It was difficult to believe that Toni was sick. Infected was a world that kept entering Jess’s head.
Jess had half the hair on his head go grey and his back hurt; his stomach protruded and his face was beginning to show permanent creases. Toni seemed to suffer from none of this - even after all these years she still stood up straight and tall, like a proud flower. Her head arched a little more, confused by the ringing sounds. The wind was hurling ash all around them, like a furious grey tunnel that they stood inside.
Jess was transfixed. He wanted to help her but wasn’t sure what to do.
The ringtone sounded like distant wind chimes. Toni looked down at her body and slowly turned in a semi-circle as if searching for the source of the sound.
She didn’t have a purse on her - so it must have been in a pocket but she seemed oblivious to the concept. With her back now towards him, Jess decided to act quickly. He took his belt off, wrapped it around Toni’s neck and pulled her around to the back of the van. She struggled a little but because she couldn’t see him since he was leading her from behind, she seemed disoriented and unable to fend him off.
He pushed her in the van and closed the doors.
She was having a fit in the back. So loud was the banging that he wondered if she could actually break through. He walked around the van and determined that it must have sounded worse than it really was. The walls were metal of some sort – no thick perhaps, but thick enough that no human hand could break through it very easily.
The store was close by. The commotion hadn’t seemed to attract any other attention, so he moved slowly across the street. He had to pry the front doors open and as he slid in he thought he heard the sound of an engine in the distance.
Must be the wind
.
He checked the time – 15 minutes had passed already.
There were a few spotlights lit around the store, likely from a backup generator. It didn’t provide much light however, but just enough to keep the place from being pitch black. Others had obviously rummaged the store earlier, as there was rotting fruit and vegetables all over the ground. Almost every aisle was in the same state. Jess went quickly, looking for canned goods and filled up his plastic basket as he found tins that didn’t look damaged.
It only took him a few minutes and then he was heading across the street again. He had to put the items up front in the van. It was going to be a tight fit with the food and two teenage boys but it was like one big sofa cushion across the front. When he dropped the cans on the floor, a banging could be heard in the back again. Toni was growling and hitting the wall. There was no way he was going to be able to pretend that nothing was back there.
He started the engine, which unfortunately caught the attention of some shuffling bodies. He drove down the ramp, stopping the van just in front of the entrance that led to the laundry room.
When he approached the door, he could hear banging inside. He quickly threw open the door and saw his boys standing against the far wall as two bodies struggled on the floor. It was an old woman with long grey hair and a man by the looks of it.
“Boys! Come, now!”
He motioned for them to exit the room and they did - Michael pushed Dustin forward first and then followed him. The door was starting to close when the man in the fracas looked up and saw Jess.
“You!”
It was Roscoe - seemingly in a struggle with this contaminated senior woman, and it looked like he had lost most of his right ear in the struggle. Blood trailed down the one side of his face. He was holding her by the throat, likely to keep her teeth away from him.
The door closed and Jess ushered the boys down the hall towards the van. He heard Roscoe shouting from within the room - angry, violent shouts.
A loud bang finally drowned him out.
“In the front seat, now.”
Both boys got in and Jess started the van and put it in gear. Banging continued in the back of the vehicle.
They all had to squint their eyes against the light before them. It was not the sun that caused them to shield their eyes. The building across the street had now caught on fire.
“That’s probably the noise we heard,” Jess said.
All of it was going up in a massive pyre. Jess pushed down on the accelerator pedal and moved them past the blaze, yet they were close enough to feel the heat, even through closed doors and windows.
Jess kept checking the rear-view mirror for signs of Roscoe.
“You still have the smartcard?” he said to Michael.
The boy nodded.
“Make sure the GPS and anything else that can track us is off.”
“Oh, I can do better than that,” Michael said. “I can get Orson to manually change our coordinates and make him think we’re on the opposite side of town.”
Jess looked down at his son.
