Waiting Out Winter (3 page)

“People are dying. Dying from the flies.”

“Hon,” he waited for her to make direct eye contact. “The beginning...”

She inhaled and looked toward the kitchen for a moment. “Ok.”

“The boys?”

“They’re fine.” Her eyes danced across his face and fell to the carpet. “Right before you left, remember the DNR saying they were going to take care of the worms?”

“Damn tent worms are still all over the highway. It stunk like hell in the thicker parts--you’d think it was dinosaur roadkill from the stench.”

“Yeah, well, their bright idea was to release black biting flies. By the droves. Because they supposedly eat tent worm larvae and would therefore eat the problem before their peak cycle became a problem.”

“Really? That was their great idea?”

“Well they fucked up.” She looked up at him, anger brimming behind her eyes as she ignored his interjection. “They released them too late and the larvae had already hatched. The flies don’t eat the worms, only the eggs and babies, so we’re stuck with the worms.”

“Ok, that explains why they’re still all over and systematically eating the forest. Have you seen that? It’s unbelievable the damage they’re doing.”

“You’re not listening.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “They screwed up. The DNR. So we were stuck with the tent worms, and then we were swarmed with black biting flies.”

“Ah, ok. That explains the fly-strips everywhere.”

“But we got a double-whammy.” Her fingernails bit into his shoulder. “The flies were, well... Infected, I guess you’d call it.”

“Infected with what?”

“There’s the million dollar question.” Jamie raised her voice again. She sat back and glanced again at the kitchen before returning in a hushed tone. “First they said cholera, then anthrax, and finally they admitted it didn’t have a name but was similar to a strain of bubonic plague that had been all but wiped out.” Her speech sped up again near the end of the sentence as she tried to get it all out in one breath. He couldn’t tell if it was anger or impatience.

“They said it wouldn’t be a problem. That it was only infectious to animals. Did you notice Buddy wasn’t barking? That’s because Buddy
died.
But not before his fur fell out and his eyes became bulges of bloodshot sickness and he became more vicious than he’s ever pretended to be.”

Nick realized he had been so confused with the state of the town he hadn’t noticed the next-door neighbor’s wolfhound hadn’t threatened to tear him to shreds for being in his own yard. He hated that dog. He’d hated that dog since the day it decided to hate everyone, friend and foe. It barked at the mailman, the children playing outside, hell, even the wind. It had gone from being a neighbor’s dog he didn’t give a crap about, to an animal he couldn’t stand the sight of. Making matters worse, the Browns never bothered to tell Buddy to stop or bring him inside when he continued. Nick disliked them for their lack of action far more than he hated the dog. The dog was an annoyance, the neighbor was a nuisance, and the difference was astronomical in Nick’s mind. For all his barking, Buddy would have never bitten anyone. He was one of those dogs who pretended to be mean--growling and snarling to put on a good show--but if you pet him you became his friend for the day--although he’d start the attitude all over the next time he saw you. Once upon a time they’d joked that if a burglar could get past the façade and pet him, Buddy would show them where the valuables were.

“Died?”

“Yeah. But they lied and people started getting sick. So they said stop eating meat--claiming it came from sick cattle--but people were still getting sick. Then they said they had a chemical that would kill it and quarantined everyone inside for three days while they dusted the tri-county area--thank God you guys were further south!

“But that didn’t work either. And now people won’t go outside. The government is starting to track the movements south and is saying the flies are going to spread to the entire North American continent within a few months. And only when they were forced by some government committee did they even acknowledge or admit they’d given the flies the disease on purpose.”

“On purpose?”

“Yeah. They were working on developing something that would kill off birds and take care of the Avian Flu, and they let
those
flies loose instead of regular black biting flies. Those flies! The flies they infected with something that was only supposed to kill animals but had never left the lab before. Had never been tested. The bastards--”

Nick cut her off, seeing her anger boil to a point that would draw the attention of the boys in the other room. “So the flies are diseased? And they won’t eat the worms, but they’ll kill us? Is that really what you’re saying?” His incredulous expression hardened as the repercussions began to solidify in his mind.

“Yes.”

He reached for the T.V. remote and she stopped him, putting her hand over his. “Don’t bother.”

“Since when?”

“It seemed like the moment you walked out the door, but I guess it’s only been a week since the televisions and radios went silent. No one wanted to even go out for their mail or to walk their dogs, let alone go to work--so there’s no one to man the stations. For a few days we had national broadcasts, they must have set them like that before they abandoned the stations, but those are gone now, too.”

“That explains the stray pets downtown.”

“Yeah, they left the neighborhoods after ransacking all the garbage cans. I suppose they’re digging in the business dumpsters now.”

“So what are we doing? When will they have it dealt with?”

“We don’t know.” Her sentence hung in the air like it was waiting for clarification, but none came.

Nick looked at her and realized she was wearing full length pants, socks and a long sleeve t-shirt. If Jamie was anything, it was a tank top and shorts kind of girl. She always had been, even in the dead of winter, so long as she was in the house. Seeing her in this much clothing in late summer or early fall was unusual at best, unnerving at worst. Could the problem really be as bad as she claimed?

The phone rang and broke the silence.

“Let the machine get it, I’m sick of the gossipers spreading fear and asking the same three questions every day.”

“What if it’s the guys? They were going to call when they got home.”

She shrugged and he walked over to the small table that held the phone, an empty flower vase--unusual as well, as Jamie picked fresh flowers for it almost daily as long as they continued to grow--and a green porcelain dish with a pewter squirrel on it his grandmother had given them which they used for loose change and car keys. The caller I.D. showed Sarah and Jerry’s phone number and he picked it up.

