My Dead World (8 page)

“I … I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Then find someone who can,” Bobby said. “It’s hard, I know. Think of the girls, Niles. Think of them. Every moment Paul is alive, so is that virus in that cabin.”

“I’m sorry I’m fighting with you.”

“It’s okay. It’s a tough time. I wish I was there.”

“I do, too.”

“Hey, is um, Dad awake? Can I talk to him?”

I muttered out a ‘yeah’ and turned and handed the phone to my father.

“Hey, Bob. Where are ya?” My father asked and walked to the far corner of the cabin, speaking in a low voice. Not wanting me to hear.

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t listening. I was swimming in my own thoughts and my own choices. Hard choices and I was running out of time to make them.

Just as I was coming out of a short period of deep sleep, Katie semi jumped on me, snuggling her cheek next to mine.

“Wake up, Mommy. Are you up?”

I groaned.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

It was a dream. All that happened, all that we went through, it was all a bad dream. I truly believed when I opened my eyes, I would be in my own room. The smell of bacon and coffee strengthened those thoughts. I envisioned Paul at the stove, telling the girls to wake me up. I basked for a moment in the thought that it was a horrific, lucid dream, and I pulled Katie to me just as reality struck.

I felt the slight morning breeze as it seeped through the window above my head, a second later, the smell from Paul’s room carried with that breeze.

I reached up to close the window.

“What the hell!” I heard my father yell outside. “Who the hell taught you? You can stick a needle in someone, but when it comes to being handy, you’re as useless as a frog with no legs.”

I winced.

“What does that mean, mommy?” Katie asked.

“It means …” Addy replied. “Pappy is making up sayings again.”

“Mommy, are you up?” Katie asked. “Pappy said we have to cook the bacon. So it’s bacon all day.”

After one more grunt, I sat up. “Can I have some coffee before we start having conversations?”

“Should we bring Daddy coffee and bacon?” Katie asked.

“No baby, stay away from Daddy, okay?” I ran my hand down her face, then played with the dark blonde curls in her hair. She was smart for a four year old, hopefully she would get what I was telling her. “He’s very sick. I don’t want you to get it.”

“But I love Daddy.”

“I know you do.”

“Maybe if I kiss his boo-boo.”

“No, sweetie, you can’t make it better. I know you want to see him, but you can’t. Okay?”

She nodded and scurried from the bed. “Let’s go eat bacon.”

Bacon.

Only my father would dictate that all the bacon be cooked before it went bad. There was no refrigerator and he grabbed all the bacon from his house.

I grabbed a couple pieces, that was all I needed and I didn’t want too much in my stomach when we went to Big Bear camp. My father was against it, so much so he wouldn’t let Cade take a break from working on the fence.

I drank my coffee on the porch with Addy at my side, while Katie helped Lisa with the multitudes of bacon.

While waiting on Cade, I noticed the solar generator was operational and I began charging our phones, radios, and anything else electronic. I noticed that he had dug a grave and buried Julie. I felt bad. I wished he wouldn’t had done that alone. We, as a family would have been there for him.

Another thing I did was check on Paul. I looked in on him through the window. I had to cover my mouth and nose, the smell was horrendous. I felt bad for him. I should have been in there, cleaning him, making sure he was alright instead of allowing him to lay in his own discharged bodily fluids.

There was nothing I could do. Paul had become volatile. While he hadn’t completely changed over, any noise usually caused him to spring and prepare almost defensively. Arms out, eyes shifting.

Finally, just after our bacon lunch, my father conceded that he couldn’t hold us back any longer and Cade gathered supplies to take to Big Bear.

Even though we had given them medical supplies, he wanted to take some other items.

My father, curious as well, decided to come along. Paul was restrained and we felt confident he wouldn’t get out of the room.

We radioed Boswick and headed over to Big Bear. There was one man on the main gate and he let us through. We drove to the top of the hill where Boswick was waiting for us outside his manager’s office.

I was surprised how many people were there. Hundreds. All having the same idea. Get out of the city and wait it out.

They all stared at us as we parked. A few, knowing my father, waved.

“Earl, Cade … Niles.” Boswick shook my father’s hand. “Glad you could stop by. I’ll take you to our makeshift infirmary.”

Boswick looked tired and that was seldom seen.

My father looked around. “How long has everyone been coming up here?”

“The last week. We’re full. Most brought supplies.” Boswick led the way. “The ones that didn’t, have been fishing.”

“Are you good on them?” My father asked. “Supplies, I mean.”

