“… in related news, the Enillo Virus has claimed millions of lives worldwide, and scattered reports of victims returning from the comatose state and attacking their caregivers are on the rise. In Africa, a veritable army of infected people are slowly marching their way across the continent, ravaging every village and city they come across. Their numbers seem to swell from each attack, and nations across the globe are scrambling to counter what many have called the worst crisis mankind has ever faced. Infected individuals seem to be impervious to pain or even what some might consider debilitating injuries. New reports coming in from New York and Chicago and Los Angeles indicate a heavy population of infected individuals. Official reports are debunking the somewhat popular notion that the dead have come back to life. YouTube videos abound on the internet, and officials warn self-styled “Zombie Hunters” that they will be prosecuted within the fullest extent of the law. Anyone caught looting will also be prosecuted. Individuals are urged to stay in their homes and avoid all contact with infected individuals. They are to be considered extremely dangerous. If a loved one or family member exhibits any symptoms of the virus, they are to be isolated immediately, and the family is to place a white cloth on their mailboxes to alert emergency personnel to the presence of another victim.”
I switched off the television and looked out my front window. I could see three houses with white towels on their mailboxes, and I wondered how many more will there be? Will there come a time when all the houses have white flags on them? If your house doesn’t have a white flag, will the officials think you’re immune and want to take you away for testing? Who knew?
The last week was a blur. I went to work and tried to keep things as normal as I could, but the kids were scared. Some were talking about how their mom or dad or sister was sick, and they didn’t know what to do. Many of my students were absent, their parents taking them to relatives in Mexico or other states, trying to get away from the large population center of Chicago. I worried about my brother, who lived downtown with his family, but I spoke with him the other day and he seemed fine. I called my parents in Virginia, but was only able to leave a message. Their house was fairly isolated, and my father was an ex-marine, so I figured they would be all right.
Two days ago, the governor of the state called for a suspension of attendance of public schools, the thought being that if a student were infected, he could easily spread it to many families due to the close nature of classrooms. For once the governor actually had a decent idea. So for the last two days I have been busy reloading ammunition, cleaning my guns, and stocking up on foodstuffs. Pickings were getting a little slim at the grocery store, as people began to see the wisdom of hunkering down and waiting out the storm.
I was very grateful Ellie had managed to get to the store before the real storm of public awareness hit, and I managed to make a few runs myself. I had gone to the bank and withdrew as much as I could, figuring to replace it should the worst pass. I didn’t want to be caught up short without cash, and yesterday they announced on the news that credit cards are going to be suspended to try to prevent people from going overboard and end up losing everything when the crisis passed. I bought everything I could think of, and my basement was pretty well stocked. I was going to feel like a class A fool if this thing blew over quickly, but the little voice in the back of my head said we were in for a rough ride.
Ellie was working today, and since I was home, I was doing the house thing with Jacob. He was such a little joy to have around. All smiles and not a worry in the world. His eyes, the little “chocolate browns”, as Ellie liked to call them just sparkled and when he looked at you it was if he was saying “I trust you with my world.” More than once I found myself just looking at him for a long time, wondering how in the hell I got so lucky.
Jake was playing in the living room when I got a call from Ellie.
“John?”
“Yeah, babe. What’s up?” I moved over to the kitchen table so I could keep an eye on our little one. He couldn’t crawl yet, but he was pretty good at a military crawl and rolling got him into trouble more times than not.
“Not a whole lot. We’ve been seeing a lot of patients today, and I might be later than usual.” Ellie sounded nervous.
“All right, I’ll feed Jake and get him bathed.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but inwardly my concern just skyrocketed.
“Thanks. And John?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“Are your toys loaded?” Ellie asked.
That sent my concern into the stratosphere. Ellie never asked about my guns, letting me have my little hobby as long as didn’t advertise it and kept my guns in a safe away from Jake. “Not yet, why?” I asked.
“You might want to think about having them handy.” Ellie said cryptically.
“Ellie, what is going on?” I said, more forcefully than I intended.
“John, just do it. Please. There’s more to this virus than people have been told.” Ellie said. “I gotta go, they’re paging me to the OR. Love you!”
“Love you, too.” I said, but the line had already cut out.
