The room was neat, orderly. Books filled long shelves, blankets sat piled on a chair. The place had that familiar old smell of his grandma’s house, when she had been alive. A pink and green floral rug covered floorboards, on which a sofa couch had been folded out into a bed. An elderly couple lay with their arms curled around each other, their eyes closed. Their pale skin had dried like parchment, and flies buzzed around the room. The smell was horrendous, biting into his nostrils with putrid teeth. On a wooden bedside table sat a bottle of medication.
Pills, Callan thought, ramming the crook of his elbow over his mouth. They committed suicide. He wondered what might drive them to do that.
“Shit,” Dylan said. He took a deep breath with his nose pinched shut. “I don’t think we need a doctor to call it.”
Sherry pressed her lips in a thin line, which meant severe concern for her.
Kristy stood at the bed, peering at the bodies. “Why?”
In a low voice, Dylan said, “Let’s see if we can find any more newspapers.” He walked out, followed by Greg and Kristy.
Sherry stepped to Callan’s side. “I don’t like it,” he said. What if the old couple had committed suicide because of the virus that had swept through Sydney and Melbourne? If it was bad enough to make killing yourself a better option, they were in big trouble.
He signalled Sherry to leave and followed her, closing the flimsy wooden door after them. He pulled her to him, and at first, she resisted, but he squeezed her hand and she let him put his arms around her. It was their first hug in a week. He had engaged her every night as they had crawled into their sleeping bags, but found only excuses. They hadn’t had sex on the trip and that alone was messing with his head. All she had to do was touch him, but he hadn’t been able to arouse her interest through any physical or emotional switches.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” he said. “Taking pills to die isn’t the way I imagine myself going out.”
“You think they killed themselves because of the virus?”
“Maybe. The only other thing I can think of is that one of them had a terminal illness and the healthy one didn’t want to go on alone.”
“That’s stupid.”
He wouldn’t call it stupid. The thought of living without Sherry tightened a knot around his gut. He could understand why a person might do that.
Callan led her towards the exit, feeling the softness of her fingers. He missed the contact. “Let’s just get home and see what we can find out, okay?” He took her face in his hands and pulled her too him.
She turned away. “Not know, Cal. I feel strange.”
“Sure, I understand. There are two dead people in the other room.” He watched her walk through the doorway, feeling a familiar defeat. Originally, he had courted her for six months, enduring several knockbacks. Sherry originated from a wealthy family in Albury and that had made his task challenging.
“Do you know how fucking hard it is to be the daughter of my parents?” She had said to him one day. “Nothing is good enough. They try and tell me who I can see, what I can do, when I can do it.”
“You do what you want,” Callan had said. Her independence was one of the things that had impressed him.
“I’m always conscious of what they’ll say. I fucking hate it.” She had smoked back then, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with a stiff hand. He still didn’t know why she had quit. “Expect to get a call or visit from my father, too. He’ll read you the family laws, what they will and won’t accept of your behaviour. Tell him to fuck off.”
“I won’t give you up easily,” Callan had said. “You’re everything to me. I love you Sherry and I haven’t said that too many times before.”
He recalled how her lips had curled at the edges, showing perfect teeth, and a hint of the love she would one day possess. What had happened to them? Somewhere, it had started to unravel, and he had no idea how to fix it.
In the shop, Dylan filled a cardboard box with items from the shelves: matches, batteries, mosquito repellent, wicks for the gas lantern, and a packet of firelighters.
“What’s that for? Callan said.
Dylan shook his head. “You never know.”
“The milk has curdled,” Kristy said, peering into a carton.
Greg leaned against the brown laminated counter drinking from his third beer. “This isn’t looking too good. I dunno about you guys, but that voice inside my head is telling me some heavy shit has gone down.”
“Any older newspapers?” Callan said.
Kristy said, “Nothing. This is it. We’ve got twenty copies though.”
Sherry said, “How long do you think they’ve been dead?”
“A few days, maybe more.”
“Maybe this virus is the reason we didn’t see anybody up at the lake,” Dylan said.
Callan said, “It’s always dead up that end. Even at the height of summer you don’t see many people.”
“But nobody? No water skiers or fishing boats? I don’t buy it. I wish I could talk to my father,” Dylan said. “Virus outbreaks are like a hobby of his. He follows them pretty closely. He’ll know what’s going on.”
Callan prickled. “He’s an expert on viruses now?”
“I didn’t say-”
“I’d like to talk to my father, too. I’m sure he’d have a good handle on things.”
“I’m sure, but I know my father will have been tracking this thing. He kept a detailed record of the bird flu outbreak. Kristy read it. You were impressed, right? We’ll see what he’s got when we reach my place.”
Callan had promised stop arguing with Dylan, but Sherry’s rebuff had stung, and any talk of Dylan’s father just pissed him off. Mention of Kristy reminded of their growing friendship. He didn’t want that to go any further, at least for Greg’s sake.
“I’m not sure this is the time for arguing,” Kristy said. “I saw Dylan’s fathers work and it was impressive. Hopefully he’s done the same again and we can learn from it, if it’s needed. We’re getting ahead of ourselves though, aren’t we?”
