Underworld Earth Read online

  After dinner, I read Fiona a story. She cuddled up to me, dark hair falling down my arm, when I heard retching from the bathroom.

  The television is off now. The man leaning on his anchor’s desk with rolled-up sleeves and tie loosened around his neck did not shed much light, and I soon tired of looking at him. Hesitant assurances followed instructions that everyone stay home, for lack of any other information to give.

  Before the man on the television informed me that emergency services were overloaded, and the state was currently unable to provide the National Guard to manage the ground situation, I tried calling for help. But the lines were busy and as much as I cursed them, they would not yield.

  Then, I grabbed the clicker, aiming at the flat screen mounted on a wall across from Meghan’s corpse.

  Until that moment, I still had hope.

  AMERICA UNDER QUARANTINE, one channel declared in scrolling marquees. The deputy governor admitting the state’s leader had fallen ill was intercut with imagery of burgeoning hospitals, authorities beating back rioters, and quarantining entire neighborhoods to no avail. My thumb depressed the channel button, moving to the next newscast.

  DEADLY VIRUS ESCAPES CDC. The marquee was red now, rather than blue. News hosts appeared visibly run-down. The lone female host’s beehive was collapsed on its foundation of blonde, strands of hair thrown from its peak.

  “The State House has fallen,” she spoke in a hoarse, shaken voice. “The majority of its Democrat-dominated legislature fell severely ill this afternoon—”

  Change channel.

  “This is unprecedented,” the anchor said, looking no less ill than any of the others. “People are advised by emergency health officials to remain in their homes until hospitals can work their way through some of the current influx.”

  That was six hours ago, when my wife lived. Fiona slept soundly on the other side of our walls as I called several more times. Beyond my window, the streets are dead. No sirens of assurance wailed in the distance, indicating any of the influx is being worked through.

  Nobody is coming to help us.

  Do I bury her?

  With daybreak only minutes away, I don’t know how to tell my daughter that her mother is dead. Meghan’s dark locks have matted around her face, flesh cool on the back of my hand. I’ll have to do it after nightfall, when the kid is in bed.

  I can tell her Meghan went into work early, which is no different from any other day. And then...

  At some point, you will have to tell her.

  I know that.

  When?

  I don’t know.

  Every inch of light the sky gains brings me closer to morning, when this will all be real. I have only left the body once.

  I’m not sure how to do it again.

  “Daddy? I’m awake.”

  Dormant panic, interrupted by a knock, propels me from the chair, intercepting the door being pushed ajar. Stepping out into the hallway, I pull it closed. Back to its engraved panels, I am met by Fiona, and my pulsing heartbeat should be evident in the silence; whether unnoticed because she’s seven, or I’m overreacting, is a matter of perspective.

  “Hey sweetie. Sleep well?”

  She nods, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and informs me she’s ready for breakfast.

  “Great. Go downstairs, start your cartoons. I’ll get you some food in a second, okay?”

  Fiona begrudgingly drags her feet to the staircase, sits on the top step, and begins descending the flight on her rear. Returning to Meghan, I cover my late wife’s body with the comforter.

  Taking the steps two at a time, I find Fiona watching cartoons in the den.

  “Daddy, is Mommy okay?”

  “Of course, sweetie,” I lie. “She’s not feeling well. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

  So much for the work lie.

  “I wanted to ask her something. When will she feel better?”

  The longer I stand here, fumbling my answers, the more chance she has of figuring it out.

  “Mom needs to rest now,” I tell her, taking her hands in mine. “You want Mom to feel good, right?”

  Fiona scrunches her nose, and nods.

  “Everyone wants to feel good, Daddy.”

  “Okay. So, tell you what. You stay here while I go make breakfast, and we’ll let Mom sleep until she feels better, okay?”

  “So… she’s not going to work?”

  “No. Think she’ll take a personal day.”