I wondered what the hell was going on, but I didn’t question Ellie. She had sources of information that did not have anything to do with the media. The cops that brought the victims in to the EMT’s that treated them at the scene to the victims themselves. Ellie often knew days before anyone else about things that were happening. She knew about a tuberculosis outbreak three days before the news reported it. But in all our years together, she had never told me to load my guns and have them handy. I decided maybe this was the event that was prickling my senses
I went down to the basement, after putting Jake in the Pack ‘n Play and putting on a baby video for him. Gotta love the electronic baby-sitter. I went down to my secret room, an area which was an expanded crawl space under the garage. It was large enough to stand in, and it was there that I had my gun safe and reloading equipment, and various other supplies and things. A casual glance would never reveal that there was anything there at all. Since no one ever expected there to be any usable space under a garage, if at all, it was the perfect hiding place. So I went down there and surveyed what I had and what I might need.
I had a modest firearm collection, around ten handguns and rifles. I didn’t have any theme to my collection, just bought what I wanted at the time, selling it when I wanted something else. I also had a few guns inherited from my Grandfather, so that added a bit. I had played at Cowboy Action Shooting for a while, owning a couple of six-guns, a lever-gun, and a pump shotgun. After that I got into IDPA, which was a lot less equipment oriented, and owned a Springfield XD in. 40 and a SIG P226 in. 40 caliber as well. I reloaded for a number of calibers, and lately had been reloading for. 40 S amp;W. On the rifle front I had an old Enfield № 4 MkI, and a couple of. 22’s. I had an Auto-Ordnance M1 Carbine replica that I had recently purchased, this was the one I had stocked up on ammo for. I had three additional 15-round magazines and two 30-round magazines for the little carbine, so that gave me 105 rounds without needing to reload a single mag. Thanks to the case and extra boxes I bought, I had 2000 rounds of ammo for the M1.
I took the two semi-auto pistols and grabbed all the extra magazines I owned for each. I grabbed four boxes of ammo and put all of this in a little backpack I had. I put all the magazines for the carbine in the bag, and put in three boxes of ammo for it. I put a box of. 22 ammo in the bag and grabbed the carbine and one of the. 22 rifles. At the last minute, I threw in a box of. 380 ammo, and the extra clip for the Walther PPK.
Slinging the now very heavy backpack on my shoulder, I ran upstairs. I checked on Jake and went into the office. I needed to think about what I was doing and where would be the best placement for armament. My IDPA days were serving me well at this point. I was looking at my home with new eyes. Where were the weaknesses, where were the bottlenecks? Where was the best place to store a gun for easy access? Do I shore up the windows, or do I block the stairwells? If I was determined to get in, what would stop me?
I sat at the desk and decided that the best way to ensure a forceful response to a crisis was to be armed at all times. I loaded my SIG and put on my competition holster. I placed spare magazines in the kitchen and in the front room for the gun. I went back and forth as to what rifle I wanted on the ground floor, and decided on the. 22, figuring if things got bad on the ground floor, I wanted superior firepower on my back up locations, which was my basement and my bedroom. The basement had the shotguns and the Enfield, so anything coming after me down there was going to earn it. I loaded the magazines for the M1Carbine and inserted a 30-round clip into the gun. Best to start off with a hail of withering fire, as my dad used to say. I loaded the. 22 next, having only two magazines for it, but each magazine held 25 rounds, so I did not feel under gunned. The. 22 rifle I had was a GSG-5, an MP5-looking. 22. Mostly for plinking, but as I loaded the hollow points, I found myself hoping it would be enough. I placed the rifle on the top shelf of the pantry, figuring it was the most central location and gave me access to the hallway and basement stairs if needed.
I took the XD and carbine and brought those upstairs, placing the pistol on a shelf in the hallway linen closet. The door of the linen closet swung outward, effectively blocking the hallway if needed, but only as a temporary measure while the pistol was retrieved. I placed the two extra magazines on the dresser near the door of my bedroom and two more in the master bathroom; the final stand, if it came to it. I prayed it never did, but I did the best I could think of.
