Aftermath (Invasion of the Dead) - Part I (3 page)

“Beer,” Greg said, crushing his third can.  He tossed it into a
full bin and it rolled off onto the floor with a clunk.

“Matches, water, fuel,” Callan said. 

“I’ve already got some of those,” Dylan said.

“You can never have too
many.”

“
Okay,” Sherry said.  “We’re getting somewhere.  How quickly can we pull this together?” 

“
Quickly,” Callan said.  “You’re right, we should do this.”  He felt hope seeing her enthused again.  It proved to him that managing people was her thing.

“
You fill the rest of the fuel tanks and the gas bottles.  Kristy and I will get drinks.  Maybe a beer or two for Greg,” she said, feigning a smile.  Greg burped.  “You belong in a sty.  Dylan can gather another box of emergency supplies.  Greg, you get the food, and not just the stuff you normally eat.  Try and find something that has a milligram of nutritional value.”

“Sure
,” Greg said.  “Hang around while I duck out to the fruit and vegetable shop and load up.  Any vegans here?  I could always get some lentils or legumes.”

She
shook her head.  “I wonder what would need to happen for you to take life seriously.  We all know your idea of a salad is pizza with a lettuce leaf on top.  Just don’t fill us with chips and chocolate, okay?” 

Greg made a face and
unsealed his forth beer.  So far, it hadn’t caused an issue, but Callan thought it wasn’t the time to get pissed.  He would shut his mouth for now, but if Greg kept drinking, he’d pull his buddy aside and say something.

Sherry clapped her hands.  “Let’s do it.  I don’t want to hang around here any longer than I have to.”

The sun was a yellow blazing eye and Callan wished they were back at the lake.  Sweat dripped down his forehead as he unloaded gear and lined the empty Gerry cans up at the pump.  There was urgency about their movement, as if they had an important deadline.  Even Greg had stopped sucking down beers, grunting as he brought box loads of food from the shop.  They worked in comfortable silence as the birds chirped and tweeted from the woods around them.

Callan would miss the peace of
the countryside.  The last five weeks has been more enjoyable than the entire four years he’d spent in his office job, cooped up in a shitty little cubicle with a picture of Sherry stuck to one wall.  He didn’t have Kristy’s brains, and would never reach the mercurial heights of academic or career achievement to which she was destined.  He dreamed of working as a fishing or hunting guide, taking rich clients up into the mountains every weekend, teaching them how to catch trout and shoot game.  He loved the smell of the trees and the leaves, and the snarling vegetation, even the algae on the rocks at the river’s edge.  It was his dream job.  He recalled a conversation with Sherry about possibly one day moving away from town. 

“You’re not serious?” 

“Have you ever been up to the Snowy Mountains?  It’s peaceful, and beautiful, and smells amazing.”

“
It’s boring, Callan.  There’s nobody there.”

“That’s part of it.  Don’t you get sick of having all these dickheads around you at work?”

“No.  Those
dickheads
give me things to do.  They’re my job.”  

He thought the camping trip might change her mind, but
that had failed.  Even now, in the short time since she had taken control and allocated tasks, she was happier.  She needed people.  His dreams would have to wait.  Sherry was the most important thing to Callan.  He would follow her wherever she went and hope one day she might see things differently.

The girls stacked
separate piles of bottled soft drink and water cases wrapped in clear plastic beside the Jeep.  Greg had done his best to vary the food, but it was limited to powdered mashed potatoes, tinned beans, and canned fruit.  Dylan added three more boxes of camping supplies and a pack of 3M breathing masks.

“I found these,” he said, holding up the box of ten.  “You never know.”

“Good idea,” Callan said.  “Was that it?  Just the one box?”

“That’s all I could find. 
They probably didn’t have time to prepare for an outbreak.”

Twenty-five
minutes later Callan had cleared the pile, stacking it into the boat around the large portable ice chest containing the skinned rabbits and a couple of pan-sized trout.  

“
We
can
get our asses into gear when required,” Sherry said.  “Let’s hope we don’t need any of it.”

“
I don’t think we have enough to pay for it all,” Callan said.  “I’ve only got a fifty and the card machine won’t work.”

Sherry
said, “Does it matter?”

“Probably not, but
it’s the right thing to do.  I’m not about to start stealing just because we can.”

“Good point
,” Kristy said, sticking a hand into her pocket.

They scraped together a hundred and sixteen dollars and left it
in the squeaky till.  It wouldn’t pay for everything, but Callan felt satisfied that under the circumstances, they wouldn’t be branded as looters.

“We could always drive
down to Cabramurra,” Callan said, as they waited for him to pack the last few things.  “See if they’ve been affected.”

“I just wanna get home,” Kristy said.

Sherry said, “Me too.  I’ve had enough of the country.”

Callan felt a
nother stab of disappointment.  He secured the last few straps on the boat trailer, closed his eyes and sucked in several deep breaths of pure country air.  It would be the last time for a while, if Sherry had anything to do with it.  You couldn’t beat the smell of the gum and eucalypt trees.  In town, or worse, a big city, there were so many different scents you couldn’t distinguish one from the other.  Out here, smells were unique, as if separated so you could appreciate each one.  Some of his clothes still smelled of smoke from the fire too, and although they had complained about it, two days from now he would miss the odour.  Albury was delightful compared to the city, but out in the real country, when you closed your eyes, your senses marvelled.  When he opened them, Kristy approached. 

“I’ll keep
driving, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“Sure.
”

“You okay?”

The more thought he gave Sherry, the more he realised she had been acting strange before the trip.  “Has Sherry said anything about being unhappy?”

