Suffer the Children (9 page)

“They’ll be tagged and mapped, Joanie. We’ll know where they are. We can have them taken out at any time and given a proper burial once things get back to normal.” Which was a lie, he knew; things would likely never get back to normal. “I’ll bring them myself.”

“What time?” What she meant was:
How much time do I have to say good-bye?

He couldn’t believe how strong she was.

“I’ll put it off as long as I can. As long as you need. Okay?”

“No,” Joan said, her voice cracking. “Nothing is okay anymore.”

He tried to hug her. She avoided his arms and told him to go.

He’d parked his truck in the driveway. He opened the front door and stepped into the cold. He paused to take a deep breath and get his bearings. Art Foley, his neighbor, stood on his porch smoking his pipe and staring at him. Accusing him with his eyes.

His wife’s voice in his head, shouting:
What did you do?

Doug winced, his face burning.
It wasn’t my fault!

But Foley wasn’t actually being accusatory about anything. He was looking at Doug with more like mute pity. The man had no kids himself. He clearly wanted to offer his condolences but was afraid of crossing some line of decorum with his neighbor. There were no rules of etiquette for this; they were all pioneering new territory in grief. Doug acknowledged him with a nod and got into his truck, where he lit a cigarette, feeling like he could chew through metal.

Pity yourself, Foley. We’re all victims today. The whole damn human race.

Doug arrived at the Department of Solid Waste Management with little memory of how he’d gotten there. He found the compound crowded with government workers, volunteers, and Army National Guard piling into and out of olive-green trucks. He recognized a few coworkers who’d retired, suddenly called back into service because of the crisis. A local vendor had set up a stand to hand out free coffee, and Doug got a tall one, cream, no sugar.

“Doug!”

He turned and saw Otis huffing toward him waving a handful of papers. Release forms for Doug to sign, it turned out.

“The training session’s just starting,” Otis told him. “If you hustle, you can get in. Sign these as soon as you can.”

He took the forms. “Lots of soldiers here with guns. All to make sure I do what I’m told.”

“They’re here to help.” Otis gripped his shoulder. “You’re a tough son of a bitch, brother. You’re going to be okay. We’re all going to get through this together.”

Doug scowled, but he was touched. “Thanks.”

The men running the session worked for FEMA. They gave him a
bright yellow hazmat suit and told him to put it on. He tried the respirator mask just to see what it was like. It smelled like rubber and ass. They told him he wouldn’t need it. He’d be wearing a simple hospital mask in the field.

He sat on a chair in the crowded room. Some of the men were smoking, so he lit a Winston. He drank his coffee and listened.

“Contrary to popular belief, the dead pose little health risk to the living,” said the instructor, a nerdy government type. “The bacteria that cause decay in dead tissue aren’t dangerous. But you still have to be careful if the child had an infectious disease like HIV or tuberculosis. That’s a risk. It’s also obviously rare, though.”

A man in the back raised his hand. “How do we know when there’s a risk?”

“The next of kin was supposed to report any infectious diseases when they registered their child for burial. It’s all in your information packets.” He checked his watch and turned to another man behind him. “Mike, can we get those passed out?”

Mike distributed the packets to the men, big manila envelopes stuffed with paper. Doug opened his and inspected the contents. Pickup lists and forms. Grief counseling contact lists. Flash cards telling him what he should and should not say. Everything looked hastily photocopied. It was a thrown-together operation.

It had been nearly two full days since the children died, and the clock was ticking. Every day that went by without burial, the bodies of the children continued to fall apart.

Like Otis said, somebody had to pick them up.

An hour later, Doug drove a twenty-four-foot U-Haul truck down Shanks Road. The vehicle had been freshly painted white with a red cross to cover up the company’s logos. On the passenger side, Tom Rafferty, a beefy man with an earnest face, leafed through the pickup list. Tom was a volunteer.

“So many,” the man said. “All in one day? Are they serious?”

“We’ll do them one at a time and see what happens,” Doug told him.

He took a swig of coffee while Tom played with the dial of the radio.