I went back downstairs and looked at my doors and windows. If I had to hole up here, how would I block them? What would I use? I figured the first floorbeing brick was very comforting, and I needed to think of some way to board up my windows and doors. I needed to go to the home improvement store.
I packed up Jacob and started out to the store. Immediately leaving my driveway, I felt something was wrong. It was in the air, something out of kilter with the world. It didn’t feel bad or scary, but your senses were on alert. Maybe I was just reacting to what Ellie had told me, but as I drove through my neighborhood, I began to see signs that things were not right. Doors to some homes were open, and there was a large stain on the porch of another home, as if something had been killed there. I saw several families packing as if to leave on vacation, putting as much in their cars as they dared. In each case, the mailbox had a white flag on it. Were they taking their sick with them? I couldn’t tell, and I really didn’t want to stop and ask. One house had the garage door wide open, belongings scattered around, and the door to the house open, as if they just ran in the middle of packing up the car. I wondered if the city was the same way. If this virus was that bad, was anywhere safe? Were these people just running to bigger problems?
I thought about these things as I made my way to the home improvement store. There were a lot of cars on the road, and many of the ones I saw had a lot of belongings in them.
Turning onto the major road, I was stunned at the amount of traffic. At this time of day, there should not have been the hundreds of cars I saw. I joined the southbound lane and noticed that the northbound lane was heading south as well. Everyone was heading south. I began to wonder what the hell had happened to the city, and whether or not my brother was safe. Every business along the road was closed, and I seriously doubted I was going to find any store open. As I slowly passed a parking lot, I saw two men arguing over a water jug, and just as they passed out of my line of sight, I saw one man take a swing at the other man’s head. People were going nuts.
I pulled off the main road into the drive of the home improvement store, and I immediately saw it was the wrong thing to do. The store was a madhouse, with people rushing in and rushing out, grabbing supplies from each other and racing off without tying down their loads. There was no way I was bringing Jacob into that mess, even being armed as I was. I had forgotten to take off my gun when I went out, so my SIG was still with me, under my coat. I pulled out of the parking lot, narrowly missing an elderly woman rushing out with what looked like fifty feet of heavy chain. Weird.
I headed west to a street that would take me to a road back north, and it was packed as well. It took me twenty-five minutes to go two miles, and everyone was on edge. I decided to get off the main road and head through the subdivisions and get home that way. I wound my way through the first subdivision, noting once again the signs of hurried leaving. Jake was starting to act up, not liking being in his car seat for any length of time. I reached around, trying to find his binky, and managed to poke him in the eye while I searched. Naturally, he hated that, and let me know it. Good set of lungs on that little guy. I looked back and found his binky between his legs, so I grabbed it and placed it in his mouth.
WHAM! The car jerked and slewed sideways, and I fought to control the vehicle as I brought it to a stop. I checked my rear view mirror and saw a body lying in the road. Oh God, Oh God, No, no, no, no, no… not good at all. I got out of the car and ran back to the body, a middle-aged man who was lying on his face in the street. “Help!” I yelled, hoping someone in the houses would hear me. “Somebody call 911!” I yelled to the unresponsive houses. I kneeled down and turned the man over, hoping he was still alive. I immediately stepped back, as the man had a gaping hole where his throat used to be. His shirt was covered in dried blood, and his face had dried blood all around the mouth. His eyes were closed, as if he was sleeping, and his left leg looked broken at the ankle. What the hell was this? Did I run over a dead body in the road? If I had, how the hell could he be there without any police or ambulance? I started to walk back to the car, and I saw another man approaching the vehicle from the passenger side. I shouted at him.
“Hey! Hey, buddy!” He looked at me and starting walking towards me, his eyes fixed on me. Something wasn’t right. He opened his mouth, and instead of saying hi, he let out this hideous groan, like he was in serious pain. I stepped back and he raised his hands towards me, as if he wanted to grab me. I backed up and placed my hand on my gun. “Hey, pal, you better back off. What’s the matter with you?”
The man didn’t answer, he just let out another groan, and lunged for me. I backed up and drew my gun, hoping the sight of the weapon would stop the guy. I circled to the left away from the car and the guy never even acknowledged the gun. He followed my movements and I could see his nose flaring, as if he was smelling me. For a brief second my mind flashed to the old man I watched tear apart his caretaker.
