The China Pandemic (3 page)

They were the lucky ones, being able to bury their dead. Most families without someone in the two percent living were left unburied. They lay in hospital beds, their own beds and sometimes in vehicles, trying to reach a destination or escape from the travesty of a life they had once known.

Early on, ailing and dying people overran the hospitals and after attempting to encase every single dead body in plastic body bags, workers soon ran out of those supplies. As things progressed, they resorted to simply burning them in parking lots. There were dead bodies everywhere—corpses left to decompose as nature intended. Natural elements either sped up or slowed down the process of decay, depending on daily conditions.

This encouraged the animal kingdom to descend in droves out of the forests and into the normally forbidden land of man. They peered around houses and onto the black asphalt-topped roads, lining the maze of streets beyond their borders. Tempted in by the lack of manmade noises that had formerly kept them at bay, they now were enticed by the aroma of rotting flesh. Out of desperation, neglected family pets soon either became prey or reverted to their feral state. They formed large packs, which often tangled with the wild side.

Coyotes, wolves, bears and bobcats chased their natural prey, the deer, which were once only seen at dusk and dawn. The sound of the ruminants’ clip-clopping hooves on the hardened road surface and concrete sidewalks were heard by few people now. Those humans who remained would then hear the sound of savagery as the prey suffered death by fang and claw. This left those who endured to the end with an intense fear of being hunted by beasts. So they remained in the shadows of their shelters, running out of resources day by day.

~ ~ ~

Graham put the boy down and locked the door. The wind picked up and the rain started again. The child just stood there, dazed. Graham looked out at the graves, which now totaled six. He leaned his head against the cold glass, fighting back the pain. He thought about the answer his father gave him for his question, “Why should I go on?” The old man had replied, “You’ll find a reason or the reason will find you.” He looked down at the boy.
Great!
My reason’s a pissed off Asian kid?

Graham sighed and looked down to his boots. They were caked in mud, so he began to wipe them off on the mat but saw how useless that was. He then removed them instead and glanced at the boy’s tennis shoes, which were filthy as well; too filthy to track around his mother’s house.

“Hey, take off your shoes,” he said.

“I want to go home,” the boy whined.

Graham spun him around to face him. “Listen, your mother spent the last moments of her life trying to save yours. She brought you to me and I promised to take care of you. I’ll do that until you manage to get yourself killed. Until then, you will do what I say, when I say it, and if you leave my sight again, you won’t get two blocks before you’re attacked by big, mean dogs. Only this time, I won’t save your ass because you didn’t listen to me. Got it?”

The boy cried, but he also took terrified glances to the darkening outside and Graham hoped the warning was enough to keep him from running off again. The truth was that he could have easily been mauled to death earlier.

“Now, take off your shoes,” he ordered again.

The boy sat down on the carpet and untied his shoes. He still sniffled but at least complied.

“Are you hungry?” Graham asked, trying for a kinder tone.

The boy didn’t look up at him.

Graham didn’t feel like eating now, either. He looked down at his dirt-covered hands. He was concerned the kid might try to run off if he turned his back. “Okay, listen. I’ve got to go shower. You have two choices. You can either promise me you’ll stay here and behave, or get eaten by the dogs outside. What’s it going to be, because I don’t have time for this?”

Between sobs the boy said, “Stay.”

“All right,” Graham said. “It’s getting dark in here. Let’s go to the back.” The boy picked up his backpack from beside the door and Graham realized he hadn’t even seen it there before. The kid followed him.

Since the illness had begun, his family had kept the house mostly dark at night. Graham used a flashlight to light their way to the back of the house. He opened the bedroom door, revealing a pair of twin beds.

“That’s my bed, by the window. You can sleep there,” Graham said, pointing to the one nearest the door.” He pointed again. “That’s the bathroom, across the hall. I want you to go do your business and wash your hands.”

The boy looked up at him. Graham started to feel guilty for being so harsh with him, but it was for his own good. The kid walked into the bathroom with the nightlight casting a soft glow, closing the door behind him.

Graham heard the water running so he waited in the hall for the boy to finish. In the meantime, he leaned his head back against the hall closet wall. He hadn’t eaten anything today but knew if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to keep it down.

