Hour 24: All That's Left

by Robert Barnard

  “And Nolan?” she said, sweetly. “Go the fuck to class today.”

  Chloe’s Dodge Challenger skidded to a stop outside 1126 Mitford Lane. It was unfair of her to chastise Nolan too much about his reliance on the trust fund left to him by the State of New York. She’d received a comparable survivor’s package herself—a little less than Nolan’s, sure, since her parents hadn’t perished in the disaster—but still enough to make her more than comfortable. The Challenger was one of the few luxuries she splurged on after the Whiteman family moved to Colorado.

  “Come on,” Chloe said, and she gave the horn of the massive car a few quick beeps. “Hurry up.”

  A woman, maybe a little older than Chloe and dressed in the same uniform, sprung from the front door of the house then locked the door behind her. She dashed down the driveway, swung open the passenger door of the Challenger, and hopped inside with a grunt.

  Chloe said: “Hannah, I’m so sorry—”

  “Don’t apologize. Just drive.”

  “Of course.”

  Chloe stomped the accelerator and the Challenger took off, bolted down Mitford Lane in a blur.

  Hannah said, “We’re royally fucked.”

  “I know.”

  “You should have texted me if you were running late. I could have called an Uber, could have found another ride—”

  “I slept through my first alarm,” Chloe said. “It won’t happen again.”

  Hannah sighed, drummed her fingers along the passenger door. “Sarge is gonna have us running ten laps for every minute we’re late.”

  “I know.”

  Hannah squinted, studied Chloe’s wrinkled uniform. “My guess is he’ll tack on an extra fifty when he gets a look at you.”

  Chloe tapped the steering wheel of the Challenger. “I didn’t exactly have time to iron my clothes and polish my boots.”

  “I can tell. Late night with prince charming?”

  Chloe laughed. “I wish. We fell asleep halfway through Conan’s monologue. We haven’t had sex in weeks. He gets distant, you know…when the anniversary approaches.”

  Hannah shook her head. “It’s been two years.”

  “He lost everything, Han. His friends, his home, his parents…which he’s still in denial about, by the way. For Christ’s sake, the underbelly of a seven-fifty-seven fell on top of his house.”

  “He’s had it rough. Who hasn’t?”

  Chloe nodded. “We all have. But out of everyone I know, he’s had it the roughest. It’s a hard line to walk, never sure if I’m being too hard on him or not hard enough.”

  “You two still go to those meetings at St. Joseph’s?”

  “No,” Chloe said. “We haven’t been in six or eight months.”

  “I thought they were helping him.”

  “The only thing that seems to help him are the infinite pages of conspiracy theories he reads about online. He’s convinced NYVO wasn’t some accident, thinks he’s figured out the origin of it. Like he’s goddamn Sherlock Holmes. He thinks the government did it on purpose, and that they’ll do it again.”

  Hannah blurted a surprised, angry little laugh. “What kind of mind comes up with that? As your friend, Chloe, I’m telling you: Nolan needs help.”

  “I know,” Chloe said. “I know. It’s just…hard. I’ve been so wrapped up in finishing school, in finishing academy—”

  “You’re smoking again,” Hannah said, and she sniffed.

  “I’m under a lot of stress,” Chloe said. “And you really—you really—have to take it easy on me. And on Nolan. You were out here in Nowhere, Colorado when everything in New York went down. Nolan and I? We were at the heart of it. We saw things no person should ever have to see.”

  “I can’t imagine what you went through,” Hannah said, coolly. “But life. Goes. On. It’s going forward for you, but not for Nolan. How long is that going to work? You’re gonna be a cop soon, Chloe. He sits at home and smokes pot. He never leaves the house.”

  “I knew him,” Chloe said, and she was surprised to feel her words stutter with sadness. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I knew him for three years before NYVO. We went to prom together. We laughed in homeroom together. He’s the best there is, and the same Nolan that I grew up with and fell in love with is still in there, somewhere. We’ve been joined at the hip for five years. I’m not ready to throw that all away because he’s been in a funk.”

