Part 2, Chapter 3

Part 2, Chapter 3 is in two parts again. I'll post the second part on Sunday. Sorry about the delay with getting this posted. Enjoy it. Be sure to leave me any comments you may have.

As always, if this is your first time here, start at Part 1.

Dave

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3

After the next morning’s breakfast, a large man, who introduces himself as Jack, assigns the three of us with work details. In a group of five others, which includes Hank, I have to conduct “reconnaissance and salvaging” along the Southside. They give me this task because I lack experience in many other practical skills. I’ve only ever been a student and an occasional employee in a coffee shop. As for Hank, he used to work in a loans office, doing paperwork for people who wanted to buy cars. Jack hands a note to Hank and I, signed by Mistress Sylvia, stating that we are to return to Lawrenceville and collect our things later that evening. This, she writes, is necessary for our own morale, if nothing else.

As soon as we get the order from Jack, he ushers our group out of Mecca, and onto the back of an open top truck, which will take us west along the length of Southside.

We drive through the ice and snow and then spend the remainder of the daylight searching through stores and apartment buildings in turn, looking for any provisions, or items of use, and loading them into the filthy vehicle, which drives back and forth to Mecca with its precious cargo. I wonder what James is doing; he received his work detail as we were leaving so he could be anywhere doing anything by now. When we disclosed our skills to Jack, James was able to list a whole host of valuable traits: carpentry, electronics, and plumbing, among others.

We conduct the searches in pairs. Hank and I work together, and, late in the day, approach yet another apartment building assigned to us. It looks similar to my old place in Oakland, composed of the same brown brick construction. Our red-haired group leader reminds us, “take your time. Get clothes and food, maybe books. But food is our priority.” Then he takes a group into a building across the street.

The large metal doors at the front of the building are smashed open, hanging off their hinges an impressive display of strength.

Inside the building, the air is stagnant. There’s an odd smell, like cat-shit in an old litter tray. Hank looks at me and grimaces. “We’ll work from the top down, huh?”

“Sure,” I reply and I push ahead of him to climb the first flight of stairs.

The smell gets stronger as we ascend to the second floor. There, we find a young woman’s body, lying face down. I double take. Somebody has smeared feces on the wall behind the woman. Hank gags and my own stomach lurches.

We hold our jacket collars over our noses and turn the girl over with the tips of our shoes. Dried blood covers her torso. The plague didn’t kill this girl — this is far too gruesome. There’s no other blood in the hallway either, so someone must have carried her here. As for the shit covered walls — fuck, who knows what that’s all about?

“Oh Jeez,” Hank says. “Oh fuck.”

I’m lost for words.

*

But there’s nothing we can do about the body. There’s no killer left to catch, so I make a note of the scene in our logbook and Hank continues up the stairs. Before I follow, I take one last glance at the blood-covered girl. She must be the same age as me. I think of photographs in my back pocket of Karen Spellman and Emily Jacobs — both dead. This body is too real, too immediate, too graphic a depiction of this new world. It reminds me too much of the people who were once in my life. My brothers and sister. My parents. My friends. A lump forms in my throat and my eyes sting. Hank spots that I’m lingering, descends the stairs and places his hand on my shoulder.

This girl, murdered, is the catalyst for a million terrible emotions to float to the surface of my mind.

I shudder under the weight of Hank’s hand. My eyes burn. I try to keep everything deep down, so I can get by each day, but this girl lays crumpled, disgusting, on the floor. She shows me how futile my efforts at repression are.

Hank tries to show me an expression of compassion but instead he looks worried. We’re all masking our emotions and an outbreak of reality would spread and explode though us all. It would manifest as weakness. We’d be crippled in our sorrow. We’d lose everything.

So I try to compose myself. I turn from Hank, his hand slips back to his side, and I climb the next flight of stairs.

*

Hank and I search several more apartments, grab canned food, cigarettes, alcohol, even a small chunk of cannabis I find in a coat pocket, and we load our new acquisitions into our backpacks. Eventually we tire of rummaging through the remains of the dead and we decide to climb onto the building’s rooftop to survey the late afternoon city.

At the top of the stairwell, the roof-access door is unlocked and propped open with a brick. There’s nothing on the roof except a collection of lonely flowerpots. Beyond these, we can see across the Monongahela River and to the high-rises of Downtown. We stroll across the roof and pause by the edge, the cityscape sprawled out ahead.

“I still can’t believe it,” Hank says. “I just can’t believe what has happened.”

This is a history we will spend our whole lives running from. Running from bodies in hallways and those once full streets now devoid of life. Running from our own loneliness and the insanity that may be only moments away.

Other than our own voices, there’s barely a sound in the entire city. Occasionally we hear another team, a few buildings to our left, clanking around as they conduct their own search. It sounds like they’re dropping steel pans down a stairwell. My throat feels tight because I’ve said so little in the past few hours.

“It’s like a dream, man,” Hank continues. “A strange, surreal dream and I still expect to wake up in a moment. You know? Like I’m going to snap out of it, wake up, and go to work again after breakfast and a shower. And I’ll hate my job, pushing buttons, loosening my tie, calling up some client who I couldn’t give a fuck about, maybe flirting with the girl in the photocopy room.” He sighs. “What’s going on, man? That woman down there— When did all this happen? How did everything turn so quick, like—?”

We remain silent. I notice how cold it’s become and how the wind has picked up, blowing into my coat sleeves. We look towards the dead towers of Downtown and Hank sighs again, a deep sigh from the base of his chest, and then he shudders with a chill.

In an office building across the river, a tower of the PPG complex, too distant to see the details, an individual is moving at an open window. He moves back and forth, a black shadow. Hank and I both notice the slight movement at the same time. Back and forth, and then struggling with something, dragging something and pushing something. Then a large object falls from the window, a desk maybe, and it drops twenty or thirty floors to the ground. As the object falls the figure yells, “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!” but from this distance, though the words are distinct, the yelling is only an angry dying whimper.

I make a note in the logbook.