Authors: Julie Cooper Brown
I poured a cup of coffee, sat down in front of the computer and lit a cigarette. It was time to get the ball rolling, I needed a job a.s.a.p., and too much time on my hands probably contributed
to my sense of impending doom. I checked my email for responses to previous inquiries and there were none. I was getting even more aggravated and decided I just needed to try to relax for a while. I got a pillow and blanket out of the bedroom and tossed them and myself on the couch. I scanned through my choices on Netflix and settled on a movie I had already seen. It didn’t matter because if things went the way I’d planned, I wouldn’t last fifteen minutes. I was kind of exhausted from the worry and I wasn’t sure that I could sleep, but I was gonna try anyway. And I did.
The clock on the TV said nine o’clock when I woke so I slept for two hou
rs. I refreshed my browser and got up to pour another cup of coffee. It was still hot because I left the pot on, but it was thick and strong so I added a little warm water and lit another cigarette. Yes, those are my vices. I love my coffee and cigarettes. I picked up my cell and hit the auto dial for my sister April and got her voicemail. I waited for the beep and after what seemed like forever, it finally came. I left her a message to call me when she could. I then tried Marie but the prerecorded message said “The customer you are trying to call is temporarily unavailable”. She didn’t have minutes on her phone. I hate those prepaid phones.
I decided to take a scalding hot shower and as soon as I stepped under the spray and lathered up, I felt the tension in my neck and shoulders begin to melt away. After a considerable amount of time standing there, the hot water was gone and I had to get out. I don’t do cold showers.
I wrapped my hair in a towel, dried off and threw on an old pair of sweat pants and one of Evan’s T-shirts. I loved wearing his clothes, I could wash his shirts five times over, back to back, and it seemed I could always smell him.
Then the phone rang. I looked at the screen and it was April returning my call. After she assured me that they were okay, I tried to hurry off the phone so I could get back to job hunting but April stopped me and asked me if I wanted to talk to Marie. I said no but asked April to tell her to put minutes on her damn phone. I wish I would’ve talked to Marie.
Satisfied that all was right with the world, I checked the MSN page for the news. Cable was too expensive to have; one hundred and forty channels and half of them were Spanish versions of the first fifty channels. I don’t speak Spanish therefore I don’t need Spanish channels. Highway robbery is what it was, so we just paid for internet service and got our news from websites.
Everything was NOT right with the world. The first thing that caught my eye was the picture that
was posted with the headlines. It just looked like a mass of crumbled buildings and deep gashes in the earth. I scrolled down the page so I could read the headlines.
‘Multiple Quakes Rock the Entire Continent of Asia’
I scrolled down a little further to read the story and was shocked. It had destroyed most of the continent. Seventeen earthquakes all within a few minutes of each other, all measured nine on the Richter scale. I watched the attached video and was horrified. A camera that was mounted on the top of the news building captured only 7 seconds of video before it too, was consumed by the great chasm the quake had created.
Th
e camera was shaky of course, but I could see the buildings sway and then topple over onto the people on the ground. Then I saw the ground opening up and people and buildings were being sucked into it until finally the camera itself and the building it was mounted on toppled as well. The video was over.
After the initial shock I went to my Facebook to post the link, these people were going to need some help. Someone had already shared the link and there was another link, to a post that was labeled,
‘No Plans for Rescue’ and
‘Resulting Tsunamis Wipe Indonesia Off of the Map’
I called Evan to tell him about it and I thought he was gonna say that’s why I was feeling bad earlier. As soon as he answered, he said, “I know, quakes in China, and…” I cut him off. I explained to him all the areas that had been wiped out and he told me that I must’ve read it wrong and that he would be home in a while to see for himself.
Evan arrived home a short time later, got a quick shower and grabbed a beer from the fridge. After reading the story and watching the video, he said nothing, only shrugged and sighed. I could tell the wheels were turning in his head. I was expecting him to bring up the book
of Revelations, but he didn’t. Evan liked to talk politics and religion, and I stay far away as I can from both of those subjects, usually.
I was concerned that he didn’t have anything to say about it, I don’t know if he didn’t say anything because he figured I wouldn’t want to hear it, or if h
e just didn’t know what to say. I actually wanted to talk about it but I let it go.
We continued our day with a short walk, lasagna for dinner and a movie we had been waiting to see since it came out. We we
nt to bed around eleven thirty. I tossed and turned most of the night and finally got up around four a.m. to check the news again.
I was concerned about the quake victims. It didn’t seem right; you would think they would have to conduct a search for survivors. The quake news had now been minimized and a much larger picture of Westminster Abbey was on the screen, there were people lying everywhere, some were even lying in the doorway like they had been walking through and dropped dead right where they were standing. The headline…
‘United Kingdom Suffers Unexplained Sudden Deaths!
Death Toll Two Hundred Thousand and Rising!’
Are you kidding me? It went on to say that three airplanes had crashed when the pilots fell unconscious at the controls, and all flights in and out of the UK were cancelled until further notice. Hundreds of car accidents and even some emergency personnel suffered the same fate en route to the scenes. I thought these disasters must be a hoax; someone has a sick sense of humor. People were dying in such great numbers, it seemed impossible. I became very afraid, and knew then, why I was feeling so terrible.
I woke Evan much earlier than I was supposed to, he wasn’t happy about it either. I started rattling the situation off to him and he grew frustrated with me because I was feeding him so much so fast. He squinted his eyes and ran his hand over his face and said,
“Tell me all this shit when I’m fully awake, will ya? It’s too much for me right now. I’m getting my shower
.” And he stormed into the bathroom this time. His morning grouchiness was something I could never get used to. I knew I was overwhelming him a bit so I went ahead and started a pot of coffee and paced while I waited for him to come back out.
