“Especially Anna? Why?”
The old man felt for Theo’s pulse and stared at his watch, perhaps taking a count, perhaps playing for time to choose his words carefully. “Pardon me for asking, but uh…were you planning on having any more children?”
“What? No! I’m done having kids. I’m past that.”
“Sorry,” Oliver said, “but Anna is not past child-bearing age. In the near future…well…” He shrugged.
“What are you saying? That’s it’s up to my daughter to repopulate the Earth? This is absurd.”
“I don’t think it’s absurd at all. It’s not like I expect her to be a baby factory all on her own. It’s just, I look around and I think of Kurt Vonnegut.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Things come apart. After Vonnegut saw how Dresden fell in one night to Allied bombs, he was surrounded by carnage. We’re surrounded by carnage, but the houses are still standing, so you don’t see it yet. This is a stealth Apocalypse. You wander around the neighborhood and it feels like everything’s pretty much the same except it seems especially quiet. I’ve seen more wildlife lately. Deer, cats…a lot of rats.”
Jack watched the old man speak, but she wasn’t sure she was processing what he meant to convey.
Oliver cleared his throat. “When Vonnegut got back from the war, he remarked on how many fine young men and women had died. Some of those people might have done important things had they lived. Maybe we’d have had jetpacks by now. Maybe there would have been a cure for cancer. One of them could even have found a cure for the Sutr Virus when it was just an idea in some mad scientist’s brain…if you believe the conspiracy theory about Sutr being of military origin.”
“What does all that have to do with my daughter?”
“Jacqueline,” Oliver addressed her gently. “The geniuses that make and run things? They only come along once in a long while. There aren’t enough geniuses to go around. We’ve had a population explosion on Earth for the last 100 years. Nature is now containing that explosion, you might even say fighting back to preserve her resources. But we need a lot of babies to get enough geniuses capable of putting us back on track. We still have the books. The information is out there so we can have progress again. That will only work if we have enough people who can really figure out smelting, solar panels, and water purification. I’m worried. Monsanto made almost everybody use seeds that are only good for one year. That’s the opposite of what we need to survive this. I mean, for humanity to survive this.”
“Sutr isn’t going to kill so many people that we’re headed for the Dark Ages. We’ll recover,” she said.
“How do we know how many people Sutr has killed? Are we going to rely on statistics from governments? You don’t seriously expect real numbers of dead from them, do you?”
Jack sat and watched her husband’s chest rise and fall for some time before speaking. “You talk about Sutr like it’s intelligent and evil and out to kill us. Viruses are the dumbest things around. Some scientists say viruses aren’t even really alive by many standards: No DNA of its own, and if it’s really successful, it kills its host so it dies, too.”
“So much for Intelligent Design,” Theo said, making both Jack and Oliver jump.
“You scared me,” the old man said. “Thought you were in La-La Land.”
“I was,” Theo said, his voice hoarse. “Then I heard the familiar sound of my wife getting pissed off and thought I better wake up and apologize. If she’s angry, it’s probably me. Did I do something I shouldn’t have, Jack?”
She knelt beside the couch and looked into her husband’s eyes. “Yeah, we were just saying how you better hurry up and get better. We don’t know how long this vacation is going to last and I have a lot of things for you to do around the house.”
“Vacation,” Theo said. “Heh, yeah. Any news?”
“Good news in that you’re fighting off the virus.”
“Really. I feel like I’m the hotel room and Sutr is a coked up rock star. He’s trashing me.”
“The bad news is that there are fires south of us,” Oliver said. “Not sure how far, though I’m sure there aren’t any firefighters on the job.”
“How do you know?” Theo said.
“I went out on a reconnaissance mission last night to see what I could find out. The local radio station is still going, but it’s a lot of canned repeats. I get the feeling there are a bunch of reporters holing up at home and phoning in. There’s probably one or two guys at the station trying to keep things going.”