“Really?”
It was so dark on the streets that the headlights of the van seemed to scan to the distant horizon where they were clear of other vehicles. They were not able to travel very fast, as cars were scattered across the street, and were not always visible until they were almost upon them. Most were deserted by their occupants. At least, that’s what it seemed like at first glance. But they had not all deserted their cars – many had died in them.
He hoped that his boys hadn’t noticed that there were lifeless forms in the windows. The state of the roads made it so that he had to get out of the vehicle a few times, just to see if there was a way around the blockage in front of them. Some of the dead had their heads slumped against the windows but most, thankfully, had fallen down in their seats and were out of view; others were slumped over their steering wheels, red blood lines trailing away from their ears and noses.
The boys were sitting together on the other side of the stick shift, quiet for a good hour, presumably shocked into silence by the devastation. Then Michael made a grunting sound as he shuffled in his seat.
“What happened to them?”
“Don’t look,” Jess said.
They went back to not talking for a bit. Jess felt uncertain about how to calm them, if that was even possible. Toni would have handled this part of it so much better. Dustin’s hands were slapping the top of his thighs in what, to him, must have had some rhythmic logic.
Michael looked out the window, rubbing the stubble on his chin.
“Holy crap, the mall is burning!”
Jess and Dustin looked over and saw smoke coming from the far end of the mall and a glow that could only be fire.
“I wish we could stop and get some video games,” Dustin said.
“”Or a new PAL,” Michael added. “The latest version has nano-integration out of the box!”
Michael looked over at his eldest son.
“What does that even mean?”
“Implants, dad,” Dustin said. “The PAL starts feeding your brain directly.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because there’s no need for devices anymore. You don’t need to worry about forgetting your smartcard – it’s always with you.”
“Michael wants to be a cyborg.”
“Shut up!”
Michael shook his head.
They went over something on the road that made the van jump and jostled them all back onto the road before them. Jess heard things bounce around in the back and now banging could be heard on the wall directly behind their backs.
“What is that noise?” Michael said.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Can’t you answer anything?”
Jess stomped on the brakes and put the car in park.
“Fine, you want to know? I’ll tell you, but we’re all going to regret this. Those noises coming from the back of the van? That’s your mother. Remember that old woman in the laundry room? How she turned into some kind of a monster? Your mother’s the exact same way. I found her when I was walking over to the grocery store. She tried to attack me but I was able to get her in the back of the van. I’m hoping we can help her. Find a doctor or a government base where they can give her an antidote or something - but I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
More bangs came from the rear of the vehicle.
“Do not even think about going back there to see her. She’s not herself and we can’t see her or talk to her until we get her help. Just be thankful that we found her.”
Jess reached down by their feet and pulled out the basket of cans. He handed three cans of Chef-Boyardee pasta and a can opener he swiped to Michael. Slowly Michael turned the handle on each can and they ate in the silence of the upward glow of the pointed flashlight.
The boys were circling their fingers around the inside of the can to scoop up as much of the sauce as they could. Dustin began tapping on the bottom of the empty metal cylinder, creating a repetitive drum beat that echoed in the cabin.
“Where’s Orson?” Jess said.
Michael pulled it out of the bag and showed him. The screen came on and his fingers did a few motions on the glass. He raised his gaze for only a moment; a frustrated look flashed on his face as if he didn’t get the answer he wanted and then he continued on for five more minutes, pushing buttons and looking increasingly agitated.
“Fuck!”
“What did you say?” Jess grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to look at him. “I don’t want to hear you say that word again. It’s completely inappropriate and your mother would not be happy to hear it.”
The look on his face did not change. Smug and young - it made him seethe with anger until one of his hands lashed out and slapped the boy across the face.
Before he realized that he was winding up for another blow, Dustin cried out.
“Stop dad!”
Michael just stared at him, more shocked than hurt. Probably what he looked like many years ago, he thought.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to hear you use that word again.”
