Viral Nation (Short Story): Broken Nation

by Shaunta Grimes

  “They tried to take everyone to Denver. When they wouldn’t go, they were arrested.”

  “Why wasn’t Pablo with them?”

  “He says he was out looking for supplies.”

  “Then how does he know they were arrested?”

  Alex holds up the letter. “I don’t know, Leanne. He just does.”

  “The Waverly-Stead Company can’t really arrest people, can they?”

  Alex shoves the letter into my hand. “I guess they can.”

  Maggie slips to the floor, sitting crisscross-applesauce all at once like the strength has just run out of her. Maybe, once upon a time, she was the kind of kid who asked a thousand questions, but now she is so quiet that it worries me.

  “There’s more,” Alex says.

  He waits for me to open the letter and read the more. I can’t do it, and after a minute he takes it back. I have a strong urge to put my fingers in my ears, and as I sit as silent as Maggie, I realize that I’ve changed, too. I’ve gotten used to bad things happening, compliant enough to just sit and wait for them. That idea upsets me enough that I force myself to ask, “What is it?”

  “The truck driver, Frank.”

  “What about him?”

  “He said that when he comes back through, on his way east again, he’ll bring a letter back to Pablo if we want him to.”

  “Just a letter?”

  Alex seems to wrestle with himself for a moment, but then finally must decide on honesty, because he says, “He said he could bring us out of the city. If that’s what we want.”

  “We’ve already talked about this.” My voice sounds old to my own ears. Like a mother lecturing her son. Or a wife frustrated with her husband.

  “Frank’s son doesn’t get the shots. He had one, in the beginning, and had an allergic reaction to it.”

  “Was his son sick?” I ask. That’s the most important question. “Where is he now?”

  “His son wasn’t, but the woman who took him in was. She doesn’t get the suppressant, either. They’re outside Denver.”

  Maggie makes a small noise now, and stands up to walk across the room and stand next to my wheelchair. “She didn’t get sick again without the shots?”

  Alex shakes his head. “Frank said not.”

  “Maybe just not yet,” I say. “Can I read the letter?”

  He hands it back to me, but hesitates a little too long. It only takes reading a few lines to figure out why. As I read, I become more and more acutely aware that I’m sitting in a wheelchair. That, while there are times when my leg that isn’t even there hurts enough to make me cry, it is still missing.

  I need you here. Pablo is alone, outside a city. The work they’ve done, planting and preparing this compound, is already lost. His chances of getting the others back out of Denver alone are slim.

  “He doesn’t know who else is alive,” I say, mostly to myself. Maggie slips her hand into mine.

  “We have to go, don’t we?” she asks, then quieter, like she’s afraid to admit it, “I miss them.”

  “I do, too.”

  I finally make eye contact with Alex. We both know that I can’t leave Reno.

  • • •

  We eat dinner and help Maggie with her homework and play Yahtzee and we don’t talk about the letter again. Maggie asks a few questions, but stops when she only gets one- or two-word answers. She asks if she can go to bed an hour early, which is a sure sign that the routine-as-always that we’re aiming for has fallen way short.

  I sit in a corner of the sofa, my good leg stretched along the seam where the back meets the seat, and my half leg propped on a pillow. My fingers tap around the edges of the scar line; the light pressure eases the achy pain and somehow convinces my mind for a while that a leg that’s rotting in a landfill can’t hurt. Alex comes to sit by me. I slide away from the sofa arm so that he can sit there and I can lean back against him.

  My head rests perfectly against his shoulder and he kisses my temple. I tip my face up, and he kisses my mouth hard, with a desperation that I don’t like. He kisses me like he’s never going to see me again, and I pull away. “Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t kiss you?” He’s hurt. I can see it in his eyes.

  “Not like that. Not like you’re saying good-bye already.”

  “I have to go.” His voice is so soft, I barely hear him.

  I want to remind him that he promised not to leave me again. I want to point out that, as far as anyone else in Reno is concerned, we’re married. Even if I am still sleeping in Maggie’s room. I want to do something to transfer to him some of the pain that is slowly engulfing me, but I can feel the tension in his body, and I know he’s already hurting at least as much as I am. “I know.”

  There’s more. I turn as best I can to face him, to see what I’ve missed.

  “I want you to come with me,” he says.

  Does he think I want to be left alone here?

  “Leanne,” he says when I don’t speak right away. “Talk to me.”

  I don’t want to whine about my leg, so I reach for the only other reason to stay I can think of. “I’ve been accepted at the school.”

  “Jesus, do you think school matters right now? Really?”

  I shake my head against his collarbone. “What if—what if I can learn something here. How long are we going to last outside a city if we don’t even know what’s going on?”

  When he finally answers me, his voice is so soft. “Please, don’t make me leave you here again.”

  I don’t want to. It physically hurts to make myself go on. “I can’t help there. If you have to run, I’ll slow you down. I can do something here, Alex.”

  “Maggie has to come with me,” he says.

  He’s right. I know it immediately, I knew it already, but there is nothing I can do to stop the tears. I am going to be alone. Completely alone. They won’t let Maggie stay with me. I’m not even sure I can take care of myself, much less her. I can’t get her to school, or pick up her rations. Our rations come through Alex anyway. I can’t work. I can’t even stand up off this couch by myself.

