Dead Quarantine (3 page)

Jake walked in. “Coach canceled the game.
Something about the flu, not being able to field enough man power.
Jeez, if I need to, I could field the game by myself.” He waited in
front of them, expecting something and oblivious he had interrupted
their conversation. “Aren't you going to move aside? Make some
space so I can sit.”

Before Lilly could scoot over, he pressed
between them, sat down, and put his arm around Sarah, who plucked
it from her shoulder.

“Come on, don't be cold like that? Too much
of that going on around here already. With kids coughing their
lungs up everywhere I go.”

She smirked. “Lilly told me all about that.
There is some pandemic going on. People are screaming that the
world is going to end, just like they did when we had the swine
flu.”

“Yeah, I saw the soldiers near the nurse’s
office.”

Soldiers? What were they doing at a school?
And in peacetime? She remembered the Army boxes. Of course they
were soldiers. National Guard, she guessed. They really were
treating it as if it were an emergency. Maybe she had dismissed the
severity of it too soon.

“Were they armed?”

“Yeah, they were, else I wouldn't have
recognize them.” Jake looked around the room for the first time
since entering. He glared at Tommy, who was still sitting in the
corner. “I'll kill that guy.” He strode toward Tom, who flinched
away. “How many times have I told you to scram when I'm in here? I
don't want no smelly fatso asshole stinking up the place.”

Tommy’s face flushed red. He didn't move.
Would it be today that he finally made a stand? Sarah rooted for
him. She didn't know Tom that well. Sure, they shared classes
together, but she was not expected to associate with the likes of
him. The in crowd would not have deemed it cool. She had seen what
happened when someone went against the crowd. Tom had a friend,
Ralph, who was not bad looking—quite the opposite. Ralph stuck by
him no matter what and he had been ostracized for it. Life in high
school would have been much easier for him had he not befriended
Tommy. It was kind of stupid.

She glanced at Lilly who was biting her
lower lip. What if Lilly was fat and obnoxiously smelly, would she
stop being friends with her? She wanted to think she wouldn't, but
she wasn't so sure. The feeling of being wanted and being popular
filled a hole in her that had been empty for so long.

Jake shoved Tommy. It would be great if he
stood up and punched Jake in the face. He didn't though. Instead,
he whined to be left alone and that the space was for everybody,
including him. Jake grabbed him by the collar and dragged him
out.

Lilly stood up and yelled, “Stop! You are
hurting him.”

Jake pushed Tommy when he tried to come back
in. “You better leave or I'll fucking kill you, fat ass.”

“Stop it,” Lilly said.

Jake grabbed her arm and pushed her out next
to Tommy.

“Stay with your boyfriend and leave us
alone.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

Tom wheeled around and left.

“Look. He's running, wiggling his fat ass.
You better hurry after him before he starts bawling like a fat
baby.”

Sarah stomped past Jake and grabbed Lilly by
the hand. She glared at him. “Jerk!”

They left him behind with his mouth partly
open, staring at them.

“You shouldn't have,” Lilly said.

“What kind of friend would I be if I
didn't?”

She wanted to be the kind of friend that
stood up for her friends. She had grown tired of being seen as a
superficial bimbo, which was how she had been acting the last few
years. High school was at its end and she wanted a clean slate to
start with, to be different. She wanted to fill that hole with
something else. She just wanted to be herself, or try at least. The
whole world would open up for her soon, and she planned to embrace
it.

CHAPTER THREE

His
mother sat next to him at the steering wheel, coughing her lungs
up.

“Really, you shouldn't do this, Mom. I'm
okay with going alone.” And ditching school.

Leaving for school had actually raised his
anxiety about taking the test. He was going to fail it, and that
was very bad, F-size bad. And he had no way out. He wanted to save
face. Get out of it. And beside his selfish reasons, he felt—no, he
knew—that his mother wasn't all right. He should take care of her.
Her face was pale, her nose ran, and she kept having these coughing
fits.

“No, you don't, mister smarty pants.”

