by Lissa Bryan
Cynthia dashed up the stairs and a few moments later, she called down the stairs, her voice sharp with panic, “Tom! Get Doc Cotton!”
Tom didn’t wait around to ask questions. He bolted out the door. Justin charged up the staircase, following the sound of Cynthia’s voice. He would have been able to run through the town faster than Tom, but he had no idea where Doc Cotton lived, and it would have taken too much time to explain.
Carly went into the kitchen and turned off the gas-powered oven, lest the house catch fire. She met Justin at the top of the stairs, right outside of the door to Andrea’s bedroom. Carly could see the young woman was sprawled across her bed as though she had collapsed there, unable to even drag herself up to lay her head on the pillow.
“She has it,” he said. “She has the Infection.”
Carly’s hand flew to her mouth. “She can’t, Justin, it’s over.”
“Apparently not.”
Andrea tossed and muttered while her mother tried to hold a thermometer in her mouth.
“But this isn’t right.” Carly shook her head, bewildered. “Even if she did have it, she should only have mild symptoms right now.” Even as the words left her mouth, she remembered her father had seemed to skip over the lightly symptomatic stage into full-blown sickness.
“Viruses mutate. Remember, in some of the cases, stages were skipped. Not everyone followed the same pattern.”
“I just don’t understand how this could happen. Who did she catch it from?”
“I don’t know.”
There was the sound of feet pounding across the porch and then the bang of the door as it hit the wall. Doc Cotton—whom Carly had correctly identified at the meeting as the middle-aged man at the table—rushed by Justin and Carly into Andrea’s room. After only a few moments, he looked up at Tom and Cynthia, sadness making him appear older than he had before. “I’m sorry, Tom, Cynthia, but she’s Infected.”
Cynthia stared at him. Blinked. “What?” It didn’t sound like her voice.
“She has the Infection.”
Cynthia still didn’t seem to be processing the news, but Tom sat down heavily on the chair at the vanity table. His face was pale and waxy.
Doc Cotton turned to Justin. “Do you have antivirals in your supplies?”
Justin nodded. Doc Cotton rattled off a list of what he needed.
“Come with me,” Justin said to Carly. “I’ll need you to read the boxes.”
They ran at full speed across the darkened streets. In some of the homes, yellow oil lamp light flickered and human shadows passed by the windows. Besides the chirping crickets, the only sounds were of their feet pounding on the pavement, the harsh rasp of their breath. They reached the barn and threw open the door with a sudden violence that made Shadowfax lurch in her stall and scream.
“It’s just us,” Carly called to her between pants for air as she crawled up into the wagon and threw back the tarp. “Light. I can’t see anything.”
Justin grabbed a flashlight they had stored beside the door and shined it on the pile. He repeated the drug names to Carly as she pawed through the stack. “Torlisibol,” she said.
“No, Torlisival.”
“Are you sure?”
Justin rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I should know this! I should—”
She stopped. “Take a deep breath, Justin. Relax. Calm yourself down.” Her voice had a calmness she didn’t feel. Fear made her stomach churn, and she hoped Justin didn’t notice how badly her hands shook.
Justin closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. “Torlisibol,” he said.
Carly nodded and added it to the bag. “I’ve got them.”
He helped her to her feet, and they ran back through the darkened town to Tom and Cynthia’s house, but when they reached the staircase, they froze in their tracks. Tom sat there, tears streaming down his pallid face, and he held Cynthia in his lap as she wept against his shoulder.
Doc Cotton came slowly from Andrea’s room. He paused on his way down to lay a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Cynthia let out a soft, ragged cry, and Tom closed his eyes as he nodded. The doctor continued down to the stairs. He jerked his head toward the living room, and Justin and Carly followed him.
Doc Cotton sagged onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands.
“It can’t be the Infection,” Carly said. Even as she said it, a small part of her mind spoke up to tell her she was in denial. “It doesn’t happen that fast.”