“I think. At least for a little while. Here.” He pointed to the party room. “We have them in here. I’m just at a loss of what to do.”

Before Boswick opened that door, Cade passed out masks and gloves to us, instructing us not to get too close and that he would handle things.

Just as we were about to enter, Boswick’s son came from around the side.

“Mr. Hanlan.” He extended his hand to my father. “It is nice to see you. You look well.”

“Thanks, Lev.”

“Who’s that?” Cade whispered.

“Boswick’s son. Don’t try to find a family resemblance, he’s adopted.”

And really, there wasn’t an inkling of resemblance. Lev Boswick stood about five inches taller than his father. A big guy, not too muscular, but intimidating. His dark brown hair had a million cowlicks. Lev wore it short and it seemed to always spike up everywhere. Probably why he wore a baseball cap. He had chiseled facial features and rarely smiled. I probably would have considered him handsome if he wasn’t such a dick.

“Nila.” Lev nodded once at me.

“Lev.” I nodded in return.

I don’t know why I was surprised to see him. Lev and his father were close. Plus, hating to admit it, Lev was strong and a good one to have in a crisis. I attributed his strength to all the years of bullying he dealt with.

There was once a time I liked him. I remembered when Boswick and his wife adopted Lev. Some sort of church thing. Lev was a ten year old orphan from either Czechoslovakia or Russia. When he came here he didn’t know any English and making it even harder for him to adjust was the fact that Lev was extremely overweight.

Broken English in public school was bad enough, but add the fact that he was rotund didn’t help matters at all. It took years for his English to become fluent. The dialect stayed with him for the longest time. In fact, I swore it was still there a little. Probably was my imagination. He really did only say my name.

Back then, when Lev was heavy and didn’t speak fluently, I hung out with him a lot. We were the same age. He was shy and nice. In fact, my father made me go to the Big Bear dance with Lev when we were fourteen.

Then somewhere around seventeen years old, Lev transformed. He started losing the weight, and when he did, he became bitter about the fact that people suddenly were his friends. For some reason he included me in that and never treated me the same way again.

That pissed me off considering I was one of the only people to hang out with him before then.

I also attributed it to the fact he suddenly had girls fighting for him and I was in the way. We went from friends, to acquaintances, to mortal enemies. Where and when that last part occurred, I wasn’t sure. I was however certain, our last conversation ended with, “Fuck you.”

Boswick opened the door to the party room. It was a large room and most camp events were held there. The day before we were told he had ten people ill, but that wasn’t the case when we walked in. The smell of vomit and feces permeated the air. People moaned and cried, some even screamed out.

“Jesus,” Cade exclaimed. “You said ten. There’s more than ten.”

“Twenty-two,” Boswick said. “They started getting sick last night. None of these folks, yet, are getting violent. I was hoping you could tell me who was close.”

Cade shook his head in disbelief. “How many are injured?”

“Five. Everyone else either was infected and showed up here without symptoms or they caught it here. I’m afraid of the ones turning violent. That’s why Lev is so close.”

“I’ll start examining them.” Cade said. “I’ll give you the best assessment I can.”

“Earl, your son is that big disease doctor,” Boswick said. “Have you talked to him? Any idea how we can stop this thing from spreading?”

“Keep the healthy from the sick,” My father said. “But according to my son, the only way to stop the spread is to kill all those infected.”

Lev stated. “That makes sense to me.”

“Oh, it would,” I snapped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lev asked.

“It means, I bet you have no problem putting them down.”

“If they are dangerous to everyone else, no. No problem.”

“Figures.”

“What is your problem?” Lev asked. “Now is not the time to carry bitter past problems.”

“I’m not. I just think that you would have no problem walking up to each and every one of the sick and ending their lives.”

“If that’s what it takes to keep people safe,” Lev said. “I’ve seen how violent people get.”

“They’re sick.” I argued.

“They’re a danger, sick or not. So you would choose to let them live and see what happens?” Lev asked,

“As long as they’re alive.”

“That attitude is putting you and everyone around you in danger.”

“That attitude is all that separates us from the animals.”

“Enough.” My father scolded. “We have sick people here to check. Cade, tell us what you need us to do.”

“Medically, I’ll examine them,” Cade replied. “But until I do, I need you guys to look at them and take note of physical changes. Do they have necrosis? Are they aware? We need to find out the common link between these people. This is not airborne, so how are they catching it? And we need to find a way, all of us, to contain it here and now. There are hundreds of people here. If they get infected,” he lowered his voice as he spoke to me, “that’s too close to the cabin for my comfort.”

