by Beth Hersant
She told them over and over again that they must never feel guilty because they had lived. That is what their parents had wanted more than anything and that’s why the grown-ups at the farm worked so hard. “You are the future,” she told them. “You’re the whole point.”
These were necessary conversations, but school could not be all work and learning and group therapy sessions. They also needed time to rest and play. They needed recess. In her mother’s recipe box, she had found a card written in her grandmother’s spidery handwriting. It read:
For Preserved Children.
You will need:
One half dozen children
One farmyard
One sunny day
One or more dogs
Mix the children and the dogs together. Add them to the farmyard and stir in the sunny day. Sprinkle the yard with flowers. Cover with a clear blue sky and bake in the sun until brown.
And this was the recipe she followed that day and children’s laughter echoed through a fallen world and made it sound like paradise. Up on the ridge overlooking the valley, a man listened and studied Camp North Star through his binoculars. Looking for a weakness … and a way in.
Chapter Fourteen
Rock of Ages
“While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eyes shall close in death,
When I rise to world unknown,
And behold Thee on Thy throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.”
Augustus M. Toplady, “Rock of Ages”
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
The corn was getting high, but still had a way to go before harvest. The ears were thin, the kernels pale. One of Louella’s fields was a sea of wheat, but there was still green on the stalks. Normally this would be the time to have Russ Johnson out to service the harvester so that it would be ready for use come July. But Russ had been shot along with the other infected who’d attacked the farm. Therefore the job fell to Levi. It was well outside his comfort zone. He was an excellent mechanic and if you’d asked him to work on a Chevy or a Ford or a Buick, he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But a combine harvester was another thing entirely and he had to rely on the manual to walk him through the process.
According to the literature, “The importance of replacing worn components cannot be overemphasized.” This statement was followed by a laundry list of things that can go wrong and Levi worked through it systematically. Happily, the machine seemed to be in pretty good shape. It was only when he looked under the feederhouse and removed the rock trap door that he began to suspect there was a problem. The rasp bars looked different from the picture in the manual.
In the margin, his late brother James had written: “If a No.2 pencil is higher than the cleats — replace.” The part did not pass the pencil test and Levi sighed heavily. Where the hell was he going to get a replacement rasp bar?
“Is it really necessary?” Ginny asked, as she sat at the table darning a pair of his socks.
“Yep,” Louella answered from the sink where she was washing dishes. “A worn rasp bar won’t thresh the grain properly. It’ll gum the cylinder up. That’ll make the engine work harder and wear out the parts faster.”
“So that’s a big yes then.” Fletch dried a skillet and put it in the cupboard.
“But where are we gonna get a replacement? I’ve got nothing like it at my garage.” Levi turned the part over in his hands.
“The dealership is out on the highway,” Louella shrugged.
Patience shook her head. “It burnt down.”
“What?” Lou was genuinely surprised. “When did that happen?”
“Don’t know. But I passed it when I was scoping out Sage Foods. It’s been completely gutted.”
“Well, shit.” Louella was hit again with the horrible realization that some things were just no longer available. Today it was a tractor part, tomorrow it could be antibiotics. All her life, she’d always been able to get what she needed and yet she had never truly appreciated that fact. Not until now when so much was out of reach. The thought sent its customary jolt of fear through her.
“What about Hackett’s?” Levi asked. “Alistair used to carry John Deere.”
Hackett’s Parts and Service Center was located out on Old Mill Road. It was a great cavernous building with room for a service area, repair and overhaul bays, an office that smelled of cheap cigars, and storage for parts and machinery at the back. When the recon team first approached it, they were especially wary. Hackett had a guard dog he called Cujo and damned if the bastard didn’t live up to that name. There, on the fence, was a sign with the black silhouette of a pit bull etched above the message:
WARNING
Cross the Line
Your Ass is Mine!
The dog was so aggressive that Wyn would only treat him if he wore a muzzle. And that was before the infection. If Cujo had New Rabies, then he would be absolutely lethal.
But Cujo, it transpired, was dead. They could see his carcass lying just inside the chainlink fence, his belly ripped open and most of his entrails gone. Upon seeing this, Sam relaxed and was about to open the gate when Patience shot out a hand to stop him.
“We don’t have to worry about the dog,” she said quietly, “but aren’t you just a little worried about what killed it?” She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
A screech echoed from the garage and old man Hackett came sprinting out into the daylight. He flung himself against the fence, scrabbling frantically to get at the people on the other side. Patience rammed the straight claw end of a crowbar through the chainlink and into Alistair’s skull. He collapsed next to his dog.