“Viruses mutate,” Doc replied without lifting his head, echoing Justin’s words from earlier. “It’s become faster, more virulent. Likely more communicable, as well.”
Carly’s breath caught. “Then we may no longer be immune.”
Neither the doctor nor Justin said anything. Carly waited another moment, hoping in vain one of them would deny it.
“Justin, we can’t go home to Dagny. We can’t risk . . .” She couldn’t continue. Her throat was too tight to speak.
“The whole town has been exposed,” Doc Cotton said wearily. “Andrea was having cold symptoms before Tom and Cynthia left for the meeting.”
“But how did this happen?” Carly blurted out. “How did she catch it in the first place? No sick people have been here!”
Justin took her hand. He seemed to struggle to find the words. “Carly, we’re carriers.”
She shook her head slightly. Her mind couldn’t seem to process what he was saying.
“It’s the only explanation. I told you this before, remember? I told you we might be asymptomatic carriers. It would explain why many of the survivors seem to be infertile. We have the virus; it just doesn’t make us sick.”
“It’s our fault?” she whispered, stricken to her very soul with guilt and horror.
Doc Cotton’s head jerked up. “No, Carly, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know. We would have had contact with outsiders sooner or later.”
Tom and Cynthia came down the stairs slowly, their arms wrapped around one another. Carly couldn’t tell who was supporting whom.
She had brought Death to their doorstep. The guilt was so terrible she couldn’t even look them in the eye.
“We’ve got to get the word out,” Tom said in a raspy voice. “Tell everyone to quarantine themselves.”
Carly’s heart ached for him. Even in this moment of terrible grief, he was still thinking of the people of his town.
Doc Cotton shook his head. “It’s too late, Tom.” He stood. “I’m sorry to leave you in this terrible time, but I have work to do. I have to prepare.”
“We’ll help,” Carly whispered. “We have to help.”
Doc Cotton nodded. “I’ll need every pair of able hands.”
Justin kissed Carly’s cheek. “Where, Doc?”
“The church.”
Justin nodded. He kissed Carly again before he left, and she caught a glimpse of the anguish in his eyes, an anguish he was trying hard not to show.
Cynthia sobbed in Tom’s arms.
“I’m so sorry,” Carly choked out. “God, I am so sorry.”
Neither of them replied. Carly darted out the door onto the porch. She sagged down onto the steps, clinging to the support post. There, she let out the sobs that had built to such an agonizing pressure in her chest. She wept for Andrea, for Tom and Cynthia, and for the precious bit of normalcy that was too fragile to survive after all.
There was barely room to walk between the beds. All were filled with coughing, retching, moaning people. The muttering of the mad were the only voices heard. In the beginning, the noise had filled the church and echoed from its bare walls. But at this point, it was a low murmur.
The church’s pews had all been removed. Doc Cotton had requested people bring beds from their spare bedrooms—just the frames, box springs, and mattresses. The room was lit by lanterns they’d suspended from the ceiling, a warm glow that didn’t soften the ugly reality that the whole town lay dying in the sanctuary.<
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Carly hadn’t slept in days. She bathed burning foreheads with cool water. She cleaned up after the sick and helped move the dead outside to the large pit Tommy Burton had dug with his backhoe. At first, the dead were washed and carefully wrapped in sheets, their families tucking small mementos, like pictures, inside with them. And then the families fell ill, and there was no one to perform those last acts of kindness and love.
“You need to take a nap, girl,” Old Miz Marson said. Carly hadn’t heard her approach.
“Perhaps later,” Carly replied, knowing it was a lie.
“You ain’t gonna do anyone no good if you fall sick yourself.”
Maybe not, but she couldn’t leave them. She couldn’t rest while the people who had taken them in— welcomed them to their community—suffered and died.
She glanced up from the person she was bathing and saw Justin with Doc Cotton, carrying out yet another victim. This one was small, a little girl. What’s her name? Tara Something, Carly thought. Her mother had brought her in, sobbing between coughs, and the two of them had breathed their last within an hour of each other. Carly was glad the mother never had to know what had happened to her little girl, a tiny mercy.
