by Brett Abell
Bear woke up shortly after the virus escaped. As Charlie bled from his eyes and fell to the floor, Bear opened his eyes in Kokomo.
Bear Causey didn’t like waking up when it was still dark, but the house was paid for in Kokomo, Indiana, and Middletown University, several miles south in Middletown, was the only school he and his mother could afford. So, they got up early for her to drive him.
Bear sat up and breathed out in the darkness. Even in the low light, he could see the mist of his breath. He slept better when it was cold, but getting up in the cold was the worst. He glanced over at the green glow of 4:00 AM on his digital clock. There must still be power, he thought, so the heater must be out again.
“It’s too damned cold for October,” he told the dark cold of his bedroom.
He sighed and swung the stumps of his thighs out over the edge of his single bed. Bear gripped the headboard with a creak as he leaned down and felt around the floor. He fished through shirts and underwear. He didn’t have socks anymore. Bear came up with one titanium prosthetic. The geared joints clicked as he straightened them. He felt around the curve of the attached sneaker and figured out it was his left foot.
The harness fit over the mesh pressure bandage on his stump and Bear tightened the binding straps until he felt pain in the muscle. He flexed the muscle but got no reaction from the struts along the leg. After a few adjustments of the wheels down the side, he flexed again and the leg pumped like it was a living thing.
He lay on his side on the mattress with his head near the foot of the bed. He swiped aside notebooks and fast food wrappers but found no right leg.
Mom called from the hallway. “Heat’s out. We’re eating breakfast in the car. You ready?”
Bear braced his palms on the floor and slid off the mattress to the cluttered carpet. He reached under the bed and came out with the leg. He shook dust bunnies out of the works.
“Bear Bryant Causey? Have you brushed your teeth?”
“Hold on, Mom.” He rolled up to sitting with his back to the bed that would have been too small for him back when he played football. “I’m still putting my legs on.”
“Well, shake a leg. I have appointments in Middletown today.”
“Still not funny,” Bear breathed as he slid the harness of his second leg over his stump. His mother cleaned houses in the two rich neighborhoods in Middletown to pay for the gas and to keep the heat on. One out of two isn’t bad for baseball.
If she didn’t have to get to work, he could sleep a little longer; if she didn’t work, they couldn’t afford the drive or the school.
Bony knuckles tapped against the outside of his bedroom door. “Are you moving, Bear?”
Bear grabbed the edge of the mattress and hoisted his body up as he flexed his legs under him. “Working on it.”
“Do you need help getting your pants on?”
Bear sighed. “I’d go naked before I’d let you put pants on me. I got it.”
“I’m going to warm up the car. Get going so we don’t waste gas.”
Bear stared at a pair of jeans balled on the floor in the sickly green light. Next to them was a pair of athletic shorts with his high school logo on them. The jeans would cover the legs, but they were harder to put on and the shorts were enough to keep him warm now. People would stare even after two and a half years, but he needed access to the harnesses today. It was a special day, so he grabbed the shorts. It was easier to put them on first, but he insisted on having his legs on when he got dressed.
Down in Middletown, the door to the interior lab opened. The janitor did not see Charlie behind the table. He started to close the door back, but then Charlie coughed and spit out blood on the floor. The custodian stepped inside. The virus had not dissipated due to the closed space, and the curious janitor coughed up blood. He went for the door but stumbled and slid down the wall behind it. He leaned his head back and bled from his eyes. If he had closed the door, it might have been contained. But the door was open, and the virus spread out through the air, diluting its potency.
***
Corn stood like walls on three sides of their lawn carved out of the middle of the fields. Yellow crawled up half of the stalks as the field corn dried for harvesting. Bear took a bite of a French toast stick from a red plastic cup as he stared out at the silos in the distance. Conveyors blasted chewed up corn and stalk into the air to separate the pieces, and Bear thought about his father. He looked out his mother’s side of the car and saw a fallow field where the sweet corn had been harvested in the summer. He thought about his father more.
There was a cold spot and a hard chunk in the middle of his bite. He saw his mother glance at him out of the corner of his eye. Bear chewed and swallowed down the hunk so she wouldn’t notice. He opened and closed his fingers, feeling the tacky stickiness from the syrup on his fingers.
She held one hand over the vents of her Nova’s air conditioning. “The heat will kick in once we get going on the highway.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
She brought her hand back to the steering wheel and flexed her fingers a couple of times. He took a lukewarm bite of toast stick and stared at the redness flared around her knuckles. It could be the cold, but he suspected she was having arthritis problems like grandma used to—from the Horner side.
His dad’s family had been soy and sweet potato farmers in Alabama. Even when Boone Causey was still alive, they rarely visited his family. His dad told Bear that they were jealous he moved to land where food would actually grow.
After Boone Causey died before the play-offs, Bear’s senior year, the Causeys complained that Boone wasn’t being buried in Alabama, and the town rallied around Bear to make a run for the championship. They were out in the second round, but Bear got a full-ride to Ohio State.
They merged onto the highway, but the heat did not kick in.
