Ping - From the Apocalypse (2 page)

Chapter Two

In the Upstairs Bedroom

(January 5
th
)

The wind ripped past Kate’s ears with such a force she could barely hear her own voice. But her banging on the neighbour’s door would surely get their attention. They had to be home — she had collided with their car in the driveway. She began to kick her boot into the door.

“Where are you?
!” she cried, shaking the handle and pushing down on the latch a third time. The sting of ice-pellets hit her face as she turned to the street, gazing into the pitch-black night. “Somebody help me! Isn’t anyone out there?!!!”

Sh
e slid down the snow-covered steps and landed beyond the shelter of the veranda, her long hair lashing her face. Burrowing into the collar of her coat, she felt her way past the neighbour’s car and climbed up into their yard, where — keeping close to the bushes beneath the window — the house provided some shelter from the wind. But, she’d forgotten about the border around the garden.

H
er boots hit a small boulder and she tripped into the low-lying shrubs, the sharp, bare branches sticking up in spikes. She staggered back to her feet, rubbed the melting snow from her face and hurried on, toward the adjacent home.

Past t
he brick wall on the far side of the window, she walked out into the wide, open gap between the houses, waving her arms in front of her, hoping to avoid a collision with one of the many mature pine trees. She descended an abrupt hill, wading through deep snowdrifts and then started the climb up the other side, gasping to catch her breath as the ground finally leveled.

Reaching
out, as she stumbled along blindly, she brushed a garage door and then, at last, the steps to the porch. “My husband’s sick,” she said faintly, hitting the door. But her body was succumbing, it was too weak to go on — pain radiated throughout her everywhere, and a terrifying feeling of helplessness was seeping into her.

“Why aren’t you
answering?” she sobbed, shaking the handle and pressing the latch, stunned when it opened. She staggered into the darkness and the wind sucked the door to a slamming shut behind her. She stood in the foyer where the muted sounds of the chaos outside punctuated her gasping breaths.

“
Is anyone there?” she panted, her body trembling and her legs so wobbly she could barely stand.

“
Hello?”

She searched along the walls, h
er fingers sliding up at last to the light-switch, toggling it futilely. Lingering in the darkness until her breaths slowed a little and her heart pounded less harshly, she noticed, as her eyes adjusted, a vague glow at the far end of the house, down the long hallway.

“
Anyone there?” Her voice was a mere whisper.

Her boots clicked over the wood floor as s
he started walking towards the back of the palacious home, following the light around the corner and through two rooms, to the kitchen, where a laptop was still glowing on a chef’s desk. But her gaze went immediately to the phone, beside it. She lifted it from its charger and with frozen fingers pressed the buttons.

“Please God
,” she bleated, dropping into a chair at the kitchen table. The ringing droned on and she collapsed into her arms across the table, eventually letting the phone slide from her grasp.

“
Answer me,” she muttered through chattering teeth. But while she shivered uncontrollably, her skin and muscles were being torched. She let her heavy coat fall to the floor and closed her eyes. “I know you need me Jon… just give me a minute,” she mumbled, determined not to pass out. But her head was so dizzy and the pain in every part of her body, excruciating.

She needed an ambulance
, or they were both going to die.

With her head still on her arm she slid
the phone close and remembering to start with a one, pressed a familiar number.

“Please answer me,
please…”

The ringing began
, and she feared it would go to voicemail, but there was a click, a string of laboured breaths, and then finally, “Hello?”

T
ears ran down her cheeks. She could barely speak. “Dad?” Her voice came out as a barely audible whisper.

“Katie…
is — is that you, dear?”

H
er mouth was too dry to speak.

“I
— I tried to call you, Kate.”

“Dad
— Jon’s unconscious!!!”

There was a
long pause. “Did you hear the news Kate?” he said in a dark tone.

“
No… I—I, there was a blackout. He needs an ambulance,” she slurred.

“
Sweetheart… ”

“
And. I’m sick too. Dad. Very sick…” She let go of the phone. Everything was going dark.

Flat on her back, she blinked up at the ceiling. Although she wanted desperately to check out the horrifying sound, she would have to wait for her strength to return. Her body was like a dead weight. She drifted off again and it was impossible to determine how long.