His thoughts wandered back to dawn and his father’s death. Graham couldn’t suppress the tears anymore. He bowed his head, and when he looked down, the boy was standing there looking up at him. Graham wiped his tears away.

“Are you all done?” he asked the boy, who nodded. He walked him into the bedroom and pulled back the blankets on the bed for him. “Okay, climb in,” he told him.

The boy climbed up and Graham pulled the covers over him. “I’ve got to take a shower. You’re going to stay right here, right?” Graham asked. The boy nodded, but his lower lip quivered.

“What’s your name?” The boy hesitated. “Look, my name’s Graham. What’s yours?” he asked him again.

“Bang,” the boy said.

Graham wasn’t sure he heard it right. “What?” he asked again.

“Bang!” the boy said and rolled over, weeping.

Graham felt even guiltier now, “All right, Bang, I’m going to take a quick shower. I’ll be right back.” He patted the boy but Bang jerked away from his touch.

Graham closed the bedroom door but left the bathroom open so he could listen for any noise. He looked at himself in the mirror, still holding his rifle over his shoulder, and saw a man he didn’t recognize. He was filthy and utterly spent—both of energy and of emotion. He peeled off his dirty clothes and turned on the shower. He propped the rifle nearby and kept the curtain partially open so he could see out. He let the hot steamy water run over his worn body, watching the clear water turn brown as it drained away. He cried again, because the strongest man he’d ever known lay cold in a grave tonight. After showering off the dirt of graves, he emerged, finding the boy asleep.

He stopped at the door and watched the sleeping child, then noticed the leather book lying atop the kid-size backpack. He picked it up and sat down on his own bed. With the golden glow of the night light, he unwrapped the leather binding. The first few pages showed a genealogy tree with Bang in the end. Photos and names of the ancestors delicately translated into English below what he guessed were Korean names. The brave lady bearing Bang’s likeness had indeed been a beauty. His stomach knotted from knowing the pain of losing his own mother too. He turned the pages slowly until a loosely folded letter addressed to him came into view. It read:

“Dear Mr. Graham,

“I’m writing to you this letter with a happy heart. I know you are a good man and will take good care of my son Bang. Please keep him safe and remind him of his father and me. When he is sad, ask him to tell you of his whole family and the people we were. We will be with you both in spirit.

“I will tell you a little about Bang so that you will know how to care for him.

“We are Korean American. My father bravely escaped the death camps of North Korea, Bang knows of the story. He is five years old and his birthday is July 15th. His birth took place in Seattle, Washington.

“He loves cars and animals. He is scared of the dark and sometimes has bad dreams. I taught him he must be brave for you. He is a good hunter of small game.”

Reading this, Graham lifted his head and looked over at the boy.

“His father and I trained him well to fish and hunt duck, rabbits and squirrels. He knows how to set small snares and traps for them. His bow and arrows are in his backpack along with his slingshot.

“He is quiet most times but can read and write well for his age. Most importantly, I believe you need him as much as he needs you.”

There it is again, that same idea Dad expressed.

“You are both alone now. That is why I chose you over the others.”

Obviously, she wrote the next part later, because the handwriting wasn’t as smooth or as calm as before.

“Please read my warning!

“When you take Bang and leave this place, I must warn you about a very bad man named Campos. I watched all the living here at night to make my decision. He has killed two of the few that walked into town. When you take Bang, please go at night away from the highway exit. He stays at the gas station there by a small blue trimmed house. He seems like his mind is gone and he speaks to himself out loud in different voices. He’s very dangerous. Please avoid him. He has guns and carries a hatchet on his belt in the back at all times. He keeps the fires in the dumpster going and he even threw one of the survivors into it alive. When you leave don’t make any noise with a car, or I fear he will find you and Bang. Stay hidden from him.

“Do not be sad for those you lost, Mr. Graham. You now have someone to live for.

“With my deepest gratitude as a mother,

Hyun-Ok”

Graham refolded the letter and slipped it back into the book, rewrapping the binding. He wasn’t sure what to think of the boy. He wasn’t surprised by the warning since he’d often heard the distant sound of gunfire and had seen the black smoke drifting this way almost every evening. So far, he hadn’t ventured that way since his dad implemented the no contact order. They mostly stayed close to the house and then his family started dying, so he certainly hadn’t thought of going anywhere until now. Now that he knew of the danger, he would have to devise a plan for him and Bang to exit this place safely.

