Of Starlight and Plague

by Beth Hersant

  “This is a good poem,” Louella said. “It’s all about spring. Who here can’t wait for warmer weather?”

  Hands shot up from the assembled children.

  “Yeah, me too,” she nodded and began to read of the green months when “the sap it thaws and begins to rise/ And the swet it starts out on/ a feller’s forred.”

  Outside a frozen wind blew. At the Midwood Medical Center, just across Fifth Street from the school, the flu patients who’d been hospitalized would have welcomed a blast of cold air. Their fevers hovered around the 104°F mark and their sheets were drenched with sweat. In his bed near the window, Eli Geissle quietly died. The disease had whittled away at him for days, carving away at his mind until he could not hold a coherent thought and no longer knew his own name. As Louella settled the children down for story time across the street, the last gasp of Eli’s dying soul sent a shudder through his chest and an exhalation of air through his trembling lips. He lay still. His body cooled. While his heart still beat, the man was gone. And then slowly a subtle warmth originated in his stomach and began to spread. At first it felt good, like a sip of brandy taken to banish the chill. But soon it intensified, cramping his stomach muscles painfully. Eli sat up suddenly and drew his knees up to his chest; oh, it hurt and he let out a low moan.

  Angela Clemmer, one of the nurses on duty that morning, rushed to him. “Eli? What is it?” She grabbed a nearby basin. “Are you going to be sick?”

  She stood close to him, her hand on his back. He bristled at this. His skin prickled with a needling oversensitivity and the smell of her perfume irritated his nose. But underneath that smell he caught a hint of something else. It was more basic — the elemental scent of sweat and flesh. His stomach, which had been unable to abide food of any kind for the last two days, suddenly growled. His spasming abdominal muscles relaxed. He sat up straighter and looked at her. It was a curious expression, the sort you wear when an elusive answer finally becomes clear. And then he grabbed her.

  Angela gasped and stumbled backward, but he had such a vise-like grip on her arms that he came right with her. An IV line tore from the dorsum of his hand and his catheter ripped free as the two of them toppled onto the floor. In another moment he was on top of her, pinning her beneath his weight. He buried his face in her neck and a hard, sharp pain tore through her. She had all of seven seconds before she passed out — not enough time to truly register the fact that she was dying. She felt only that she was falling backwards, in darkness. The other patients on the ward, however, were watching intently. Their shattered minds took in every detail with a keen attention that they had not been capable of in days. They watched as the blood pooled around Angela and Eli. They listened as the nurse’s right shoe drummed convulsively on the tiles and as Eli sucked noisily at the wound he’d made. But it was the smell — that dank, faintly metallic musk of spilled blood — that roused them.

  At first as they moved through the halls, doctors and nurses ran to help them. They were too ill to be out of bed and the Chief of Medicine had visions of some of them collapsing and smacking their heads on the way down. But these thoughts were banished when the first medic, an intern by the name of Hartwell, was grabbed and brought down hard by an eighty-six year old patient with mobility issues. Once on the ground the crowd swarmed over him, tearing at him with their teeth. His screams jumped an octave and then ended abruptly as a spray of arterial blood arced across a nearby wall. The rush to help the stricken patients became a panicked retreat.

  Across the street, just as Louella read the line “a-gitten down/ At the old spring on his knees,” the door opened making her jump. But it was just Edna Hinkle.

  “Time to go, guys,” she announced. “What do you say to Mrs. Bernhard for coming in to help today?”

  This was answered by the singsong “Thank you, Mrs. Bernhard” you get from small children when prompted.

  Louella chuckled. “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll take them out and hand them over to their folks,” Edna said as she herded the class toward their pegs.

  Louella helped Mae wriggle into her puffy pink jacket. She grabbed the child’s Scooby Doo backpack and they followed the class out into the watery January light.