  “That’s not like her,” Fiona observes. Oblivious to terror floating in my chest, she shrugs, and returns to watching her cartoons. I can’t respond without letting the cat out of the bag, and simply turn, making my quick exit.

  “Daddy?” she calls.

  Jesus.

  “Yes, sweetie?” I say, without looking back.

  “Could you tell Mommy I hope she feels better?”

  Feigning a smile, my attention is pulled to the door as the sound of shattering glass flies through the front of the house. The sun barely pokes its smallest rays out of hiding and judging by tones outside the house, I can only deduce one thing.

  Looters.

  Fiona bolts up on the couch, squinting at the intrusion.

  “Daddy, what was that?”

  “Stay there, baby.” Creeping to the open door that divides the dim hallway from what little safety the room affords us, another orchestra of breaking windows echoes beyond it.

  “Fiona, lock the door when I go out. Wait on the couch. I will knock three times when it’s safe to open. If you don’t hear three knocks, you don’t open it. Understand?”

  Any chance of sheltering her from the truth disappeared with the shattered silence.

  “Okay, I’ll be right back. Lock the door, sweetheart.”

  I leave the den, awaiting a certain click, and her tiny footsteps back to the couch. Shadows bounce in the thin corridor; one way leads to the kitchen, where we ate dinner as a family only hours ago, and everything was fine. On the house’s opposite end, a female voice commands her companions to grab everything they can.

  If they are robbing houses with impunity, it is only because there is nobody to stop them. Objects crash, furniture is overturned in the darkness, and anything valuable is picked up along the way.

  Who are these people?

  It doesn’t matter, suggests a more rational train wreck of thought. They’re in your home, and your wife’s body is in an upstairs bedroom.

  I have to get them out of here.

  When I was young, my father unceremoniously dropped out of our lives. All he left behind was inadequate memories of a factory worker who liked to smoke and drink after work, tended to beat his children to teach them in the ways of the world, and destroyed the woman who bore them. But he also left a Smith & Wesson, forgotten in his hurry to escape the wretched witch he transformed my mother into. That memento became mine the day I stole it from her, and it has rattled around the bottom of a drawer in the garage, unbeknownst to my wife, since we bought this house.

  If I get to it, I can gain the upper hand.

  More crashing draws my attention back to the intruders. The interior garage entrance is by the front door, near their location. The only way around them will be around the house’s exterior.

  If the sound of an automatic rolling door doesn’t alert them, I might stand a fighting chance. Stepping toward the kitchen, I plead under my breath they don’t find Fiona and pray they won’t stumble on Meghan, desecrating the site of her death.

  For a non-religious person, I seem to be putting an awful lot of stock in prayers.

  One step, followed by another; I reach a crevice in the cheap, prefab structure, turning the corner into our kitchen. Every step closer to the garage is further away from protecting my child, and merely a mile in the vertical drop of personal suffering tonight. At the sliding back door, I take as much breath as my lungs will hold, and wait for the next loud sound to cover my escape

  You can do this, York.

 
; “Goddammit!”

  The woman’s scream emanates through the lower level. She instructs her companions to search the upstairs while she canvasses the lower floor’s back half.

  Shit.

  My estranged father’s forgotten pistol will not help us here. Breaking for the knife block on the marble counter’s furthest corner, I fumble for the largest blade. Keeping the pointed end brandished outward, I return to the corner dividing my kitchen from the adjoining hallway, and see a woman reaching for the door that conceals Fi behind it. Logic to the wind, I rush the intruder. She is more prepared than I am, twisting the knife away as I thrust it toward her. She forces my arm back up, suspending it in the air as each of us struggles for control.

  There is no safety if this woman can call for help. I drive the knife’s momentum left as she throws her weight the other way. The resulting friction vaults us towards the opposite wall. In our constant spinning, my body hits it first before clipping her shoulder. Conjoined wrists smash against studs behind the wall. The knife falls to the floor, sliding away from us.

