by Sabina Green
I let the scenario play out again and again, it was so much more bearable than reality. It was almost amusing how devastated I’d been back at the hospital, when the doctor told me about the cancer and gave me six months to live. He took away my whole life… And then when I met Mark and The Collective, those six months seemed like an entire lifetime. It was all a matter of perspective.
I emerged from my daydreams. When was the last time I’d seen any news reports? I reached for my handbag, carelessly abandoned under my bed, and took out my phone. I hadn’t turned it on since the flight attendant asked all passengers to switch off their electronic devices. As soon as it was back on, text notifications started popping out one after the other. From Emma–I realised with a flash of guilt that I’d completely forgotten about her–, the sergeant, my other colleagues and a few friends. From Mark.
I didn’t bother reading them and looked up the latest virus statistics. News about the plague had taken over everything else, the virus was all people were talking about. Laboratories had confirmed that it was man-made, and released deliberately. The number of infected people was rising at an alarming speed, despite all safety procedures. There was even a website showing the overall number of deaths.
Deaths!
I’d known this would happen, but this quickly? I stared at my phone in shock. It was a miracle that I, someone from the first line, was still alive, while others, infected much later, were already dying. Back in Perth, I’d heard Molly mention that weaker people would succumb more quickly, but I never thought that I’d live to see the irreversible destruction of lives. I’d assumed that all the other deaths would come long after my own…
It was a miracle I was still alive.
Then I corrected myself. It wasn’t a miracle so much as a curse.
Mark
In the last ten days I’d called Connie countless times, and all the calls went straight to voicemail. She wasn’t reacting to my texts either. I had no idea what was going on with her. I’d gone to her house several times, rang the doorbell with no response. Was she there and just didn’t want to open the door? Or was she staying somewhere else? Where would she have gone? I wasn’t aware of any other options besides the ones outlined in her folder. Her Dad didn’t have his own place that she might consider as a temporary shelter. She wasn’t with Emma or any of her other friends, I’d checked their houses and flats too.
Where was she? Could she have had a car accident again and ended up in hospital?
My life had now shrunk down to this one single mission; find Connie. I’d done my bit for The Collective. I’d attended various events every day since the injection. The protest, an evening show in a concert hall, pubs, shopping centres and markets, bars, walks through the city centre, local beaches that were forever busy. After Connie mentioned the airport, I went there a few times, too. As soon as the news of a mysterious infection reached TV news, I stopped. The plague would keep spreading even without any further contribution from me. Besides, I felt so awful physically, that I decided to focus all my remaining energy on searching for Connie.
What if the virus had already claimed her? The thought was unbearable. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I reached for my phone again, knowing that my attempts would be futile. I couldn’t quite believe it when I heard the phone ring.
Shortly after, her voice, much as it was affected by the illness. “Mark…”
“Connie,” I rasped back. My voice didn’t sound like my own either. It was the never ending cough, strained vocal cords, protesting lungs.
What should I say next? How’s it going? Stupid, she must have been feeling more sick than ever. What are you up to? Would she have enough energy to be out and about somewhere, after nearly three weeks–almost at the finish line? Obviously she was in bed!
“I’d like to see you again, one more time…” Well, there it was. The words felt like a declaration of love. Maybe she didn’t see it like that, because she didn’t know me as well as I knew her, but that didn’t change anything.
Would I still be able to get out of bed, into my car, and drive to her? I hadn’t drunk or eaten anything since yesterday morning, and although my stomach was writhing with hunger and my mouth was unbearably dry, it wasn’t worth the trip to the kitchen. But seeing Connie… maybe even hugging her…
“I’d like to see you again too,” she said quietly and I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. “But I can’t.”
“Why not?” I was almost too weak to speak, how could I persuade my body to do anything more than that? But I’ll make it, I ordered myself. “I’ll get to you. Right now, if you want! I…”
“Mark, I’m in New Zealand.”
Silence fell between us while I was processing that.
“How… When…?” I stammered.
“The day after the protest. Those tickets were just a charade for Dad, to make him believe me… but in the end I had to go to them.”
“So when you told me you were at the airport…”
“I meant that I was waiting for my flight. But I reckon I’d infected loads of people along the way, so The Collective can’t say anything. The airport was buzzing with people, and the plane was almost full.” She was crying and clearly it took a lot of effort. Her sobs were interspersed with wheezing breaths, rasping and coughing.
How could I have been so stupid? Of course she’d taken the opportunity to join her family, to spend her last moments with them. I was the only idiot who’d sentenced himself to house arrest and made peace with dying alone.
Her sobs slowly subsided, but the wheezing continued. “I’d ask if you were angry… but I guess it doesn’t matter, at this point I really don’t care….”
She was overcome by a coughing fit, I could hear her gasping for air. Breathe, I encouraged her in my mind, and with a shudder remembered the panic I’d been feeling in the last few days, whenever I was coughing so much I couldn’t breathe.
