Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  “What’s this militia of yers gonna be for?” asked an older man in overalls whose unshaven facial hair was gray trending toward white.

  “Well sir,” Sheriff Walcott replied, scratching his forehead underneath his hatband, “I guess you’d call ’em our last resort, if things get outta control with the Infecteds.”

  “Let’s call ’em what they are!” someone else shouted. “We cain’t afford all that political correctness comin’ outta Warshington. They’re zombies, is what they are. And the Bible warned us they was comin’. Revelations!”

  “Now Teddy,” the mayor said, “I don’t think the Bible specifically foretold any zombie uprisings.”

  “They’re evil, is what they are! They’re gonna try and kill us and ours, or turn us into one of them, and take our places and our stuff! What would you call that if not the devil’s work?”

  There was a murmur of concurrence, but it wasn’t universal. More than half, Noah estimated, were silent and taking it all in, like him. But the other half was engaged and potentially confrontational. Sheriff Walcott was tamping the crowd noise down with his hands, trying to keep the floor.

  “What about the Army?” another farmer-type asked. “They’s been convoys passin’ my place every coupla days.”

  “We don’t know yet ’bout the Army,” the Sheriff replied. “Apparently, they’re still arguin’ about what to do in whatever bunker they’re holed up in.”

  “That’s more bullshit!” said Teddy, the anti-PC guy, garnering unanimous support for that sentiment. “That’s what we have an army for, ain’t it? Why are we havin’ to do their job?”

  “Cuz Pres. Stoddard is a pussy!”

  Noah was surprised. Not by what people were saying, but that they were speaking their minds so freely. No shrinking violets here deferring to authority.

  “The National Guard has been federalized,” Walcott noted sanely.

  “That’s ’cause the gov’nors said they was plannin’ on usin’ the Guard to fight the zombies. That’s why that pussy—no offense—we got for a president federalized ’em!”

  The meeting was spinning out of control, with a dozen angry, irrelevant arguments breaking out. Walcott, the mayor, and the fire chief tried to rein them in. Noah grew tired of it. “Give the Sheriff a chance to talk!” he shouted.

  Maybe it was because his remark was out of the blue, or maybe it was because no one knew who the hell he was, or maybe it was just louder than everyone else, but the crowd turned his way and quieted.

  “Thank you, Mr. Miller,” Walcott said. “For those of you who don’t know Noah Miller here, he moved down from northern Virginia and fixed up the Old Miller Place.”

  Everyone waited for Noah to say something. “So, what is this militia gonna be for, Sheriff?” he asked.

  “Well sir,” Walcott replied, tipping his hat back off his forehead, “to help me and my deputies keep us all safe.”

  That wasn’t sufficient for Noah. “Help how? Do you mean collectively defend the town from a horde of rampaging…zombies, or whatever? Correct me, Sheriff, if I’m wrong, but don’t most people live out in the hills, not in town? If we come down here to serve in this militia, we’re gonna leave our homes and families undefended.”

  There was a stir of agreement shared in whispers and amplified by repetition.

  “So, Mr. Miller,” replied Walcott in a tone not nearly as welcoming as before, “you wanna go every-man-for-hisself? When that horde is outside your house, you wanna deal with ’em with no help from the rest of us?”

  “I just want to hear specifics, Sheriff. A plan—a good plan—before I leave my family to fend for themselves. What would this militia do exactly?”

  Walcott looked at the mayor and fire chief. The only sounds were the muffled arguments outside the firehouse door. “Well sir, I s’pose that if Infecteds are unfit to live in society—if they’ll be walkin’ around spreadin’ the virus, or they might go crazy at the drop of a hat…” The sheriff clearly didn’t want to say it.

  The residents all deferred to Noah and waited. “So what you’re implying is that we have to decide—to vote—on whether we’re going to kill anybody who gets sick?”

  “I didn’t say just because you get sick…” Walcott began, but Noah interrupted.