Unfortunately, the direction he needed to take to get to his family’s cabin led him right through the trouble-spot. They were landlocked by man and nature both. To get to the other side of the highway, raised like a causeway there, and lined with boulder walls on each side, they needed to cross the interstate bridge right in front of this Campos fellow. This guy sounded pretty bad, and regrettably the immunity to the virus wasn’t confined to good people alone, like his dad had warned him.

Then, like most nights before he went to sleep, Graham cleaned the gun that he kept at the ready, taking pleasure in the routine and familiar task. Somehow, this act in recent days had taken over his typical pre-bed ritual of reading a chapter or two of a chosen novel before nodding off. Now, he felt the world around him mirrored some of the dystopian novels too much to enjoy them.

Just before he woke, his father’s death replayed in his dreams. The desperate pleas from him, hoping he’d given his son every bit of advice he would need to survive, remained with him as sleep left. Then he opened his eyes and became aware of a sleepy little Asian boy sitting atop the adjacent bed, leaning against the headboard. He rubbed at his morning eyes and yawned. For a minute, Graham couldn’t make the connection. Then it all came back to him from the day before, losing two and gaining one.

This new day brought with it a new purpose, one Graham could look forward to because now he had a boy to look after and that meant he needed to keep him safely away from harm. He felt the burden of the promise. He did not resent it, though it had come unexpectedly.
Well, time to get the hell out of here especially considering Hyun-Ok’s warning
.

“Morning, Bang. You sleep well?” he asked. Bang nodded at this question. From the sad little face, Graham he knew yesterday’s facts were draping themselves into reality for him, as well. Bang let himself drop back down to his pillow.

“I’m going to take another shower this morning because we probably won’t be able to get clean for a while until we get to the new place. After I’m done, you can take a shower or a bath, too, whatever you’d like to do. You do know how to take a shower, right?” Graham asked him. The boy nodded.

Hell! I don’t know what to do with a five-year-old. Guess I better let him figure it out and if he comes out clean then that would do. A stinky little boy will be the least I have to worry about. Heck, we’re both going to be pretty ripe soon enough. It looks like I’m going to have to find a way out of town tonight, sans engine.

Graham grabbed a change of clothes, went back to the bathroom and turned on the hot steamy shower. He tried to wash away his grief and banish the uncertainty of what lay ahead. While in there he came up with an idea. Maybe they could take the bikes in the garage. They were quiet and they would not make as much noise as his truck when getting out of town. He did not know if Bang could ride a bike. His niece’s bike would have to do, being about the right size, though girly.

He sure hoped the boy knew how to ride because teaching him out front in the driveway would be too risky. As he thought about it, teaching a kid he hardly knew hit right up there with experiencing parenthood. He, being a novice guardian at best, felt severely unprepared. He wished he could go in the next room and ask his dad. He would just have to rely on his own experiences as a kid. He figured his parents were pretty decent with him and his sister, so he would just ask himself what his mom or dad would do as each case presented itself. He’d made a promise to Hyun-Ok and as best he could, he meant to keep it.

Finally, the day had come where he would set into place what he and his father had planned. Now these plans had to include a young boy too. It would certainly slow him down, but he’d never been a loner in life and started to warm to the idea of having the kid along. At least it gave him a legitimate reason to talk, with no one accusing him of talking to himself.

After getting ready, he contemplated shaving, but somehow he just could not bring himself to do it. Looking at his own reflection, he saw only a worn man full of grief, someone he did not know at all.

Ready for the day, he headed into the bedroom. He found a neatly folded solid blue comforter but no boy. “Bang?” he called, panicked, and he ran into the kitchen searching for the kid. He cursed himself for not leaving the door open. He did not have to look long. He found Bang staring out the glass door to his mother’s grave.

The boy’s eyes had still not lost their sleepy morning gaze. “All right, buddy, it’s your turn,” he said with relief. “You do know how to turn on the shower, right?” The boy grabbed his backpack without looking up at Graham and stomped past him. He headed down the hall and into the steamy mist of the bathroom beyond. Graham watched him as he closed the door. Somehow, he did not quite believe the kid could do it all by himself, as tiny as he was.

