This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (11 page)

“What’s the value in hypotheticals?”

“Don’t give me a politician’s answer, Theo. I’m asking, what if?”

There was a long silence. The boy was about to get up when he heard his father mutter, “If it comes to that, we’ll turn on the gas.”

Jaimie didn’t understand what his father meant. When he looked up each word, he still didn’t understand.

Mourning what we had

T
hings were quiet between Jaimie’s parents and Anna for the next few days. Jack went out to gather supplies, staying away longer each time. No seeds were available in the city.
 

Theo paced, anxious for his wife’s return. He forgot to make dinner so Anna heated some pasta noodles for herself and for her brother. Still angry, she made nothing for her father. When Jack finally came through the front door, it was dark.
 

Jaimie looked up from his seat on the recliner, his finger marking a passage in the Latin dictionary which read
major e longinquo reverentia
or
no man is a hero to his valet.
His mother had told him something similar from her Bible study. “No prophet has honor in his own country.”
 

It seemed distance or absence made people love and respect each other more. This puzzled Jaimie. If he could will himself to speak, he would have asked about love first.

His mother’s absence for the day seemed to increase his father’s love for her. As she returned, he embraced her so roughly Jack dropped her bags. He pulled her surgical mask down and kissed her on the lips.
 

“I kept my phone off to preserve the battery in case I really needed it,” she said.

When she took in his frown, Jack smiled, bent and retrieved one of the grocery bags. Through the white plastic, Jaimie could see the word “seeds” in big block letters.
 

“Everyone on the street is wearing a mask,” she said.

“I was told masks don’t work.”

“Not so!” she said. “The radio said bank robberies are up 70 per cent. I guess they’re good for something! What’s the television say?”

“I’ve been watching the driveway,” Theo said.

She looked to Anna, who sat on the living room floor. “I watched it earlier but I turned it off when they kept repeating the same things.”

“Really no news at all about progress on a vaccine?”

“Elevated tensions in the Middle East,” Anna mumbled around a red licorice stick.

“Still or again?”

“The news doesn’t make any sense. First they said Sutr started in India. Now the CDC is saying it started in Pakistan and was a weaponized alteration of something that only sheep used to get. Then they say to stay away from bats, as if anyone was running to bats for love and comfort. Oh, and something’s happened in England. Violent riots. No real details, though.”

“Probably too many people ran out of food. Is that all they had to say?”

Anna shrugged. “Just the usual warnings about staying away from each other. Of course,
you
still went out. Way to go. Mom of the Year. When I went out, you guys pitched a hairy fit and — ”

“I went out for seeds to feed us, Anna. Not to make out.”

“
Mom
!”

Jack sighed. “Turn on the television again. I want to watch a movie or something. I want a story where everything works out well in the end.”

“
SpongeBob Squarepants
?” Anna suggested as she touched the power button.

The sudden blast of an alarm from the television jarred them and hurt Jaimie’s ears. A loud red and white tone filled the room and Jaimie jumped from his chair. His Latin dictionary fell to the floor, clapping shut. He tasted copper coming out of the television. He felt like his clothes were made of sandpaper.

Jack snatched the remote up and turned the volume down. This is the Emergency Alert System,” a man’s voice said. It repeated that message three times.
 

“They’ve been testing that thing all my life,” Theo said. “We know! We know! They used to call it the Emergency Broadcast System. About time we got our tax money’s worth.”

Jack and Anna went white and Theo’s smile faded. Jaimie suspected he had tried to make a joke but no one laughed. Jaimie felt sorry for his father. Jaimie didn’t understand jokes, either.

“The Office of Public Health and the Office of Public Safety, in coordination with the Emergency Services Bureau is declaring a health emergency in your area. The World Health Organization has declared the Sutr Virus a level six emergency. For public health and your safety, you are required to stay in your homes and avoid contact with others. Do not travel unless absolutely necessary.”

