The automatic sliding doors to the big drugstore stood open, jammed on the half-consumed synthetic rubber seals of their sliding tracks before the power had failed completely. It was quite plain which sections of the linoleum floors were infected, as a trench of goo ran down the center, flanked by footprints spreading out like uncooked pancakes on a griddle. He did his best to avoid getting any on his shoes; the shoes were leather with leather soles, but stitched together, no doubt, with polyester thread. A few people desultorily rummaged the shelves, but he’d plainly missed the party where looting was concerned. All the food items, water, batteries, and electronic items were gone. The cooler and freezer doors were hanging open. Someone had forced open the metal cage protecting the pharmacy proper, whose shelves were stripped bare. Amit did, however, find a few bottles of isopropyl at the back of one of the bottom retail shelves, and the bottles weren’t sticky or deformed, so he tucked two of them into his laptop case.
The sun was straight up in the southern sky. Half the day gone already. He saw no choice but to keep going. Wearily, he set out down Canal Street, past warehouses and storage units, overgrown lots, and barbed-wire-topped enclosures with hundreds of trucks inside. There were no hysterical half-dressed folk dashing about here, just a grim procession, strewn along the broad streets, of those who realized a big city was nowhere to be once the trucks and trains stopped running. One foot in front of the other down Lakeshore Drive. He passed the majestic Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry, and continued towards the South Shore and its less prestigious sights.
Just at dusk, he heard a car, one of the few still running. A large, dark car with tinted windows, playing loud thumping music, pulled up beside him. He braced himself for the worst. A grey-haired Indian man with a computer, walking alone through a neighborhood like this at night, was a like koi among sharks, and he doubted the police were going to be much of a presence without any running cars. He walked ahead, trying to ignore the vehicle while remaining alert. He calmed himself as much as he could, thinking about how he’d never imagined his life ending like this. He’d known it was too good to last: he’d not yet seen any of the human predators from the districts on the far side of the freeway cross over to attack the refugees among whom he walked. But apparently his luck was running out.
Then, a familiar, woman’s voice rang out: “Professor!”
He turned around and saw Juni, standing by the driver’s door, waving to him across the hood of the car. Relief flooded through him. Joyfully, he walked to the passenger side and climbed in. He settled himself into the comfortable leather seat of Juni’s Town Car with a deep and appreciative sigh.
“What happened, Professor? Are you all right?” She looked at him with a furrowed brow, deep circles under her eyes, her normally meticulously coiffed hair in a kerchief.
“Juni, did anyone follow you?” Amit realized he sounded paranoid, but he didn’t care.
“What do you mean? Of course not. Who would follow me?” She eyed the rear-view mirror nervously.
“Good. Where have you been since I saw you?” Amit asked. Juni fastened her seat belt. The car was running but she hadn’t put it in gear.
“I went to the hospital in the cab you hailed for me, but their X-ray table was in bad shape, so they couldn’t X-ray my ankle—it’s fine, now, anyway, a little swollen, but not hurting to walk on anymore. So, I went home with my husband when he got there.” Her face turned instantly gloomy and pallid. She sat looking straight ahead at the windshield, lost in a private vision.
“…Your husband?” Prompted Amit. He realized the car doors were unlocked and pushed the button to lock them.
“He got out at the Jewel to look inside for food.” She spoke slowly. “He left me locked in the car, waiting, with the engine running, and made me promise to start the car, drive away, and keep going if he wasn’t back in an hour.” She glanced at Amit, then quickly turned her eyes to the horizon again. In her silence, he inferred what she couldn’t force herself to utter audibly.
“Juni, I’m sorry.” Amit spoke softly.
She produced four sharp sobs and turned her head away. After a long pause, she drew a breath and said, “I’m sure he’s alright.”
“Where are you going, Juni?” Asked Amit, knowing when to change the subject.
“He told me to keep driving until I hit Indiana. He said the country is safer than the city. Maybe the machine sickness hasn’t reached there yet.”
“Machine…sickness?”
