Part 3, Chapter 1 (Second Half)

Here's the second half of Part 3, Chapter 1. Cue weird sex scene!

I'll post Chapter 2 on Thursday, July 2nd.

All the best,

Dave

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1 (Continued)

The sun sets and so I decide to find a place for the night. This task shouldn’t be too difficult and I soon find a particularly promising street.

Upon my approach, I maneuver around the overturned cars at the end of the block. The residents of the street placed them there to act as barricades, though it doesn’t really work. Next to the barricades, hanging from a streetlight, a large plywood sign reads in large black painted letters, “PRIVATE PROPERTY – TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT”. And daubed underneath, the words, “With No Warning!”

I’d seen streets like these on the news broadcasts, when my TV had still been able to receive broadcasts. Communities or work places formed together and barricaded buildings or whole streets from looters, trying to create self-sufficient enclaves similar to Mecca. Of course, these enclaves fell apart as the plague indiscriminately removed members from the ranks. Eventually, nobody was left alive to mount the defense, but by then there were few looters left to defend against and little of value left to take. These days the only things of true value are immediate practicalities: food, fuel, clean water, and firewood. Hopefully, this street’s former life as an enclave will mean there will be something worth finding.

So I crawl the snowmobile along the road. The waving sign unnerves me slightly, but I know nobody will be firing bullets today. By now, everybody who once inhabited this street is either dead or left the city a long time ago. I take in the smashed windows around me, and the random bits of junk in gardens and on the road. Desolation here first, then at a neighbor’s. Then another home ruined. Desperation makes bullets sound in the night, and then, soon enough, in the daytime too. And now there’s nothing but this mess.

I decide to stay at an old square protestant house in the centre of the block. I choose it because it has most of its windows intact and so it should keep the wind, rain, and snow outside for the night, if nothing else. The building is a perfect cube; its length, width, and height the same. I call it a protestant house because my mom called these places protestant houses. I presume this is because protestant’s want things clean and simple. My mom was prone to generalizing.

I pull the snowmobile up by the side of the protestant house and enter through the building’s side door, stepping onto the basement’s stairwell. I have to crack open the door between the basement and the kitchen with the crowbar. When I place the crowbar between the door and the frame, I notice the dried blood on the end of the tool, and then, looking down, the dried blood that spatters my coat. Oh fuck. The dread sinks down through my chest. Dread first and then a racing heart of panic. Do I have blood on my face? Am I literally the walking face of guilt? This is a fucking disaster. I’m crying again.

I take a moment for deep breathing and try to compose myself. I feel light headed. In the toxic mixture of guilt and anxiety, the world begins to sway.

Calm the fuck down, Matt, I tell myself. Relax.

Time passes. I’m moaning, but then as quickly as this started, the panic begins to subside. I look at the crowbar, the blood, and feel nothing once again, except the frown pulling at my face. So I jam the weapon back between the door and the frame, pull it towards my body, and the door flings open upon its hinges.

I move into the kitchen and through home’s lower rooms. The air is stagnant with a strange, but expected, rotting smell. A smell like old damp clothes. I climb the stairwell, past photographs of the six-person family who had once lived here: mom, dad, three sisters, and a brother. Like a negative image of my own family. Then I pass some paintings, all by the same artist. Lilly pads and country homes. Monet, I think.

I find each member of the family in their room and in their respective beds. The last to die was one of the teenage girls. I know this because she lies in a mess of shit-covered sheets, face down in a pillow. Each of the other bodies lie face up and composed in clean, smooth sheets. Obviously, the remaining family members gave dignity to the dead, by laying them down, clean and graceful.

I’m tempted to look through the rooms of the three daughters, as I’d done to Karen Spellman’s room, but guilt overrides these impulses and leaves me feeling nauseous. And then something else makes my stomach churn and I feel weak. My limbs wobble and I break into a sweat. I need to sit down, so I do, right there, on the ground in the upstairs hallway. My head spins. I feel electricity in my brain. The world swims in and out of dizzy focus. I lose my peripheral vision and vaguely feel myself slump sideways to hit the carpet. I’m aware of each coil of fabric pushing against my cheek and I feel the perspiration on the other side of my face turn ice cold. The carpet is so very comfortable, is all I think as the room slips into darkness.

