After Days (The After Days Trilogy) (3 page)

“At least they are still alive,” Mr. Jennings said. “So they are lucky in that regard.”

“Are they?”

2

The rest of November and the first part of December passed without incident, until school let out for winter break. Leaving Fort Carter Junior High the Friday before Christmas, I had no way of knowing that I’d never set foot in the school again. My time in a classroom was over, but it was not the end of my lessons. One thing that I have discovered since the infection is that you never stop learning.

When it happened, it happened real quick. The United States, the greatest nation on earth, functionally ceased to exist in less than a week. The first people started getting sick on Christmas day.

“Thanks, Alan, Eleanor, I love it!” holding the small remote controlled car in my hands, I felt almost happy, part of a real family for the first time since the fire. Most of the presents that they had given me were functional – a sweater, some woolen socks, a new backpack to carry my school books in, but the remote control electric car was the first real toy that I had gotten since my parents died. At fifteen I might have been a bit old for
toys
, but I was still glad to get it.

I raced the little car around the living room, and then jogged after it as it zoomed through the dining room and into the kitchen. The thought of playing had been absent from my mind for over a year and for just a brief moment, I felt almost like a normal kid again. Under my control the car zipped in a circuit of the kitchen and back through the dining room to the living room.

“Are you alright, Al?” Eleanor was saying as I reentered the room. “You've been coughing an awful lot this morning.”

“Just a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat,” Alan replied. “I'll be fine.”

“Judith said there was a bug going around,” Eleanor said, shaking her head. “Let me get you some warm salt water to gargle, perhaps we can knock it out of you before it really sets up shop.”

“I hope so; I took a mega-dose of vitamin C this morning when I first noticed it.” Alan said. “You know how I hate being sick.”

“Doesn't everybody hate being sick?” I asked earnestly. My question caused Alan to crack a smile, as warm as ever.

“Isaac, can you clean up the wrapping paper and put your gifts away?” Eleanor asked, before heading to the kitchen to fetch the salt water for Alan. “John and Amy should be here soon.”

John and Amy were two of the kids that they had fostered before me, John was in college now, down in Providence and Amy was living up in Boston. Both still had strong feelings for the Fosters though, and came to visit often on holidays. Amy even called them Mom and Dad. I had met both a few times before and they seemed like good people, just the sort of kids you'd expect to come out of a family life crafted by Alan and Eleanor.

I gathered up my gifts and took them to my room, where I dumped them in a pile on the bed. I had to admit to myself that I was looking forward to Christmas dinner. With John and Amy there, it would be almost like the family gatherings I remembered from before my grandparents had died. I went back to the living room to gather up the torn wrapping paper into a garbage bag. Eleanor was on the kitchen phone
.

“Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that dear. I hope that you feel better soon... No, no, don't worry about it, perhaps you can get up to visit before New Year’s... I'm sure that he'll understand... get some rest and eat some soup, chicken noodle helps your body get over bugs... Love you too. Bye John.” She looked tired as she put the phone down but when she noticed me she perked up. I knew it was just a front.

“That was John,” she said. “He's feeling a bit under the weather and won’t make it tonight. Amy texted my cell phone a half hour ago though, and she should be here any minute.”

I felt a small loss now that John wouldn’t be coming, I really liked him. From the little pieces of information that the Fosters had given me, I knew his struggles had been far rougher than mine before he had come to live with them. That he'd turned out to be such a good, well-adjusted person and had gone on to college was a testament to how great of parents the Fosters were. I looked out of the window and saw that snow had started to fall. It was the first snowfall of the year and the weatherman had not predicted it, but it looked like there was going to be a white Christmas in Fort Carter, Rhode Island after all.

I dutifully lowered my head and clasped my hands as Alan said grace. At that time in my life I was angry with God, but not completely ready to give up on the idea of his existence. The meal had been prepared with expectations that John would be there as well, so there was more than enough food to go around – ham, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, pum
pkin and apple pies for dessert. It was a veritable feast. Given the things I have eaten just to stay alive in the weeks since that day, I almost feel bad about taking that meal for granted.

The conversation around the dinner table was merry, with Alan, Eleanor and Amy all laughing and having a great time. At one point during the meal, I began to tune them out and focused on eating. My mood had taken a turn for the worse. Rather than making me feel better, being reminded of the family gatherings that I could so distinctly remember actually made me feel down. Amy seemed to notice.

“Why don't you show me the presents you got after dinner?” she said. “Mom said that you got a new car? I'm jealous, they never got me a car.”

“It's just a toy.” I mumbled. Amy was nice enough, but she was older than John, in her mid-twenties and always seemed more like a visiting adult than a potential sibling. I ate a few more bites but found that the food had begun to lose its taste. I could tell that one of
my mopey moods (that’s what Eleanor called them) was about to hit me hard. Such bouts of depression had gotten fewer since I had been living with the Fosters but I had not completely left them behind.

“May I be excused,” I asked looking up at Alan.

“Sure, take your plate to the kitchen.” Alan said. “Don't let yourself get too down in the dumps though, mister. Later this evening we are going to go caroling around the neighborhood.”

“Okay,” I got up and picked up my plate.

“Is he still that unhappy here?” I heard Amy quietly ask as I went into the kitchen. I did not hear the reply. We never did go caroling that night. When the time came, Alan was feeling much worse than he had been that morning and had developed a fever to go with his sore throat and cough. Amy was beginning to feel ill as well.