  As my ribs connect with the ground, the woman’s head smacks into my collarbone, and all I can envision are the thousand emotions running through Fi’s expression on the door’s other side, and what may happen if I’m taken out.

  Vaulting over her to grab the knife before she can, I am still too fucking slow. For all the adrenaline of losing my wife, fearing for Fiona’s safety and my general panic, the girl thrusts her elbow into my jaw, sending me tumbling. Her palm wraps around the knife’s handle as her associates drag me off her thinner frame. Thick hands pull me back, slamming my spine into the wall which runs under the staircase, facing the door concealing my child.

  The woman rebounds; I stop struggling as she removes her mask, revealing the last face I expected to see. Her hand presses the blade to my throat.

  Both of us need a moment to process the other. She is instantly familiar, but I don’t place her in the context of being widowed, with a knife against the jugular by home invaders.

  And then, it hits me.

  That’s quite the donation tray, I mused to her last night, noticing the white strip of paper under masking tape, telling me to ‘leave a fuck you, take a fuck you.”

  Thanks. Made it myself.

  The woman from the convenience store. The distinguishable sneer, even in the dark hallway, is unmistakable.

  What is she doing here?

  Bad day?

  Fuck do you care? she replied.

  This makes no sense.

  “You,” I say, squinting at the lone strand of hair falling over her blue eyes.

  “You,” she repeats, recognizing me as well.

  Sometimes, things have to fall apart to make room for new things, right?

  The woman’s associates are confused by our exchange and ask what they should do with me. Like me, she is speechless, having expected an easy target to rob from under the nose of corpses, and stumbled on the weirdest coincidence of all time.

  It only takes one moment to change everything.

  Samantha

  I don’t know when this all went to Hell.

  When we were young, it was easy to make a life-shifting decision; to escape the emotional black holes we came from and give nary a thought to what we were leaving behind. Once, it was simple to assume there would be consequences, but easier to ignore looking them in the eye someday, and explain why we made such an audacious choice. It was almost a given that when I returned to face my dying mother, my sister would not be on her heels in death, or that people would be falling over left and right to an illness I had never even heard of.

  And, at the end of it all, here we are. A series of fits from Catherine’s heart monitor pulled several HAZMAT-clad doctors into the windowed box. They passed through two sets of sliding doors to reach her.

  Steph, whose voice had grown hoarse, despite speaking little in the last two hours, launched from her plastic red chair. Her hands pressed against glass, behind which medical professionals shouted orders at each other and our mother spewed bright orange bodily fluids in the air mask used to replace the ventilator pulled from her throat.

  From my chair, I focused more on my ailing sibling than my lost cause of a mother. An exhausted nurse held her shoulders to keep the frail bag of bones in place as Stephanie looked on, helpless to intervene.

  I couldn’t hear their orders or suggestions between those working to save her, but it was all for naught; Catherine soon fell still, head turned to the side. Her left eye was half open, mouth agape. The doctors released their grip on her, and slowly backed toward the sliding doors.

  When the group emerged from quarantine, Steph turned from the window.

  “I’m sorry,” the masked doctor said. I couldn’t make out features through the visor, but he sounded young. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

  Ballooning fingers at her mouth, my sister convulsed emotion in both palms. Taking Steph in my arms, I feel little for Catherine, but the thought of losing my sister to the same fate made me want to never let go.

  Beyond the window, our mom’s fresh corpse stared back over Stephanie’s shoulder, taunting me for leaving her with this burden.

  Eventually, the nurses covered Catherine’s face with a sheet, unlatched the brakes of her hospital bed and wheeled her away. My sister was unrecognizable now; her eyelids were swollen, skin pale, and she could barely manage breaths. Nurses and doctors grew scarcer. An hour after that, no medical staff remained on the floor at all.

  By now, her condition had grown so bad, I feared leaving her. When I could no longer bear to watch her sag in the chair, I helped her out of it, guiding her to the elevator. We ascended a floor to where Catherine was previously kept, navigating to her old room. Like the Intensive Care Unit, the nurse’s station was abandoned. A heart monitor in one of the rooms ceased its intermittent beeping, droning on in everlasting D tones.

