Day Three

There’s sunlight streaming into the bedroom and it hurts my eyes. It’s brighter than usual, and I look at the clock. Nine eighteen AM. Fuck. No phone call from the tree. Rachel has knotted herself around me during the night and I slowly untie myself from a mass of arms, legs and long, brown hair. My phone is on the table next to me, and I check it. No Missed calls. Weird. I call my number two guy, Tommy. He’s six feet five and Irish. He answers on the first ring.

“Dude.” He’s older than I am, but he’s still trying like hell to be hip and trendy, despite an obvious paunch and a deeply receding hairline.

“Tommy, what the fuck? No one called me on the tree, have you heard anything?” Mike tells me to turn on the TV. His voice is shaking a little and he’s quieter than usual. The television blinks on, already tuned to CNN. What I’m seeing looks like Viet Nam, the L.A. riots and 9/11 all rolled into a neat little package. One shot shows an exodus of cars from New York City, stretching from one end of the Holland Tunnel to the other. The next shows footage from Tampa, where looters are hauling big screens and Blu-Ray players out the front of a burning Best Buy. “Riots?” I say to Tommy, who is breathing heavy n the other end of the line. “Over a flu?”

He pauses for what seems like a year and lets out a long huff of air. “Just watch. You haven’t seen what I’m talking about yet.” So, I watch. And there it is, grainy cell phone video of, what is that? Thriller? No, it’s daylight. But it’s a lot like Thriller, a big group of people lurching and jerking down the center of what looks a lot like Lakeshore Drive. Some are wearing hospital gowns, some are in regular clothes. Some others are naked. Tommy says “Are you seeing it?”

I am. But I don’t have a clue what is I’m looking at. The morning anchor,  a blonde woman whose name I can’t remember, but she’s got a great rack and she’s always wearing something that shows it off, comes back and starts talking about the cell phone video. “What you just saw was uploaded to CNN.com just hours ago…”

Tommy tells me that the people in the video are dead.  The CNN chick doesn’t come out and say it, but she’s alluding to it, talking in circles about how some of the flu victims that had been pronounced dead may have just been in a deep coma. Amanda sits up in bed and stares at the TV. She looks at me, and in a voice I’ll never forget, tells me to turn it off, now. I tell Tommy I’ll call him back. Rachel is stirring a little and I hit the power button on the remote.

Downstairs, I turn the TV back on and there’s the grainy video again, showing these shambling, aimless – what, people? They look like people, but they don’t move like people. Their walk is all wrong. It’s a step, but not a step. One leg swings forward, the foot plants, and the body stops. Then the other leg swings forward, the foot plants, rinse, repeat. It’s a stride, like a ghetto walk. I’m not listening to the anchor as she tries to explain what the fuck is happening. Every sense I have is concentrated on the images on the TV. In inset pops up and it’s an enhanced close up of the face of one of the walkers. It’s so… blank. The eyes were there, but they weren’t. It was the kind of look you see on the face of someone who’s catatonic, a vegetable. The image switches to another face and it’s the same thing. Different nose, different mouth, same featureless eyes. It’s almost as if the eyes can no longer see, but they’re still staring at… something. Like they’re stuck, frozen. Mandy is downstairs now and she’s watching the TV with me. She looks at me and mouths “what the fuck?” and shrug and I mouth back “I don’t know”. Fox News is showing the same video while a doctor tries to explain how the Haitians use an herb to induce a near-death state and the flu might be producing a similar effect.

The house phone rings. It’s my boss. He’s crying. The kids are sick and his wife is alive but won’t wake up. I can’t believe what’s happening. I know what he’s saying, he’s saying goodbye, but it doesn’t register. I tell him to get the kids to the urgent care place that’s about a mile from his house, he tells me it’s too late and that he hopes we make it. He coughs and I know he’s sick too. Now I’m in a fucking panic because yesterday I was with him and I shook his hand and Jesus Christ, did I wash it before I rubbed my eyes or touched my mouth or, for fuck’s sake, scratched my nose? I tell him it will be all right and I know it won’t, but I don’t know what else to say so I try to make it sound convincing. I know it doesn’t. He laughs a little, and then coughs, and we say goodbye. I wash my hands and throw water on my face.

Amanda hears me on the phone, she knows what’s becoming of our friends, and she puts her head in her hands. I put my head in my hands. We’re sitting there, our heads in our hands, and Rachel bounces into the family room, asking what’s for breakfast. Mandy and I laugh a little, not because it’s funny but because it’s so goddamned ironic. I’m not hungry. Mandy’s not hungry. But Rachel is, and maybe some food will take away the horror and replace it with some semblance of normalcy. We decide to make a big spread, eggs with ham and cheese and pancakes and turkey sausage that we tell Rachel is regular sausage because she wouldn’t eat it otherwise, even though she loves it. Rachel’s pancakes have chocolate chips in them and I let her go a little overboard on the real maple syrup.

I’m not eating, Mandy is picking at her pancakes and Rachel is halfway through her plate before she realizes she’s the only one swallowing. She asks what’s wrong and we tell her everything is OK, but she’s a smart kid. She reminds us we’ve all had our flu shots and it’s cute, so we smile and pretend to feel better. Rachel coughs, and I get so scared I almost throw up, but she’s just swallowed wrong.

