It was a Tuesday when I saw the first one.
I was on my way to the co-op when I saw it. I mean, I didn’t know what I was looking at when I saw it, but thinking back, that guy had to have been one.
It was a guy in filthy clothes. Some sorta of black and red shirt, muddy pants and shoes that talked like a child on an airplane. He was standing near a dumpster by that motel on Baxter and Evers. I think the place was called Paradisio or something, I’m not sure. He was walking back and forth, like he was confused. I was at a red, so I had a minute to watch him. That light at Evers is almost two minutes long these days after that jogger got tatered a year ago. Not that a longer light was gonna do much, but that’s not the point.
Anyway, he would take a few steps, sway a little, and stare off into the distance. Then he would turn around and take a few steps and stop again. He’d cock his head, then shake it like something was in his ears, then take a few steps in another direction. I saw a couple watching him from nearby. A man and a woman. The man was on his phone, so I figured they were calling the cops on a druggie. That’s what I thought he was, someone outta their head on something, maybe one of those new drugs they keep coming up with. What’s wrong with just smoking a joint, like when I was younger? Folks are out here chasing birds till they end up in space, you know? God knows I could use one now. Sorry. You probably don’t care about that.
I think I saw my next one on local access news. I don’t like to go out more than I need. My son used to call me a shut in, but I just like being home, you know? Him and that new wife of his always knew where to find me. That’s fine, isn’t it? Nobody bothers you there. At least, they didn’t before.
Anyway, some lady flipped out and attacked her ex-husband at the grocery store. The reports say she looked rough, like she hadn’t bathed in a week. I didn’t connect the dots, though. I mean, who would have thought too? Woman attacks an ex, it’s nothing noteworthy. Little town like this, sure it makes the news, but it don’t exactly stand out.
The day after that, I heard about a cop who almost killed his family. Wife and three kids. Two in high school and one in middle. They were kinda well know. The boy eldest was on the baseball team. Wife was head of the PTA. High-stress job. Cop was a military guy, apparently. Sometimes war is heavy, and it never leaves you. I get that. I assumed it was nothing that mattered to me outside the general sadness of so much life lost for nothing. Wife managed to put him down with his own gun, but he’d already gotten to the youngest two. Was trying to finish the eldest when wife put one in the back of his head.
Then my boy, Fabian, calls me. Tells me that the mom was his Janet’s best friend. They went to high school together. She was shook up and was visiting her in the hospital. That when things started to sorta come into focus. The wife of the cop started to degrade fast. She was only busted up a little, but she was losing control over herself. Breaking stuff, getting confused, staring into the distance, staring at Janet. It was like she recognized people, but wasn’t really seeing them. She’d squeeze a glass hard enough to break it, but didn’t seem concerned with all the shards in her palm. It was like she was on drugs, but couldn’t come down.
Then, one day about a week later, while my son and his wife were visiting her in the hospital, she attacked Janet. My boy said it was fast. One second she’s just laying there half in, half out, and the next she was one Janet like a mad dog, foaming and screaming. Fabian couldn’t pull her off until he almost broke his foot, breaking her ribs. She turned on him then. Jumped at him like a feral cat. My boy knows some strange martial art from some island, and just flipped her outta the air.
Her neck broke when she hit the ground.
My boy is so sweet. He’s a good boy. I taught him never to hit a woman, but to always defend yourself. He fell apart. The sheriff knows us, knows my Fabian. He knows what a good boy he is, but still had to lock him up. I go down there to get him out and the department is in a tizzy. Folks all over town are getting out and out violent with each other and they’re running out of places to put the ones they catch. Though most folks aren’t letting themselves be caught. Friend against friend. Families tearing each other apart. It’s all the same. About a week of degrading, then bang, they’re trying to murder a loved one.
Now, it sounds like zombies, right? But no one is trying to eat anybody else, just kill ‘em. No one is really getting bit. I mean, folks were getting bit occasionally, but Sheriff Dadeson told me it wasn’t anything consistent. He’d called down the road to Halmstead to get some help and see what was happening out there, but things were fine. I asked if anyone was coming, but he said he thought better of it. He called the CDC instead. Figured it was something viral. What else could it be? Even though at the rate it was spreading, it made not a lick of sense how. Maybe it was something in the water? I drink a lot of bottled water, so that may be why I was okay. Though I still use it to cook. It all comes from the same place. Nobody cooks with bottled water. That’s just wasteful. I guess it’s bad enough to waste the plastic in the first place. Sorry.
I loved my boy. I loved him, but I let Dadeson convince me to leave him in lockup. Said he wasn’t safe because the one thing he did notice was if someone “infected” was killed, the person what did it would snap within the week. That was one way it was getting around. He couldn’t release Fabian to me, knowing that everyone like him had snapped. So I couldn’t even say goodbye. I left my baby boy to sit in a box, hoping the end wouldn’t come for him. I did that.
