The King of Clayfield - 01 (6 page)

I sent her a message:

“Jen, I am at home now. It’s getting dark, and I’m not going out. I will come by your place in the morning. I will be in a black SUV. Have some things ready to leave. Please respond to this message, so I know you got it.”

I hit “send.” Then I checked Blaine’s profile. There was nothing posted since last week, and it was a link to a
 
seed catalog. He’d commented how it was time to start his tomato seeds indoors. I visited
 
the profile of his wife,
 
Betsy, and
 
the week before
 
she’d posted a link to a Stevie Wonder music video.

Not getting any pertinent information, I got busy with the masked woman’s advice. I typed HOW TO PURIFY WATER into the search engine. Every result was a link to a site pertaining to disaster preparedness.

The first one was a government site. It had already been updated and adapted to deal with the current crisis. From what I could gather, it was
 
posted for those
not
in infected areas that were experiencing shortages. There was no advice as to how to deal with the infected except to keep your distance and notify authorities. We were past that. I got the impression that they’d written off the infected areas as a loss. There was actually a sentence toward the end of their home page that said,
 

“Once the affected areas have been fully depopulated, testing should indicate whether these areas
 
are habitable again.”

Depopulated?
I stared at that sentence trying to figure out what they meant. Did they plan to wait it out or depopulate it themselves? I didn’t like either option. There wasn’t going to be a rescue. At best, I could expect to
 
stick it out here
 
alone until the infected died off. At worst, the federal government was going to do something to eradicate us.

I couldn’t think about that right now. I had a job to do. I dug around in my desk and came up with a partial
 
package of paper–at most,
 
30
 
sheets. It would have to do. I started printing out the information. I printed
 
from the
 
government site for a while, but then I found some sites
 
that seemed better suited for my situation. These were sites that
 
used acronyms like
 
WTSHTF (When The Shit Hits The Fan) and TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It).
 
Those terms
 
described
 
my
 
day exactly.

These sites were like a gold mine for me, but since it was all so
 
new to me, I wasn’t sure
 
on which information I should focus. I kept it simple with food and water.
 
I looked through their
 
guns sections, but
 
I thought
 
some of it was ridiculous. I mean,
 
where would I come across an
 
automatic weapon?
 
I already knew how to shoot; my dad took me hunting when I was a kid. It had been a while, but I
 
could still do it. As far as using the guns
 
for something other than hunting…I
 
didn’t even want to think about shooting someone.

I did remember the masked woman talking about hooking a generator up to a well pump. I knew Blaine had a well at his place. It was under one of those little
 
white, fiberglass well houses. I did a search for that, and there was discussion about this in a forum. I’d have to
 
hardwire the generator
 
into the pump. I printed off some information on that, too.

One site had a list of “necessities” that
 
everyone should have in case of the end of the world. Another site told how much food was needed to supply a
 
family of four for a year. I printed front and back of every sheet, and it didn’t take long.

I tried to call my mom and Blaine again. They didn’t
 
answer. Then I checked to see if Jen had responded to my message, but she had not.

I searched online a while longer and started hand writing information in the margins. I wrote until my hands
 
hurt. I thought about
 
exploring more sites, but I was exhausted. I realized as I turned off the computer that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. It was now close to 11:00 pm. Only twelve hours before, I’d been sweeping my museum.

CHAPTER 6

Before
 
going to bed, I looked at the TV. There
 
was a video of men in biohazard suits, lifting body bags onto a truck. Then the image switched to the
 
news anchor
 
standing at a large map. All of the southern states east of the Mississippi River were shaded in red,
 
also all the way up through D.C., Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania. Looking at the map, I really didn’t see any way they could stop it from taking every state east of the Mississippi.
 
They might be able to stop it from spreading into Canada.

The anchor said,
 
“An Ohio doctor claims
 
inebriation
 
could have an affect on Canton
 
B.
 
 

“Dr. Sharron Harris of
 
the
 
University Hospital
 
in
 
Cincinnati
 
has spent the past two days assisting
 
medical
 
personnel in Louisville, Kentucky. She is with
 
us now, via satellite. Dr.
 
Harris, this has the potential to be something big. How did you come to this conclusion?”

The
 
doctor looked tired and solemn. She said, “I examined
 
a
 
woman last night, a rape victim.
 
Her assailant was later brought in by police exhibiting symptoms of the virus. Tests concluded that he was infected, however, his victim tested negative. She had been drinking.

