Hot Zone (6 page)

“Can I have something to eat?” I asked finally. I looked for the remote that seemed to have a life of its own and a mission to hide at every opportunity.

Tucker shrugged. “Just keep in mind that the local news is a lot more accurate. The national channels are a little, well, hysterical right now.”

We turned on the TV and I soon realized what he meant. CNN had experts in medicine who discussed what the nation could do if the problems in the Midwest turned out to be contagious. The next segment was how people who lived near the affected area could protect themselves (
from us zombie people
, I thought sourly). Politicians assured the public that they wouldn’t let this epidemic get out of hand. Then there was talk about China. Then more about the “diseased areas” as it was called on Fox. Meri kept trying to get me to turn it off, but it was an amazing window on what I had missed the last few days. There was video galore of people killing others without apparent cause. There were horrible photos of suicides. There were close-ups of children killed by parents who had lost their minds “to the infection.” There were satellite photos of areas where even cameramen wouldn’t go.

Apparently some people who had not been here when it happened had come in healthy and had become irrational and suicidal. That was the main reason people believed it was contagious, as far as I could figure out. Surely they would realize soon that it wasn’t a disease and it wasn’t contagious. Surely they would see that. But what if it was contagious? What if it spread across the entire country, and people began to turn on each other? I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be in a place where there were millions of people in a small area. No one would enter the Twin Cities now, and power had failed there sometime yesterday, if the reports were accurate. They were able to see from helicopters flying over that Minneapolis and St. Paul were a haze of fires still burning and darkness. People with cell phones could still get through, but one “expert” on MSNBC wondered aloud if anyone could trust anything people from the affected area said. Isn’t it possible, this expert had asked, that stories of thousands of people who seemed healthy and needed outside help was just a ploy to get more people to come to the area so they could kill them?

I looked over at Tucker, who had fallen asleep on the other side of the couch. Yeah, Tucker was a great example of a killing machine. No, soon the true facts would set these people straight. How long could they continue to just run with misinformation and fear? But in the back of my head a little voice asked,
What if it is contagious? What would I do to save the world from people like Eddy?

I nodded off soon after that cheery thought, and when I woke up, it was to see that Phil was awake as well. They had put her in my room when I had been in there so one person could keep a watch on both of us. I quick tried to call Mom’s cell, but she must have had it off because it went right to voice messaging. I left a message saying I was fine and they should call because I was worried.

I said hello to Phil but didn’t hug her as I wanted to because Tucker put a cautionary hand on my arm. He shook his head and I frowned, looking back at Phil more closely. She was muttering to Meri, who had her arm around her waist. Phil suddenly lurched as if a rug and been pulled out from under her, and Meri almost fell with her. I was ready to go over, but Tucker curled his fingers around my upper arm and held me back.

Phil looked around blankly. “Who took all the plates?” she asked clearly, voice then dropping back down to an inaudible level. Meri helped her to a chair, but stood ready next to her. Tucker let go of me and went to the kitchen to get her something to eat. Phil put her head in her hands and began to sob. Meri rubbed her back, giving me a rather wry look that seemed to say she had seen this before.

“Phil?” I asked rather tentatively. “I’m glad to see you,” I finished lamely.

Phil didn’t look up at my voice or give any other indication she’d heard me. She looked around the room again and pointed letting out a little yelp of fear. I automatically looked to see what she saw but saw nothing. Meri shushed her, murmuring comforting words. Phil rocked back and forth, leaning on Meri a little until the food came. Tucker stopped as far as he could from Phil, and Meri took the plate that contained a sandwich and some cut up canned pears on it. Phil stared at Tucker and closed her eyes and shook her head, causing her tangled hair to fly around her face. Tucker went back into the kitchen, out of Phil’s sight and beckoned me to come in where he was.

“What is going on?” I asked in a whisper as soon as I was out of Phil’s sight as well.