Upon his words, I saw the bigger picture. Ten people were ill the day before and that number doubled.

Cade stated it was too close to us for his comfort, yet, Paul was even closer.

The vision of the twenty-something sick people was a wakeup call for me. We needed to find out why and how it spread so fast. If it was happening at Big Bear campsite when people weren’t even under the same roof, chances were it could happen to us. We were around Paul, taking care of him, breathing his air. The thought not only sickened and worried me, it scared the hell out of me.

It seemed insane to me that suddenly I was a different person. In the current situation I was weak. Never could I have believed I would get that way. When the new fry boy at work, burned his hand while removing potato cakes, I didn’t bat an eye helping him. My next door neighbor had a heart attack while trimming rose bushes, I administered CPR until rescue workers arrived. When the teenager down the street cut off his fingers, I was the one who grabbed the fingers, double bagged them and put them in cold water after covering the wound.

Me.

The ‘go to in a crisis’ person.

Always strong, always dependable.

Yet, when faced with the virus and the effects of it, I was weak. It wouldn’t be long before I went from being an asset in any situation, to a hindrance.

Perhaps it was my unwillingness to believe it was really happening. Every second I expected it to stop.

In that community room, I couldn’t stay any longer. Each person, each child that I saw was a punch of reality in the face that I was ill equipped to handle.

Finally, in a nice way, Cade told me to wait outside. I don’t even know what I was doing that caused my ejection. I stepped outside and that was when I heard it.

A television.

For some reason, it was in my mind that since we high tailed it out of town, the world was done. But that wasn’t the case.

It had been only a little over twenty-four hours since I watched the news. It seemed like a lifetime. Things were happening fast and important news could be missed with all that was happening.

‘We were a society obsessed,’ the female newscaster’s voice carried my way. ‘Obsessed with an apocalyptic world filled with recently deceased, rising up and eating the flesh of the living. Now, how far is reality from fiction? With us is epidemiologist and former deputy director of UK Health Services …’

For real? The news wasn’t just news it was talking points?

A group had gathered around a single television set up outside one of the RV’s.

I walked over. Everyone watched.

“You’re not going to get much from Bette Stevens.” His voice said behind me.

I wanted to scream. After rolling my eyes, I turned around. “I’m trying to find out something, Lev. I haven’t caught the news.”

He took hold of my arm and started to lead me away.

“Hey.” I argued.

“That is not news. What you see on television isn’t a real representation. It would be like watching Jimmy Fallon, Johnny Carson or any late night talk show host tell you the president was assassinated. You don’t know whether to believe it.” We stopped at the Big Bear office and he opened the door.

“Was that an example or was the president assassinated?”

“He was shot this morning.” Lev closed the door behind us. “But you won’t hear it on the news.”

“Oh my God. He was shot.”

“They should have had him in a secure location earlier.” Lev pulled out a chair for me, set a bottle of whiskey on the table with a glass and opened a cabinet, exposing two speakers and different types of radios. “But he insisted on staying. Someone shot him right through The Oval Office window. No one was around to make sure the White House was a hundred percent secure.”

I was shocked, to say the least. Speechless.

Lev poured a shot worth of whiskey in the glass, then turned on the small radio and upped the volume. “Sit here and listen. These are real emergency calls, reports as they come in. Some are bits and pieces, but enough for you to put it together.”

“Where are they coming from?”

“I don’t know. It’s what the dish …” he pointed to the roof, “…picks up. It doesn’t matter, it’s what reality is. I’ll be back.” He opened the door, turned the lock on the knob and walked out.

When the small office was quiet, the voices flowed from the scanner. At first they meshed together, said numbers and letters, and were hard to make out. After a few minutes, I understood, and just to make sure I remembered, I grabbed a notepad and pen from the desk.

<><><><>

10-4 exercise extreme caution.

Roger that.

Holy shit! They’re pouring out of the apartment building.

Pull back. Pull back.

Man down.

Gun shots.

We can’t … can’t hold ground. Advise.

Direct order. Shoot to kill.

Barricade down at 1600 block of Penn.

The chatter and calls meshed together and went on and on. I couldn’t tell where exactly they were, but I could tell what was going on. Although a part of me still wanted to see the news, I doubted they would talk about the riots in the streets.

I was done listening, and as I shut off the scanner, I jumped when another voice came on the radio.

“Anyone out there?”

Static.

“This is Butler KOA, anyone in range listening? Over?”

Static.