Graham turned on the Keurig one last time and leaned against the counter. He and his father joked, before the first of them died, about who would get the last K-cup of coffee. His dad dubbed it as the ‘last stander’ trophy. Graham flipped the white cup around a few times and opened the Keurig’s latch, popping the cup in with its familiar snap. They’d been without coffee for three weeks now. This last single cup was a kind of morbid symbol. He let the machine go through its rowdy routine. The pleasing aroma filtered through the room, which made the first tears of the day slip gently down his sunken cheeks. Graham lifted his steaming cup with a tip to his departed father as he sipped down the black brew. He needed this caffeine jolt to begin this day. His father was right. If it were not for the promised plan, he would not make it for long here in this silence.

Bang emerged from the bathroom and walked back down the hall towards Graham, dragging his feet and his backpack. Besides that, he looked and smelled fairly well cleaned to Graham’s summation.

“Good job, buddy. You look pretty clean. Let’s get some breakfast and start packing up this place. We have got a lot to do before we head out tonight,” Graham told him.

Graham reached down and lifted up the boy’s light weight easily onto the granite counter top. He needed to talk to him while preparing some leftover beans and rice he’d made the day before. Initially, it was enough to last him and his dad a few more days. Now, they’d have to throw some out.

Luckily, for Graham’s family, his mother’s southern roots taught her always to stock a pantry well. She kept twenty-five pound sacks of pinto beans and rice in quantity. She shopped at Costco weekly and always prepared for emergencies. After having lived through the aftermath of several hurricanes, droughts and one calamity after another while growing up in south Texas, she argued it just made sense to be prepared.

While the family quickly grew tired of beans and rice, they never grew hungry. Grabbing a second bowl for the boy, Graham considered him and asked something his mother always asked his friends. It had always caused him great embarrassment as a kid.

“Are you allergic to anything?”

The boy just raised his shoulders and made a face instead of answering. Not ever running across anyone allergic to the concoction, Graham decided it was a safe bet he could have it. He knew now this parenting thing left him with a lot to consider.

As he’d always done for his niece, Graham pulled out the little red plastic cup reserved for her. He filled it with cold tap water that thankfully still ran. He handed it to Bang with the steaming bowl of food. The boy peered down at his bowl and for a second, Graham thought he might toss it on the floor, but hunger won out.

Seeing this, Graham felt a pang of guilt at how easy their family really had it. At least, they had not gone hungry. He felt happy to be able to ease the boy’s hunger even in this little way. Once he finished, Graham debated giving him seconds, but thought it might not be a good idea. Instead, he opted to offer him more clean water. He did not want the boy to lose what he’d gained.

With their meal completed, Graham took the time to ask him a few questions. After all, he’d only known the kid a few hours and held full responsibility for his life now. As much information as he could get would help him decide their next step. Graham knew they would be leaving for the family cabin, isolated up towards the Old Cascade Highway by the Skagit River tonight. The plans were already made. At least, they would be safe from the animals and the stench that brought them in here to civilization.

Waiting for his father to pass felt like the only thing holding him back. His father would never consider being buried away from his mother. Even now, he could hear the howls of the packs in the distance at night. Additionally, the fires that started in Seattle continued to grow unabated. What started as a distant glow seemed to be spreading, consuming the vast amounts of fuel rapaciously on its way.

“So, it’s just you and me now,” he said to the boy sitting on the counter with his small legs dangling down, resting his heels against the cupboard. He knew he needed to get some dialog going with the obstinate child. Remembering the letter Hyun-Ok wrote, he asked, “So, how old are you, Bang?”

Instead of answering, Bang held up his hand and splayed five fingers. Graham tried again.

“Can you hunt?” he asked. The boy’s face brightened a little and he nodded his response. “Well, I’ll have to see you do that sometime,” he said, trying to make the best of it, even if the boy did not want to talk back.

Graham thought he should probably make a few things clear to his new ward before they got started. “Bang, we need to set a few rules to be safe,” he said. Recalling his sister’s voice to her own daughter, he said, “You need to always stay in my line of sight. I need to know where you are, all the time. If you have any questions, you can ask me, all right?”

Bang just nodded.

“Do you have any questions?” Graham asked him, putting him on the spot, and waited for a response.

The boy’s face was blank, but then he asked all of a sudden, “Do you have a truck?”

