The Sick

Part 1: The Long Drive

Static played over the speakers and the whirring of tires on asphalt droned on in my ears. The highway is barely lit and I can't make out any signs of life and it is beginning to feel like one of those, "am I really alive right now?" moments. His hands tighten on the steering wheel as he shoots me a distraught look before irritatingly jamming down the power button on the prehistoric stereo. "I don't know what you expected," I whispered. I do know what he expected but it was unreasonable for him to expect that.

We have been on the road for hours and you could count them by the stress lines in his face, leaking out from the sides of his mouth and pressured into where his brows furrow. "Are there no CDs in this dinosaur?" he whines as he shuffles through the center console, throwing out balled up napkins and crumpled food wrappers in his warpath to find a single shred of entertainment. I lean my seat back and prop my feet up on the dashboard and close my eyes then press my hands into them until I can see galaxies behind my eyelids. "Is it about time to switch, you're obviously getting grumpy. You need a nap," I drone on, "you know, it's important to sleep. Whether you want to or not. I am pretty sure I can press the pedal just as well as you can." An eye roll I wasn't supposed to see, what pleasant company I have for this road trip.

Finally in the distance the sun crests the hill to our backs and illuminates the outlines of buildings on our path, I can't help but smile knowing I'll be out of this car and stretching my legs any minute. "It is about that time isn't it," he taps his watch and smiles at me. It is about that time, the familiar smell of the Bradford pear trees that line the stretch of highway outside of my home town leeches its way into the car causing me to make a playful gagging sound. "It sure is, what gave it away?" My laughter turns the question into a joke, much like the idea of visiting home again, what a joke it is.

We pull up into my favorite gas station and he takes a deep breath before rustling around in the back seat. I start preparing myself for his speech but he interrupts my train of thought, "you know the drill." The tension starts in my shoulders and spreads down my arms and chest, leaving me in a momentary state of paralysis before I can cough out a simple, "yes." I take a breath so deep I can practically feel my lungs inflate to capacity, pressing up against my chest, and my heartbeat begins to rattle against my ribcage. He nods in my direction and hands me a crowbar, I slip out of the door and raise my weapon up while looking around. As usual, no signs of life.

"I think we're good, I mean look around at the leaves," I say. The season has been anything but kind to us this year and with no one else around to rake them up they've piled up over the past few months and accumulated everywhere the wind blows them. Which is pretty much everywhere. They've been super helpful for scouting out areas to stop, highly concentrated areas of life tend to have less leaves scattered around. He scouts out the pumps and feeds dollar bills into the hungry machines, yet another thing that brings a smile to my face. I can't help but find the humor in needing cash during an apocalypse because if you can't laugh then what can you do?

Part 2: Homecoming

As usual I'm too caught up in my inner monologue to hear the little chime come from the door of what used to be my favorite gas station, it was only for the sub sandwiches but nobody is in there whipping them out anymore. He catches sight of it before I do and we both fall dead silent, only briefly making eye contact with one another before we both completely become statues. Now that I have to be still for a while, let me introduce you to the current problem, "The Sick." The disease spread rapidly before anyone could come up with a cuter or more specific name for them, so Michael and I just call them "The Sick" too. It's nothing like the movies and the dead aren't coming back to life so I want you to rid your mind of that zombie mumbo-jumbo right now. They are real living people but they're off, something in them is different from your average person and they are overwhelmed with the desire to be violent, sad, angry, and every other negative human emotion you could pack into a person. Most of the people infected by the sickness ended up committing suicide early on in the spread but I guess the streets full of bloodied bodies from rooftops lit a fire in some of the others that were angrier.

If you stay still and quiet, much like your regular person going about day to day business, they'll ignore you. It's almost like they've convinced themselves the world is normal, some even carry on with their daily activities from before the breakout. Getting into their cars to drop their kids off at daycare, but they open the door to let a child out that doesn't exist anymore. Going into work and sitting at a dusty cubicle with no telephone service just staring off into the void. Whatever this sickness is, it's like it put people on autopilot, and if you interrupt the comfort of that autopilot they tend to get very upset.

I recognize this one from high school and oddly enough I think he recognizes me too. The outbreak started when I was on vacation with my now ex-boyfriend but at the time current boyfriend, you guessed it, Michael. It's taken us 32 hours of driving, 47 hours of arguing, and probably over 50 stops to look for gas or find a new car but we're finally home. "Mary," the sick tilts his head at me. "Hi Mary," he straightens his head back up and waves. I wave back at him, "Hi Devin." He freezes for a moment before cracking a smile and then walking around the back of the building. Michael stares at me for a minute before shaking his head and laughing, "I guess you never pissed him off, huh?" I never did, I actually gave Devin a ride home from school once and I guess he remembered that. The sick tend to only mess with people they don't like or people they don't know. I release my grip on the crowbar and let out a huge sigh of relief, it's good to be home.

