Going to Coop’s bed, he ripped the dinosaur pillow case off the pillow and went to the boy’s brightly painted dresser. Opening it, he pulled out socks and underwear from one drawer, the next drawer, he found shirts of all colors and designs. The next drawer, he pulled out shorts and jeans. He shoved them carelessly into the pillow case. Going to the child’s closet, he began to pick up shoes, then some toys. Shoving all this into the pillow case, he moved back to the living room. He saw an old blue blanket on the couch and knew that was Cooper’s lovey. He grabbed that as well. He saw a family photo and grabbed that. Turning, he looked around the quiet house. Cooper could not come back.
Brian turned and walked out of the house with Cooper’s belongings. He’d come back later tonight and take all the supplies and food back to his place, as well as a few more photographs, for Cooper. Coop was now his responsibility, all thoughts of suicide had gone out of his consciousness, his concern was now for the small four-year-old, eating scramble eggs in his dining room.
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Emma Prichard pushed the shopping cart along the sidewalk. She had a deep blue, checkered bandana tied across her face; Vic’s vapor rub smeared across fabric. It was to keep the stench of the rotting bodies away, as well as the bloated flies that seemed to bounce off her face. She also wore sunglasses, and rubber gloves. The whole city was an open wound, suppurating with noxious and toxic biomatter. She was becoming used to the grizzly sights of the streets. There were no other people around and she’d not seen another living soul for over a week. Though Boston was a very large city, she’d been in Jamaica Plain, which was on the outskirts of Boston proper. Her apartment was located near Johnson Park, which had been turned into a large dumping ground for the dead.
During the first days of the EV-01-H, she’d been in the thick of it. Scores of victims pouring into the ER, dying within hours. The morgue had overflowed and then when the staff, doctors and nurses began showing the petechial splotches on their skin, Emma knew it was the beginning of the end. After a week, she knew she could do nothing and so had gone home and stayed there. Locked behind her doors, watching from the windows and watching the news as the grim facts and numbers danced across the screen. This was an extinction level virus and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do but wait it out or die. She was a nurse, not God.
The victims had writhed in agony, their skin turning vermilion as the virus took over their bodies. Near the end, blood leaked out of their ears, eyes, nose, mouth and their bowels. She could only hope that their brains were so damaged by the virus, that they were oblivious of their pending death. The husk left behind was gruesome. Outside the doors of Massachusetts General, bodies were piled in grotesque monuments. When she’d gone home that last day, the trains had stopped running, as had the buses. She’d found a taxi driver, willing to take her. She’d had to show him her skin, proving that she wasn’t infected. His face hidden behind a white surgical mask. His eyes frightened. She was lucky to make it home.
Now, she was unsure if there were people still alive and hiding or if they were all dead. The drone of the buzzing could be heard from her apartment, the flies so thick as to be a substantial dark fog. The sound of buzzing was the only thing she heard these days. It was strange that such a large city was so quiet. No sound of cars, or mechanized droning. Sometimes she heard crows, or she’d see a murder of crows raising from a large heap of bodies. She looked away at those times. It sent shivers down back, it was the harbinger of the end of days.
She’d stayed in her apartment as long as possible, terrified to leave the sanctum. The smell from the halls and outside her window ensured her confinement. When she was down to her last can of peaches, she knew she’d have to go out and search for food and water. Every bowl, bottle, jar and bathtub were filled with water, as well as plastic bags. The power had gone out yesterday. She’d kept the receptacles full, knowing at some point, the power would go out, and it did. The apartment had heated up quickly and she’d had to open the windows. She’d lost her lunch at the foulness that wafted her way. Finding the stringent cream, she used for chest colds, she’d put a dab of it under her nose. She’d been a nurse for six years, but nothing had prepared her for this wholesale slaughter.
She’d only been in Boston three years, having left Lancaster, Pennsylvania after a bitter divorce. She’d loved this vibrant city, but it was all different now, sinister. There were fires around the sprawling city and smoke hung low in the sky, and she was sure the smoke was toxic. She stopped when she heard gunshots in the distance. So, someone was alive. It sounded like automatic gunfire. Not the single shot kind, but a rapid tattoo. That didn’t bode well for