With a relieved smile, Graham knew he’d made some kind of break-through with the boy. He also remembered being a boy of five himself and an aficionado of trucks. “Yes, I have a blue truck. I thought we would use it today but now I think we’ll have to make different plans.

“We have to leave here tonight and go somewhere that’s safer before the winter weather takes hold. We’ll start packing now and leave after dark. We have a lot of work to do.” He helped Bang down from the counter.

Graham pulled out several Ziploc gallon bags and showed Bang how to fill and seal them with the leftover dry rice remaining in the opened twenty-five pound bag.

Watching the child sift the little grains into the bags with a cup there in the kitchen reminded Graham of memories only recently made. Though partial to the pinto bean as versatile as it is, his mother did not restrict them to only one kind of rice. There were ten twenty-five pound bags of several different varieties left stored in the garage. It kept things from getting too boring, at least. She had stored Jasmine, Calrose, Long Grain and Basmati.

He and his dad jokingly fought over which bag they would open next, finally settling on a system of rotation. Graham favored the Jasmine, but Dad preferred the short sticky grain, Calrose. His father argued the benefits were that it, “stuck to your ribs,” and said, “Now that’s rice that’ll get you through men’s work.”

Here I go again, stirring up memories that will do nothing but hold me back today.
Though Graham knew it was probably normal to go through his memory file after someone important passed away, he wondered if Bang also had the same issue. He hoped not, since he had the benefit of being in different surroundings. There were not as many stimuli to provoke such memories. Once they got to the cabin Graham hoped the reminiscences would subside a little. He did not want them to go away completely, just enough to prevent him from going insane.

After showing the boy how to continue the task, he said, “I’m going to go right over there to the garage to work on a few things. I’ll leave the door open, so if you need anything, yell.” Bang just looked up at him, nodded, and then continued his work, but Graham noticed the boy glance over to the couch where his mother had died. His memories were there too.

Leaving Bang to his task, Graham propped open the garage door with the petrified rock his dad kept there for that purpose. The first thing that came to him in the darkness was the scent of his father.

He flipped on the light and looked at the bikes neatly stored along the ceiling hooks. He pulled down the one his dad often rode as well as his niece’s pink Barbie bike that his parents kept for their granddaughter’s visits. He cringed at the pink sparkly tassels. Being a boy himself, he would not have dared be seen on one of these at Bang’s age in normal times. However, these were not normal times and the kid would just have to deal with it. Graham quickly pulled off the tassels and the basket, but that was the best he could do right now.

He brought the little bike over to his dad’s workbench. He looked around and could sense the man who usually worked there on various projects. He considered using the noisy air compressor to fill the tires, but it probably was not worth the risk of attracting attention, so he opted for the handheld pump they’d always taken with them on long rides.

Graham grew uneasy at the silence from the kitchen and went back to the door to check. The boy was still busy at the bottom of the big bag so he said, “Come out here when you’re done.”

He’d taken care of his niece a few times, but never held the sole responsibility of a child. He decided he both liked and disliked the duty. He could not quite pinpoint why the job came as a hindrance to him, but it made him feel vulnerable somehow. He had only been the boy’s guardian for twenty-four hours now. He knew he’d have to kill anyone who would want to harm the boy and for him that came as a shock. He’d never before adopted what he thought of as the macho-man attitude but there it was.

Back to the little bike, Graham put it down on the concrete floor and pressed his own weight down on the seat and handlebars, rolling it across the garage. He wanted to listen to the noise it made or rather see if the noise attracted attention. Noticing the typical clickety-click of the chain, he heard something unexpected. He knelt down and saw bunches of pine needles wrapped around the back wheel-slot and bits of brush in the spokes. He picked them out and cleaned it up. Next, he oiled the chain and spun the pedals to work it in. Satisfied that he’d made the bike as soundless as possible, barring the typical chain noise, he turned his attention to his own bike, doing the same.

Next on the list, his mom’s bike cargo trailer they’d often taken along for picnics. This one consisted of a two-wheel configuration that attached with a hitch to the back wheel joint. The flat platform measured to fit a heavy duty lidded blue storage container. Repurposing this from remembered family picnics to a survival escape trek took little effort. Graham simply dusted it off, rolled it around to listen for any excess noise and oiled its moving parts.