First there were the floods. Then there were the fires. Now we have The Sickness.
Has it always been this way? Looking back, honestly looking back, the warning signs were there. There have been devotees and self-proclaimed psychics screaming ‘THE END IS NEAR’ in the streets for over a decade now. I guess they’ve finally struck gold.
Sorry, it’s hard to think these days. Our small town is set apart from pretty much anywhere, founded by somebody’s grandfather back in the sixties. I can’t remember whose. He died the following year in an accident, just before the unveiling of the town hall. We have a classroom named after him.
Streets. Streets. Streets. There are people in the streets, walking like shadows between the wooden buildings. Stumbling more than walking, hunched over, spluttering into handkerchiefs.
‘Close the curtains’ my mother hisses at me, her skin damp with sweat.
She caught The Sickness on Tuesday. Today is…well, it’s a weekday because my brother is at the farm. This morning I heard them whispering in hurried, harsh voices but I couldn’t make out a word of it.
…
Alex isn’t the oldest, Rachel is. She up and left sometime before the fires, and people who leave never want to come back. I found her old phone beneath the loose floorboard in her room, alongside the eyeliner and pink lip-gloss she wore whenever she and her friends would sneak out into the city. I keep them on my bedside table. I don’t really know why.
‘Do you know where she went?’ Alex asked and I did. Her texts were all there. Maybe she hoped we’d follow her someday. Maybe it was a goodbye.
‘Or maybe she just forgot it when she was ditching our sorry asses’ was all he said, and we haven’t spoken about it since. Neither of us told Mother.
…
The announcement sounds. It’s time for Town Hall. I close the front door tight and trudge along by myself, through the mud that the floods left. God only knows where all of the water came from, it hardly rained. Some of the homes here have only one floor and they weren’t built to withstand any pressure. Two families drowned in their sleep. I have no idea how the water got so high.
A lot of people haven’t listened to handwritten Stay Home, Stay Safe notes that our pastor left in out mailboxes. The cold wind whips against my face and only amplifies the uncomfortable sensation of my runny nose. Wow, it really is cold. I know I should choose a seat towards the windows but they’re wide open and my holey winter coat does nothing and my teeth are chattering so hard that I’m being shot a bunch of confused looks.
Funny, the fires seemed as though they’d never end. They cut through the buildings as easily as a fish through water. The school lost its dining room. The shopping center lost its haberdashery and its bakery. Three more families lost their lives.
…
‘We need to get out of here,’ Alex told me then, ‘Nothing good ever happens’.
There was a burn on his left hand. He’d helped the other farmhands put out some of the blaze.
We were in our room. It’s so tiny that there’s barely enough floor space to make your way around it. When I was younger, too afraid to sleep, my brother was my only comfort. I would lie awake, listening to his snores and watching the bed sheets rise and fall with every breath.
Wait, that’s not important. My head is pounding.
‘Where would we go?’ I asked. Yes, that’s what I said. I didn’t want to add the unthinkable, about joining Rachel, just in case he got upset again. Our mother was sobbing in the other room.
‘That’s not important, we’ll just go,’ he said, a little quieter this time. He was frowning at me to show he was serious, but I could tell from the waver in his voice that he was already talking himself out of it.
‘With Mother?’
‘No, just us. She’d never leave.’ And he meant it too.
The sky outside was still grey from all of the ash, so bright that it could have been daytime. In that moment, I was happy that our mother wouldn’t let us take over Rachel’s room because Alex reached out and hugged me – a sign of affection that was usually reserved for holidays.
‘I’ll figure something out’ was all he said, and we haven’t spoken about it since.
…
Oh, the mayor has been speaking. How long haven’t I been listening? Usually Town Hall is as packed as Chapel, full of people with praises and complaints and questions about restoration work or supplies or education. We’re quite isolated here, did I tell you? There aren’t many books. We’re always asking for more books.
‘We’re here to talk about The Sickness,’ says The Mayor, baring his teeth in a forced smile, ‘That is our main priority’.
Did you know that humans didn’t exist at the same time as dinosaurs? Rachel once drew the disciples riding on the back of a t-rex. She got twelve raps on her knuckles.
‘All we can do is stay hydrated and wait for the storm to pass,’ says The Mayor, ‘Remember to drink lots of water’.
We’re always waiting for the storm to pass.
I trudge back through the mud and my head is feeling very heavy. I had to keep Rachel’s phone hidden up my sleeve and it almost crashed to the floor when I started dozing. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water.
All we’ve done is drink water, none of us are feeling any better. Mother is asleep in the kitchen, slumped over the table. I mustn’t wake her. The water is cloudy and tastes strange. Maybe it’s my mouth that tastes funny. Alex will be home soon. I hope that he’s home soon.
…
‘There’s a whole world out there,’ my brother said yesterday, ‘Movies without John Wayne’.
We shared a mean laugh. Our mother loves John Wayne. She says he looks like our father but she’s delusional. John Wayne and The Mayor are nothing alike.
‘Big movie theatres,’ I added helpfully. I could taste the popcorn already. ‘And lots of food.’
Our backpacks were full to the brim already, hidden beneath our beds.
‘We’ll try everything, I promise,’ is all he said, and we…we…
…
My head realy hurts. Wrting is hard on this lttle kyboard. I wnt to sleep. The room s spinning an spnning. But its ok. Were leaving tmrrow. Jst one mor night.