It
was such an alarming sound and she found herself sitting up on the floor beside a pool of vomit. She managed to pull her body up, stagger to the sink, and fill a glass with water. She pressed her lips to the rim, craving the cool liquid so desperately that she gulped it. Her heart was thumping far too fast.

H
er legs buckled and her knees smashed into the ceramic tiles. She crawled past the broken glass, through the water, over to the cupboard door. She leaned against it, hyperventilating, and glancing upward. There was something she had to check out on the upper floor.

Eventually, she
stood up again and waited for the buzzing in her ears and the faintness to diminish enough that she could walk without falling. The laptop was her only source of light. She took it with her and staggered from the kitchen to the hall, and then, to the stairs by the front door.

Grasping the railing, s
he began to ascend — one step at a time — waiting until she could handle the next. At the top, she lowered herself down to sit on the landing, grateful for a place to rest — moving around had brought the throbbing, searing pain back. She collapsed against the railing, barely hanging on to consciousness, her perception growing more distorted.

Then,
she heard faint stirrings near the end of the hall — soft swishes against a rug. She swung the computer around like a wide flashlight. Staggering to her feet, she shuffled toward a window at the front of the house and then stood before it, swaying, ready to collapse. There was an overwhelming buzz in her ears.

H
er gaze went through the doorway of a bedroom. There was something on the floor in the far corner. She stumbled backwards, knocking the clanging, metal blinds and suddenly, it was as if she was at the bottom of the sea, viewing everything through a wavering current.

S
he tripped forward across a floor that had tilted downward like a funhouse at a carnival, gravity dragging her down into the bedroom until she crumbled to her knees in front of the dreaded slice of reality on the floor. She had hoped it was only a doll, yet deep in her core she knew it was a child.

Th
e buzz in her ears was as loud as a chainsaw as she watched the lips part and saw a shallow breath seep from his tiny mouth. She touched his blue sleeper, hoping the solid feel of it would bring her to her senses, and out of this lucid nightmare. Her fingers slid along the fuzzy material up to the chin and over a round, blistering cheek to his fine, damp hair. She stroked him, waiting for another breath.

His lid
s suddenly flung open, startling her almost out of her stupor. He peered at her with stark, blue eyes as round as coins — with flecks of gold that gave them such depth, it was like gazing into the universe.

“What’s wrong with y
ou?” she whispered. The pupils expanded with a perceptiveness that seared into her soul. But then, just as abruptly, the look flattened and the life in him was gone.

“Don't go,” she
cried, sweeping him into her arms.

Chapter Three

The
Rash

(January 6th,
Year One, Post Apocalypse)

The agonizing pain was all Kate knew for a long while; there seemed no end to it, or the raging fever which kept her delirious, confused, and oblivious to her whereabouts. Eventually, when the storm died down, the unprecedented silence seemed so unnatural and eerie that she opened her eyes in terror, only to discover a darkness that could not be blinked away and a void in her mind where her memories had been. Too weak to move she was stuck on a cold floor drifting in and out of awareness.

As dawn approached a
vague square patch appeared from behind the curtains; shivering, she kept glancing back at it as it slowly lightened to a dark navy. All she knew for certain was her helplessness to do anything about the sickness which was surely going to kill her. It seemed to be burrowing deeper into her, torturously, like an infestation of hungry insects devouring her flesh. Somehow she sensed it was best not to try to run from it — her body needed every ounce of energy if she was going to survive.

By afternoon she was calmer, b
ut when the light hit her eyes, she whimpered from the pain, turned her head away, and stared in a daze at the small body on the floor in the corner, which frightened her; her gut muscles tightened and squeezed and — suddenly recalling this happening before — she gagged and heaved, and passed out.

S
he didn’t wake again until the pitch-black had returned. Sitting up, she screamed for Jon. She crawled until she hit a wall and then a crib, and finally gripping some long drapes, she pulled herself up. With her face against the window, horrified at the impenetrable darkness, she stumbled out into the hallway searching for a light switch, then flicking one up and down, sobbing.

I
n a bathroom, she filled her hands with frigid water and gulped it desperately. But a minute later, feeling as if she’d swallowed a knife, she fell back against the towel rack dragging the metal rod and towels down with her.