Pat was thorough in her recon work; she gave her team every detail she could to help prepare them for the mission ahead. But at the same time, they all understood that anything could happen once they left the safety of the farm. Hence, they suited up in their protective gear with its heavy, tear-resistant fabrics and hoods and goggles and boots and gloves. And while that had been good for the winter months, it was June and unseasonably warm with temperatures topping out in the high eighties. It could have been worse — Louella’s grandmother had once told of a day back in 1933 when the mercury hit 107 °F — but back then no one had to venture out in hazmat gear. And so the timing of the mission suddenly became more complicated. They still had to sweep and secure the area. They had to post lookouts and find the needed part and all of that had to be executed carefully and methodically. But now there was an added time pressure. If they took too long, they’d overheat in all that gear.
The garage itself was like a sauna; it had been sealed up for winter and obviously Alistair had been too far gone to open it up and let some air in as summer came on. Hence the thermometer in Hackett’s office read 95 °F. To Fletcher it was damn near unbearable. It made him feel like a damp rag that was trying to wring itself of all moisture. He didn’t realize that, because of his age, he was suffering from heat stress. Anyone over sixty-five can find themselves at greater risk from high temperatures and he was now working his way down the list of common symptoms. He’d gone profoundly pale and his muscles cramped painfully — especially his stomach muscles as a wave of nausea swept over him. Most worryingly, sweat stung his eyes and blurred his vision and he kept pushing an awkward finger up under his goggles to wipe it away.
The world was too damn dangerous to go traipsing around blind. In frustration he whipped his goggles off and rubbed hurriedly at his eyes. As the details of the garage came back into focus, he spotted a flutter of movement in the corner of the room. His first assumption was that it was a bit of black tarp rustling in the breeze. But then he realized: there was no breeze, no free-flowing air in the garage at all. So just what the hell was moving over there?
“Got it!” Levi announced triumphantly and at that sound the shadow rose into the air and fractured into individual wisps of blackness.
“Bats!” Fletcher bellowed and every member of the group hit the deck. They yanked the drawstrings on their hoods tighter and pulled thick scarves up over their mouths and noses to cover the last of their exposed skin.
But Fletch was too near and too slow and the swarm hit him full in the face. There was a flurry of papery wings and sharp pain as bats latched onto his chin, his cheeks, his forehead so that they could bite and bite and bite. Fletcher screamed and flailed at them, but the attack continued until Patience reached him and literally tore the bats free. And then strong hands under his armpits pulled him up and half-guided, half-dragged him out the door. Fletcher could taste his own blood as he gasped for air. The world was a blur around him; the high-pitched voices of his team seemed to babble utter nonsense and only one thing made itself known to him with any clarity. It was a single thought. I’m dead.
The call came in over the radio as the team sped back to the farm. One man down, infected. Multiple bites. They had already discussed their options should the situation arise. If the bite was on an extremity, then they would apply a tourniquet and amputate the affected limb. For this reason, the team had a Black and Decker 40-volt cordless chainsaw as part of its first aid kit. It was an awful prospect, but at least you could stop the infection and save the life. When, however, the bite was located somewhere else — on the torso or face — then the treatment protocol became much more of a gamble.
Louella quickly lit a fire in the hearth and thrust the end of a steel poker into the flames. In the days before the rabies vaccine, the only logical treatment was cauterization. You had to try to burn the infection out. That is what they did in October 1831 when a rapid wolf rampaged through Arbois, France. Some of the victims went to the blacksmith to have their wounds cauterized and an eight-year-old Louis Pasteur could hear their terrible screaming. Likewise, when a young Emily Brontë was bitten by a rabid dog, the child marched straight into the kitchen, grabbed an iron out of the fire, and burned out the infection herself. As a result of that moment of incredible bravery, she survived to write Wuthering Heights. The people of Arbois were not so lucky. Eight members of Pasteur’s community died of hydrophobia. Therefore cauterization was a crapshoot. Taking hot iron to Fletcher’s face did not guarantee his survival, but it was the only shot he had.
Seated in a chair and so scared that he was literally panting, Fletch slipped a kitchen towel into his mouth and Niamh tied it firmly at the back of his head. Alec held one arm and Owen the other and Louella hugged him from behind. And then Wyn went to work with the iron. Fletcher’s face was covered in bites and scratches — some ragged and inflamed and others little more than small red dots and Wyn knew he had to go deep on each of them. With the first touch of steel, Fletcher arched his back and screamed — a high muffled sound around the gag. As the iron came at him again, he yanked his right arm, pulling Alec off balance and there was a general flailing as they all tried to restrain him. Again and again, the iron was reheated and applied to the wounds and Fletch bucked and cried and Louella held on. She was not the one being tortured, but every spasm of his pain communicated itself directly to her; as she gripped him, her body was forced to writhe with his. She took every knock as he arched and thrashed and threw his head back into her chest until finally the job was done. Lou knelt in front of him as he collapsed into her arms and wept.