“Go on back to Preacher Wilson’s office,” Old Miz Marson urged. “I’ll send that man of yours back to you. He won’t rest, either, but he might if you do.”
Doc Cotton had told Carly no one knew how old Miz Marson really was. He said she’d been an old woman when he was a little boy and hadn’t seemed to change since. She was one of the few able-bodied people left.
There wasn’t any medicine left, but it hadn’t done much good, anyway. As their supply dwindled, Justin had tried to reserve it for the children, but none of it had worked. He hadn’t even hesitated to share it, though they’d both known it was probably futile. Carly wondered if this marked some sort of change in Justin, thinking with his heart instead of his coldly practical mind.
They had done everything they could think of, but one by one, the town’s children had slipped away, burned alive from the inside out by the terrible fever. Only one was left, a little seven-year-old girl named Madison Laker. Her parents had both died a few days earlier, along with the baby her mother had been carrying. Madison was staying next door in the preacher’s house, and while Carly thought she was too young to be left alone, there was no one left to watch her.
Doc Cotton had tried to keep a log, recording the deaths, but they came too quickly, too many at once. Some were taken outside before he was informed, and afterward, no one could remember. Doc Cotton had become sick, too, but he was trying to work as long as possible before he succumbed. It wouldn’t be long, though. His eyes were bleary from fever, and he had to blink sweat out of them. As she watched, he helped lift Clayton Bierce so he could sip some water.
Carly and Justin were still immune, or so it seemed. She closed her eyes as she thought of her baby and the agonizing choice she’d made when the latest crisis had started.
She’d stood on the street and shouted at Mindy on the porch; she wouldn’t risk going closer. “You need to get out of here. Take Dagny and go. Find a safe place and hole up there until this is all over.” There had been some cans of baby formula and bottles still in their packaging in the grocery store. Carly had put them on the sidewalk and sprayed the containers with Lysol before she stepped away. It hurt, losing those sweet, precious moments when her baby lay next to her heart and nursed, but she had no choice. It was too dangerous for them to stay. Dagny might not be immune to this version of the virus.
Please, she prayed. Please let them have found somewhere safe. There were so many dangers out there.
She heard a soft whine and looked down to see Sam beside her. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You know you’re not allowed in here.”
Sam whined again and used his nose to nudge something on the floor, something Carly could barely see in the low light. She bent down.
It was Tigger. The cat’s breath came and went with a congested wheeze, and she was as limp as a rag when Carly picked her up. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
Sam whined again and shuffled on his paws. Fix her, he seemed to be saying. His eyes pleaded with her.
Carly laid the cat on one of the empty beds. She touched the inside of Tigger’s ear and found her burning hot with the fever.
“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’ll do what I can, I promise.” Carly stroked his head gently. She dunked Tigger into the pan of cool water. The cat shivered even as heat poured off her body. Carly went to the supply box and found an eyedropper. She pried open Tigger’s mouth and used it to squirt some water down her throat. When she tasted it, she began to lick eagerly at the eyedropper and then at Carly’s fingers. Carly gave her more until the cat sagged back against the bed, sated and exhausted. Sam laid his head on the bed beside her. His ears drooped back. Carly stroked his head again and gave him a hug. There was no way she was going to tell him he couldn’t stay.
“I’ve got to go check on the others,” she told him. “But I’ll be back.”
She made her rounds through her shrinking collection of patients. Old Miz Marson was seated next to a woman’s bed, reading the Bible aloud to her. She glanced up as Carly passed and shook her head because Carly hadn’t taken her advice to rest.
The door opened, admitting a brilliant stream of light that hurt Carly’s eyes. Justin emerged from it. He was pale, and his hands trembled with exhaustion, but he kissed her warmly and then set about assisting with the sick. It was an endless cycle of illness and death, and one loss bled into another until she wasn’t sure who she was caring for at the moment. She looked down at the sweating woman on the bed and saw her mother. She was calm and lucid, which Carly hadn’t seen since the spike in her fever.
