The Journal: Ash Fall (9 page)

They all crowded around the bowl and spooned
the warm rice into their mouths with gusto, making me wonder if it
had really been only two days since they’d eaten or whether it had
been longer.

The bowl wasn’t empty, but it looked like
they were done eating. Lydia started talking first. She looked to
be in her mid-thirties, with dull blue eyes and natural blond hair
now matted and uncombed. She wore sensible walking shoes, jeans and
a printed V-necked t-shirt covered by a gray sweater. I noticed
that the sweater was buttoned wrong.

“This little angel is Jessica and she turned
six last week,” Lydia stoked her daughter’s dirty brown hair. “This
little guy is Aaron. He’s two.” Aaron promptly sneezed, and then
coughed a very lung-y, raspy wheeze. I backed up further toward the
tree I was standing near.

“The baby is Sara. She’s been such a good
little girl, not complaining or crying, but then she’s only six
months old and they usually sleep all day anyway.” Lydia pulled the
soiled pink blanket down so I could see the child. The baby’s skin
was a darkening mottled gray, and it was immediately obvious to me
that she was dead, and had been for days. My stomach twisted. The
mother was either in deep denial, ignorant or crazy. Perhaps all
three, which made her dangerous.

I looked at this wayward family more
carefully. They hadn’t looked sick at first, but now I spotted how
listless and lethargic they all were.

“Cute baby,” I said. “Excuse me,” and I
retreated into the house. In the bathroom, I washed my hands with
the hottest water I could stand, then doused them with peroxide,
thankful I hadn’t touched anyone, but wondering if the distance was
enough.

From the kitchen window, I saw Emilee
bounding down the well-worn grass path on the way here, and moved
quickly to intercept her.

“I’m sorry, Emi, this is not a good time for
you to visit.”

“Why not, Nahna? There’s new people here,”
she protested.

“Don’t argue with me!” I know I was too harsh
with her. “I’ll be over tomorrow to explain. For right now, you and
your dad stay home, you understand?” She nodded and sullenly went
back to their house.

* * *

“You’re welcome to stay the night on the
lawn,” I said as the sun was setting. I placed the plastic lid to
the bowl on the table for Lydia to put on.

“I promised to help with the wood,” Max
protested weakly.

“And I do appreciate that. I really don’t
need the help. Consider the meal a gift, my Christian gift to a
family in need in a world gone crazy.” I smiled and returned to the
house, after locking the barn up.

What was I going to do??

May 20

I slept fitfully, knowing I might have been
exposed to whatever sickness this hapless family carried with
them.

When I looked outside the next morning, they
were gone. It was as if they’d never been there.

I took the remaining half gallon of bleach
from the pantry, and doused the water faucet and the garden hose.
Then I poured the rest of it over the picnic table and the seats,
any place I could think they may have touched. I didn’t know if it
would help, but it sure wouldn’t hurt.

Then I called our law enforcement, Ken and
Karen.

* * *

“We didn’t see anyone on the road coming
here,” Ken stated.

“They probably left at first light, or during
the night,” I replied through the face mask.

“Well, we’ll take a cruise along the route to
the Mulligan and see if we can spot them. I’m not sure what we can
do, Allexa,” Karen said.

“You can warn others along the way not to get
near them!”

After they left, I called Tom White in
Marquette.

“Well, hi, Allexa,” he answered. “You might
not believe this, but I was going to call you today.”

“About what? A new outbreak of some virus?” I
know I sounded snarky and I didn’t care.

“How did you know? I just got the reports
this morning from the ME’s office. There have been several cases of
flu similar to the one last winter, and all of them have been along
County Road 695, moving toward Moose Creek.”

“Tom, they were here and I’ve been
exposed.”

“They? They who?” he asked.

“It’s a family, Tom. They were on the way to
their camp when their car broke down and they’ve been walking.
Apparently they’ve been spreading this along the way,” I slouched
in my seat, my head pounding. “They were here, at my house. Max and
Lydia Johnson, along with three kids. The baby is dead and they
keep pushing it in a stroller. The two year old is bad-sick, and
the rest look … I dunno, just ill.”