The family sat and watched the screen, though it was just a red field with the same white words crawling across the bottom of the screen: Martial Law Declared.

There were a lot of new rules: A curfew of six o’clock in the evening was declared. No one was to gather in public groups for any reason. Trucks would come through the cities with supplies for people who needed them but they encouraged all citizens to “use what supplies you have on hand first.”
 

Jaimie looked up the word
quarantine
. He thought the word beautiful. The
q
tasted sugary and
uaran
struck Jaimie as the essence of a firm avocado. Best of all, the word ended with
–tine,
the sound of a little silver bell.

The message started to repeat so Anna switched channels. On a Canadian news network feed, three men and two women were talking about nuclear missiles in Pakistan. In a small box in the bottom of the screen, a line of people seemed to be waiting for something but it wasn’t clear for what. The family had seen similar pictures of people waiting in lines when they were covering the outbreak in India. However, these new pictures were mostly fat white people.
 

The Weather Channel was working and predicting a rainstorm and unseasonably warm temperatures.
 

“Unseasonably.”
So close to unreasonably
, Jaimie thought.

All the other channels broadcast the same repeated message. Theo took the remote and switched to Netflix. He selected a black and white movie with an actor Jaimie recognized: Jimmy Stewart in
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
The credits said James but Jaimie knew everyone called him Jimmy. Theo watched his movies many times so Jaimie had seen them all.
Rear Window
and
Vertigo
were his favorites.
 

The family was still watching the movie when someone knocked on their front door. Theo answered and found Mrs. Bendham looking at the shattered screen door propped up on the porch.

Jaimie looked out from behind his mother. Jack pushed him behind her gently. Their neighbor had been crying. Her eyes were red and her face was gray.

“Could you come see Al?”

“What’s going on?”

“I thought he was getting better. His fever broke and he was getting crankier, so I was sure he was getting better.”

“What do you want me to do exactly?” Theo said.

“I don’t know. Just look at him and tell me what you think I should do. I tried calling an ambulance last night but the lines were so busy. Around five this morning, I got up and called again. I did get someone and they said they’d send someone. That was this morning. Now it’s dark.”

The quaver in her voice was back. “A dispatcher said she’d put me on her list. I’ve waited all day. I don’t know what to do.”
 

Theo Spencer looked back at his family. Jack shook her head. He shrugged his shoulders and said he’d get his jacket. He grabbed a winter scarf from the front closet and wrapped it around his mouth and nose.

It was Jack’s turn to pace, but she didn’t have long to wait. Her husband returned in a few minutes, looking pale. Theo went straight to the kitchen sink and washed his hands with bright yellow soap they used for washing dishes.

“She said he got quiet and fell asleep around ten last night. Before she went to bed, she put her hand on his forehead and decided his fever had broken.”
 

His father washed his hands in a way Jaimie hadn’t seen. Put the words
savage
and
urgent
together. That would define it well.
Somebody should make up one word for that idea
, he thought.
Savurgency
maybe
.
 

His father stood at the sink a long time, scrubbing his hands as the family watched and waited for him to say more. He flicked his wet hands at the sink instead of using a hand towel and turned to face them. “She thought his fever broke but I think that was when he started to go cold. Al’s dead.”

“Oh, Theo,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” he nodded, grim and gray, as if seeing Mr. Bendham’s body had depleted him in some way. “I’ve mostly seen dead bodies at funerals. I never saw death like that before.”

Anna shrank back. Jack stepped forward and gave her husband a hug.
 

“I’ve only seen a couple of dead bodies, both when I was a little girl,” Jack said. “We’ve been lucky, haven’t we?”

She moved to the coffeemaker. Despite the late hour, his mother pulled out the used filter and grind from that morning. Keeping her hands busy seemed to sooth her and allowed Jack to talk and remember.
 