The radio murmured:
“If there are any living children in your area, please call the toll-free number at the CDC—”

“Turn that off,” Doug growled.

“We need to stay informed.”

“There’s nothing to inform,” Doug told him. “Nobody knows shit.”

Or rather, they already knew everything. Everything worth caring about, anyway. And nothing could change what they knew.

They passed a school, ignoring the playground speed limit. Doug remembered waving as Nate entered his school on his first day of second grade.

Funny how Nate’s so strong in some subjects, like math and geography, and weak in others, like English. Joanie thinks a parent-teacher conference would help. She wants to blame the teacher. Nate knows who’s to blame. I’d like to lean on him, and Joanie’s always at me, telling me to help her out with disciplining the kids, but every time I do it, out comes Mama Bear protecting her cubs. Nate will get the message from me loud and clear one way or another. It can’t be all on me. I’ll give him a shot, but he’s got to step up and take it. He’s got to do his part.

“Doug? Doug!”

“What? Was I talking?”

“Man, you were shouting.”

“I haven’t really slept in days.”

“Are you okay now? You freaked me out.”

“Peachy.” Doug ground his teeth. “Everything’s just peachy.”

He wished he could have a drink. One little drink. Something to dull the pain.

“You ever do anything like this?” he asked to change the subject.

Tom, startled: “No.”

“I mean waste collection. Biological waste in particular.”

“No. I’m a volunteer. I just want to help.”

“Well, I have experience with this stuff, so I’ll take the lead, all right?”

“No problem. Whatever you say.”

“Did you lose anybody yesterday?”

“No, sir. I don’t have any kids. I didn’t even see it. I was out cross-country skiing with my girlfriend when, uh, everything happened. You?”

Doug ignored the question. “You ever seen a dead body before?”

“My uncle died a few years back. There was a wake. My granny, when I was a kid.”

“I mean a
real
dead body. One that’s been decomposing for two full days.”

Tom swallowed hard. “Not really. I mean, we saw a few when we drove back into town, but at a distance.”

“What I’m saying is, if you’re doing this for the excitement, I can let you off here and find somebody else. No harm, no foul.”

“I really want to help.”

“What you see today is going to stay with you a long, long time.”

Saying this decided an important issue for him. He parked the truck on the street in front of a strip mall and killed the engine.

Doug said, “I have to pick something up. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

All the storefronts stood dark and empty except for one. A line of about a hundred people snaked out of it across the parking lot. They hugged themselves to keep warm. A big man with a baseball bat guarded the entrance. When a customer left, he let somebody else in.

Doug didn’t have time to stand around. He cut in line at the door. The guy with the bat took one look at his hazmat suit and stepped out of his way.

The door jingled as it closed behind him.

In every aisle of the store, people slammed liquor bottles and six-packs into shopping carts. It was ten in the morning, and half the shelves had already been emptied. They stopped to stare at his suit. They knew what it meant. He ignored them.

He found a bottle of Jim Beam and studied the label. In the old days, he’d been a real hell-raiser. He and Joan started dating just after
high school and partied hard almost every night of the week. After they got married, he expected the party to go on forever, but Joan got pregnant with Nate and quit her wild ways. The party was over. The wildcat he’d courted and married turned into a responsible parent and upright citizen. Doug would still go to the bar after work to unwind and shoot the bull with the other san-men. The only problem was he could never have just one. Next thing he knew, he’d wake up in his truck and have to drive straight to work.

Joan made him quit.
Nate needs a real father
, was all the reason she gave him. For him, it was enough. He’d heard once that to quit anything that got ahold of you, you had to give yourself up to a higher power. His kids were it.

Now they were gone. With trembling hands, Doug unscrewed the cap and sniffed. It smelled like old times.

He took a quick sip and gasped. The bourbon was like fire in his throat. Another sip.

Take it slow. Make it last.

Then another. Another.
Just need to get a little numb here.

It took everything he had not to chug it.

