The Days and Months We Were First Born- the Unraveling (5 page)

David said he was in his home the morning the news broke. He had left work early the day before, and was prepared for a flight to his hometown, Portland, at three o’clock that Saturday afternoon. When he learned that the virus was going to touch everyone, he tried calling his family; and like me, like billions of others, he couldn’t reach anyone.

Naturally, David was frantic. He went outside to get tested; and he was blown away by the scene. It was similar to what I saw: people in masks; soldiers and police throughout the crowd; plus utter confusion and drama from his neighbors.

He came up immune. Then he returned home, condensed his possessions to one suitcase, and set out for LaGuardia Airport, despite martial law.

He had to walk there. It took him several hours to make it through midtown, over the Ed Koch Bridge, and through Queens. Soldiers and police were everywhere, but they didn’t stop anyone from coming or going. They were only concerned with keeping order.

The airport was barricaded upon David’s arrival. But
that didn’t deter him one bit—him or
a few thousand others
.
The sizable crowd protested that they should be allowed to fly out of town. But the line of East American Soldiers, State Troopers, and NYPD held fast.

Eventually it grew hostile. Someone from the crowd threw a bottle of lye on one of the soldiers, and a storm of violence ensued.

The crowd rushed forward, and the line of defense opened fire. People fell all around David, either succumbed to rubber bullets, or stunned by sonar rays. The crowd reversed direction and scattered as best they could; but as the crowd retreated, many were trampled. David said he was helpless as he and hundreds of others were forced to step on and over the fallen. It was a matter of survival. To stop was to fall and die; to keep forward was a chance to live.

After a few terror-filled minutes, David escaped the danger. Then he returned home, shaken but intact.

A couple of days later, David finally heard from his sister, Calina. She said everyone was infected except for a few of his nieces and nephews. Calina said she drove to Portland from Los Angeles to see their parents, their brother, and two of their sisters. She also said they all planned to stay under one roof, likely at their parents, to wait out whatever happened. David told his sister he was immune, and he explained what had happened at the airport. Brother and sister talked for over half an hour. And then the phone went dead.

David said he couldn’t reach anyone after that, and he became depressed. Portland was too far. He didn’t know how to get there, or what to expect once he made it. So he remained in his home. He watched the news, did a lot of sleeping, did a lot of crying, and only went outside once to get a round of food rations on August 1
st
. David stopped showering, he stopped shaving, and he was completely absorbed into his dark thoughts. He even contemplated suicide, but couldn’t quite take it to that extreme.

David said that his stupor lasted until the night of August 7
th
. On that night, a group of thugs broke into his building. They were noisy and they were looking for victims. The apartment units had paper-thin walls, their greatest flaw, and David had excellent hearing.

A few neighbors were in their homes
as the thugs invaded. Some screamed, some begged, and there were even a few neighbors who fought back, but it was of no use. It always ended with the victims shot, and the monstrous bastards bragging and ransacking afterwards.

Terrified, David improvised and found a way out. He grabbed a set of rope that he had from a rock-climbing expedition. He also grabbed his hunting knife.
And he escaped
onto
his balcony
with minutes, perhaps seconds to spare.

He said he leapt from balcony to balcony until he was well on the other side of the building. Then he tied the rope and lowered it to the ground. Fortunately for him,
it was
only
four levels.
He climbed down. And once he hit 35
th
Street, he ran up Second Avenue, with the knife in hand, stoked with adrenaline.

He made it as far as 38
th
Street
before running into a group of our patrollers

***

David and I first met the next day. He was assigned to our unit to replace one of the men who had quit. We were in the middle of clearing an apartment on 91
st
Street. Inside was a family of four, dead by murder-suicide. He walked through the front door with his hazmat suit on and helmet in hand.

“Hi, I was sent in here by Cody. He said that I was to start with you…”

David’s voice tapered as he saw the family. The two children, a boy and a girl, were strangled. They were slumped on the opposite ends of the couch. The mother was in between them. She was against the back of the couch, with a kitchen knife plunged deep into the left side of her chest. And the husband was on the floor. He had shot himself in the left temple with a .22 caliber. He was sprawled before the family he had slain
.

And just like a new guy, David ran to a corner and began to puke.

A couple of men laughed, while others sighed in irritation. But I watched the new guy, and I felt a tinge of sympathy.

