Survivors

by Rich Goldhaber

  Survivors

  Rich Goldhaber

  This is a work of fiction by the author. All of the names, places, characters, and other elements of this written material are the products of the author’s imagination, are fictitious, and should not be considered as real or true. Any similarity to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights to this work are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations as part of critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2015 Rich Goldhaber

  ISBN- 13: 978-15116918669

  ISBN- 10: 1516918665

  Acknowledgements Once again the usual suspects have helped to improve the quality of this literary work in many ways. They deserve special recognition.

  Kathleen and Lu Wolf have made a number of helpful suggestions. Their feedback is always on point and greatly appreciated.

  Miriam and Luis Blanco’s insightful comments have added to the accuracy of this novel.

  Don Tendick, as always, gives great feedback. Jeanne Goldhaber, my chief editor and constant companion, has continued to live up to her reputation.

  Also by Rich Goldhaber

  The Lawson Series

  The 26th of June

  Succession Plan

  Vector

  Stolen Treasure

  Risky Behavior

  The Four Roses

  Other novels

  The Cure

  The Proof

  These novels can be purchased at

  Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com

  Visit Rich Goldhaber’s website at richgoldhaber.com

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Naples, Florida I sat on the bench overlooking the small lake in the back of our home just staring down at the fresh graves of the two people in the world that I loved the most. I had buried Gloria, my wife of fourteen years, in the dress I had given her for a recent birthday. She had said the bright colors reminded her of the flowers in the garden she loved to tend.

  When Sarah had died two days after Gloria, I had carried her frail body outside and dug a grave next to her mother. At eleven years old, she had outgrown the need for dolls, but before covering her with dirt, I had placed a beloved teddy bear into her beautiful little hands and kissed her forehead.

  I had buried my daughter with no help from my neighbors. Everyone else had already died. My body shook with grief with every shovelful of earth I had placed reverently in her shallow grave, and when it was over, I had collapsed onto the ground and prayed for my own death.

  That was two weeks ago, and I was still grieving. I had witnessed so much horror in the last two months. It was hard to imagine I could shed any more tears, but I did. I cried in solitude as I looked down at their buried remains and mourned their loss. I cried for their lost souls; I cried for their lives cut so short; I cried for the loss of all my friends; I cried for their unfulfilled hopes; and most of all, I cried for the unknown fate awaiting me.

  I took a long drink from a half-full bottle of bourbon and drew comfort from the alcohol as it burned my lungs. How long before I would die? Who was left to bury me? Was I one of those lucky ones the CDC said were somehow immune to the ravages of the pandemic? Lucky ones! Gloria and Sarah were the lucky ones. They no longer had a care in the world.

  I looked out at the small lake and the road behind it winding through our upscale gated community. Sitting on this bench for the last two weeks, I had not seen a single car drive by or any other sign of human life. Mother Nature, however, was ignoring the catastrophe enveloping the planet. The birds still soared in the air, and the fish still jumped in the water. I had even seen a deer drinking from the far end of the lake the day before; lots of life, but not a single living person to be seen. The airlines had long since stopped flying, and in fact I hadn’t seen a plane in the sky in almost three weeks. Was I the last living person on earth, and if I was, why would I want to live?

  I looked down at my family’s graves and focused on the fresh dirt covering their bodies. Gloria wouldn’t want such a barren final resting place. I found two potted geranium plants from inside our lanai and transplanted them as headstones. Gloria, I thought, would want their graves marked with symbols of life, not death.

  It was four weeks since the last government voice spoke to the nation. The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, I forget his name, spoke from someplace in Washington. He was twelfth in the line of succession to the presidency. He said it would be the last broadcast from the Federal Government. Thankfully, the man never tried to paint some rosy picture; it was time to tell the truth. For unknown reasons, only a very few people would survive. The disease had struck all alike: rich or poor, young or old; black or white; and every country in the civilized world had received the same death sentence. There was no miracle cure, because there just hadn’t been time to develop one.

  The guy had talked about the bodies piled up in the streets of the large cities. Instead of offering guidance to those able to listen to the broadcast, he had just wished everyone good luck and offered prayers for our safety, and then he closed out the broadcast with those now seemingly ridiculous words, and may God bless the United States of America. I didn’t believe God had done much blessing of the United States of America or for any other place on the planet for that matter.

  I thought back to the beginning. It started out in New York City with a single case of Ebola. Some monkey in Africa had bitten a man returning from a safari. We all thought it would play out like other Ebola outbreaks in the past. The CDC changed its mind four weeks later as the number of patients suddenly skyrocketed to several thousand. Their experts said it was a mutated strain of Ebola they had never seen before. It was highly contagious, and unlike previous forms of the disease, this virus could be transmitted through the air. They warned people to stay in isolation, not to venture outside their homes unless absolutely necessary, but it was already too late. The pandemic was out of control now; the tipping point had been reached; too many people had already become infected and were contagious, and the mutated viral disease spread like a tsunami throughout the entire world.

