Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga) (25 page)

****

The flight to Paris was unpleasant, although the
view of the Alps was magnificent. I was down to my last inhaler by then and only
used it once on that plane. However, the flight attendant was rude, so I
coughed on him. Same with the businessman seated next to me. And that’s another
thing. On all the flights I took over the past two weeks I must have sat next
to thirty or forty people. I know I killed them all, along the rest of the
people on those planes, but I only think about the ones I didn’t like. Do you
think that is some sort of psychological defense mechanism?

The French were also rude to me and I didn’t mind
killing them at all. As soon as I opened my mouth and revealed that I was not a
French speaker their heads tilted up and they were talking down their noses to
me – even the short ones. Whereas the people in Italy and even Greece had
seemed eager to be able to practice their English, albeit ignorant that the
conversation was their death sentence, the French appeared put out by our
encounters.
 
To be fair, they were not as
overtly prickish as the South Africans, but I couldn’t help thinking that Paris
would be a better place without so many French people. It was certainly a
beautiful city. I saw as much of it as I could in the day I was there. They
have a great Metro system. I used my inhaler on every train and in every
station I passed through.

****

I took a late night train from Paris to London, through
the Chunnel, releasing a puff in every rail car during the trip. I wish I could
have seen the French countryside, but we passed through it at night. The
Chunnel was a bit unnerving, knowing the whole English Channel was above us. It
was dawn when the train came out of the tunnel and I got a good look at a lot
of England during the rest of the trip to London. Those were the last open
fields, little forests, picturesque farms and quaint villages that I will ever
see up close.
 
The train was not an
express on the English side of the channel, so it made numerous stops on the
way to London. Dozens of passengers got off at each stop, taking the virus with
them, while others boarded to acquire it. I pictured the virus spreading from
person to person, town to town, and I must say the weight of the world fell
upon me. I actually shed some tears. Not that you would care, nor God for that
matter. What’s done is done and I did it.

Upon arrival in London I walked around the train
station using my inhaler frequently until it was time to catch the Tube to
Heathrow, then used it on the Tube too, so I wasn’t really repentant. By then I
just wanted to get it over with, all of it – my life and all of yours too. And
I was almost there. I had come more than halfway around the world on a zig-zag
loop, sowing death, and now I was about to do the same thing twice over in
little more than a day. My final flight was actually two flights and I was
morbidly pleased that they would both be on United Airlines. It would be my
first American flagged carrier since I flew Alaskan from Seattle to Los Cabos
for a connecting flight to Mexico City. Better yet, the one stop between London
and Sydney on my final journey would actually be in my home town of Los Angles
with a lengthy layover. Yes, I was going home one more time and I was bringing
the apocalypse with me. When I sat down on the plane I saw a world map on the
back of the inflight magazine. I pulled out my red pen and drew a continuous
line of my two week flight plan – starting in Seattle and ending in Australia.
At first it looked like a giant cursive “O” until I realized it was closer to a
distended version of the Greek letter Omega.

****

United Flight 935 departed Heathrow on schedule at
10:25 on the morning of March 29
^th
.
 
In less than twelve hours I would be home. I was excited and terrified,
remorseful and exultant, empowered, yet helpless to alter the course of events.
Suffice it to say that my feelings were quite conflicted. I almost decided not to
use the inhaler at all on that flight, knowing my fellow passengers would
deplane in LA. Then I started thinking about all the polluted air in the LA
Basin, the contaminants that flowed from the city into the ocean, and the
millions of people who made driving on the freeways a nightmare. I thought
about all the people I knew there and tried to think of one that meant more to
me than completing my diabolical mission. There were some that I liked. A few
that I loved. But they were vastly outnumbered by those I despised.
 

I thought back to the first few months after my
diagnosis of cancer and couldn’t think of more than a handful of people who
really gave a damn. My boss seemed to care, but I think he was more worried
about paying off my life insurance policy and finding someone else to sell more
of them. A couple of ex-girlfriends had returned my calls, or emailed their
mushy condolences, but if they really cared they wouldn’t be exes. One of them
could have at least pretended to love me again for a few months. None of them
did that. Even my buddies seemed to shy away from me when they learned of my
terminal condition. Maybe they thought it was contagious. Or they simply didn’t
want to let me kill their buzz. So be it. But now I
am
contagious and I’m going kill a lot more than their buzz. After
stewing on it for an hour or two, I got up from my first class sleeper seat to
go to the lavatory and I took my inhaler with me.

Our flight took the Great Circle polar route, so we
came down over Canada to reach the USA. Viewing the world from 30,000 feet was
much different than my train ride through England. I looked out the window and
saw millions of acres of unspoiled land, dotted with signs of human habitation,
disturbance and destruction. The occasional town, city, or industrial site
stood out like a tumor on an X-ray, marring the beauty of the landscape. I felt
none of the sympathy for those below that I had for the people whose faces I
saw through the window on the train. The people beneath the airplane were
smaller than ants and less significant, except for their impact on the planet.
They were the virus and I was the cure.

I was clear headed and calm when the Boeing 777
began its approach to LAX, gateway to the city of angels. I’m glad I had a
window seaton that flight. Looking down through the smog as the plane descended
over the San Bernardino Mountains, I took in the magnitude of urban sprawl. It
was malignant growth, no different than the tumor growing in my brain. And just
like my own cancer, it was incurable and terminal. The only solution was death.
It was a bitter realization, but one I had been operating on subconsciously all
along.
 