“Yes, when the plastic parts in the machines and the fuel starts to decay and then the goo infects other machines. It’s like a sickness. It spreads.”
“Machine sickness. Yes. Good description. I wonder who thought of it. Listen, Juni, I believe I have a place where we can go. I promise I’ll tell you as we go. But first, let me do something.”
He pulled one bottle of isopropyl out of his laptop case and, grabbing a tissue from Juni’s console, he wiped his shoes and drenched the parts of the carpet where his shoes had touched. Juni had a bottle of hand sanitizer too, and he made her slather her hands while he wiped down her tennis shoes, feet, and ankles (her ankle did look fine, just barely swollen). She was wearing jeans, a kente cloth shirt with a hoodie over it, and a matching headwrap over her hair. He blotted isopropyl into the carpet under her feet, and wiped the trim around the car door. The steering wheel was smooth, no sign of decay in the plastic, but he wiped it down as well, just to be sure. The gas gauge showed almost full.
“When did you last fill up?” He asked.
“All the gas pumps were broken, so Jim filled the tank with gas from the shed he kept for the riding lawnmower.”
“Good, that probably wasn’t infected then. We have a shot at making it.”
“Making it where?”
“Indiana, as your husband said. Just drive.”
Juni put her foot on the gas and off they went. Amit said, “I promised to tell you where we are going. First, I must tell you the story of Sutokata.
“When I was a young man, a million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had some hippie friends at college. One of them was Hank. Hank had been a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam and was in school on the GI Bill. He’s also one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. Literature, philosophy, physics, calculus, biology, economics, psychology—Hank aced every class he took, without studying. He'd attend lectures, flip through the book while the teacher talked, and bam!” Amit clapped. “He had it. Mind like a steel trap.”
“Like a lot of soldiers back from Viet Nam, Hank got disillusioned by the war and disgusted with the state of the country. Like a lot of people in his generation, he turned on, tuned in, and in his third year of college, when they were pressuring him to choose a major, he dropped out.
“But in Hank’s case, dropping out meant building something totally new. That’s just the way he is. He and his wife Suzanne took new names: Snowbear and Akisni. They bought a plot of land in the middle of nowhere and built a self-sufficient compound. They called it Sutokata, which means seed of the future in Lakota.”
“Sounds primitive.” Juni said.
Amit smiled. “In the best sense. Suzanne—Akisni, which means “healing” in Lakota—was a trained midwife and has become something of an herbalist. She's the anchor who holds Hank—Snowbear—down to earth when he starts wandering off on one of his space journeys.” Amit made spiraling movements next to both temples. “At least, that's how things used to be with them. It's been a while since we've seen each other. But we keep in touch.”
XL.
Root Beer and Everclear
DD put on her rigid-soled hiking boots from the moving truck, and with those protecting her feet as they continued to heal, she was able to take a full four-hour shift pedaling the bike rickshaw. They established a routine: Jessica rode onward on the scooter, stopping at least every hour or so, or sooner if there was an auspicious salvage site, to let them catch up. She’d perch on her scooter, helmet under her arm, and
patiently wait until they reached her. DD’s heart never failed to leap when she first spotted the child whose loss she’d so deeply mourned, but she quickly quashed the emotion, sure she was being played for a fool once again.
“You don’t trust your daughter, do you?” Jeremy asked suddenly one day, sitting in the back of the Pedi cab.
“I don’t trust anyone.” DD said shortly, conserving her breath for the slight incline ahead of her.
“Didn’t think so.”
In a few spots, the way had been blocked by immovable cars and trucks, and they’d crawled their cycles on foot along narrow winding pathways that they picked through the obstruction. They were two of the few vehicles still moving. Cycles definitely had an advantage on the rapidly-deteriorating roads.
They stuck to highways and interstates, which were mostly still in pretty good shape, though they hit a few stretches where the asphalt was crazed or melted into a sticky goo. These seemed to be typically in high-traffic areas where lots of vehicles used to change speed or direction, or else where there were overhead lights for birds to perch on. DD supposed that the birds were carrying the bacteria in their crops and passing it in their feces.