  As Mrs. Hinkle caught sight of a parent, she’d tap the corresponding child on the head as a signal to go. It was during this exchange that the front doors of the hospital flew open and an orderly, Mitchell Fuhrmann, pelted out into the snow. He hit a poorly gritted patch of ice and fell. Before he could regain his feet, Mayor Albitz (in bare feet and a flapping hospital gown) dove on top of him, clawing at him like a wild animal. Mitchell screamed, actually head-butted the Mayor and pushed him off. As he struggled to his feet, two more people plowed into him.

  This was the vanguard of the pajama-clad army that flowed into the streets. For a moment everyone outside the school froze … and then the crowd broke apart with people screaming and dashing in all directions. Louella grabbed Mae’s hand and ran. It was only a short distance across the parking lot to her car, but it took forever to get there. The journey, for the most part, was a blur. But there were moments — usually accompanied by a physical jolt — that focused her attention on some detail. When her boots hit a patch of ice and her ankle twisted painfully under her, she skidded to a temporary halt and there was Elsie Benfield clinging desperately to her son, Caleb. Dr. Rhoads tore the child from her grip and bit into the boy’s scalp with tooth-shattering ferocity. Louella picked up her screaming granddaughter and ran. But Mae was heavy and the old woman felt as if her lungs would burst. The car was in sight now, straight ahead. But at that moment Denny Latshaw staggered in front of her. He was clutching his daughter, Anna, and still attempting to run in spite of the two people who clung to his jacket. They finally managed to bring him down. As he fell, he literally threw the child away from himself, screaming, “Run!” Anna, God bless her, tried. She took off as fast as her little legs would carry her. Josh Heffley, a boy in Sam’s class, gave chase. He ran with all the nimbleness of youth and didn’t even slow down as he scooped the girl up and carried her off. Louella dodged these obstacles, her eyes on her Chevy, her teeth gritted with the exertion and with Mae’s shrill cries spurring her onward. And she almost made it.

  Suddenly she was yanked backward by the hair. Still clutching Mae to her, she fell heavily onto her rump. She looked up and there was Josh Heffley again, high school track star extraordinaire and, apparently, the most prolific vector for the infection currently in play.

  “Josh … please,” Louella gasped and then the teenager was struck by another body. It was Sam. Her grandson came in low, his chin level with Joshua’s gut. On contact, he brought his hips and arms forward in one smooth movement, hoisting Josh off his feet and slamming him into a nearby car. It was a perfectly-executed football tackle and then Sam had Louella by the arm.

  “Here!” she screamed, passing Mae to him. “Go! Go!”

  The boy clutched his little cousin and took off like he was going for a touchdown. Louella ran after them. She pressed the button on her car key and the Chevy’s doors unlocked with a cheerful “blip” just as Sam reached it. He dove into the back seat with Mae and slammed the door shut.

  In another moment, Louella joined them. “Are you ok?” she gasped. “Mae? Sam?” She leaned over the front seat to look at them. “Are you bleeding?”

  Panting heavily, Sam shook his head. “We’re fine.”

  “Get her strapped in and get your seat belt on.” Lou turned around and started fumbling for her inhaler, but her few seconds of respite were over. Joshua was on his feet again. He charged at their car, colliding with the back window on Sam’s side, cracking the glass. Louella stomped on the gas pedal. Her wheels spun briefly, then gained purchase on the grit and the car shot forward.

  The quickest way out of town would have been to turn left out of the parking lot, take Fifth Street for one block and then follow River Road to
the Third Street bridge. However, that way was blocked. The street was a chaos of crashed vehicles and the swarming infected. She veered right and headed out to Lincoln Avenue. It was the second widest street in town, running perpendicular to Main Street and while there were accidents here too, she had room to maneuver around them. She made decent progress until old George Nuss ran out in front of her with the mayor’s wife hot on his heels. He stopped, turned to face his pursuer, and raised a little Beretta .22 bobcat. As Irene Albitz plowed into him, he pulled the trigger. The impact, however, knocked his arm to the side and the bullet shattered one of Louella’s headlights. George was blasting away now and as the bullets flew, Louella yanked the steering wheel to the left and careened down First Street.

