by Brian Smith
Going Home
James Lee had spent a nice time travelling to a certain tropical country and was now on his way home again. His blue eyes shone like two precious stones amid his pleasantly tanned face and sandy hair.
"Would you like anything to drink, sir?" the stewardess asked him.
He sneezed and shook his head. The stewardess moved on repeating her question at every row.
"What a fantastic time," he thought. "But now it's back to work. At least I've something to tell the guys at work." He blew his nose noisily attracting one or two disapproving looks. "Damn," he thought. "Must have caught something on the plane. "
At the airport no one noticed him. It was flu season and as he just sneezed occasionally this was nothing unusual.
He sneezed again at customs. Immigration officer Laura Miller checked his passport and waved him through. She was wearing a surgical mask. Quite a lot of passengers sneezed or coughed and she didn't want to bring anything home.
James Lee sat down near the gate to his connecting flight. "Just forty minutes," he thought, "and I'll be on my way home again. Damn the nose, though." It was running again and he wiped it as best he could with an already wet tissue.
Something bumped against his foot. He bent down and saw a toy ball. He picked it up and looked around. A little boy stood there looking at him anxiously. He smiled. "There you go kiddo," and tossed the ball to him. The boy ran off without a word. "He can't be more than three or four years old," James thought. Suddenly he heard the boy crying and he turned round again.
"How often do I have to tell you that?" his mother barked angrily at him. "Don't put your fingers in your mouth! They're not clean. Just look at that ball of yours and how it's rolling around everywhere!"
Feeling a little guilty at the thought of his own not so clean fingers James walked to a washroom to get a fresh tissue. The noise of the angry mother berating her son followed him down the corridor. "Bitch," he thought. "Can't you be nice to the little kid?"
When he came back he noticed the tearful boy sitting on a seat next to his irate mother. He shook his head and glanced at the display board. "What the f?!" he said. Now other passengers were looking too. The display had just changed and showed their flight was cancelled. A crowd of disgruntled and cross passengers quickly gathered around the flight desk. All he heard was something about weather conditions and flying the next day. He picked up his bag and made his way to the exit. "If I can't fly today I might as well have a good time in town, "he thought. Determined to make the best of the evening he took a taxi and dropped off his bag at a cheap hotel. There was a subway station near his hotel. He caught a train to go downtown. "How miserable folks here look," he thought as he compared their tired, stressed faces with the people he had seen abroad.
After dinner he went for a drink, and that first drink was followed by another and another as he wandered from bar to bar. Later that night he felt a different kind of urge and visited a hooker. He was half drunk and finished quickly. After some more drinks here and there with changing company he went to his hotel where he spent the first half of the night puking and the second half sleeping off his drunken stupor.
Laura Miller, the immigration officer, took off her latex gloves and surgical mask when she finished her duty. "What a long day," she thought and rubbed her eyes transferring micro-organisms from her face to her hands. In the locker room she took out a sandwich and ate hungrily before changing out of her uniform and going home.
The stewardess from James Lee's flight was already sleeping. The next day she would have another long flight; to Europe this time.
The passengers in the seats around James had been luckier than him. None of their transfer flights had been cancelled and they were already safely at home in L.A., Miami, Chicago, Toronto and a few other places by the time James was throwing up in his hotel.
And the little boy with his ball was tucked up in bed dreaming about the wonderful time he'd spent at the beach. And best of all how he would tell his friends about it all.
The next day James got his wake-up call. He yawned and cursed. "Oh hell, man, this headache is killing me." He gulped down some aspirin and looked in the bathroom mirror. "Eyes like two piss holes in the snow," he muttered to himself. His nice tan seemed to have vanished over night and now two bloodshot eyes surrounded by a ghostly pallid face stared back at him in the mirror. "Creeping hangover," he said and coughed. "First thing back home and I've got the flu or something, too."
After some strong coffee he felt better again and hopped on a cab to the airport.
"Just finished your vacation?" the driver said to strike up a conversation.
James nodded and sneezed.
"Ah, it's the flu season here now," the cabbie said. "Gotta be careful. I'm lucky myself. Ain't had the flu in twenty years, always healthy, always on the job," he said and chuckled.
James wiped his nose. "Not so lucky myself. I've just got back from paradise and this is my welcome gift."
The driver laughed and soon dropped him off. "Have a nice day, sir," he said happy with the generous tip.
By the time James got home it was late afternoon. He felt awful, took some flu medication he still had and lay down for a nap.
The stewardess from his first flight was already in Europe. She had developed a slight cold and sneezed a few times on board the plane. She tried her best to hide it but still overheard one of the passengers saying "shouldn't come to work with a cold."
Laura Miller also sneezed a few times when she got back to work. When her second mask got wet she saw that there were no more surgical masks left. "What the heck," she thought. "If I'm sick already it doesn't matter anymore. Plenty of other folks walking around sneezing and no one bothers with a mask, so why should I bother?"