There were lots of people on foot, and a few had devised ways of replacing bicycle tires like Jeremy had: rope was a popular material choice, but so were rolled-up newspapers, and also sewn canvas tubes stuffed with various materials.
Once, shortly after starting out from a rest break, Jessica came across a woman crouching over a small child who was lying supine on the ground, while two older children stood by her, silently watching. The woman didn’t bother to look up as they approached, even when Jessica walked up and stood over her.
“Something wrong?” She asked.
The woman finally lifted her tearful face to regard her, and Jessica saw blood on the ground underneath the child’s head. It was a little girl, dark-skinned like her mother and siblings, with thick, dark, coarse hair that pegged them as mestizos or Indians. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt with a unicorn printed on it. Her feet were neatly wrapped in strips of cloth which had been stitched with care into passable shoes.
“What happened?” Jessica asked, just as DD and Jeremy rolled up, DD pedaling and Jeremy riding. They dismounted and the woman just barely flinched when she saw Jeremy.
“This guy—she didn’t do nothing...” The woman had a mild Spanish accent. “We was walking and he walked up behind us. He just, just, hit her with a stick he was carrying. There was something wrong with him. He started yelling crazy stuff and ran off...”
“What did he look like?” Jeremy asked, suddenly watchful.
“Tall, skinny black guy, red shirt, grey hair...” Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. He spun on his heel and strode off in search of the assailant.
Jessica was already on her knees next to the girl. “She’s breathing with a good pulse. What’s her name?”
“Martha.” She pronounced it in the Spanish manner, with a hard T: Marta.
“Martha,” called Jessica. “Can you hear me? Puedes oirme? Does she speak English?”
“She speaks English.”
The little girl opened her brown eyes. “Mamá?” she asked. Her mama knelt across from Jessica.
“Martha,” said Jessica, fearing skull or neck injuries, “do you hurt anywhere?”
“My head,” the little girl said. She was about four years old. She sat up before Jessica could stop her, immediately twisting her head to look over her shoulder at DD. Jeremy walked off to circle around and make sure the attacker wasn’t nearby. Jessica looked at the wound on her head, then went to her scooter and took out a bandanna, which she saturated with Everclear from one of the fuel bottles in her saddlebag.
“This will sting,” she warned, and Martha whimpered a little as she cleaned out the wound. “It would probably be better to sew it up, but...”
Martha’s mother wordlessly pulled a spool of thread and a needle out of her pocket and held them out to Jessica. “...but I’m not a doctor,” finished Jessica. Martha’s mother shrugged. She threaded the needle and bent over her child’s head.
“Have you done that before?” Asked Jessica.
“Not on a human.” The mother’s voice didn’t shake. She pushed the edges of the wound together.
“Let me!” Jessica took the needle and thread. The little girl was stoic, not whimpering or weeping. Once, she flinched and hissed a breath in between her teeth, but instantly regained her almost-eerie composure, and soon the wound was closed, a little snip of white thread in her mass of black hair the only sign of it. Jessica dabbed it with a little more Everclear, then patted Martha on the hip. “All done.” She smiled as the girl ran to her mother’s side.
The sun was close to the horizon now. “Should we go on?” DD tossed out to the group. “Or stop for the night?
“Me and the kids were going to camp under this overpass,” volunteered the woman.
“My name’s DD. This is Jessica... and Jeremy.” Jeremy had just sauntered up, satisfied that the assailant was gone for now, and stood considering them. Martha was standing next to her brother and sister, all three of them quietly watching the adults from a row of brunet almond eyes in solemn faces.
“Gabriela.” She took DD’s proffered hand. Then Gabriela leaned over and kissed Jessica’s cheek. “Thanks for stitching up Marthita’s head.”
“No problem.” Jessica shrugged. “I’m an LPN. I worked at an urgent care center where the doc was getting old. He had shaky hands. I wound up doing a lot of his wound closures after the first few months.” Jessica turned to her mother. “Let’s spend the night here.” Gabriela’s tiny smile let them know she welcomed their company after her scare. Jeremy nodded silently.
