At the End of Everything, page 19
“When we don’t need new graves to be dug, I tend to the ones we have. I help out in the garden. You can figure out where you’re useful, I’m sure.” I keep my voice as level as possible. I don’t want to feel bad for her. I don’t want to see how much that one word impacted her. I want her to get to work.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I cradle my arm close to my chest. “I don’t care.”
FRAGMENTING FOOD SUPPLIES
• An already fragile food supply chain is forming tears under the weight of plague spread and lockdown restrictions.
• Meat processing plants have been shut down following outbreaks, farmers have been forced to dump milk and destroy potato stockpiles, and transport has come grinding to a halt.
It’s going to be a cold and lonely Christmas.
With hospitals overflowing and death tolls continuing to rise, another challenge is already presenting itself. It’s not connectivity—while phone and internet networks have been straining under the weight of increased traffic, network providers claim they can handle increased demand for the foreseeable future. It’s a far more basic problem: food. Fragile food supply chains are being disrupted across the country due to movement restrictions of food workers, vulnerability in food processing, and missing links in logistics.
“Many stockpiles are going to waste because we simply have no way to process them,” says a spokesperson from the Department of Agriculture. “High mortality rates have caused sourcing issues too. Even in those situations where supply lines function as intended, stores are understaffed and, in many cases, have shut down completely, breaking the chain right before food reaches the consumers.”
A secondary presidential task force has been called into existence to discuss potential solutions for supply problems. In addition to the consequences of the outbreak, food insecurity could cause massive civil unrest. It also goes to show the fragility of the system; if these essential supply chains are breaking down, what will be next?
But even in places where food supply chains are still functioning, Christmas is going to be a solemn affair. Governor Brooks (AR, D) has explicitly called for people to respect lockdown measures during the Christmas period and stay at home instead of traveling or visiting other households. “I expect everyone to understand and respect the severity of the situation,” she says, following an outbreak in Faulkner County that was traced back to a megachurch service.
Hope for Better Futures: A History
By Isaiah Wood
This is not a proper introduction.
Once all of this is over, someone needs to know what happened here. If we’re the ones to tell the story, that would be best, but human memory is fallible. I don’t know when this will end or how long it will take. I don’t know if we can remember all of it.
So I’m writing it down now. All of it. The internet is slow. The phones aren’t working. We thought it may have been Better Futures at first, deciding not to pay the bills. Especially since they haven’t responded to our messages. I can’t get through to anyone. But outages appear to be the case everywhere. Network congestion, according to one of the news sites.
This is the best thing I can do until I find other ways to make myself useful: record who we are and what we’ve done and experienced, for posterity. They call me the Professor. I can act like it.
This is what you’ll find in here:
• A timeline of the events. I’ve done my best to be precise and truthful. I’m starting three weeks too late, so I’ll do best to reconstruct those weeks carefully.
• Our personal files. All of us. Our criminal files. Our psychological reports. You should know who we are.
• All the logistical information I’ve managed to recover from Warden Davis’s computer. The guard assignments, from the weeks leading up to the outbreak to the first days after the initial outbreak, when our guards were still here. I don’t know if any of them infected us, but I want to be as complete as possible. The last head count he did the day before the staff left. An email he sent to Jemma, Hope’s resident therapist, to tell her not to worry about the teens, that we’d be taken care of. Emails from Better Futures’s management.
• Everything the others will give me. Notes, drawings, memorials. Recordings of phone calls. We’ve all found different ways to cope.
Phone call between Riley and her best friend
RILEY: Hey. You still alive?
SAPPHIRE: Yeah. You?
RILEY: Yeah.
SAPPHIRE: Good. It sucks out here.
RILEY: It’s not much better inside either.
SAPPHIRE: Wouldn’t think so.
RILEY: God, I’m terrified.
SAPPHIRE: You? Scared? Hell must have frozen over.
RILEY: Oh, fuck you.
RILEY: Yes, I’m scared. I haven’t been this scared since… Well. That day.
SAPPHIRE: That day you decided it was enough and you had nothing left to live for, and I ended up sitting by your unconscious side at the hospital in full drag? That day?
RILEY: Yeah, that’s the one. I’m sure you looked royal.
SAPPHIRE: Honey, I always do.
SAPPHIRE: You better not be calling me because you’re sick now.
RILEY: I’m not. I promise.
RILEY: I just really wanted to hear your voice.
RILEY: Do you know what the absurd thing about this whole shit show is? I’m terrified because I don’t want to die. I’m still fucking afraid of living too, but I don’t want this plague to kill me.
SAPPHIRE: What scares you so much about living?
RILEY: For everything to hurt and nothing to get better.
RILEY: And don’t you dare tell me it gets better.