With this rather selfish though perhaps understandable attitude she went on checking passports all day, occasionally sneezing, but always covering her mouth and nose. Of course, to cover her mouth and nose she had to use the same hands that were handling other people's travel documents all day.
The other passengers from James' first flight were by then busy sneezing at neighbours and friends, the little boy was sneezing in his playgroup, the taxi driver, people from the subway train, from the restaurant, the bars, the hotel and even the hapless hooker had all developed a slight irritation in the nose that made them sneeze occasionally. But no one paid any attention. It was the flu season after all.
The next day was a Sunday. "And thank God for that," James thought. "I've never felt that bad after a vacation before. Where're the friggin' pills," he cursed as he went through the bathroom cabinet. His hands were shaking and a cold sweat formed pearls of perspiration on his forehead. "Gonna have to call in sick tomorrow if this continues," he muttered. He found what he was looking for and went back to bed. It was a restless, feverish night and he remembered almost nothing of it when he awoke on Monday morning. The fever had gone and even though he still had a slight cough and runny nose he felt much better and refreshed. "Nothing like a good night's sleep to shake off a cold," he said. Not long after he was back at work, still sneezing but more than happy to tell everyone about his great vacation.
On Tuesday Laura Miller didn't go to work at the airport. She had a fever and stayed in bed. "Good-bye," her son said and kissed her before going to school.
"Anything I can get you honey?" her husband asked.
"I'll be fine," she said and closed her eyes though she was far from sure if she would be fine. She felt awful. Her heart was pounding. Her blood was rushing through her head giving her strange angry sensations.
The door clanged as her husband left for work.
As the morning progressed Laura felt the blood throb in her veins. She turned from side to side feeling angry and getting yet angrier with every beat of her heart. She felt full of energy, full of raw strength. And she knew she had been wronged. Who or what didn't matter. All that mattered was her anger, her burning fury. She got out of bed but she didn't know where she was. All underst
anding had left her mind. There were photos of her family on the table. They made her angry. With a sudden outburst of violent anger she swept them onto the floor. The sound of breaking glass made her feel good. It was what she wanted. But it was over so quickly. Like a drug addict wanting his next high she quickly picked up a bottle and threw it at the window. It shattered and the sound was delicious feeding her anger, her lust for violence.
The garden was visible through the broken window. She quickly ran outside. She saw someone moving.
"Morning Laura," her neighbour called while concentrating on the flowers he was watering. "Not at work today?"
She heard the words but they meant nothing to her. Only that voice, it was somehow familiar and it made her so angry; it was the anger of a desperate addict who couldn't get his next shot. In a wild fury she shot across the lawn and jumped over the fence at her neighbour. She didn't notice the surprised look on his face, but his shouts and screams of agony were so delicious to hear and the smell of his blood as she bit him and tore at his skin was wonderful.
Someone kicked her off her victim but she felt no pain. In a rabid fury she went on biting and scratching anyone she could reach. She only stopped after someone put five bullets into her.
James didn't watch much TV. So when he went to bed that day he missed the evening news that reported a number of strange and puzzling cases where ordinary people suddenly went out of their minds and attacked anyone they saw.
And had James watched the morning news he would have seen worrying reports about thousands of such cases across the U.S. and overseas; about emergency services being stretched to breaking point; about the CDC looking into a possible pandemic; about officials - many of whom were seen sneezing - announcing emergency measures to ensure public order.
By noonday nobody was talking about anything else than the strange outbreak of violence and when the first case occurred in James office he decided it would be wiser to go home and lie low.
He locked and bolted the door when he got home, closed the shutters and locked himself in his bedroom watching events unfold on TV.
During the afternoon the National Guard was mobilized. The police had already been overrun and hospitals didn't function anymore with too many hospital workers being attacked by their patients.
In the evening the lights suddenly went out. James shook his head in disbelief. "Should've stayed on the beach," he said.
For the whole of that night and the next day he stayed indoors careful not to make any sound or light. The air outside was sometimes filled with screams of terror or barbaric cries of bloodlust. The day after everything was quiet. He remained indoors for another two days but then his food and water ran out. He carefully opened the front door and went to his car. He slowly drove into town. Everywhere the same picture greeted him, that of dead mangled bodies lying on the roads, in doorways, in flowerbeds and shop windows. And there were rats, millions of rats feeding and gnawing.
"There's no one left," he said. "Nobody but me." Dazed he pulled up at a supermarket and loaded his car full of canned food and other things. He drove straight back home. "Shit, shit, man, what am I gonna do? There're just bodies and rats everywhere."
Although James didn't know it, by that time he was the last American left alive. And he didn't know what to do. The city was not some kind of exciting place to explore like he had seen in some films, it was a place filled with the stench of millions of dead bodies.
When the power shut down emergency generators at nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage facilities automatically switched on. The diesel generators provided the electricity needed to cool fuel rods. When the diesel fuel ran out temperatures in the cooling water began to soar. Not long after at hundreds of such facilities across the U.S. alone black smoke was billowing into the sky.
A fortnight later James Lee, the last American, died of radiation sickness.
