Family Reunion "J" (16 page)

In the dream, he suddenly became aware that Simon was absent. “Where is Simon?” he asked his wife. “Who?” she replied. “Our son, where is our son?” She looked at him with her head tilted to one side as if she didn’t comprehend what he was saying. He stood and looked around and found himself at a dump. The bulldozers pushed the piles of refuse over a cliff, and then backed up to begin the process again. Dust filled his nostrils and the musty sour smell of the garbage made him wrinkle his nose. He began calling out his son’s name, searching the dump, yelling for him, frantic to find him. The big bulldozers ignored him as he ran about, digging through the garbage. The beeping sounds of their backup alarms mixed with the sound of the birds picking through trash.

Beep, beep, beep.
The sound of the bulldozers backing up faded as he came out of the dream. His watch started beeping at him again a moment later, bringing him all the way back to reality. He stirred and lifted his head from the musty-smelling mattress. “Simon?” he said as soon as he realized his son wasn’t at his side. “Simon, where are you?” he said, sitting up.

He did a quick search of the basement, sure that he would find Simon close by. Somehow, while he slept, he had become aware that Simon was no longer lying next to him and his brain had tried to prompt him to look for the boy. He went to the stairs and found a box on the top step that Simon must have used to unlock the door, which now stood open.

“Simon!” he called out as he raced up the stairs. His dreamed panic now became all too real. He continued to call out to his son as he looked in every room. The turned had wrecked the entire first floor of the house. He felt that all-consuming fear that only a parent can know.
Where are you Simon, where would you go?
Julian went to the front door and found it still locked from the inside. Its broken glass lay on the hardwood floor and bloody footprints of the turned led away into the house. He went into the kitchen to find the rear door standing open. He ran out onto the small back porch and yelled for Simon again. He stopped and listened, waiting for a response. The only thing he could hear was the birds flittering about the garden and the wind blowing in the tops of the trees.

He circled the house while continuing to yell for Simon. It was pointless to look for any sign of his trail as the visit from the turned last night left tracks everywhere. He stopped at the back of the house and tried to think like a six-year-old. His childhood, far removed, made this avenue pointless as well. He stood with his hands on his hips. He worked at slowing down his breathing. Going off half-cocked in a frantic search was a bad idea.
Think dammit, where would Simon have gone?
He decided that the boy would follow the path of least resistance. He began a slow search of a path that lead away from the house and into the woods.

Trampled leaves covered the path as it meandered through the trees. Once into the woods, the sunlight filtered through canopy and diffused the lighting. Every few feet Julian stopped and called out for Simon, then waited, listening for any reply. He searched alongside the path, looking for any evidence that the boy had passed this way. Seeing that the trees gave way to a clearing up ahead, he picked up his pace.

Entering the large clearing, he came to a crabapple tree. It was much too early in the season for the fruit to be edible, but he found a small apple in the dirt that had one small bite taken from it. Julian’s pulse quickened a little and he looked for any other signs that Simon had come this way. He found a small footprint in the dirt, which prompted him to call for the boy again. He moved into the clearing and saw the long grass bent down a few feet off the path.

As he walked toward the spot, he saw the blood, then the body. He held his breath until he realized it was too big to be Simon. He exhaled the breath in a
whoosh
and bent over to keep from passing out. He steadied himself and got his bearings again, not bothering to examine the corpse as he was sure it wasn’t Simon. He hurried on to the other side of the clearing and, as he reentered the woods, heard a creek or river ahead. He couldn’t stop himself and broke into a run. He skidded to a stop as he rounded a bend in the path and saw Simon throwing rocks into a small river.

“Simon!” he shouted. The boy leaped into the air where he stood, startled by his dad’s voice. Julian hadn’t meant to scare him, but his tone carried an edge that Simon must have interpreted as anger. It wasn’t anger; it was Julian’s angst spilling out. He went to a knee and held open his arms and Simon ran to him. He pulled the boy to his chest, laughing and crying all at the same time.

“Simon, you scared daddy half to death,” Julian said, holding him tightly.

“I am sorry daddy, I had to pee, and then I kind of got lost.”

The sound of the river must have kept him from hearing Julian until he was right on top of him.

“That is okay, I am just glad you are all right,” Julian said as he set Simon down and checked to make sure that he really was unhurt. “Next time, wake me up when you need to go pee, okay?”

“Okay,” Simon shrugged. He seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing now that he could see that he wasn’t in trouble.

“Seriously, Simon, you cannot just wander off like that,” Julian said with a little more sternness in his voice. He didn’t want Simon to feel like he was mad, but he did want him to understand the importance of his point.

“Okay daddy, I will not.”

Julian took him by the hand and they headed back through the woods. When they got to the place in the clearing where Julian found the body, Simon showed no recognition that it was there. He pointed ahead at the crabapple tree. “I was kind of hungry and got an apple from that tree, but it wasn’t any good.”

“We will eat some more peaches when we get back to the house, then we will pack up the car and get going.”

Simon dropped his dad’s hand and took off running. “Race you!” he said over his shoulder. Julian laughed and ran after him.