“What’s it like out there?”
“I heard some gunshots, but far off.”
“I heard those, too,” Jack said. “Around midnight.”
“I thought I saw my dog,” Oliver added. “But he didn’t come when I called him so that couldn’t be Steve. First I saw the one dog following me, the one I thought was Steve. Then I saw more dogs and realized they were all following me.”
“What did you do?” Jack asked.
“I threw rocks at the leader and that turned their tails. I ducked into a house and they moved on. It was a bit hairy for a minute or two there. I’m not much for running anymore, and I don’t think anybody could outrun a pack of really hungry dogs.”
“Bear spray,” Theo said hoarsely. “I’ve got some in our gear in the van.”
“Excellent,” Oliver said. “I wish I’d known about that last night before I met up with the dogs.”
“While you’re up — ” Jack began.
“While I’m still conscious, you mean,” Theo said.
“Shut up,” Oliver said. He reached for a bowl of stew on the floor and handed it to Jack so she could feed her husband. “Eat, Theo. It’ll keep your strength up.” He gave an encouraging nod. “Please continue Jacqueline. About the proposition.”
“Mrs. Bendham has asked to come with us if we have to leave.”
“I’ve been collecting some food and things to trade,” Oliver said. “Between that and what canned goods Mrs. Bendham has stored up, we’d have enough to get away if the fires come north.” He considered his words carefully, “The wind is blowing our way and if it’s as big as it looks from here, the flames could easily be jumping streets. All it takes is a roof to light a tree to light some leaves that blow over to the next property and before you know it, we have a firestorm.”
“That’s troubling.” Theo swallowed some stew with difficulty and began coughing again. It seemed to hurt him more to cough now. “And things were going so well.”
Oliver allowed a grim laugh. “I’ve been working on our exit strategy. We’re smart and, with your van, we’d be fine.”
“Roads?” Theo asked.
“As far as I’ve seen the roads are down to one lane but someone’s keeping them clear. I imagine that’s either the city or the military at work.”
“You don’t know?”
“I still haven’t seen anyone clear the road myself, though I haven’t gone farther than a few blocks lately. There’s no one around to ask, but the body trucks are still running.”
None of them had seen the man in the red and yellow van with the bell for several days. However, a farm truck had gone by once. The truck body now had a canvas cover so they couldn’t tell if it was full of bodies or not.
“I had hoped we could hunker down and wait this out, but that fire worries me. I think we should seriously consider her offer. Mrs. Bendham is quite a canner. She’s got lots of goodies stored up for a rainy day. What is it about jams and jellies and little old ladies?”
“We need her rainy day supplies,” Jack said. “It’s not just raining. We’re in a flood.”
Theo nodded wearily. “If Mrs. Bendham comes with us, the kids will learn a lot about opera.”
“Oh, don’t tell Anna that,” Jack said. “She’ll — ”
“Listening to everything you say!” Anna called from the kitchen.
“Wash a plate, Anna!” J
ack yelled back.
“Vaccine?” Theo managed.
Oliver shook his head. “They said at the beginning of this — remember when they said this was all a tempest in a chamber pot? They said they had 90,000 doses of Tami flu. That all went to politicians and their families and maybe trickled down to some frontline hospital staff. Pandemics come in waves, and, from what the short wave says, there won’t be any vaccine coming for this thing until a while after we go through the third wave. Even if there was a vaccine, there’d have to be more organization up and working to deliver it. I’ve seen no evidence of that.”
“I was happier having fever nightmares,” Theo said. He managed to eat half a bowl of stew. Oliver finished it for him. “No worries about backwash,” he told Jack. “I’m still super! Sutr will never get me. When you’re well, it’ll never bother you again, either.”
“This feels so bad,” Theo Spencer rasped, “I wish it would either get it over with, whatever it’s going to do.”
There was no self-pity in his voice. Only exhaustion.
