Quarantine (Incarnate)

Day 55, November 3rd

Arizona

            They said it wasn’t contagious, but what the hell did they really know about anything. They had been spouting horseshit since day one. Pure, high-grade, Kentucky-Derby-winning, horseshit. Nate Williams grabbed a full piece of red chalk from a small Ziploc bag in a drawer. He dropped a diagonal line across four hash marks, stood back from the kitchen wall and counted out loud. “Eleven sets of five equals … fifty-five days. Fifty-five days since the power went out.” 

Fifty-five fucking days.

“Don’t worry.” Nate’s head tilted from side to side as he mimicked, “That big ole flare just fried a few transformers. We’ll have ‘em up an’ runnin’ before you can say grid failure.” 

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Fifty-five days later, and I’m still missing my weekly dose of Survivor. “Assholes.”

He never would’ve believed them about the flare if he hadn’t seen that crazy display of lights fifty-five days ago with his own eyes – the swirling neon greens lacing through the night sky. It was the most incredible thing he’d ever witnessed. “Can’t fake that,” he’d say to anyone that would listen.

            Then, with the red chalk he circled tomorrow’s date on the calendar next to the refrigerator. In fact, he circled it twice. His birthday. The big sixty-five. 

As if searching for a higher power to bargain with, he looked up to the ceiling. “Like the grid failure isn’t enough to worry about, I have to worry about my birthday as well? Fuck that. They’re not taking me anywhere.” He then placed the tip of his index finger on his calendar birthdate, pushed until it blanched white, and tapped it repeatedly. “Not. Taking. Me.”

 He had an idea. He walked briskly to a cupboard in the kitchen, rummaged through long-forgotten uselessness, and found a pink spray can. Bingo. Knew it was in here somewhere. 

            He unlocked the deadbolt on his front door and hauled it open. It was a late, gray afternoon. The street outside was as bare as his pantry. He stepped out onto his cement landing and scanned the street, mentally checking off the neighborhood houses. It was impossible to know if anyone was still home. By the end of the first week, everyone had clammed up, turning inward to their families – especially when the craziness started, the dying and the killing. 

He muttered to himself, “Well fuck that. No one’s killing me, and I’m sure as hell not killing myself. And double fuck them if they think they’re taking me away to some camp just because I’m turning 65 tomorrow.” 

            He turned to his front door and started shaking the paint can. Spittles of fluorescent paint dropped to the cement landing. The chemical aerosol odor made his nose twitch while he straight-armed a massive “X” across his front door. He sprayed the word “Quarantine” underneath. Maybe this will keep them away. He stepped back to admire his work. 

            “Nate. What the hell are you doin’?”

            He jumped – it had been a while since anyone had talked to him. A man of medium build with a shaggy blond wave and week-old scruff seemed to have materialized out of thin air, standing on the grass, just a few feet off of Nate’s porch. His eyes were sad and weighed down by puffy grey pockets. The two had been neighbors for seven years, and spoke frequently, but Nate probably wouldn’t have recognized him if it hadn’t been for his distinctive voice dusted with a subtle southern drawl. 

“Trying to keep them away, Doug. I’m turning 65 tomorrow.”

            Doug made a harsh clicking sound with his tongue. “Shit, Nate.” He rubbed the bristle on his chin with the back of his hand. “Didn’t realize … 65. That’s EMAP camp age.”

            “Not for this kid.”

            “You think that big neon pink “X” will keep them away?” Doug asked.

            Nate shrugged his shoulders. 

            “You know it’s not contagious, right? This thing that’s making everyone crazy.”

            He shrugged his shoulders again. “I don’t know anything, just like everyone else.” He locked onto Doug’s eyes for a short breath and went rigid, daring Doug to contradict him. But his anger quickly faded. He looked down at the ground, then back up with a softer expression.  “How’s your boy, Doug?”

            “DJ’s fine. Like me, he misses his mom.”

            “Sorry, Doug. Terrible shame about the fire.”

***

No one came. Until they did. Two weeks later. 

Nate hadn’t been feeling his usual self for the past week. He had no appetite anymore. With his food supply dwindled to mouse-like proportions and no rations or goods to exchange on the black market, it was just as well.  He did have headaches, though. Lord, did he have headaches. Lodged deep at the base of his skull, pounding away like a condemned man’s heartbeat standing on the gallows.

            The sudden squeal of brakes made him forget his headache for a second. He shuffled slowly to the window facing Doug’s house – the window with a cobweb-like stellate crack in it – and shifted the curtain aside with a trembling index finger. A police van and a military Humvee were parked in front of Doug’s bungalow.

            “What the hell, they’re taking Doug away? He’s not even fifty.” Nate absentmindedly traced the window cracks with his finger, all the while watching as Doug came out of his house and spoke to a military man and a police officer. Doug then pointed to Nate’s house.

Lightning strikes suddenly arced across Nate’s visual fields rendering him blind for a moment. The pain at the base of his skull pounded relentlessly. He stepped away from the window, grasping the back of his head with both hands, muttering, “Not going to any camp. Staying right here. Staying here.”