  The Challenger stopped at the front of Cherry Valley High School. Chloe threw the car in park then yanked the key from the ignition. On a football field adjacent to the school, twenty or so men and women were performing jumping jacks in unison as the day’s first light broke behind them.

  Hannah jumped out of the car and hurried towards the field. Chloe slammed her door shut and studied the face of the building for a moment. In its own way, Cherry Valley High didn’t look too dissimilar from Henderson High, her alma mater.

  She closed her eyes. In a moment, she was back there, back in her hometown of East Violet; before the virus, before the plane crash. There was happiness and laughter that went on for days, there were late nights studying for tests and hazy summer afternoons kissing Nolan behind the bleachers.

  And then…and then…

  Then there was the outbreak.

  There were broken voices crying out for help, panicked and confused. There were people killing one another in broad daylight. There were the infected, shambling through the streets of East Violet, their sunken, yellowed eyes hungrily seeking victims, cursed by an unquenchable thirst for flesh. There were men, women—children—being eaten alive in grocery store parking lots, in malls, in hospitals and in schools.

  The world had ended, hadn’t it?

  But then the most miraculous thing happened—the end of the world stopped.

  It stopped, and life returned to normal. Not quickly, of course not. But slowly, surely, ads on television reappeared for super hero blockbusters at the cinema. Fast food restaurants reopened, pedaled cheeseburgers constructed of dubious ingredients at an even more dubious price. Rock stars released albums, authors released books. The scientists and the politicians appeared on TV, reassured everyone that everything was fine, that life would return to normal. That America was safe, that what happened in New York on that one terrible autumn day two years prior would never—could never—happen again.

  And Chloe might’ve almost believed that, if she hadn’t been there on the front lines to witness the worst of it, when it happened.

  “Whiteman,” a voice barked from the football field.

  Sergeant Fuller.

  Chloe snapped from her daydream, focused her eyes on the burly man at the top of the hill ahead of her.

  “You’re late enough as it is. Are you going to stand there all morning, staring at the sunrise?”

  Chloe shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “Your fellow cadets will have to finish fifty more jumping jacks,” Fuller said, and the battalion behind him groaned in unison, “to compensate for your tardiness. And as for you, I want three laps around the perimeter of this school.”

  Chloe said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Not the football field,” Fuller continued. “The entire school campus. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Sir, yes sir,” Chloe said, and she tugged her belt and began the sprint to the top of the hill.

  It’d been the best she felt all morning.

  THREE

  In his bedroom, lost in a deep, dark slumber, Jim stirred atop his mattress. The nightmare had returned. It had visited him on a weekly basis for the past two years, the bleakest flickers of his subconscious happy to remind him of all the horrors he had seen and overcome.

  The dream started as it always did, with Jim sitting at the kitchen table of his home back in East Violet. There’s the screeching tires of a car outside, and Jim goes rushing to the commotion.

  Behind the steering wheel is his superior from the East Violet Police Department. Sergeant Ingram. And though the world is en
ding all around him, it’s as if Ingram and he are the last two people left on the face of the planet.

  Ingram toddles out of the car, stumbles toward Jim only the way a very obese person can. Jim calls out, asks what’s wrong, can tell that something isn’t right with his sergeant.

  Before Jim can react, a fight ensues. Ingram pins him to the ground, bashes at his head, squeezes at his throat.

  It’s at this point in the dream—every time—that Jim moans at his pillow and gasps for air.

  “Please,” Jim cries out. “My daughter.”

  It’s then that Jim realizes it—Ingram has turned, just like the hundreds of thousands of other New York residents, into something insidious. Whatever humanity within Ingram has vanished, and all that is left is a monster who wants nothing more than to feast on human flesh and blood.

  In the dream, Ingram bites Jim on his chest—just beside his shoulder—and the sensation is just as clear as the day it happened two years prior.

  Jim cries—he screams—he raises a pistol to Ingram’s tubby, doofy head, closes his eyes and pulls the trigger.