In Middletown, someone coughed in the outer lab. The undergraduate held the table and bent over, hacking wet in his lungs. The virus was spread out thinner, so the tissue was liquefying, but it was taking longer. Charlie opened his bloody eyes.
The Hubbard family and Kokomo Grain had been generous with Anna Belle Horner Causey when she had to sell. She made Bear come to the signing, and they told Bear how proud and sorry they were over and over. He was still looped on painkillers from the accident at the time and between surgeries, slumped in his wheelchair. It wasn’t as fulfilling as his signing for a full Division I ride to a National Championship University he wouldn’t be attending now.
They had cut out the lawn and built a handicapped-accessible house with ramps and wide doors as part of the deal. Now that Bear was walking on the prosthetics, those wide halls and ramps were a bitch.
The Hubbards still invited Anna Belle and Bear to Farm Day with rides and a hot air balloon. Some of the million dollar trackers that Boone and Bear used to man together were still in the sheds for kids to climb on at Farm Day. The Hubbards maintained them better than Bear had for his father. He went the first year, but the last two years, Bear hadn’t gone to Farm Day with his mother.
She still had family over in Peru, Indiana, near the prison, but they didn’t go over much anymore. She had asked him about going to the circus each year. It was one with acrobats and no animals, but Bear had passed on that as well.
Now he was a year and a half away from a barely-above-a-community-college business degree and had no idea what he wanted to do with it. Bear was pretty sure the only reason Middletown qualified for university status was because of some off-campus business and arts night classes they offered in Indianapolis.
“Did I not heat them up good enough?”
Bear blinked and took another bite of French toast stick. “No, they’re fine. I was just thinking about what to do after graduation.”
“That’s a good thing to think about. What have you come up with?”
“I think I’m going to head down to Alabama and cook meth with the other Causeys.”
His mother swatted his should
er. “That’s not funny, Bear. I thought you were being serious.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t figured out what’s next. I’ll let you know though as soon as I do.”
“I’m sorry your father wasn’t around to see you through the last couple of years, Bear, but he would be proud that you moved forward with the hand that was dealt us. I hope you know that.”
Bear thought that if his father had been around during the spring and leading up to graduation, Bear wouldn’t have been allowed to head out to the lake all night, with girls along too. If Dad had been around, Anna Belle would have stood up to Bear’s insistence instead of giving in to her dumb ass son. He would have been home pissed and sulking, but he wouldn’t have been in the back of the truck getting a hand job when it flipped over. Stacy might still be alive, his dad would still own the farm, and Bear would be a starting wide receiver for Ohio. The neighbors would be giving Boone shit for letting his son go out of state and his father would laugh about it. But that’s not how shit happened.
Bear was pretty sure his father would be disappointed in how Bear got hurt. The man who always told his son to move with purpose would not be happy the paramedics found him with his pants around his bloody knees, next to a decapitated girl who attended the same church the Causeys did. He wouldn’t care that Bear ended up in some “safety” school, but he would not tolerate his son approaching graduation with no plan. He wouldn’t be as upset about the farm being sold to afford medical treatments and surgeries, but he would be especially disappointed that Bear was running around all night the months before the accident as the work went neglected.
The Hubbards took better care of the million dollar tractors.
The orange juice bottle was empty when Bear brought it to his lips, so he swallowed the French toast on a dry throat. “Sure, Mom, I know.”
She patted Bear’s left leg just above the harness and he recoiled from the unexpected touch.
She said, “Besides, if you are going to cook meth, you can do it right here in Indiana—God’s country.”
Bear sniffed. “Okay, Mom.”
They passed a sign that marked the mileage to Middletown still just shy of three digits. He set the empty bottle and Solo cup of French toast sticks in the floorboard before he pulled his black backpack up between his titanium legs. Bear closed his eyes with the cold air blowing on his face.
Charlie Noble found his legs and staggered out of the inner lab. His vision was blurred by blood and aftereffects of death, but he saw a girl crouched over the body of the undergraduate lying in his own vomit and blood. Bits of the virus still floated in the lab, but the air from the vents scattered them and the airborne delivery system proved less effective than the military had hoped.
Charlie heard her yelling for help and he smelled her. He fell on her and closed his teeth on her throat. She screamed louder. His teeth closed on a lump that was cold and hard in the middle of his bite, but like Bear had done, Charlie swallowed it down. His bite delivered the virus to the girl, where the airborne system had failed. Charlie open and closed his hands on the sticky blood that coated them.
Unfortunately, someone heard her scream and came running.
***
It was warmer as the Nova pulled into the space with the engine idling unevenly. A hundred miles north or south in Indiana was like changing continents some days in October. Even with the sun still creeping up, a few kids were moving about in shirtsleeves—Indiana balmy.
“I’ve got a bunch of clients today, so I’m going to be all over. I’ll skip lunch, but I might be a little late picking you up still. Will you be okay?”
Bear’s attention was through the windshield, on a line of small guys in a line, like running fireplugs. They looked to be small enough to still be playing high school ball even though some of them were juniors and seniors. The coach leading the morning’s run was one of the assistant coaches. His name was McKnight and he was a stocky, black teacher from the middle school that shared the same campus as Middletown High School. Middletown University was so small that the football team used the high school field and played games on Saturdays. They were Division III and competed against other unknown schools. McKnight was running the team in the morning, so he could finish up before he went to teach science to preteens.
