At the End of Everything, page 10
It wouldn’t have made a difference, since my signs are mine and Leah’s. No one taught me how to sign properly in school. No one took the time to listen.
“Do you read and write?” Grace asks. We turn the corner, and she guides me toward the kitchen. I follow because that’s what she expects, but now that we have left the infirmary behind, the weight of the day settles on my shoulders, and I would just as easily find my room and lie down.
Especially because it was quiet near the infirmary, but it’s loud here. People are shouting and arguing. Isabella sobs into the shoulders of a brown boy with long, dark hair. “My father is sick. They don’t think he’ll make it through the night. So many people are dying, Xavier.”
When we walk past them, it’s clear Xavier’s eyes are red too. His hands around her are trembling. “My brother said it’s overwhelming the hospitals. I don’t know how this could happen.”
Elias leans against the wall, fists balled. “My uncle says it’s all a hoax. He told me I shouldn’t buy into it.”
“Yeah, my mom said the same this morning. But she’s sick now.” Chloe Hughes stands across the hall from him, staring harshly into the distance. She’s always been tall and lanky, but it looks like she might fold over.
Grace tenses when she hears the conversations back and forth. “Fuck.”
I frown.
She’s better at reading me than Casey. “I’d forgotten about the phone calls.” She laughs at that and shakes her head, but her laugh is cold and full of pain. “I don’t know how I forgot. I’m trying to keep track of everything, but—”
I reach out and skim her sleeve. Not enough to touch her. Enough to let her know… I don’t know. That I understand? That I’m there? That I haven’t answered her question yet?
I make a scribbling motion with my hand.
She nods. “Thanks, Logan. And good.”
When we get to the kitchen, another person is there already. Nia Miller, with her ever-present pen and ink stains on her hands. She has some of the paper we stole from the classroom folded up in her pockets. A piece lies on the counter in front of her, scrawls all over it. The kitchen still smells faintly of toast and coffee.
She startles when we walk in. Her whole body tenses before she realizes it’s the two of us and not a guard.
“Logan will help take inventory,” Grace says, by way of introduction. “Please be careful to keep your distance from each other.”
“We will.” Nia is already moving again, between the counter and the large pantry. With the doors open, endless cans and cartons peek out, but there’s plenty of empty space too. If the plague doesn’t kill us, we’ll have to keep each other alive.
Grace frowns. “Hunter didn’t leave us much.”
Nia turns to her, a carton in hand. “I think we may be at the end of a delivery cycle, actually. Do you think we can expect anything else?”
Grace’s nostrils flare, and she grimaces. “I’ll ask Isaiah to check.”
“Good.” Nia points me toward a second door across from the pantry. “I started with the dry food,” she says. “You can make a list of what’s in the freezer. We probably need to get through the cooked meals first. We can figure out food for tonight later. Grab a piece of fruit if you haven’t eaten yet. It won’t last anyway.”
I turn around in time to see the doors close behind Grace, and that’s it. It’s Nia and me now. I scour the kitchen for more paper and a pen, nibble on a pear, and start my new job counting cooked meals, leftover turkey, and endless jars of peanut butter.
It’s good to know what we have. It’s good to have a purpose. If I can’t be with my sister, I’ll focus on doing the best job I can—and I think it would make Leah proud.
WHAT IS YERSINIA PESTIS? AN INTRODUCTION
• Y. pestis is a gram-negative bacterium, widely known by the disease it causes: the plague. The plague is known to take three forms: bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic.
• Pneumonic plague arises from infection in the lungs. It can develop from inhaling infectious droplets or from other untreated forms of plague that spread to the lungs.
• Y. pestis has been on the CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System since the system’s inception. With outbreaks in at least a dozen cities, Y. pestis is a nightmare scenario come true for scientists.
• Some scientists believe the current and multidrug-resistant P21 variant is not naturally occurring but has been genetically weaponized, but as of yet, no evidence exists to back up that claim.
Historically speaking, the plague may be best known as having caused the 14th century Black Death, a pandemic that killed an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the population of Europe, North Africa, and Asia. But there have been multiple plague pandemics throughout history, as well as many localized outbreaks.
In modern times too, plague cases continue to occur, and the plague is said to be endemic in at least two dozen countries across the world. It has always been considered a threat to human health, but up until recently, it was a controlled threat and one with an effective treatment.
Following an outbreak of the plague in several cities across the country, doctors, hospitals, and scientists are discovering that this current strain of Y. pestis—Yersinia pestis modernis, with its current variant P21, which presents predominantly as pneumonic plague—has developed a multidrug resistance. It cannot be treated with the antibiotics normally used to treat victims.
Multidrug resistance in Y. pestis is not new. It was first discovered last century, and it’s been a source for concern for scientists. But while there have been multiple cases since, they have never occurred on this scale.
Additionally, the way infections are spreading suggests that this variant may be more virulent than what we were used to. While it was previously understood that transmission of infected droplets is the only way that plague can spread between people, and that people therefore had to have been in close contact with each other, initial case spread also suggests infections following fleeting contacts.
