Waiting Out Winter (5 page)

“Yeah, people that avoid us. People that won’t talk to you because you might be diseased. People that will grab what they want and run away as if you were a leper trying to kiss them.”

“Nick, really? It’s not all that bad. You have to understand how they feel. Hell, how are we any better? We’re covered head to toe, sprayed down with this foul shit--which by the way, is starting to burn a hole right through my damn wrist--and we’re not exactly planning any barbeque parties.”

“Never mind. You’re too thick to get it.” Nick watched the house on the corner rather than the road in front of him as they passed it. The house was abandoned now and he made a mental note to check it on one of their excursions to see if they’d left anything useful behind.

Jamie had told him how the woman--who had moved in with her husband, children and home daycare business only a few months before the world ended--had had a hell of a time when all the kids were pulled from her care. Then her own children fell to the dangers of the tiny killers and she learned what Hell really was.

According to a tearful Jamie, several days before the guys returned from their trip, the woman’s daughter had been playing with their youngest, Tyler, when Jamie noticed the swollen nodule on the girl’s jaw line. Upon closer inspection she quickly sent the girl home and immediately bathed Tyler in water a touch too hot for his comfort. She said she had cried about it that night, and tears welled up again as she repeated the story to Nick, worried she could have hurt Tyler but feeling justified when he remained disease-free. Her guilt resurfaced several days later, when the little girl died and the mother told the press she noticed the sore a full day after Jamie had sent the child home. What if she’d called the mother? Would earlier treatment have helped the girl? Jamie didn’t sleep for several days thinking about the possibilities and her part in the child’s death. When officials announced none of the serums they had seemed to be having any affect on the infected, Jamie finally slept. Her stomach twisted in guilt, but her mind assured her that once infected, no amount of warning would have helped the girl or her mother.

They pulled into the hospital parking lot, planning on raiding the maintenance area for tools, and Nick turned off the truck after coming to a stop in the emergency lane. Without the engine, the silence of their speechless trip was overwhelming.

“Sorry. It just bugs me to see everyone like this.”

“It’s ok.--”

“No, it’s not.” Nick slammed the door as he exited the vehicle. “Remember when 9/11 happened? Afterward there was this amazing communal feeling across the country. This time? No one cares about anyone outside their own house. It’s wrong.”

“It different, that’s all. It’s…” Jerry stopped and raised an arm, pointing at the hospital like a mute zombie. “What the hell is that?”

A thick chain was wrapped around the handles of the hospital doors several times and held in place with three different padlocks. Inside, plastic had been fortified with sheets of plywood and windows were blackened with dark tarps.

Nick squinted at the hand written sign on the outside of the glass, “What’s that say?”

Jerry took several steps forward, “Closed. But I can’t read what’s underneath.”

With matching strides, they walked the remaining twenty yards to the hospital’s door and read the handwritten sign.

“Shit,” Jerry turned and headed back for the truck.

“Bullshit!” Nick kicked the glass door, cracking the tempered glass but gaining no entrance. “Damn it.”

“Nick. Come on, man. We still gotta go to my house and I don’t want to be out here any longer than we have to.”

Through the business district, neither man said anything, but when a young girl who looked like she should have been in the hospital crossed the street in front of them without looking, Nick let loose.

“We apologize for the inconvenience?
Are they serious? Where are people supposed to go for medical care? We’re all on our own to do the best we can with our first-aid kits? Tell me how this isn’t bullshit.”

“Oh, I can’t. I just don’t see how you getting all worked up is going to change any of it.” Jerry smirked and tried to break Nick’s anger, “You thought a tantrum would stop me from marrying your sister, too. That didn’t work out so well either, did it?”

Nick rolled his eyes and offered a fake grin. He stared at Jerry, waiting for more attempts to lighten his mood. Instead Jerry screamed and put his hands against the dash.

“Nick!”

Nick looked forward in time to register the infected deer and slam on the brakes. They screeched to a halt with only a foot to spare between them and the animal.

“Holy crap.” Jerry hissed through his teeth.

“Ta hell? It’s not even close to dusk. They’re just going to roam town now?”

“Screw it. Go around it. Let’s get this done and get back to your house.”

After only a few more trips out of the house, they realized their town had been completely ransacked of essentials and began traveling to neighboring communities and out of the way gas stations. The loneliness Nick felt in town was far worse when they traveled further away. His mood seemed to worsen when they were out of the house, but generally came back around to level by the time the girls let them back in again.

The back entry worked as a decontamination room for both garbage dumps and supply runs. Whenever they returned, they stayed in the small mudroom and listened intently for the sound of flies, watching the wall that faced the kitchen, while someone in the kitchen watched the walls and floor behind the men for signs of insect-sized movement. If there were no signs after an hour, they were allowed in. They generally spent the time talking about the lack of other people on the streets--the homeless and insane were presumed long dead from disease or moved on to other areas--and wondered how other households were fairing. The wait in the entry made the excursions longer and, as the adrenaline of being outdoors wore off, they often entered the kitchen completely exhausted. But for the safety of those in the house, Nick and Jerry never complained about Jamie and Sarah’s extreme methods.

The adults in the house slept in shifts and took turns watching baby Emily, worried the one person that couldn’t let them know a fly was nearby would be the one bitten. They were wrong.

They didn’t know for sure how it happened, but were so dependent on the use of the kitchen door they had to blame the basement for letting in the diseased fly. They had no warning, no buzzing to raise their attention. The temperatures were getting lower and lower, and the flies had stopped flying, stopped buzzing. They had become what had once been a funny nickname for lethargic bluebottles out of season, “walks.”

