What Survives of Us (Colorado Chapters Book 1) (4 page)

“Re-supply your ‘arsenal.’  Good idea.”  Scott had always supported her natural remedies for their family’s illnesses.  “And fill your car up while you’re out, okay?”

             
“Okay.”  She paused, then spoke in a rush.  “Oh, this is silly, right?  I mean, we’re just over-reacting.  We are.  We’ll laugh about this in a few days, won’t we?”

             
Scott straightened, and again, their eyes met and held.  “Maybe.  A lot of people would say so, that’s for sure.”  He held his hand out to her, and she took it, lacing her fingers through his.  “But I’d rather live feeling silly than die saying ‘dang it.’”  He smiled when Naomi giggled.  “See?  We’re laughing already.”

              Five days later, everyone quarantined in the Safeway store was sick.  Within ten days, they were dead, all of them, though it would be some time before officials confirmed this fact.  People, presumably medical or CDC personnel, were filmed by news crews entering and exiting the building encased in hazmat suits.

             
Desperate families pressed the perimeter line relentlessly, some of them even camping out in tents.  They mobbed any vehicle that crossed the yellow line, demanding information about their loved ones, but none of the officials involved were talking.  Six days after the quarantine started, police had to use riot gear and tear gas to repel a group that tried to walk through the line.

             
And all the while, the whole world watched.  News crews from all over the United States and a growing number of foreign countries formed a third perimeter around the police line and the families, vans bristling with lights, power chords snaking everywhere.  Round the clock, they broadcast very little news and a great deal of fear back to their home viewers.  Officials might not be talking, but the media had found numerous experts on communicable disease willing to speculate.

             
A biological weapon, some of them posited.  Highly contagious and deadly, they all agreed, as evidenced by the official response.  None of them could come up with a reason – other than the direst of scenarios – the families would not be allowed any kind of contact with their loved ones.  Reporters alternated their interviews between sober, grim-faced PhDs, doctors and former CDC employees, and terrified husbands, wives, parents and children of the victims.

             
Finally, eleven days after the start of the quarantine, the official announcements began.

             
Bubonic Plague.  One of the paramedics had seen the disease before, and suspecting the highly contagious pneumonic form, had immediately set the quarantine in motion.  The plague was not unheard of in the western United States – several cases were reported each year, with fatalities occurring only if the victims did not receive antibiotic treatment in time – but as it turned out, this was Bubonic Plague with a caveat. 

The first victim, a soldier recently returned from active duty in Pakistan, was unaware she was carrying a sleeping superbug: bacteria enhanced by a mutation of the NDM-1 gene.  Known to only a few virologists in the world, the mutation had only recently been identified; antibiotics that could combat NDM-2 weren’t even in the pipeline.  Like its predecessor, NDM-2 was both prolific and promiscuous, transferring itself easily among many types of bacteria via microbial mating.

World-wide, NDM-2 had already infiltrated dozens of bacterial species, gifting even easily-treated infections with its special talent:  antibiotic resistance.  Even the most powerful drugs of last resort were useless against it.  A day spent shooting prairie dogs with friends, a flea bite she’d been all but unaware of, and NDM-2 had been introduced to the Black Death by Private First Class Emma Turner.

It was untreatable.

There was no vaccine.

It was 99-100% fatal.

Furthermore, the desperate attempt at containment had failed; officials on Fort Carson had confirmed twelve additional cases, and three fatalities.  Memorial Hospital had isolated nine cases, Penrose Hospital seven more. 

Symptoms were scrolled along the bottom of every cable and satellite TV station, and droned endlessly on the radio:  fever, weakness, swollen lymph nodes, nausea and headache were among the earliest signs, followed by rapidly developing pneumonia.  The time from exposure to death varied; some succumbed in three days, others fought on longer.  Thus far, no one had lived more than ten days.

While the people in the Safeway store had sickened and died, the CDC and FEMA had been quietly mobilizing the National Guard.  When the official announcements began, the Colorado Springs Airport had already been closed, and every major route out of the city had been blocked by troops.  On the advice of the world’s top virologists and molecular geneticists, Colorado Springs was transformed into a modern-day Eyam, though the quarantine was not voluntary.