“What do you not care about?” I asked when her breathing returned.
“What people think. I intend to spend my last days the way I want to.”
I would also much rather spend my last moments in her company than on my own, so I understood her need to be with her family.
We didn’t speak for a while and I was wondering if she’d fallen asleep.
“Can I call you again?” I whispered after a while, hoping that my words somehow got to her consciousness. I was surprised when she answered.
“Anytime you want.”
Then the line went dead and I was alone again.
For the first time in my adult life I didn’t wish I hadn’t been born. I wished I could go back several years and persuade The Collective to give humanity another chance. What would my attitude have been like if I hadn’t already been longing for the end of the world? If I’d had someone to love and saw a purpose in my life, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted the end to come. Maybe I would have found some inner strength to keep helping others, and made Grandma’s motto my lifelong mission.
Pay it forward.
Such a simple idea, and so effective. People selflessly helping others, that would have been a good start. Many others would then wake up, learn to work with the system, do their bit, and create a sense of togetherness around them. You help me, I help somebody else. Selfish, cruel people unwilling to do anything for others without personal gain would automatically be filtered out.
The Association must have had enough financial resources to promote it. How much money and energy was spent watching the selected targets to make sure they were really worth saving? And how much had gone towards securing the best possible conditions for the hideouts and the eventual meeting place of the survivors? We could have used these resources to research more people, test them one by one.
Looking for a needle in a haystack, I recalled the phrase Connie had used to sum up my explanation back then. I also remembered som
ething I’d told her: People will only change if you hold a knife to their throats.
What was I trying to trick myself into? How could I want yet another chance for humanity? I was only delirious from dying alone.
I picked up the phone again and typed in a number. Andrew picked up at once.
“So you’re still alive. I wasn’t sure.”
The greeting was so morbid it made me laugh. Andrew joined in. It only took a moment for us both to start choking.
“We don’t have much left…” I managed. According to the doctor, three weeks were the longest possible time, which gave us a few more days, at most.
“I hope so,” he groaned quietly. “I don’t want to be here a second longer than absolutely necessary.”
This was obviously why The Collective mainly accepted those for whom suicide wasn’t a foreign concept. Our negative emotions, unwillingness to forgive past hardships and desire to end everything and everyone had sealed the fate of the planet. It was so humanly hypocritical.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if it didn’t work out?”
Andrew cleared his throat. “Actually, I never thought it would all work out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just think how many people all over the world were a part of it. Did none of them get cold feet and want to back out? Save their own skin?”
A memory of my recent meeting with Ross flashed through my mind. According to him, I wasn’t the first person who’d wanted a vaccine, and I wouldn’t be the last. I wondered if Andrew had approached him too, but somehow I doubted it.
“I guess we got lucky,” I replied, and he chuckled.
“What do you mean, lucky? Did you think that they’d leave us unsupervised?”
My eyes bulged out. “They were watching us? I mean, after we joined The Collective?”
“Of course they were. We needed to be looked after like babies. You can’t just trust people to keep cool and not go to the police. Self-preservation instincts are stronger than some oaths.”
I could attest to that.
“And what about Connie?” I wondered after what he’d said. “Weren’t they concerned that she’d turn us in, back when she was still going to the station?”
“Obviously. I informed them that you’d told her everything, although they probably already knew. Lana dealt with her,” he mentioned our psychologist for whom body language was as clear and legible as x-ray images.
Who was guarding our guards? I thought but didn’t say it out loud.
“Did you ever want to back out?” I asked in the end.
“No,” he replied, stern. When he spoke again, he sounded conciliatory. “But I can understand that others might have. If the girls were still here… I’d never have joined The Collective.”
The mention of his wife and daughter brought Connie back to mind. What if I’d met her under different circumstances? Maybe I would never support this thing either. The plague would have happened even without me or Andrew, but we would be blissfully unaware. He would be enjoying family life with “the girls” as he called them, I’d be with Connie. The time with her, however short, would be a thousand times better than this loneliness.
“Mark?” Andrew interrupted my thoughts. “You were the best colleague I could ever hope for.”
“That’s an honour,” I responded. At least someone was affected by me. I just wished it had been someone else.
Connie
I couldn’t bear the idea of Ruby’s last memory of me consisting of me suffocating in a coughing fit, gasping for air, with a scary rumble in my chest, eyes bulging in fear. Looking like death, and then… truly dead. Lying unmoving on the bed, still covered in sweat, slimy and cold. Surrounded by tissues, soaked in blood more and more as days went.
It was horrifying to live through it, but even more horrifying to be a child and watch it happen to someone you think is indestructible. I remembered my own Mum’s death all too well. I clearly recalled how she’d tried to get us to safety in the bank, and when an armed man stepped between us and a way out, she turned around to shield me from him. The terrified expression on her face. Then a gunshot and her body, which flinched once and fell down, still shielding my own.