Sarah felt what she never heard, and they all knew what had happened by the way she snapped to attention and stared forward for a moment before slapping her neck and pulling off a smear of black death. She turned to her baby and reached out, fear in her eyes and a trembling acknowledgement causing her hand to shake, before pulling away from Emily.

“No...” She half moaned as comprehension that she could never again hold her own child crossed her features and the other three jumped into action without a word. Nick knew his silence was based on cautious fear he might say something to upset her, but figured Jerry’s was pure terror and Jamie’s was something akin to speechless sympathy.

The bite was treated with rubbing alcohol, searing heat, and another round of alcohol that stung the newly burned flesh and made Sarah scream out in agony, startling the children into tears. She didn’t get nauseous for a full twenty-four hours and the other three whispered in hopeful circles outside of her earshot, perhaps it hadn’t been a contaminated fly. Unfortunately, the nausea was quickly considered a symptom, as the red spot on her neck turned into a blister with a white halo.

They knew.

She knew.

It was just a matter of time.

They cared for her the best they could, through rubber gloves and generously lathered layers of hand sanitizer which had been procured on a midnight run to break into the hospital, grocery store and local discount stores for anything and everything they thought might help. The bathroom became a supply closet any M.A.S.H. unit would be proud to call their own, but eventually they came to grips with the fact none of their stolen first-aid would stop her death, or prevent their own. Their survival meant abandoning her.

“We can’t kick her out.” Jamie tried to let both Sarah’s husband and brother know she wasn’t suggesting a heartless exile for the girl that had become more than a sister-in-law to her. “But she’s a danger. Even if you ignore the danger to us, you have to agree she’s a threat to the children.”

“What would you suggest? Should we push her out the door and slam it behind her? Or ask nicely if she’d take these supplies and kindly get the fuck out?” Nick barked at his wife under his breath, his furrowed scowl replacing the volume he denied himself for the sake of Sarah, sleeping in the other room.

“She’ll never leave Emily.” Jerry’s comments were matter of fact. The anger rose behind his eyes, but Nick watched as the anger met with worry and frustration for the truths Jamie spoke and mingled to become something of a deadpan tone.

“No. You’re not listening.” Jamie slumped against the counter, defeat pulling her shoulders into a defiant slouch. “I’m not suggesting we do anything, I’m
asking
if we should. And if so… What?”

“But even the suggestion...”

“No, Nick. She’s right.” Jerry looked out the kitchen doorway and Nick knew his brother-in-law could see the children coloring quietly, oblivious to the disease that slept only a few feet away on the couch. “We can’t risk the children. We just can’t. We can’t have made it this far just to endanger, or worse, lose them.”

“Jerry--”

“Don’t Nick. I know you haven’t always liked me, or thought I had your sister’s best interests at heart, but we moved beyond all that. This isn’t that. This is something uniquely different. This is Emily and Hunter and Tyler.”

Jamie reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“Don’t be.” He didn’t look at her. Instead he stared at Nick. “Seriously, Nick. If this was you… If you were the one out there popping infectious blisters and coughing into the air your children are breathing, what would you do?”

“I’d leave. But that’s me, not my sister. I’m a man, I can care for myself and protect myself from the loonies we all know are hiding outside--even though we haven’t seen them, we both know they’re out there. Not to mention the wild animals that have started cruising through town.”

“How about the garage?” Sarah’s voice startled them and they turned in unison to see her tear-streaked face. Nick wondered how much his sister had heard and wanted to shrink back into the wall, disappear and pretend the conversation had never happened.

“It’s ok. Really.” She tried to hold back a cough while she spoke and her voice cracked in response. “I’ve been thinking about it and I’m surprised you haven’t had this conversation before now. I can’t stay here. We all know this. But as Nick pointed out, I can’t exactly roam the streets. So why not the garage?”

“If you get better then you’re still right here and can come back in--”

“Nicky, I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse and we know where worse leads. Stop trying to hide from the truth and stop trying to protect me. Better me than one of the kids, and I need to leave before it becomes one of the kids. I’ve been here far too long already.”

The room fell silent as they thought about her suggestion and the situation and listened to the giggles of innocence from the other room. Jamie turned and started putting away the dishes from supper. Jerry shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a rhythmic pattern that mimicked his eye movements across the floor, incapable of looking up at his wife. Nick switched his focus from person to person in the room, taking in their actions, or lack thereof, and trying to accept it was no longer their decision. Sarah had made up her mind to leave, and he knew his sister would do it with or without their help or blessing. He finally broke the silence, sighing as he stood up.

“Okay. So what do you need?”

They scattered through the house and gathered a small box of supplies for Sarah. When they met back at the kitchen, Sarah pulled the food from the box.

“I haven’t kept anything down for two days. I just hadn’t told you. There’s no point in me taking food from your mouths. I try to leave the room before I have a coughing fit that ends in bloody rags. And you have no idea how many sores are hidden beneath my clothes. It’s bad guys, don’t feel guilty.” They acknowledged the truth of how advanced the disease was inside her with a mutual silence. “I’ll sleep on the couch tonight and spend one last night watching the kids play, and I’ll leave in the morning before they’re awake so I don’t have to deal with them seeing me leave.”

The group settled back into the living room with the children, though rather than a normal night of them trying to fill the empty air with movie quotes or book discussions, they sat in silence. Having told them how sick she was, Sarah didn’t leave the room to cough and they witnessed something that should have been coming from a lifelong smoker of eighty-five or better, rather than the young woman with the toddler. None of them said a word in response to her hacking. She didn’t either. She couldn’t meet Nick’s worried gaze and only offered an apologetic look to Jerry.