  “Well it follows that if everybody who survives infection is a threat either because they’re violent or contagious, then that threat begins the moment they’re infected. After that, they’ll either die or turn and threaten to attack or infect the rest of us. There is no third possibility.”

  “Then what are you proposin’?” the mayor asked, seemingly eager to have someone else say what the county’s elected officials would not.

  “I’m not proposing anything. I’m the new guy here. But I’ve got things to do, and I wanted to cut to the chase.” He turned to the crowd. “The only reason to raise a militia, it seems to me, would be to go to war with the Infecteds, not to wait in barracks down here for problems to materialize. To engage in a campaign of eradication of them. All of them, because they’re all contagious, and how can we tell the peaceful ones, if there are any, from the violent ones?”

  Sheriff Walcott did not disagree. But neither he nor the other county leaders seemed willing to publicly endorse mass murder, which was still technically illegal, not to mention immoral for these presumably church-going people.

  “So,” said Teddy, the stubbled Book of Revelations scholar, “what does that mean? Somebody gets sick and we shoot ’em? Like puttin’ down a hog?”

  “Yes,” Noah said. The crowd stirred. “That would be the plan we vote on.” There were murmurs of heated rejection. Noah made it even more difficult. “And that means that if someone in your family gets sick, this militia will come into your house and put a bullet in them. Your wife. Your kid. Your grandkid.”

  There was now open rebellion in the firehouse. “Whoa!” and “Ain’t nobody…” and, “Just like to see ’em try,” were snippets of remarks Noah overheard.

  “It’s us or them!” came a shout from the crowd, which hushed the gathering. A man in a tattered green John Deere cap and unbuttoned red flannel shirt over a faded gray T-shirt said, “I don’t plan on lettin’ my fam’ly git sick. And if that means I have to serve in a militia, then that’s what I’m gonna do!”

  In what Noah thought was a ridiculous to and fro, the crowd seemed to tilt back toward that viewpoint. Everyone awaited Noah’s rebuttal.

  There was something about an argument, any argument, that had always roused competitiveness in Noah. He saw flaws in reasoning, unaddressed impracticalities in a proposal, or facts assumed without proof, and in pointing those defects out, he ended up picking a side without due regard for his true views. He lowered his mask to help connect with the impromptu jury. “Once anyone is infected, it’s practically a hundred percent chance that everyone around that person will get sick too. So the plan we should vote on would be to kill everyone in a household once any one of them gets sick.”

  The harshness of that mission for Walcott’s militia had its intended effect. A chill settled on the room as the men and a few women contemplated killing everyone—strangers, or friends and neighbors—unfortunate enough to have any among them get sick.

  Noah’s red-flanneled debate opponent, however, responded. “Or we can all agree that, if we get sick, we’ll take care of the problem our own selves.”

  “Suicide?” Noah asked. The green John Deere hat bobbed resolutely. “Okay. Let’s add that. An up-or-down, yes-or-no vote agreeing to kill ourselves and everyone we’ve been in contact with if any one of us gets sick. Problem is, do you really expect that the people who vote no on that plan tonight will follow through on it if they lose that vote? Or even the people who voted yes, when the time comes and they’re standing over their sick kid’s bed with a shotgun?”

  Not without a solution, the pro to Noah’s con said,
“I guess that’s where the militia comes in.”

  “Okay. Good point. Let’s vote on that plan.” Without any debate, Noah’s repeated mention of voting had made that exercise in democracy a condition to adoption of any militia plan. “I move that we vote on a plan, A, to agree to kill ourselves and our entire family if any one of us catches Pandoravirus, and B, failing that, to consent to the summary execution of our entire household by the Sheriff and his militia. All in favor?”

  There were shouts of, “Hold on there!” and “Wait just a doggone minute!” Noah’s legal skills at framing the question had clearly prevailed.

  “Lemme guess,” came from the man in the John Deere hat. “You a lawyer?”

  “Is there anything wrong with my logic?”

  “I ain’t killin’ nobody,” came a new voice, “unless it’s self-defense. It ain’t Christian.”

