Part 2, Chapter 2

Part 2, Chapter 2, is fairly long and episodic, so I'm posting it in two parts. For the record, this is one of my favourite chapters from the early parts of this book. I really enjoyed taking the Mecca setting to a darker place, and playing with the flash-backs. I think you get to see the darker sides of all the characters involved.

Enjoy it.

Dave.

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2

James and I spend that afternoon in the common room. Various men pass through the area, but everyone seems busy with their assigned tasks. Mistress Sylvia has provided a distinct sense of purpose for these men and the strength of the work ethic at Mecca is incredible. Some people, of course, are more polite to us than others. Everybody’s been through a tough time, so I can’t resent those who come across as rude or impatient. Michael, for instance, thick bearded and from the Northside, has little time for us. Maybe it’s because he sees so many new people every day and has little energy left to reintroduce himself. He tells us, “we had better show respect to the Mistress,” and that, “She’s all that’s holding civilization together now.” He begins to walk away, but then ducks back into the room, and to prove his loyalty, informs us that he was the one who took the Warhol for Sylvia. “That’s right. The same one that’s hung at the back of her office.” I couldn’t have cared less.

James and I find a Monopoly set and half-heartedly play a game with another newcomer, Ethan, who hails from the Hill District. I place three houses on the orange tiles and Thomas, a big-shouldered, short-legged guy from the South Hills, joins our table to talk. When the plague took full effect in the suburbs, he drove through the snow and into the city to try to find other survivors. He arrived as the chaos in the Southside began to abate and thus he was one of the first to find the newly formed Mecca enclave. “So that almost makes me a founding father of our new state,” he laughs. “A regular old Benjamin Franklin.”

I like Thomas; I like his smile and humorous demeanor. Ethan, who I’m playing Monopoly with, also seems like a good guy. It’s unfortunate that Ethan is so severely shell-shocked. It makes him both a victim and a pawn. He jumps at the sound of dropped saucepans, or at the sudden commencement of hammering, which happens to be a regular occurrence.

Fifteen minutes later, our Monopoly game is still going well. I pick up a Chance card when we’re interrupted by yells from the stairwell. Yells from the floor above us. The floor our room is on.

“No, fuck you!” an unfamiliar voice yells. “We ain’t a fuckin’ charity!”

The door into the stairwell is open and the sound of the conflict carries down to us all, alert, sat upright, with dice in hand. Every other man in the common room stops what he’s doing and listens with their eyes towards the ceiling.

“Well who the fuck are you? This isn’t any of your business. You’re not quality control.”

“So, I was asking him a question and you have to go butting in—”

“You’re asking him what gives him the right to come in here, and, man—”

“Just a fucking question!”

I can hear Hank upstairs, muttering in apology, “Guys, guys. Please.” My heart pounds when I identify his voice. I realize how profusely I’m sweating. My eyes widen. James looks to me. A mask of worry.

“The Mistress says anybody is welcome.”

“Fuck that! Just because someone arrives — we need some quality control. Who is this guy? Who are you, even? A fucking psycho-murderer? How the fuck would I know? Before all this, you could have been anybody. How do I know who I can and can’t trust to even sleep in the same building as me?”

Already, men are scrambling for the stairwell, both to break up the hostilities and to get a good view of the action. I rise from my own seat too, but it’s short-legged Thomas who’s in front of the gathering crowd.

“You’re crazy. It’s you we shouldn’t have let in.”

“I’m crazy?”

“Guys!” Hank finds the confidence to yell, “Jesus, please, guys!”

“Hey! You shut up and stay the fuck out of this. DON’T TOUCH ME!”

