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.
4
For the next week I was on auto-pilot. I woke up, I fed Jake, I changed his diapers, I ate, and I went back to sleep. I couldn’t think of anything past what I was immediately doing and Jake’s needs. I didn’t try to go anywhere, and I didn’t even turn on the news. I was in a fog, lost in a pit of depression and self-pity. All I could ask was why? Why did this have to happen? Why did I have to lose my wife? Why did Jake have to lose his mother? That depressed me a lot, that eventually Jakey will not remember his mother in a little while. I was all he had.
I was all he had. That thought began to stick into my head and I began to realize that I was all Jake had. I was all that kept him alive, all that prevented him from maybe turning into one of those things. I remembered a line from a very good movie once, and it stuck in my thoughts, so much so that I wrote it on a piece of paper and placed in on my fridge so I would never forget its truth. Very simple and more poignant than ever these days. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” I thought about Jake and remembered my promise to his mother. Time to get busy living.
I turned on the computer and fired up the internet. I was stunned at what I had missed over the past week. Headlines of “The Dead are Walking” and “Dead Consume Living” were all over the place. Talking heads were discussing the end of mankind and things like that. One of the sites had a list of cities to avoid, as the number of walking dead far outnumbered the living. People were in a state of panic, and martial law had to be declared. Videos were all over the net of people being attacked by mobs of zombies. One had a video of an attack, then the cameraman was attacked and the last shot of the video was of a mess of blood on the ground as two bloody feet slowly walked away.
Realizing I could be overwhelmed with information and none of it useful, I decided that if I was to survive this, I needed to know what I was up against. I spent the next three hours learning about the virus, how it was spread, how long it took to incubate, what the symptoms were. I read survivor stories and got bits of information from there. I learned that the infected victims hearing and smell seemed to be heightened, while their sight remained normal. I learned that they weren’t particularly fast, and were extremely limited in problem solving. I watched a video of a zombie trapped in a small room because it couldn’t figure out where the door was, let alone work the knob. I began to wonder how in the world everything had gotten to be such a mess, with an enemy that was pretty much stupid.
I got my answer a lot closer to home than I intended. While I was on the computer, I happened to see a man out on the bike trail behind my house. He was walking on the trail when another man came out from between the garages by the condominiums. The second man walked slowly and directly at the first man. The walker held a baseball bat and waited for the first man to arrive. The second man was an older gentleman who clearly was infected. His skin had a grayish pallor, and he groaned into the wind. The walker waited until the zombie was close enough, then struck him on the shoulder, clearly breaking his arm. The zombie didn’t even slow down and barreled into the walker, knocking him down and biting whatever her could reach. The first man screamed and kicked shoved the zombie off, losing his hold on his bat. The zombie took repeated kicks to the face with no effect, and continued to bite and tear at the walker’s legs. The man screamed again and kicked with his feet, dislodging the zombie and scrambling backwards. The zombie rolled up and grabbed the man’s leg again, dragging him back within biting range. The walker’s legs and hands were bloody from bites, and he was obviously weakening. But he gave one more effort and threw the zombie off of him. The walker got to his feet and stumbled away, pursued by his attacker. The encounter had attracted the attention of another zombie, a woman with a torn shirt, who came out of a doorway, saw the walker, and started after him. I thought two things at this point. One was the man who was bitten was going to die anyway and become a zombie, and two, the zombies never stopped coming. They didn’t feel pain, they didn’t do anything but attack, attack, attack. My own experience was testimony to that.