I look outside and there aren’t any cars going by. We live on a corner, our house is on a quiet side street off a busier avenue, and on a regular day there is at least a car every couple minutes. Today isn’t a normal day. To the west, I can see smoke rising over the trees. There’s nothing over that way but houses, so someone’s home is obviously up in flames. No sirens, no fire and rescue team, just smoke.

We send Rachel to the loft. She’s watching Harry Potter and the Something of the Something, lost in a world of wizards and magic. I say a quick thank you to Dumbledore for the diversion.

I call my brother Artie. He lives in Upstate New York, close to the Adirondack Mountains and far away from major metropolitan areas. He sees as many deer and wild turkeys in a day as I see cars. He’s in front of the TV, watching the cell phone video over and over. He’s been a science teacher his whole life, maybe he has some insight. He doesn’t. Artie is just as freaked out as I am. Anxiety runs in my family, and neither of us has been spared. He’s healthy, his wife and youngest son are doing fine, and his oldest kid is on his way home from college in Syracuse. His mother-in-law has a fever and his wife wants to go to help, but he’s hidden her car keys and doing whatever he can to make her stay put. He figures he’ll be able to ride out the worst of the epidemic and hang on until it’s past. His closest neighbor is a half mile away. I always broke his balls for being so isolated. Now I’m envious. We agree to talk daily and hang up.

The emergency broadcast system comes up on the TV screen, the harsh drone of the alarm buzzer jerking me alert. The scroll says we’re to travel only in extreme situations and recommends the sick or exposed stay in their homes until twenty fours after becoming fever-free. The National Guard will be patrolling the Chicago Metropolitan Area. A nine PM curfew has been imposed until further notice. Looters will be prosecuted. The Surgeon General suggests heavy use of fever-reducing over the counter drugs such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Straight aspirin is not suggested as it thins the blood and could result in heavy bleeding in the event of a coughing attack. Double dosing will not cause long-term damage and may work to counteract the effects of the fever. In the event individuals succumb to the flu in their homes, survivors should cover the bodies with a heavy blanket and close off the room. A sheet should be hung on the front door of homes containing the infected or dead. Government health officials will assist with the removal of the deceased.  

I hear a siren. A fire crew speeds past, heading towards the smoke a couple neighborhoods west. Finally, some help. I ask Mandy if she thinks we should try to head east to Artie’s. She wants to stay here; so do I. I feel pretty helpless; I’m not a survivalist, not Special Forces, not a doctor or an ex-marine. I don’t know what to do to protect my family, so I get up, make sure the doors and windows are locked and start pulling empty water bottles from the recycling bin to wash and refill.

Around four in the afternoon, we notice the family across the street has hung a white sheet in their front door.

The Reicherts have two boys and a girl Rachel’s age. The kids played together Monday after school. I fight the urge to throw up. Mandy dials the phone and watches out the window. Sandy Reichert answers, and we see her in the window of her house gazing back at us. I can only hear half the conversation, but I know that Bob Reichert has gotten sick and he’s blockaded himself in their back bedroom. I can hear Sandy’s voice through the telephone and Mandy has a look of pure fucking terror on her face. Sandy is screaming and I can hear her saying no, no, no over and over. I hear a crack, like a big limb breaking from a tree. Then another, and another. A fourth crack, and Sandy’s voice stops screaming through the telephone. Mandy lets the handset drop to the floor and covers her mouth. It hits me I’m hearing gun shots. Jesus Christ. Mandy jumps as the fifth and final shot echoes from across the street. Five shots for each of the Reicherts, and in just a few minutes a whole family has ceased to exist.

I’m panicking. Fuck, fuck, FUCK. I can’t believe how awful things have gotten and how quickly they’re gotten there. Amanda and I are sitting on the couch watching CNN. The Washington DC police department has declared martial law. The President will be speaking to the nation at seven PM. Los Angeles has devolved into a war zone and New York City is following suit. In Atlanta, things are relatively calm, but there are several reports of the infected “waking up” – that’s how the anchor puts it – and maintaining a trance-like state. More video, this batch from a CBS affiliate in Dallas, shows a SWAT team firing on a crowd of infected. Bullets spray, blood splatters and heads explode in clouds of red mist. The bodies jerk and spin with the impact of each strike, but still they keep lurching forward.

Mandy and I discuss what to tell Rachel, and we decide she’s going to stumble over one of the news networks as she channel surfs anyway, so we figure the truth is the best approach. The flu is killing people and they’re waking up, dead. We practice and decide it’s better if we tone it down a bit. She takes the news well, and asks a few questions, mostly about when she’ll be able to go outside and when school will start up again. She’s so goddamned innocent, it’s fucking killing me.

After it gets dark and the girls are asleep, I go outside for the first time in three days. The air is cool and still, and it’s quiet except for a siren far off in the distance. Normally, there would be planes all over the sky, waiting for clearance to set down at O’Hare. Tonight the sky is empty. Some of my neighbors’ houses are lit, others are completely dark. The Reichert’s house is one of the dark ones. There won’t be any lights on there again.

Back inside, I lock the doors and check the windows again. I decide that tomorrow, I’ll need to see what I can get from the Reichert’s place. I know there’s a gun in there.