We removed the two children while David gathered his nerves in the hallway. He cursed to himself, and drank water from a bottle and spit, trying to remove the aftertaste. One man teased him as he was hunched over. “Toughen up, Mocha! It’s going to be a long day.” And David gave the man the middle finger as we walked down the hall.

By the time we came back in for the adults, David was standing by the husband’s feet, helmet on and ready to assist. I walked to the corpse’s arms, and together we lifted and carried.

“Most of us throw up on the first day,” I said.

“I bet like hell you do!” retorted David.

“I know. It’s hard. But trust me, after a while it becomes a job like any other.”

He gave me a scornful look. His eyes were intense and bloodshot red through his visor.

“A job? This isn’t a damn job,”
he said. “This is a nightmare. And somehow we’re
all stuck to live in it. I had a
real
job. Do you know what I would be doing right now? I would be in a conference call, trying to close a deal with some Soybean farmer in Midland. I would have had that Arab hick hook
,
line and sinker, eager to undersell a season’s worth of crop for sixty-five cents on the dollar. And when we were done, my partners and I would have gone to Capital Grille for steaks and a bottle of Combs 16 to celebrate. Now that, my friend, was a
job
!”

I could tell he was envisioning a juicy slab of beef and a glass-full of champagne as he spoke.

“It’s not good to think of what you
would
have been doing,” I
said.

And despite myself, I had a vision of me in Southampton, out on the beach. I was sitting in a lawn chair, watching the waves crash and drinking a Budweiser. Julie was with me. She was wearing her red tinted shades, the pair that covered half her face. She had on a skimpy bathing suit, and her skin was layered in sunscreen. It was a sunny day without a worry in the world. The following week, I was to show up in Stamford, Connecticut to begin lesson prep. I was to begin my first year as a History teacher for a private school.

“So what should we think about?” David said. “What type of life do you think we’re going to have now?”

“I don’t know…” I paused for a few seconds to gather my thoughts. “I suppose we have to let these bodies bottom out, get a hold of these bad guys, and see what we have left. But one thing is for sure. I am an optimist for my city. At some point, things will get better. Good people will find their way here. And when they do, we’ll make something out of New York…out of our lives. It won’t be what it used to be, but it’ll be something.

“My family is gone, my girlfriend is gone, my old life is just fucking gone. But I live for some reason. Whatever that reason, I intend to put it to good use….That’s something we all should do.”

David didn’t say anything. We carried the body down the two flights of stairs and to the truck in silence. Four men were standing on the passenger side of the payload, chatting and taking a breather. So far, we had eighteen bodies in the back of the truck. Usually, we went to the dumpsite when our total was fifty.

As we turned to go toward the building again, David touched my shoulder.

“I like your attitude,” he said. “The world is going to need more men who think as you do.”

He took off his right glove and extended his hand.

“My name is David Patrov.”

I removed my glove, and shook his hand firmly.

“Martin. Martin Jacob.”

The Descent of August

As August continued,
the situation deteriorated for our militia. The cancer went active around the same time David and I met, and steadily, it began taking its toll.

At first, there was only consistent coughing among the former smokers. One infected member of our unit, or another, suddenly began hacking. In reaction, we all paused to look at him or her with concern. Immediately, the hacker claimed that he or she was fine. And only slightly reassured, we all continued our work.

But the hacking didn’t stop.

Within a couple of days, the infected people’s skin became pale. The areas around their eyes became dark. The color of their lips became purple. And their bodies grew weak. The infected became bed-ridden. And on August 12
th
, we had ou
r first death: a man named Ted.

That first death had a profound
effect
on all of us. It was one thing to know that death was pending, but to actually see it happen
, well, it was a turning point. An avalanche.
By the end of that day, twenty-six others had died
.

As you can imagine, people were stressed, especially the ones who had to see their family members
succumb.
I remember this one man named Preston, who blew his brains out with a semi-automatic. We were in Windsor Court, in line for dinner, about fifty of us, when without warning, he pulled the gun out from under his shirt and
fired under his chin. Plenty of us lost our appetites that day.
Preston was immune, but his girlfriend had just died, and his tw
o children were soon to follow.
It was simply too much for the man to deal with.

And then there was Abby.
Abby had caught some guy smoking a cigarette during our break. Smoking had been forbidden in the Last Standers, it was one of the conditions for joining, but this guy was smoking anyhow. Well, Abby walked right up to this guy. She was very slow when she did it. Then
in quick motion, she removed a G
lock from her satchel, shot the poor fucker seven times, and turned the gun on herself. A
t least a
dozen of us witnessed this, but once we had caught on to her intent, she had already begun to fire. We were helpless to stop it. The incident did assure one thing, though. No one tr
ied sneaking a cigarette again.

