray stone tile floor when she raced through the bathroom grabbing a bag of toiletries. Skye startled as she caught the reflection of her green eyes in the mirror, wide with fright. She moved on, pushing at her long, dark hair, but the sight stayed with her.
A bead of sweat traced Skye's back as she ran to her well-equipped kitchen. She flung open the white cabinets pulling out peanut butter, protein bars, fruit, and water, setting them on the marble countertop. Is this all the food that’s left? I need enough for both of us.
The boy was her priority now. Skye needed to get to him—that she knew. How much time she had, she did not.
A wave of nausea overtook her, and she fought it back, gripping the smooth marble with her trembling hands. There is no time for this. I have to leave, leave now. She threw everything on top of the clothes in her bag and turned to go.
A sharp crack then glass shattering at the neighboring house stopped her short. The odor of burning wood drifted to her.
I need a weapon.
The uninvited thought shocked her. She covered her lips as if she had said the words aloud. It shoved away all other worries, and she imagined the many ways she might need to protect herself.
Skye looked around the immaculate room and saw her large set of kitchen knives. They were versatile. A knife, especially this kind of knife, didn't automatically make her a bad person.
She wrapped her hand over the smooth, wooden handle and swiftly drew the longest knife from the butcher block. Still, the swoosh it made when sliding into the slim side pocket of the backpack caused her stomach to flutter with uneasiness.
Skye grasped the increasingly heavy bag and ran into the hallway, snatching her purse containing the car keys while slipping on shoes. Out of habit, she twisted the lock on her stained-glass front door.
Stupid. Can't come back here ever again, not after what I'm going to do.
Skye crossed onto the hard concrete of the garage floor. She yanked open the back door of her blue Jeep throwing in her backpack and her unopened camping gear.
Her stomach clenched when she heard voices. She leaped into the vehicle and slammed the key into the ignition, turning it before she even hit the seat.
She threw the Jeep into reverse and floored it. Tires spun and squealed as they met pavement. White smoke trailed over the roof of the car.
Skye raced down the street. She pushed the gas pedal as far as she dared as the Jeep screeched around the wild curves of the West Virginia road. She only hoped she would arrive in time to save Jesse.
A last panicked look in the rear-view mirror told her she had narrowly escaped the horde. As she sped through the historic town, she gave it a silent, sentimental goodbye.
One way or another, after today, my life will never be the same.
Two
It Begins
Two months earlier, Skye was laid back in her padded office chair humming as she munched on her favorite salad. Her right hand clicked her mouse, cuing up a few James Corden and Jimmy Fallon videos.
Her favorite lunch consisted of salad and coffee. Today, she treated herself to two cookies from the batch of chocolate chip she made last night. Skye liked to keep things simple. Her job presented plenty of complications. Young, troubled patients with emotional parents kept her walking a tightrope most days. And acerbated her own anxiety issues. Lunch was her time. Simple, normal, quiet.
A notification of a new email from her friend, Diane, flashed onto the screen. Skye clicked on it. Diane had included a YouTube link along with the text.
Check this out. It happened near Colton. Everyone's saying this is a hoax, but it's odd. No, it's more than that. It's something strange. What is wrong with this guy?
Before and after the message, there were several grimacing emojis. In spite of that, Skye stopped humming.
Her curiosity peaked, she clicked the link and pushed play
It was an amateur video, grainy and shaky. This alone would have been enough for Skye to move on, sure it was a joke, regardless of what Diane thought. But she stayed her hand. Her cousin, Tom, was in the video. Tall, blonde and built like a linebacker, he was hard to miss.
In her work as a therapist for abused children, Skye often needed information from the local law enforcement agency. Her first choice was Tom, the local sheriff. One thing she knew, if by-the-book Tom was in this video, it was no hoax.
Skye's gaze narrowed as she studied the dark film. A suspect’s black SUV sat on the long strip of grass beside a four-lane highway with multiple police cars surrounding it. While the closer lanes had no traffic, cars still zipped by in the far two lanes.
She ate her salad as about thirty-seconds went by. Police lights flashed. In the fading light, Skye could see a shadowy man in the driver's seat of the SUV. An orange time stamp flashed at the bottom right of the screen. It was taken yesterday evening.
Uniformed officers stood in a circle a few yards from the car. Some on alert, others with hands resting on their belts, looking off into the distance. Tom faced the tail of the SUV and away from the camera. With shoulders squared, he looked ready for anything.