“Bear?” His mother touched his shoulder.
Bear slumped down in the seat as the team passed in front of them on the sidewalk. “Yeah, I’ll be fine, Mom. Just call my cell and I’ll come meet you.”
McKnight spotted Bear through the windshield anyway. He winked and gave Bear a thumbs up. Bear swallowed and waved back.
His mother kissed his cheek and Bear startled. She said, “I love you. Have a good day.”
He opened his door. “I love you too. Steal me something nice.”
She swatted his shoulder. “That’s not funny. Don’t even joke about that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bear held the doorjamb and planted his sneakers on the asphalt, over the white line. He took a deep breath and flexed as he lifted. His legs straightened and held. He let go of the car and held his hands out for a moment like the parking line was a tightrope from the Peru Circus.
He reached down and took his backpack from the floorboard before closing the door. He shouldered the pack and leaned hard on the rough railing as he negotiated the steps, one flexed footstep at a time. The Nova’s engine sputtered behind him and he felt his mother’s eyes on him like a physical weight.
“I should be better at this by now.”
Bear reached the flat, inclined surface of the concrete path and leaned forward as he pumped his artificial legs under him. The Nova’s fan belt squealed as his mother backed out of the space. A few of the early morning kids, pumping their arms in skin-tight, second-skin running suits, and other dudes with perfectly unkempt beards, leaning over cups of gourmet coffee looked up despite wearing earbuds or ironically oversized headphones. They stared at Bear and then looked away with rigid determination to not to be seen staring at him any longer. It was the perfect combination of gawking and ignoring.
“I should be better at this by now.”
There was an odd lull in the spread of the virus. After several rapid kills once Charlie and the janitor reanimated, the supply of victims tapered off. Several morning biology classes had been moved outside for an experiment involving chlorophyll. Some of the less responsible students forgot about the move of the class meeting location and they paid with their lives. After they reanimated, many wandered the labs and halls in circles, without finding anyone. Others pawed at windows, smearing them with infected blood. The girl with her throat torn out managed to get trapped in the elevator and didn’t have enough understanding left to push the buttons as she clawed at the back wall.
The custodian made it all the way to the basement. It might have been a coincidence or some latent muscle memory. Once he was there, he chased around one of his coworkers for quite a while.
The outer lab cleared out of infected carriers as they sought more food, driven by the genetic markers of the bio-engineered weapon.
***
Bear sat down in the front corner of an economics class. He went from taking notes to just trying to stay awake. He shifted in his seat and accidentally tightened his thigh, kicking the wire basket under his desk with a high, sharp ping. Everyone, including the professor, stared for a few long beats and then looked away.
In his ethics class, Bear placed his backpack behind his legs to keep from doing it again.
After his second class, he checked his wrist and frowned. He had forgotten his dad’s watch on the side table at home. He hoped it was on the side table. It was the kind that still had to be wound by hand, and Bear usually forgot to wind it, even when he remembered to put it on.
He crossed campus with a little more ease now that he had worked out the morning sluggishness in his muscles. Across from the campus was a smattering of boxy houses left over from when the ironworks out by the railroad went be
lly-up before Bear was born. In the midst of them, were fast food restaurants, a bar that was only open Wednesday through Saturday, and The Climbing Barn.
The Climbing Barn building had been everything except an actual barn. It was a theme restaurant in the 1950s, Bear thought, and it had been a Christmas knickknack store when Bear first started at the university. Now it was The Climbing Barn.
Outside, he read a sign in a blue circle which said: This Business Serves Everyone. Several businesses around Middletown had these signs. It had something to do with a law Bear couldn’t remember.
“Everyone,” Bear said. “Even us no-legged climbers.”
Bear stepped in and Holly looked up. She smiled and tilted her head toward the entrance. Bear walked through and found the multicolored holds speckled up the full three-story height of the grey, polygonal fake rock walls. They looked like discarded bubblegum to him. A few other students worked their way up the walls, with friends or one of the attendants feeding the other end of the rope through a lock wheel hanging off the front of them like prosthetic phalluses.
He sat down on a bench and unlatched his legs. “Guess it could be worse.”
Lewis held up one finger from across the gym and untethered from a buxom blond, who was easily three feet shorter than him—maybe Bear’s height with his legs off now. Lewis had a mop of dark hair and a perpetual two-days-away-from-a-shave look that Bear thought a little girl like that would misplace her panties over. Bear set his legs aside and opened his backpack. He wondered if Lewis might introduce them. Lewis leaned down and hugged her with his face lost in her blond curls. Bear nodded. Maybe not, he thought.
He pulled out a pair of legs that were little more than steel bars that came to a clawed point. Lewis’s hand slid down the short distance from her back to her ass. Definitely not, Bear decided. He strapped on the legs and slid to the floor. Bear crawled down the length of the bench so the claws wouldn’t cut the blue padding on the floor.
