by Sarra Cannon
In the back seat, her mother adjusted her weight and began coughing again. Parrish closed her eyes and swallowed down the lump of fear rising within her. She took a couple of deep breaths.
Keep it together. Everything is going to be okay.
But she didn’t believe it. She unbuckled her seat belt and turned around in her seat. She put a hand on her mother’s forehead, hoping maybe her fever had broken and she was out of the danger zone. She’d stopped sweating, so maybe she was going to be okay.
Only, her forehead felt worse.
How could it possibly be worse than 105? At what point did someone start getting brain damage from a fever?
She couldn’t afford to sit here in this stupid line.
Parrish looked ahead at the long row of cars and pressed her lips together in a tight line. Maybe someone up ahead knew what was going on. Maybe they could tell her another way to get to the hospital. She got out and walked up to the blue Toyota in front of her and knocked on their window.
A small Hispanic woman jumped slightly, then slowly rolled down the window. Her dark eyes looked kind, but tired. “Yes?”
“Hey, sorry to bother you, but I need to get to the hospital. Do you know what’s causing all this traffic? Was there an accident or something?” Parrish shivered even though it was warm out. Maybe she should have grabbed some real clothes after all.
“We are also trying to get to the hospital. My son, he’s very sick.” The woman motioned to the young man sitting in the passenger seat. Parrish hadn’t noticed him before, but she could see that he was wrapped in a green blanket. He seemed to be sleeping, but she saw the familiar dark rings around his eyes.
The same as the guy who’d collapsed on her street the other night. The same as her mom.
“Do you know if there’s another way around all this traffic?” she asked. “Maybe we could drive around whatever’s going on. Maybe they’re doing construction or something.”
The woman’s eyes grew sad. She pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. “Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”
Parrish took in a ragged breath. Something in the woman’s eyes scared her.
“No, why?”
The woman reached over and turned up the dial on her car stereo. Parrish leaned forward slightly and listened, not sure what to expect.
“I mean, I can hardly believe it myself!” a man said, his voice booming through the speakers.
She immediately recognized the voice of a popular late-night deejay called T-Bone.
“Again, folks, let me confirm that Providence Hospital and Georgetown University Hospital have both closed their doors. They are not accepting any new patients, so they are advising people with a severe emergency to go to any other local hospital. We are hearing reports that most of the other health care facilities in the area are completely swamped. Patients are pouring in by the hundreds every hour complaining of high fever, vomiting and seizures.”
Feeling faint, Parrish leaned against the hood of the blue car.
By the hundreds?
“I don’t understand,” Parrish said. “What does this mean?”
Parrish opened her eyes and looked down at the woman. Sympathy was written across her features. Sympathy and fear.
“It means this traffic is not traffic,” the woman said. “This is the line to get in to the hospital.”
Parrish stepped backward. Her ears began to ring and she couldn’t breathe. The line to the hospital? But they were still almost a mile away from the hospital. How could there be this many people waiting to be seen?
She lifted both of her hands and pressed her palms tight to her head.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” the woman asked.
Parrish nodded, but it was a lie. She wasn’t okay. None of them were okay.
Viruses didn’t spread this fast. It wasn’t like people were fine one day and then suddenly they were all sick with a high fever all at once. This wasn’t how the world worked.
She jogged the few feet back to her own car and got back in. She just needed to keep breathing. Keep moving. Somehow, this was all a huge misunderstanding.
She looked back at her mother. She was sleeping again, thank God. Her breathing was rough and raspy, but she looked relatively comfortable.
Parrish reached forward and turned on the radio, scanning channels until she heard T-bone’s familiar low voice.
The line of cars inched forward.
“I’ve gotten word here in the studio that several local hospitals have called in help from the Red Cross and the National Guard. They are working to set up temporary tent facilities in parking lots and fields in order to accommodate the rush of incoming patients, but it’s going to take some time to get things set up. They are advising anyone who can to stay at home. If you have a loved one who is ill, the best thing you can do right now is try to make them as comfortable as possible. Do what you can to keep their fever down and make sure they’re drinking plenty of fluids.”
Parrish listened to the same station for the next hour, moving forward inch by painfully slow inch. A few times, she considered turning around and going home, but how would she get her mom back in the house? She needed a doctor. Her cough had returned and she was moving some in the seat, moaning in pain. Every once in a while, Parrish reached back to check her forehead, but the fever was the same.
The minutes ticked by like mini-eternities. Parrish bit into her bottom lip and tapped her toes. If the doctors could see how much worse her mom was than probably half these people in line, they’d take her first. Delirious, she pushed forward, waiting for their turn and praying this hospital didn’t close down before she got there.
Finally, the red emergency room sign came into view ahead. She opened her window and lifted herself up to see farther into the distance. There were about twelve cars ahead of her now.
“It won’t be much longer, Mom,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure her mom could even hear her anymore.
The bag of ice she’d brought was completely melted now, the water inside lukewarm and useless.