Kristy looked confused.  “No.  Why?”

“She’s been different.”

“Today?”

“No, longer.  Before the trip.  Don’t let her know I’m worried.”

“Are you?”

Callan ached when he considered life without her.  His mother once told him that in any relationship, there is always one person who loves the other more.  Callan was that person.  He felt her slipping away.  Lack of affection was one thing, but she seemed less interested in him,
too.  “Yeah.” 

Kristy
put a hand on his arm and gave a conciliatory smile.  “Let me talk to her.”

As they rolled away from the gas station, Callan
looked back at the ramshackle building and felt a pang of concern.  Were they driving into trouble?  If he didn't need to check on his parents, he’d be glad to head back up to the lake and wait it out until they got word that the virus had passed.  They had fuel and enough food to last several weeks.  He couldn’t sit up there wondering whether his loved ones were safe, and he doubted the others could either.  They would discover what had happened soon enough, and the idea filled him with a cold apprehension.  Surely the government would have control of the situation by then. 

2.
        
Road Trip

Kristy
gripped the wheel tighter as they cruised along the winding highway, fighting tight corners and steep hills.  She pressed the accelerator to the floor trying to coax the Jeep over the rise and onto the downward side.  The sun cast warms rays through towering gums, and out here, only brown earth and hardy, sun-loving bush existed.  They had seen the odd dead kangaroo on the dusty gravel edge and once an echidna preparing to make its trek across the black suicidal stretch.  As much as Kristy loved town life, like her brother, she had a soft spot for the real country too.   

A
nervous tension had swept over her again.  Its absence had been bliss for the last three weeks, and she thought she might have won after a year of fighting the stresses of thirty-six hours shifts and people dying under her care.  As they crept towards home though, it was back, like the old friend you don’t really like who keeps contacting you.

She hadn’t thought about working in the ER for weeks, but
now, the memories crept back with a sharper edge.  She always thought of her first, the old man who had come into the ER complaining of breathing difficulties after suffering symptoms of the common cold. 

“What were his initial
signs?”  The attending physician had said after she requested a consult.

“Cough, sore throat, mild breathing difficulty, painful right ear
headache.”

“Diagnosis?”

“Upper respiratory tract infection.”

“Treatment?”

“Analgesic.  Come back in two or three days if it doesn’t improve.”

It didn’t improve though, and by the time the man returned, the infection had move
d to the lower respiratory tract.  She chased the original attending around the ER as he sought to save the life of a car crash victim.

Her tone was higher
, panicky.  “His breathing is very short, he’s complained of chest pain, and is coughing sputum.  I’d like to perform a chest x-ray.”

He had agreed, and s
he had the x-ray taken, confirming pneumonia, and had administered antibiotics immediately, notifying his elderly wife and son of the diagnosis.  They suspected afterwards a virus
and
bacteria had caused the infection, but combined with the man’s age, he had not recovered.  The attending had found her sitting alone in one of the doctors’ quarters in tears, more than three hours after her twenty-six hour shift had ended.

“It’s not your fault,
” the attending said.  Kristy had blown her nose and tried to speak but emotion had impaired her.  “He waited too long to come back in.”   

“I should have known,” she managed.  “What sort of doctor am I
losing a patient to pneumonia?”

He had put a hand on her shoulder.  “A good one.  I consulted on this too
remember.”

Kristy
had never forgotten her negligence though, and that had been the beginning of the erosion in her confidence.  Now, the newspaper headline and the dead couple at the gas station, along with the prospect of returning to work, unsettled her.  She supposed she was nervous by nature, but this had touched a sensitive place.  The unknown consequences of the virus had disturbed the group, and a contemplative silence had befallen them. 

She wondered from where the pathogen had
come.  Was it global?  Did they have a pandemic, or was it limited to Australia?  The papers said a virus had caused the deaths.  She suspected a high virulence based on the death toll and the rapidity with which it had moved.  What if it was airborne? 

Stop it.  Don’
t think about this until you have to.

Kristy forced herself to concentrate
ahead, where in the distance, thin white clouds had gathered in the west.  It had only rained twice in the last month.  Most days had seen vivid blue skies and only the occasional clouds.  One of those times, she and Dylan had stayed behind to clean the camp whilst the others had gone skiing.  They had ended up having a fight with the dirty dishwater until relentless laughter had hurt their bellies.

Dylan had made her time
at the lake more enjoyable.  Whilst they hadn’t been intimate, she felt a connection, and was certain he had too.  They had known each other since high school and had always been good friends.  Why had the romantic spark failed to turn into a flame earlier?  She thought that was probably her fault.  The list of failed relationships was impressive, angry, brooding, aggressive types, much like her father, she supposed, all the opposite of Dylan.  His quiet, passive nature, his ability to listen and give sensible responses to her comments provided a pleasant change.  He was cute too, and she found herself sneaking more glimpses of those sharp green eyes and waves of dark hair as the trip lengthened.  Her favourite moments had been their quiet, late night talks by the orange embers of the campfire, smoke chasing them in a circle as they sat together, discussing the world in general.  The romance of it all made her tingle.  How she had wanted to snuggle up in his arms and fall asleep.  He wasn’t big and manly like Callan or Greg, but he possessed an intelligence that she thought made him stronger than any man she had known before. 

Kristy saw him talking to Sherry in the rear view mirror and her stomach
flipped.  Admittedly, she hadn’t been forthright the way Sherry would if she liked a man.  Sherry was blunt, to the point.  Perhaps Kristy should seek her advice.  She promised that once the virus business was resolved, she would make a move.