She gently coaxed him back onto the chair so that Niamh could clean and bandage his wounds. It was decided that he would bed down in the barn where Louella had a separate quarantine pen for sick or calving livestock. They could lock him in there and wait and see if the treatment was successful. But first Lou helped him into the downstairs bathroom, cleaned him up and brought him fresh boxers and sweats because, at some point in all the pandemonium, he had wet himself. They set up a cot in the calving pen and gave him Tramadol for the pain. And Louella had James’s old easy chair carried out there so she could sit with him.
When, however, she tried to drag it into the pen, Fletcher became very agitated. “Get out! You are not bringing that in here!”
“Fletch, you’re going to be fi…”
But he was on his feet now, drunkenly trying to push her out of the stall. “You are not sitting in here! Damn it, Louella!” He would not be persuaded to lie back down until she was out of the pen and had chained and padlocked the gate.
She stood there trembling, looking at him through the bars. “Fletch, if you’re infected, you’re not contagious yet. It’s too early.”
“I don’t care.”
“Besides, I think we got it all.”
“Yeah, Wyn was pretty thorough.” Fletch lay down and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh God, Lou.”
She didn’t know what to say to him. The man had been attacked by a swarm of ravening bats, he’d been tortured with an iron brand and now lay in a barn waiting to see if he was doomed. No words were an adequate response to that. Except perhaps “I’m here” and “I love you.” But the Tramadol was kicking in now and every time Fletcher blinked, his eyes remained closed a little longer. Finally, mercifully, he fell asleep.
Ginny sat with him while Louella went back to the farmhouse.
“Is there anything else we can do?” she asked Wyn.
He could only shake his head grimly in reply.
“Right,” she sighed. “I want to get a few things out to the barn, make it feel a little less like a cage and then, as bizarre as it seems, we need to carry on as usual while we wait.”
“I want to post a guard on him,” Patience said.
“We will if he develops symptoms. Until then, I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Fletcher was out for the count and so they were able to spruce up the pen without waking him. They placed a low bench beside his cot with books and a lamp and a glass of water. And the kids drew him pictures and made ‘Get Well Soon’ cards that Louella taped to the walls and bars. Bib cooked up a batch of chicken soup and Peg brought in a vase of orange and yellow nasturtiums, although these were already starting to fade in the heat. They set up a fan to keep him cool and laid a fleece blanket out in case he got a chill. It was homier, nicer, and hopefully it would cheer him to wake up and find his cell transformed into something that looked a little more normal. But all Louella could think was: “We’ve just given him a nicer place to die.” And she reached for the tablets in her pocket.
Her headaches came every day now and it took more and more medication to beat them into submission. She found that two extra strength Tylenol and six Aleve would at least keep her functional. But as she sat and watched Fletcher sleep, the tablets did not even begin to touch the pain. And when a sheepish Levi informed her that (in all the chaos of getting Fletch out of the garage) he’d dropped the needed tractor part, Louella smiled at him kindly, told him they’d sort it out, and (as soon as he left the barn) threw up in the sink.
Fletcher had a hard night. Niamh came in to prop him up with more pillows, because apparently the burns on his face would swell more if he lay down flat. Whether the pillow trick worked or not, Louella couldn’t tell. She sat and watched as the pain dragged him out of sleep again and again. Sometimes he would shift around under the thin sheet, but then swiftly pass out again. Other times he would awaken fully and remember the bats and the virus and the torture. He was sure in these moments that he was infected; he’d turn and they’d have to put him down. He wept, from pain and exhaustion yes, but also from fear. He did not want to die. It didn’t matter that he was sixty-five years old and had had a good run. He wasn’t ready for it all to be over. He wanted more time. In his most lucid moments, he grappled with the idea that he was running out of nexts. There had always been a next — his next meal, his next book, another spring, a tomorrow. He could not conceive of a moment from which nothing would follow on. A day would co
me when there would be no more nexts. No more of him. It seemed incomprehensible that he should no longer exist.
He found these thoughts hard to articulate — his mind was too blasted. Yet as he rambled on, Louella got the gist. She was convinced that even in death there is a next, a crossing over, a heaven. But he did not believe in such things and this wasn’t the time for Sunday school. She tried a few times to go in to him, to hold his hand and hug him as he cried, but he would not let her get anywhere near. And so she sat outside the pen all through that long night.
In the morning Bib brought him some thin broth — she wanted to see if he could keep that down before offering him anything more substantial. And Wyn changed his bandages and checked his temperature which, thank God, was still normal. But even through all this, Louella was not admitted into the cage.
“I don’t understand you,” Louella said quietly when they were alone again. “You let the others in, why not me?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” she sighed wearily. “If I thought you were dangerous, I wouldn’t let Bib or Wyn in there with you. Your temperature is down and you’re still you. So what exactly is the problem?” She had not meant to sound harsh, but exhaustion was taking its toll and her head throbbed with nauseating regularity.
He looked at her for a long moment and then said, “Even when we were little, I loved you so much. And it took a while to understand why. I mean, I had other friends. What was so damn different about you?”
“So what was it?”
“It was you and all your dolls.”