  She was going too fast and clipped parked cars and mailboxes as she went. Farther down First Street, a pickup truck had T-boned a Ford C-Max and in their panic the drivers had abandoned the vehicles. There was no way through. Feeling like a cow being funneled down a cattle chute at a slaughterhouse, Louella was forced to turn right onto Bugler Avenue. She could have taken the narrow alley to get to Main Street but that too was blocked — this time by a minivan. A crowd of about eight infected had shattered its windows to get at the people inside. Louella veered away from the carnage and found herself in the parking lot behind First Federal Savings and Loan.

  She skidded to a halt and sat trembling at the wheel. The parking lot was empty and blessedly quiet.

  “Gran?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “There’s only one way out of this lot. We have to go back the way we came.”

  Louella turned in her seat to face them. In doing so she accidentally hit the radio control that Levi had installed on her steering wheel. With a sudden crescendo, there was David Seville and his fucking chipmunks “Walla-Walla-Bing-Banging” again. The absurdity of it was too much. She and Sam burst into hysterical laughter.

  Collapsing weakly back into her seat, she wiped tears from her eyes. “Need to focus,” she muttered.

  The boy unbuckled his safety belt, leaned through the gap in the seats and hit the Media icon on the MyLink screen. He tapped the listing for “Sam’s phone” and a different song began to play. The first thing Louella heard was a throbbing drumbeat. In her mind’s eye she saw again Dr. Rhoads biting into little Caleb Benfield’s head and at that moment a low voice on the radio commented, “Oh shit.” Oh shit indeed. She glanced up into her rearview mirror and looked into the white, terrified faces of her grandchildren.

  “That’s not going to be you,” she said.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “Put your seat belt back on.”

  Down with the Sickness by Disturbed is not a relaxing, easy-listening song to play in day spas or elevators; it is a wailing ode to utter insanity. And oddly enough, it calmed her. She sat for a moment gathering herself, hardening herself for the task ahead. She didn’t care, frankly, if she got infected and she didn’t care if she died. But those two kids were getting out of here. No matter what.

  Calmly, deliberately, she put her glasses back on. “Hang on,” she said and hit the gas pedal.

  There was only one way to go. She had to backtrack just to keep moving. But there, like a recurring fucking nightmare, stood Josh Heffley at the corner of First and Lincoln. She hit the brakes. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. This was the boy who used to come over to the farm for sleepovers with Sam. This was a child who loved Spaghetti-Os and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She’d bandaged his skinned knees and gotten him a weekend job at Levi’s garage. She could still see that boy beneath the smears of blood on his face. But as he looked at her, there was no recognition, just the same black indifference you see during Shark Week: a Great White eyeing up a grey seal.

  “Just go, just go, please Joshua, pick any other direction,” she whispered.

  But then he screeched — a shrill, unholy sound that brought gooseflesh out on her arms. He ran full pelt at their car. With a choked sob, Louella stomped on the gas. She hit the boy while going about forty-five and on impact he buckled at the waist, his head and outstretched hands slamming onto the hood of her car. She hit the brakes and he flew backward, out into the intersection to land in a bloody heap. She maneuvered around him and sped off toward Main Street.

  At the corner of Lincoln and Main, she had to stop. In front of her there was a line of stationary traffic who waited, horns blaring, for their turn to nip past the barricades at the far end of the Main Street Bridge. The people of Midwood seemed to have decided en masse to get the hell out of Dodge. But it was very slow going. Two old school buses and more sandbags than she’d seen during the last flood created a chicane that cars had to weave through at little more than a crawl. It would be the same at every exit. As Louella considered her options, a cacophony of shrieks and screams sounded behind her.

  “Oh shit!” Sam’s voice was hoarse as he stared out the back window.

