The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth) (2 page)

The other man stood half a foot taller and weighed at least a hundred pounds more. Joshua introduced him as Keith.  He looked soft and out of shape. Where Devon came across as brooding and jittery, Keith could have doubled as Santa at Christmas. All he needed was a big white beard. He alread
y had the belly and the kind smile.

The two women, he introduced as Kate and Jessie.
Kate stood taller, had shoulder-length blonde hair and calculating eyes. She offered a trite smile when I nodded. Jessie’s hair was dark, longer and kept straying across her face in a wild, windblown tangle. She didn’t smile. She grinned at me, and then hugged both Elsie and Daniel.  I couldn’t tell if she was simply one of those touchy-feely people who spread hugs and smiles from an internal need to be accepted, or if she was genuinely friendly.

Elsie settled that dilemma when she turned and
breathed a soft whisper.

“That’s a good girl right there.”

The final three sat in folding camp chairs eight or ten feet away. They neither rose nor stopped working at the edges of pouches I assumed contained dinner. The woman sat in the middle. She had short dark hair, big eyes and an equally big smile.

She waved a plastic knife.

“I’m Kelly,” she said and pointed left then right. “That’s Zack, this is Tyler.”

Tyler looked up through a mop of dark hair. Describing his position as sitting stretched the term considerably. He looked more like he was trying to lie in the chair, with his ass perched so far forward it nearly hung off the front. Six inches of underwear lay bare above the top of his jeans.

“Sup?” he asked. 

“Go ahead,” I replied.

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

I sighed, not wanting to start off on the wrong foot with anyone.  Tyler though, invited the worst in me.

“To sup is to eat,” I told him. “Like I said, go ahead.”

I turned to Elsie before he could say anything else.

“Want to spread out here? I didn’t think to bring a tarp so I guess we’ll be sitting on the grass.”

Given her earlier mood, I expected a sharp retort, something reminding me again that I was male and rarely thought of others. Instead she smiled sweetly, her eyes full of humor.

“Yes, this will do,” she said and glanced toward Tyler. “I wouldn’t mind getting about the business of supping myself.”

Elsie’s dinner drew appraising looks from around the fire. I could understand why. The kayakers
looked to be dining on military-surplus MREs--Meal’s Ready to Eat
.
The spread in front of Joshua’s crowd appeared equally skimpy and ill-tasting with the bulk of it consisting of packets of dried noodles and soup.

“She cooked enough for everyone,” I said. “Save your packages. This stuff will go to waste if it’s not eaten tonight.

I didn’t have to offer twice. Faced with sterile, freeze-dried food that would take rehydrating to be edible and a cast-iron stomach to be palatable, it didn’t take long for the line to form. I handed out thick slices of ham. Elsie scooped out large portions of beans and potato salad. Daniel even chipped in, passing out chunks of fresh bread.

I could have just as easily been passing out magic beans, with Friendly Potion Number 9 stamped on the side. Elsie accomplished something that evening much stronger and longer lasting than filling empty bellies with good food. She single-handedly tore down the walls that exist between strangers and erased the strain of meeting people for the first time. She did it, not with her wit, nor her sharp tongue, but with an afternoon of cooking and baking that provided the first common ground between us. Even the sudden tension I’d managed to build between myself, Tyler, and his drooping pants vanished quickly.

What began as three well-defined groups occupying their own space, rapidly devolved into something more akin to a welcoming dinner. Conversation ebbed and flowed, becoming as infectious as the disease we feared. Laughter punctuated the deepening night like exclamation points scattered across a written page. Personalities emerged as tension faded. Devon who had seemed gloomy and withdrawn earlier, turned out to be the comic of the group, rising at one point to dance a jig around the remains of the ham before falling to his knees to worship the gods of Pork and Salt.

Joshua, who had surprised me on the beach earlier, increasingly came across as quiet and introspective. Kelly, the lone girl in the group of kayakers, proved adept at extracting details out of people without coming across as prying. Once they discovered that Elsie had grown up on the island, she swiftly became the focal point of dozens of questions, and kept the group enthralled with tales that stirred life into a museum constructed of houses too clean, too pretty, and too empty.

Colder air settled in as the evening progressed. The wind had been light all day, but by the time plates were empty and bellies were full, the breeze had freshened, coming stronger out of the north. The fire danced and billowed, casting wavering shadows across a nearby cottage. As the wind grew, people shifted closer to the blaze, seeking warmth and reassurance from the flickering flames.

At a lull in the conversation, Joshua stood up and stretched. He looked like a caveman in the firelight with his tangled, wind-blown hair and dark beard. He and the ponytail girl didn’t fit as a couple. He seemed like he could be happy with a club and a couple of furs for clothes. She looked as if tolerating the situation was the best she could manage.

The two who appeared most at odds were Devon and Kate. She stood two inches taller than him and sat slightly apart from the rest as if creating space between herself and the commoners. She rarely spoke. When she did, her sentences came across as aloof and detached. Devon on the other hand, bounced back and forth between party animal and brooding loner. Try as I might, I couldn’t piece together the spark that brought them together, much less held them together.

“We’re staying here tomorrow. None of us live close enough to get home before the ban hits,” Joshua said. Firelight played across his features carving out impressions in light and shadow.  “We talked it over earlier and think we’ll be evacuated at some point. They can’t leave us here.”

I poked at the fire with a stick.

“Elsie and Daniel live just across the sound
. I’m taking them home in the morning. I should be back by tomorrow afternoon.”