  There’s a rose colored mist of skull and brain and blood that hangs in the air for a moment like a fog, blocking the early morning light—

  And Jim wakes up.

  Jesus, Jim thought, and he patted at the bed beside him. Empty. Dana must have already woke up, started her day. He rolled over, buried his face into her pillow, took a deep breath. She could always calm him down after the night terrors, and how he wished she’d been there now.

  He slumped out of bed, strode into the kitchen. Sure enough, Dana was sitting behind her laptop at the kitchen counter.

  “Morning, sleepy head,” Dana said.

  “Morning,” Jim answered, and he scratched at the stubble that had formed across his chin.

  “The nightmare again?” Dana asked, and she didn’t bother to look up from behind her computer screen.

  Jim nodded, opened the refrigerator door, plucked out a carton of orange juice. “Yeah. The nightmare again.” He yawned, took a swig of juice straight from the container, then shoved it back into the fridge. “What’s got you up so early?”

  Dana sighed. “Your daughter slammed a door pretty hard on the way out to academy this morning. It sounded like her and Nolan were having a fight. I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “They’ve been quarrelling for days.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Dana said. “Do we do anything? Say anything?”

  Jim shook his head. “They’re young. Let ‘em work it out.”

  Dana clicked at the keyboard on her computer. “There’s some interesting news today. I’ve been reading about it all morning.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jim said, and he made his way to the coffee maker. “What’s that?”

  “Congress voted to lift the travel bans. Residential travel will be permitted again between the states, between Canada and Mexico…says here, even to certain parts of the Caribbean.”

  For the past twenty-four months, an indefinite moratorium on the travel of private persons had been put into effect. New York especially was sealed off, as it appeared that the entirety of NYVO had been contained within its borders. International travel had been shut off completely, too. Jim, Dana, Nolan and Chloe were only allowed to move to Colorado because they were part of the surviving groups of persons displaced in New York. Between the destruction of East Violet and their move across the country, they’d lived together in a survivor’s refugee camp just outside of Albany. It’d been claustrophobic to say the least.

  Jim smiled. “The Caribbean doesn’t sound bad. We’re right due for a vacation. Let’s book a cruise.”

  Dana laughed. “That sounds great, hon. But I had something else in mind.”

  “Shoot,” Jim said.

  “I haven’t been able to visit my dad since the outbreak. I was thinking of booking a flight out to Wyoming.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jim said. “To Laramie?”

  “Mhm,” Dana said. “Flights have been selling out all morning, and they’re not cheap. But, I’m not worried about the money. I still have a bunch in savings, from the survivor’s fund.”

  “Can you take the time off from teaching?” Jim asked.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” Dana said. “They’ll be able to get someone to cover.”

  Jim shrugged. “Great. I’ll call Ranger Buford at the parks department. I should be able to get a few days off without much of a fuss.”

  Dana bit her lip. “Let me just cut to the chase, Jim. I’ve already bought a ticket.”

  Jim said, “What do you mean?”

  “It was really difficult to find a pair of seats together on the same flight. The tickets sell out as soon as they go online. There’s an entire country of people who haven’t been able to drive across state lines for the past two years, let alone fly. And—honestly—I just need some time alone with him. Like I said, he’s the only family I have left.”

  Jim shook his head. “We’re married, Dana. We’re family.”

  Dana stood up at the counter, closed her laptop, pulled a purse over her shoulder. “I have to get to school,” she said, and she kissed Jim on the cheek. “Please understand that I have to do this. For me.”

  “Sure,” Jim said, halfheartedly. “Sure. I understand.”

  “I’m running late. We’ll talk about it more when I get back.”

  Jim nodded, shrugged.

  Dana grabbed a set of keys from beside the fridge and gave Jim one more kiss atop his bald head. “Thank you.”

  Her heels clicked along the kitchen tile as she made her way to the front door, and before she left she turned to Jim one last time and said: “And oh, honey, one last thing.”

  “What’s that?” Jim shouted from the kitchen.

  “I used Chloe’s bathroom this morning so as not to wake you. It reeked. She’s smoking again.”

