The Oasis of Filth (8 page)

18

They took me to a similar bright room, and just like the lobby, it was covered in plastic. “What the hell are you doing to us? Let me go!” I shouted, with no results. The two burly young men in light-blue medical garb who were holding my arms took me to a hospital gurney in the middle of the room. I struggled, but they easily strapped me down, then left the room. I was lined up next to another gurney, where another person lay strapped down. The whole trip, the whole idea of The Oasis, was a huge joke. They must be taking in stragglers off the streets for some perverse game.

Thinking that the person next to me — a man, I could see, maybe 25 or 30 — was someone who must have wandered into their grasp, too, I tried to make eye contact. And I realized he was really, really sick.

He looked feverish, nearly unconscious. I remembered Noah, sweating on that first cool day. These people had just strapped me down next to a soon-to-be-zombie. Was this their idea of fun? Maybe they’d watch as he turned, then tore at his straps until he was free to come rip me apart. All that plastic would make for easy clean up.

Why hadn’t we been more cautious? Rosa, well, she just believed. And I was desperate to get her help. It was a pair of fatal mistakes.

The door opened again, and Harvey walked in.

“You son of a bitch!” I started. He just held up his two large hands in front of him, calmly.

“Hold on,” he said. “I know how this looks.”

“Really? Because to me, it looks like you’re about to watch us die, for sport!” Harvey seemed confused. Then he turned to look at the other gurney, and my meaning dawned on him.

“Oh.” His eyes got slightly wider. “Oh. You think — well.” He stammered, but also seemed amused. If I could have ripped him limb from limb at that moment, I would have.

He leaned over me, eyes darting around, checking everything over. “This is going to be really unpleasant for you, I won’t lie.” Then he did crack a small smile. “But not in the way you think. The man next to you is named Todd. But he
doesn’t
have the disease. He has the
flu
.” Harvey turned and walked out, and a nurse came in, dressed all in white, a strange reminder of Terry Rawlins, my nurse before the disease.

She took my vital signs without a word. Then she prepped a small rolling cart carrying a tray stacked with instruments. To my surprise, she pushed it over next to the other man, Todd. After a brief check of his vitals and a few marks on a chart that hung off the end of his gurney, she raised a long, thin, wooden stick with a cotton swab on the end. Peeling Todd’s lips apart, she twirled the cotton swab in his mouth, covering it with his saliva. Then she turned to me.

She reached for my mouth, and a combination of terror and revulsion went through me in a fast wave. “No! Stop that — leave me alone!” I turned my head away. Her latex-gloved hand reached out, grabbed my chin. She was strong and clearly used to these feeble attempts to ward her off. She leaned over me while tipping my head back, and managed to open my lips with her fingers. I was desperate. I tried to thrash my head back and forth. I may even have snapped my teeth at her fingers to make her back away. It was all pointless. She stuck the cotton swab into my mouth, and Todd’s saliva mixed with mine. I had the urge to throw up. Instead, I spat at her, hitting her in the face. She flinched, but only slightly, then turned and methodically cleaned up herself, her tray and instruments. She tossed the cotton swab in a trash container in the corner of the room, and left without another glance in my direction.

19

Her name was Marian. She was 56, Caucasian, a mix of English and German in her family tree. She was about five-foot-10, and built solid — a battle-axe, someone my age might have called her. She’d been a nurse in Augusta before the outbreak, and remained one afterward until the city fell. She didn’t know where to go once the walls came down, but in that part of the country the rumors about The Oasis were more persistent, and much more specific. She joined a caravan heading north. Harvey was impressed with her right away and, after her own processing, asked her to help with The Oasis’ medical staff. She was pragmatic. She knew what had to be done and knew she could do it. Now here she was, processing Rosa and me.

Processing was the official welcoming procedure for anyone arriving at The Oasis. It was standard for them not to tell you what it was until they got you started. Marian told me that they used to try to be nice and explain it up front, but too many people refused to do it then still wanted to stay. So Harvey declared, and the residents of The Oasis agreed, that everyone who wanted to stay had to be processed. A couple of the ones who refused turned belligerent. There was some bloodshed. But processing continued, and The Oasis stayed safe.

I had a lot of time on my hands. Eventually, after three or four episodes with the cotton swab, two men rolled Todd out, and I stayed by myself. I started to feel sick, but in a more
normal
sense — sore throat, fever, aches and pains. It felt… old-fashioned. They’d obviously given me the flu by introducing Todd’s germs into my system. Marian kept me hydrated and regularly checked my vitals, marking them down on my chart.