God, she knew how to bring it and make him
feel small. He was eighteen already.

“I'm going make sure to drop you off at
school and watch you go inside. You're a smart kid; I know you're
going to ace that test.”

He glanced at her. She was smiling. There
was no way she really believed that; she must be delirious if she
did. She must have seen doubt on his face because she said, “You'll
do all right; don't worry about the test.”

She drove out of the carport and onto the
street.

“I'm not worried about the stupid test. I'm
worried about you and Ginny.”

“Just a cold. Nothing to worry about.” She
flashed him a smile. “I'll go and take myself and Ginny to see
Doctor Morris. Hope that makes you feel better.”

Their physician, old doctor Morris. How many
times did they visit him? Once or twice a year? And to hear what?
That they needed bed rest for two weeks? Only when an illness
persisted did they ever go back for a checkup. It was clear to him
what he should do if he wanted an easy job after graduation.
Though, as easy of a job as it would be, it wasn't easy to study
for. He quickly dropped that thought. No, he didn't really know
what he should do with his life after graduating. He would postpone
thinking about it until the second semester. His stomach knotted.
Second semester was almost upon him, less than a month away.

It had gotten quiet in the car while his
mother focused on driving. Sweat trickled down from her forehead.
With her sight fixed on the road, she paid little attention to
anything else. It probably took all the strength she had to do it.
He feared she was downplaying her illness for his sake. Common
cold, she said. He believed whatever it was it was closer to the
common flu.

Ralph fiddled with the radio dial. Some
newscaster was on every channel reporting the same thing. He didn't
want to listen to the blaring of some overinflated radioman; he
wanted some sweet pop music. The newest Rhianna hit would be cool.
Now that was a woman he would like to date. He wouldn't mind that
she was older than him. But wasn’t she going out with that
Canadian, that Bieber guy? He was younger. Nah, daydreaming never
amounted to anything. He would rather have Sarah pay attention to
him. Another daydream. He stood as much chance getting Sarah to
give him the time of day as having Rhianna propose to him.

No music at all, only the same newscaster.
Weird. There was always some sort of music on at least one channel,
and still if by chance you wouldn't, you sure would not have the
same newscaster on every frequency.

“Don't change it.” The car swerved a little
when she said that.

The newscaster blasted over the
speakers.

They say this flu is much worse than the
swine flu during the 2009 epidemic. Already the World Health
Organization wants to declare a pandemic and quarantine everybody.
Other scientists have said it's being exaggerated. Economic leaders
said that a quarantine would create too much turmoil over too
little. Yeah, like human life is worth less than financial gain.
Wall Street may think it is, but I bet a fortune that it is not to
you, my listener, you who must be wondering right now if it's the
smart thing to be taking your kids to school. The scientists and
Wall Street are not the only ones pondering this flu. We have the
conspiracy theorists; they claim the government is using the common
flu to scare us into thinking it's worse than it really is so we
run scared and get a vaccine shot. All for the big, bad
corporations mega profits. At least these conspiracy terrorist are
not the looniest of the bunch, though they are a close second. The
first spot for that goes to... What are they called again?
Apocalyptic? Whatever they are called, they are saying...wait for
it...that this flu is a hundred times worse than the bird flu, that
after it's over no living human will walk the Earth. What is it? A
pandemic, a hoax, a conspiracy, or the apocalypse. To dispel doubt
and panic, our station and yours truly, John Murray...

“The hack,” mom said.

…
.have been selected by the government in
collaboration with WHO's spokeswoman Rita Lee to answer the many
questions you may have.

A woman's voice replaced the
too-smooth-to-be-any-good baritone of the newscaster, radio jock,
or whoever he was. Ralph did not know any of these people, but
apparently his mother did, and she did not have a high opinion of
the man based on the way she sneered.

I'm Doctor Rita Lee, spokeswoman for the
World Health Organization. The first thing I have to say is to
counter these preposterous claims that this flu is some doomsday
virus. What other crazy theory will we have next, someone claiming
the dead will walk?