He shrugged his shoulders and turned the smartcard off, slipping it into his jacket pocket.
“Well, what did it say?”
“I can’t get a signal to make a phone call. I can’t get anything to work. Data usually works everywhere nowadays – not in the subway, but everywhere else. Where are we going?”
His eyes were pleading in the light of the flashlight.
“We’re going to grandma and grandpa’s place. I’ve got us clothes and food. They were prepared for these kinds of emergencies there.”
“What about my stuff?” Dustin said.
Jess knew that he was thinking about his video games and his collection of mint anime comic books that were worth a small fortune.
“We’ll come back for it if we can,” Jess said, urging them toward to the minivan. “It’s not going anywhere.”
The response didn’t really put Dustin at ease. He didn’t care that the gadgets were useless without power. Obtaining them took years of lobbying prior to holidays and birthdays. They were valuable because of the difficulty in obtaining them.
He looked at his older son now through the rear-view mirror. He looked so much like he used to, the wide-set jaw and the way his nose wrinkled at the bridge when he was tense or laughing – any reaction apart from being still. Michael though, had one thing that his father hadn’t for many years: a sense of ownership; of entitlement. Michael felt that his appreciated physical abilities, his adult-like physique, granted him entry into adult decisions and events. His father had given up competing for all that was available to him. He had that drive at Michael’s age – that desire to be the best; a leader and go-getter. But that was before everything changed.
Now Jesse worked because he had to. He was tired and broken.
“Where are we going?” Michael repeated.
“I told you: to your grandparent’s,” he said.
“Why does Mommy keep hitting the walls?” Dustin said. It was a title he hadn’t used in many years. Mommies were protective. Dustin wanted his mommy.
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “All of these infected people seem angry for some reason.”
“Maybe she’s hungry,” Dustin said.
Jess thought about the various infected people he’d seen over the last few days and shuddered as he pondered what they seemed most interested in eating.
“Maybe she is.”
“Can we give her some food? There’s another can of pasta in here.”
“Not right now, but I’ll tell you what. The next time we find a place to settle down for a bit I’ll try going back there to see if I can offer her something. For now, you two have to stay away from her.”
They passed by a bus that had slammed into the side of a house. As Jess drove around it the headlights showed that the vehicle sported the same insignia as the one emblazoned on Jesse’s work shirts and maroon jacket: the city’s public transportation authority.
They still hadn’t made it out of the city yet.
The carnage was everywhere and every few minutes Jess came across a street that he was unable to continue on. Cars would be piled up in accidents that blocked the way. He’d have to turn around and go back to find some other route to get through. Occasionally, cars would be burning in the street. They’d roll their windows up against the black smoke as they passed by and then roll them back down once they were clear.
There wasn’t a living person to be seen. Bodies were also strewn on the sidewalks, pedestrians perhaps, out walking the dog or taking the trash to the curb. Others had survived, Jess was certain, like the others in the building, but they all seemed long removed from the city.
It took twice as long to get anywhere as it would have normally, even with the gridlock. The boys marvelled at the ash, looking so much like snow, was still falling from the sky.
When he turned his wipers on the boys realized that it wasn’t snow. The flakes were smudged across the windshield, leaving a dirty trail. This was dust, or soot, perhaps from the earth or from things burning, blowing up into the air and descending back to the ground again. It soon formed a thin layer on the van. He had his boys roll up their windows.
“Don’t touch or taste that stuff if you can help it,” Jess said. “It’s not what it looks like.”
An hour later the falling ashes had become thicker. The distant horizon was blotched out by them. The sky almost seemed to darken continuously as they drove.
They weren’t getting a whole lot closer to their destination but they were getting out of the heart of the city, and the going did seem to get easier the further out they got. The roads still weren’t clear, but it was better.
