The China Pandemic
Read The China Pandemic Online
Authors: A R Shaw
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Dystopian, #Post-Apocalyptic
Copyright © 2013 by A. R. Shaw.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed ‘Attention: Permissions Coordinator’, at the address below.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover Design by Keri Knutson of Alchemybookcovers.com
Dedicated to Thomas
For all your faith in me.
Table of Contents
Shivering in the pounding, Pacific Northwest rain, Hyun-Ok needed to see for herself what threat the grim man in the distance posed. She’d heard him yelling before, followed by a gunshot blast and then a terrible, human scream. Having already counted him an unsuitable candidate to offer her the aid she needed, she had to be certain he wasn’t an immediate danger to her and her son.
With a death grip on the stationary black truck bed behind which she had taken refuge, she gasped in horror as the crazed man powered up a small, worn backhoe and scooped his victim up. He lifted him in the bucket, then spilled him, still alive and screaming, into a massive fire he had kept burning all day in a dumpster. Hyun-Ok grieved in silence for the unlucky man’s soul as sparks flew skyward.
She slinked away, her broken sobs bringing on a coughing fit from her own infected lungs as the agonized screams finally died. She must escape this part of town! The evil man, Campos, had posted No Trespassing signs and his actions told her he meant the warning.
~ ~ ~
She was her son’s only hope. Hyun-Ok had little time left to ensure his future as the disease weakened her more each day, telling her she would soon die. She could not leave her child to fend for himself with the likes of Campos around. Her days of scouting had told her there was only one person left to consider. The search had already taken up too much valuable time and energy, and Bang must be in caring hands soon.
He had one more to bury anyway. She might as well spend what little time she had remaining with her son.
She recovered from her coughing fit as best she could then and continued her journey home. She would need to make the trip in silence through the forested night, hidden from the few remaining people. Every evening, she went out like this, into the dark of night, since she came to the realization that her son, Bang, showed no signs of the virus.
One by one, everyone around her had died off as she cared for them, Bang always at her side. Her elderly mother had been the first to go, followed closely by her father. Then shortly after, her husband, though he desperately clung to life, not willing to abandon his wife and son.
Though she was also covered in the sweat of fever, and her words rasped, Hyun-Ok assured him his son would be fine, and urged him into a peaceful beyond. “I will be with you soon, my love,” she told him with tears streaming down her face. As weak as she was, the tears had surprised her.
The endearment, and the true meaning of her words alerted him. His eyes darted from her to his son, who was standing at the bedside. In brutal agony, he drew himself up to gaze at Bang’s face. “He must not be left alone and defenseless in this world gone mad!”
Hyun-Ok tried to comfort her husband with words, pushing him gently back toward to the mattress, and revealed her plan to safeguard their son. He held them both close and, prayed aloud to an unhearing god that he could draw them with him as he slipped away.
That very night, just seven days ago after Bang had drifted off to sleep, Hyun-Ok went out canvassing for the few remaining survivors in their neighborhood. Cloaked in black and defying the many dangers, she spied on them and assessed them based on her instincts. She estimated six hundred had originally occupied the area, and with only two percent survival, there should be twelve survivors—now known to be carriers. Of those, she only found seven.
She immediately discounted the first person she came across, two streets over, as being too elderly to be the guardian for a child of five. This lady only had a year left in her, if that. Hyun-Ok’s boy needed someone younger to carry him through life, at least to his teens.
The gentleman she found next made her uncomfortable. She observed him definitely grieving for his lost family, sitting out in a lawn chair at night yelling obscenities. He taunted and waited for the starving dogs, now gone wild, to smell him out. He shot at them, but it seemed to her that he only tried to provoke an attack. She could sense his massive sorrow and knew his intentions were death by mauling if he could manage it. If not, he would likely soon take his own life. Sadly, she suspected that happened a lot with survivors. She kept up her search.
Hyun-Ok went across the highway unseen and found a scantily clad woman picking apples off a tree in a vacant lot. She knew the woman would attract the wrong kind of attention and wouldn’t be a good choice for her son’s welfare.