Part 3: Family

Cell service and internet went down right when the outbreak started, Michael was convinced it's some government conspiracy to keep the outbreak under wraps and they shut it all off manually, personally I think that the sick are too simple to do their old jobs so they all stand there where they used to work and do nothing. Either case, neither of us have heard a thing from our families since it all started. It was unusual for Michael because his mom might as well be next in line to date him with how obsessed with him she is. Typical for me, I didn't talk with my brother much except in passing. We lived alone because our mother was always off on some drug binge and I was the only one that worked, I left home at 17 and he soon followed. I can't believe it's been 3 years since then.

Michael managed to squeeze some gas from the pump and we both got back in the car and sat in silence for a minute. I knew what he was going to say next but I was hoping he wouldn't and he would just drive. "Who's house should we go to first?" Fuck, the outcome for this isn't going to be good. "I have no preference," I bite my lip, "you decide." He starts up the engine and starts driving and I can't stop biting my lip, he passes by where he should've turned to go to my house. Being brave, I guess. He'll go first.

His mom was a bitter mid-40's woman with bleached blond hair and a bad temper, his dad left when he was younger which is why his mom became borderline obsessed with him. If she needed something done, rain or shine, Michael was her knight in shining armor. She was so bitter, in fact, that I'll be dumb struck if we don't find her decomposing in their front lawn when we arrive. There is no way on Earth that someone as miserable as Grace wouldn't be in the suicidal group of the sick. The woman was a walking red flag, the type to wear white to her sons wedding, someone who would actively monitor their doorbell camera for "suspicious activity." We are only a few minutes away now and Michael is starting to look nervous. He's only human but I've never seen him look so detached yet scared at the same time. His eyes show no expression and only bounce back and forth slightly as he watches the road, his fingers are tensed on the steering wheel but lightly tremoring, and the veins in his neck and arms are beginning to become more prominent. Michael must be thinking what I'm thinking, that we will arrive at his house and Grace will be sprawled out like a cheap Halloween decoration.

His pale yellow house stands out against his neighbors white and eggshell homes at the end of the street, the tree in his front yard is bare and has covered his front lawn in crinkly leaves. Grace could be there, under them. He stops in the street right before the driveway and gets out without even looking at me. I should help him, I should follow him, but I don't want to do the wrong thing right now. Michael is kicking around the leaves and I finally work up the courage to help him, getting out and starting on the other side of the yard. Five minutes pass and there's no sign of Grace. He rustles around in his pocket before I hear the familiar jingle of his keys and he singles out the blue key, his house key, and heads toward the front door. He's brave, braver than me, all I can think to do is follow him in. I halfway expected him to yell for her when we got inside but instead he set his keys on the counter and stood still, scanning the room with his eyes. Grace was particular about a lot of things and her home décor was one of them, there was a decorative gold flaked bowl full of pinecones in the center of the kitchen counter but I could've sworn it was full of those silly twine balls before we left. "Honey!" I feel like I could crawl out of my skin or melt into a puddle on the floor and slip through the cracks, Michael and I both swiftly turn to the bedroom doorway to see Grace standing there.

Grace never looked disheveled before, her clothes were never wrinkled and her hair always fell perfectly at her shoulders. This isn't Grace, it can't be. Her hair was matted into clumps on one side of her head, there were large stains across the bottom of her skirt and rips in the sleeves of her blouse. The bags under her eyes looked like a new shade of purple that had yet to be discovered and her finger nails were long, dirty, and yellow. "Why is she here?" Grace motions at me, smiling, and raises her voice this time. "Why is she here?" She repeats again, growing louder. "Why is she here? Why is she here, Michael?" She is screaming now. I hear Michaels breathing getting faster and I am frozen in fear, I knew Grace didn't like me but I also didn't think Grace would be alive.

She lunged for me, digging her dirty nails into my arm leaving little cuts along the way. Her laughter echoed through the house. I curled up and protected my face with my hands, she grabbed a fist-full of my hair and began ripping at it and trying to drag me to the floor. It felt like a lifetime before Michael finally pulled her off of me and began screaming at me. "Car, now." I ran for the front door and got into the passenger seat of the car before the thoughts starting pouring in, should I be in the drivers seat? Didn't he take the keys inside? Is he going to come out? What is he saying to Grace? Will he leave Grace? Tears began to fall down my face and roll onto my arms which burned the freshly made cuts courtesy of his psychotic mom. I let out a series of loud curses to myself. I locked the car doors and leaned back trying to steady my breathing and stop crying. If there was a rule list for the apocalypse, "don't cry, it doesn't help" is probably somewhere on the list.

Minutes passed, tens of minutes, and finally an hour rolled by. I know Michael told me to wait in the car but what if Grace turned on him too? My mouth was dry and my body was covered in cold sweat but I began to force myself to work up the courage to go check on him, I set my hand on the door handle and let it sit there for a minute to let myself grow comfortable with the thought of possibly encountering her again when Michael quietly slipped out of the front door. His face was red and he was in new clothes, his eyes were puffy, and the only sound coming from him was the jangle of keys in his pocket. He tapped on the window and I unlocked the doors, he threw a gym bag into the back seat that had the string from a sweatshirt trapped in the zipper. He got into the drivers seat, put on his seatbelt, and started the car. Pulling away from the house, he said nothing. His fingers kept tapping against the steering wheel, one of his common anxiety tics, I reached out to grasp his hand but felt something unusual against my fingers. Dried black crumbles coated his fingers and hands, it wasn't blood but it felt like dried blood. Noticing my confusion, he pulled his hand away and confidently placed it back on the wheel. "There were some rotten fruit on the table, I picked them up and threw them out before I left." I've never seen rotten fruit turn black but I've also never observed fruit rotting.