I raised the gun and tried one more time. “Mister, if you do not stop I will shoot you.” I was nearly shouting at this time.
No response. He just kept coming. I thought for a second to just wound him, but nobody can shoot like that. I lined up his chest in my sights and pulled the trigger.
The shot seemed unnaturally loud in the subdivision, and struck the man squarely in the chest. The. 40 caliber slug knocked him backwards and onto his back. Exhaling heavily, my breath caught as I watched in horror while the man slowly scrambled to his feet and come at me again.
Thinking I must have hit something in his clothes that stopped the bullet, I took careful aim this time at his chest and fired another round. The man staggered backwards a few steps, but managed to stay on his feet. I could see the holes in his shirt, and they were both centered on his heart. No blood came out, nothing. It was like the man was already dead, but how the hell could he be walking around? I heard another groan as the man came at me for a third time. I raised my aim and fired a shot that entered his right eye, exploding brains and dark matter out the back of his head. The man dropped instantly and was still. My brain spun for a moment. A noise snapped me out of my reverie, and I looked up in time to see the man I had initially hit with my car shuffling up to me. He moved slowly, and I could see his foot was broken as he dragged it along the ground. His leg bone clicked as it hit the ground in his advance. A rasping gargle came out of his ruined throat as he reached for me with one hand, the other hanging loosely at his side.
I didn’t waste time with any more body shots. I centered my sights on his face and fired once, the bullet smashing through his nasal cavity and erupting out the back of his head. The man’s head snapped impossibly far back, largely due to the fact that he was missing half his throat. Overbalanced, the man fell straight back like a tree falling and smacked onto the road.
I took a step back, holstered my gun and looked around me. Two men were down, killed by my gun. But were they killed by me? Or were they already dead? Ordinarily that would be a crazy thought, but I had just seen for myself a man rise after being hit by a car and having his throat torn open. Did the virus do this? Were all those people who were reported as “comatose” actually dead, and coming back to life? Way too many questions and this was not the place to think about it. I could see other people starting to come from houses and around buildings, attracted to the noise I made. By the way they were walking and the groans I was starting to hear, no one living came to investigate, which I think scared me worse than anything else. Was this whole area just dead? I needed to get out of here and get home. I turned back to the car just in time to see a teenager clawing at the back window, trying to get in at Jacob. Jacob was screaming at the noise I had made, and his screams must have attracted this nightmare. The teen was grayish in color, and his face was ripped up. One of his cheeks was torn open, giving him a horrific leer. That face was pressed against the back window, and I could see the teeth working, wanting to get in and tear at Jake’s tender skin.
Something in me snapped. I ran over behind the teen, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and the belt that held up his sagging pants. I screamed “NO!” as I bodily lifted teen and slammed him down head first into the pavement. His head cracked and dark fluid began leaking out. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. I drew my gun again and fired eight shots rapidly into his head, splattering brains and bone and everything else all over the road. Bullets skipped off as they ricocheted off the road. The slide on my gun locked open, indicating an empty gun, and still I pulled on the trigger. I was breathing heavily, and couldn’t see very well. I heard noises around me, but nothing registered. I didn’t want this thing dead, I wanted it destroyed.
Jacob’s crying penetrated my fog, and I managed to look around. At least ten more people were coming at me, and I did not have any more rounds. Time to go. I ran to the driver’s side of the car, jumped in and started the engine just as another one came at my door. It was a housewife in a robe, and the robe was open to reveal a ripped-open stomach cavity. What horrified me was her organs were missing. I could see her backbone as her bloodied hands pounded on my window. That was a close-up I didn’t need.
I started the engine and pulled away, bouncing another woman off my fender and swerving to avoid three more people. When I cleared the area, I looked back and saw a mob of about twenty slowly following my car. To my horror, I saw a young woman run out of her house, waving her hands and trying to get my attention. She didn’t notice how close the mob was. They reached her quickly and she was dragged back screaming as fetid mouths began to tear chunks of flesh from her arms. She was swallowed up and taken down by the crowd, and I could see just a single foot drumming the ground for a second, then she was still. It was like watching a pack of hyenas kill an animal. I shook my head and gunned the engine, trying to get out as fast as I could. If I had gone back, I would be dead and so would Jake. Please forgive me, I prayed, wondering what kind of God I was praying to, and wondering if prayer would ever matter again.