The plan sounded simple:  Residents were instructed to stay home.  Skeleton crews of employees were being organized at Colorado Springs Utilities, hospitals, police and fire stations, protected by the Universal Precautions used in the medical field.  If residents needed food or medical supplies, there was an emergency contact number they could call.  If they tried to leave the city, they would be turned back.  No exceptions.

Over and over, local and national TV stations ran an address to the city of Colorado Springs by the Mayor, her face worn into lines of worry and fatigue, her eyes shadowed by the terrible decisions she had been forced to make.  She spoke earnestly, persuasively, bluntly. 

“We are ground zero.  If this disease escapes our city, it will result in a pandemic of Biblical proportions.  The facts you have been given are not exaggerated.  I know what many of you are thinking; every year, we’re warned about this or that superbug, about the swine flu or H1N1, but this isn’t hype.  For
years, experts have been saying that it’s just a matter of time.  Well, that time has come. 

“All of us are scared, and many of us are desperate to leave, perhaps to join family somewhere far away and safe.  Believe me – there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to be sitting at my parents’ kitchen table in Walnut, Iowa, with all of my family safe and sound, right about now.” 

The mayor leaned forward and paused, her face intense.  “But I need you to know this:  If we carry this disease out of Colorado Springs, nowhere will be safe.  Nowhere.  Which brings me to my most difficult point…” 

The mayor paused again, swallowing repeatedly.  When she finally spoke, her voice was steady, but the grief in her eyes was magnified by tears.  “If you or your loved ones get sick, do not go to the hospital.  Do not go to your doctor.  There is no medicine for this disease, no treatment.  We cannot help you.”  Her voice broke, and again, she fought for control.  “For the sake of our community, for the sake of humanity, we must do everything possible to keep this plague contained.  My prayers, and the prayers of the world, are with us all.”

              In the years that would follow, historians would note the heroic attempt at containment by the people of Colorado Springs.  With few exceptions, people followed the official dictates to the letter.  And for almost a week, the city was preternaturally quiet.  All local TV and radio stations had been shut down; the residents of Colorado Springs received news of themselves from sources on the outside. 

Reports varied wildly on the progress of the disease, since officials remained largely uninvolved, but hospitals received a steady trickle of people too terrified to stare down the Black Death alone.  Two weeks after Emma Turner died, the death count had risen to several hundred, with no way of
knowing how many people had died at home, but hope soared that the disease had been contained.

Then, an explosion.  Cities all over the state of Colorado reported outbreaks.  It was never determined whether infected residents had managed to evade the blockades, or whether the disease had traveled the way people do, casually and routinely from place to place.  Before a more extensive quarantine could be discussed, states across the nation began to report in, and the news worsened by the hour:  By the end of day 19, the pandemic was official.  The first foreign nation to report an outbreak was Great Britain, followed closely by Australia and China, and after that, there was no stopping it.

The President of the United States gave his last address to the nation on the 28th day of the plague.  He had developed a fever that morning, he said candidly, and before his illness progressed, he had a few things to say.  Though he had not been a popular president, and his administration had accomplished little of note, he would be remembered by the surviving generations for the words he gave his people as he faced his own death on international television.

“Some of you will survive,” he began, without salutation or preamble.  “Some of you are immune, and a very lucky few will survive the plague.  Less than 1% of the population, they’re telling me, but enough of you will make it through this to continue the human race.  When you go on, when life resumes, it will be tempting to assign some blame for the millions who have already died, and the billions who will likely die in the days ahead.”

The president paused, and shook his head wearily.  “Don’t waste too much time on that.  We already know we did this to ourselves.  Overuse of antibiotics created the superbug.  Our immune systems are shot and the majority of us are overweight and half-sick already, thanks in part to food processed to last longer than we will.  Drugs for every symptom you can think of, not enough exercise, too many conveniences and corners cut.  We set ourselves up, and now we’re falling.  I know this, and you know it, too.”

