The Grief Team (8 page)

His walkabouts through the mall soon became his raison d’être as hundreds, then thousands of citizens sought shelter from the coming Armageddon in the welcome arms of the Oakville Mall staff. Thus, Elias became a fixture in the local landscape of Mallshoppers, known for his humour and wit, his willingness to trade dirty jokes, and his equitable assistance to all when the Viruses struck.

Two years later, in 2003, at age 20, Elias was appointed General Manager of Oakville Place, assuming command upon the death of George Braverman who had succumbed to Virus 3 only ten minutes before. It was then, Elias believed, that Fate played his ace, and the life and times of Elias Macdonald Kraft became fused with Richard Donalato, Mayor Dickie, the Father-of-the-Malls. 

In the beginning, Jeffrey Meilgaard, the Norwegian Satan (heir to at least twenty-seven other morbid sobriquets), was thought to have concocted his home-made virus purely to obtain revenge against his ex-bosses and ex-fellow employees at the local Walmart in Tallahassee, Florida. A landed immigrant from Oslo and a doctoral candidate in microbiology, he had once worked as a laboratory assistant at the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta.  He had been laid off from the CDC when budget cuts hit and suffered in reduced circumstances for some time; chiefly, because he’d also managed to get hooked on black grease, a highly-addictive by-product of crack cocaine. He was fired from his job at Walmart for slapping a nine-year-old boy who, having tried twelve different pairs of running shoes in the space of forty-five minutes, decided against a purchase. Meilgaard had slapped the little bastard all right but he had also thrown the little prick into a rack of cheap, imported boots. He was dismissed three minutes later, leaving him to stew back in his rancid apartment in the stifling August heat. When his last smear of black grease was history, he decided that it was time to return to Atlanta and visit his old friends at the Centre. 

Twelve hours later, cleaned up, fed up, and out of his mind, Jeffrey Meilgaard boldly went where few humans had ever been before; that is to say, directly into the Deadly Airborne Infectious Diseases laboratory in the sub-sub-basement of the complex. He managed to bypass each obstacle with the assistance of his newly-acquired Mac-10, requiring only seven shots, four deaths, and three purloined access cards in all to gain access. Once in the lab, he selected three vials at random, ignored their warning labels and, tipping them into a fourth vial, created a cocktail of virulence that, in their first human host, melded to become the beginning of the Replicating Viruses that would sweep the planet. Meilgaard, the incubator, walked out of the complex and drove to a nearby Walmart where, in under an hour, every man, woman, and child was dead. 

The symptoms were the same: a feeling of tightness in the chest area, then external signs of inflammation as nipples beg
an to swell and itch painfully. Swelling of the neck and groin followed with copious dischargings of blood and mucus through the mouth, nose, ears, genitals, and rectum. Emergency crews, called to the scene by security guards in the store who could barely believe what they were seeing on their monitors, noted in disgust that nearly all of the victims had clawed and torn their clothing, many ripping deep wounds in their chests before succumbing. 

The violence of the reactions surpassed belief in some instances as women literally tore off their breasts and men sent their thumbs deep into their mammalia until they punctured themselves. Children died within scant minutes, clawing at their purple faces. The emergency crews, all of whom experienced the same reaction within ten minutes of entering the store, died in the midst of those whose rescuers they were no longer. As did those in a second and third wave of emergency response teams. A fourth team, surveying the carnage, quickly shot and killed the sergeant who had ordered them inside and drove away.

The news of the break-in at the C.D.C. and the catastrophe occurring at Walmart were linked by the horrified Chief of Police who, not feeling well as he directed operations in the Mobile Command Centre in the Walmart parking lot, managed to shout his hypothesis over the radio before he began clawing at his chest, his fingernails slicing through his shirt in his mania to tear off his nipples and reach inside himself.

The number of dead in the Atlanta Walmart reached 3,401 (of whom 58 were emergency services personnel), and a quarantine was ordered within a three mile radius of the store.  As CNN turned its cameras on itself, Jeffrey Meilgaard was driving back to Tallahassee, enjoying the first frantic reports on the radio and honking and waving at ambulances as they raced past him on the freeway on their way to certain death.  Meilgaard, within whom the biological cocktail was now replicating itself, completed the drive in good time and parked in front of the main doors of the Tallahassee Walmart where he had, several hours before, sold shoes. The newly-hatched Virus 2 was released as ‘Walking Death’ headed for the toy section.