Skye's hand tightened on her silver fork. The peace of the afternoon was shattered. What exactly was this strange thing Diane talked about?
The police officer closest to the suspect's car shouted, "Hands on the steering wheel, sir. Show us your hands."
There was no movement.
"Hands on the steering wheel!"
The suspect quickly raised his arms well over his head. They wavered as he held them there for a moment. He dropped them on the steering wheel with such force they bounced before he grasped it.
; The sound on the video faded in and out. "Out of... car, sir."
The man didn't move. He didn't even twitch.
"Sir? I need... step... car now!"
Tom moved his hand to hover over his holster.
Still, the guy didn't respond. The officers nodded to each other. With caution, they took a few steps closer to the vehicle.
They came to an instant standstill when the driver's door unlatched. It didn't open all the way. It stayed there, barely a bump along the side of the automobile. Something that should have been scarcely noticeable, yet it was all everyone watched.
The opening widened, inch by inch. It was an old man struggling to get out of the car. No, not an old man. Someone disabled or ill.
One jean-covered leg moved from the car to the ground. Once that foot was stable, the man carefully transferred the other.
A shaky hand grabbed the vehicle's door to hoist himself out. His head down, he paid no attention to the chaos surrounding him.
He took a single slow, unsteady step, then another. A hand laid on the SUV windows to maintain balance. His right foot lightly dragged along the ground as he walked.
At first glance, he didn't appear sinister. Dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a light-blue zippered jacket, he could have been making a run to the local grocery store. However, on closer inspection, something was off, something more than difficulty walking.
His stiff, unstable gait moved him toward the back of the SUV.
Once then twice, he lifted his head. The wide angle of the lens didn’t show much detail, but he squinted his eyes so tight, it was hard to imagine how he could see. Both times the man gave his head a fierce shake then lowered his gaze back to the ground.
Often the man stopped and gave a strange shudder. After a few of these episodes, he jerked and heavily leaned against the van. His head whipped forward, and his hands moved to his chest. Bloody gobs of spit flew from his mouth and rolled down his chin.
The milling crowd of bystanders outside the ring of police cars grew, and chatter erupted. The man squinted up at them as he continued to stumble along the side of his black vehicle.
With one hand clenching a taillight, he lurched around the end of the car. A light breeze caught his unzipped jacket and blew the left flap back.
Strapped to his waist was a gun.
The police backed up in unison as they pulled their weapons. Sharp and loud, they barked out their orders. "Halt! Stop! Hands in the air!"
The suspect did not respond.
A scowling officer snapped out instructions. "Lay your weapon on the ground!"
But the man continued to hobble along, one short, shaky step after another as he dragged a leg behind him.
The policeman shook his head and conferred with two others.
As dusk turned to darkness, they struggled to see. A few officers pulled out flashlights and pointed them toward the SUV. The rays of light played along the exterior of the dark-colored car searching for the suspect.
The sudden display of bright light made the surrounding night appear that much darker. They hunted for the man without success, adding more flashlights to the search. The brilliant beams began to move in a frantic pattern. Out of the darkness, he appeared.
The intense beam caught him full in the face. The man, who had acknowledged nothing else, reacted.
Hands clenched into fists as he flung his arms up to cover his face. His head swung so hard his whole body moved back and forth with the motion. With a quick movement, he brought his arms back down. Stiff and straight, he held them at his side.
The camera zoomed in on the suspect's face. There was an odd blankness to his eyes. His skin was pasty-white, drained of all color, except for his lips. A trick of the light, perhaps, because his lips appeared to be blue.
From those blue lips, red, foamy saliva dripped from his mouth, over his chin until it rolled off his face staining his jacket.
The suspect stilled for a moment. His face twisted in rage. He bared his red-smeared teeth and lunged toward the nearest flashlight.
The officer behind it called out a warning. "Sir! We know you are unwell. You must surrender, or we will shoot!"
The man stopped and wavered. His eyes rounded in desperation. He spoke for the first time, his voice hesitant, guttural and phlegmy. "I can't! I've tried."
Disease warred against man. The winner was clear when he lurched toward the policeman.
The officer fired his gun, but showing pity, hit the suspect's lower leg. The man's body jerked, but he kept coming. Pain didn't affect him. When surrounded, he changed direction, to another light, another officer.
"Stand down, or we will put you down."
A second shot rang out. Blood ran from the suspect's upper arm dripping to the pavement. His leg wound continued to bleed, drenching his entire lower leg.