Another pause.  Then, the president squared his shoulders, all trace of illness or fatigue dropping away.  “Analyze it enough to understand it, and move on.  Do you understand me?  Learn what you need to from our mistakes, then go on and
be better.
  Be stronger, smarter, more honest, more brave.  When the ugly scramble to survive ends, pick up the pieces, forgive yourselves for anything you needed to do, and rebuild humanity using the very best that is in each of you.  Let that be your monument to those of us that don’t survive.  Make your very lives a monument.”

              The second corpse Naomi saw was her husband.  Scott died on the 17
th
day of the plague, 10 days after the start of the city quarantine, and before she had even figured out how to keep breathing, Macy was sick.  For Naomi, the world shrank to her daughter’s small body, to the next rattling breath, and the next, to the rhythms of fever and chill, sponge and cover, and the constant coaxing of broth, water and herbal tinctures down a small, unresponsive throat.

             
They had lost contact with Piper right after the plague broke the boundaries of the city.  Scott had been trying to arrange for her to join his sister and brother-in-law in Michigan, but plane tickets couldn’t be bought at any price, and he didn’t want her driving cross-country alone.  Failing that, he had tried to convince her to head for their cabin on Carrol Lakes just outside of Woodland Park.  If worse came to worst, he told her, they would join her there as soon as they could leave the city.  Piper, being Piper, had stalled.  She didn’t want to leave her studies, didn’t want to leave her friends, and most of all, didn’t want to admit the situation could be that serious. 

The last time they spoke, Piper had mentioned a friend whose family lived in the mountains, but the call had dropped before she had given them a name or an address, and Naomi hadn’t been able to reach her since.  Service had been spotty at best – the lines were simply overwhelmed by a frantic world trying to connect with loved ones.

              Piper didn’t even know her father was dead.  Naomi tried her number hundreds of times a day, whenever her hands weren’t soothing Macy, preparing medicines, or caring for the few animals she had left.  Just hours before he had died, she and Scott had argued terribly over the pets.

             
“Naomi, for God’s sake,
think
for once instead of just feeling!”  He had to pause to cough and cough and cough, then to catch his breath.  “I know you love them.  I know they depend on you.  But so does Macy, and you’ve got to take care of yourself, too!  Your heart is too soft – you’re not going to survive this, if you don’t lighten the load!”

             
She hadn’t been able to answer him, throat locked closed with grief and hurt, stricken into silence by the harsh words from her tender husband.  They were the last coherent words he spoke to her.  Shortly after, he had drifted into a fevered world of muttered nonsense, interspersed with moments of terrifying clarity.  She would give anything to forget some of the things he had said.

             
“Piper!”  His eyes had flown open.  “No, oh no, I’m so sorry!”  His eyes were lucid but filled with horror when they met hers.  She reached out to soothe, but he gripped her hand so hard her knuckles grated together.  “So broken, Naomi, she’ll be so broken.  She’ll need you so much, but she’ll push you away.  Don’t let her!  She’ll die of the shame if you don’t help her.  Promise me you’ll help her - promise me!”

             
Naomi had nodded, beyond fear, beyond despair.  Still clutching her hand, Scott eased back on his pillows, but his eyes darted frantically, watching something she could not see.  His face crumpled, and he sobbed a single terrible sob.  His head rolled on the pillow, his lucid gaze met hers again, and he smiled with tears filling his eyes.  “Macy will be okay, Naomi.  I promise.  She’ll be okay.”

             
A cold like Naomi had never experienced had radiated from her core at his words.  She had leaned to kiss his forehead, murmuring nonsensical words of comfort, to hide the shudders that wracked her.  When she leaned back, his eyes were closed, his face peaceful.  He died less than an hour later.

             
In a numb twilight, Naomi had smoothed and straightened the covers around him, checked on a sleeping Macy, then had started complying with his last request.  Macy’s mice were released in the yard, the fish dumped on the compost.  Then she released Poseidon from his cage and carried him outside on her leather-protected forearm. 

Her body almost betrayed her then, and she had to stand for several minutes, swallowing, swallowing the sobs back down, face turned away from the big Macaw while he shifted and muttered on her arm, unsettled by her behavior.  When she had regained enough control to look at him, he turned his head nearly upside down – what Scott used to call his “charmingly inquisitive act” – and asked, “S’up?”