“Hell--“

“Oh Nick! I’m so glad you’re home. Mom’s been calling every day and none of the authorities were willing to send anyone to locate you and--“

“Sarah, breathe, hon. I’m home, Jerry’s home, everyone is safe. Let me talk to Jerry for a second, okay?”

Rather than an answer from his sister, Jerry’s voice responded. “You believe this shit?”

“I don’t know. I just got the basics and it’s still sinking in.”

“I got the high-speed cliff notes. Never knew your sister could talk like that.” Nick heard Jerry spit and imagined the paper cup Sarah demanded he use in the house. “The worms then the flies, then the pets and kids and elderly... Damn, Nick, what the hell are we going to do?”

“Kids and elderly?” He spoke into the phone but questioned Jamie with his eyes. She nodded and turned away from him.

“Let me call you back, okay? Call around and see what you can find out. We need the full story here and communications being cut off will make that difficult. Is Wade still working for the county or did he transfer already?”

“Nah, he’s there until December, then he goes south for small town sheriff duty.”

“Call him.”

“Will do.”

Neither man said good-bye, simply hung up. Nick turned back to his wife and saw her shoulders slumped. He could hear her breathing and knew she was upset, but didn’t think she was crying. Yet.

“Jamie, what about the kids and elderly? Our parents? Emily?”

Without turning around or looking up she answered in a broken voice. “They’re fine. I mean parents and Emily. I’ll never understand you and Sarah. You love each other to death but have barely spoken since she married Jerry--yet you take him everywhere with you. Whatever… the elderly and kids though… dead, dying, infected. I was trying to tell you.”

Nick knelt in front of her. He grabbed her hands and leaned down, willing her to make eye contact. “I’m listening. Tell me everything.”

“Everything” included slowly revealed details, some of which were difficult for Jamie to share and almost as hard for Nick to hear. When the disease spread to humans it attacked the weakest first, the elderly and children. Children played outside, unconcerned with tent worms and only annoyed by the flies, and therein became easy pickings for the flying beasts with infectious scissor-like teeth. The elderly may have spent more time indoors, but they were more susceptible due to immune system deficiencies. The first case was actually thought to be bedsores, until they spread, rapidly covering the poor woman and hospitalizing her within forty-eight hours. Her fever rose to 104 and the tiny blisters popped, leaking into any and all wounds, scratches or other abrasions in her thin, aging skin. She was dead within ten hours and panic slowly started to rumble through the hospital, then it reverberated through the town around it.

Those that knew reacted as quietly as they could, pulling their children from daycare, calling in sick, stocking up on food and supplies. But as is the nature in small towns, gossip travels quickly, and when it is not fed directly, it’s imagined by the actions of others. Suggestion leads to supposed truths, which leads to new rumors based on absolutely nothing concrete. By the end of the first week, there were six dead and several dozen sick, but the word on the street was much higher numbers.

Nick learned almost everyone had firsthand experience with the infection, through a family member, coworker or neighbor and stared with his mouth agape as Jamie told him the horrors of their own neighborhood.

“Terry was the first and that poor girl of his found him.” The divorced dad across the street had been nothing short of the perfect father to his eleven-year-old daughter, and Nick frowned as concern for the girl welled inside him. “Last I heard, she was staying with her grandmother while they tried to figure out if they could even locate the mother. I don’t know if they ever did.

“It happened so quickly. From release to enough deaths to cause panic was only five days. People had begun dropping like, well… flies.”

The irony of the lifespan of the infected being drastically shorter than that of the insect biting them was not lost on Nick. “Will the disease die when the flies die?”

“No. It’s part of them. It’ll reproduce with them. Genetically altered and all that shit.”

Nick wasn’t sure he could believe something that hadn’t come to fruition yet and wanted to ask if this was her opinion or official word from the government, but he remained quiet and allowed Jamie to spew forth all the ugliness he’d missed, hoping it would cleanse her of it in some way.

Jamie explained how, after the tenth death, everyone swarmed the grocery stores for food, hardware stores for supplies, and ran their credit cards up as they wore their checkbooks down--often overdrawing them in the name of survival.

“But where is everyone? I mean, why not stockpile supplies in one place? Make a stand as a group?”

“We were, initially… well, sort of. Groups formed in churches and schools and businesses, but that all fell apart when people realized no one could trust who was or wasn’t sick. In the interest of self-preservation, everyone has turned their backs on everyone else. Hell, I dare you to try and knock on a door! They all shut the world out. Some ran off to relatives and cabins in other parts of the country--afraid the government would burn Hayward to the ground with napalm or something. Kill off the disease and count us as collateral damage.”

“It’s not impossible, but I think far too many people believe it’s as common a solution as Hollywood would like us to believe.” He quickly counted off the movies he could recall that had used the technique, whether in the United States or elsewhere to deal with anything from disease to alien invasion. “And if anything, it would be precise strikes, not grand sweeping genocide. Most likely the woods--”

Jamie continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Telephones and television and radio helped those of us that stayed behind. But everything changed when the static began.”

“When was that?”

“Wednesday? Nine days or so after the initial fly dump.”

“Unmanned stations?”

“Well, there were a few theories. I preferred that one, but Sarah heard it was because it was worse out there--that everyone else was dead. Rebecca told us it was because they’d just turned off our feed so we couldn’t see how bad it was, and that made sense in a weird way. After all, why aren’t our national stations and cable and satellite and such working? Cartoon Network doesn’t come out of Duluth or Eau Claire, it comes out of California or something doesn’t it? Damn media tells us too much when we don’t want to know and not enough when we
need
to know.”