“If you are out there. We have folks that need help. We’re packed to capacity and more want in. We have about fifteen cases of that virus here and can use medical …”

Lev came in and shut it off.

“They need help,” I said.

“And so will we if we reply,” Lev said, shutting the cabinet. “If our fathers weren’t long time friends, I would have advised him not to answer your calls either.”

“We’re helping you.”

“For now. Eventually, at some point in this, we’ll all help each other.” Lev said, grabbing the bottle from the table, he poured a shot and downed it.

“Is it everywhere?”

“I’m going to guess it is. Some places worse than others. Probably not so bad in rural areas.”

“When we were down near Evans City,” I said. “They didn’t have it.”

“The lesser population, the better chance. As time goes on, this will have to hit everywhere before it’s done. The last advisory I heard was to stay in your homes or to retreat to smaller populated areas. Wait it out is the general consensus. But no one knows for how long. Being here is waiting it out safely.”

“Is Cade done examining?”

“Pretty much,” Lev said. “How’s Paul?”

“He’s …” I paused. “What do you know about Paul?”

“My father said you told him he was shot.” Lev shrugged. “I figured it was a Nila lie to cover up the fact he was bit.”

“A Nila lie?”

“Nila, you know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t. But ... I was afraid to tell your father the truth. Paul was bit.”

“How bad?” Lev asked.

“How bad is the bite or how bad is he now? Scratch that.” I grabbed the bottle. “Both are horrible. Bobby didn’t say how fast Paul would go downhill. I guess I didn’t expect it to be so quick.”

“Has he turned into one of those things yet?”

“No. But he’s close.” I exhaled. “And I hate being away from the girls this long. Lisa is with them but with Paul being like he is … I would feel better being back there. Do you think Cade will be much longer?”

“I don’t know,” Lev replied. “I can take you back to the cabin if you want.”

“No.” I shook my head and walked to the door.

“Take the car then and I’ll bring Cade to you.”

I laughed sarcastically. “No you won’t. You’ll kidnap him. He’s a valuable asset that is needed under these circumstances and you guys turned him away.”

“Okay,” Lev lifted his hands. “Then wait for Cade. Can I ask what you plan on doing with Paul?”

“No, you can’t.” I opened the door and walked out.

“Before I left New York …” Lev called out.

I exhaled in annoyance and stopped.

“My best friend was bit.”

I turned around. “You were in New York? Season started, you’re never in New York when camping season starts.”

“I was. I was ready to come home when things got crazy there. Me and Ricky … you remember Ricky North, right?”

“Yeah, the kid that used to pick on you.”

“He became my best friend.”

“Okay, good for you. What about him?”

“We were together and we decided to get out of the city. Somehow when he went back to his place to get his things, he ran into one of the infected and got bit. He wouldn’t go to the hospital because he knew he was going to die. He knew what was going to happen to him. So I waited around with him. Took care of him.”

“How bad did he get?”

Lev huffed out sadly. “Bad. And then … he turned into something I didn’t know. Some sort of insane, rage filled person. Like he was rabid. He went nuts.”

“You were with him?”

“I was. So I know what it’s like to see someone you care about come down with it. To turn. To know you have to do something.”

“I take it you killed him?”

“No.” Lev shook his head. “I walked away. I locked him in that apartment and left. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him. Yet, the whole way home I kept thinking, what if he got out? What if he attacked someone, infected them? That’s when I realized, my responsibility wasn’t to my emotional attachment to my friend, it was to those he could hurt. I failed. I will not make that same mistake again.”

“So are you telling me I should just kill Paul?”

“What would you tell someone here? Would you want an infected to live near you if it puts your children in danger? Because Nila, he’s putting the kids in danger.”

“I know this. Don’t you think I know this?”

“You’re agonizing about it. I can see that. I know you.”

“You don’t know me. Not anymore. You lost the right to even say that to me.”

“Fine.” Lev lifted his hands. “I’m just trying to help you.”

“By saying I should kill Paul.”

“Nila, listen, I …”

“Because I can’t.” I barked with emotion. “I can’t kill my husband. I can’t walk up to him and put a bullet in his head. I can’t. He’s sick.”

“I know he’s sick and I am not telling you to kill him,” Lev said. “You have a medical guy in there.” He pointed to the community building. “Go to him. Ask him. You don’t need to shoot and kill Paul. You just need to find a way to help him die faster.”

And that, from the mouth of my enemy, was the one thing that made sense. For the first time ever it made sense.

Help Paul to die.