The doctor snickered, which sounded more
like a crazy lady losing it than someone trying to rebuff an absurd
theory. He couldn’t really blame her for feeling a bit lost with
the situation. Lately, people have been making the craziest stuff
up to get attention, or for the fun of it. He hated listening to
this nonsense instead of music, but his mother was listening
attentively. God, she was going to make him take a vaccine if they
convince her that something bad was going on.

So, Doctor, what about these conspiracy
theorists’ claim that it's all to fill some fat cat's pockets?

Since when have they ever been right? They
are barely saner than the doomsayers. Do you really believe the
government would risk our health, which they have sworn to protect,
for some scam to get money for some corporate donor? No, of course
not! These are good people; they are at the helm to serve the
people. And we, as a world organization, help these governments,
foreign and domestic, to deal with situations that can have an
adverse effect on our health. We are a nonprofit organization and
we do not profit on making people sick; we cure people as best we
can.

“Pleaseeeee,” mom said.

Doctor, can you tell us what is really going
on?

It's a new strain of the flu. Our current
vaccine doesn't work on it. As far we know, we have no reason to
not believe that it's as harmful as the common flu.

Why then the call for a worldwide
quarantine?

Because what many don't realize is that the
common flu has about thirty thousand fatalities around the world
each year.

We don't have a quarantine in those cases,
so why now?

Indeed, we don't have them, because the cure
in those cases could be worse than the flu. We don't see the
fatalities we could get from a quarantine as easily as from the
flu. At six, almost seven billion people worldwide, a worldwide
quarantine would have consequences and could also lead to the death
of many.

What changed with this flu?

It's new, never been seen before. Almost no
one has any defense against it, but for those who are naturally
resistant and those who are immune.

Ralph's mother coughed. “Guess I'm not
immune.”

She radiated a smile at him. “But maybe you
are.”

He couldn't help but to smile at her. She
would not even give him a get out of jail free card with this
pandemic looming over them.

We calculated that about 4 percent are
resistant and have a chance of not getting infected. The other 95
percent, if they get in contact with this virus, will get ill. We
can't afford to have 95 percent of the population ill; we need a
quarantine to ride out this virus.

“So maybe you're not immune after all.”

So maybe that get-out-of-jail-free card was
still in the running. Ralph saw a way for him to get out of taking
the test. A plan formed in the back of his head. He hoped his
mother would swallow this shit on the radio. He decided to side
with the conspiracy theorist; well partly, it was just a common
cold and not necessarily preplanned by the government. He doubted
the government would do anything like that; the current president
was way too cool. He would never harm his country.

How many would die if we don't
quarantine?

One in ten thousand.

Doesn't sound that bad doctor.

That's about six hundred thousand by the flu
alone, and many more caused by people being too sick to be able to
care for themselves and others. What a lot of people don’t know is
that neglect kills.

That's horrible! So what's keeping the
government from doing something?

A quarantine is not enacted on a moment's
notice. It needs planning and the people should be informed in
advance. We don't want them to panic. Panic also causes deaths.

Again the nervous laughter.

What time frame do you suspect...?

“Watch out, Mom,” Ralph yelled, panic in his
voice. “Brake!”

The car swerved as his mother stepped on the
brakes. The car jerked to a stop in the intersection. They flung
forward; their seat belts pulled them back hard. Two yellow school
buses raced by at speeds he had never seen them move at before.
They show no sign of stopping or even slowing down. Had they not
stopped in time, their car would have been flattened.

“God damn them,” mom said.

His mother turned off the radio as the
doctor and the radio host were discussing the economic consequences
of a quarantine. “I didn't see them coming! What has gotten into
these drivers? Oh God, we could have been dead! Oh praise, God
saved us!”

Ralph didn't know about that. It was his
timely warning and not God who had saved them. But he dared not say
that to his mother; she would point out it was God that gave him
eyes to see the oncoming hazard and God's hand that grabbed his
face and pointed it at the oncoming buses. It was boredom that led
him to yawn and look out the window. Chance saved them, chance, not
God.