The man she had picked was the only one capable of being her son’s guardian. Not only that, something about him, either the way he carried his tall frame or the thoughtful dignity with which he buried his loved ones, assured Hyun-Ok that the neighbor named Graham would prove himself the best guardian. She knew more than ever that she could trust him with her boy. Knowing that as soon as Graham’s father passed, he’d have no more to bury, she too could make the transfer before going on her own journey into death.
One more day
, she thought. But before then, I need to write to him about Bang.
Smiling, she stepped through the maze of parked vehicles, listening attentively to all sounds and alert for any dangers. She peered up at the glow in the distance one last time as she made her way toward home. The last remaining obstacle would be to make Graham understand that he needed the boy as much as the boy needed him. She knew that would be the greatest challenge. She had to convince him of that or her son would be doomed.
From his bed, the frail man reached out to his son. Through tears, Graham gently grasped his father’s shaking old hands. As his father lay dying before him, he knew then it was the closest they had ever been.
Graham reaffirmed that he would go on as they had planned, and would always keep the rifle beside him. Through drowning coughs, his father reminded Graham that taking his own life was not God’s plan. It would only ensure a soulless wandering in the afterlife, never again joining with his departed family.
Having seen the signs too many times before, Graham felt the end drawing near. He became desperate, knowing this time the difference would be him standing alone without a soul known to him. His father’s wheezing breaths came in shorter gasps, his eyes drew quiet, and his face sank within itself. Graham went from the desperation of losing his father to death, to praying for mercy and a quicker end. He could take no more of this torment. Just like all the others, one by one, they all died in anguish.
Graham could not understand why he lived still. He had watched helplessly as his wife, Nelly, died, taking their unborn child with her. Then his dear mother abandoned him, followed by his sister and four-year-old niece. Now the same fate was due for his father. He waited those long grueling minutes.
Graham asked him, “What will I do without you?”
His father answered him slowly, “Do what I have taught you. Make good decisions along the way and don’t regret anything. You’ll do fine. Always know that I’m proud of you.”
Graham wiped spittle from his father’s lips and clutched his hand. Too much experience told him it would not be long.
When it did finally come, his father assumed a peaceful demeanor and said for the last time, “I love you, son.”
~ ~ ~
Exhausted and emotionally spent from that night’s endless vigil, Graham rubbed his face. Tears of frustration, fear and utter loss mingled, and streamed down through his light brown whiskers. He had not shaved since things were normal, and did not care if he ever shaved again. Food, and even the very air he needed to breathe had lost all importance to him. Tears fell again as he sat by his dead father’s bedside. He could only wonder how he could possibly go on without his father’s strength and guidance. He wept for his father as he had for the others before him. Rain pelted hard against the rooftop, bringing a descending gloom with it.
With his last racking sob, Graham took a deep breath, as his father would expect of him. “Buck up,” his father would tell him sternly. And that’s what he decided to do. He was now father of the clan, and continued as if there was a family to lead.
With another grave to dig, at least there were no others to die. That little consolation would have to do at that moment, but this one grave would be the hardest.
Beyond his own family, everyone he’d ever known was now gone. From his friends to the lowliest beggar, and to the President himself, no class went untouched. It was an equal-opportunity pandemic, where no one could be accused of racism or class warfare.
With only the blue shadowy morning light peering in on them, Graham reached over to close the blue veined eyes of the man he loved and admired.
“Goodbye, Dad,” he whispered. He kissed him on the forehead.
He wrapped the edges of the white bed sheet slowly around his father’s body, a skill he learned through repetition. Then he got up and left the room, walking lightly, so as not to disturb the peace.
His father had made him leave space between the other four graves, amid his mother’s prized rhododendron garden. On one side lay his mother and Nelly, and on the other, his sister and niece. His father wanted it that way so that he could, “safeguard the ladies,” he’d said.
Graham had known his father, always a gentleman, would hold out to the last, after the ladies went.