I drove home without incident, paying very careful attention to the road and side streets. There were several cars on the road that looked like they had been abandoned, at least I could not see anyone in the cars. I moved through my neighborhood without incident, although I swear I could see something moving in the backyard of the guy who lived at the end of the block. I pulled into my garage and quickly closed the door. I pulled a now-sleeping Jacob from his car seat and moved him quickly inside. I carried him upstairs and laid him in his crib, then went downstairs to close the blinds and drapes on the ground floor. I didn’t want to announce my presence to anything unfriendly, not until I had taken some precautions. As I closed my front drapes, I noticed a dark figure moving down the street towards my house. My heart skipped as I thought, He knows someone’s here. I ran to my ammo store and reloaded the empty magazine in my SIG. I went to the pantry and retrieved the. 22, checking the magazine and making sure a round was in the chamber. I went back to the window and surreptitiously watched the dark figure slowly become more recognizable. It was a man, roughly my age, limping slowly down the middle of the street. His mouth hung open and his hands were swinging at his sides. He walked with an almost hypnotic gait, edging ever closer to my house.
Suddenly, Jake started crying. I ran to his room and picked him up, trying to get him to go back to sleep. His cries were unusually loud, and as I peeked out the window I saw the man move closer and closer to the house.
“Please, baby, please be quiet.” I whispered as I bounced Jake gently. “Sleepy time, daddy’s here.” I wondered if he had a nightmare about that horrible face trying to get through the back window of the car.
I looked out again and the man was closer, his head cocked to the side as if he was locking in on my home. Christ, if he started pounding on the doors he was going to attract more of them.
“Jakey, sleep honey, sleep.” I tried to sound as calm as possible, but an edge was getting into my voice. We’re so dead. I thought.
Jake finally quieted down to subdued whimpering and I snuck a look outside. As the dead man came within ten yards of the front of my house, out of the east came a kid on a bike, pedaling like the very demons of hell were on his tail. He swerved away from the corpse on the street and headed west, dodging an outstretched hand and groaning mouth. The corpse turned to follow the biker, completely losing interest in my house. I nearly fell over in relief.
That was interesting. They follow what they want until distracted, then they follow that. Might be useful to remember. I stayed at the window, looking out and managed to see what the kid on the bike was running from. A crowd of about twenty of those things came shambling down the street, in various states of decay and disrepair. Several had large amounts of blood down the front of their clothing, others were missing fingers and eyes and pieces of flesh. One particularly gruesome specimen had his lower jaw ripped off, and his tongue lolled around in the air under his face. Where were they all coming from? Why wasn’t the news reporting this? I had to resist the urge to run out and hose down the mob. I knew I would be overwhelmed and killed, and what would happen to Jake then? No, caution was better. Besides, I needed to think about reinforcing my windows.
Where was I going to find enough wood to build a barrier? I certainly was not going back to the home improvement store, and I sure wasn’t going to leave Jacob. What to do? I pondered this as I looked out my back window at the bike path that ran along the power line easement behind my house. The condominiums across the way looked peaceful enough, but part of me wondered what nightmares awaited in the halls. I hoped I would never have to find out. For a moment I considered my fence as a source of lumber, but dismissed that as foolish. I might need that seven-foot barrier if for nothing more than to be able to move unseen in my yard. I was never so glad that I insisted on reinforced support posts than I was right now.
My eyes fell on my porch, and all of a sudden I had a flash of inspiration. My porch was made of two by sixes of various lengths. All the wood I needed was right there. I just had to pull it up and bring it in. I ran downstairs and grabbed my drill, pausing to put the extra battery in the charger. Thankfully, I had made the deck with screws, so I just needed to back out the screws and pull the boards up. I figured I had only an hour before Jake woke up, so I needed to move quickly.