Jay followed Route 52 to avoid the second tunnel across the mountains and stayed on it through the corner of Virginia. The mountains had given way to rolling hills, well forested with a large variety of different trees. One tree she always looked for, Ryan’s favorite, the beautiful magnolia with its large flowers, let her know she had made it to the south. No respectful magnolia would grow in the north. No palm trees yet, though—her own favorite didn’t start showing up until you got closer to Myrtle. She cut the engine in the parking lot of the convenience store. She’d decided she needed more information. There was only one car parked behind the building.
That means there’s a crazy or a dead person inside.

She banged on the door, her Glock drawn. No one came running. She pulled the door open and got a nose full of the stench of death.
If I live to be a hundred I’ll never get used to that smell… who am I kidding, no one’s going to live to be a hundred any more.
She swept the room, looking for anything that might attack her. Grabbing a plastic bag from behind the counter, she started shopping.

She tried to breathe through her mouth to avoid the awful smell. She picked up a pocketknife from the display and a handful of cheap plastic lighters. She collected several fruit pies and got a bottle of warm water from the dead cooler. She added some beef jerky to the bag, not her favorite but it made her think of Auddy. Auddy would inspect each bag of jerky before deciding on which one contained the best stuff. The grimace on Jay’s face cracked into a hint of a smile at the thought, but the smell returned the grimace immediately.

She spotted what she was looking for. The newspaper stand had several different papers from which to choose. They were dated June 13, the day the craziness all began. Friday the thirteenth, Ryan’s lucky day, or so he always told people. “Missed being born on Friday the thirteenth by one year,” he’d tell anyone who’d listen. He was born on Thursday the thirteenth, 1959, but 1960 was a leap year so that Friday fell on the fourteenth. She had never brought this to his attention because he liked that story. She took a
Wall Street Journal,
a
New York Times,
and the local paper and went back outside.

She walked to a grassy area where a picnic bench sat in the shade. The trees signaled she’d made it to the south, but the heat index reinforced that fact. The temperature was already into the eighties and she knew it would get hotter. She took off the helmet and leather jacket, which she always wore into buildings she was scoping out. Even in this temperature, she planned to continue wearing the jacket that had proved itself a lifesaver.

She looked at the banner headline of the
Times:

SOUTH AFRICAN FLU CAUSES MAYOR TO CLOSE CITY

The order to close bridges, subways and all public meetings came this morning as Mayor Bill de Felice tries to minimize the spread of the flu. “Over the last month, the vaccine proved effective in containing the flu and we saw a marked decrease in new cases. However, these additional measures have become necessary to try to halt any further spread of the disease. I take this action with no illusions as to the effect it will have on the economy of our great city. The financial hardship is something that we will work toward alleviating with the help of the federal government once the danger has passed. It was decided that we would rather lose billions of dollars than millions of lives. I say that not to frighten our citizens, but to emphasize the severe nature of the challenge we now face.” The new order comes on the heels of the recall of the vaccine. The CDC cites as reasons for the recall the virus’s mutation and the vaccine’s resulting ineffectiveness. No new vaccine is ready for distribution and anyone having symptoms of the flu is advised to rest, drink plenty of fluids, and remain at home.

The first part of the article jibed with what Jay remembered from the news she had seen over the last couple of weeks. The vaccine was beating back the flu and was hailed as a miracle. Everyone was flocking to their doctors to get the vaccination. Clinics were set up all over the country distributing the shots; even the drugstore chains were getting in on the act. The period of time the flu was thought to be contagious was two weeks, which would mean that Friday, June 13, should have been the end of the pandemic, not the beginning of more restrictive measures to defeat it.

There was more to the article, but Jay saw it as an effort to pacify the public with platitudes. She opened the paper to the second page, then the third, and kept turning, looking for any more information on the vaccine. There were no other articles on the vaccine in this paper, and after perusing the
Journal
she found nothing there as well. Looking through the local newspaper, she found an AP article from two weeks prior, reposted by the editor.

She read the entire article, looking for any clue as to the side effects associated with the vaccine. The only thing she found was a quote from a Dr. Ruegg, the vaccine’s inventor:
“The biggest upside of this vaccine is that the nanites used to deliver it will only target the virus, which means there are no side effects.”
The journalist who wrote the article questioned the doctor further, asking how he could be sure of that without extensive testing of this new technique. The doctor’s reply was not reassuring.
“We will continue the testing, and if any problems arise, we will address those in the future. But I can see no way that those fears will come to fruition. The rapid deployment of this vaccine is the only hope we have of defeating the rampant spread of this flu. That is why the government has taken the unprecedented step of bypassing the normal approval process.”
The article had charts and tables supposedly showing that not only was the vaccine indeed highly effective in protecting against the flu, but also in treating those already exposed.

Jay set the paper aside and tried to match what she had just read to the reality of what had ultimately occurred. She could come to only one logical conclusion: the vaccine was somehow responsible for the crazies. It was stopping the flu, things were getting better, then everything blew up. She knew that neither Auddy nor Mark had gone and gotten the vaccination. Mark had said that everyone was overreacting and he wasn’t getting one, and Auddy had made it clear that she wasn’t either. The flu mutating so close to what should have been its demise could not be a coincidence. The papers hadn’t given her any real answers, and she was left with nothing but more questions.