I learned that it all started as an accident. Before there was The Oasis, when the first dozen or so people came to Hickory Knob State Park Lodge, looking for refuge, two of them were in the very beginning stages of the flu. The two men had been chicken farmers, and the common theory later on was that they’d contracted a strain of avian flu. As the others began to notice their symptoms, the group fractured. The majority wanted to send the two men away, fearing they were becoming zombies and would infect everyone. One person objected: Harvey. He was just one of the group then, not a leader, but he was just as forceful, just as brash, and wouldn’t let them condemn the others to die. He volunteered to take the sick men to a small building and take care of them. And that’s how he became the first processing nurse of the community that grew into The Oasis. Under Harvey’s care, the men got better in a few days. Then Harvey himself became ill, and the people who had railed against his plan said it was fate, that even if he had been able somehow to save the two men, now he himself would become a zombie. But he didn’t. Harvey’s wife, Anne, was one of the original members of the group and couldn’t just let him die, and so she entered the building and served as his nurse, caring for him until he got better. In a just over a week, when they felt certain it was over, Harvey opened the doors of the small building where he’d first taken the two chicken farmers and walked out, with the two men behind him. All three were well. The rest of the group was forced to readmit them, but remained wary. Anne contracted the flu and remained in quarantine, with Harvey nursing her to return the favor.

A few days later, there was trouble. Back then, The Oasis didn’t have any fortifications, just the lodge itself. And given its size, they hadn’t been able to check out the entire complex. With the flu outbreak seeming to have passed, they finally went through every room, closet, office, basement, and workroom in the lodge and the surrounding buildings. After going through most of the spaces with no problem, they became a little careless. They stumbled onto a group of zombies locked into a lodge room, and were overrun. Hearing the melee, Harvey ran to help and was bitten. Three others also became infected by bites and cuts — including one of the men Harvey had nursed through the flu — before the zombies were dispatched. In time, the group watched as all four began to show signs of the disease, and began making plans to execute them. And that’s when they saw that Harvey and the other man who’d just had the flu actually got
better
. As the two others continued to turn, Harvey got an idea.

He rushed the infected men to the small building and into the room with Anne. Others shouted that he was crazy, that he would kill his own wife. But he wiped mucus from Anne onto the two men, took them into another room, strapped them down, and waited.

They lived.

* * *

I asked Marian about Rosa all the time, and Marian told me she was having a rough time. The disease was already working its way through her by the time we got to The Oasis, and the processing was adding even more stress to her body. But Marian thought she would make it. During the time Rosa and I were being processed, during the deepest part of our illnesses, other new people were brought in and strapped to gurneys next to us, and they began their own processing, kicking and screaming. It was a cycle that couldn’t be broken, strung out in a chain all the way back to those first two men and their avian flu.

In a week, I was released. Rosa came out four days after that. And she was fine, with no signs of the disease. Somehow the flu had saved her.

So that was why The Oasis seemed so filthy. They didn’t care anymore about keeping every spot clean, of scouring every nook and corner. They just lived. A little dirt was okay when you knew you weren’t risking zombie infection.

Rosa became obsessed. She’d spent years trying to find any clue that might help eradicate the disease to no avail, and now here was clear evidence of a cure, right in front of her. She asked for as many details as she could from The Oasis’ processing team. Marian told her that they had to keep a live culture of the flu at all times or it wouldn’t work. They tried preserving it but didn’t really have any idea how to do that, which meant a constant cycle of people had to come into The Oasis and be processed. If there was any lull and no living person carried the flu to the next person, the chain would be broken and the cure would vanish forever. Rosa dove right into the middle of it, setting up a makeshift lab.

As far as I know, she only took one break that whole time, other than eating, going to the bathroom, and sleeping. She came and saw me. She looked nervous, which was uncharacteristic. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, trying to get her to look into my eyes.

She wouldn’t make eye contact, and for a time I thought she might turn and hurry back the lab. Then she put her hand in her pocket. “I just...” she stammered.

“What?” I said, as compassionately as I could. “Look, we’ve been through just about everything together. Whatever you have to say, just
say it
.” Finally she looked at me. When her hand came out of her pocket, it was holding something tightly.

“I just wanted to say
thank you
. And... I made you this.” She opened her hand. Inside, there was a thin, multi-colored twist of strings. She reached out, lifted my hand, and began to tie them like a band about my wrist. I looked down at her hands as she did it, and saw she still wore her colorful bracelet from her days in D.C. Where hers was made of bright synthetic fabric, mine used organic strings, cottons of various colors. I could only guess she collected them from around The Oasis. When she was finished, she pulled back a few inches to look. And we stood there, each with a colorful thin bracelet, different but still matching.