  Nolan rolled over in bed. Chloe had been gone for a few hours now, and he’d just heard Dana walk out the front door.

  Now it’s just me and…Jim, Nolan thought, and he groaned.

  From his bed he listened to Jim stumble around the kitchen, open and close a cupboard door, and shuffle to the dining room of their large colonial. For a second, he half expected Jim to holler out, ask if he wanted some breakfast or to shoot the shit about the football game from the day before. But all that followed was silence.

  Jim and Nolan didn’t get along much, anymore.

  Nolan grabbed at his comforter, wrapped it around himself, and opened the laptop computer he kept on his nightstand. From his drawer he fetched an electronic cigarette, the size and shape of a pen, its insides gutted out so that it could be packed with marijuana. Nolan brought the pen-shaped device to his lips, clicked a button, and took a long drag. The room filled with a musky, earthy stench. When they’d first moved in together—Nolan, Chloe, Jim, and Dana—he probably wouldn’t dare to smoke inside at all; or, at the very least, try to mask the scent. But he didn’t care. Chloe had stopped bothering to try and hide her nicotine addiction, and as far as Nolan was concerned, weed was a much safer alternative and not worth making a fuss over.

  “Go to class,” Nolan said to himself, quietly. “Like hell I’d go to class.”

  He pressed a button and the laptop hummed to life. He scrolled to the computer’s web browser, opened it, and brought up YouTube.

  Nolan’s YouTube homepage listed his favorite subscriptions, ranked in order from how often he watched them. Up first was “TheDeadFronteirMan,” a guy out of Syracuse, New York, who, like Nolan, had survived the outbreak two years earlier. Now he made videos, each one graphically depicting the methods he employed to execute the NYVO victims who had tried to harm him and his family. Next up was “SkeletonGirl69,” a cute chick out of L.A. who, despite not being anywhere near New York on the day of the outbreak, offered gardening and self-sustainability tips to those looking to live off the grid in a post-NYVO word. Lastly there was “HellOnEarth,” a guy who went into great detail on w
hat the possible origins of the NYVO virus might be.

  A year after the outbreak in New York, a physician named Dr. Merrill took to the television screens of millions of Americans to offer the leading theories on what caused so many people to turn violent and bloodthirsty that one awful autumn day twelve months prior.

  In Dr. Merrill’s esteemed opinion—and, in the opinion of the United States Government—the initial culprit of the virus was the S.S. Anna. Anna was a maritime vessel that’d returned to the Port of New York after a deep-sea fishing excursion forty miles east of New York City. After months of laborious testing and experimenting, Dr. Merrill had concluded that the Anna’s crew snagged an awful parasite embedded deep within the seafloor on its return to New York and, after its arrival, unleashed that parasite onto an unsuspecting populace. Thanks to a rapid military response, the virus that the parasite unleashed had been contained within the borders of New York State, and the death toll—though at least a million—was much less catastrophic than what it might have been without swift intervention.

  Guys like “HellOnEarth” absolutely and vehemently rejected the official explanation for NYVO as cheap fiction.

  So did Nolan.

  But, as is often the case, cheap fiction sells. It sells well. And, it’s easily digested. The opinion of Dr. Merrill became the opinion of the majority, despite the many flaws and holes in its story. And people like “HellOnEarth,” people like Nolan Fischer, people who yearned for a more satisfying, truthful explanation regarding the day that ruined so many lives, had been tossed aside as kooky outcasts.

  Nolan hovered his cursor over “HellOnEarth”, saw that the uploader had posted a new video in just the past two hours. Nolan clicked the video, tapped a button on his keyboard for volume, and watched.

  “Hey demon slayers and defenders of the truth,” a surprisingly chipper voice on screen said. “Ken here from HellOnEarth and, wow, do I have some exciting news to share with you all.”

  Nolan shifted in bed, leaned in closer to the screen.

  “Followers of my video series,” Ken continued, “will know damn well that it’s not a matter of if the EV1 virus returns, but a matter of when. Which is why I’m thrilled to introduce all of my viewers to Arabella.”