“What in the hell is going on, now?” he asked as he finished combing his hair.
“Just look at the picture first.” I said, as I settled back against the counter with coffee in hand and watched him as he scanned the picture. “It’s Westminster Abbey, what about it?” he said with an attitude. Ouch, so damn grouchy!
“What’s wrong with this picture, Evan? Look at it, really look at it!” I said with a little attitude myself, as I pointed out the bodies. I shouldn’t have gotten so snippy because he really needed glasses, had since he was a child. He just didn’t like to wear them. I watched his face and saw it change when he realized what he was seeing.
“Holy shit, this is…”
I had a bad habit of cutting him off.
“You are NOT going to work today.” I told him.
“Yes, I am. That’s there, Jill. Not here. I have to go to work. The world doesn’t stop turning. We had this conversation yesterday. Why are we having it again today?”
“That could be contagious and could be …” I was going to say spreading to here, but this time I was the one cut off, by Evan’s cell phone. It came with the convenient feature of Voice Announced Caller ID, with a lifelike smoky female voice; it said ‘Call from - Gloria’. She is the office manager at Coopers Insulation. Before it could begin its annoying chime of a ring, he picked it up.
“Good Morning.”
I could only hear his end of the conversation. “Yea, my wife and I were just talking about that - Okay, then - No, not at all. I’ll be there within the hour - Okay, see ya there.” He looked at me and said “Well, you got your wish. Our job for today cancelled. We gotta go pick up my paycheck though, and she is only gonna be there a little while. Let’s go.”
We drove the twenty minutes to the shop, and Gloria was already gone but had left it in the mailbox with a note saying they had included a bonus and that she would call on Sunday if they were going to open up shop on Monday.
I could go on about the rest of the night and the next day, but nothing else really important happened until Monday. I’ll just tell you about our weekend, but
first, I need to check on Evan.
Chapter Four
Evan has fallen into a deep sleep so much like death, except that I can see his chest rise and fall with his short jerky breaths and he is sweating profusely. His skin is cold and clammy, and his face is ashen. I can see small squiggly veins protruding all over his body. I tried to wake him if only for one last look in his eyes and one more kiss, but he is not responding to me. As I lie next to him, I hold his hand and cover his face with kisses; I know that at any moment my husband will no longer be here. His soul abandoning its wounded vessel and I will have to kill the monstrosity that’s been left in his place… and then - me.
I wonder if God will forgive me. I wonder… if I can even do this, or will I just let him devour me. I imagine it will be much like the vampire stories, when the willing victim squeezes her eyes shut as the sexy vampire moves in to deliver to her, his immortal kiss.
I am so scared. I could do this right now, while he’s sleeping but I don’t know if he’s really just sleeping, or if he’s just unconscious till the end. A few hours ago, he was awake and completely coherent, though weak and in moderate pain. He was holding me, consoling me, when he is the one who has been bitten. I think if he didn’t focus on me, he would be driven mad in the last moments instead of spending them with me.
We cried and talked a little bit, apologized to each other for all the mean things we’d ever said during our fights over the years. We were really good together, but like a lot of relationships, when it was good, nothing could stop us. When it was bad, man, it was really, really bad and we had both said some things that we regret. Then we laughed because he said, “What do ya mean no blood pressure, no pulse?” and “Send more paramedics.” (More lines from RLD) We didn’t laugh because it was funny, we laughed at the pure irony of it. Then we cried even harder. I’m still crying.
I wish he would’ve agreed with me yesterday when I said I wanted to end it right then. I told him this gun was powerful enough to kill us both with one bullet. I told him I didn’t want to see him turn into a monster.
“We can’t do it that way, Jill. What if it doesn’t kill YOU? What if it just leaves you with brain damage and they’ll get you anyway? There’s no one else here to make sure you don’t come back.”
I had been looking down and he put his hand under my chin to turn my face up to his and looked me in the eyes and kissed me, he lingered there for a few seconds, savoring the kiss just as I was. He then said “It’s better for us if we just hold each other for a bit, while we still can. I know I‘m never gonna be able to hold you like this again and I want to shut everything out and just feel you, okay? And you won’t have to see me as a monster, as soon as I stop breathing, you shoot me, okay?”
I was too upset to speak and was hanging my head again because it hurt so much to look in his eyes, I was sobbing heavily by this time and he turned my face up to him again and used his thumbs to clear the tears that were flowing down my face in heavy torrents. It seemed at the moment that I could not run out of tears.
“I mean it, Jill. Don’t wait. It has to be done this way. I love you…” He pulled my face down into his chest and I wept almost soundlessly trying not to excite the dead below us.
“You know…, you could try sitting on it one last time.” he said and I looked up at him. He had his right eyebrow raised, and I thought about it for just a second, but instead I playfully slapped his leg and declined.
He hugged me tighter and said “I don’t think it’ll work right now anyway.” He never failed to shock me with his ability to think about sex at any time.
I snuggled my face even deeper into his chest to inhale the sweet masculine scent of his skin, to feel the silky hair on his body caressing my cheek and the fee
l of his strong arms around me. And while I enjoyed this so much, I thought to myself, how in the hell am I supposed to know which breath is truly his last? Sometimes they don’t even get to die, they just turn. I was terrified that I would suddenly feel his teeth clamp down on my head, I feared that I would have to look into a face I didn’t recognize, into eyes that didn’t know us.
We remained in that position until he became too weak to do anything but lie here and I put our backpack of clothes under his head and rearranged myself to lie next to him. I lightly caressed his body with the tips of my fingers, hoping that it soothed him. I didn’t even know if he could feel it, but
I did it anyway, just in case. Soon after, he drifted off to sleep. Maybe because the virus had taken over too much of him and exhausted him, or maybe he just needed a break from the situation.