It was another twenty-four hours before Meilgaard was identified as the carrier and his picture beamed everywhere. Within that time, the President had spoken to the nation from Air Force One where he and the members of his Cabinet had been moved as a precautionary measure. A national emergency was declared and the world watched as the hunt for Jeffrey Meilgaard moved from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, where he appeared in the men’s department of the Walmart there for less than three minutes (7,312 dead and rising) before leaving for Orlando (11,445 dead and rising) and Tampa (28,988 dead and rising). 

Faced with the gathering evidence that the virus was replicating itself into stronger and more virulent strains and, as authorities struggled to contain the infected areas, the President affirmed the order to create a five mile firebreak around each containment area, regardless of who or what was inside it. The fires, shown through the lenses of television network cameras to all parts of the globe, burned for weeks, unleashing black clouds of toxic smoke as refinery storage tanks exploded and burned, gas stations roared into flames, and the DuPont Paint Factory just outside Jacksonville erupted, levelling seven square miles of civilization in one awe-inspiring explosion heard as far away as Washington. 

Jeffrey Meilgaard, his face now eerily familiar to practically every citizen in the world, was finally recognized four hours later by security officials in Disney World. He was shot dead just outside the Enchanted Castle, but not before he had shaken hands with a giant mouse and his goofy friends.

His legacy, continuously mutating and adapting, carved its own path of destruction, tagging along with the panicked hordes which began fleeing the cities. Weeks later, when Viruses 6, 7 and 8 appeared in China, India, Europe, and Africa, Meilgaard was nothing more than hundreds of tissue samples being handled with extreme caution by the few scientists remaining whose brains were capable of understanding the scientific horror of what they were seeing under their microscopes. Across the globe, microbiologists and experts on viruses were seized and isolated by authorities who immediately transported them in great secrecy to the United States to the Centre for Disease Control. There they were ordered under threat of death to find a cure. 

This gathering of the finest minds in the world on such matters was later seen to have been a colossal mistake when a delivery kid from Domino’s sent in Virus 2 with the pizzas. Effectively eliminating their only hope to save themselves, the President himself then paid the ultimate price, courtesy of a grief-stricken Secretary of State, who fired point-blank in the certain knowledge that he was killing Satan, the Anti-Christ, and a goddamn useless fucking Democrat to boot.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, newly-mounted and fashionably-attired for the Millennium, began their infernal ride round the globe while conspiracy theories promulgated live over the television networks and local stations that managed to remain on the airwaves. The insane celerity of events forced world leaders to make rapid, gut decisions, some of which led to the immediate deployment of nuclear weapons. Despite the clear evidence that the Viruses had been hatched in America, the Indian Prime Minister was duly informed by his secret service that the virus had been secretly  imported and released in Bombay by Pakistani agents. With 50,000 people succumbing every hour, the Prime Minister did not hesitate to act and, at 3:30 in the morning on August 23, 2003, Pakistan ceased to exist. Two days later, the Middle East vaporized in a massive exchange of warheads as the Israelis attacked Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, and The Lebanon. Only Iran’s missiles flew in retaliation, but it was enough. 

In Cold Lake, Alberta, a French-Canadian general appeared live on the C.B.C. to announce that he was choosing that moment to strike a blow against decades of repression by English-Canada, self-destructing his stockpile of cruise missiles and leaving a crater similar in nature if not size to that known as the Grand Canyon. Radiation, that most significant of the after-effects of nuclear explosions, settled comfortably into the jet stream and, in the aftermath, added its own terrible tally to the number of deaths recruited by Virus 6, now the most virulent of the replicants first hatched by Jeffrey Meilgaard.

In the U.S. Midwest, the White Guard, an underground supremacist movement, led the charge to stay ahead of the encroaching viruses and cut a swath of death all the way to the Californian coast. Los Angeles, after her own fashion, was raped and burned by her own citizens.  Television images of the assault on the homes of the Hollywood rich were among the most gruesome digested by the remaining few who still happened to be watching television somewhere. The heads of two prominent Australian actors were hacked off by rioters and each forced onto metal spikes in their security fencing. The cast and crew of the hit show, Teen Innuendo, were immolated along with their live audience. And, if Los Angeles was in the throes of self-immolation, hundreds of other cities throughout North America were also caught in the bone-chilling, blood-thickening panic of Imminent-and-Certain-Death.