SAPPHIRE: I wouldn’t, because neither one of us can know that. But I do know that one day, this plague will be over. This pain will not last.
SAPPHIRE: Now, life may not get easier. The world will not suddenly be fair. All those things require work and struggle, and I know you’re tired.
SAPPHIRE: But one day, there’ll be other things than pain.
RILEY: Like?
SAPPHIRE: Like joy and love and people who care for you. Like peanut butter cups and drive-in movies and candlelight at midnight and the sound of wind rustling through the trees. Like friendship. You have me. I’ll always be here to listen to you when you’re hurting and to ride out the storm with you.
RILEY: Candlelight at midnight? I never pegged you for a romantic.
SAPPHIRE: I’m not. I’m just desperately clinging to the idea that one day, the things that make life worth living will balance out the things that are too hard to bear.
RILEY: I’ll see it before I believe it.
SAPPHIRE: As long as you stick around until you do.
RILEY: Is it enough if I promise to try?
SAPPHIRE: Honey.
SAPPHIRE: Of course it is. It’s everything.
This phone call has been disconnected.
Phone call from Sofia to her brother
Attempt #1
SOFIA: Luca? The phones have been spotty here, but—
We’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.
Attempt #2
SOFIA: Come on, pick up—
We’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.
Attempt #3
SOFIA: …
We’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service…
WHAT IS PLAGUE MENINGITIS?
• Neurologists are reporting a complication in the treatment of plague patients: the occurrence of plague meningitis.
• While incidence of plague meningitis is low, it adds complex and ethical questions for hospitals that are already struggling with offering the care needed.
• Plague meningitis predominantly shows up in younger patients who have survived the initial few days of infection, with clinical signs and symptoms developing between 7 to 14 days after the onset of illness.
• With limited treatment options, it is currently unclear how well this type of inflammation responds to antibiotics or what its long-term effects may be.
Exact numbers aren’t available yet, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that this continued outbreak of Y. pestis is a health danger on multiple levels. A growing number of patients—predominately teens and young adults—who have survived their first days of infection are showing signs of plague meningitis, an inflammation of the meninges (the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord).
Signs and symptoms cover an array of possibilities, from neck stiffness and photophobia to high fever and loss of consciousness. Where standard treatment consists of a high dosage of antibiotics, it’s unclear whether those are effective given the bacteria’s resistance. In coming days and weeks, experimental treatment with various broad-spectrum drugs will hopefully be able to provide more than mere anecdotal evidence.
Meanwhile, the Health Department has requested a selected task force of ethicists to advise on treatment protocols, especially with an eye toward survival rates and lasting side effects. “No one officially wants to be the one to make the call, but with a limited number of hospital beds available, prioritization of patients has come into question,” said Mr. Warbler, one of the members of the task force. “It is only rational to consider quality of life as part of that equation and whether or not it’s better to let some people die.”
Disability justice organizations across the country have responded with outrage, rightfully calling the discussion an unacceptable step toward eugenics.
Frequently reported side effects of meningitis infections include focal neurological signs, hearing loss, and epilepsy. Focal neurological signs comprise a wide spectrum of potential phenomena, including but not limited to unsteadiness and weakness of limbs, partial paralysis, dyslexia or dyspraxia, amnesia, aphasia, seizures, and loss of smell.
Twenty-five
Grace
Sofia and I go back to Sam’s Throne three days later. Late at night, when the overcast starlight won’t give us away. The faint light of the coolers gives the store an eerie glow. We find nothing new in the aisles of the store. What little was left has been scavenged and put to better use.
But I expected that to happen. I brought Logan’s hand-drawn map with me, where she drew all the abandoned houses we saw. All the houses with plague signs and warnings. We follow the same route, and Sofia is quiet when she sees all the reminders of illness and death.
I don’t say anything—I don’t know what to say—but I reach out and brush her fingers with mine. It sparks like touch always does.
“It’s one thing to know that this is happening to us,” she says, eventually, softly, when we walk past the church and its countless markers for the dead. “It’s something else completely to see it happen to everyone.”
“It’s hard to wrap your mind around the scale of it, isn’t it?” I ask, though it’s more of a statement than a question.
“Hope is such a small world,” Sofia says. “Between what happened inside those walls and our hunts outside, I never thought about anything else. I tried to call my brother again, but he never picked up. And I…I compartmentalized, right? Easier to imagine everything’s okay if you don’t linger on it too much.”
I nod. “I thought about the good foster families a few times. The friends I made when I stayed with them. I learned not to grow too attached. It’s the easiest way to survive.”
“When you think about it, probably the worst too.” She winces. “Luca has a wife and two little girls. Before I got sent here, I was supposed to go live with them.”
“Maybe you still can? Once this is all over?”