“One Sunday, I was leaving a church service with my parents when I saw a man standing at the top of the stairs. That was the shortest route to the parking lot, but he was blocking the way. He asked us to go out through the front of the church. He stood there with his hands behind his back. I remember thinking that he was just another man from church, but the way he stood, made him seem official somehow. My father pulled me by the shoulder to spin me back toward the other exit, but not before I saw the old woman lying at the bottom of the stairs. I caught her in a single glance, but one peek is all it takes for something like that.”

“What happened to her?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know exactly, honey. I remember she was wearing a long dress, white with a purple design on it…you know, kind of an old lady dress. And she wore a hat. Must have been one of those deals where it was pinned to her hair because the hat was still on. She must have fallen down the stairs. God knows. Maybe she had a heart attack or a stroke on the stairs first, or maybe after she hit the landing. Funny, I can still see those white old lady stockings and the surprised look frozen on her face.
Frozen!
I could have done without that.”

“Didn’t they call an ambulance or something?” Anna said.

“That’s kind of the weird thing. That poor old woman was alone at the bottom of the stairs. That seemed really wrong to me — still does. We shouldn’t die alone. My mother told me when I was little that people who die alone come back to haunt us. I know that surprised face still haunts me in odd moments.”

Jack opened the coffee can and the aroma of the brown beans wafted out. Jaimie thought he’d like to drink coffee when he grew old enough, but he wasn’t sure how old he would have to be. His mother had never made coffee at night. Jaimie guessed that’s what people do when the old man next door dies.

Jack ground the beans in an electric hand grinder and poured the rich, brown mix into the top of the filter. “When I was a kid there was this little girl who came with her mother to pick up one of my friends from school. She was a little too young for the big kids’ playground but she played on the monkey bars while they were waiting for my friend. When the bell rang, we came out and there was this circle of children standing around the girl. She wasn’t moving, but lots of help came fast.”

“What did they do?”

“Oh, nothing much. It turned out my friend’s sister just got the wind knocked out of her and she was really okay. When she got her breath back, she started crying. They comforted her. I remember we formed a circle around her, everyone reaching with one hand stretched into the center to touch her head and let her know she was okay, not alone…loved. That’s the way things are supposed to be. Somebody gets hurt or needs help and the more people standing close by, the better.
 

“But I remember thinking that here was this little old lady, surprised to be suddenly dead at the bottom of the stairs with her legs bent at crazy angles and there was no one near her, just this old guy giving us a smile and asking us to use the other way out. Sometimes when someone dies, no one is around. That’s what God is for, so we’re never alone.”
 

“Sounds like God is an Orwellian voyeuristic dictator.” As soon as he blurted it, Theo backed away a step, his lips bunched tight.
 

Regret tastes like a sour green apple
, Jaimie thought.

Anna’s eyes were wet and glassy.
 

Jack cleared her throat and did not look at her husband. “I asked my Mom what happened to the old lady and she said not to worry about it. It was a big church. Every month the pastor included death announcements about some elderly people.”

“That was supposed to make it better? Did that make you feel better?” Anna said. “That ‘every month’ thing bugs me, like the more numbers there were, each loss was, I don’t know—“

“Diluted,” Theo said.

Anna nodded. “Yeah, like, to God, we’re mere statistics.”

Jack poured water into the coffeemaker. She seemed to think a long time before answering. She pulled down the sugar bowl from the cupboard, some spoons out of a drawer and five mugs.

“The pastor never called it a death notice. He said Mrs. So-and-so went on to glory last week, or passed on to be with Jesus or was off to receive her eternal reward. Something like that.”

“Sounds comforting. Too good to be true, in fact.” Theo couldn’t seem to restrain himself.
 

“Well,” Jack smiled. “Comfort was where the focus was. Ought to be. God knows us each by name and he knows what He’s doing. Look at the images we’ve seen from the Hubble telescope. Look at the symmetry in a flower. There’s a plan and we’re each God’s child.”

Anna turned to her father, who seemed to study the floor. “Where do you think we go when we die, Dad?”