Somewhere, a bird is singing.

The world switches off.

*

When the infected woman, Laura, left the apartment, I locked the hallway door behind her, paused to listen for her fading footsteps, and turned around to look into Emily’s worried face. She held the damp t-shirt in her hand; a talisman for defense from airborne germs. But we knew such a defense wouldn’t work. All we had were gestures because we could find no enemy to fight. Only biology. There was no bad guy. Nobody to take the blame. Nobody to take practical action against. So we created these symbols of defiance, like a scarf or a facemask. They emphasized that we would not die like animals, without a fight, without a care, and that we valued this life over the alternative the virus offered. Even if we could do nothing about it and even if we knew it was already too late and even if we had to evict innocent helpless women from our homes. What did I say about not being an animal?

From the other side of the room, Emily flashed me a weak smile, and I returned one in kind.

I returned to the bed and sat on the edge, my back hunched and my eyes staring to the ground. Emily stayed in the far corner and mirrored my posture. We both knew there was no point in talking. We both felt terrible for what we’d done.

Minutes passed, and Emily moved to my side, stroking her hand through my hair. The grief began to fade into a sore numb point, so she sat down next to me, hugged my side, and finally lay back on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling. I wondered if sex would make the situation better or if my previous act would instead consume the moment. I mulled over that question while a dog barked in the street.

I didn’t move for a long time and eventually, understanding my turmoil, she put her hand on my shoulder. I turned to gaze at her, and she pulled me down.

I wondered if, were I with someone else, rather than Emily, would they have allowed this to happen at all? I mean, would they have taken a part in the eviction and helped share the blame? And it made me bitter. I conducted that terrible act alone and so the sex was wasted in an effort to mask the events of that night. If she had shared the responsibility in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to have sex to make up for it, and I wouldn’t have felt so cold towards her. We would have had normal sex, as we normally did – fun sex and satisfying sex. And I knew the resentment was going to bleed over into the next morning.

But in fact, it was all forgotten. The bitterness of that night stayed with that night.

Because the next morning, Emily awoke with a cough that emanated from deep down in her lungs. A million malicious microbes making a new home and preparing to destroy her from the inside out. She’d caught G9.

I didn’t know how my emotions would ever work again.

*

The world swims back into focus. Lights dance in front of my eyes and my limbs feel weak but I manage to sit up and blink away the confusion. Darkness shrouds the hallway, masking everything except the feint edges of objects.

The very first thing I think of is what I did to Hank.

Maybe my mind isn’t as straight as I thought it was. I did lose consciousness after all. I feel sick to my stomach. I keep seeing Hank’s crumpled body in the snow and crowbar in my hand.

I killed a man.

The world swims and blurs again. I feel the movement translate in my stomach and brain. The world swells and pulses, swerves to the left, then right, and left again. The scary part is that I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My face feels heavy and when I try to speak my mouth doesn’t move the way I want it to. All I can utter are guttural vowel sounds. So I have to sit and wait while the world simmers down.

I take a deep breath and tell myself, “Calm down.”

I don’t know how long I sit there but eventually I get to my feet, holding on to the banister to maintain balance. The first thing I notice at this new orientation is how parched my throat feels. I stumble into the bathroom and turn on the faucets at the sink. Nothing happens; the water supply stopped working over a week ago. I turn around and lift the lid of the toilet cistern, which is full of stagnant, ice-cold water. I drink it with my cupped hands and let it run down my neck.

After satisfying the need for water my body screams for more rest, so I stumble down the stairs with an awkward gait and grab my bag from the side of the door. I pull a blanket out and lie down on the couch. It’s a cold night but my eyes are so heavy that I’m sure I won’t feel the chill. I wrap my body further in the couch covers and push my face into the cushions. For a while, darkness becomes absolute.

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