I brought my. 22 outside with me and slung it across my back. I needed to move all the stuff off the deck first, and do it quietly, since I wasn’t ready to withstand a siege. I moved the chairs to the fence, giving myself firing positions if I needed them. The back of my property dropped off four feet. The table I moved to the fence door, and jammed it into the ground. The door opened outward, and I needed to be able to block it if got pulled open. I hoped it never came to that, but then the dead seemed to be walking, so here we are.
As I went back to my porch to take off some boards, I was struck by how quiet it was. My house was in the landing pattern of the nearby airport, so there was usually a plane or three overhead. I listened to the wind and could faintly hear distant sounds: intermittent pops that I figured was gunfire, a groan or two, and the screeching of tires. I hoped all the noise would distract any infected from whatever noise I made.
The first few boards came off easily with no serious sound. I removed about three feet of boards and brought them into the house. The hard part was going to be cutting them, but I had hand saws for that. As I placed the boards in the house, I noticed the curtains move on my neighbor’s house. As I straightened up, the curtain was pulled aside and I saw my neighbor’s daughter Erica in the window. She waved at me and I waved back, happy to see another person in this crazy world. All of a sudden she was jerked back and the curtain was shoved forward. I hoped she was okay. I didn’t hear any screams, and so I figured it was just her parents trying not to attract attention to their house. They were just as scared as I was.
I went inside and heard some happy baby noises coming from upstairs. After I put the rifle back, I went up and found Jacob sitting up in his crib, playing with his blanket. He smiled a huge smile when he saw me, apparently no worse the wear for the experience we had over the afternoon. I picked him up and changed him, able for a brief second to forget the world and the crisis we seemed to be in. I took him downstairs to the basement, transferring his pack ‘n play. I went back upstairs and measured the windows, figuring on using the deck screws to fasten the boards to the window frames. I went back down and began cutting boards. For whatever reason, Jake thought this was fascinating, and smiled and laughed the whole time I was cutting boards.
I took him back upstairs, and brought up the boards I had cut. I figured only to cover the front windows at this time, since they were the weakest point of entry, and there were only two of them. The good news was there was a hedge in front of the windows, and my house was raised off the ground by several inches, so direct access was difficult. It could be done, but not easily. I decided to cover up the windows but leave the top six inches open to let in light and give me a firing opening. If I needed to close the whole thing, I could just drop the drapes. I was just attaching the last board when the phone rang. It was Ellie. “John?” “Hey, Babe!” I said, trying to sound cheerful, in spite of all that had happened today. “How are you doing?” She sounded like here was something seriously wrong. “I’m fine.” I said, moving over to where Jacob was. “Have you been watching the news?” Ellie asked. “Actually I’ve been a little busy.” I understated things, since I didn’t want her to worry.
Ellie sounded exhausted. “Just to let you know, whatever you hear on the news about this crisis being localized and that the government is handling things, is a flat out lie.”
I actually wasn’t so shocked by this, giving what I had been through. “What are you talking about?”
Ellie sighed and told me. “We have been working non-stop on infected people. They don’t go into comas, they die. They die and then they come back. The morgue is a nightmare, full of walking dead and they are trying to get out. Several patients who didn’t get transferred in time came back and attacked staff members. John, I watched my shift boss get eaten by two patients. Eaten!” Ellie sounded more panicked. “Jesus, God, what the hell?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I was quiet for a minute. I was having a hard enough time wrapping my head around the events of the day to really hear what Ellie was telling me. Ellie seemed to shake herself and asked me “Did you do what I asked, earlier?” I told her, yes, and I went into detail about my preparations, about where I had guns and ammo, and the boarding of the windows. “They’re that far south, are they?” Ellie asked. “What do you mean?”
Ellie sighed again. “We had a Chicago cop in here and he said the city was complete anarchy. Thousands of those things were in the streets, attacking anyone they saw, and transferring the virus. If they aren’t killed, eventually they become one of them. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow, and it all depends on the individual. The cop said they can only be killed by destroying the brain.”
“I know.” I said inadvertently.
Ellie paused. “How do you know?”
I told her about my little excursion, not leaving out any detail. I figured I would catch nine kinds of hell, but she just was quiet and then said, “Thank you for saving my baby.”
I tried to be reassuring with a little false bravado. “Any zombie coming after him has to go through me first, and hell hasn’t made a zombie yet to match me.”