“Doesn’t mean Dylan’s house is the first stop,” Callan said.
“It makes sense though,” Greg said. “It is the closest.”
“Shut up man. Whose fucking side are you on?” He couldn’t believe Greg would agree with Dylan. “There’s a quick way to my place. If we take the back roads, it won’t take any longer than getting to Dylan’s or anyone else’s house. We’ll be there five minutes and then we can go wherever you guys want.”
“Don’t be a shithead, Cal,” Kristy said. “I thought you’d stopped taking those asshole pills.”
“Okay,” Sherry said, stepping in. “That’s enough. We all want to get home, right? That’s our goal? To get back to Albury safely?” She waited. “Anybody disagree?” Sherry had a business management degree from Deakin University, and was classified as “highly influential” in the DISC personality profiling system. It was impatient bossiness, but Sherry preferred the term “leadership”. She was well organised too, and Callan had seen her form a coherent, successful team amongst a previously dysfunctional group of people. She had Callan tied around her little finger, but he didn’t mind. When she walked into the room, his heart stopped. He thought he would walk through a burning house for her. “It’s time to get organised. Imagine there’s no power or water for a few days. What do we need?”
“Beer,” Greg said, crushing his third can. He tossed it into a full bin and it rolled off onto the floor with a clunk.
“Matches, water, fuel,” Callan said.
“I’ve already got some of those,” Dylan said.
“You can never have too many.”
“Okay,” Sherry said. “We’re getting somewhere. How quickly can we pull this together?”
“Quickly,” Callan said. “You’re right, we should do this.” He felt hope seeing her enthused again. It proved to him that managing people was her thing.
“You fill the rest of the fuel tanks and the gas bottles. Krist
y and I will get drinks. Maybe a beer or two for Greg,” she said, feigning a smile. Greg burped. “You belong in a sty. Dylan can gather another box of emergency supplies. Greg, you get the food, and not just the stuff you normally eat. Try and find something that has a milligram of nutritional value.”
“Sure,” Greg said. “Hang around while I duck out to the fruit and vegetable shop and load up. Any vegans here? I could always get some lentils or legumes.”
She shook her head. “I wonder what would need to happen for you to take life seriously. We all know your idea of a salad is pizza with a lettuce leaf on top. Just don’t fill us with chips and chocolate, okay?”
Greg made a face and unsealed his forth beer. So far, it hadn’t caused an issue, but Callan thought it wasn’t the time to get pissed. He would shut his mouth for now, but if Greg kept drinking, he’d pull his buddy aside and say something.
Sherry clapped her hands. “Let’s do it. I don’t want to hang around here any longer than I have to.”
The sun was a yellow blazing eye and Callan wished they were back at the lake. Sweat dripped down his forehead as he unloaded gear and lined the empty Gerry cans up at the pump. There was urgency about their movement, as if they had an important deadline. Even Greg had stopped sucking down beers, grunting as he brought box loads of food from the shop. They worked in comfortable silence as the birds chirped and tweeted from the woods around them.
Callan would miss the peace of the countryside. The last five weeks has been more enjoyable than the entire four years he’d spent in his office job, cooped up in a shitty little cubicle with a picture of Sherry stuck to one wall. He didn’t have Kristy’s brains, and would never reach the mercurial heights of academic or career achievement to which she was destined. He dreamed of working as a fishing or hunting guide, taking rich clients up into the mountains every weekend, teaching them how to catch trout and shoot game. He loved the smell of the trees and the leaves, and the snarling vegetation, even the algae on the rocks at the river’s edge. It was his dream job. He recalled a conversation with Sherry about possibly one day moving away from town.
“You’re not serious?”
“Have you ever been up to the Snowy Mountains? It’s peaceful, and beautiful, and smells amazing.”
“It’s boring, Callan. There’s nobody there.”
“That’s part of it. Don’t you get sick of having all these dickheads around you at work?”
“No. Those dickheads give me things to do. They’re my job.”
He thought the camping trip might change her mind, but that had failed. Even now, in the short time since she had taken control and allocated tasks, she was happier. She needed people. His dreams would have to wait. Sherry was the most important thing to Callan. He would follow her wherever she went and hope one day she might see things differently.
The girls stacked separate piles of bottled soft drink and water cases wrapped in clear plastic beside the Jeep. Greg had done his best to vary the food, but it was limited to powdered mashed potatoes, tinned beans, and canned fruit. Dylan added three more boxes of camping supplies and a pack of 3M breathing masks.
“I found these,” he said, holding up the box of ten. “You never know.”
“Good idea,” Callan said. “Was that it? Just the one box?”
“That’s all I could find. They probably didn’t have time to prepare for an outbreak.”
Twenty-five minutes later Callan had cleared the pile, stacking it into the boat around the large portable ice chest containing the skinned rabbits and a couple of pan-sized trout.
“We can get our asses into gear when required,” Sherry said. “Let’s hope we don’t need any of it.”
“I don’t think we have enough to pay for it all,” Callan said. “I’ve only got a fifty and the card machine won’t work.”
Sherry said, “Does it matter?”