The assassination of the Prime Minister of Canada by Lisa Bellinger, a psychopathic faith healer and spiritualist, took place during a two month lull in the spread of the Viruses when it appeared that Death was satiated. In an unpredictable turn-of-events, the Reformation Party of Canada seized control of the country in a well-prepared coup which saw seventy-nine members of the previous government hanged during a hasty period of trials and executions which lasted three days.

In Quebec, separatists took up arms against the ursurpers and the First War of Canada began. It lasted eight days, culminating in simultaneous combined tank and infantry assaults against Montreal, Quebec City, and Trois Rivieres. Thousands died in a shoot-on-sight policy suggested by the leader of the Reformation Party who was, he believed, receiving his instructions from Jesus Christ himself. The ultimate insult, the sowing of salt into the Assembly Nationale, enraged the vast Asian community on Canada’s west coast, who saw themselves as the next target of the Reformists, and riots broke out in Vancouver and vicinity. This Second War of Canada was ended informally and rather abruptly three months later when Virus 8, newly-hatched, reached the waters of the Pacific.

It was death, death, and more death. 

Enough for everybody.  Enough for all.

It was the end of civilization.

The year was 2006.

Elias tilted his head back with some difficulty but he managed nonetheless to pop another oily sardine into his maw. The manually-driven can opener, called into play to negotiate the four rounded corners of the rectangular can of Connors Brothers sardines, also performed the function of fork, its broad single tine sleekly declining to a point that was perfect for stabbing the slimy little headless delicacies. Elias studied the can with some measure of detachment, his teeth macerating in a noisy symphony of pleasure. 

He had been to St. Andrew’s once when he was a youngster of 13, attending a summer hockey camp that he had enjoyed. Louise, who had remained in Oakville, always sent Elias back to his roots whenever she could. He had managed to lose his virginity, pumping away for all he was worth in one of the finest rooms in the nearby Algonquin Hotel. The recipient had been Linda-or-Lynn-Something, a  college kid who earned money by making the beds, a task she performed quickly and expertly while Elias was putting his clothes back on. He had liked her very much, but never saw her again. He had asked about her, learned that she had been fired for screwing in the hotel’s bedrooms, and had felt remorse for a day or two, convinced that he had been the cause. He was too naive to imagine that other young gentlemen might also have been involved. Elias had returned to his home in Ontario a much older young man, and with the salt-fresh air of St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea in his blood.

Elias executed the final sardine and looked for something to wipe the oil from his fingers and lips. Seeing nothing suitable, he settled for wiggling them in the sink under hot water before waving them back and forth in the air in a vague attempt at air-drying.

“Elias...”

“Mary!  Come in!  Don’t be alarmed, I’m not planning to take off and fly!” Elias pulled his arms in as Mary rolled into her routine of putting the kettle on, arranging the tea pot and mugs on the tray, and setting out a small plate of chocolate biscuits.

“Can’t sleep either?”  Elias was admiring two sturdy hips and an attractively substantial bottom shaping what was obviously a man’s bathrobe into something distinctly more feminine. “Death take me, Mary, but you’ve got a right beautiful arse!”

“Death will take you and my arse, as you call it, won’t have a thing to do with it.”

They smiled at each other while they listened to the ever-increasing pitch of the kettle whistling to the boil. There was comfort in the simplicity of this long-established pattern for both of them.

A few minutes later, Elias led the way into the little box around the corner from the kitchen which passed as the living room as Mary, laden with the tray, followed. They sat together, side-by-side on the couch, though to all the world it had much the same effect as a massive boulder dwarfing a pebble for Mary, shapely and sturdy at forty-seven years of age, was not tall and Elias’ size had always been truly imposing since she had known him. 

Perhaps his obesity was partially responsible for her fascination with Elias, but she also understood that she was seated next to a man whom she truly believed was a good man. Mary sometimes thought that she might marry Elias. Indeed, she often prayed for guidance on the subject, a matter which she kept hidden in her heart. Mary knew what happened to recidivist believers in the Malls. It was a reality which produced strong feelings of uneasiness and an acid taste in her mouth. It was much safer, calmer, and just as interesting to be Elias’ neighbour and occasional lover. She doubted that she could keep her religious beliefs secret if she married him.

