by Ronald Malfi
Watermere was quick to flip his notebook closed. The whole thing seemed to David like a formality.
“He was sick,” David said. It wasn’t a question. And judging by the impassive look on Watermere’s stony face, he did not think he was passing along any new and vital information to the police detective.
“The Folly, sure,” Watermere said. His voice was rough and deeply resonant, as if he gargled with gravel instead of mouthwash in the mornings. “It’s every third call I get.”
“Are you—you’re serious? Every third call you get?”
“It’s bad and getting worse.” Watermere seemed under no compunction to withhold any information. “Two days ago, fella over in Glen Burnie, black fella, went for a stroll along the Cromwell Station light-rail tracks. Witnesses said he was raving, having a conversation—heck, an argument—with himself. Nose was bleeding, eyes looking all goofy in his head. When the train appeared, a few folks tried to get him off the track. He refused to go. Then he turns to the train and just, well . . . kinda opens his arms as if to embrace it.”
David said, “Jesus.”
“Was a mess, that one,” Watermere said with a grunt. There was a spot of mustard on his loosened necktie. “They get trapped in these hallucinations, you know? I mean, you hear about it on the news, sure, but you really don’t get what it’s like till you see it. Or see the aftermath of it.”
“Aren’t you afraid you might be exposing yourself to it, dealing with all these sick people?”
“Way I hear it, we’re all fucked. If it’s in the air, it’s in the air. I suppose there’s a chance it’s by touch, by . . . what’s it . . . proximity? I mean, anything’s possible. But I don’t think that’s the case, tell you the truth.”
“No?”
Watermere leaned over the table, closing the distance between them. The pungent aroma of his aftershave caused David’s eyes to water. “You wanna hear something really fucked up?” said Watermere. “Something that tells me humanity is doomed?”
“Okay.”
“I got a brother-in-law works as a prison guard at the correctional facility over in Cumberland,” Watermere said. “That’s the federal joint. They got a wing of inmates there done some heinous things, Mr. Arlen, and these guys, they don’t get visitors, or letters, or the occasional romp in the fuck-shed, if you catch my meaning. Other than the prison guards and the other fellas who share that wing, they get exactly zero contact with the outside world. Total isolation. Yet I heard from my brother-in-law that about three or four months ago, these guys start exhibiting symptoms of Wanderer’s Folly. At first, the guards didn’t know what to make of it. Most of these guys are nut-balls to begin with, so how can you tell when they’re hallucinating, right?” Here, Watermere tapped his temple, as if to illustrate where all the crazy was housed. “But then things got worse. One fella, he chewed right through one of his wrists until he fully amputated his hand. Another guy actually pushed his skull through the bars of his cell. Killed himself, in other words. A bunch of the others just curl up in a corner of their cell, whimper like kids who’ve been spanked for spilling a glass of milk.”
“They’re all sick,” David said.
“Yep,” said Watermere. “Prison doctor confirmed it with blood tests. And they all died a couple of weeks later. Hemorrhages, embolisms, aneurysms—whatever it is. But what I’m saying is, they’d been isolated. And none of the prison guards had any symptoms or ever got sick. No one was carrying the sickness to ’em, in other words. Yet here they are, these jailbird monsters, getting sick and droppin’ dead jus’ like the rest of us.”
At that moment, Watermere was overcome by a coughing jag so profound it sounded painful. Still sputtering, he produced a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his sports coat and covered his mouth with it. When he finished, his eyes red and leaky, a timorous smile curling up the corners of his otherwise humorless mouth, the detective said, “Coughin’ ain’t a symptom of the Folly. That’s the emphysema.” Then he laughed, an aggravated explosion that started in his belly and volcanoed out through his gaping, spit-flecked lips. Then the laugh transitioned into another coughing fit that, once more, caused David to imagine a bottle of Listerine in Detective Watermere’s bathroom filled with granulated bits of gravel.