“There’s no cavalry coming over the hill, is there?” said Jack.
Deus ex machina, Jaimie thought. He’d read somewhere that it made for bad stories. Since God was not showing up to rescue his family, their lives must be a good story.
“Whoever could come to the rescue,” said Oliver, “has the same problems we do. We’re going to have to rely on ourselves for some time yet. Don’t ask how long, but don’t worry. I have things well in hand. With all the food and supplies you’ve gathered, we’ll be set up well if we have to run. And we can take Mrs. Bendham with us.”
Jaimie thought of ancient Roman wisdom. Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos. Roughly translated, it meant that with a van full of supplies during a plague, you’ll suddenly have lots of friends.
The Ungrateful Living face new laws
Jack and Oliver stepped out into his backyard to let Theo sleep and to avoid Anna’s eavesdropping.
The grass had grown long in his absence and Oliver absentmindedly bounced a tennis ball off the concrete patio deck. At the rear of the property, along the base of the tall wooden fence they could still see where Oliver’s big German Shepherd had scratched and pawed at the dirt beneath the fence until he had escaped.
“Ordinarily I’d come out here and play a little fetch with Steve.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, “but I don’t think I’m up to it at the moment.”
The old man smiled at her. “I’m glad you are willing to take Mrs. Bendham along. In the spirit of the new economy, I’ve got a good-sized bag of trinkets to pay for my ticket on the Spencer Express.”
Jack began to protest. “You’ve already taken us into your home — ”
“No, no. This is just enlightened self-interest at work. I’ve got some good jewelry. I’ve got an eye for it, of course. In my business, I know cheap costume stuff from the real thing. Mrs. Bendham has food to contribute and I’ve got loot. And my startling good looks, of course.”
“How soon can she be ready to leave…you know, if we have to?”
As if on some unconscious signal, they both turned to look up. Plumes of dark smoke gathered so the sky looked like a black thunderhead hung low over the city.
Jack put a finger in her mouth to wet it and held it up to the wind. “If the wind doesn’t shift soon, we may be leaving faster than we thought.”
“I miss firefighters, and not just for their calendars, anymore.” Oliver looked at his house and yard, as if already saying goodbye.
“So Mrs. Bendham is ready to go when necessary?” she asked.
“Jacqueline, that old woman started packing up as soon as her husband died. She’s been holed up over there, rocking back and forth and praying and she never takes her mask off so her glasses are always steamed up. She’s driving me batty. She’s over there boiling and listening to the radio and praying to Jesus. When we look back on this, we’ll think of those who died. When she looks back on it, she’ll say the cabin fever was worse. For the next apocalypse, everyone will be better prepared, and they’ll all have decks of cards and Scrabble games ready. ”
“Has she gone crazy?”
“No, just grieving. Mostly she’s doing it quietly so I approve. She’s stopped singing. That’s really a shame, too, since I’ve never liked her that much — Al was more my friend than she ever was — but she does have a beautiful voice.”
“That just leaves the big question,” Jack said. “If we have to go, what’s the route?”
“Can’t go south. Too many people and I’ve heard of trouble around the state border.”
“From whom?”
“TV. Radio. Around.”
“What kinds of problems?”
“Too many people with too many guns. It’s the old west, but without the helpful sheriffs to keep the towns clean. Times like these, nobody wants a stranger coming to their door.”
Jack nodded. “So…?”
“We could go north,” Oliver ventured, “but that’s too few people for my taste, and food might be a problem.”
“I’ve heard Mormons have to have a year’s supply of food stashed away,” said Jack. “Maybe we could head farther west, find some Mormons and they’d share.”
“Iffy. They might feel that’s presumptuous. Also…you might be thinking of Seventh Day Adventists or Amish. I’m not sure who the religious hoarders are. I was a Presbyterian, so I’m sure it’s not them.”
“And we’d definitely have to convert,” she said. “If it’s the Mormons and things go into a slide, Theo might take it into his head to get a harem going.”