I went home and called Janet and told her what Dadeson had told me. I told her she could come stay with me while we rode this thing out, but she was worried she might infect me somehow. She was in the room, after all. If Fabian might be sick now, what about her? Not everyone showed it like her friend. Some folks, it messed with a lot, some folks it only messed with a little before they broke. Who was to say she wouldn’t go crazy and hurt me? Or force me to hurt her? That poor girl. I could tell she was scared. She didn’t want to be alone in this either.
I’ve got a den in the basement. Always liked it down here. The house managed to settle funny and the door sticks like it’s locked. It actually does lock sometimes. It has one of them little buttons on it at the base of the knob and if you got big clumsy paws like me, you might hit it sometimes. I keep a tiny screwdriver in the kitchen junk drawer so I can pop it open. It’s fine if you are in here, just a problem if you hit it wrong and close the door, leaving it. Not a tangent this time, I promise.
A few days later, I’m in the basement when I suddenly hear something upstairs. I was watching M*A*S*H. I think. It was a great old show. I was a kid when it went off the air but ended up falling in love with it in high school for some reason or another. It’s a strange show for a teen to get into, I suppose. Anyway, I turn the TV down and now I know I hear someone walking about. The steps are heavy and unsteady. I didn’t know who it was, but something in my soul told me they were infected.
“Phil. Are you in the basement?”
It was Janet. I don’t know why, but I rushed to the door and locked it. It’s a shameful thing to be scared of a little woman like Janet, but by god, I was.
“I heard that.” Her voice was hard and drunk. The doorknob rattled, and she slammed all her weight against the door. “Did you lock it? Or is it stuck?” She slammed into it again. “I’ll get the screwdriver. You wait right there, Mr. Dimaggio. I’m gonna get you outta there.”
She’d stomped into the kitchen when I heard her take a tumble. “Fucking heels.” She screamed and started slamming a foot on the floor. “Off. Come off. Get off of me!” After a minute or an hour, I don’t know. I could hear her crying. “Fabian is dead. Dadeson killed him. I killed Dadeson. It wasn’t easy. Or maybe it was. I can’t remember. Everything goes white.”
I could hear her ripping my kitchen apart, screaming gibberish. And then she goes silent before her voice is at the door again. I never was a gun guy. So all I had in the basement was an old walking cane from when I had knee surgery. I have these fluid pockets that form in there. Regardless, the cane is all I have, so if she got in, it’s what I’d have to use. I couldn’t even take a minute to absorb what she said about my baby boy. My baby boy, I left in the care of that bastard Dadeson. She’s at the door and I hear her scratching around the knob, trying to pop it loose.
“Hold on, Phil. Hold on, Phil.” She keeps saying it, getting louder and louder each time she says it. After a moment, I hear that little screwdriver hit the floor, and she starts rattling the knob and slamming against the door again, her words turning into a series of screeches. Then silence again.
If it wasn’t clear, Janet’s small, but she’s not so small as to not be able to bust through a cheap door. It’s a nice, heavy wooden door. It kept her from just going through it. It also helped keep it stuck when she broke the knob off and left a hole in the door she could look through. She could look through it and see me. I was half up the steps and it put me right at eye level with it.
She was smiling as she looked through it at me. That wasn’t my daughter-in-law anymore. That was a demon in human skill. The joy in her eyes. She knew it was only a matter of effort now. She screamed at me through that knob hole.
A gunshot cut her off, and I heard her hit the floor. After a moment, I heard two more and a new eye appeared in the hole.
“How many people are in there?” It was a man’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it.
“Just me,” I said back.
“Did this woman live here? Did you know her?” He asked.
“Janet. My daughter-in-law.” I told him. “She was married to my son.”
“Where is your son?”
“She said the Sheriff killed him.”
“My condolences,” the man said. “You got supplies down there? Think you can make it a week or so?”
I have my big freezer, a hot plate, a bathroom. I could ride out the time, I figured. The TV still worked, and I still had the internet, though I wasn’t sure how long that would last. I have books down here and a couch. “Yeah,” I said.
“Good. I’m gonna block this door and I’ll be back in a week. If you’re still you when I get back, I’ll get you out of here.” The man said.
He disappeared from the hole and after a minute I hear the floor creaking before something big passed the hole and thumps on the floor. “I used your fridge. Stay away from this hole and keep quiet. I will be back for you, understand?” The man said.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“You don’t need that. Just stay in the basement.” He said. “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t go calling anyone. Last thing we need are people showing up and adding to this. If you care for your fellow man at all, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
“Are you with the CDC?” I asked him, but I’m pretty sure he was gone by then.
So I’m waiting. Waiting and I wrote this. It’s been a few days and I feel alright. I was gonna be silent because I don’t want anyone wandering into this, but at the same time I gotta warn folks while I still can. I figured you guys would be the best to tell. You know what’s what. You won’t just think I’m crazy. If you see any of the symptoms on people you know, watch out. Just take a trip. Give it a week.
As for me, I might just watch M*A*S*H again. I’ll never get tired of watching Alan Arkin act. Maybe seeing men manage to laugh in hell will pass the time faster.