After the interview with Watermere, David met Burt Langstrom for lunch at the campus cafeteria. David relayed to Burt what the detective had told him about the prison, and Burt just nodded and looked mostly down at his food.
“What’s wrong?” David said.
Burt looked up. The smile that appeared on his face wasn’t just false: It was terrifying. “Nothing, David,” he said.
“Hey, man, it’s cool if you’re shaken up. I’m shaken up, too. Every time I close my eyes I can see that poor kid . . .”
“I don’t like this,” Burt said.
“What’s that?”
“Any of this.” He sat back in his chair and glanced around the cafeteria. It was mostly empty, which was rare for this time of day. The only noise came from the TVs bracketed to the walls and the clanging of pots and pans from the kitchen. “I’m uncomfortable here. Anyway, I heard it’s only a matter of time before they shut things down completely.”
“You mean here at the college? That’s just a rumor.”
“Is it?” Burt’s eyebrows arched. All color had drained from his face. “Is that what you think? Students are dropping classes left and right. They’re leaving and going back home to be with their families. They’re scared, David.” He lowered his voice. “I’m scared, too.”
At the far end of the cafeteria, one of the lunch ladies dropped a tray of dishes; the sound of them shattering on the tiled floor was like an A-bomb barreling through the silence. Both David and Burt jerked their heads in the direction of the commotion in time to see the lunch lady, a portly woman in what resembled a starched white nurse’s uniform, frowning apologetically at them. A second woman joined her, and together they began cleaning up the mess. They both looked terrified, as if the accident might get them fired. Since the Folly, every accident was suspicious, every trip of the tongue or lapse in memory a cause for concern.
“I keep watching my kids,” Burt said. “I’m looking for signs of . . . I don’t even know. Disassociation? Daydreaming? Some say bloody noses or burst blood vessels in the eyes or eyelids. How can you tell if a young girl’s daydreams are killing her?” He laughed a little bit here, but there were tears forming in the corners of his eyes. David considered that maybe telling him about Watermere’s prison story had been a bad idea. “Just look at that,” Burt continued, pointing over David’s shoulder to one of the wall-mounted TVs.
David turned around and saw a news report about the outbreak in China. There were people crying in front of the camera, which then cut to what appeared to be men in hazmat suits rolling body bags into a mass grave.
“It’s no better anywhere else, including here in the States,” Burt said. “The Black Death wiped out an estimated two hundred million people. That was a third of the world’s population back then. At this rate, we’ll reach those numbers by the end of the year, or maybe early into next, if we’re lucky.”
“They may find a cure before that,” David offered.
“Or they may not,” Burt said. “Doctors don’t know shit. It’s fucking biblical, David. A plague manifests among the populace with no rhyme or reason, shot like a bolt of lightning straight from the finger of God.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Been hearing about these people, call themselves Worlders.”
“They’re a cult,” David said.
“They might be a cult, or they might be the only sane people left on the planet. While the world is trying to fight this thing, to understand it, to . . . to somehow annihilate it even though no one knows what the hell it even is . . . these Worlders, they’re embracing it, David. They’re saying, ‘Okay, yeah, bring it on. People have been shitty to each other for so long that maybe this is the
planet’s way of ridding itself of us.’ It’s like we’re fucking head lice or something.”
“I’m not so sure that’s the right way to look at things, either,” David said.
“Listen,” Burt said, lowering his voice. “I’ve been considering getting out of here. There’s a used car lot I pass every night on my way home. They’ve got really low rates on RVs right now. Rentals, you know? I guess they’re big in the summer, but now, they’re just sitting there collecting dust.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m thinking about renting one. Packing up my family and getting the hell out of here.”
“And go where?”
“Someplace where we can all be alone. Someplace where there aren’t any other people around. It might be safer that way.”
“Didn’t you hear the story I just told you? What that detective said about those inmates?”
Burt was shaking his head. “He’s not a doctor. What does he know?”