Ahead, she could see the bright white tops of tents that had been set up in one of the parking lots. She could also see large military trucks shuttling supplies from the hospital to the tents. About twelve cars ahead of her own, she could see a large man in a green military uniform leaning in to the driver’s side window of a pickup truck. All of the soldiers were wearing white medical masks.
Fear hitched in her chest. Soldiers?
She watched as patients were taken from most of the cars in front of her. Sometimes they were wheeled away on a gurney while others walked with assistance.
But a few cars later, she watched as two bodies were taken and laid out on the pavement beside their car. A woman got out of the driver’s side and collapsed next to the bodies as soldiers placed white sheets over them.
Parrish looked away. She lay her head against the cool glass of the window until it was time to move ahead.
Finally, the blue Toyota up ahead pulled forward to the line of soldiers. The woman’s son was lifted from the passenger seat and rushed inside one of the tents. His mother opened her car door, but a soldier pushed it closed and pointed off in the distance, directing her to some other area of the hospital.
Parrish nearly cried tears of joy as the woman drove away. It was finally her turn.
“Oh, thank God,” she said to the man who appeared at her window. “It’s my mother, she’s in the bac—-”
The man interrupted her with his large, booming voice. He shone a bright light toward her. “Open your mouth, miss.”
“Wait,” she said, confused. “It’s not me who’s sick.”
She heard the back door slide open and another soldier climbed halfway into the back to check on her mother. The larger soldier spoke again. “Please, open your mouth, miss. We’re just checking for any signs of the virus,” he said.
His voice was strong and his tone made Parrish feel the way she had in elementary school when
she’d gotten reprimanded for talking too much in the cafeteria. He shined his light into her eyes and ran some kind of digital thermometer across her forehead.
“This one’s clear,” he yelled to his colleague. “What about the other one?”
“Sir,” the younger soldier answered.
Something in his voice made Parrish stop cold. She turned and looked back at him. When his eyes met hers, she knew. All the air was pushed from her lungs as if she’d been hit. Her mouth fell open and she couldn’t move.
“She’s dead, sir,” the soldier finished.
All around her car, soldiers in masks jumped into action, but Parrish was frozen.
Dead?
He couldn’t be talking about her mother. She was just fine this evening. They’d had dinner together and she’d been fine. Maybe she’d mentioned being tired and having a sore throat, but sore throats couldn’t kill you. How could she be dead?
Parrish unbuckled her seatbelt, and tried to slip in to the backseat.
They were wrong. She was just sleeping. She would show them.
But the men were already taking her mother’s lifeless body from the car.
Someone gripped her arm and held her to her spot, keeping her from jumping out of the car after her mother.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the soldier said. “Can you please give me her name and social security number for our records?”
Parrish shook her head, unable to take her eyes off her mother’s face. Her eyes were closed and a drop of blood trickled down from the side of her mouth.
“Miss?”
“She’s my mother,” Parrish said. “She’s just sleeping. I need to show you. If you just—”
Then the white sheet went over her mother’s face and Parrish screamed. She jerked against the seat and twisted her arm until she slipped from the man’s grasp. She bolted into the back seat and through the sliding door of the van. She jumped down by her mother’s side and lifted the sheet from her face.
“Stop it,” she shouted. “She’s okay. She just needs to see a doctor.”
The men at her side exchanged a look. She wanted to punch them in the face. They were acting like they thought she was crazy.
She put a hand to her mother’s forehead. “Mom? Wake up, okay? I need you to wake up.”
But she didn’t wake up. Madelyn Sorrows was gone.
Hands circled around her arms and pulled her to her feet, away from her mother’s body. A third man replaced the sheet over her mother’s face and Parrish screamed again.
“I’m sorry,” a voice said in her ear. “I’m sorry, but we have to keep the line moving.”
Parrish, too weak to struggle, watched as her mother’s dead body was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled over to a pile of bodies covered in white sheets.
The Witch
She was dreaming of the woman inside the ice again.
Ever since the young witch had come through the portal to this world, her dreams had been so real. So incredibly detailed. Even now she could feel the cool air rush across her skin.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
The woman trapped inside the ice opened her eyes. “I want you to set me free,” she said.
The witch shook her head and took a step closer to the center of the ice cave. “But I don’t know how,” she said. Worry squeezed her veins. Was she supposed to know what to do? What would happen if she couldn’t do what this woman asked of her? The look in those dark red eyes scared her. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You have already done more for me than anyone in centuries,” the woman said.
“How? I didn’t mean to do anything. I was just following the old man.” She shook her head again, sleep making her mind foggy. “I was just doing as I was told.”
“Don’t lie to me, child,” the woman said. Her eyes glowed brighter. “Why do you work so hard to make yourself seem weaker than you are?”
“I am weak,” the witch answered. “I have always been weak.”
“Then you are lying even to yourself. You have never been weak and you know it. Your whole life, you have been underestimated. Taken for granted,” the woman said. “But deep down, you don’t believe any of the things the elders of the Council have said to you about your powers. You know you are capable of so much more than they believed. Don’t you?”