Before she left though, she came up to my room to look over my presents and chat in an attempt to cheer me up. It was nice of her and I appreciated it, but it was an awkward, stilted conversation. During a particularly long pause I told her with typical teenage bluntness, “You look terrible.”

She really did, there were dark circles under her eyes and every few minutes she would cough into her handkerchief. I remember being amazed that she had gone from being perfectly healthy two hours before to her obviously ill state so quickly. Her hand had fluttered to her throat. “Yes, I think I better get going.” She gave me a hug and left.

An urgent knocking on the door of my bedroom woke me the next morning. Checking the clock I saw that it was around six. The knock sounded again and I called out, “Yeah?”

“Isaac, Alan isn't doing well this morning, I am going to drive him over to the United General,” Eleanor said through the door. “Are you going to be alright here by yourself for a while?”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied. I was old enough to look after myself for a few hours if need be. I thought about jumping up to go with them, but by the time I had decided to act on those thoughts I heard the car start up and back down the driveway. I got up anyway and wandered through the empty house. Some left-over ham and mashed potatoes provided a decent enough breakfast and I soon wandered into the living room to turn on the television. The channel it was tuned to was broadcasting a news report, so I switched it to another station, only to see the same news report. This must be big I thought, and settled in to watch.

I saw the familiar podium with the CDC emblem, and there was Dr. Ackerman walking up to it again. At first I thought that they might be replaying the press conference from before Halloween, but I realized this was new as soon as Ackerman started talking. A growing coldness developed in the pit of my stomach as he spoke.

“It has been confirmed that the infection, known as the Pyongyang Flu, is currently sweeping the eastern seaboard of the United States.” As he spoke, his face was as emotionless as a stone slab. “At this point it appears that the disease only affects those people approximately seventeen years and up. Or to be more exact, people that have past the growth stage where both the distal end of the humerus and the distal end of the tibia are fully fused. This generally happens between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, so people younger than that seem to be safe. We still do not know why this is.”

“What about adults?” One of the reporters shouted, briefly interrupting the press conference.

“Adults exposed to the virus have a high probability of contracting the disease. This seems to vary across phenotype or race, but at this juncture it is impossible to say whether people such as Native Americans are truly immune to the disease, or if it simply takes longer for them to succumb,” Ackerman held up his hands to quiet the growing murmuring among the reporters. “It is not my intention to cause a panic here. The CDC is getting ahead of this thing, and we should have the outbreak under control within a matter of days. The first case was reported yesterday, but not confirmed as Pyongyang Flu until this morning. From what we can tell so far, it spreads like a normal flu virus, so wash your hands, don't sneeze on each other and...” Ackerman was interrupted by a man rushing up to the podium from off camera. The man quickly whispered something in Ackerman's ear and passed him a sheet of paper. The CDC publicist's face drained of all color as he absorbed the words and read what was on the paper before screwing it into a tight ball.

“What is it? What’s happening?” The same reporter from before shouted.

“CDC scientists have just confirmed that H3J2, the virus commonly known as the Pyongyang Flu, is, in fact,
a man-made biological
,” Ackerman said. I fancied that he had the same numb look on his face that I'd had when I had seen the smoking ruins of my home from the backseat of Mr. Benson's car. “It appears to be airborne. At this time up to ninety percent of the population of the east coast is suffering from infection, and the infection…the weaponized virus… seems to be moving westward at a rate of over one hundred miles per hour. At this rate of progress every part of the continental United States will be affected within the next twenty-four hours. The CIA is now calling this a terrorist attack, although no one has yet claimed responsibility.”

All hell broke loose in the conference room. The microphone caught the sound of women and men crying as dozens of reporters rushed for the exits. The more hardened veterans clamored closer to Dr. Ackerman yelling more questions, while to the left of the podium I noticed the man who had delivered the awful message coughing into his hand.

Ackerman only answered one more question, a high pitched and panicked, “…what do we do!?”

“Stay in your homes…and pray to God…”

I switched off the television and went to the kitchen. Picking up the phone I dialed Eleanor's cell number and waited impatiently as it went through to her voice mail. “Eleanor, I just saw on the news that the Pyongyang Flu has come to the country... they are saying that terrorists are spreading it around or something. Are you and Alan okay?” I managed to stammer out before the phone beeped again, ending the voice mail.

Not sure what else to do, I hung up and then immediately dialed the number for Margaret, the social worker that had placed me with the Fosters. Once again it rang through and I got a message saying that she would be out of the office until January second.

Hanging up the phone I went back to the fridge to cut off a bit more ham. I felt lost and alone. All I could think about was the grainy video of the feral children in North Korea and hoped that it wouldn't get that bad here. Looking back now, I know that hope was nothing more than a child’s wishful thinking.

Eleanor and Alan returned early that afternoon. She had not been able to get him in to see a doctor at all; the emergency room had been swamped long before they had arrived. I helped her move Alan, by this point weak and delirious with fever, to their bedroom, where she laid him down and covered him with warm blankets.

“Run to the freezer and bring me the ice pack,” Eleanor said. “I'm worried that his head's getting too hot.” When I returned with the ice pack she placed it in a pillow case and set it across Alan's forehead. “Oh, Alan,” she whispered. “Please don't leave me.”

She sat by his side for a while and then, after he'd fallen into a fitful sleep, she went to the living room to watch the news. If anything the news had gotten even more horrific since I had turned it off that morning and we learned that the Chinese government was now admitting responsibility for the attack and claiming all of North America by right of conquest. The other nations of the world were protesting mightily, but the threat to them was obvious and they appeared afraid to make any real moves to help America for fear of the H3J2 virus being turned on them as well.