“I think I’m too old to really enjoy a harem much, although having a bunch of young fellas around to paint the house and do the landscaping sure would be sweet.”
They laughed together. Despite his Australian accent, the old man’s easy laughter somehow reminded her of her grandfather. He was a take charge kind of man, but with a lighthearted demeanour that pulled her toward him.
With Oliver and Mrs. Bendham stuffed in the back of the van — two somewhat crazy surrogate grandparents — the kids would have a taste of what family used to be. It would be a nuclear family, together instead of spread across the country. She wondered if all families would be cobbled-together and close again now that the world had slowed to survival mode.
Oliver threw the tennis ball with surprising force against the back fence. It bounced just a foot from the hole his dog escaped through. “It’s a long ways to run, but young Anna has told me about Theo’s father’s farm in Maine. That could be…”
“Sustainable?”
Oliver shrugged. “Salvation.”
Jack thought a moment. “Spence — my father-in-law, I mean…he would take us in. He never wanted us to leave the east coast.”
“You lived out there, too?”
“I’m originally from Poeticule Bay,” she said.
“Where?”
She smiled. “A little place no one’s ever heard of on Maine’s coast. We’ve got a really nice postcard.”
“I’m guessing it’s a scene with a lighthouse,” he said.
“Exactly!” she laughed. “With lobster traps at the bottom.”
“That how you met Theo? High school sweethearts?”
She shook her head. “Freshman sweethearts. We met in the cafeteria at Stanford. Theo’s a little older than me and he went away to boarding school so we had to meet all the way across the country to find each other. Poeticule Bay’s so small, it’s a miracle we didn’t know of each other. He never liked it enough to even visit home.”
“It’s an awful long ways to run to not to be welcomed. You sure it would be good with your father-in-law, taking in a couple of old strangers like Mrs. Bendham and me?”
“Oh, it’ll be fine with Spence,” Jack said. “It’s Theo, I’m worried about. He swore he’d never go back to that farm.”
“Bad blood?”
Jack shrugged. “Th
eo didn’t get along with his mother and never wanted to darken that door again. I’ve tried to talk to him about it. Theo just says it brings up too many bad memories. He said they wanted him to stay and work in the family business. That wasn’t for him. You know how some families can be.”
“Is Theo’s mother still alive?” Oliver asked.
“No. Helen died a couple of years ago. She divorced Papa Spence and they never reconciled. Suicide. She was bi-polar and sick, as well, so she might have chosen lots of pills over another round of chemo. That’s another family secret rarely uttered. Sometimes talking to Theo or his dad, it feels like they work at the Pentagon or something. When Helen died, Theo was broken up, but for the wrong reasons. He got depressed because he and his mom never worked out their differences. When she died, he cried a little because he thought he should cry a lot. Theo didn’t have it in him to mourn her much. I’m sure it’s his greatest regret.”
“I’m sorry to hear of Theo’s loss, though…now that his mother’s gone, there’s really no reason not to make the run to salvation when the time comes, is there?”
She nodded her assent.
“That’s good,” Oliver said. “Because if Helen was still there, we’d have had to kill her, wouldn’t we, Jacqueline?” He caught her shocked look and patted her arm and waggled his eyebrows at her. “In the spirit of mutual benefit and enlightened self-interest.”
He moved on briskly. “The weather’s warming up. Should turn on the air conditioner and enjoy it while we can. Let’s get back inside. Seems like there’s no point to having a backyard now, not unless you’ve got kids or a dog.” He let out a long sigh. “I miss Steve.”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Jack said as she stepped into the kitchen.
Anna was still sitting across the kitchen table from Jaimie. She’d switched to reading a book about girls in love with the vampires who would inevitably kill them. “Coffee is mom’s solution for everything,” Anna said.
“What? Are you taking over for your Dad?” Jack said irritably.
This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) Page 18