I had finally moved past denial,
past anger, and into full acceptance of my fate and that of humanity. The
landing was uneventful, but momentous.

I had an 8 hour layover and plane change in Los
Angeles before the final 15 hour leg of my flight to Australia. That was plenty
of time to leave the airport, rent a car, and go to see some of my favorite
places one more time. I could even stop by my apartment a few miles away in
Redondo Beach, check my messages and pick up my mail. And I was seriously
thinking of visiting a few close friends to say goodbye, knowing that I would
be killing them if we met in person, but wondering if it wouldn’t be easier for
them to join the first wave of infected than battle against them for unlikely
survival. I was daydreaming about these plans on my way out of the terminal and
taking a puff off the inhaler when a tap on the shoulder almost made me piss my
pants. I spun around and there was Linda.

****

“Welcome back, killer,” she said with only a hint of
animosity to belie her smile. She leaned forward and kissed me passionately on
the lips. I was stunned, alarmed, and excited.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted when the kiss
ended.

“Meeting you, of course,” she said. “Let’s get out
of here and catch up. I already have a rental car in the parking lot. We don’t
want to waste any time.”

“You can say that again,” I agreed readily. I
wasn’t sure if she planned to fuck me or kill me, but didn’t see how it made
much difference. We walked hand in hand to a Ford Mustang convertible. “Nice
ride.”

“Only the best for the walking dead,” she replied
sarcastically. “You can drive, since you know your way around this town a lot
better than I do. So, how was your big adventure?”

“It was amazing, but I’m glad it’s almost over. Everything
went according to plan. My second inhaler is almost used up, right on schedule.
But what about you? How were your last two weeks?” I regretted my choice of
words immediately as her smile melted. I really hadn’t meant it to come out
quite like that, but was curious to know what she had done since I killed her. My
apologetic expression must have worked because she proceeded to tell me.

“After you drafted me into the legion of walking
dead I was a wreck. I wanted to kill you. I almost killed myself. I came close
to going back to the Tabula Rasa base without telling them and hoping it would
force them discover or disclose an antidote. They say they don’t have one, but
they could be lying. Infecting them might have been the only way to force their
hand. But in the end I decided that would make me a traitor to the cause. So I
called and told them what happened instead.”

“How did they react?” I asked as I drove out onto
Sepulveda Boulevard and turned south towards home.

“They were shocked at first, then very grateful
that I hadn’t returned to infect the base. They gave me a choice between going
off to spend my final weeks however I wanted, or I could take an inhaler like
yours.
 
I thought about it overnight and
decided that I’d rather further the cause than wallow in my own sorrows. I
thought about you a lot too. At first I hated you with a passion. Then I
realized that I was suddenly in the same position as you were when we met. I
hadn’t fully appreciated the fear and desperation you must have been feeling
until I felt it too.”

I glanced over towards her as we drove through the
tunnel under the LAX runways and saw sincerity reflected in her eyes by the
lights flashing past on the walls of the tunnel. Nodding slightly and wanting
to change the subject I asked, “What did they tell you to do?”

“They sent me an inhaler along with a prepaid Visa
card and cleared all my debt. They told me I could go wherever I wanted, do
whatever I liked, and that they trusted me to make the most of my time to
promote the cause.”

“So, were did you go?” I asked as we drove through
El Segundo.

“I spent another day in Seattle, then I flew to
Portland for a day. After that I flew to San Francisco and spent a few days
there. Then I jumped on a flight to Las Vegas and lived it up for the better
part of a week. I went to almost every casino and club. I slept with a lot of
men. They were all from out of town, so I can assure you what happened in Vegas
didn’t stay there.” She laughed when she said that and I had to chuckle myself.
I wasn’t bothered at all that she had been sleeping with other men. I’m sure
she didn’t have to pay for sex the way I had and catching an STD was the least
of our worries. We both had a sick sense of humor, but I’m sure you’ve figured
that out by now.

“How long have you been in LA?” I asked to change
the subject.

“This is the third day,” she replied. “I went to a
lot of tourist attractions and spent the rest of my time shopping in malls and
going to clubs. The trunk of this car is full of shoes and dresses I’ll never
get a chance to wear.” She giggled before saying, “I thought about leaving
today, but decided I wanted to see you one more time. I want to bury the
hatchet and be able to talk to someone about all of this before it ends.”

I knew exactly what she meant. It was hard to keep
this kind of secret. What we were doing could drive you crazy with inner
turmoil between pride and shame, determination and disgust, not to mention
guilt. At least that’s how it was for me. I felt the same vibes coming from Linda.
Talking to someone in the same position should help both of us resolve those
inner conflicts. Of course I wanted to do more than talk. I turned right on
Redondo Beach Boulevard and was only a few blocks from home.

****

We spent a glorious two hours in my bed, the
details of which will thankfully be fresh in my mind when time runs out. I
checked my mail, but didn’t see anything worth opening. I only listened to a
few messages on the answering machine. Just enough to know that nobody really
missed me too much and decided I didn’t want to listen to the rest in case
someone did. I still had a few hours to kill, a term I use repeatedly and
loosely of late, so I took Linda to a popular restaurant on the beach. While
there I asked her what she planned to do for the last day and if she wanted to
join me on the flight to Australia.