Our ignorance of the viral nuances proved a disaster. Families let in other survivors, who had unknowingly picked up the bug. Cal had met other people holed up in the office supply store. One of them must have been a carrier.
His fever rose. “It’s probably from crawling through that freezing culvert,” I said. “It’s probably nothing.” His face was pale and sweaty; he hadn’t shaved in weeks.
“I can’t Turn,” he said. “I can’t hurt you or Lindy. I can’t be up here with you.”
“You won’t Turn. You’ll be fine. Hush.”
I fell asleep curled against him and Lindy for warmth. Some time that night I heard the attic stairs descend then pop back up.
He was gone. He had written on one of the rafters, right by Lindy’s drawings. “I love you.”
Cal gets into the bed during the night and holds me. “I don’t like it when we fight,” he whispers.
Turners say that the first thing they remember is their chest pounding when their hearts started beating again and the cold, quick breath of air back into the lungs. Some say they remember floating to a heavenly white light and being jerked back, but Cal says he remembers nothing. They can’t remember the screaming or the taste of blood on their teeth, like warm copper pennies. It’s up to the Non-Infected to remember. It’s up to me.
The nation’s economy is nearly nonexistent, and the only million-dollar selling product is a little plastic bracelet that says, “Jesus rose. Jesus forgives.”
I watch Cal in the dark next to me and I want to hit him. I want to smoother him, choke him, bite him, kiss him. I hate him; I love him. He’s my husband. He was Lindy’s father. He saved us. He was once undead and now he’s back.
“What’s on your mind? Why don’t you ever talk to me?” he whispers.
Surely he must know. But I say nothing and we make love instead. I think of Felix Narvaez.
Cal was gone. One day I heard shuffling below us in the garage and looked through a peephole in the attic’s floor. It was him. He was standing in front of his workbench looking blankly, as if he had forgotten something. He moaned. Then he shuffled out through a broken gap in the door and joined the other Turners, slowly walking down the streets looking for blood.
Two months later Lindy and I had eaten all the dog and cat food. Cal’s idea had saved our lives so far; there were people starving all over the world. I was going to have a make a plan.
Cal has erased his picture from my computer. I was looking for it this morning but it’s gone. I don’t blame him for not wanting a reminder of what he looked like post-infection, but it was mine. He had no right to destroy it. I check the message boards and realize that I miss the old Internet, full of silly videos. The U.S. Council for Recovery has set up Neighbor-Board, the only social networking site we have, but it’s not the same. There is no YouTube or video sharing. The last thing the Council wanted was someone posting old footage of attacks. The feeling I have knowing that Cal got on my computer and deleted his picture is the same one I have when I use this new “net.” It feels likes some sort of violation, or censorship.
I ride my bike to work and it’s a fine spring morning. There is even a sprig of green sprouting from the dirt and grit in the tank on Main Street.
I had climbed out of the roof’s hatch, screaming for Lindy. The roar in my ears turned out to be planes zooming in from the horizon: crop dusters. A yellow mist came streaming out from them. One of the planes flew so close that the pilot waggled his wing tip at me. He probably thought I had been on the roof, shouting for joy.
At this same time, Felix Narvaez was on the bridge in McAllen, facing the four thousand gruesome hungry dead. He had been listening in on the radio contact between the military and heard the cure was on the way. He refused to fire on the Infected. He stopped right where he was. His people had enough firepower to destroy the whole hoard but he ordered them not to fire. Instead, they fought them off by hand until the planes soared overhead and released their loads. They could have died in their act of compassion, and they nearly did. Narvaez watched the dust settle and the slow shift of consciousness begin.
That was the day I lost Lindy. That was the day the world came back alive. It was the third of July.
This morning when I get to campus I go to the faculty break room first. Sarah, the psychology teacher, is talking with the Spanish teacher, Kay. “It’s not anorexia,” Sarah says, “but something near to it. I’m sure it’s based on guilt and not physiology. Clinically, I’ll be interested to see the long-term effects. Some of the people I’m seeing can’t keep anything down, and it’s not just Turners either. There is a subset of people who didn’t get infected at all but are claiming that they did, and that they can’t remember anything. They are also vomiting when they think of food.”
Poor Sarah. Not only does she teach classes and volunteer like the rest of us, her Citizens Orders have her counseling post-traumatic shock victims. Kay sees me and clears a space for me.
“Buenos días. ¿Cómo estás?”
“Hola. Muy bien. ¿Y tú?
“Así así,” Kay smiles. She has always been something of a quiet seer. When Cal and I got married she gave me a beautiful candelabra and her handwritten note said: Something to help light your way. Kay has told me that in less than ten years more than half of the country will not speak English. I had asked her what would happen if the borders closed and the English-speakers got ticked off about being outnumbered. She had said, “Perhaps another Civil War, no? Neighbor against neighbor, yet again.”
Kay listens quietly while Sarah talks about her patients. I put my lunch in the faculty fridge and excuse myself. “I have to go to the library. Adiós.”
I know what I have to do. I dreamed about it last night. I dreamed I was teaching Daniel Defoe’s tale of the bubonic plague, Katherine Anne Porter’s tale of the 1918 flu, Albert Camus’ tale of cholera, Randy Shilts’s tale of HIV, Richard Preston’s tale of Ebola . . . There were so many books on the lectern that they spilled over. I leaned against a marble bust of Giovanni Boccaccio and it fell, crashing to the floor. I knelt to retrieve the pieces but found only marble feet instead, tiny and delicate, like a child’s. “What will they write of us?” I asked the class. “What will they write of us?” The students tried to answer but their voices only beeped and blared like the campus emergency alerts. When I woke, I knew what I needed to do.
I’ve timed my visit carefully, when I know the head librarian will be there. She was a Mole. She and her husband made it out to their deer lease in West Texas where they survived on venison and canned fruit, but they ran out of heat and nearly froze in the winter. She lost two toes.
“I have something for the library,” I tell her. “But not everyone should see this. Not everyone would understand.”
I slide her the journal that I found in the computer lab, written by one of the Eight.
Her eyes open wide. “I heard rumors about this!” She fingers the bloodstained pages. “I’ll put it in the archive,” she whispers. “Only I have the key.”
I nod. “Maybe later, people will want to know.”
“Does it name names?”
“Yes.”
“Was Cal . . . ”
“No. He wasn’t one of them.”