The light was coming in around the blinds. S
he peered with alarm at the bloody vomit beside her head. Trembling, she pulled the bath towels closer and rolled into them for warmth. Shivering but unable to move further, she closed her eyes and searched for strength.

After a while
she managed to shift her weight to her forearms and knees, and began to crawl out into the hallway towards the stairs, planning to slide down one step at a time to the entranceway and then, while it was still light, drag herself through the snow so she could die with Jon.

But, a
s she neared the top step, something grabbed hold of her foot. She turned her head. He was on his knees too, grasping onto her with deformed hands and staring at her through swollen lids. His face was a mass of oozing, blistering sores.

“
NO!!!” she screamed, “I want to be with Jon!”

With each pounding beat
of her over-working heart, fiery torment shot into every nerve. She opened her eyes, groaning for water — taking note of the pillow beneath her head, and the white, down comforter over her. It was a single bed, pushed up to the wall of a tiny, spare room. She slid her feet to the floor and staggered the few steps to the other side of the room.

Screaming, she sunk
against the dresser, gritting her teeth and holding her breath, barely managing to keep upright as she waited for the torture to ease. Then, slowly, she began to shuffle, in stocking feet, into the hallway. One of her boots lay up against the railing. The other one was not in sight.

She made it to the bathroom
and gaped at the heap of stained towels. Her insides curdled. She didn’t want to remember any of that, it was too terrible.

There was a glass pushed against
the far corner of the long countertop. Too bad she hadn’t known it was there, shrouded in the darkness. She filled it immediately, but drank slow, one sip at a time. Then, hobbling back toward the bedroom with water spilling over the edge of her refilled glass, she made it as far as the door to the bedroom, and then sank to her knees, heaving.

Dehydration had become her new worst enemy. She sat on the lid of the toilet, waiting for the strength to try another sip. The grout between the tiles above the tub and by her feet wriggled and writhed distressingly, but closing her eyes caused her to nearly fall over and she grasped the countertop to steady herself.

The
glass of water was there beside her hand on the counter, ready and waiting. But, one mouthful sipped slowly, was all she could trust her body to handle, for now; she could not afford to vomit again, frightened and convinced she would die of dehydration. A sip would be better than nothing at all, and if that stayed down, only then, when she was certain it was safe, would she try another one. She tottered back along the hallway and with some of the water still in the glass when she arrived at the bed, where she perched on the edge of the mattress, shivering.

Unable to control the wide trembling of her hand as she tried not to spill any
more of her water while placing the glass on the nightstand — she noticed, for the first time, how the skin on her hands had bubbled up like simmering cheese beneath a broiler, and she finally understood the extent to which the infection was affecting her — eating away at her flesh, from the inside out.

Easing
herself down on the pillow, she grimaced, waiting for the excruciating throbs to ease a bit. Finally, able to breathe again, she pulled back the bottom of her blood-stained sweater to grimly discover the reason for such extensive pain — every inch of her was covered in a raw, oozing rash. It was a devastating sight to behold and she could barely control the gags that arose in rebellion to it, from her gut, pushing her tongue out of her mouth threateningly. Never had she been more grateful that she’d obeyed her instincts to avoid looking in the bathroom mirror.

Now,
too dehydrated even to produce tears, her lids scratched into the surface of her eyeballs like coarse sandpaper, and, realizing she could not even afford the luxury of a good cry — let alone the wailing that would have been in proportion to the intensity of her horror and the extent of her pain — she nudged the cover close to her nose, a frosty mist escaping from her sighs in the freezing room. Drained of every ounce of energy and badly in need of the rest that might provide her body with a slight, fighting chance, she succumbed to her overwhelming exhaustion and quickly passed out.

The three-quarter moon’s face seemed turned away from her slightly, as if it were trying to conceal an unspeakable certainty. And the brash illumination of stars — which had congregated in numbers never before witnessed by Kate’s far-reaching gaze — sent a cold chill down her tender spine. She’d never seen anything like it in her life. But the truth was glimmering in unabashed black and white, and she blinked up at it in fear.

She turned away and peered over at the inch of frozen water that had formed
over the top of her glass. With long, swollen fingers she reached out and brought it over so she could push the ice inside and have a small sip. It hadn’t seemed possible that her sores could get any worse — yet now they were fatter and denser and more deeply rooted. It seemed to be the end of everything.