DD nodded quietly. I wonder why she lost that job. A lot of doctors keep narcotics in the office.
The weather was fair and cool and appeared likely to remain so, so they decided the shelter of the dry but reeking, grubby overpass was unnecessary. Instead, they found a flat, dry, leeward spot where a retaining wall ran up against an embankment and set up camp there. They hung tarps and blankets overhead against the morning dew, spread more on the ground, and built a small fire. Pooling their food stores, they produced an enjoyable meal of hot dogs, canned beans, corn tortillas, sliced apples, and chocolate bars.
They drew closer to the fire as the night grew colder.
Sitting around the fire with full stomachs, DD extracted a 6-pack of glass bottles of root beer from the rickshaw. She'd liberated it from the stinking refrigerator of an abandoned home a few miles back.
“Jessica, how much of that Everclear do you have left?”
“Four gallons. Enough for a couple more days.”
“Can you spare a pint or so? I bet it would mix well with this root beer.”
“Mom!”
“Sounds like a country song, doesn’t it? Root beer and Everclear.” They swigged a few ounces from each bottle so they could top off with alcohol.
Jessica passed the Everclear bottle instead of pouring. “I’m allergic,” she told Gabriela.
“You don’t drink anymore?” Asked DD.
“No, I realized the drugs and alcohol were part of what set me off. It wasn’t easy. I started drinking when I was 13, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
Jessica laughed. “Mom, do you really want to know all this? You were so sure you had everything under control all the time, it was easy to convince you of what you wanted to see.”
“How could I not have known?” DD replayed Jessica’s late childhood and adolescence in her head: She caught her and a girlfriend trying cigarettes behind the garage at age 12 and confiscated her phone for a week. Normal kid stuff, or at least it seemed that way to DD, after her own upbringing.
She’d had no clue the rest was going on. Not until Jessica started driving. Then, she disappeared for a day, right before Christmas break of her sophomore year. Then, she disappeared in her junior year, for the entire week of Spring
Break, sending a text message every couple of days saying she was out of signal, her phone was dead, she was on her way home, she’d call in a few days. Then she started showing up, nodding off or jittering on the balls of her feet. She’d appear at odd times at DD’s work, or at home, with boyfriends with eyes blue as toilet cleaner or green as snake bile in pustule-ravaged faces, teeth like the windows of abandoned houses, and homemade tattoos on wrists, neck, face. Every attempt to confront her led to a fight and withdrawal. Jessica appeared to straighten out for a while and raised her grades. But then she began cutting, neat slices in her forearms and the fronts of her thighs. Her father withdrew into silence and soothed his unacknowledged pain with online shopping, until the cards were maxed out to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars and he could no longer hide it.
The divorce, though amicable, occupied DD's attention. Jessica appeared to straighten out; she was in therapy, and she qualified for a full-ride scholarship. Then, Spring of her senior year, not long after her 18th birthday, Jessica moved out abruptly. Soon after, DD got a call; Jessica had stopped showing up at high school entirely. Jessica’s phone was cut off. Her apartment was vacant, but like a tornado had struck it, childhood stuffed animals alongside sacks of rotting trash, irreplaceable family photos ruined by dripping candle wax, where the power had obviously been off for weeks. The landlord hoping DD would make good the unpaid rent, and DD guiltily refusing.
This is bringing up too many painful memories. “I guess I should have listened to you instead of trying to force you to succeed according to my standards. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay mom. I only have one regret. I wish I’d been born Swiss.”
“What’s so great about being Swiss?”
“I’m not sure. But the flag is a big plus.”
Everyone was quiet for a while and sipped their drinks. DD was grateful for the silence as it gave her a chance to integrate her feelings and recollections. The children were under a blanket; one of them was snoring ever so softly. The warmth of the liquor spread through their bodies and the gibbous moon drifted higher in the firmament.
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 15