Without early treatment, the pneumonic plague has a near 100 percent fatality rate. Even with early treatment, the IFR remains high. But compared to fatality rates of other recent outbreaks, it appears that this plague variant—at least—is not as immediately deadly as the original strain.
Thirteen
Grace
We’ve been left here to die. It’s the same refrain, in the back of my mind, over and over again, along with all the things we don’t have. Generous supplies. Medication. Help. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything to Hunter. I could have let everyone leave and simply let myself stay behind with Case.
But I didn’t. I told others they could stay too.
We’ve been left here to die. And so we have to figure out ways to live.
“It’s the pneumonic plague,” I tell everyone at dinner. I’ve climbed up and sat down on the food serving station, so I can see the eighteen people in front of me. Everyone but Leah and Serenity.
Everyone keeps a little distance from each other, but none so much as Casey. I told him to come here for food, but he’s pale and uncomfortable. Everyone gives him a wide berth while we’re eating our precooked meals.
I fight to keep my voice even when I give them the details, confirming what some already heard when they called home. Isaiah was able to get into Warden Davis’s computer, but the information he’s found has only made things worse. The plague instead of a plague. The actual, medieval plague, but with a modern, virulent strain. Yersinia pestis modernis.
“Others will get sick. It’s inevitable. This plague is contagious, and it’s deadly, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. We can be careful. We’ll keep our distance from each other. Wash our hands. Fashion ourselves masks. Clean everything we touch. Quarantine if you don’t feel well. Stick to your rooms.”
“And put up a sign like a plague cross?” someone calls out.
It takes me a moment to identify the speaker. Khalil Nassif. He leans his chair back on the hind legs. He’s crossed his arms, and his dark eyebrows draw together in a frown.
He meant the words like a challenge, I’m sure, but… “If that’s what it takes. If you get sick, the rest of us will make sure you have food and water. I don’t know when help will come—” I glance in Isaiah’s direction and swallow hard. “I don’t know if help will come.”
According to Isaiah, Better Futures knew about the plague outbreak a few days before the guards left. The instructions from upper management were for the warden and the staff to leave and go home to quarantine. The company wanted them to be safe and not risk their lives guarding us.
“Their exact words were ‘It’s not worth it,’” Isaiah told me. “Nothing more than that. There was nothing ensuring we’re safe or healthy or fed. There was nothing about anyone coming for us.”
I asked him to reach out to Better Futures regardless. Email, call if necessary. “Maybe the authorities need time to decide what to do. They can still come for us,” I said. Something cracked in my voice at those words, but what else was I supposed to say?
How do we move forward from here? What happens next? Should we figure out kitchen duties for all of us and take inventory of the medical supplies? What happens if our food runs out before winter comes? Why on earth should we stay here?
“But we’ll take care of each other,” I tell everyone, “because that’s what we have to do. Casey will stay in the infirmary, and he’ll look after the sick for as long as he can. We don’t have many beds. We don’t have much in the way of medication. But we’ll make do.” If the plague is resistant to everything anyway, medication doesn’t matter. “If anyone wants to help him, they would be more than welcome.”
Dead silence. Of course.
“We have plenty of other work to do too. We’re here together. We’ll make it through together.” I can’t keep the annoyance out of my voice, so I check my hastily scribbled list. “Nia and Logan are on kitchen duty. They’re in the process of taking inventory. They could use more volunteers.”
After another long pause, Elias raises his hand in the very back of the room. His light hair flops around his face. “I can cook.”
“Yeah, you can,” someone mutters.
“Like actual food too, thanks,” he shoots back. “I used to cook for my mother,” he adds sheepishly—quietly.
In the six months he’s been here, I’ve never seen him do anything useful. I had a whole list of assumptions about the guy, but those perceptions all shift uncomfortably. “Cool, thanks.”
I make a note, pretending for all the world like I know what I’m doing, and continue. “Isaiah will use the warden’s computer to keep up with information about the plague and life outside for as long as we can. We’ll try to have updates for you every day. If you have specific questions or locations you want to hear about, let him know, and he’ll take care of it.”
In my periphery, Isaiah nods. When I asked him about this, he immediately started making lists of everything to check up on. And if anyone wants to know about their homes or their families, they have a way to ask and figure it out.
“In addition, the phones should work for the foreseeable future, so you can call home any time you want.”
The words are followed by a wave of murmurs. A sense of relief—and pain, for the people like me, who have nowhere to call. Worry about their loved ones. And about us.
“We’re going to need people on cleaning duty as well and people to tend the garden.” I have a whole list of tasks to divvy up between all of us. The garden was actually Emerson’s idea.
“If no one comes for us,” Emerson reasoned, “we’ll need the food.”
“To grow ourselves?” I didn’t want to ask how long they anticipated us being here, on our own. They seemed like someone prepared for the worst.
They shrugged. “If necessary.”
“It would take months.”