“No spiders?” Carly asked her.
“Water,” her mother whispered. Carly got a plastic cup and helped her up so she could gulp eagerly from it.
“Careful, Mom, you don’t want to make yourself sick.”
Her mother smiled at her. “You always were such a good girl, Carly. You made your father and me so proud of you.”
Carly had to swallow around the lump in her throat. “I’d hoped so. I was always afraid I’d disappointed him since I didn’t go to college and I—”
Her mother cupped her cheek with her palm. “Oh, baby, never think that. He only wanted the best for you, for you to be able to do anything you wanted.”
“I’m glad I didn’t go,” Carly said. “I’m glad I could be with you when—” She broke off, puzzled. She thought her mother had died, but that didn’t make any sense. “Where is Daddy?” She glanced around the room, but the beds to her left and right were empty. “Mom, I can’t find him!”
“Shh, it’s all right. Your father is fine. He’s happy now. You should listen to Justin. He was right, you know.”
“Carly?” She turned her head and blinked at Justin. He repeated her name, and she tried to focus her tired eyes.
“Yes?”
“Honey, are you all right?”
She looked down at the bed and saw the woman lying there wasn’t her mother, and she was dead. Carly closed her eyes, and two tears fell out onto her cheeks. She took a deep breath and collected her things.
The low and mournful howl of a wolf filled the room. “Sam!”
She rushed over to him and knelt down to check Tigger. She wasn’t breathing. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry.”
He howled again, and it rattled the stained glass windows in their panes. Most of the patients were too far gone to hear it, but Old Miz Marson bowed her head when she heard it, recognizing the sound of heartbreak across species.
Sam picked up Tigger’s limp body and walked to the door, his tail dragging low. He stopped at the door and looked back at Carly, and then he was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Carly sat on the courthouse lawn and watched the church burn. Beside her, Old Miz Marson leaned against the War Memorial, smoking a Pall Mall, and on her other side was Justin. He
was absently stroking Sam’s ears.
The roof of the church caved in with a roar, followed by the steeple. The bell clanged one last time as it went down.
Tom had died the night before and Cynthia, earlier that morning. They were among the last of the living. Carly had sat back and looked around at the room, still filled with the dead because Justin couldn’t carry them out as quickly as they passed. The bulldozer key could not be found, and Justin wondered aloud if it had still been in Tommy Burton’s pocket when his body was placed in the mass grave.
Faced with a daunting task when they were both exhausted to the point of collapse, they had decided to burn the church and with it, the mass grave. Justin had collected gasoline from the cars still parked along the streets and a barrel of waste oil from the auto shop. Both were too old to be used in cars, but they were still flammable. The flames would burn long into the night.
“It ain’t fair,” Old Miz Marson said suddenly. Her voice quavered, and the hand that held the cigarette shook. “It’s just not goddamned fair. I’m old. I’ve smoked like a chimney since I was twelve years old, and I’ve buried two doctors who told me I’d die in a year if I didn’t quit. I’ve got more aftermarket parts than a Playboy model. And yet I’m still here. It ain’t right.”
Carly put an arm around the old woman’s shoulders. She was trembling, though whether from grief or anger, Carly didn’t know. Perhaps it was a combination of both.
The town’s population stood at eight. Three, if you didn’t count the people who had brought the plague with them through the gate. Madison Laker, Old Miz Marson, and a teenage boy named Kaden Weaver were the only ones left from the town’s population. The two young’uns, as Miz Marston called them, were tucked into bed inside her house, both of them so shocked and bewildered that they allowed themselves to be treated like small children and put to bed after supper.
Sam let out a soft huff. He’d returned without Tigger, and Carly would never know where he had taken the cat’s body. The sadness seemed to weigh on him heavily. Carly understood the feeling. Though she hadn’t loved any of the people in this town, she knew she would have if given the time.