“I just don’t want to see you make some knee-jerk reaction because of what happened to Udell or because of shit you hear on the news or read on the Internet,” David said. “I’m as shaken up as you are, but we’ve got to keep our wits about us. And in this day and age, where in the world would you even go where you and your family could be completely alone?”
“A campground,” Burt said without missing a beat. David could tell the man had been giving this plan more than just a passing consideration. “Maybe a national park somewhere out west where there’s less people. Or the mountains. We could live in the RV and tuck ourselves up into the woods. It’s not as impossible as it sounds. I used to go camping with my dad and brothers all the time when we were kids.”
“But that’s just camping. My family rented an RV and did it one summer when I was a kid, too. But that was only for a few weeks. I mean, how long are you talking here, Burt?”
“Permanently,” Burt said. “Or at least until things get back to normal.”
David wondered if things would ever get back to normal. He asked Burt what he would do for money in the meantime.
“Wouldn’t need any,” Burt said. “We’d live off the land. You’re not hearing me, David.”
“I hear you just fine. I just think you should take some more time and think this through. Have you discussed this with Laura?”
Burt dismissed his question with a flap of his hand. “Laura’s in denial. She’s petrified. Did I tell you she quit her job? She’s home with the girls now. Some days she doesn’t leave the bedroom.”
“And you think you’re just going to convince her to hop in an RV with you and the girls and drive up to some mountain somewhere?”
“I can.” The words issued out of Burt’s mouth in a breathy whisper. David could tell he had already convinced himself of this point, too. “I can do it. And you should talk to your wife, too, David. You need a plan. You can’t just sit here and hope that some miracle will happen and things will get better.”
David turned again and glanced at the nearest TV screen. A mother with blood on her face was clutching a small child to her breast. The child’s arms and legs flailed, its eyes bugging out like the eyes of a lizard. There was the absence of thought behind those eyes, replaced by nothing but hallucinatory insanity. Just when the image had grown too intense to keep watching, the TV cut to some amateur footage of people jumping off the roofs of buildings. David had to look away.
Later, David cancelled his afternoon classes and went home early. When he drove past the charred skeleton of Deke Carmody’s house, he was surprised to find that the memory of that horrible night at Deke’s house now seemed no more important than all the other terrible snapshots that scrolled on a nonstop loop through his head: Sandy Udell, the screaming mothers, suicidal people plummeting from rooftops to their deaths, the frequent absences of his students as well as the other deaths on campus, the ice cream man who lost his mind right there in the cul-de-sac that December night that now seemed a million years ago. There was also Kathy’s increasing depression, something she freely acknowledged and accepted with inevitable finality. She had become withdrawn, and even her interactions with Ellie appeared rote and unemotional. Her blood test had come back negative for the virus, as had the tests both David and Ellie had most recently taken—the government had mandated quarterly blood tests for all citizens by this point, done alphabetically and by county—yet Kathy shambled through her days and evenings like someone sentenced to death.
When he pulled the car into the driveway, he saw Ellie on the front lawn beside the hedgerow that ran the length of the house. At the sound of his approach, she turned and watched him shut down the car. She waved and he waved back as he got out.
“Hi, Little Spoon,” he said, walking across the lawn toward her. Brown crickets springboarded into the air and rebounded off his shins while gnats clotted around his face. He swatted the gnats away. “Whatcha doing?”
“Delicate work,” Ellie said. She was holding a shoe box in one hand while holding back one of the branches of the hedgerow with the other. “I’m trying to be careful, but I can’t get back there to reach them.”
“Reach what?”
“The eggs.”
For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about. But then he recalled the bird nest below her bedroom window, and the three spotted eggs nestled within it.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” he said.
“The mother never came back,” Ellie advised, “and I’m not just going to let them be abandoned.”
David eyed the shoe box before reaching out and shoving the branches of the hedgerow out of the way. “So, what’s the plan? You’re going to be their surrogate?”