“How were you exposed, Alex?” Tom asked
gently.

“I was near them before I realized they were
sick,” I admitted. “I’ve washed well and sanitized everything they
touched, I don’t know if that’s enough though. How is it spread, do
they know yet?”

“No, they don’t. The ME said if it’s like the
last one, it’s airborne and with a very short incubation. Have you
been in to see Dr. Robbins yet?”

“No, that’s my next call, though I doubt he
can do anything either.” When I hung up, I washed my hands again,
and sprayed the phone.

With gloves and a mask firmly in place, Mark
met me outside by the picnic table. I explained to him everything
that had happened and he listened solemnly.

“So you were exposed twenty-four hours ago?”
he asked.

“Yes, about that. It was mid-afternoon when
they showed up.”

“I talked with the ME after you called me.
They’re getting a quick handle on this virus, Allexa. There are
survivors,” Mark said with an air of hope. “Although the virus is
fast, about twelve hours, and deadly if you get it, it’s also very
hard to become infected. So far it’s hit only small children and
those with weak immune systems. How are you feeling right now?” he
asked as he listened to my lungs, flashed the pen-light in my eyes
and looked down my throat.

“Other than tired from not sleeping and a
headache from worrying, I feel fine,” I answered.

“No sore throat? Any coughing?”

“No, nothing.”

“I would say you escaped catching this nasty
bug. You’re very lucky. Maybe next time you won’t be so trusting,”
he admonished me as he removed his mask and gloves to prove that he
wasn’t concerned with me being contagious.

May 21

“We found the family, Allexa,” Karen said.
She sat down in my kitchen for a cup of coffee. “We were a bit late
tracking them down.”

“What do you mean ‘late’?” I asked, setting
down a plate of scones.

“The father, Maxwell Johnson, was sitting on
the cabin porch with a gun in his lap when we arrived, almost like
he was waiting for us. We kept our distance. He knew all along that
the baby was dead, and that the boy, Aaron, was really sick. He
said he expected the girl to get worse quickly. So he shot the two
and buried all three children while his wife was asleep,” Karen
said matter-of-factly. “The two older children were his from a
previous marriage, but the baby was Lydia’s first child. He also
knew that Lydia was well past the curve of sanity over the baby, so
he killed her too. Right after he told us all that, he shot
himself.”

I was stunned at the news, although not
really surprised. The world had indeed gone insane.

CHAPTER 8

May 22

It was my day to see John and Sven for their
massages. I needed his comfort, however, I just couldn’t tell him
about the recent events involving being exposed to the flu. So I
kept it to myself, like I did so much.

It had only been a week, and it was good to
see John, until I remembered I was mad at him for covertly deciding
on all these building projects without discussing them with me
first. I set my massage table up in the open hall, just like I’d
been doing for almost two years, and waited, quietly seething. When
he came around the corner, his face split with a genuine smile, and
then it froze when he saw I was angry. Instinctively, he must have
known the source of my ire.

“Honey, I wanted to surprise you,” he pleaded
as he enveloped me with his muscular arms. “And yes, I also knew
you would protest.” He looked around and, seeing we were alone in
the room, he gently kissed me. That’s all it took for me to forgive
him.

“The plans really are incredible and Jason
already has the footings in,” I said as I spread some oil on his
back and began to knead his tight muscles. “I’ve got some of the
plants set in the garden too, mostly they’re just acclimating to
being outside.” I told him about what I had planted, and
intentionally left out any details about the pile of wood that was
dwindling steadily.

When the hour was over, John laid some cash
down on the side table.

“I don’t feel right about you paying me,
John, you’re already doing way too much for me as it is!” I folded
the table and put it back in its black canvas carrier.

“This is your work, Allex. You work – you get
paid, simple and no arguments.” He was quite adamant, so I folded
the cash and slipped it into my pocket. The Resort hadn’t started
up yet, and I did still have expenses, especially with gas at
$20.00 per gallon. John carried the table to the car for me and
loaded it in the back.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and he slid
his around my waist. It was our hug time, just like always.