In October, the soft loamy ground still shoveled easily but would freeze soon enough. Luckily, the garden graves were easily dug there in the suburban town of Mountain View, a bedroom community near Seattle. The autumn rains were often misty this time of year, though this morning it rained as if it meant it. The digging would have to wait till the rain let up.
That was okay with him. He dreaded this final act almost as much as when he’d buried his beloved Nelly. Graham slumped down in his father’s living room chair and brought his hands back up to his face, sobbing without control. “Where do I go from here?” he yelled angrily.
He grabbed his water glass and flung it across the room, crashing it against the wall. Really, he already had an answer to that one. His father made him commit to their plans already.
Graham remembered them and asked out loud, “What for?” He continued to sob after that, frustrated with unanswered questions.
His father had only told him that Graham would find a reason, or a reason would find him.
Frustrated, he left the room. He walked over to the dining room window and peered out into his mother’s garden. He saw the drab leaves of rhododendrons, expected in the death of autumn. The memory of the previous spring’s flowers made him wish he could somehow share his grief with Nelly.
After the pandemic had started, he and his wife had fled to his parents’ isolated home from the chaos that culminated in Seattle. With her teaching job suspended due to futile quarantine efforts, and his job as a math professor gone, it only made sense to get the hell out of their city apartment. Especially after shots rang out one night, while he slept holding his pregnant wife securely against him. The next day, they learned their neighbors had been murdered for their food supply. Fearing they were next, he and Nelly packed up and got out.
As humanity died off, people turned on one another. Fresh food was at a premium, and preserved foods ran short. The immune preyed on the living. They desperately searched for dwindling food supplies since the grocery stores were no longer being stocked. To make things worse, the counties implemented quarantine roadblocks in an ill-fated attempt to lock infected populations out of their territories, thus making legal residents prisoners in their own communities.
Even though, Graham was raised by a Marine Corps father, he staunchly held the belief that guns were at the root of all violent acts involving them. He blamed too-easy access to guns for the various school shooting tragedies and railed against the ongoing wars fought abroad. This view was further embedded by the liberal-minded schools and universities he’d attended.
Having grown up in the northwest, Graham embraced the culture and ideals, unlike his mother and father who kept their worldly views to themselves. They never took a public side or tried to dissuade their son or daughter. They felt it a disservice to push upon a child their own views. They wanted Graham to become his own man in their troubled world.
He loved his father, and though the man insisted Graham learn to hunt from a very early age, he never owned a gun of his own. His father often tried to convince him to have a pistol with him for protection, especially since he was married and lived in a dangerous neighborhood. Graham had always refused, and even tried to convince his father those were the old ways of thinking and that every situation could be reasoned out peacefully.
Based on his father’s experience, he, of course, doubted this. While he worried about his son’s attitude, the older man’s subtle, fatherly teachings through the years, provided Graham with the skills he needed to survive. He wanted the boy to be prepared no matter his political affiliation. To do that, they spent much time bird and deer hunting. Even at their family cabin, where all manner of survival skills were keenly disguised as camping or hunting, he tricked his son into learning.
Inexplicably, they would sometimes arrive at the old cabin that had been retrofitted over the years with running water and electricity to find both unavailable. His father would then show him how to set up solar unit panels for power as well as how to sterilize the nearby lake water. In doing so, he taught him how to hunt and cook outdoors over a wood fire. Graham now realized how clever the man had been in those early days to teach him so well. The effort it took for his father to avoid arguing and instead give him the skills he needed was admirable.
Before it all came apart, Graham and Nelly had been happy and enjoyed exceedingly healthy lives. They had just celebrated their second year of marriage. She was a planner and a list maker. Not surprisingly, she had their futures all mapped out.
He usually arrived home first and got dinner ready for them. She’d been down with a cold then, so he’d planned to make her favorite knock-off of a soup they both enjoyed from a local Italian restaurant, the one with the sausage and kale she liked so much. So, he was startled that evening when he found her home from work early. When he walked through the door, he’d found her balled up and crying on their bed. She was not one for weeping fits, so he knew something terrible must have happened to her and bent to comfort her. She resisted, and sat up to face him
.