“Yes.” The finality to their voice sucked the air out of me.
At least the garden and the chores are a good way to keep everyone busy. That is, perhaps, the only real lesson I’ve learned here. Can’t get into trouble when you’re kept busy.
Well, it’s harder to get into trouble anyhow.
Emerson is the first to offer taking up garden duty, as expected. Riley Jackson joins them. So do Mei Fujita and Faith Lang. After another moment or two, Khalil raises a hand too.
Unexpectedly, Walker Green is the first to sign up for the cleaning squad. When he first arrived, everyone pegged him for a rich white boy who would only be kept here a month, to be scared straight. It’s been almost a year. He shrugs when I raise my eyebrows. “Might as well make myself useful, and I’m better with my hands than with my brain anyway.”
Sofia Rodriguez follows. She doesn’t say anything, and she has her arms wrapped around her chest. The scar across her eye has grown pale against her brown skin.
From there, everyone claims something to do. Mackenzi offers to be our handyman, though we don’t really have anything she can fix yet. Others sign up for laundry duty and still others for guard duty, though I don’t know what they want to guard us against. A tentative trade begins too. Swapping out positions so no one has to do the same thing every day.
I have no idea yet if any of this will work, but when I look at the group of them—of us—I think we might stand a chance. Case still keeps to himself, and Nia and Logan are behind me, on the other side of the kitchen counter, but there is more vibrancy and life to the group than I’ve seen in ages.
The world is crumbling all around us, but we have the chance to build something that is ours. A small outpost against the coming storm, where we’re safe and protected, because we’re the ones who secure and protect ourselves.
And then someone coughs.
Immediately, our tentative house of cards collapses. The voices disappear and silence settles. Energy makes way for deep, abiding fear once more. Everyone turns around to try to figure out where the sound came from.
Another cough.
Quiet.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s someone eating too quickly or choking on a sip of water.
Then, at the farthest edge of the room, comes the sound of something hitting the floor. Everyone sitting around the table pushes themselves from their seats and backs away.
I stand up on the serving station to see what’s happening, but I hear it first.
The intense, racking cough that sends shivers down my spine. Mei described it like drowning on dry land, and that’s what it sounds like.
I jump down and carefully move closer. Someone is lying on the floor.
“Help me.” The voice sounds cracked and ragged.
Aleesha Mantis is trying to push herself to her feet, but her arms don’t have the strength. She coughs again and again and again, and it sounds like it’s coming from deep inside her, like she’s trying to eject something lodged inside her lungs.
She trembles and shakes.
I take another step closer.
Tears are rolling down her cheeks, and while she manages to sit up, she’s gasping for breath. “It—it hurts.”
“Bring her to the infirmary.” Case’s voice, behind me. He’s picked up his tray and brought it back to the serving counter. His eyes find mine but for a heartbeat.
I nod. I find my own voice. Because this is what we do now too. “Come on, she needs medical attention. We need to get her to infirmary.”
Unexpectedly, it took longer for people to volunteer for cooking. The girls who shared a table with Aleesha walk around it to help her up, but Walker and Khalil get there first. As if in tandem, they reach down and pull her gently to her feet, offer her support on either side.
At one of the other tables, Sofia leaps up and—once Aleesha and the boys have made their way past her—beelines for the kitchen. “I’ll clean up. Everyone keep their distance,” she states.
Her actions are brisk and brook no discussion. Nia immediately steps back and lets her enter to grab water and detergent and sponges.
I was afraid of desperation, but tonight, here at the end of the world, we find determination instead.
Aleesha manages to stumble to the door, supported by Walker and Khalil. She sways back and forth between them. Her head lolls. Her lithe dancer’s frame strains under the weight of her racking coughs. No blood yet, but judging by the sound of her gasping breaths, that’s only a matter of time.
Casey is already running toward the infirmary to prepare a bed for her.
Phone call between Walker and his mother
MRS. GREEN: Walker?
WALKER: Hi, Mom.
MRS. GREEN: I…I didn’t think you’d call home.
WALKER: I didn’t mean to, but with everything… How are you? How’s Dad? How’s Tibby?
MRS. GREEN: Tibby’s okay. The school’s closed, so she spends her days up in her room on her computer and chatting with her friends. They’re playing this type of game together… I don’t know what it is, but it’s distracting her. At least this way, she isn’t scared mindless like the rest of us.
WALKER: That’s good, isn’t it?
MRS. GREEN: Yeah. I hope so.
WALKER: Is it as bad out there as they say it is?
MRS. GREEN: I don’t know what they’re saying, Walker.
WALKER: Just that…it’s everywhere. People are dying.
MRS. GREEN: Ah.
MRS. GREEN: I imagine it will blow over in time. People talk so much.
WALKER: I guess. How are you and Dad?
MRS. GREEN: I’m doing okay. I’ve been meeting up with Mrs. Davis from across the road and Mrs. McCoy. We are under lockdown orders, of course, but they can’t expect us all to stay home indefinitely. We need company to find solace with each other.