“I don’t know what to say... I —” She interrupted me by quickly leaning in and placing a short, delicate kiss on my lips. I felt nothing but an electric sensation of surprise. Just as quickly, she turned and rushed out, back to her lab.

* * *

Harvey was thrilled to have a true medical researcher in the group, and so he fully supported Rosa’s work. She was given access to anything and anyone she wanted. She took samples from everyone being processed. Eventually, she needed more equipment. Marian thought Augusta would be the answer — there were several hospital labs back there. The Oasis had scouting groups that routinely went out for supplies, so Harvey had Rosa make a list. She did, and even drew pictures of certain items. The scouts — a wiry young brunette with a long, braided ponytail named Janine, and a tall, muscled Korean kid named Hank — pored over her requests. Their reply: “No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Rosa asked.

“No offense, but, these drawings... they’re terrible.” Hank pointed down at Rosa’s sketches. “I wouldn’t trust us to get the right thing.”

Janine held out one of the pictures. “This round thing. Is this a plate? Or a ball?”

“It’s a Petri dish!” Rosa shouted, throwing up her hands. “I wrote
Petri
right next to it! As many as you can get.”

“Can’t read your writing,” Janine said with a grimace. “Sorry.”

Hank was holding one of the other sketches. “What is
agar
? And would any kind of microscope work?”

“It’s a solution for growing cultures... and.... Look. Never mind. I’ll go.” We all turned to Rosa, wide-eyed.

Harvey objected. “Now look, I know you’ve been out there, but you haven’t been a scout and you haven’t been to Augusta. Besides...” He stared at her with a serious look tinged with what seemed like... fear. “You’re our only hope to truly fix this. I can’t risk sending you.”

She thought about that. “No. You can’t risk
not
sending me. These two,” gesturing at Hank and Janine, “will try their best, but they might fail. They’ll
probably
fail. Then what? I make some more sketches and send them again? That’s time wasted that we don’t have. If we miss this window, if the virus dies out now, we may never — the
world
may never — have this chance
ever
again.” She let the idea hang in the air like the fetid smell of a rotting corpse.

“Fine.” Harvey was a practical man, after all.

“Me, too,” I added.

Now it was time for the scouts to object. “What? Come on, but aren’t you a little...”

“Old? Yeah. But I go with Rosa.”

“He does,” she added.

In the end, they couldn’t object and still get what we all needed. So Rosa and I joined Janine and Hank on a mission to Augusta.

* * *

The next morning, we set out. Hank and Janine had a jeep fully outfitted for their scouting runs, but we had to take out some items to make room for us in the back seats. As we drove off, I looked at the boxes piled on the ground, and hoped we weren’t going to need anything we left behind.

“What’s in there?” I asked, gesturing back at the discarded boxes.

“Mostly grenades,” Janine shouted back as the car accelerated and wind whipped around us, muffling every other sound. Hank nodded to the two young men holding open the gate as we drove through, then raced along the twisty wooded roads, headed first east, then south, taking us through the coniferous woodlands down to US 378. From studying maps before we set out, we knew that our options here were to turn left toward McCormick or right to cross the bridge into Georgia. Hank turned left without a pause.

“After the outbreak, the bridges were pretty much the first thing the military took out, especially around the walled cities,” Janine said, pointing at the map. “The bridge here over the lake is still intact, but farther south we’d have to cross the reservoir on 47, and that bridge is long gone.”

We rolled into McCormick not long after that. Rosa and I were shocked by what we saw.

“Did a tornado go through here or something?” Rosa asked. “Why is this town...
flat
?”

As Hank steered into town, he pointed to an abandoned bulldozer. “Harvey’s orders. See that bulldozer? We used that and a couple other ones to tear everything down. McCormick isn’t much, but it’s the closest town to camp and we saw zombies in the area. Harvey thought it would be safest to just run the place into the ground, so there was nowhere for them to hide.” Hank turned right onto Mine Street, aiming south again. A few blocks along, I looked across a wide parking lot off to the left. It looked like it used to hold something big, like a supermarket or one of those big-box stores. The building was flat, like everything else. I turned back toward the road... and stopped, whipping my head back to the left.

“Something moved,” I said.

Hank continued driving. “What? A deer? Got a lot of those out —”