I looked up and waved the glowing end of the stick. “I doubt I will come back here though. I’ll probably come up the back side and find a place to hunker down for a while.”

No one said anything. Denise shot a questioning look at Joshua.

I sighed and tossed the bit of wood into the fire.

“I’d planned on coming here, and staying here. Rather than being stuck, I’m pretty much where I want to be. I’m not a doctor, but I lived with a nurse for a long time. This disease is spreading fast and killing as it goes. I didn’t come here to escape. I came here to spend what might be my last days doing something I enjoy.”

I leaned back.

“I had asthma as a kid. I’m a sucker for any type of respiratory infection.”

The sudden silence that followed grew uncomfortably long.

“We’re leaving in the morning too,” Kelly said finally. “All three of us are from Virginia. We left our truck parked on Hatteras. We’re hoping we can make it to the Cape by eight o’clock. Even if the cops shut down travel exactly at noon, we’ll be close to home.”

She glanced from face to face.

“Has anyone heard the latest news?”

Elsie cleared her throat.

“I had the radio on while I was cooking.”

She hesitated and looked at the boy beside her.

The sudden thought struck me that she didn’t want him to hear what she was about to say. I rose and motioned toward him.

“Come on Daniel. Let’s go check out some of these old houses.”

The old woman reached out and pulled him close.

“It’s okay, Hill William. He was there. He’s heard it already. It’s just sad.”

She pulled him over and put her arms around him.

“I turned it on for the music. I couldn’t find any. Every station had nothing but news. They’re saying that The Fever is spreading too fast to contain. It’s in every state now, even Alaska and Hawaii. The announcer said that new estimates put the death toll by morning between five and ten thousand.”

Her voice trailed off into stunned silence. I sat down as abruptly as I had risen. Everyone, including me, had thought it would take weeks for the disease to migrate that far.

“The hospitals are in trouble. The infection control procedures aren’t working. Doctors and nurses are coming down with it faster than the general public,” she continued.  “Not everyone is dying from it. About
40 percent survive if they get good care. That’s the problem though. There are too many people sick.”

“This morning we heard a thousand dead by nightfall, not five to ten thousand,” Denise blurted out. “Where are they coming up with these numbers?”

Elsie lifted weary shoulders.

“I don’t know. The annou
ncer said we were playing catch-up.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Devon said in a sharp voice. I glanced over at him and stifled the sudden urge step between them. He could question the reports all he wanted, but he was not going to curse her in the process.

“It means two things,” I said and ticked them off on my fingers. “One, the reports are an estimate. No one knows how many are actually dying.”

I let that sink in before I stuck up finger number two. “Second, people have been
ill and didn’t know it. You don’t catch a bug in the morning and end up sick by afternoon with most diseases. There’s an incubation period where it multiplies. By the time you start feeling bad, your body is swarming with the infection.”

Elsie looked old in the firelight. The flames highlighted the deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and cast her face in shadows that left her looking gaunt and tired.

“They revised that today,” she said quietly.

I shot her a surprised look.

“They said it could manifest symptoms in three to four days. That’s down from a week to ten days. They said The Fever is evolving.”

She looked at Joshua. “I don’t think you will be evacuated, at least not for a while. Police, fire and rescue, they’re expected to be swamped trying to enforce the ban. They’re not talking detention. They’re saying that
anyone violating the travel ban could be treated as a mass murderer.”

I gave the old woman a sideways glance. She caught my eye and looked puzzled. I shook my head and turned back to the fire, mentally chalking up an
other note about Elsie Morgan. Most of the day she’d talked like a grandma who’d never made it out of the flatlands. The words she had just spoken could have come from an English professor.

“What does that mean?” Kelly broke in.

“It means if you can’t get home by tomorrow noon, you might get shot for trying.”

Tyler wiped hair from his eyes.

“You can’t be serious.”

Elsie nodded. “I am. It’s not official policy and groups are already threatening lawsuits, but the announcer said noon tomorrow, people better stop wherever they are until they see how the ban is going to be enforced.”

She glanced around the fire. “At minimum, you’re looking at jail time.”

The dark-
haired girl who had been so friendly earlier spoke up.

“Well they can’t just leave us out here, can they?”

Elsie shrugged. “I don’t think they know you’re out here. If they do, I think they have bigger things to worry about than a few people stuck on an island.”

Wind swept at the loose strands of gray hair that had escaped from the tight bun. Firelight played across her face.

“It’s not just here either. Countries across the world are reporting cases. Riots broke out in France and Greece today with people fighting over food at grocery stores. The world is going to be a different place tomorrow. We’ll just have to see how different.”

Voices rose around the campfire, some in fear, and others in protest. I listened but said nothing. I had little to add. The social structures that Dad had hated appeared to be on the edge of collapse. The protections and comforts most had treated as a fact of life rather than a privilege of the society we had created, were being dismantled quickly and easily. Like most facades, what lay behind them looked significantly less inviting. 

When the protests finally subsided, Elsie looked at me.

“Will you see us back to the boat, Hill William? We have an early start in the morning.”

I nodded, and went about gathering up the leftovers from dinner. There wasn’t much. The ham had been reduced to little more than a bone. I stuck it in the plastic bag Elsie had used for the bread, thinking I would use it as seasoning for soup or beans. The rest amounted to a few spoonfuls of green beans and a sliver of the bread she had baked earlier.

Tyler nodded when I held up the bowl so I scraped the last few bits into his plate.

“You get that flashlight out of the boat?” I asked Daniel when we were loaded up.