  “Easy!” I told her, removing the arm from around my neck. Helping her onto Catherine’s old bed, I eased her down to a fresh round of retching. “Easy, Steph. It’s okay. I’m here.”

  This is a horrible way to die.

  Assurances would offer my baby sister little solace, but my silence prompted a deep, terrible convulsion from her lungs.

  “Sammy,” she croaked, and I took her hand, telling her not to speak.

  “I’m going to get you help, okay?”

  Leaving the door to Stephanie’s hospital room ajar, I stumbled into the hallway. Not ten seconds passed before my hands covered sobs escaping my mouth.

  I should have stayed.

  I should have stayed and died like Stephanie will die. I should be the rule, not the exception.

  Collecting breath, I begin walking toward the nurse’s station. To fill out insurance forms, hail a doctor—anything which might bring my sister help in time to save her life. But the desk was abandoned. The aura was eerie in an airport; a place dependent on motion. Here in the hospital, despite the infirmary’s immobile nature, the absence of sound is sacrilege. No gasps escaped identical doors along the glossed tile floor. There was no one waxing the surface beneath hurried steps, no harried nurse to sort through static piles of patient charts and file folders cluttering the desk.

  Returning to Stephanie’s room, all I can do is sit at her bedside, holding a limp, clammy hand in mine…

  I would mourn these people I ran away from, if there were any emotions in reserve. The medical staff are too busy with quarantine and I am no doctor, but Steph’s prognosis does not look good. Her eyes are completely swollen shut, breathing is shallow, and the puffy flesh makes her look like a grotesque piece of human art.

  Whatever the outcome, I am resolved to stay here until there is one.

  Four excruciating hours later, my sister passes away. In that block of time, I do not witness a single soul enter or leave the floor. The hospital is as deserted as it was when I last ventured out to find help, and I do not anticipate returning to the floors below.

/>   For a brief time, Steph’s condition does not visibly worsen, nor does it improve. Every inhale sounds torturous, drawing air through a moaning mouth. Whatever this is acts brutally and quick.

  There was no mention of a killer flu when I left Stamford. Climbing aboard the plane, nobody was sick. I don’t know how many people will die from this thing, but it sprung suddenly, and infects instantly.

  Though kicking myself for being too scared to leave her alone, it is not her final moments that all my guilt rages upward. Stephanie spews orange bile onto sterile sheets. I hold her head as it drips off the side, narrowly missing my shoes.

  And when she falls still, eyes vacant as they stare into my welling ones, I feel to blame.

  Don’t cry, Sammy. Somewhere in a memory, ten-year-old Stephanie Cleary, who never took another name but her maiden one, says there’s nothing more I could have possibly done.

  I should have never come home.

  Ignoring her cries for help, I could have spared myself the trouble. But that thought is replaced by my husband’s voice in my memory, telling me this thing is everywhere.

  CDC is declaring a state of emergency, he said on the phone. Something about a monkey injected with some million-year-old bacteria they found under a receding ice cap.

  It’s everywhere, and here to stay. I could not have stopped it any more than I could have saved my mother’s life. But the same question which has plagued me since arriving back at the hospital lingers at the forefront, contagious to every thought in my process.

  Why am I not sick?

  If possible, I will return to take care of Stephanie’s body. As for standing here, awaiting my baby sister’s return from the dead, it is no option. Air in the hallway is more unsettled than ever, and each step beyond the hospital room brings new trepidation. Overhead lights have dimmed, as if the sun has set on humanity’s time. I am left to wander its wasteland alone.

  Judging by whirring mechanisms behind double stainless-steel doors, the elevator hasn’t been summoned in a while. But when the dual doors slide apart, and I absent-mindedly try to step into the lift, I meet with a face I did not expect.