It was normally a trip that took a few hours, depending on the traffic. The highway was a mess which wasn’t uncommon but this was like a massive accident in the middle of rush hour that went on and on. The biggest roadway collision in the history of man. Jess instead chose to stick to the smaller roads by the lake. By the time he had reached the town of Pickering, he had to stop for a break. He pulled into a gas station. The pumps were not working but there was a kind of roof on stilts that protected them from the near endless onslaught of falling ash.
Jess turned the car off to preserve gas but kept the headlights trained at the small store attached to the station. The shop had already been ransacked but there were still potato chip bags intact here and there, most on the floor and pushed back under a low ledge. There was a dead body behind the counter. Jess peered over the desk only long enough to determine that there was no life in the face of the man who lay there. He took the snacks back to the boys and they tore them open from their packages and ate. The darkness seemed unending and there seemed to be no lights anywhere, although it was odd that the door dinged as he entered and left. The flashlight also didn’t seem as bright as it was once was and he was sure that the batteries were soon to expire. Packages hung from the walls but there were no batteries, just condoms called “Bareback Stallion’” and cardboard pine tree cut-outs in clear cellophane.
Once back in the van, he struggled to find the confidence in his decisions.
He looked over at his children. Dustin was asleep; Michael was yawning.
Across the street was a strip mall – a row of stores anchored by a big box company specializing in home furnishings and knickknacks for your kitchen and bathroom.
He jostled Dustin by the shoulder.
“Grab the bags,” he said, “and put your jackets on.”
There was a very cold wind that had kicked up now, blowing the ashes around in a myriad of directions. Jess momentarily permitted himself to ponder the illogical thought that months had passed rather than days.
Was it possible it was winter?
“What date is it Orson?”
“I don’t have any databases to cross-check, but my own calendar indicates that it’s the 28
th
of August.”
“You know, I’ve seen some winter weather that could rival this, but never in August.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael said. “And they used to have dollar stores, where everything cost a dollar.”
Michael rolled his eyes.
“It’s true!”
“Whatever dad,” Dustin added.
The boys knew better – at this point – than to ask questions that contradicted their father’s orders. They scrambled across the parking lot, their feet leaving a trail in the ash behind them. The first store they came to was a pharmacy. Its doors were locked. Same for the music store next door. The biggest one, called HomeSense, had large, sliding glass doors. Jess passed underneath the door’s sensors and they parted like they would on a normal day, eager to admit more shoppers.
Inside, the power was off; no lights were on, yet the ceilings were abnormally high and allowed a small amount of light in from the outside, which was only marginally lighter than the interior of the store. An unmoving escalator went up to the second floor, where signs indicated that bedding supplies could be had here. Jess decided to do a quick walk-through of the place, starting with the ground level.
“Stay close to your brother,” he told Michael.
Michael grabbed a metal towel bar, ripped off the ends and held it at his side like a baseball bat. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and propelled him ahead, behind his father.
There were shelves lined with plates and pots and kitchen gadgets in cardboard boxes. Jess managed to pick up a few small candles, lit one with a lighter from his bag and filled his pockets with the rest. He took another handful and handed it to his boys, which they also stuffed into pockets and bags.
They had made it through the area for kitchen supplies when Jess noticed a door that must have led to a back storage area. He walked up to it and pushed it open slowly.
Inside the room were skids of boxes. There was a draught coming from somewhere – doors not completely closed near the back perhaps – and as he crept forward he saw a sliver of light that shone like a wide, thin beam into the room, creating the silhouette of what looked distinctly like a person.
They stood still for what seemed like several minutes, waiting. Michael tried moving forward and Jess put up a hand.
Stay still.
There was a cough finally, absolute evidence that this was a man. Jess extended the dying flashlight to draw the scene out from the shadows. He reacted by cranking his head sideways to avoid the direct light. Jess could see that the man was tall and thin. His beard was white and most of the hair on the top of his head was thin and stringy, save for a small clump of haphazardly pointed strands that arched out in such a way that made it clear that he had not showered in some time. The man’s face frightened him the most. He seemed to have various boils across his forehead, cheeks and nose – they were large, round pink glistening blisters. His eyes were red with aggressive veins. He put his arms out and a moan escaped his lips.