The witch fell to her knees in front of the block of ice. She began to cry, but the instant her tears touched her face, they froze to her skin, then fell like diamonds onto the floor of the cave.
No one had ever spoken to her like this. No one had ever really understood.
“When you stepped through to this world, I felt your presence like a glowing sun,” the woman said. “You became my hope and my future in that instant. And who told you to come here? Who commanded you to follow Tobias, the old man?”
“No one,” she answered.
“No one told you. You made those choices on your own,” the woman said. “And who commanded you to kill him?”
The witch’s eyes snapped to the face of the woman in ice. The Dark One with her red eyes glowing. She swallowed, her throat tight and her hands trembling.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she whispered.
“Yes you did,” the Dark One said, her voice low like a growl. “You felt my presence the same way I felt yours. You felt my will, my power, inside you. That’s why you raised your dagger to his chest. You did it because I willed it. And the first drop of his blood that touched this earth was the first step toward my freedom. The first step toward breaking the seal on this earth and regaining my power. Can’t you see that?”
The witch nodded. Yes, she did see. It was beginning to make sense to her now.
When she’d stabbed Tobias, she knew there was something, or someone, pressing her to do it. Something that reached inside and begged her to do it.
“You had a choice,” the woman in ice said. “You could have ignored my will. You could have spared his life and let him take you back to the world from which you came. But you didn’t. You chose to follow me. To obey me. And for this, child, I promise you will be greatly rewarded.”
The witch stared down at her hands, almost able to still see Tobias’ blood on them.
“Before you receive your reward, there is more work that needs to be done,” the woman said. “If you do my will, you will know a power greater than anything you could have ever imagined. I promise you that you will never again be taken for granted or treated like a useless child.”
The witch looked up, tears in her eyes. This is what she had always wanted for her life, but never, in any of her dreams, had she expected to have to kill someone in order to get the respect she longed for.
But the death of a few seemed a small price to pay for what she might get in return.
When she looked into the Dark One’s eyes, the witch knew one thing was certain.
She was going to have to kill again.
Crash
Crash had been staring at his computer screens for hours. Days. He’d only taken short breaks since this whole thing began and his insomnia was in full force. He wasn’t even sure how long it had been since he last slept.
He pushed off with his feet and his computer chair soared across the cement floor toward the mini-fridge. He grabbed a giant-sized energy drink from inside, then pushed back toward his desk.
Information was pouring in now by the minute.
Facebook. Twitter. Forums. Every single social media site out there was being flooded with stories of the strange illness.
Most of it was the same—people posting that someone they loved was sick or had been taken to the hospital. Or worse. But Crash was looking for something more. He wanted answers. Where had this virus come from? How many were infected?
So far, social media wasn’t giving him any concrete answers.
His friend Atomic had finally responded to him, but he didn’t have much either. He said he’d been trying to hack into the CDC mainframe for days
with no luck.
What they needed was more data. Crash wasn’t even sure how he knew what to do, but the idea for a new program popped into his head. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he typed in code he didn’t even know how to read two days ago. Suddenly, though, it all made sense to him. Like a new language. Maybe he’d picked up more information from his hacker friends than he’d realized.
He told the program to start pulling data from several online sources, collecting numbers of sick and hospitalized. Death tolls. He brought up a specialized map and started feeding the data into it, creating a program that would not only bring up the current status of the virus across the country, but would also predict how many would be infected in the next few days.
When he was finished, he took in a deep breath and pushed back. Holy cannoli. How had he even done that? The feel of it was exhilarating, like flying.
He shook his head and took another long drink. Now, he just had to kill some time while the program did its thing.
Crash opened a browser on his fifth monitor and brought up YouTube. If people were posting status updates and pictures all over the web, they were probably posting videos too.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. What should he search for?
He thought for a second, then typed in “virus hospital videos”.
Several videos appeared, and he clicked on the first one, titled “Inside the Quarantine, San Francisco, California”.
A hospital corridor appeared and Crash leaned forward, clicking to make the video full-screen. The video was dark at first, but as soon as the person carrying the camera turned a corner, he gasped. The sheer amount of sick people stuffed into the hallway was shocking. Some people were laid out on gurneys, while others were slumped over in chairs that lined the walls.
The screen bounced up and down with every step and the movement was choppy and too fast. If he had to guess, Crash thought it was probably taken with a cell phone. Whoever was running the camera began to narrate and he was surprised to hear a young woman’s voice. She sounded terrified.
“This is Angela Burrow, I’m a volunteer here at San Francisco General Hospital.” She quickly spun the camera around to her face. The image moved so fast, Crash’s stomach lurched. When it settled on her face, though, he felt the breath knocked out of him. Angela looked to be about twenty years old. She must have been very pretty once, but now dark purple bruises appeared around her eyes and her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her skin was as white as a sheet.