“Next week is shift change,” he reminded me.
“Can you pick me up around nine in the morning?”

May 23

The morning began with clear blue skies and
just a hint of coolness that was refreshing to work in.

The garden called to me. I took the hoe from
its corner in the barn and worked on the first row, digging away at
the weeds that were already starting to grow. I still needed the
markers to show me where some of the rows were. The beans and peas
had popped through the soil and were starting on their second and
third leaves already so they were easy to work around.

By noon, I had half the garden done. I also
felt a new chill in the air and noticed some dark clouds forming
over Lake Superior. We needed the rain. With such deep, sandy soil
that drained away quickly, we always needed the rain.

Jason had come by yesterday and showed Eric
how to put the gutters and drain spouts back up on the barn eaves,
and together they turned the cistern over and readied it for summer
usage. If these distant clouds did produce rain for us, at least we
could start collecting again.

Within minutes, the sky turned very dark and
I felt a few drops of cold rain hit my face. The gray and black
clouds were roiling low overhead. Just as I was putting the hoe
away, there was an earsplitting crack of thunder simultaneous to a
jagged streak of lightning and the sky poured out hail. Large, icy
balls the size of quarters pounded the ground, bouncing in all
directions. It was stunning in its beauty and fury and I stood just
inside the barn, mesmerized, as a thick carpet of ice started
forming. From inside the metal barn, the noise was deafening and I
pulled myself out of my reverie when I realized that ice was
pounding away at the tender seedlings in my garden!

I grabbed a tarp and headed out into the
downpour, quickly covering my head from the onslaught. Ice beat
down on my arms, stinging the exposed flesh with every strike.

My tray of unplanted seedlings was taking a
beating. I covered them with the tarp while dragging them closer to
the plants already in the ground. The ten by twelve foot plastic
tarp didn’t cover much. I squatted next to a tomato cage, pulling
the tray closer and trying to spread the covering to protect more
ground. The hail continued to pound on my back the whole time.

It was over in minutes. I stood, shook the
ice off the tarp, and surveyed the loss. Stunned was the only word
that fit. The hail storm had lasted maybe five minutes, however,
the destruction wiped out two weeks of new plant growth, eighty
percent of the newly planted seedlings, and weeks of work.

* * *

“Mom! Mom! Where are you?” Eric yelled as he
came running across the road.

“In the garden,” I called out.

He came to a halt at the fence and just
stared at all the ice, piled up like small Ping-Pong balls. The
winds had come out of the north, depositing much of the hail along
the inside of the southern fence line.

He stepped carefully around the damaged
plants. “I’ve never seen hail this big.”“Me neither,” I sighed.

“What are we going to do?” he said as it sunk
in what this meant.

“We’re going to replant, that’s what. First
we’re going to get this ice off the plants so it doesn’t give them
freezer burn,” I said with a confidence I really didn’t feel, and
we started raking the balls of ice away from the damaged plants,
piling them in the pathways.

“I have an idea, Mom, but it has to be done
quickly and it won’t wait until tomorrow.”

Eric was trying to splice and tape some of
the plants he felt might survive. The idea he came up with didn’t
surprise me, but it did impress me. He took a Master Gardening
class in Florida and although some things were different here
because of the climate, some things just don’t change.

He set the pile of sticks he collected to one
side, most of them about two feet long.

“I’ve heard this works, Mom, and now is a
good time to try it out.”

He started to break some of the long sticks
into six inch pieces. Very gently he straightened out some of the
broken tomato plants and splinted them in place with two sticks and
wrapped it with some of my plant tape, then loosely tied the entire
plant to one of the longer sticks he shoved into the ground,
propping it up.

“If the outer cambium layer is still
partially intact it will continue to feed the plant from the roots,
growing and healing the broken layers,” Eric said. “At least that’s
the theory. It’s worth a shot.”