  Sheriff Walcott responded. “So Bobby, if Carl gets in trouble next door you ain’t gonna come help? Ain’t that all we’re talkin’ about? Helpin’ each other out?”

  Noah jumped in. “It’s one thing to help a neighbor out…”

  “Good,” his debate opponent interrupted. “Glad to hear since I’m your neighbor. Trey Nichols.” They greeted each other with apparently customary bobs of their heads.

  “But Sheriff,” Noah continued, “it’s another thing entirely to form a government force—with zero legal authority, I might add—to engage in cleansing of the population through mass murder.”

  “What’s your plan then?” Trey Nichols asked.

  “Okay. How about the Castle Doctrine? Every man’s home—his property—is his castle. Right now, the law already says you can defend your home, family, and property.”

  “That works real nice for you,” Sheriff Walcott said icily, “since you just posted all them no-trespassing signs.” He clearly felt betrayed. “And so if me or my Deputies come on your posted property, you gonna shoot at us?”

  “Maybe. Since you may one day, God forbid, be the ones who’re infected.” Noah’s audience was listening intently. “But I’m sure as hell gonna shoot any militia that’s coming to kill my wife and children. And by the way what does happen, Sheriff, if and when you turn? And your Deputies? And this militia that we’ve armed and empowered to kick in doors and kill whole families? We’ve all seen the news. The people who’ve turned get up out of their sick beds and go back to work doing whatever they were doing before. I assume that includes zombie sheriffs and zombie militiamen. It’s pretty easy to imagine them taking a vote one day and deciding that it’s the uninfected people who are their big threat. That’s the road this proposal would start us down.”

  Sheriff Walcott was an elected official, as was the mayor. They knew how to count noses in a vote, and they glanced at each other before Walcott pivoted. “What about all the public spaces? Roads? The town? The George Washington, Jefferson, and Monongahela National Forests? The Shenandoah National Park? Who polices all those places?”

  “Are you sayin’,” one man asked, “this militia will be headin’ out twenty, thirty, forty miles from here? I gotta track my wife’s blood sugar every few hours!” There was an avalanche of other loud objections.

  “So it’s every man for hisself, is it?” Walcott exclaimed.

  A hirsute farmer said, “There’s this castle thing the new fella said. Nobody goes on anybody’s land without permission, or else. We should vote on that.”

  In short order, Noah’s Castle Doctrine was approved by the raised hands of at least three-quarters of the people in the firehouse. But after the vote, huddled beneath a row of fire jackets on hooks and helmets on shelves, were the men whose hands had not risen. Included among them were Sheriff Walcott and Noah’s neighbor, Trey Nichols.

  * * * *

  The news on the radio in Noah’s SUV ran the full range of modern punditry from pessimistic to apocalyptic, with a huge skew toward the latter. “Well, I guess this is it!” proclaimed the host in a broken voice. Previously grounded but now sobbing, she was comforted by her panel of politicians, scientists, entertainers, and clergymen. Noah searched satellite radio. “Breaking news. The BBC has just learned that the Swiss government has granted refuge to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. To repeat…” Noah tried MSNBC. “The federal government’s response to this crisis has been criminally inept.” He jumped to CNBC. “Trading was suspended when gold hit six thousand dollars an ounce.” He had 1,500 ounces in the basement safe and almost ran off the ridge road doing the math. Nine million increasingly worthless dollars’ worth of gold. “Whoo-hoo,” he muttered sarcastically. Technically, it was the best investment he’d ever made.

  Noah’s family was right where he had left them, except that Chloe, sitting on her heels, now read old-fashioned e-mails from a laptop. The servers used by most of her social media apps were slowing or had failed, but she had been thrilled that you could just send an e-mail and get a reply whenever, without having to wait around. “Do you think that’s why they call it e-mail? Because it’s like sending a letter?” She was amazed, as if at finding a working telegraph. “Gracie and her fam just made it to Idaho. The one with mountains.”