Naomi had given up her battle against the grief then.  She launched Poseidon into the air - he flew to the nearest tree and roosted there, screeching his dismay, while she ran into the house, hands over her ears.  She couldn’t handle any more loss, just couldn’t.  In the morning, she would assess how much food remained for the other animals, and make the necessary plans.  But she hadn’t made it that far, waking in the middle of the night instead to Macy’s moans as she shook and burned with fever.

             
The days had blurred together since then, as Naomi tried everything she could think of to save her daughter.  She read every book she had on herbs – even ended up throwing one across the room because it could tell her how to make a lovely potpourri, but not how to help her daughter breathe.  Before they lost the internet, she had scoured websites for information, finally stumbling across a master tonic recipe which seemed to help, along with some poultices.  This morning, for the first time, Macy appeared to be sleeping easily.

             
Naomi couldn’t count the number of times she had smoothed her hand over Macy’s heated face, and she did it again now as the morning sun streamed in the window.  Definitely cooler.  She sat back in her chair, and just watched the rise and fall of Macy’s chest for long, long minutes – still a whistling wheeze, but the deadly rattle had retreated. 

She didn’t think about hope – didn’t even let the word enter her head – but her shoulders dropped a fraction as a tiny bit of tension eased.  Her fingers slid through Piper’s number on the cell that rarely left her hand; she didn’t need to lift it to her ear to hear the “all circuits are busy” message.  She closed her eyes, and rubbed her hand over her heart.  She could feel her daughter there, alive, she just knew it.  She placed the cell phone on Macy’s bedside table, and for the first time since Scott had sickened, she took a huge, gulping, shuddering breath.

              The room around her looked like a cyclone had hit it.  She had been sponging off in the bathroom across the hall and just dropping her dirty clothes wherever they landed; likewise with Macy’s soiled pajamas and bed sheets.  Every surface was cluttered with bottles and books, basins of water, used poultices and mugs of broth.  In the corner of the room, curled up on one of her discarded sweatshirts, Persephone watched her with liquid eyes.  And on one of the upper shelves of the bookcase, Ares was doing his best sphinx imitation, tail swishing, green eyes slitted.

             
“Hey, guys.”  Naomi’s voice crackled – she hadn’t spoken above a murmur in weeks.  “Are you okay?  Are you hungry?” 

She held out her arms to Persephone, and the little dog shot across the room to huddle in her arms.  Her small, sturdy body shook with tremors of anxiety and joy, and Naomi closed her eyes, burying her nose in the soft fur – familiar, warm, musty scent of dog.  “Come on.  While she’s sleeping, let’s go see about some breakfast.”

The kitchen was as bad as Macy’s room, dirty dishes teetering on every counter and littering the top of the table.  Whenever she had thought to, Naomi had thrown down food and water for the animals, but she had no earthly idea who had been eating what.  One of the cats had thrown up a hair ball by the sliding glass door, which made her frown – usually Zeus gobbled them up before she could get to them, easily his most disgusting habit.  His food dish was still full, too.  Before she even started looking for him, she knew.

Other than caring for Macy, Naomi had taken the time to do only one thing:  Tend to Scott’s body.  There was no one to call, no one to ask for help.  So she had stolen moments to wash him, to say goodbye to the body she had loved and slept beside, to kiss his beloved strong hands, and finally to wrap him in his favorite afghan.  She didn’t have the strength to carry him down the stairs, to dig a grave and bury him, so she had ended up wrapping him in plastic tarps, which she had sealed with duct tape.  She had laughed and cried as she’d completed that last step – Scott had enjoyed a life-long love affair with duct tape, and she swore she could feel his amusement at her desperate innovation.