“This morning, I treated
 
a homeless man that had been attacked. He’d been beaten and bitten by two individuals in the advanced stages of the virus.
 
The homeless man is
 
an alcoholic and was intoxicated at the time. I did tests on him, and they all came up negative for Canton B…”

The reporter interrupted her, “Yes, but doctor, does this really indicate that alcohol had anything to do with it? I’m sure there are people out there with a natural immunity.”

The doctor shifted in her seat, “No, right now, this is a theory. I have contacted hospitals across the southern states, but as you know, much of the South is without power and communication is spotty. I did receive an email from a nurse in Atlanta
 
who stated she had treated an intoxicated woman following a car crash, and the woman had tested negative.

“I don’t think it is a cure, but I think that perhaps alcohol’s interaction with the brain might
 
prevent the virus from initially taking hold.
 
We don’t know enough to say for sure, but I think it should be investigated further.”

“Doctor, isn’t there a danger in telling people to drink?
 
I would think that now more than ever, especially in the infected zones,
 
people wouldn’t want their judgment impaired.”

“I’m not telling anyone to drink; I’m trying to get information out there that has the possibility for saving lives.”

“Doctor, how much should we drink to fight off the virus?”

“I’m not say anyone should drink…I don’t know….”

I turned the TV off.
 
I had a bottle of bourbon in the pantry, but I didn’t want to get plastered just on the hunch of
 
a tired doctor. I had to keep my wits.

I started to try my mom again, but decided to wait. Part of me questioned why she hadn’t called to check on
me
.

I slept hard. When I woke up, daylight was coming through a
 
gap in my bedroom curtains.
 
There
 
was a faint smell of smoke.
 
The house was cold. It wasn’t cold enough for me to see my breath, but it was uncomfortable. My alarm clock was dark. I’d set it
 
to go off at 6:30 am, so I could
 
go help
 
Jen.
 
I tried the lamp
 
by my bed, and it wouldn’t come on.

I peeked through the curtain, and there was about
 
an inch
 
of new snow on the ground.
 
A
 
body was in the street in front of the house next door, also covered in snow. It was smoky out there.
 
I’d hoped it had all been a dream.

I went to the kitchen where
 
I could
 
check a
 
battery-operated clock.
 
It was
 
a little after
 
nine. I looked out a window in the back of the house. I could see a lot of smoke coming up over the trees to the west.

I wouldn’t be able to stay. Maybe I could bundle up enough to sleep there, so long as that fire didn’t spread,
 
but eventually
 
the water would freeze.
 
It might warm up this afternoon, or it might stay this cold for a week. I didn’t know, and I doubted the local weatherman was still making forecasts.

I went to my closet and put on some warmer clothes–a blue and yellow Murray State University sweatshirt and some jeans. Then I took out five more changes of clothes to take with me to Blaine’s. I piled them all on the bed, and then I went out to the
 
spare room
 
to get my suitcase. On my way through the living room, I stopped to try my mom again. The phone
 
relied on electricity and
 
was dead. I felt a little empty and worried. I wondered if I would ever know if she was okay. I was suddenly angry with the woman in the mask for taking my cell phone.

I was angry all around.

I went into the spare room. I never called it the guest room because I never had any guests. I’d always thought about turning it into a little library or a study, but that’s just another plan that never happened. The room was stacked with boxes and junk. When I divorced two years prior, I’d bought this place. I unpacked the necessities when I first moved in, but this other stuff had never made it out of their boxes. Some of the boxes were packed when
 
I left home for college
 
many years before. I was just too sentimental or too much of a pack rat to let any of it
 
go.

One of the boxes contained my old comic books. Some were collector’s items, but I never sold them, because I always thought I’d read them again. I tried once, but they just weren’t the same…no,
I
wasn’t the same. Another box had some of my back issues of Mother Earth News. I never threw them away either. I always had this little fantasy of living in the country and growing my own food. I could live that dream vicariously through Blaine and reading those magazine articles. I grabbed the box. I figured that I’d need them.

I packed my clothes in the suitcase. I emptied out one of the boxes of junk
 
from the spare room and put the contents of my
 
medicine cabinet in there. I took everything--even a bottle of expired vitamins.
 
I had three
 
rolls
 
of toilet paper and a partial; I put them in the box. Toothpaste, mouthwash, disposable razors, nail clippers—it all went in.

I had some lace-up Wolverine work boots
 
in the closet that I didn't wear much, but I kept them around in case I ever needed to do any work outside. I put them on and took the box of toiletries, the magazines, and the suitcase out to the Blazer.