Doug got in line at the register. The proprietor, a man with a beard that sprawled across his big stomach, dropped the bottle into a paper bag and pushed it back across the counter. Doug added a steel hip flask to his purchase while he was at it. He couldn’t walk around in broad daylight with a bottle in a bag like some wino.

“No charge for you, friend,” the man said.

Doug mumbled his thanks and walked back outside. He couldn’t help but feel guilty. He hadn’t had a drink in eight years. Not only had he given in to an old vice he’d sworn to Joan he’d never do again, but here he was doing it at ten in the morning. This part wasn’t like old times. Drinking used to be for fun. Now it was medicinal.

Head down, he trudged across the parking lot and got back into his truck. He set the bag next to him and took another nip from the bottle before filling the flask. He lit a cigarette and sat there blinking, already feeling a buzz that threatened to morph into a splitting headache.

They’re never coming back.

Tom watched him with alarm.

Doug offered the flask. “Snort?”

“Uh, no thanks.” The man rolled down his window to let the smoke out.

Doug took a long pull on the bottle, capped it, and put it under his seat. He slipped the flask into the breast pocket of his jacket inside the hazmat suit. He felt flushed and boozy.

“You all right?” said Tom.

Doug started the engine. “Yup.”

“You know, you never told me if you lost someone yesterday.”

He guided the rig back onto the road. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

They drove in silence. The roads were virtually empty. The whole country had come to a halt, still reeling from the shock of what had happened.

Tom pointed to a blue house up ahead on the right. “This is twelve twenty-four. The Emersons. Two kids, aged six and eight. No infectious diseases.”

Doug pulled over and parked. He and Tom left the truck and tied hospital masks over their mouths and noses. They pulled on their gloves. Doug grabbed the clipboard with its forms. Tom went to the back, unfolded the stretcher, and followed him to the front door. Somebody had taped a piece of paper onto it, on which was scrawled:
Take whatever you need
.

Doug knocked and waited. Knocked again. Nobody home. He glanced to his left and saw a young couple staring at him through the window of the house next door. He turned and noticed others gazing at him from their porches.

Tom waved. Nobody waved back.

“Friendly,” he said with obvious sarcasm.

“We have a bunch of stops here,” Doug said. “These people all have kids.”

“Oh. Right.”

“To them, we’re the Grim Reaper.”

He tried the door. Unlocked. He opened it, entered the house.

And stopped.

The smell of death smacked him with an almost physical force.

Tom joined him and said, “Oh, man.”

A boy and girl lay in the middle of the living room floor. Their parents lay on either side of them. The Emersons hugged their kids even in death. Their faces had turned blue.

The mother’s eyes were open. She stared at her son’s profile.

Tom took a step back. “Do you think Herod’s syndrome might be spreading to adults?”

Doug shook his head. “No. They did this to themselves.” He pointed to the empty pill bottles on the carpet next to the father’s head.

“Holy shit,” Tom said again. “That’s nuts.”

“It might be the sanest thing I’ve ever seen somebody do,” Doug said.

Tom glanced at him but said nothing.

Doug couldn’t shake the feeling these people had known something he didn’t, had a higher level of courage he lacked.
They won’t be needing any grief counseling here
, he thought. The Emersons had dealt with their grief head-on.

He sighed. “Rest in peace.” To Tom, he added, “Let’s go in the kitchen and get the paperwork done. Then we’ll move the bodies.”

They had a lot more houses to visit before they finished.

47 hours after Herod Event

David watched CNN in his living room with the volume turned down while talking to Ben Glass on his cell phone, getting bad news from both.

Children were dying in Asia. By yesterday morning, the phenomenon the news channels were calling Herod’s syndrome had jumped the Atlantic and continued its eastward creep. One by one, cities exploded in panic and violence. Millions migrated east in anything that moved, trying to stay ahead of its advance.

Everywhere the disease spread, the children died. The story was always the same. The children complained of headaches, strange burning smells, parts of their bodies going numb. Many became confused and uttered cryptic statements that later would haunt parents searching for meaning in the deaths.