by Guy James
“Well, the next significant event was that the quarantine was lifted and the military personnel left.”
“What was that like?”
“It was a huge relief—to find out that we weren’t infected, all traces of the virus in the environment were gone, and that we could be reconnected to the rest of the country. I had never even begun to expect that we wouldn’t be reconnected, but now I realize that was a real possibility. We were very lucky to be reconnected, and for the quarantine to have been so short.”
Mallory nodded.
“Helicopters continued to fly over us and drop supplies,” Sven said, “because even though the quarantine was lifted, the supermarkets didn’t reopen and there wasn’t exactly a big push as far as getting people and businesses back into Virginia. That’s still a problem, with people continuing to leave Virginia now. I think it’ll probably be years before things begin to get back to normal there.” Sven shook his head.
“So at that point,” Sven went on, “we were there and we were getting supplies, but we were still confused about what was happening. We were glad that the quarantine was over, but we weren’t exactly sure what we would be doing with our lives from then on. I don’t think anyone had any real ideas for us as far as what we should have been doing next, besides just more waiting.”
3
“How much weight did you lose,” Mallory said, “if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind. I lost sixty-two pounds. I don’t exactly look like a personal trainer anymore, but I’m getting stronger again. I don’t think I’ll ever be as big as I used to be, so now I’m concentrating on improving my strength-to-weight ratio. It’s a fun metric to work out by.”
“Wow, that is a lot of weight to lose, but I think you’ve recovered very well since then.” Mallory looked Sven up and down. “Can you tell me something about the letters that you, Jane, and Lorie began to receive while you were still in Virginia?”
Sven smiled. “Sure. The first batch we got, well that whole experience was weird. I remember I was down in the basement, just thinking, and Lorie came down and told me that the mail truck was outside. I couldn’t believe it, but I guess it made sense, what with the quarantine being over. So I went upstairs and outside, and there it was, a mail truck, with a mailman, too. It wasn’t the mailman I knew. It was a new guy.” Sven paused. “I remember seeing this guy and thinking how tan and wiry he was. He looked like a guy that carried mail, and not someone who just drove a truck. Anyway, he came up the path to the door, said hello, and dropped off a large bag of mail for us. I mean the bag was overflowing with letters and small packages.
“I didn’t think that all of that mail could be for us, so I told the mailman there was some kind of mistake. He smiled, and told me that he was sure it was for us. Jane, Lorie, and I all looked at each other, confused, but I didn’t try to argue. The mailman seemed nervous that first time, and left quickly, but he became a regular visitor and we got friendly with him over time. Sometimes he would stay over for some sweet tea—Jane makes some great sweet tea—and talk to us. So after he left, we took that first batch of mail inside—after poking it with a stick a few times—and we went through it. It turned out that the letters and packages were for us.”
“What was in them?”
“Most were letters and small gifts from people who wanted to show us their support. They were heartfelt, touching...some came from people who had lost friends and relatives in the outbreak, and others came from people with no connection to Virginia at all. Some of them were painful to read, but it was the kind of thing that really restores your faith in humanity and good in the world.
“Some people who wrote to us even thought that we—Jane, Lorie, and me—were the reason the outbreak hadn’t spread outside of Virginia.” Sven shook his head. “That’s not true, of course, but...” Sven shrugged. “The letters were from people who had seen all the footage and read all the reports, so with the pieces of information in their letters, Jane and Lorie and I were able to piece together what had happened.”
Mallory nodded. “I’ve read some of the published letters, yes. Did you get other mail?”
“Yeah. Oddly enough, there were a lot of job offers. For all of us.”
“Job offers?”
“Yeah. Some were from groups of survivalists that wanted us to speak at their gatherings. They wanted to feature us as speakers with firsthand experience with the infected. These groups—many of the ones that surfaced after the outbreak—believed that another outbreak was inevitable. They were offering us a lot of money to come out and meet with them and to tell them about our experiences. There were also offers from companies that made and sold survival products. They wanted us to come and try out their products, do some consulting, promote the products, all of that.”
Mallory shook her head. “Wow, I bet that was unexpected.”
Sven nodded. “Yeah, it definitely was unexpected.”
“How did you feel when you learned that people outside of Virginia believed that another outbreak was a certainty?”
“It was very unsettling…and difficult to imagine. But it was a completely understandable reaction.”
“What did you think of that at the time?”
“Of the possibility of another outbreak?”
“Right.”
“Well, we had just lived through one, so it was definitely on our minds, but the military told us that the virus was gone, dissipated, and that no trace of it was left.”
4
COCA-COLA BOTTLING FACILITY, HAWTHORNE, NEW YORK
As Milt crawled down the suspended gangway, water sloshed in the canister that was affixed to his back. The bottling plant crew, the piddling, foolish, irrevocably myopic lot of them, was at a morning team-building meeting. Milt scoffed, thinking of the sordidly idiotic affair, and a gurgling noise escaped from his throat.