In the beginning, there were other militias and gangs that the Last Standers collaborated with. We pooled resources, we used the same burial sites, we often ate together during breaks, we cooperated to hunt bad guys, and we had even set camp in the same buildings on certain nights. But as the resources ran tight and as the deaths began to mount, those same allies became rivals. Rivals who would just as soon set us up for the kill and take what they could. As a result, we had to keep on the move and watch our backs. And that was a hard thing to do with so many of our people were becoming immobile.

***

All of this bec
ame worse when the power
gave
on
August
25
th
.
We had set up camp at an apartment complex in Columbia City, and there were thirteen of us to each unit. (They tried to keep us segregated. Families kept with families, singles kept with singles, children kept with children, and the sick kept with the sick.). My roommates for the night and I were gathered in the living room.
We sat in a circle Indian style on the hardwood floor.
We had portable dinners heating in the microwave and
oven. And some of us were engaged in a rigorous debate.

“We have to get off this island, that’s all there is to it. How could you have the gumption to argue otherwise?” said Alicia, a former Physics teacher of Stuyvesant Charter School.

“What? And let the thugs take over? Screw that! If we’re going to leave Manhattan, what the hell have we been doing for the past month? We shouldn’t go anywhere. We’ll expand our numbers and we’ll find more food. We just need to tough it out,” said Almir, a former taxi driver who used to live in Washington Heights.

“That’s bullshit! We’re only a few hundred people. There is no food grown here. How are we supposed to survive? Eat the rats? We need to go to New Jersey or Westchester. Somewhere we can plant things. Maybe at some point we can come back here, but not now. We need to go away,” said Jharna, an Indian lady who used to work at a kiosk in Times Square.

“If you all want to leave so badly, why don’t
you just pack your shit and go!”
Almir replied.

David and I sat next to each other—we were spectators as the two sides went back and forth. Five were on the side of leaving Manhattan, led by Alicia; and five were on the side of staying, led by Almir. But as passionately as they argued, their fuss didn’t matter worth a damn. No one in the room was a decision maker for the militia. It was just a lively form of entertainment to pass the time until we went to sleep.

“She brings up a good point,” David said to me in private. “What are we going to do when we run out of food?”

“Find some more. What the hell else are we going to do?” I
said.

It was a concern for all of us, though. Long gone were the networks of trucks, planes, ships, and trains that brought supplies into town. The grocery stores were looted, the warehouses were pilfered, and the survivors were either robbing each other or scavenging apartments for whatever they could find.

“Do you think we’re going to make it here? Once the weather turns?” David said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so. Manhattan doesn’t have an infinite supply of stuff, but most people are gone already. At some point, we’ll find groups who are willing to cooperate. It’s in everyone’s best interest. What’s the point of going around killing each other? What good is that going to do?”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I hope I’m right, too.”

Suddenly, there was a plink, then darkness.

Everything stopped—the conversation, the microwave, my breathing.

I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel the unease. Then voices of concern rose from the other rooms as people began to panic.

“Oh, shit…not good. Not good,” said David.

I heard Alicia say, “See, this is why we can’t stay in Manhattan. What the hell are we suppose
d
to do without power? Huh? We’re fighting for a lost cause.”

“Shut the hell up!” barked Almir. “No one has time for your goddamn cut and run noise right now!”

“Who in the fuck are you telling to shut up?!”

The room erupted into
argument, and I couldn’t make out a single word.
People were clacking away like stressed birds in a coop.

This gaggle went on for thirty seconds before I became annoyed. Carefully, I stood up and headed for the window.
I could
barely
make the rectangular opening out, and I had to feel my way toward it, using my hands as probes and taking deliberate steps.

When I reached the window,
I
gazed out, and
could se
e the stars and the moon above.

It was beautiful. I had never seen such clarity in the New York night sky. The moon was full, and I could make out the Big Dipper, Orion, and Cassiopeia constellations. It was bright. So bright, I could see the rooftops of Harlem below.

There was a loud knock at our door. It grabbed my attention, everyone’s attention. Then someone abruptly entered our room.

“Is everything alright in here?!”

It was Wesley, one of Wu’s top lieutenants. His booming voice
echoed into
absolute hush.