I can’t do this to my daughter. Somehow I had to make sure that she wouldn’t see or hear me suffocating. But how? The coughing fits came more and more often. Today it was one after the other, and I started to panic. All it would take was for one of them to last a little longer… I shuddered.
I lay still, wondering what kind of arrangement to make with Dad. It wouldn’t be fair to him either, especially after what he’s been through. But he was an adult and knew that Ruby must be protected.
I focused on the sounds around me. My daughter’s laughter and cheerful screams were coming from the outside, she must be at the playground again. Dad’s baritone joined in every few moments, reminding her to be careful.
Then there was another sound. A wild cough coming from the inside of the house, and then Darlene’s weak voice, repeating a single word.
“Help…”
Do I have enough strength to worry about anything else now?
I made myself sit up. I waited until the vertigo goes away, then reached for a sweater and put it on, because my body was overcome with shivers. I put my slippers on and drank a glass of water to calm the aching throat. A futile attempt. There was a burning piece of charcoal in my throat that even all the water in the ocean wouldn’t put out. I leaned against the bedside table and pushed myself off the bed with shaky hands.
I must have looked like a hundred year old granny but that was how I felt. Weak, at the end of my journey. The last remaining bits of energy were spent on slow steps towards Darlene and Hugh’s bedroom. I left sweat marks on the walls as I was dragging myself along them.
I knocked and almost screamed out. The pain in my knuckles was so intense I thought my hand would break into pieces. Darlene coughed in response and I opened the door.
She was lying in bed, covered with two blankets. She had taken Hugh’s blanket too, because he didn’t need it anymore. His body on the other half of the bed was waxy looking and bloated. How long has he been dead?
His eyes were bulging out, staring unseeing into the ceiling, through the roof, up somewhere to the sky. I shuddered and almost fainted, weak and disgusted by the scene. Was this how Ruby would find me?
Darlene coughed. She tried to tell me something but couldn’t. Every word, every syllable was interrupted by crackling, wheezing, the persistent cough. She knew it, her eyes seemed to say: It’s my turn now. Her frowning eyebrows, tears quivering on her eyelashes were adding: I don’t want to…
You’ve done this, a voice in my head said.
I went to her and took her hand in mine. I was the one that took Darlene to the edge, a calming touch was the least I could do.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, but it would have been a miracle if she’d understood. I had just as much trouble speaking as she did. Maybe even more so, given that I’d been sick for longer.
I couldn’t help her, however much I’d wanted to. Even as I was getting up from the mattress, I somehow knew that this visit wouldn’t help me. I was being pushed by something else…
By sheer willpower I managed to take a step back and turn around. Break away from her gaze. I survived another vertigo and, bent as a willow tree, stepped forward. I didn’t aim for the soft, warm bed waiting for me in the bedroom. I was going outside. I chose the main entrance; Dad and Ruby couldn’t be allowed to see me.
Through the patio and three steps down. My hand slipped off the railing and closed around thin air. There was nothing to hold onto anymore, no support around me, and I staggered by the whining dog through the yard, the unlocked gate, the field with grazing cattle. Towards a small forest on the other side of the property.
Wind blew
against me, but I was so cold I barely felt it. I dragged myself like a zombie, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. And then again. And again. The sun was calmly and patiently making its way across the bright blue sky, measuring out the rest of the afternoon.
At the edge of the forest I leaned on a tree and looked back. Dad and Ruby were still there. Ruby sat on a swing, her back to me, flying back and forth, her braids whirling around her head. Dad’s large, protective hand was steady on her back, pushing her forward.
I didn’t want Ruby to see me so debilitated, but I was granted the gift of seeing them both one last time. I stared at them, blinking, carving this picture so deep into memory that not even death would be able to take it away.
As if moved by some higher power, Dad suddenly turned around and looked my way. He was so far that I could barely make out his face. Only his posture, the sudden stillness, showed his surprise.
Did he realise what I was doing? That I was leaving to spare my daughter the trauma, and him the unthinkable task of carrying my dead body out of the house and digging it a grave?
I thought of our goodbyes this morning, and almost fell over into the green veil of the forest. Don’t prolong this suffering, I ordered myself.
He raised his hand and waved in one swift movement. He couldn’t hear my whimper, or how everything in me started crashing down. I waved back. Goodbye, I love you both.
I was glad that Ruby missed our quiet conversation. She kept on swinging through the air, shouting: “Grampa, push me! Higher!”
To tear my eyes away from Darlene and her suffering was unbearable, but to look away from Dad and Ruby was a hundred, a thousand, a million times worse. I wasn’t bound to them by strings, it felt more like steel ropes. Which tool, or how much inner strength would I need, to sever those ropes?