“Huh?”
“Their adoptive mother.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Why not?”
“Because they’re eggs,” he said. Between two prickly boughs he spied the nest—a brownish-gray meshwork of twigs and dead leaves and blades of grass and bits of paper and cellophane all meticulously knitted together. Inside, the eggs looked profoundly delicate, and it amazed David that any birds in the history of the world had ever survived.
“They’re just eggs now,” Ellie corrected.
“And they’ve been eggs for quite some time,” David said. He gathered the nest out of the tangle of branches and handed it over to Ellie. “They aren’t going to hatch, baby.”
“You don’t know that,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure. It’s been so long, they would’ve hatched by now.”
“You don’t know that,” she insisted, holding out the shoe box with its lid open. “Besides, it isn’t right that they should be abandoned like that. Someone needs to take care of them.”
“All right,” he acquiesced, setting the nest into the box, then brushing his hands along the legs of his trousers. “So I guess now you’re the mama bird.”
“What word did you say before?” she asked, peering down at the nest in the box. She cradled it against her breast.
“Surrogate,” he said.
“Surrogate,” she repeated. Then she frowned. “That doesn’t sound nice at all,” she added.
35
He woke her just before dawn, and in silence they cleaned themselves up, pulled on fresh clothes, and made their way out to the car without muttering a single word to each other. It wasn’t until they were heading west on I-70 with the sun creeping up along the rear windshield that Ellie asked where they were going.
“I spoke to Uncle Tim last night,” he explained. “We’re supposed to meet him at a campground in Colorado. We’ve still got a lot of driving to do.”
“Why a campground?”
“Uncle Tim’s just being cautious, and I can’t say I disagree with him. Also, I don’t think he wanted me driving the whole way.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows people are looking for the two of us.”
“Did you tell him about Mom?”
“I did. Anyway, this campground,” he said,
quickly changing the subject, “it was a place we’d visited when we were kids. It’s called Funluck Park. Some name, huh?”
“What is it?”
“Just a state park. A campground. But do you know what it used to be?”
“What?”
“An amusement park. You know, with rides and game booths and all that stuff.”
“Like Disney?”
He laughed. “Not even close, sweetheart. It was just an old park when I visited as a kid. But you know what? A lot of the old amusement park rides were still there, left behind. They were sort of like run-down landmarks.”
“Do you think they’re still there now?”
“Could be,” he said. “Hey, do you want to hear a crazy story about what happened there when I was a kid?”
For the first time in a long while, her face brightened. “Sure.”
So he told her about the cross-country trip his family had taken back in the summer of David’s eleventh year. Emmitt Brody had rented an RV and had shuttled his brood—Tim, David, David’s mother—beneath what Woody Guthrie once proclaimed was the “endless skyway.” The trip lasted about five weeks, during which time they made it all the way out to the West Coast and back.
At one point in the trip, during a stop at a gas station somewhere in Colorado, Emmitt Brody got wind of a rinky-dink amusement park that had been closed down decades earlier and now served as a local campground. The gas station attendant who imparted this bit of trivia unto David’s stepfather also added that many of the rides that had serviced the amusement park had been left behind, and while they were all out of commission and beyond repair, they had become a sort of trademark for the little park and the area that surrounded it.
Munching on gas-station hot dogs, they had detoured to the park. Soon, they came upon the ancient wrought-iron fence that surrounded the wooded grounds. There was a sign out front that read FUNLUCK PARK. Within that fence stood the relics of its former incarnation—the undulating roller-coaster tracks overgrown with weeds, the Tilt-A-Whirl cars sunken partway down into the earth, the bumper cars strewn about in a distant field like a herd of buffalo that had died in the middle of some prehistoric pilgrimage, a wooden carousel horse tipped on its side, weather-faded and strangled by vines, or perhaps the garishly painted boards of a gift shop tossed about like so much driftwood washed up on a beach.