Tucker shrugged. “Who knows? From what Meri and I can tell, most of the people who got sick were violent—either to others or to themselves.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Then there are others—like you and Phil, who …” He faltered and shrugged. “The reactions are all over the place. There have been fevers, sleepwalking, confusion, headaches like yours, body aches, vomiting, you name it—someone seems to have had it. And some people just aren’t getting better like you did. You know that lady who lives just below here?”

“Oh yeah. Mrs. Frisch or French?”

“Yeah, something like that. She won’t eat or drink, and her daughter says she can’t hold on much longer.”

And it all suddenly hit me. Poor Mrs. Frisch who had come only a month or two ago to live with her daughter. Eddy going psycho, my illness, Phil’s confusion and fear, and my parents not calling, the breakdown of services I had always expected to be there. I physically felt it all crash in on me. My knees loosened and I sagged to the floor.

Tucker didn’t try to haul me back up. He just sat down next to me and put his arms around me as I cried and shook and sobbed. Eventually as I began to wind down he told me he had already had his share of tears over this. He told me that Meri had become so frustrated that at one point she had hit him in the chin. He made me look at his chin, and sure enough there was the smudge of a bruise there. He said in a very soft voice that nearly everyone he knew was either dead or missing. “If Meri hadn’t needed my help, I don’t know what I would have done,” he said simply.

“It would just be better if I could give Phil a hug,” I said, taking the paper towel he gave me and dabbing at my face to get the worst of the wetness off.

“I wouldn’t try it,” he said. “She is really fragile, and she freaks out when I get anywhere near her. When she saw you sleeping on the floor one time while she was awake and you were out of it, she tried to kick you and said some crap about you having butterflies all over you.”

I sighed. The eternal clown inside me made me say, “At least it was butterflies and not maggots.” Then I realized that maggots live in dead things and there were probably enough dead things around to make maggot heaven. “Tucker, what about the bodies?” I pictured dead people in the streets.

“They declared this whole area a disaster, and the National Guard is patrolling. I guess you just go out and tell them, and they will take the body somewhere.” He ended abruptly, as if he had been about to say more. I didn’t press him. As he realized I was now back to what could be called normal, he stood back up and put out his hand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet. I wondered about him. He had fit himself in with us as if he’d always been here. Good old Tucker. But what did he think of this? If he’d put his arms around me in the old days, I would have worried about giving “signals” and then wondered if he was giving “signals” or if I wanted to cross that line of friendship—the whole attraction thing. I did like Tucker, but it wasn’t sexual, I didn’t think. Maybe attraction just couldn’t happen when so much else was going on.

He said, “You just take it easy and keep getting better. We’ll all take care of Phil, and the rest we’ll just manage as it comes.” He dropped my hand and smiled a little crookedly at me. I had never been much of a believer in God, but I had to admit that things would have been completely different if Tucker hadn’t stopped that day. I nodded back at him, and we both peeked out at Phil. Meri was feeding her slowly, and Phil was eating a little. But she was still staring blankly, and tears still ran silently down her cheeks.

Chapter 4: I go shopping and tell a story

I got through the night. I felt shell-shocked and moved about like I was in a dream. A thought would come to me, and I would try to think about it, but before I could examine it, I would be distracted by another thought. I slept, even though that’s pretty much all I’d been doing for days. My headache was still there, but it seemed to be going away slowly, and most of the time I barely noticed it.

I was getting more and more anxious as time went by and Mom and Dad didn’t call. Finally Tucker volunteered to drive up the way they had gone to my aunt’s cabin and look for them. I told him no, but I was seriously considering it. I wanted to go myself but knew that neither Tucker nor Meri would let me go unless I grabbed the gun and forced the issue. And that was seriously not my style.

I kept thinking that Mom would call any minute. I had heard from my older brother who lived in Oregon, probably at the behest of his wife, and had assured him I was fine. Dick and I didn’t really get along that well. He was a lot older than I was, and had such a completely different outlook on life I felt like we spoke different languages. He dutifully (again, Tabitha probably reminded him if she didn’t actually dial the phone and put it in his hand) called Mom and Dad about twice a month. Mom would tell me he called, and her mouth would get sort of tight. This meant he had said something that had made her angry or hurt her feelings. Good old Dick. See Dick run. See Dick talk about how much money he makes. See Dick buy another Porsche on credit. See me not be impressed.