Ellie began to cry, and I immediately regretted my words. “I’m sorry babe, I know this is serious.”
Ellie managed to bring herself together, and asked me where Jakey was. “He’s over on the floor, trying to figure out why he can’t put a ball that’s bigger than his head in his mouth.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Sure.” I brought the phone over to Jake and held it to his ear. I could hear his mother speaking to him, and he smiled as he recognized his mother’s voice. He squealed and laughed, and I could hear Ellie say how much she loved him and she would watch over him. That was odd. I brought the phone back to me and said, “Hey, I’m back, he rolled away.” Ellie was crying again. “John?” “Yeah?” “Take good care of my baby, please.?” “Sure thing. What’s going on? When are you coming home?” Ellie paused. “I’m not.”
“What? What are you saying? Why aren’t you coming home? If things are that bad, you need to get out of there and come home.” I was getting very concerned. “John, please listen to me.” Ellie begged. “Okay.” I said suddenly worried. “I’ve been infected with the virus.”
My world suddenly crashed. The sinking feeling I had in my gut became a hole in my chest. My heart sank and I could not focus. I started breathing heavily and I nearly dropped the phone. “John? Please talk to me.” Ellie said. “I need you to talk to me.” “Jesus, no, Ellie. Not you. Please not you.” I started to choke up, cursing a God that would do this to my family. “How?” “An accident. An infected patient was brought in, and he hemorrhaged in the OR. Two of us got blood in our eyes.” All I could do was shake my head. “No, no, no, God, please, no.” “John!” Ellie cried. “I need you to strong for me. I need you to take care of Jake for me. Please!” “I’ll come get you.” I said, knowing deep down it would be suicide. “Just wait and I’ll come get you.” I could barely talk.
“No, John. Please don’t. This is hard enough as it is. If I know you and Jake are safe, it will make things easier. Please don’t come for me. I don’t want you infected. Promise me, John, please.” Watching Jake with tears in my eyes, I promised my wife I would not come to her rescue. “I won’t. You’re right.” “Thank you, John.” Elli sounded relieved. “John?” “Yeah, babe?”
“Could we just talk? The phones have been going in and out and I don’t know how much time I have.” Ellie sounded like she did when we first started dating. My eyes watered up again, and I almost couldn’t talk.
“Sure, babe. Sure.”
So Ellie and I talked for the next hour about everything we had done, all of our happy memories, our regrets at not being able to do the things we wanted to do. I must have told her I loved her a thousand times, and she did the same. I brought the phone over to Jake again, and with the phone on the floor, I tickled Jake so his mother would have a memory of her baby laughing as she went into the long night. I asked her about what was going to happen and she told me that the doctors have been giving massive doses of morphine to anyone who was infected so they would die peacefully. I found this to be of some comfort, morbid as it seemed. Suddenly the phone started to have static and Ellie and I realized we did not have much time left. “John, please remember me as I was.” Ellie asked “Of course,” I said. “Nothing else.” “Take care of my baby.” “He’ll grow into a fine man.” I said, my voice catching. “Just like his daddy.” Ellie said, starting to cry again. The phone buzzed again and for a second I thought I lost her. “Ellie? Ellie?” “I’m here, John. We may as well stop, as I’m not feeling well, and I need to go see the doctor.” “I don’t know if I can do this without you, babe.” I cried, trying to hold back my sobs.
“John, be strong. You’re much tougher than you give yourself credit for.” Ellie tried to console me, but it was hard. “Jake needs you.”
That brought me back into focus. “I miss you already.” I said.
“Me, too.” She said.
I didn’t know what else to say, except, “I promise you, Jake will survive this. On my life, he will survive this.” Ellie cried again. “Thank you, John. I love you.” “I love you, too, babe.” “Give Jakey a hug for me.” “Will do. Ellie?” “Yes, John?” “Thanks for all the joy you’ve given me.” “My pleasure, sweetheart. Good bye, John. Love you.” “Love you.” I started crying again. “I’ll see you again.” “Promise?” She asked, crying herself. “Promise.” I said, and I meant it with all my heart. The line crackled once, and went dead. With that, I never saw my wife alive again. I went over to where Jake was, sat down, and just started crying.