“Having one of your nights, Elias?”  Mary poured a thin stream of tea into two mugs, one distinctly larger than the other. No fine china teacups for Elias, who could not get even his smallest digit into the handle. The only time she had attempted to employ such an exquisite item, Elias had pontificated that it, however fine, could hold no more than a swallow of tea and was therefore useless in its primary function. He had proceeded to explore the problem further; such objects were demeaning in their pathetic uselessness and were also sexual, in that there was the ritualistic pointing-of-the-extended-little-finger and everyone knew what the hell that meant!

Mary had bristled of course and recited a long list of names which included Limosges, Derby, Spode, Royal Doulton and a dozen other manufacturers who no longer existed but whose wares fell under the umbrella of Mary’s domain. She toiled, for her pains, as the Supervisor of Domestic Supplies (Dry) at Yorkdown Mall where, amid the organization of basic necessities, fine bone china was an example of  human ingenuity which Mary alone seemed to appreciate. The fact that Elias was hugely indifferent to her sensitivities in this matter was a source of moderate discomfort but which, in the end, did nothing to change Mary’s feelings for him.

Elias swallowed several quick gulps of tea from his oversized mug and presented it for a refill. Aware of just how hot it was, Mary marvelled at Elias’ ability to ignore that fact altogether. She poured once again.

“I would like a cat, Elias,” said Mary, as she set the teapot on its trivet and popped a little quilted cottage teacosy on top. “A ginger cat with white paws.  Or a little grey tabby cat.”

“Cats don’t exist. You might as well ask for a dog or a lemur.”

“I know that.  All the same, I would like a cat. I am expressing a wish on my part to have a cat.”

“Wish all you like, Mary, but wishes can’t always come true. Cats were demented animals born with dual purpose and intent, in that they were both good and evil.”

“Hardly,” smiled Mary, “a cat is a cat is a cat, not some sort of feline demigod of polarized persuasions. In any event, you did not take note of the fact that I was merely stating my desire to have a cat without necessarily committing myself to the act of going out to look for one.”

“They’re all dead anyway,” said Elias abruptly. Then, softening, added, “Do you not really want one then, Mary?”

“I would like one but I do not want one.”

“I see.”  Elias finished his second mug of tea, one drawn in more slowly this time allowing as the first was solely to prime the pump. Elias expunged a long sigh. Accepting a third pouring, he leaned back into the groaning couch as far as he dared and settled himself. Mary recognized this as a necessary preliminary to Elias’ unburdening of his troubles and, establishing herself adjacent to him without actually entering his physical space, Mary prepared herself to listen.

In the interim, a silence ensued, punctuated only by the odd sigh or clearing of the throat by a thoughtful Elias. Some seven or eight minutes later, he spoke. “Mary, what would you say if I told you that something over which we have no control is happening to us?”

Mary straightened her dress. After all this time, Elias was finally getting around to proposing. It was so unexpected, it was…

“Elias, I…”

“…I had a dream last night, Mary. One I’ve had before, where I’m out fishing on the Digdeguash River in New Brunswick, catching rainbow trout. But this time, while I’m sitting in the boat, a boy…a Wildkid…he’s suddenly sitting right beside me, just as plain as anything. Dark hair, dirty, skinny, and coughing a lot, like he was sick. Maybe a virus but it didn’t seem like it.”

Mary felt the corners of her mouth wobbling, always the sign that she was having difficulty getting her emotions under control. In the space of a few seconds the topic at hand had moved from marriage to mirage.  “I…I see,” she said finally, masking disappointment with a brusque tone of voice that Elias failed to notice. “And what…what did this boy in your dream want?”

Elias leaned forward, spreading his hands as if in supplication.  “He told me that he was coming to see me.”

“Coming to see you?”

Elias nodded. “Some Wildkid I’ve never seen before comes into my dream and says he’s coming to see me.”

“That’s it?”

Elias nodded.

Mary sighed.  “Would you like another cup of tea?”

“Sure. Want to fuck or do you want to see what’s on TV?”
(see endnote 7)