She found Zeus just where she knew she would, curled up against Scott’s body in their bed, his head resting on Scott’s chest.  She smoothed her hand over his cold, silky ears, and sobbed.  “Oh, Zeus.  Thank you for going with him.  He’ll be so happy for the company.  What a good dog.”

~~~

              Grace worked for two days, trying to dig graves for her family.  Finally, exhausted, with bleeding hands, she made herself stop.  She had barely made it 3 feet down, even though she’d dug in the garden where the soil was soft.  She needed a Plan B.

             
The plague had hit Limon in the first wave:  Mrs. Dunwoody, the organist at the Methodist church, had collapsed in the middle of a Sunday morning service.  Grace couldn’t believe people had been stupid enough to help her – had they not been listening to the news?  If it had been up to Grace, Mrs. Dunwoody would have died where she lay instead of infecting half the church, including Grace’s grandfather.

             
Her mother had sickened next, her stepfather and Benji the very next day.  She knew she wasn’t supposed to call for help, but she had tried anyway.  Nobody answered at the local medical clinic or the police station.  She finally reached a man at the fire department, who had promised to send someone, but no one ever came.  On the morning of the 5
th
day, Grace woke to find Benji and her stepfather already gone.  Her mother had lingered for a few more hours.

             
“Dead.”  Grace said the word aloud to the huge, prairie sky.  “They’re dead.  Mom is dead.  Wayne is dead.  Benji…”  Her voice broke, her breath hitched.  Sweet baby brother.  “Benji is dead.”

             
She could not permit herself to start crying.  To start might mean never stopping.  She kept making herself repeat the facts, deal with the reality.  She hadn’t suffered so much as a sniffle – she assumed that meant she was one of the less-than 1% that was immune.  It also meant she had a duty.  Grace wasn’t a spiritual person – she didn’t know how she felt about God or any other idea of deity – but she understood her responsibility to humanity.  The president’s speech had riveted her, and his words were lodged deep in her heart.  She had survived, and it was her job to go on, to help rebuild.

             
She leaned her shovel against the house, and stretched with her hands fisted in the small of her back.  She had run out of food completely this morning after rationing for days, and she could feel her body weakening.  They had lost phone service some time during her family’s illness – she wasn’t sure when – so the most logical thing to do was get in the car and go see what she could find.

             
She hadn’t heard from William in well over a week, and this was one fact she could not force herself to dwell on.  The last time they talked, one of his little brothers had been sick.  She had promised to call the next day, but kept getting a busy signal.  She hadn’t even tried since.

             
Their ranch was the closest – it was logical to start there.  Grace went back in the house, showered and changed her clothes.  Even as she fussed with her appearance, she recognized the stall tactics in her behavior.  William wouldn’t care if her hair was dirty and her clothes covered with grime – he would just be happy to see her.  She took several deep breaths, then made herself leave the bathroom.  She found the keys to her mother’s truck hanging by the door and headed out.

             
The roads were deserted.  Grace crept along at a snail’s pace, disoriented, a little dizzy, inexplicably terrified to be outside.  She lifted her hand to her head – was she getting a fever?  Her forehead was cool and dry, but she was breathing too quickly.  Panic, she realized, and forced down a deep breath, muttering calming nonsense to herself.  “Take it easy.  You’re fine.  Everything’s okay.  Just keep swimming.”

             
But no amount of positive self-talk could unknot her stomach muscles as she turned into the Harris family’s driveway.  She scrutinized the house as she crawled along – nothing looked out of place, but something felt off.  She parked the truck by the back door, shut off the engine, then hopped out before she lost her nerve.

             
“Hello?”  The screen door slammed behind her as she entered the mud room, making her jump.  “Hello, is anyone home?  Mrs. Harris?  William?”

             
She stepped into the kitchen, and recognized the chaos of illness:  Dishes everywhere, though it looked like someone had made a start on cleaning up.  The sink was filled with soapy water and soaking dishes, and a single spot had been cleared at the kitchen table.  She lifted her head, sniffed, and winced.  Faintly, she could smell sickness – improvised bed pans for people too sick to reach the bathroom, soiled sheets.

             
A creak sounded behind her and she whirled.  Her heart jolted painfully; a man loomed in the deep shadows of the mudroom with a baseball bat poised over his shoulder.  “No!  Please – it’s just me!  It’s Grace!”