There was no sign of slowing. Instead, the man's outrage increased. He dripped with sweat. His chest heaved with emotion, his hands became fists.
Bloody spit oozed between his clenched teeth. Blue lips pulled back in a tight, unnatural grimace dripping red wavering ribbons onto his chest.
He turned to another light, his face stark in the glare—Tom's flashlight. Despite his injuries, the suspect raced toward Skye's cousin. Tom took two small steps backward before stopping and holding his ground.
Tom opened his mouth to call out. There was no time. The air shattered with the sound of the shots. Once. Twice.
The man dropped to the ground. A serene expression graced his face. As if, at last, he felt peace. Then he was gone.
The video flickered and ended.
Skye’s shaky hands covered her mouth, holding back a scream. Her bracelets lightly clanged together as she lowered her arms and leaned back in her chair. She willed herself to draw in a few slow breaths to calm herself. She would have heard by now if Tom was hurt.
She took a sip of the still-steaming coffee and lowered the cup too fast. Skye knocked it against her desk and sent small beads of hot latte sloshing onto her hand. She gasped at the sharp burn of the hot liquid. After righting the cup and correctly setting it on the table, she brought her hand back up to her lipsticked mouth.
Skye leaned toward the computer screen and narrowed her eyes in thought. She rewound the video and stopped it on the dying man. She stared at the scene. It was impossible.
Skye raised her gaze and let it drift across the homey earth tones of the large room. Her latte's taste turned acrid on her tongue as her troubled mind replayed what she’d just seen and rejected it. She couldn’t be seeing it right.
But sometimes the mind comes across something so unfamiliar, so bizarre it refuses to accept it as reality. Was that happening to her?
No, Tom was in the video. It had to be real. Blue lips, the dripping red saliva? Was the limp a symptom too? How can a person be shot that many times and keep going? None of it made sense.
Worried about Tom, and wanting answers, Skye picked up her cell phone. She punched in his number, but all she heard was ring after ring without a response.
Three
Jesse
Skye groaned as she ended the third failed call to Tom. With no voicemail, and the police station's mandate that personal cell phones stay in their lockers, it seemed almost impossible to reach him during the day unless it was an emergency, but she had to try.
Skye turned back to her work, determined to try again later. The slight scratch of shifting papers was soon the only sound in her spacious office. She reviewed these notes for the umpteenth time. The eerie video kept tugging at Skye's mind, and she nagged herself to focus on her patient's case.
Her client this afternoon was twelve-year-old Jesse Bailey. Her hardest one to date, and the child she worried about the most. Skye wanted very much to help this boy, but he wasn't having any of it. She sighed and nipped her inside cheek, a frown starting on her face.
Chipping away at his granite exterior was proving harder than Skye imagined, and she had known it would be difficult. No
wonder though, Jesse had been through so much.
The death of his mother two years ago had left him alone with his abusive father, Frankie Bailey. Jesse’s grandmother took in his older sister, Sue Ellen. Other than them, Jesse had no other relatives Skye could track down. And if he knew of any, he wasn't sharing that information with her.
When Skye in formed the grandmother her grandson’s homeless state, she hadn’t said much. And what she did say hadn’t been helpful.
Refusing to take Jesse, she said, ”Jesse’s sister helps around the house, but I'm not up to takin in another young'un, especially a boy. I know Frankie whales on the boy, but he'll be fine. After all, a boy needs a good beatin now and again."
Pfft. Skye puffed out a breath over the hand loosely covering her mouth. Let's see you get a good beating.
Skye shook her head. This wasn't the first time she ran into this attitude, no matter where she worked, and it wouldn't surprise her if Frankie had been the object of some harsh treatment himself. When Skye asked the grandmother if she could speak to Sue Ellen, and the woman flatly denied her, it reinforced this thought. Skye made a notation to suggest someone stop in on the girl.
Skye brought a hand to the back of her neck. Jesse's lack of any loving family was a concern. To help a young person through trauma was a complicated process for them. When there was no support system, it became almost impossible.
Skye turned the page on his report. No one remembered when the abuse of the boy started, but teachers and neighbors alike had been more than willing to offer other family details.
Jesse's dad, Francis Lee Bailey, aka Frankie, hadn’t aspired to be a great dad or even a good dad. When he was younger, he'd had big dreams of being a race car driver. Those disappeared when his girlfriend became pregnant, and her family insisted on marriage. It appeared it was never a good union though Frankie tried at first. There were regular paychecks, and neighbors said he was home most nights.