He stumbled into the kitchen, steadying himself on the counter. He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a Hammer Coach double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun. He knew he already had a round in each barrel.

There was a loud knock. “Mr. Williams? Nate Williams? We’re from the Emergency Management Action Plan camp in Pinal County. I’m Lieutenant Childs. We’re here to help you.”

Nate moved slowly to stand directly in front of the door, the shotgun hanging at his side, tightly gripped in his right hand. He felt as if his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. Concentration was impossible. He squeezed his fisted left hand into his forehead, trying to push the pain away. For a moment, he tucked the muzzle under his chin and toyed with the trigger. He could put an end to all of this right here. Now.

“Open the door, sir. We can help you.”

The pain intensified and he fell to one knee, supporting himself with the shotgun, muzzle into the floor. He tilted his head back and released a blood curdling scream, like a dying howler monkey. Streams of drool hung from his mouth. There was motion, low voices and the sounds of weapons being cocked on the other side of the door.

One cheek trembled uncontrollably as a sneer came over him. He yelled, “FUCK OFF …”

He stood and wavered his shotgun at the front door. A blinding, searing pain shot up his spine again, flipping his head back, holding his spine arced and his shoulders and arms pulled all the way back, as if he were crucified and hanging from a cross. Just as quickly, the pain released him and he dropped to a kneeling position. He felt like Lucifer’s marionette, dancing for an unseen master. And then, there was no more pain. Nothing. Like someone had flicked a switch. All he felt now was … rage. It built inside him. Expanding through every synapse, coursing through every vessel. Enclosing him in an impenetrable, armored cocoon.

He felt strong again, like a young man back on the farm. Capable of anything. He stood tall, his kyphotic spine creaking to its full height, and his eyes darted over everything as if he were seeing his living room for the first time. His senses were heightened, and the room glowed in his eyes. The rage ebbed, and he heard a voice calling out.

“Mr. Williams, if you don’t open the door, we’ll have to use force. You don’t want that, do you? We want to help you.”

Nate caught a glimpse of a helmeted head running by the cracked window. He focused through the window, through the crack, on Doug who was standing on his porch, watching. His son, DJ, was tugging on his pant leg and Doug was trying to shoo him back inside. Nate’s focus moved to the crack in the glass and his eyes traced the pattern over and over as he realized Doug, his neighbor of many years, had given him up. Snitched. The rage began to swell again, ballooning inside him, ready to explode.

Just as a loud, crashing noise came from the front door, Nate leveled his shotgun and launched himself at the cracked window. He pulled the trigger as he jumped through, and the glass disintegrated into a shitstorm of a thousand daggers ripping at his skin. There was no pain. His legs ran of their own accord and his bleeding outstretched arm held the shotgun pointed straight ahead. His vision tunneled in on Doug standing on his porch, DJ hiding protectively behind his legs. His last thoughts were, kids never listen, why didn’t he go inside? His tunnel vision gradually narrowed into a tiny speck of darkness, oblivion, and his mind went dead black.

***

            Doug was focused on the actions of the soldiers at Nate’s front door when he simultaneously felt a tug on his pants, heard Nate’s window crash open, and DJ yell, “DADDY, LOOK!” Doug vaguely noted in his peripheral vision a small arm shoot up next to his left leg, pointing at – what? Was that Nate? He looked possessed, insane. Blood spilled off his body as he ran towards them. A shotgun was aimed directly at them.

            A million thoughts struggled for priority in Doug’s brain as the devil incarnate bore down on them: 

DJ, why didn’t you go inside like I asked?

I was too late, the epsilon particle got him. 

Why aren’t those soldiers shooting at him?

            It all happened in seconds. Doug crouched down, using the porch railing for protection. He pulled DJ behind him, as much as he could. He drew a pistol from a shoulder holster inside his jacket. Before he could get a shot off, a shotgun blast struck the side of his house, just off the porch, shattering a window. Doug reflexively covered his face with his arm and felt the sting of shrapnel hit his shoulder. When he looked up Nate was still running towards them, his face tortured, eyes empty. Nate was already gone. 

            A soldier’s bullet struck Nate first in the left thigh. Another, in his upper back. He slowed down, but only a little. Doug drew his pistol and aimed it between Nate’s eyes. When he pulled the trigger, Nate was at the railing, and Doug could hear his labored breath, like a racehorse crossing a finish line. Doug fell backwards on top of DJ as Nate collapsed on the railing with a dime-sized hole in his forehead. His lacerated fingers clutched repeatedly at the railing before going still. 

As he lay on the deck, his arm around DJ’s shoulders, staring at Nate’s face, Doug thought back to his wife, Abby, telling him about her lab experiments. “Chimps exposed to the epsilon particle go absolutely crazy, Doug. They’re like killing machines. I’m telling you, it’s like they don’t feel pain. None at all.”

The rest of us aren’t so lucky, are we? he thought, picturing Abby’s wide eyes, the delicate little frown line above her brow. God, how he missed her. The pain made his chest ache. 

He lifted their son, trembling from shock, and gently carried him into the house.