“I’m pregnant!” she blurted and cried some more.
“You’re
what?
” he asked, stunned.
“I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby, and it’s way too early. It’s not part of the plan. Now I won’t be able to get my Masters.”
He pulled her towards him even though she struggled, going from utter fear to glee in a matter of seconds as he kissed her swollen red lips. “You’re so silly, Nelly. We’re going to have a baby! It’ll all work out. I love you,” he said to her.
But none of her plans worked out, of course. The pandemic had taken her and their unborn child from him.
Now that he was all alone, he wondered how many in the neighborhood were still alive and how many would, as his father had warned, have “evil intent.”
He noticed the pelting rain had dwindled to a light mist. He retrieved his slicker and shovel from the garage, and his rifle from beside the door. It felt as natural to him now as carrying his keys. Anytime he ventured outside, he had it slung over his shoulder or within arm’s reach inside. “At all times,” as his father had insisted.
Graham knew it was time. His throat tightened as he tried to suppress more tears. He was heading out to dig the final family grave and he leaned the rifle within reach against the garden shed. The wind picked up as he stood and listened before he began the chore. He and his father made a practice of this early on. The act of listening became a survival ritual. The silence should be filled with familiar sounds—very few now—and the total absence of them could mean trouble.
No distant train could be heard, nor planes overhead. No lawnmowers or cars’ squealing belts or the always-present roar of Highway 90, passing through town. Neighborhood chatter and children at play were sounds only in memories past. Those sounds were the only ones he missed since they were gone from the ever-pursuing silent world.
The reverberations he did hear were often met with the natural instinct of fight or flight. Like the howling of a dog, or was it a wolf? The noise of dogs fighting over prey was as feared as any distant gunshot. An occasional scream, which in recent days had become less frequent, replaced that of children squealing happily in a distant yard. These were the thoughts Graham chose to distract himself with while bending over the soaked loam next to the mounded grave of his mother. They were ruminations of a world gone silent.
As sweat dripped from his nose, he heaved each shovelful with vengeance, using the activity to release some of his anger. He continued to toss shovel after shovel, ignoring the pain in his back and shoulders.
Then he could not help it. He broke down again as an image of him and his father tossing a ball in that very spot crossed his mind. He dropped the shovel and put his hands on the back of his neck. He crouched down to his knees in the damp grass. “No, this cannot be happening,” he cried, lifting his face toward the sky.
At that moment, out of the corner of his eye next to the barberry bush, he spotted a form in gray, one that did not belong. It was so slight, he nearly missed it all together. In one fluid motion, he quickly retrieved his rifle and cursed himself for not spotting it sooner.
Graham leveled the rifle and aimed. “Get back! I will shoot you!” Grief fueled his anger and at his harsh tone, the shape slipped back around the corner, but he knew it hid there. He could sense the presence. He had no idea of who or what it could be.
“There is nothing for you here, so please leave,” he added after a second.
Then a muffled coughing signaled someone around the corner. He knew it was not his imagination or his mind playing cruel tricks on him. He took several wide side steps to view the hidden space. He adjusted his aim to get a visual of the intruder on his private grieving.
A slight form stood against the house, hooded and bent over in a futile attempt to restrain the persistent coughing spasm. When it lessened enough, she lifted her head to gaze at him. Her eyes pleaded with him as she raised her hand up in a gesture to show she meant no harm.
The frail woman limped forward, stopped and raised her hands again. Graham could tell she was weak with the disease, and after a couple more steps, could clearly see she would not last an hour. Her face showed all the signs he’d seen before. The fact that she was able to stand was a miracle alone. Her whole body vibrated with the endless coughing. He walked within fifteen feet of her and lowered the business end of his rifle. He met her pleading gaze with his own, knowing her dying breath might come at any minute.