  Many people fled the cities, trying to reach areas far away from civilization, but it was too late. They had already been infected with the virus, and they all died in isolation, their bodies feasted upon by a variety of wild creatures.

  A few days after the dire CDC warning, vital services and infrastructure began to breakdown. There was no longer a morning paper, garbage piled up at the curb, and the local stores were closed. One week later the power went down. It was back up a day later and then failed for the final time a week afterward. I guess there just weren’t any workers left who knew how or were willing to risk their lives repairing the system. One day later the water pressure dropped to zero.

  I managed to talk to my only sister before the cellphones stopped working. Mom and Dad had been one of the early ones to die. Uncle Ben and Aunt Minnie followed soon after, and my sister said her entire family was just now showing symptoms. We cried together, and when I hung up, I cried some more.

  The hospitals were overwhelmed, and then the medical staff became infected and died. Almost every day someone in our neighborhood passed away, and the rest of us helped bury them in their backyards. Empty coffins no longer existed, and burial in a cemetery was impossible.

  My best friend and next-door neighbor lost his wife and three kids, and I helped bury them all. He dug an extra grave for himself, and then as the first visible signs of the disease showed, he shot himself in the head while lying in his pre-dug tomb.

  The pathology of the disease was horrific: high fever, followed by h
emorrhaging of every internal organ, and finally a delusional mind bordering on total madness.

  Gloria woke up one morning with a fever. We hoped it was just the flu, but we both knew better. A day later Sarah joined Gloria, and both had temperatures of 104 degrees. Even at her young age, Sarah knew she would die. By now, we were all experts on how this disease would run its course.

  Two days later they were both coughing up blood and bleeding from every orifice in their bodies. I tried to help, but all I could do was clean up the mess and try to encourage them to eat or drink something. Both, however, refused food or water.

  Their conditions deteriorated rapidly over the next week, and they were unable to get out of bed. I tried to be of support, and I prayed to God to relieve their suffering.

  Gloria and Sarah began to hallucinate; they mumbled to imaginary people in words I couldn’t understand. The last hours of their lives were the worst: shrieking sounds of despair, complete loss of bowel and bladder control, and finally a peaceful coma. I sensed Gloria’s final moments of life. I can’t explain how I knew the end had arrived, but somehow I knew.

  Everyone who’s ever lost a loved one knows when death is imminent there’s a sense of personal guilt, things you desperately wanted to tell the person before they passed on, but somehow the words or the opportunities were never there. Sort of like a necessary cleansing of the soul prevented from ever taking place.

  It was certainly the same for me. It wasn’t about missed birthdays when I was out of town on business or forgotten anniversaries. It was much more basic. For me the guilt was all about how I had taken our love for granted. Why hadn’t I told her how much I loved her more often? The words I love you were so easy to say when she lay in her pre-death coma and so hard to express when she was healthy.

  I had held her hand in mine; I spoke to her as never before. “Honey I loved you the first time we met at that party over at the fraternity house. You were wearing black shorts and a white top; and then I hit on you with this stupid line don’t I know you? Then you looked at me and with a straight face answered, I think I saw your picture on the post office wall. God, I have no idea why you went out with me, but for me it was love at first sight. I miss you so much, and I’ve never told you how much I love you. I’ve said the words, but I loved you more than words could express.”

  Gloria’s body suddenly became very rigid, and she passed onto the next life. How does a person deal with these types of deaths? When does a person see so much suffering they are no longer able to show grief? I remember seeing some pictures of the people in concentration camps taken at the end of World War II, and those people looked like they could no longer feel emotion.

  The CDC predicted only one in onethousand would live. That meant the U.S. population would be reduced to about 320,000, and from what the authorities said, they would be spread out across the land. The survivors living in the country on farms might be okay, but the people in the cities would be hurting as soon as the food ran out.

  I had read in the paper the population in Collier County was about 365,000 with about 20,000 living in Naples. So where were the people? As if to answer my rhetorical question I heard a car horn blaring. The sound obliterated the tranquility of my silent vigil. At first I thought a car alarm was going off, but then I realized all of my neighbor’s cars were parked in their garages, and this sound was coming from the street in front of my house.

  I picked up my bottle of bourbon and walked around the side of the house to the front yard. A car was parked in the center of the street, and a woman was leaning on the horn. As I approached, she saw me and jumped out of the car. She was attractive and young, maybe in her early twenties. She had an athlete’s body, lean but muscular, and long black hair tied in a ponytail. Her facial features were defined by her captivating large brown eyes. Without thinking of her own safety, she ran up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

  We both stood there in the silent street. I had the bottle of bourbon in my hand, and she wouldn’t let go. If someone had a camera it would have made a comical almost pathetic picture. I hadn’t seen another living person for almost two weeks, and I just wanted to give up and die; and she seemed happy to finally see another human and appeared eager to get on with life.

  She finally stepped back and said, “I’m Jessie Bolden. I live on the other side of Livingston Road. I haven’t seen anyone in over a week.”

