We left long before everyone died off, of course. Lots of the survivors did. Once we figured out that the soldiers were no longer confining us to the quarantine area, folks just started slipping away in little pockets. In my case, we stayed a bit longer because I was still terrified that Lizzy was going to get sick. I didn’t want to take us too far away from where all the medical supplies and people were. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my health, though, or what it might mean that both Lizzy and I remained healthy long after everyone else gave out. It’s like I said: she’s the reason I’m still alive. If she hadn’t been with me at that time, I think I would have just laid down on a cot and waited for my brain to turn off… or maybe grab one of the rifles from a dead soldier and turn my brain off.
So, when all the medics started dying off, I was left with a load of medical supplies that I didn’t know how to use and no one to show me. It didn’t make any sense to hang around anymore. The staff stationed with us had dropped off to a minuscule degree; I mean there were maybe one or two people left for every five sick tents. You could literally walk along column after column in the grid and not run into anyone official or in charge. More often than not, you could see people who used to be in charge lying in sick cots. There was no one running the place.
I led Lizzy to one of the supply tents (you had to lead her everywhere by that time; all she did anymore was sit quietly and stare off into the distance or just sleep) and got what seemed like plenty of supplies at the time. I grabbed a bottle of Ibuprofen, a first aid kit, and so on. I saw a bunch of other drugs and what I guess must have been antibiotics (they all had names I didn’t recognize and couldn’t pronounce, all ending in “-l-i-n”). I saw one bottle that said “Broad Spectrum” so I grabbed that. A couple of sleeping bags, a ruck from one of the soldiers that I stuffed with some MREs and a couple of bottled waters, and finally one of the soldier’s rifles. I didn’t even get any extra magazines for the rifle; I just took it with whatever it had loaded in. I didn’t know about survival or self-reliance or even bug-out bags back then. A backpack with some waters and some food seemed like it was enough.
I didn’t have much of a plan at the time outside of getting away from all the dead and dying people. Lizzy and I went back into the city to see what we could find. In the weeks that we had been restricted to the tents, Sandy and the areas around it had changed more than I would have thought possible. The quarantine was set up far away (I think twelve or fifteen miles) on the other side of the mountains from the city, so the most we ever really heard or saw was the occasional pop pop pop of gunfire at night, or perhaps a plume of black smoke rising into the sky from some undetermined place in the distance past Latimer point. It was like a whole different city when we came back to it. There were abandoned barricades everywhere and vehicles in between them, also abandoned. Shop windows all over were broken out with merchandise lying in the street. It was pretty obvious what had taken place, but I still remember how hard it was to accept what I was seeing. Riots were a thing that happened up the 15 in Salt Lake City, and they were always confined to a block or two. I couldn’t think of a single riot ever taking place in Sandy. I didn’t think our people were like that, but then I started to look closer at the businesses that had been hit, and things started to make sense. I saw the occasional TV or appliance on the sidewalk but, for the most part, grocery stores and pharmacies were gutted without exception. Other places like outdoor and sporting goods stores were also ripped wide open.
We walked through the streets for hours. Sometimes, we ran into little knots of people that looked as confused and lost as we must have appeared. We never said anything to each other. It seems crazy, but you have to understand the situation: the only supplies any of us had were what we could carry on our backs. Most of us were armed in some way. If we didn’t talk to each other, if we didn’t join up, it meant one less challenge we had to deal with. Other people meant risk. You risked getting involved with crazy or violent people, or you risked joining up with people who would need more help or more supplies than you were willing to give. You just didn’t know who they were going to be. And this was universally understood by all of us, so when we saw each other across the street, all we did was make momentary eye contact and then look down and move on in another direction.
Eventually, we came to our old apartment. The door hung open with a few strands of orange colored biohazard barricade tape trailing from the jam. I don’t know what I thought we were going to find there. The place was as ripped apart as the rest of the city. All of our things… the things that made the place our home were destroyed. The couches were ripped up. Picture frames pulled off the wall and smashed on the floor. Every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen had been upended. I picked up a chair that had been knocked over and sat Lizzy down in it. “Stay here, Mija,” I told her. She nodded and then turned her head to stare out the front door. I went down the hall to our old bedroom.
I don’t know what I thought I was going to find there. Some piece of me was expecting or hoping to find Eddie lying in our bed, perfectly preserved in the state he was in when I left him, so I could finally say goodbye. He wasn’t there, of course. He had been bagged up and taken out to the mass grave where they burned the remains of the infected. Whatever was left of my husband—my best friend who had always been there for me, had always protected and provided for me, who had loved me without fail for as long as I knew him—all that was left were ashes in a pit that I didn’t even know how to find. I collapsed into my bed and had a complete breakdown. I sobbed for I don’t know how long, jamming my face into the one remaining pillow out of fear Elizabeth would hear. She heard me anyway, I guess, because she was there a few minutes later, climbing into the bed behind me and wrapping her arms around me. We fell asleep in the bed that way; her holding me, me holding the rifle.
We woke up with the sun the next morning. I began moving around our home mechanically, cleaning a little here, straightening some furniture there. I was mentally numb and trying to come up with some idea of what to do next. I think a part of my brain was operating under this assumption that if I could just clean the place up enough, we could hunker down and survive there until whoever was still in charge figured out how to fix everything. I’m sure I would have figured it out eventually once it was clear that the water was never coming back on, but Lizzy had two and two added way ahead of me.
“Can we go get Lelo and Lela?” Lizzy asked me. I didn’t have much hope that my or Eddie’s parents were still alive, but it was at least a plan. Things might be better down in Beaver. It was something to hold on to.
I went through the apartment and collected some things that I couldn’t live without: several pictures from before, our wedding rings, and Lizzy’s old stroller. I hadn’t been able to donate it to Goodwill yet, and I had always dreamed that Lizzy might have a brother one day, so it was easier to just store it under the stairs. It was one of the huge ones that you get when your baby is newborn; a mother’s rolling toolkit, complete with fully reclining bed, lower shelf space for diaper bag, toys, and doo-dads—even a cup holder. It wasn’t exactly a pack mule, but it helped me to get some of the weight off my back. I found some canned food that had been missed in our pantry, so I threw that into the stroller, plus some kitchen matches, extra sweaters, and blankets.