  I try to anyway, pushing against Alex’s chest to put some space between us. He won’t let me go, his arms tighten around me, like he’s afraid to let me leave him before he leaves me. I fight for another moment, but then I realize I’m more afraid that he’ll let me go than I am of letting him hold me there. I relax into his arms and I cry. I feel his tears dampen my hair.

  • • •

  I wake up the next morning in our bedroom, mine and Alex’s. The one with my things in the closet but that until now I have never slept in. I’m still wearing my clothes from the day before, and Alex is so close that I’m not sure how I managed to sleep at all. I push back against him, and he shifts, so that his weight is off me and I can breathe.

  Before we finally slept the night before, he wrote a letter back to Pablo. He wrote that I lost my leg, as if I’ve misplaced it and might be able to find it and screw it back on. He won’t leave me until I have my prosthetic and can manage on my own. He made sure to add that he will come back for me when I’m well enough to leave Reno.

  He told Pablo that he needs a month, and then he’ll come with Maggie. In one month, I will be alone. Just me and my fake leg. I try not to think about where the leg will come from. Is there a warehouse full of them somewhere? There must be some way for me to have a prosthetic that doesn’t involve taking it off of a dead person. When I let myself think about it, I wonder if this is how people who need new body parts feel when they’re waiting for someone to get in a car accident or something so that a heart or liver or kidney becomes available.

  Then I wonder if there is even a doctor left who can perform transplant surgery, and I back out of that rabbit hole as quickly as possible.

  I don’t have to wait for an accident. Almost everyone is already dead. The radio doesn’t talk about percentages or numbers for the country as a whole. Instead they talk about how many people are in each city. Nearly
100,000 in Sacramento, twice that many in New York City. Only 500 in Wichita, Kansas, until they relocated some more people there.

  I know how many people lived in Nevada before, and I know that 15,000 left in my state means that almost everyone is already dead.

  “Don’t tell her yet,” I say to Alex when he and I are sitting at a dead family’s kitchen table, drinking coffee from their pantry out of their mugs. “It’ll only upset her.”

  He nods, and looks at me long enough that I start to get uncomfortable.

  “What?” I ask, running a hand through my hair.

  “Will you sleep with me again tonight?”

  I think about saying no. Some things are hardwired in and don’t care if a war and a virus collided and changed everything. Not wanting him to think that getting me into bed with him will be easy is one of those things for me. But I will be alone in a month. So alone. In the end, I lift my mug with both hands, even though it burns my palms, and say, “Yeah, sure.”

  My hesitation does something to Alex. His face flushes and he fumbles with his coffee, splashing some on the table. “You don’t have to.”

  This whole situation is so tragic that the only thing left to do is laugh. Laugh because in a month he’s going to leave and take Maggie with him, and there is nothing I can do about it. Laugh because I love them both, and this moment comes in a close second to the one where the vice principal of my school told me my mother was dead. Laugh because, what else can I do when my body and my heart have both been broken beyond real repair?

  He looks up at me, his dark eyes narrowed. He thinks I’m laughing at him.

  I want to ease the worry from his face. “Where else would I be?”

  He looks down at his cup and goes on quickly, as if he’s afraid lingering on the subject will give me time to change my mind. “There’s a guy on my crew. I think—I think after, you know—he’ll help you get settled into a dorm on campus.”

  “Okay.” I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.

  “I’ll invite him over. To meet you.”

  I’m hit by a sharp stab of anger that is made worse by the frustration of being stuck in my chair. “I’m not ready to be passed off yet.”

  “I’m not passing you off,” he says. “Leanne, I’m not—”

  “Fine.”

  “This isn’t permanent. You know that, don’t you? When you’re better, when everything in Colorado is settled, I’ll come back for you.”

  I want to believe him. “I really might learn something at the school that will help.”

  “I bet you will.” Relief brings his voice down an octave. “We need you. You’re the brains of the operation.”

  • • •

  They call the school the Waverly-Stead Academy, and for some reason that cracks me up every time I think about it. It sounds so posh, when really it was just me and exactly ninety-nine other kids in an auditorium in an old brick building on the University of Nevada campus.

  Everyone sits in stadium chairs with little pull-out desks. Everyone but me, anyway. I sit in my wheelchair at a table in the back. Teachers filter in and out of the room. All of us are in some stage of grief. Some of us are still recovering from the Virus. No one would have let us go to school just a few months ago, but here we are.

  I am uncomfortable knowing that I am lucky compared to most of the others, who were taken from the foster homes. I have Alex and Maggie, and that is so much more than many of the others have that I don’t ever talk about them.

  We’ve been coming five days a week, from nine to three because human beings are creatures of habit, for two weeks. I have five days left with Alex and Maggie, and I have so far learned nothing at all that might be helpful to them once they leave. I can feel my resolve to stay slipping away. I could talk Alex into taking me, even though it would be dangerous for all of us.

  All we have done at school is take tests. Hours upon hours of tests. I have just about decided that no one really knows what they’re doing here. They don’t know what to teach us, so they’re not teaching us anything.