But
, since she was still alive — then, it had to be possible Jon could be too. She couldn’t die now, only to leave him to battle — whatever this was — alone.

It was hard to believe that o
nly days ago, the moonlight had come in through their bedroom window casting shadows from the trees on their silky skin as they moved, entwined together —their bodies, like beautiful, breathing canvases. She could see Jon’s chest rising above her and smell him as his tantalizing warmth brushed her face. His eyes had met hers, teasingly, and just before they’d fallen asleep, still wrapped close to each other, he’d twirled her long hair around his fingers.

If only
they had a way to communicate now. To think he was only two doors away.

“I love yo
u Jon,” she sobbed, her gaze finding the framed photo that had fallen from the chest of drawers. It was a young woman with her hair in a bun and long earrings. Kate remembered the name, Jen, her husband Josh, and the three children that had kept them busy, cheerfully driving here and there. But now everything had changed.

She sat at the edge of the bed, testing her strength and staring at her boots. The pain was deep in every bone as she hobbled toward the dresser, but some of her stamina had returned. Delicately peeling her stained top away from the scabs on her breasts and over her head, she slipped on the cardigan she’d found in the top drawer, and zipped it up, shivering.

After a few minutes
she sat on the bed, guiding her boots onto her feet, groaning. “It’s time,” she said bravely, and stumbled to her feet gasping at the pressure against her scab-encrusted feet.

She hobbled down the hall to
the window that faced the street and peered out at a sweeping arena of untouched snow. The cars were completely buried and there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere. She pulled her sleeves over her fingers, beginning to turn toward the stairs; but she suddenly stopped — her gaze was stuck on something.

“I thought you were
n’t real.” She let out an unsteady sigh, and inhaled deeply. Shuffling through the door, she stared at the tiny corpse in the corner of the room for a moment and then, stepped over to it, bending down for a closer look.

There
was a rash — clusters of small red dots — but, nothing remotely similar to the mess that was still festering all over her body. His quick death must have been the reason — there hadn’t been time for the sores to develop. It seemed like she had been fighting for her life for an eternity, but it hurt to think he’d even suffered a fraction of that pain.

But she wasn’t going to cry.
Sobbing over him was not going to help. If she really wanted to survive this, there was no room for useless emotion; too much sentiment would only derail her. She peeled some adhered strands of hair from her cheek and hobbled away.

Her hand was on the rail and s
he was about to step down the staircase, when she turned back to gaze at a bedroom door. There was much more she’d been avoiding, and it would be wrong to leave, without facing the truth. She slowly walked over and peered into the master bedroom, where Josh lay, just inside, sprawled out on his back.

He looked like a monster, his face unrecognizable, and the skin so swollen and marred with pus-filled eruptions that she couldn’t even find his features. He’d lasted almost as long as she had,
probably in and out of consciousness, delirious like she’d been. Yet, Josh had done his utmost to rescue his family and Kate, who was certain if she’d been allowed out in the snow that day she would be dead. She wondered if he’d put her in that bed and covered her up too. She couldn’t remember.

Jen’s
arm hung over the side of the bed, and beside her, beneath the covers, there was a mound. Kate didn’t want to look.  Instead, she gazed out the window past the set of half-buried swings, to a familiar maple that was at the back of her own property. She had swung on its branches as a child.

Returning
to the bed, she finally pulled the blankets back. Beside their mom were two little girls. She couldn’t leave them like that. Despite her swollen feet, she wobbled down the hall to the baby, lifted him in her arms, and carried him back, placing him beside his siblings, and then covering all of them.

“Thank you,” she
whispered to Josh, spreading a quilt on top of him.

Her
boots clunked on the wood as she descended the stairs and went along the hall in search of her coat. For a while she rested on a kitchen chair holding her stomach and groaning. Then, pulling down a hat and some mitts from the shelf in a closet, she dressed for the outdoors and stepped outside.

The fadin
g light felt harsh on her eyes as she held the railing to the porch, stumbled down the snowy steps, and began to slog through the high drifts. It seemed a long way back. By the time her cottage was in sight she collapsed, breathless in the snow.

S
he gazed down her long driveway, at her big front veranda, the stained-glass window with the Christmas wreath over it, and the string of lights around the doorframe. There was just a little ways to go before she could see Jon again.