Part 4: Funeral

The car hugged the corners as Michael sped through our hometown, he still wasn't speaking and I didn't know what I wanted to hear him say but the silence was horrible. I was so distracted by the silence that I didn't even notice where we were headed, my house. It's my turn now. My house was on the opposite side of town, Grace had money and I had a full-time minimum wage job. It wasn't glorious but it was mine, my 2 bedroom piece of paradise. Halfway furnished and always way too hot or way too cold. No trees, only a sliver of grass before the sidewalk starts. Located conveniently on the corner, it came up much faster than I expected. Do I stand up and confidently leave the car? No, I'm not Michael. There'd be no leaves to shelter whatever horror show was in my yard.

There was nothing in the yard, or neighboring yards. If not for the lack of kids outside screaming with one another and running up and down the block you'd think it was a normal day. The house looked just as I had left it. My body had somehow turned immobile from the stress of possibilities but I was jolted from my temporary paralysis by the sound of Michael muttering to me, "You don't have to do this." I've never processed my emotions like other people and when I get nervous I begin to laugh. I started to laugh, uncontrollably. He gripped my wrist with his hand and rubbed his thumb along the top of my hand, tracing the tendons. I can't sit here forever.

The next few moments happened in a blur, I made it to my front door and three steps inside before I was hit with the worst blow of my life. My brother, my brother on the couch. The couch, the couch was stained. It was red, the red was coming from my brother. I crumpled to the floor, Michael was quickly at my side with his hands rested on my shoulders. I leaned forward as the wave of violent sobs erupted from my mouth and eyes, pressing my forehead to the cold tiled floor. I was so silly to not consider this, so stupid. I lifted myself from the floor and stumbled over to the couch, where he laid with outstretched arms drenched in dried blood and covered in deep open wounds. Flies begun to gather and left maggots in the open cuts the formed patterns over his forearms like bracelets. I gagged before running to the bathroom to throw up. I lost track of time.

Michael was waiting for me when I finally felt empty enough to leave the bathroom, I came out with my eyes closed. "You can open your eyes, it's okay." I opened them and my brother was gone, the couch was gone, and the small splatters of blood on the floor were gone. It smelled like bleach. I was relieved but also angry, "where is he?" Michael grabbed my hand and led me to the back door, sliding it open. A freshly covered patch of dirt covered in flowers from neighboring gardens and a fire going nearby with the empty shape of my old couch engulfed in flames. I really looked at Michael now, his hands lightly blistered and covered in rotten fruit remnants and dirt, his hair greasy and flopping the wrong way. A man that just buried my brother. A man that just walked the street picking stray flowers to cover a grave with. I sat in the grass and cried and he sat beside me, I leaned into him and let the woes of the world have their way with me.

Part 5: Away

A bag was packed for me and in the car before I finally jostled from my sleep. I lost track of time, and days, and really... everything. It felt weird to sleep in my bed. Coming home from vacation and being back in your own bed is always mildly disappointing but somehow being back in your own bed knowing you will be leaving it forever shortly is even worse. Michael cleared out my kitchen cabinets and packed them into the trunk, alongside my bag of clothes and a few trinkets he thought I'd want to keep. We didn't spend much time talking about what we would do after we got home, we only wanted to get home. Something inside me knew we wouldn't be staying and it was confirmed by the empty cabinets. I performed one final walkthrough of my home, my house. I let my fingers drag across the tables and counters, collecting dust and crumbs and whatever was left from my old life.

Michael found me staring at a picture on the fridge, "I think we should go." I nodded my head and followed him out of the front door, leaving it open behind me. I settled into the passenger seat and sat in silence for a moment before looking at him, he was looking right back at me. We leaned our heads in and pressed our foreheads together. He asked if I was okay and I laughed. "No," the laughter continued, "are you?" He started to laugh too. "Absolutely not." For the first time in weeks he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine, softly, and I kissed back with what little energy I had left to spare. He laid the palm of his hand against my cheek and held it, stroking the side of my face. I pulled back for air and he let his hand fall down the side of my face and to my shoulder, giving it a small squeeze before readjusting himself in his seat and turning on the ignition.

I clipped the picture from the fridge onto my sun visor and grabbed a CD from Michaels bag. I knew he'd grab some. I turned the volume up to an obnoxiously loud level and Michael sang along as I leaned back in my seat, propping my feet up on the dashboard and humming along. I tapped my fingers on the center console and Michael snuck his hand under mine before intertwining our fingers. "Where are we going?" I asked. He shrugged before shooting me a geeky smile, "Away."