“Probably not, but it’s the right thing to do. I’m not about to start stealing just because we can.”
“Good point,” Kristy said, sticking a hand into her pocket.
They scraped together a hundred and sixteen dollars and left it in the squeaky till. It wouldn’t pay for everything, but Callan felt satisfied that under the circumstances, they wouldn’t be branded as looters.
“We could always drive down to Cabramurra,” Callan said, as they waited for him to pack the last few things. “See if they’ve been affected.”
“I just wanna get home,” Kristy said.
Sherry said, “Me too. I’ve had enough of the country.”
Callan felt another stab of disappointment. He secured the last few straps on the boat trailer, closed his eyes and sucked in several deep breaths of pure country air. It would be the last time for a while, if Sherry had anything to do with it. You couldn’t beat the smell of the gum and eucalypt trees. In town, or worse, a big city, there were so many different scents you couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Out here, smells were unique, as if separated so you could appreciate each one. Some of his clothes still smelled of smoke from the fire too, and although they had complained about it, two days from now he would miss the odour. Albury was delightful compared to the city, but out in the real country, when you closed your eyes, your senses marvelled. When he opened them, Kristy approached.
“I’ll keep driving, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“Sure.”
“You okay?”
The more thought he gave Sherry, the more he realised she had been acting strange before the trip. “Has Sherry said anything about being unhappy?”
Kristy looked confused. “No. Why?”
“She’s been different.”
“Today?”
“No, longer. Before the trip. Don’t let her know I’m worried.”
“Are you?”
Callan ached when he considered life without her. His mother once told him that in any relationship, there is always one person who loves the other more. Callan was that person. He felt her slipping away. Lack of affection was one thing, but she seemed less interested in him, too. “Yeah.”
Kristy put a hand on his arm and gave a conciliatory smile. “Let me talk to her.”
As they rolled away from the gas station, Callan looked back at the ramshackle building and felt a pang of concern. Were they driving into trouble? If he didn't need to check on his parents, he’d be glad to head back up to the lake and wait it out until they got word that the virus had passed. They had fuel and enough food to last several weeks. He couldn’t sit up there wondering whether his loved ones were safe, and he doubted the others could either. They would discover what had happened soon enough, and the idea filled him with a cold apprehension. Surely the government would have control of the situation by then.
2. Road Trip
Kristy gripped the wheel tighter as they cruised along the winding highway, fighting tight corners and steep hills. She pressed the accelerator to the floor trying to coax the Jeep over the rise and onto the downward side. The sun cast warms rays through towering gums, and out here, only brown earth and hardy, sun-loving bush existed. They had seen the odd dead kangaroo on the dusty gravel edge and once an echidna preparing to make its trek across the black suicidal stretch. As much as Kristy loved town life, like her brother, she had a soft spot for the real country too.
A nervous tension had swept over her again. Its absence had been bliss for the last three weeks, and she thought she might have won after a year of fighting the stresses of thirty-six hours shifts and people dying under her care. As they crept towards home though, it was back, like the old friend you don’t really like who keeps contacting you.
She hadn’t thought about working in the ER for weeks, but now, the memories crept back with a sharper edge. She always thought of her first, the old man who had come into the ER complaining of breathing difficulties after suffering symptoms of the common cold.
“What were his initial signs?” The attending physician had said after she requested a consult.
; “Cough, sore throat, mild breathing difficulty, painful right ear headache.”
“Diagnosis?”
“Upper respiratory tract infection.”
“Treatment?”
“Analgesic. Come back in two or three days if it doesn’t improve.”
It didn’t improve though, and by the time the man returned, the infection had moved to the lower respiratory tract. She chased the original attending around the ER as he sought to save the life of a car crash victim.
Her tone was higher, panicky. “His breathing is very short, he’s complained of chest pain, and is coughing sputum. I’d like to perform a chest x-ray.”
He had agreed, and she had the x-ray taken, confirming pneumonia, and had administered antibiotics immediately, notifying his elderly wife and son of the diagnosis. They suspected afterwards a virus and bacteria had caused the infection, but combined with the man’s age, he had not recovered. The attending had found her sitting alone in one of the doctors’ quarters in tears, more than three hours after her twenty-six hour shift had ended.
“It’s not your fault,” the attending said. Kristy had blown her nose and tried to speak but emotion had impaired her. “He waited too long to come back in.”
“I should have known,” she managed. “What sort of doctor am I losing a patient to pneumonia?”
He had put a hand on her shoulder. “A good one. I consulted on this too remember.”
Kristy had never forgotten her negligence though, and that had been the beginning of the erosion in her confidence. Now, the newspaper headline and the dead couple at the gas station, along with the prospect of returning to work, unsettled her. She supposed she was nervous by nature, but this had touched a sensitive place. The unknown consequences of the virus had disturbed the group, and a contemplative silence had befallen them.
She wondered from where the pathogen had come. Was it global? Did they have a pandemic, or was it limited to Australia? The papers said a virus had caused the deaths. She suspected a high virulence based on the death toll and the rapidity with which it had moved. What if it was airborne?
Aftermath (Invasion of the Dead) - Part I Page 2