He was on his belly, advancing like a misshapen, blubbering, snake-like beast that had eaten an obese human and a scuba tank, and was now realizing that digestion might be an insurmountable feat. And yet, there was purpose in Milt’s crawl, and it was evident in every fitful movement of his fumbling limbs and torso down the length of the gangway.
Trying to control the flailing of his heft, Milt peeked over the edge of the gangway and looked into the packed conference room. All the crew members were turned away from him except Joey, the supervisor. Joey was a mighty meathead of a man who reminded Milt of Sven. He especially reminded Milt of Sven in the way he carried himself—straight-backed and loose in his movements like a man who did not spend most of his life in a sitting position.
The massive vats of churning Coca-Cola syrup were under the far end of the gangway, and Milt was still only in the middle. He turned away from the team-building exercise, noting that his absence would certainly be remarked upon, and probably by Joey, who, Milt had noticed, was in the habit of keeping detailed lists, many of which referred to each other. For example, item three on Joey’s daily to-do list might say, “refer to items 7-11 of daily to-do list from Monday of last week.”
“What a buffoon,” Milt grumbled. “Soon to become one of my personal servants…if he is worthy of such an honor.”
Squirming quite inelegantly, Milt crawled to the far end of the gangway and positioned himself above the syrup vats. He stared down into the black, viscous liquid that was bubbling beneath him.
Its aroma, thick and pungent, pulled him into nostalgic visions of his former life. He saw himself sitting at his computer in his comic book shop, at his custom built battle station, as he used to think of it, meting out his supreme justice upon the World of Warcraft universe.
How things had changed, he reflected. How the world had changed, and how it was about to change even further in the coming weeks, at his own mighty hand. Milt shook his head. Change wasn’t the right word. Evolve was far more fitting. He was about to evolve the world, and evolution could not be accomplished without collateral damage.
“Jetsam and flotsam
,” Milt muttered. The people who would die were no more than that, jetsam and flotsam on the tsunami that would forever change the terrain of New York City.
“Not only New York City,” Milt said to himself, “and not only the state of New York, but all of America.” His eyes widened. “All of America? And perhaps not only America, but all of…” Suddenly he wavered, trembling as he pondered the weight of his duty.
He put his hand on the knob that regulated the flow of liquid from the canister on his back and gave it a slight turn. He felt better in an instant, rejuvenated.
Milt reached into his pocket and removed a vial filled halfway to the top with his blood. He pressed his thumb against the cork. It began to loosen, and—
“Milt?” someone said.
Startled, Milt squeezed the vial, breaking it. Glass shards tore into the palm of his hand.
“Milt, are you alright?”
After two failed attempts, Milt rolled over onto his back, and saw that his assailant was none other than Joey.
“I am quite well, actually,” Milt said, craning his neck downward to look at Joey and forming an impressive quadruple chin in the process. “I am taking a much-needed break from my duties, which, I must add, are taxing on my system.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re okay, Milt. Here, let me help you up.” Joey walked closer and offered his hand to Milt.
“No, thank you. I am rather comfortable at the moment and would prefer not to be disturbed.”
Joey opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, apparently having changed his mind.
Milt smiled inwardly as he watched Joey’s feeble mind struggle with the situation on the gangway.
“Well,” Joey said, “uh... I was looking for you. I’d like it if you were at the team-building meeting. I know you’re just visiting here and all, but we just got through our first icebreaker and I’d really like for you to be there, so that you can get to know the rest of the team and they can get to know you too. Teamwork is very important here at this plant. It’s what we’re built on, you know.”
“Yes, thank you,” Milt said. He rested the back of his head on the gangway. “I am well aware of that, I assure you. I have read the About Us materials no less than thrice.”
“Okay, that’s good, but it’s not just about reading the About Us materials, you know. It’s about building a team, and...”
“And team-building?”
“Of course team-building,” Joey said, nodding. “Are you sure you don’t want to get up? It’s not usual for team members here to lie down like this on the gangway, you know.”
“I repeat: I am quite fine at the moment, and I prefer not to be disturbed. Perhaps I will pay you and the team members a visit at a later time.”
“Uh…okay. Well, there’s still a lot of good coffee left over from the meeting. So if you need a pick-me-up, it’s in the conference room.”
Milt did his best to smile up at Joey. “Thank you, that is very kind.”
“Well…okay.”
“Yes, okay.”
Joey turned around and walked away.
“Buffoon,” Milt mumbled when Joey was at the other end of the gangway.
Now that Milt had been discovered, there was no further need for stealth, though there was little need for it to begin with given his supposed job duties. He rolled up to a sitting position and gazed down into the vat of slowly rolling liquid. He opened his hand. His gaze remained icy when he saw the shards of glass poking up out of his palm. He pulled them out one by one—there were eight in all—and used them to scrape up what was left of the vial’s contents from his palm. Then, after a quick glance around him to make sure that no one was looking, he put the shards on the floor of the gangway and pushed them over the edge.