  The infected surged up Lincoln Avenue behind them. Louella leaned on her horn and waved frantically at the owner of the Jeep Cherokee that was blocking her path onto Main Street. He took one look in the direction she was pointing and kicked his Jeep into reverse. It collided with the car behind and pushed it back a little. Next he rammed the car in front, shunting it ahead. Back and forth he went until he could clear no more room for himself and then with a grinding of metal he made a sloppy U-turn and headed back away from the bridge. In an instant, Louella shot into the gap he’d made. But she wasn’t quick enough. Mae screamed as Doctor Rhoads appeared at her window. He hammered so hard on the glass; Lou was sure that, broken hand or not, in another minute he’d be inside. She jerked the wheel to the right, grinding the man’s body between the side of her Chevy and the front bumper of a car that was trying to force its way forward. The doctor screamed and flung out a bloody hand to leave its print on her windshield. And then he fell and she felt her back wheels skid over him as she accelerated away. She turned right, away from the bridge, and darted up another alley and onto Cemetery Road.

  This led to the old covered bridge and again the road was thick with traffic as people tried to get past the barricades on their way out of town. But Louella had already decided to bypass that mess. She turned into the cemetery itself. She knew it well — hell, she was down here every other week tending the graves of her husband and her son. She knew precisely where she needed to go. At the back of the graveyard, there lay an impressive mausoleum that belonged to the Ott family. Josiah Ott, Midwood’s version of Mr. Magoo, had once occupied a sprawling mansion on private woodland just behind the cemetery. For convenience sake, he’d paid to have his own private entrance to the boneyard there, next to the family mausoleum. But no one had lived in the Ott Mansion for over forty years now and it had fallen into ruin. So had that old gate. It was pure rust. Louella suspected that the chain that had been threaded through its bars to lock it shut was actually sturdier than the old hinges that connected panel to post. She meant to try those hinges now. As she revved her engine, she muttered quietly to herself. At first Sam couldn’t hear what she was saying, but then he caught a phrase: “dei nohma loss heilich sei” — “Hallowed be thy name.” She was reciting the Lord’s Prayer just as her old Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother had taught her.

  That made sense. Because this, he realized with chilling clarity, was the moment of truth. If they couldn’t get out this way, they would not be getting out at all.

  He joined her. “Dei Wille loss geduh sei /uff die Erd wie im Himmel.” (Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven).

  And then Louella hit the gas. With another squeal of tires (she was turning into quite the drag racer today) she barreled into the gate and sent the left panel flying.

  They emerged onto the old country road just past the barricades and darted over the bridge. Sam whooped and clapped at their escape. But as they emerged from the cover of the
trees, sunlight struck Louella’s windshield and the bloody handprint on it glowed a warm red. Doc Rhoads, she thought. The hands that delivered my children, that gave me a sedative the night James died, that set Eben’s broken arm when he fell in the barn. She pulled over, hastily unclipped her seat belt and hopped out of the car.

  “Gran? Are you ok?” Sam asked, but Louella could not respond. She stood, hands on her knees, being violently sick. I killed him, she thought, and Josh. Oh God.

  She returned to the car, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

  “Gran?”

  “I’m fine. Let’s just get moving.”

  Chapter Seven

  Day One

  “So long awaited that its coming was a shock.”

  Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

  “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

  Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It

  Throat and nose still burning from being sick, Louella stopped at the Grissinger Farm on her way home. It was the first chance she got to hug her grandkids. Little Mae climbed into her arms and clung to her like a limpet and even Sam was reluctant to leave her side.

  “Bib? Arnold?” she called in a hoarse voice — she’d really done a number on her throat with all that retching.

  The front door banged open and Arnold appeared carrying a shotgun. “Is it just you?” he asked scanning the road. Bib, also armed, appeared behind him.

  “Yeah. Look, you’ve gotta get outta here. It’s all kicked off in town and you are too damn close.”

  “Oh we know.” Bib, her face ashen, nodded to the left of her front porch and Louella noticed for the first time the stiff forms lying there covered by a coarse, brown stable blanket. Two pairs of feet stuck out from underneath — one clad in work boots and one bare, dark and swollen with frostbite.

  “Who?” Louella asked.