  Jake reclined on the floor against displaced sofa cushions, aiming his presumably empty assault rifle at targets on the large flatscreen. “Jake!” He knew the infraction immediately and lowered the high-powered weapon.

  Natalie made Noah sit in a chair far away from the rest. “Quarantine. How’d it go?”

  Noah briefed them on what had happened at the town meeting.

  Chloe interrupted in a whiny voice. “Does the Castle Doctrine mean we’re supposed to just…shoot people? Whoever wanders onto our property?”

  Infuriatingly, Natalie said, “She has a point.”

  “What point?” Noah replied.

  Chloe’s laptop binged. “Gracie said everybody has guns in Idaho. They’ll shoot you if you get too close. Is that what we’re supposed to do? Shoot people who come too close? How close? And which people? And without asking an adult first?”

  Jake sat up and turned his full attention to whatever his dad was going to say. Noah needed to sound more certain of his reply than he felt. “Okay. Let’s start with the fence line around the house. Nobody, nobody, comes inside that fence. Even if they’re in terrible distress. Especially if they’re in distress. Anyone who tries—you shoot.”

  “At them?” Chloe asked. “No warning shot?” Noah tilted his head in reproach. “I know, I know. Like the sign said.” Her mother looked bewildered. “There was this sign,” Chloe explained, “at the gun range that said, ‘Due to the rising cost of ammo, I no longer provide a warning shot.’ But the instructor said it really meant that people who’re shooting at each other are already, like, way past warning shots.”

  “Remember that other sign?” Jake asked. “‘Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again’?” He was overcome with laughter.

  “That’s…fuckin’…horrible!” Chloe said, kicking her brother.

  “Language, Chloe,” Noah corrected.

  “Language?” Natalie snapped at him. “Language?” She turned to her kids. In the same voice as she’d lectured them about stranger danger in preschool, she said, “If anyone tries to come through the fence, or gets inside, you shoot them. If you let someone go, they could hurt or infect not just you, but all of us. So we’re all depending on each other, no matter how hard it is. You shoot them. Understand? Keep shooting till they quit moving, like Jake’s sign said.”

  The gravity of Natalie’s directive settled slowly and in silence. Both Chloe and Jake were taken aback, with Chloe appearing almost sick at what she might actually have to do.

  Natalie turned to Noah, who was fighting his own dismay at hearing the words spoken aloud…and from his wife. He had worried about Natalie being unable to make the transition to a world filled with unavoidable violence. Now he wondered just how much violence she wa
s prepared to unleash on it. “And I think,” Natalie added, “we should all begin regular target practice. Tomorrow morning. Starting with me.”

  For some reason, this felt to Noah like the formal beginning of their family’s personal apocalypse. Their trial by ordeal had arrived, or was close.

  “What about the property line?” Jake asked. “Where we put up all those signs?”

  “What signs?” Chloe asked.

  “They say, ‘Posted.’ It’s a warning so we can shoot people legally.”

  “That’s not fair. People don’t see a sign that says, ‘Posted,’ and think, ‘Hm, somebody will shoot me if I step over some totally invisible line.’”

  Noah jumped in. “It also says trespassers will be shot, okay?” He sighed, rocked back in his chair, and rubbed his face.

  Natalie said, “I’m gonna go make coffee.”

  “It’s late,” Noah objected, pretty sure country folk got up early every single day, though he still wasn’t certain exactly why.

  “We need to talk about this. These rules. I’ll make coffee. You try to relax a little.”

  By bedtime at one a.m., after hours of challenges by his wife and children, Noah had hashed out the Miller family rules of engagement. The fence around the main house was to be defended with deadly force—no warning shots. Anyone else on their property was to be ordered to leave and, if the confrontation escalated, engaged with deadly force—one warning shot allowed but not required. Outside their property, they would only use their weapons in self-defense or, if the situation demanded, the defense of others—no warning shots, aim to kill, then get the hell out of there. Natalie’s target practice would commence in eight hours. “Have a good night’s sleep, kids.”