  “I’m not taking another test.”

  I twist in my seat to see who spoke. The movement causes my prosthetic leg to cut into my stump. I want to agree with the girl who spoke up, but before I can our math teacher says, “You don’t have to.”

  The mood in the stuffy classroom elevates like it’s been given a shot of helium.

  “You get your assignments today.” Mr. Porter holds up a hand when several students ask what assignments are all at the same time. “You’ve all done so well so far. Now that we know your strengths, you’ll be assigned to a course of study that will help you succeed in the work that will help your city and your country the most. After you’ve been given your assignment, you may go home. Rest up, kids, the real work starts Monday.”

  One by one, he calls each student to his desk and speaks to them privately. I’m aching to know what the assignments are, but each student is sent out of the room immediately and I can’t hear a word from my place in the back.

  It takes most of an hour for Porter to get through the entire student body of the Waverly-Stead Academy, until there is only me left. Me and my wheelchair and my fake leg that probably came off a dead person. I try to convince myself that maybe I’m not last because of my leg. Maybe he’s going alphabetically and Wood is at the end of his list.

  Either way, he’s going to tell me I can’t stay. There aren’t any assignments that want a girl with one leg. I have this weird mix of irritation and a kind of deep relief. He is about to take whether or not I go with Alex out of my hands.

  “The best for last.” He comes up the stairs and sits on the edge of my table. “You’ve been assigned to the Mariner track, Leanne.”

  “To the what?” I am aware that my confusion is showing on my face, because I can see that Porter is amused.

  “The Mariner track. It’s the most prestigious we have.”

  The only thing I can think of to put “Mariner” in perspective is the Marines. “I can’t join the Marines.”

  “No. You can’t. There aren’t any Marines left.”

  That sits between us for a while, until I finally say, “I don’t understand.”

  “You tested very well, you know.”

  I raise one shoulder.

  “The Mariners are the new military.”

  So, not the Marines, but he was still sending me to be in the military. “With one leg?”

  “With one leg. You’ll learn to use your prosthesis. Everything has changed, Leanne. Our military doesn’t need to do the same things it did before. You’re going to be fine.”

  By the time I wheel myself out of the building and down to the little parking lot where Alex waits for me, my mind is spinning. I’d been so sure that I was wrong about staying.

  “We have to leave sooner than we thought.” He takes the handles of my chair, and even though I’d rather push myself, takes off fast. “Leanne, are you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening,” I say. “Slow down.”

  “We have to go. Now. Tonight.”

  I look around, checking to make sure no one is close enough to hear. “What are you talking about?”

  “Maggie told her teacher that I’m not her brother.”

  My stomach does this weird backflip. “Why would she do that?”

  “Some kind of therapy thing,” he said. “Trying to get the kids to talk about their grief or something like that. Anyway, she got upset about Tomas and told the truth. A social worker was by this afternoon. She didn’t take Maggie, but we can’t risk it.”

  “Alex—” I’d been sure that my school assignment was a sign that staying was the right thing to do, but when I speak what comes out is: “I’m going with you.”

  My words surprise me as much as they do him. He comes to a stop. “Are you sure?”

  I am. I can tell by how right it feels. “I’m sure.”

  He starts moving again, almost running. I am thrown around my chair with every
bump in the sidewalk, but I just hold on tight and don’t complain. It’s a little like flying.

  Maggie is already in her room, packing whatever she can’t live without into a blue and white duffel bag. Her cheeks are stained with tears that are still falling. That’s why Alex left her at home.

  “Can you find me a bag?” I ask.

  She looks up, one hand clutched around a stuffed dog that Angelica gave her before we left the hospital. “You’re coming?”

  It makes me so happy to be the one that takes away her sad face. She throws the dog into her bag, then runs out of the room. She’s gone all of ten seconds before she’s back with a purple backpack covered in pink hearts. Her school backpack.

  When I wheel myself back out to the hallway, I see a litter of papers and pencils scattered over the living room floor.

  “Let me help you.” Alex takes the backpack from me and shoves a handful of my underwear into the bottom of it.

  I wheel myself to the closet and open it. “It’s going to be colder there.”

  “I know.” Alex moves me out of his way. It seems to me that he’s just ripping my clothes off hangers without looking, but I see T-shirts and yoga pants go in, and my favorite sweatshirt, so I don’t complain. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

  He puts the backpack in my lap and wheels me out of the bedroom, kicking Maggie’s school debris out of his way.

  “Slow down!”

  He stops just short of ramming my knees into the wall next to the front door. “I’m sorry. Maggie! Let’s go!”

  We leave everything behind, without even thinking about it. It isn’t our stuff. Even what we’re bringing with us belonged first to someone who is dead now. There is nothing keeping us in Reno. Nothing. I’m still not sure about going without the shots, but I don’t care anymore. We won’t be that far from Denver.

  I stand up and walk a couple of wobbly steps to the car. Alex opens the passenger door for me and the back door for Maggie. This feels surreal, and too fast. I was in school being put into some kind of military service no more than half an hour ago. Are we doing the right thing?