  “I’m Jim Reed, and the last living person I saw was my daughter, and she died two weeks ago.”

  Jessie and I left her car in the center of the street. Who would complain? “Let’s sit out on the lanai. There’s no air–conditioning, and it’s more comfortable out there.”

  Jessie saw the two graves and asked, “Your family?”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I lost my parents and younger brother. I’ve got nobody now. I listened to the last radio broadcast. I guess there’re only a few of us left.”

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. Jessie looked down at the bottle in my hand and asked for some juice. I walked back inside the house and found one of those rectangular cardboard containers with a straw attached. Sarah had loved them. I brought a container of appleraspberry out to Jessie who thanked me.

  We moved to a table with an umbrella and sat down in the shade. I took a swig from my bottle as she opened her juice container. “You have to stop drinking that stuff. I know you’re mourning, and I know how you feel. I’ve lost my whole family too, but we have to get on with our lives.”

  I looked into my bottle of bourbon searching for hope and finally set it down on the table. Jessie picked it up, walked over to a planter, and poured what was left in the bottle into the dirt. The flowers didn’t seem to object.

  I thought about what she had just done. Gloria would have done the same thing if she was still alive. “How old are you Jessie?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “You seem much older.” Jessie looked at my two graves and with flushed cheeks and tears in her eyes said, “I grew up when my little brother died in my arms.”

  She then broke down and started to cry. She buried her head in her hands, and her whole body shook as she completely lost it. She looked up at me. “It was the way they all died,” she said, “The bleeding from the eyes and nose and mouth; but the worst was at the end. Everyone just went completely mad. My father asked me to end his life. He told me to get his gun from the closet and begged me to kill him, but I couldn’t do it. Back about three weeks ago, I heard gunshots every couple of hours. People preferred a quick death once they showed symptoms, but I just couldn’t bring myself to kill my own father.”

  She broke into tears again, and I got out of my chair and held her arms in my hand. I began crying as well. Jessie stood up and wrapped her arms around my chest. We stood there together; both crying for the loved ones we had both lost and out of fear for what unknown future lay before us.

  Jessie finally broke free from my embrace. She looked into my eyes. “That’s the last time I will ever cry. I’m done crying. We’re both alive, and there are other survivors. There must be a couple dozen in the Naples area alone. We need to find them and plan our future.”

  I thought about Jessie’s words; they were like a slap in my face forcing me to abandon the horrific realities of the past and consider the uncertainty of the future. There was no denying my hurt or the world’s hurt, but now it was time to stop grieving and to get on with life. I reached out and held her again in my arms and kissed her on her forehead. “Thank you,” I said, “You’re right; let’s find the survivors.”

  Jessie looked at me and started to laugh. “You can’t go searching for people looking like that; you look terrible, and you smell like shit.”

  I looked at myself as best I could, and she was right. I hadn’t cleaned myself or shaved since the water stopped running. I looked over at the swimming pool. The pump was no longer circulating water, but it still looked clean. “I’ll cleanup in the pool.�
��

  Jessie said, “I’ll join you.” She was about to take off her top ready for a skinny dip until I stopped her. “You’re my wife’s size. You can use one of her bathing suits.”

  We both walked inside the house. With no air-conditioning, the temperature was over ninety degrees. I rummaged through Gloria’s closet until I found a drawer with a few swimsuits. I handed them to Jessie and told her to take her pick. I pointed her to the guest bedroom to change, and I headed for my own closet. I threw my dirty smelly clothes into our hamper, put on my swimming trunks, and found two clean beach towels in the linen closet.

  I dropped the towels on a table and stepped into our swimming pool. The water was pretty cold, but no worse than a swim in the ocean. A few minutes later Jessie joined me wearing Gloria’s favorite black bathing suit. We sat in the shallow end with the water just below our necks.

  It was time to get to know my new-found friend. “Jessie, tell me about yourself. I want to know everything about you.”

  “Okay, but then it will be your turn. I’m a Senior at Duke majoring in genetic engineering. I had a boyfriend, but given the odds, he’s probably dead. I came home for Christmas break. The CDC was just beginning to realize that nobody was going to make it if they became infected. Just before I left for home, one of my professors showed me the mathematical projections. He predicted almost everyone would die in seven more weeks, and then it would all be over.

  “Anyway, when I got home my mother was already showing symptoms. We tried to get her into the hospital, but it was full, and there was a long waiting list. She died a week later just as my dad was showing the first signs of the disease.

  “We buried mom in our backyard. Everyone in our neighborhood was doing the same thing. My dad died a week later, and then my brother died in my arms. I dug all their graves and buried them next to each other.”

  Jessie’s eyes were swollen and a glossy red. She had tears in her eyes, and she tried to hide them by dunking her head underwater. She just sat silently next to me in the pool staring at the red Bougainvillea bush on the far side of the lanai. Finally she faced me and said, “So Jim, what’s your story? What did you do before the shit hit the fan?”