The shards separated as they fell toward the vat. They broke the surface of the syrup in a series of tiny plops. They sank, and Milt’s face broke into a grin so broad that he felt his lips cracking under the strain.
Milt lumbered to his feet, and, still grinning, looked around him for any sign of witnesses. He saw none. His so-called “team members” were still in the conference room, by the looks of it enjoying the coffee and pastries that Joey had arranged for them.
Milt wondered about the pastries for a moment, remembering his former self and his former tastes. Sweets no longer excited him the way they once had. He found some enjoyment in them still, but it was a joy that he could forego.
At present, Milt calculated that the cost of interacting with his team members outweighed any benefit of pastry consumption, and therefore he would not partake of the treats in the conference room. At least not until everyone else had gone from it.
Reflecting on the consummation of his plan, Milt made his way back across the gangway and descended the stairs to the floor of the bottling plant.
He walked across the floor of the plant, weaving among the magical machinery that processed and bottled that sweetest of nectars that had once served as the chief fuel of his inspired activities. When he reached the end of the floor, he peered into the conference room where the team-building meeting was reaching its conclusion.
“Soon you shall all be evolved,” he whispered.
Milt walked to the plant exit and stopped at the refrigerator alongside it. From the refrigerator he took four twenty ounce bottles of Coca-Cola, and, stuffing them into the front pocket of his XXXL sweatshirt, walked out of the bottling plant and into the cold.
5
CITY HALL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Mallory was watching Sven as if she were a cat watching her prey. “Did you consider any of the offers in the letters—the speaking engagements, consulting jobs, marketing positions, or anything else?”
“No,” Sven said, “not at all at that point. We talked about it some, but we weren’t ready for something like that just then. It was all a lot to take in. Just the fact that people knew us was a lot to take in.”
“How do you think they found out where you lived, the people who were sending the letters, I mean?”
“They didn’t. The letters didn’t have my address on them, they just said ‘Sven’ or ‘Sven and Crew’. I guess the postal service tracked me down.”
Mallory smiled. “How did people find out who you were and what your name was?”
“I know now that a couple of my friends who lived outside Virginia recognized me in the YouTube videos. They made the connection during the late stages of the outbreak, started posting about it on the internet, and then the media picked it up. I guess I was easy to recognize.”
“You still are,” Mallory said. She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, and smiled. “What do you think made that particular mailman decide to take the job?”
“He won it in a lottery.” Sven looked at Mallory, knowing that she knew this story already, and was asking him to retell it for her article. For a moment, he was struck by the thought that he should be focusing his energy on something more meaningful than this, but then he reminded himself that making people understand what he had gone through was a large part of his current job. If they understood, they could be more easily convinced.
“He won it in a lottery,” Sven repeated, “if…if you can believe that. Apparently, there was all this mail for Jane and Lorie and me, and someone had to take it into Charlottesville. The office of the postal service just outside Virginia that was holding all the mail didn’t think any postal workers would want to travel into the previously quarantined area, but more than ten people volunteered, so they had to hold a lottery, putting names in a hat and so forth. Paul—the mailman that won and who we met, told me that he and his coworkers were very curious about going into Virginia.”
“And about meeting you, I bet.”
“Sure,” Sven said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair, “and that.”
“So then what happened?”
“At first it was just the one bag, but the next time that Paul came, there were three bags, and the time after that, seven. We all had to work togeth
er just to haul the bags into the house and down into the basement. It was a challenge to go through all of that mail, but it gave us something to do. I liked it a lot, actually. Jane and Lorie did too. And Ivan, he loved to play in all that paper.”
Mallory laughed. “I can picture it now: bags of mail overturned and emptied on your basement floor, Lorie crouched over the piles of letters, sorting and opening them, putting them in some kind of order, you and Jane following along and sorting letters in your own way, everyone stopping to read a letter out loud every once in a while.”
“Yeah,” Sven said, nodding, “that’s just about exactly how it went. There was iced tea, too, and snacks, if you can believe how quaint that sounds. Jane made sure we had something to drink, and to eat. It was easy to get lost in reading and sorting letters. I remember—” Sven got a wistful look in his eye, “—she would over-sweeten my tea on purpose so that I was getting more calories. I could tell she was doing it, but I never said anything and I did my best to drink the tea. You know, it was strange going through those letters in a different way, too.”
“Oh, how do you mean?”
“It felt like I was reintegrating into the world through them. Getting back into my former self, before the outbreak. Not back all the way, but closer. By reading the letters, we were able to piece together the progression of the outbreak and catch up to what the rest of the world knew by that point.
“The doctors who’d been testing us during the quarantine had refused to tell us much about what they were testing us for, odd as that may or may not sound, but with the letters, we finally got some idea of what had happened.” Sven looked at Mallory, then down at the desk. “We read about reporters that had gone into Virginia in the beginning of the outbreak and who were never heard from again. A few of the letters were from their families, asking us if we’d seen their loved ones, or if we knew anything about where their remains were. Of course you know what the answers to those questions were, and I’m sure the families knew it too.”