Jess could feel his boys huddling up close behind him. His eyes were slowly adjusting and he saw, cowering against some stacked boxes behind the man, a woman and two small children.
The man made another noise, barely audible.
“Please,” he said and followed this up with a series of violet coughs.
Michael lowered the bar. The others came out from their hiding spot, slowly; standing behind the old man, displaying clear trepidation.
“Are you okay?” Jess said.
The man fell backwards with limited control, sitting himself atop a box. An old woman – presumably his spouse – shuffled over to his side. When she spoke, all of them (even Dustin) noticed the barely restrained fear and panic in her voice.
“He’s sick,” she said. “He was out when the blast hit, taking out the garbage. These are our grandchildren. Don’t hurt them. Please.”
She nodded at the two children, one boy, one girl, both holding tightly to her on each side.
“Their parents are out trying to find a working vehicle for us.”
“You’re alone?” Michael had spoken up.
“Yes,” the woman said. “I’m Patricia and this is my husband George. These two little critters are Grace and Peter.”
George took a large pair of glasses out of his pocket and put them on.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I can’t see well without them but sometimes it also hurts more just to wear them. Might actually be better not to see half the time.”
The boils were larger on the outside of his hands and he gazed at them for a brief moment contemplatively.
“How did you survive?” Jess said.
“Our house is old, older than me, and it has very thick walls,” George said. “I only opened the door for a moment. The blast knocked me right off my feet, like a hurricane. The others were all sleeping. What’s your story?”
“I was at work,” Jess said. “These two were getting ready for bed.”
He explained that they were trying to get out of the city.
“The ash seems corrosive,” George said with his creaky, strained voice. “I think it gets into the engine of vehicles. Causes them to stop working.”
“How long have you been here?” Michael said.
“Since two days ago,” Patricia said. “There are many large and fluffy beds upstairs, so if you have to spend the night, it should be comfortable.
The idea didn’t make anyone feel better but they were slightly buoyed by the new company. The world at least, hadn’t perished. Not yet.
“Is it day?”
“I believe so – we have a working smartcard but we’ve been trying to conserve the battery.”
The group gave Jess and his sons a tour of the area upstairs. It was surprisingly cozy, although they explained that it wasn’t completely meeting their needs. They had no food.
Jess unzipped one of the backpacks and withdrew a few packages of the most nutritious snacks he could find. He gave them two each. He hardly felt that granola bars were great meals but the family ate them up quickly, except for the old man, who ate one and passed the other on to the children, who took it without question.
Michael was acting restless, bouncing from one foot to another. He finally yanked on his father’s jacket and they moved off to the side and spoke in whispers.
“What are we doing here? We should keep moving. The food won’t last forever.”
“We need to rest,” Jess said. “None of us have slept in a bed for days. We need a good night’s sleep and then we can start fresh tomorrow with our heads clear so that we can plan out our next steps.”
“They never care about what we have to say,” the old man said. He waved his hand through the air as though he were swatting away some unseen insect. “We’re old; we don’t know what we’re talking about. We have nothing to offer.”
They had positioned several reclining chairs in a semi-circle with a view to the front windows of the store. They could all oversee the parking lot before the store, but little could be seen out there apart from the falling ash in the dim light of the waning day.
“When I was a boy, we ate the same thing day after day,” the old man said. “And we had single mattresses on the floor, which we had to share with our brothers. Mattresses that were little better than sleeping on the floor itself. If the springs didn’t get up under your armpits and jab you in the ribs you could on your brothers doing it.”
Michael watched the ash fall from the windows. It was so light and silent that it really did look like snow from a distance. It was the only thing that moved outside the windows.