“Yes. Everyone is fine, sir,” Almir answered, in a meek voice.

“Ok. Everyone sit tight. We’re going to find lights. I’ll be back soon.”

Then he was gone,
as suddenly as he entered.

No one h
ad anticipated the power going out
so soon. SkyCharge, our energy system, went down a few days after Awareness Day, but as a safety net, automated generators on the ground had kicked in. The generators were supposed to last five months to give people time to get the primary system up and running. Whatever plans we had as a militia, it was
dependent
upon having that power. Perhaps someone had tampered with it. Perhaps there was no one to maintain it. Regardless, the Tri-State area and who knows where else was now thrust back into the dark ages. Literally.

***

It didn’t take long for the
worse
to begin. That same night, as we were trying to get some sleep and worry about our troubles in the morning, David tapped me on the shoulder with urgency.

“Marty! Marty! Wake up! You need to see this!”
he whispered.

I had fallen asleep not too long ago, and wasn’t happy to be bothered.

“What! What the hell do you wan…”

I fell silent once I realized I could see. The room was awash in a dull, orange light,
flooding through the window like an invading spirit.
Confused, I pushed the covers off, stood, and followed David to the window. We had to take careful steps to avoid those sleeping on the mats at our feet. 

After half a minute, we reached the window together and we both gazed out.

“Oh my God,” I gasped.

Harlem was on fire below us. The rooftop gardens, a signature of the neighborhood, burned like torches; and the fire was leaping
from building to building with
the wind. Plumes of dark smoke highlighted with orange edges escaped upward and blocked out the night sky. There was a low but broad rumbling noise, along with occasional crackles and pops, which traveled all the way to our window. The blaze was vast, engulfing the grid of blocks as far as the eye could see. Even Julie’s old building, four or five kilometers on other side of the island, was on fire.

“What the fuck are they doing down there?!” said David. His voice was excited. “Why are they burning the place?”

More people stirred out of their sleep,
and in no time, the window was crowded.
We had to jostle for position, but eventually we settled into an order to take turns looking. And just as David and I, the rest of our roommates were in awe of what they were seeing.

***

At daybreak, every able-bodied person was gathered in the courtyard, around three hundred in total. You could see the frustration on people’s faces. You could see the fear as well. The air had the smell the smoke and cinder from the burning of Harlem, and the fire still raged into the day. Our complex was safe from the blaze because we were on top of Morningside Hill, but the Last Standers were no less anxious.

The crowd had been gathered for half an hour before our leader appeared. He emerged from the apartment building, wearing a navy blue, button-down shirt, with jeans that were faded and tight to his legs. He walked swiftly and had a stern look on his almost perfectly round face—the look of a man who meant business in everything he did. He was flanked by seven of his lieutenants. And he had a loudspeaker in his left hand.

A meter-tall box was to serve as a makeshift platform. Once Eric Wu was there, he was helped on top of it. We all formed a semi-circle in front of him.

Once we were settled, he began.

“Morning, Last Standers.”

Wu paused to gauge our
mood, and the mood was shitty.
Grunts of disapproval and sneers echoed throughout. One man, a heavyset White guy to my left, spit a big loogie on the ground. Then he said, “That’s my fucking morning for you right there.” Nope. The crowd wasn’t happy at all.

“I know you are frustrated,” Wu continued. “I’m frustrated as well. My wife and child are in that apartment building behind me, they are bedridden on cots, and they don’t have long. So I understand your anger, because it’s my anger. I understand your fear, because it’s my fear. I didn’t ask for this. None of us asked for this. But
this
is the hand we are all dealt. Getting upset and panicking will do us no good. SO HOLD YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!”

People cowered at the sudden force of his voice. Even the guy who had spit backed up a step or two. After giving us all a menacing stare, Wu went on.

“Ok. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go downtown and set up our permanent base. Our scouts have found a building in Chelsea. It’s nice and spacious. We will set up an infirmary and have a consistent place to operate from. Enough with all of this moving around.

“Now, as far as power, we are working on a plan. We were blindsided by this. It’s a bit complex. So I’m asking for you to have a little patience. We will have to use generators, surplu
s batteries, candles, anything
we can find. And that’ll have to do for the time being.

“Considering what we’re going through, we’ve done an excellent job so far. These are impossible circumstances. Unimaginable hardships. And we’re persevering. You should all be proud. Let’s continue to do what we have to, and things will turn for…”