I shouldn’t be such a snot, I suppose. He called, after all. As a matter of fact, whenever my cell service was working (it had become a little unreliable—remember those commercials, “can you hear me now?” Well, it had become, “is it working now?”) Dick had called and so had some other relatives who thought me rather interesting since I was in the “Hot Zone” (that phrase was courtesy of ABC News). They wouldn’t have given me the time of day otherwise, but whatever. Everyone was genuinely concerned about Mom and Dad. No one had heard from either of them. I was starting to wonder if they had died. The problem was that every time I went down that road of possibility, my mind took a detour or made a quick u-turn. It just wouldn’t go there.

There was a website where you could type in the name of the person you were looking for, and it would send you a message if the person was on the “confirmed deceased” list, the “reported deceased” list or the “confirmed alive” list. I sat down at the computer and tried to fill out the little form, but always “escaped” out before I completed it and pressed send. No, I didn’t really want to know. Finally Meri and Tucker browbeat me into giving them the information and input the facts on Mom and Dad. It took a couple of hours, but we received word back that they weren’t on any list. I didn’t know what to make of that, but Meri thought it was good news.

Another bit of good news was that Phil had woken in the night and been pretty rational for a change. She still seemed skittish but focused on us and knew who she was. She wouldn’t talk about the things that scared her, but you could tell by looking at her she remembered them. She wanted every light we had on and said (in a rather embarrassed voice) that she didn’t want Tucker or me to get near her. Other than that, she didn’t seem to mind us. A couple of times, however, she would look at me and cringe a little. She didn’t really look Tucker’s way at all unless it was by accident. I was just so happy that she wasn’t crying and screaming I could have danced. Previously I was worrying maybe there was something a doctor would be able to do and by keeping her here we were, well, dooming her.

That night there were gunshots right down in our street. The bar below us, along with just about everything else, was closed. There was a dark to dawn curfew in effect, and even during the day the military didn’t want anyone out unless they were going to or from a “necessary” workplace (read: police, grocery store personnel, gas station attendant, doctors, utility workers) or stocking up on food. The local cops were easily identifiable since they walked around with simple cotton masks over their faces in deference to the “virus” or “gas” (or evil spirits or whatever). The National Guard, however, was in full anti-infective gear, and bore the look of spacemen in the quiet streets. Admittedly, Catfish didn’t warrant many guardsmen, but a few were around. And they were very heavily armed. Now maybe you understand why I didn’t want to send Tucker off to travel the roads. God only knew what they would do if they caught him roaming about.

The next morning I was so antsy waiting for news about Mom and Dad I decided we were in desperate need of food, and come hell or high water (or germs or spacemen carrying firearms) I was going to the store. And by God, I was going to walk. Meri gave Tucker a worried look, and I snarled at her, “No, I’m not going crazy. I just feel like a goldfish in a bowl, and I’m tired of swimming in circles.” Okay, so maybe I was a little crazy, but I really felt better, not like I was sliding into insanity. The question was: would I know if I were? I pushed that irritating rational thought away. I was going and that was that.

Tucker didn’t say a word, just put on a large black coat and waited for me. Meri had spoken to him, but I hadn’t asked what was said. Looking back at it now, I think I was sort of ticked off that she and Tucker treated me as if I might explode at any time. I was recovering, wasn’t I? I wasn’t going to be like Eddy, or like Phil. I was going to be normal. I wondered if they thought just because they hadn’t ever fallen sick it meant they were saner than I. Or maybe stronger. Of course to their point of view, I was acting a little irrational, but I certainly didn’t see it that way then.

I stopped at the door and glared at Tucker. He didn’t say anything or seem to notice my glare. He just waited, eventually yawning. So much for my killer glare. I stepped out of the apartment and went down past the apartment below ours. I hesitated at the door, wondering if there was anything I could or should do to help. I thought about knocking, but what would I say? Gosh, sorry your mom is nutty. No, best to just move on.