“Yeah, maybe.” The wind picks up around us and yawns through the street, the sound a soft, distant cry. Sofia turns to one of the houses with a bright-white stripe across the door. “I’m afraid of what I’ll find.”
I brush my hair back. “Yeah. I wish I knew how to make that better.”
“You can’t,” she says simply. “We’ll hold on, and we’ll make it through. As many of us as possible.”
It’s all we have. I take a pen out of my pocket and fold open Logan’s map. I mark the door with the new plague cross. As we walk, I note the changes we see. The new slashes on doors. The worn, old ones. The houses where flowers and plant have rotted and dried out without anyone replacing them. The houses that look completely abandoned.
I pause in front of one that looks particularly empty. It looks like it was once a comfortable middle-class house, with flowery curtains in front of the windows and a potted plant near the front door. But the plant has dried out, and the white slash across the door has cracked and faded. One of the small windows on the second floor is broken. Inside is completely dark.
“We should take a look,” I say. I take a mask from my belt and gloves from the infirmary that Casey gave me. We still don’t know for certain if the plague spreads by touching the same surfaces. We deal with it by not taking any chances.
Sofia hesitates. “Here?”
I ball my hands to fists to keep them from shaking. “Here.”
“Didn’t we have anyone left who got convicted for burglary?” she asks, and it’s clear she tries to make it sound like a joke, but it lands like a gut punch. Sofia sighs. She reaches for her own supplies. “Never mind. Window? Door?”
“Let’s try the door first.” I walk over and half-heartedly give it a push. I expect it to be locked, but it creaks and swings open to a darkened living room. The little bit of light filtering in around me and through the windows illuminates the shapes of furniture. I hold my breath, waiting for any sound to come from the inside, but what greets us instead is a deep silence.
My nose itches.
When my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can see the chaos in front of me. The sofa has been overturned, and what must have been once a coffee table is cast aside and has a crack down the middle. Everything else looks normal enough. The cabinet along the wall hasn’t been opened. The drawers are all where they’re probably supposed to be. No one stole the TV off it either.
But someone pushed their way in and had to make room.
I take a deep breath and step in, and the second thing that hits me is the stench. The putrid, sweet smell of rotten flesh. I gag, I can’t help it. Behind me, Sofia makes a muffled sound then dashes out again and vomits. I want to gulp in fresh air, but I’m terrified of opening my mouth. The smell is so heavy, I can taste it.
I manage another minute of edging my way in, but by then, my stomach is protesting so loudly, I dash back outside like Sofia did and retch.
“We can find another house,” she hisses, while she’s still wiping her mouth.
We could. But the trouble is, “I don’t know which other ones are safe yet.” We could keep mapping. Give it another day or so, but I’d feel far more confident if we could stockpile extra food now. To be safe. To be sure.
“I’ll try again,” I manage. Trembling, I reach for the small bottle of water in my backpack and use it to soak my mask. I don’t know if that’ll be any better, maybe it’ll make it worse, but I hope the layer of cold will protect my nose.
I take as deep a breath as I can, and then I run. Through the living room, toward the kitchen. I have my backpack open and I open cabinets, shoving in what I can. I stay far, far away from the fridge, because I can’t imagine that’ll be in a much better state than the rest of the house.
When my lungs feel like bursting, I dash out again, retch, and repeat.
Eventually, over the next week, even raiding dead people’s houses becomes easier. We keep the food as cold as possible and as far away from the kitchen as possible until it smells edible. Dry food is better than fresh. Canned and bottled is best of all. We take everything we can find. We run and hide when we see other humans, but that’s rare. Some days, the food we find offers us a reprieve from worrying about our inventory. Some days it’s barely enough to keep us fed.
But while it’s possible to grow used to almost anything, I can’t grow used to the smell. It’s everywhere. It’s worse in houses that haven’t been cleared at all—and we do avoid those. It clings to me, like ghosts. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get it off.
No one else notices it.
* * *
The days are easier than the nights.
In the morning, before I go see Isaiah, I spend time with Casey. We both stay on either side of the hallway, but spending time together matters. We take every precaution we can, though it seems to me that if he were going to get infected, it would have happened already.
Maybe Logan is right. Maybe we’re all safe now. Maybe we’re the lucky ones.
No one else has fallen ill since Josie and Saoirse came here. We’re all painfully aware of it, but no one has dared to mark the days yet. We’re too scared to jinx it.
Isaiah’s tiny little snippets of information, those few things he manages to scrape off the internet, tell us that the world is falling to pieces. But Casey tells me Isabella is recovering. It’s slow, and she would be our first recovery. It would mean everything.
The world may be ending; we find ways to live.
“She sat up independently today,” he says with a smile that’s never quite as wide anymore, but it’s still genuine. “She was still coughing, and she couldn’t say much, but it’s progress. I didn’t think, after a whole month…”