Then there’s a clamor of yelling. Other men have arrived in the room of conflict, and I’m certain that it’s my room, and so I’m running for the stairwell, pushing people aside. Somebody’s yelling, “Put the gun down!” Somebody else is yelling, “Philip” and “Calm down!” But then a gun discharges and the noise booms through the building. Everyone around me ducks. Perhaps somewhere below, Mistress Sylvia is stirring in her boudoir. There’s a scuffle and the gunman is tackled. He screams: “FUCK YOU” “GET THE FUCK OFF ME” “ASSHOLES!” I get to the hallway and see the open door at the far end. Three men run through it into the room. Several others back away with no intention of getting involved. The gun discharges again. Yells. “GO TO HELL!” Punching. Screams. A blonde-haired man in jeans and a hooded jacket is dragged into the hallway and is beaten upon by two other individuals. One of them is Thomas. A kick to the face bloodies Blonde-Hair. On his side, on the ground, Blonde-Hair doubles up from another kick to the stomach. Somebody’s screaming “MY ARM!” Somebody else is dead.

*

I watch as a man staggers from the room, bleeding from the arm, supported by another man in a baseball cap. The gunman is unconscious, down the hall from me, and blood drips from his nose onto the carpet. Thomas binds the gunman’s arms together with electrical tape. I suppose Thomas is not entirely the victim I thought him to be.

Hank yells from the room, “No, don’t move him,” and the relief is palpable because Hank, one of my few allies in this bizarre dream, is safe. My sweat turns cold as the adrenaline subsides.

Somebody says someone else is dead. “That’s it, man. It’s over.” Someone wants to apply a tourniquet but someone else spits out the bitter question, “How the hell do you suppose we wrap a tourniquet around that? He’s dead.”

Hank cries because this man died to defend Hank’s life. He’s blubbering and somebody says, “Shut up,” and the third voice says he’s sorry.

There’s more clamor and commotion when someone retrieves the gun from the ground. Cries of, “Be careful.”

The wounded man pushes past me on the hallway and heads down the staircase. He emits a weak, “Excuse me, kid.”

Two more men carry the dead body out between them and I back down the corridor to make space. Wrapped in a large coat, the body drips blood to the ground. It leaves a trail of red spots behind it as if plotting its journey through death. I don’t want to call it the body but I can’t think of any other appropriate terms to use.

“Did anyone know him?” a man with red hair asks. “What’s his name?”

Nobody knows.

“What’s going on?” Mistress Sylvia shouts from below.

The clamor makes me dizzy. I need to be alone. I need to think.

*

After the riot in Oakland, I carried the young woman, who was bleeding from the leg, back to my apartment. Emily helped me set her down on the couch.

My jeans hung loose because I’d wrapped my belt around the girl’s leg in an attempt to stem the blood loss.

“Can you hear me?” Emily asked the woman, and pulled up the trouser leg to reveal the wound. She grimaced and turned to me. “You may have saved her life, you know.”

“Well, don’t jinx her,” I say without humor, and then after a pause, “There are no ambulances now. Do you think the cops would have just left her there?”

“We both know the answer to that.”

At that moment, the police were mopping up the stragglers left on the university campus and then moving on to South Oakland and across into Southside. The next day, Emily and I had our suspicion confirmed. The police were far too busy to help the wounded or move the dead. They should have removed and burned the bodies because they were a plague containment issue, but the morning news informed us that, by now, containing the plague was a futile effort and a waste of valuable resources.

When the wounded woman regained consciousness, she told us that her name was Laura. We cared for her through the evening, treated her wound, and brought her food.

In the early hours of the next day, Laura’s coughing woke us both.

“She’s caught it?” Emily asked in a whisper. “G9?”

“Then she’s got to go,” I replied.

After a false start, I mustered the courage to confront Laura with our ultimatum. I knelt down next to her in the darkness of the studio. I held a moist t-shirt over my mouth and nose and glanced back at Emily, who lay in the bed covering her own face with a wet towel. She nodded at me and I turned again to speak to the worried girl.

“If you’re infected — then you can’t stay.” I said through the wet fabric.

“But—”

“There’s no cure. We all know that. And we can’t run the risk of letting you infect us. So you can’t stay. You have to leave.”

Laura rolled on her back and craned her neck to look towards the window. Snow fell outside. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” she asked. “At least until the snow stops.”

I sighed and looked towards Emily again. She shuffled as if she was about to get up and talk to Laura herself. We couldn’t afford a discussion on the matter. “No, it has to be now. You have to leave now.”

Emily developed symptoms of the G9 virus the next afternoon.

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Continues here.