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Mr. Miller turned on the TV and listened to the latest casualty numbers. Hundreds of millions dead in Asia, and Africa. Close to 4 million in France and England alone. Estimates on fatalities were thrown about. No one really knew for sure, but most of the “experts” predicted the number of dead in America alone would top out eventually around 10 million. The big cities were graveyards on a Biblical scale.
Everything had been shut down—grocery stores, gas stations, even the local police and fire department—because there was no one left to work. Nearly everyone was sick and in bed or on the floor and the ones who weren’t, would never rise again.
It was the worst pandemic to hit mankind since the Black Death of the Middle Ages—it dwarfed even the infamous 1918 Spanish Flu. Chad thought for a second that maybe some long-distant ancestor of his had stood over a mass grave in London or Frankfurt or something, and watched the same way he had watched his little community die. The thought gave him some small comfort.
The government had labeled the blossoming pandemic a series of numbers and letters that Chad found he now couldn’t remember. Chad had to look it up online to figure out the disease sweeping the planet was an avian influenza. The press—what was left of them—were simply calling it The Blue Flu. Chad didn’t need to watch the news to know why—the dark blue of his little sister’s face had been so unnatural, so unsettling, Chad knew straightaway he would never be able to forget the sight. They called it cyanosis. The word had been etched into Chad’s memory overnight.
The two neighbors sat without a word as video images from deserted cities scrolled across the television screen. London, Madrid, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Beijing. More and more bodies were seen in the major cities, just lying in the street where they fell, now bloated and stiff. Most cities had riots of one sort or another as the system broke down under the strain of so many deaths. All that was left was trash and empty cars or overturned buses and dead bodies. The violence and looting died off as soon as the people who started it began to die.
In Asia, where it had started, the survivors were only then beginning to crawl out from the unimaginable wreckage into the light. New estimates of close to a billion people dead between Europe and the Pacific Ocean were simply beyond comprehension.
It felt like it was the end of the world.
“Don’t know when this damn bug’ll ever burn itself out…” said Mr. Miller. He coughed, a wet, deep, pitiful sound. “I don’t think I’ll be around to see the rebuilding, though…”
Chad said nothing. What could he say? He knew he would be around, and it made his heart ache. If Mom had only been able to stay healthy for another couple weeks, maybe she would have made it.
He idly wondered if there were any other people out there like him. When the Blue Flu had finally spent its fury and went away…would he be the only person left alive?
“At least we don’t have to live through that,” the Old Man said, pointing a weak hand at the screen depicting rioting in Phoenix and Mexico City. People broke into retail stores and carried loot in all directions. The sickness was only now beginning to slither its way through the American Southwest from South America.
“Enjoy your TVs and sneakers, you lousy—” Mr. Miller sneezed again. “You won’t live long enough to play with that shit you’re stealing!”
“I’ll try to get us something to eat. You need your strength,” Chad said. He knew the worst for Mr. Miller was just around the corner. He had seen the sickness take its toll on too many people. He looked at the mostly empty pantry. When everything went bad, the truckers had stopped delivering food to the stores. Sometimes, the government just took the food. Where they took it, no one knew. Others stole it too, but when the government did it, it hurt more.
Soup. Again. That was all that was left. Chad hadn’t thought about what he’d do when his last dozen cans of various soups were gone. They had a little bread left, and some emergency foodstuffs left over from tornado season, but that was it. Chad paused, his hand still on the can of soup, half in, half out of the cupboard. They. He caught himself thinking that word again. Not ‘they’ anymore. No more family left. Just him.
Three days later, on a clear, frigid day, Chad buried Mr. Miller next to Miss Emma. As he climbed over the horse fence back into his own yard, Chad saw how deserted the neighborhood was. Every house save a half dozen or so, had either a red 'X' or a black 'X' on the front door. Chad could remember every single one he had sprayed.
Stu Masters, three streets up the road, had stopped by the day before and said he had heard from one of the other few haggard people left behind that the National Guard was going through the rural parts of the county looking for survivors, now that the sickness appeared to have peaked. And now, those left alive in their own neighborhood were planning on hooking up with the Guard and leaving. They were all running out of food and water and had nowhere else to turn. Many were out of propane, like Chad. Would he go too?
“Don’t know, sir,” Chad had said, scanning the empty streets and empty yards and empty houses beyond his own front door. The neighborhood had died.
“C’mon, son, you can’t stay here,” said Mr. Masters, rubbing his arms in the frigid morning air. His breath puffed around him in vapor clouds. “You’ll die, like the rest. There’s only a handful of us left.” He coughed.
A worried look passed the older man’s face for a moment. He glanced around nervously. “Look, we’re all leaving together. The government is coming to take us to Fort Worth, I hear.”
“What will you do when you get there?” asked Chad, looking right through Dad’s friend.
Die, most likely.
He kept that thought to himself.
“Does it matter? Look, my own kids died a few weeks back,” Mr. Masters said, his face a mask of grief. Chad remembered. Stu’s children were among the first to fall to the deadly sickness in their community. He and his wife had taken ill, yet hung on and survived, albeit weakened. “Nancy and I are going. So are the Lightways—and we’re taking the Caleb boys, since their parents died. There’s a few more people we’re trying to reach at the other end of the neighborhood, but that’s pretty much everyone who hasn’t already died or left town. We’re all leaving; Chad, son, you can’t stay here by yourself.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “Chad, I know that look in your eyes. My dad told me about it when he came back from the First Gulf War. You’ve seen too much, buddy.” Quietly, he said, “I know.” He crossed his arms and looked at Chad with a fatherly gaze of disapproval. “You think your momma would be happy to see you sit here in the dark, all alone and starving to death?”
Chad didn’t respond.
“Chad…you can’t give up. Don’t do that to your folks, son. They made you immune to this shit somehow. Don’t waste that gift. Earn it. You’ve got to live, if not for you, then for them.”
“I’m sorry,” said Chad.
“Look…” said Mr. Masters. “We’ll make sure to stop by on the way out before we leave. Okay? One last chance. Think about it.” He clapped Chad on the shoulder awkwardly and turned away.
When the National Guard Humvee rolled to a stop in front of Chad’s house with a charter bus right behind it, three days later, he was waiting at the end of the driveway with two bags. One of clothes, the other of all the memories of his family, photos, albums, and scrapbooks. Mr. Masters helped Chad load his bags into the storage area on the bus, then they climbed aboard. It was half-empty.
They had just picked up the survivors from the next town down the road, Mr. Masters explained as Chad found a seat. The Caleb boys, Edgar and John, were crying about leaving their home and their parents behind. Nancy Masters cried at leaving her own babies in the ground. Almost all of the people on the bus had been sick but survived, barely. Three others apparently hadn’t been exposed and wore masks and clean-suits.
Chad was the only one, the examining doctor explained, who she'd heard of who hadn’t taken ill despite the above-average exposure to the sickness. She and her assistant were very excited to talk to Chad, but he ignored them and found a seat near Mr. Masters, next to a window.
“Hey doc, take it easy. He buried his mother a few days ago. The rest of his family last week,” said Mr. Masters in a warning tone.
The doctor looked at her clipboard of information through her spacesuit-like outfit and relented. “I suppose there’ll be plenty of time for questions when we get to the survivor processing facility in Fort Worth.”
Chad watched as his house receded into the distance. He looked at the little mounds in the backyard with the crude tombstone. In his hands, Chad held a wrinkled picture of Mom, taken by the pool the previous summer, when all was right with the world, and pandemics were just for paranoid people.
She had her sunglasses pushed up on her head, her large blue eyes were smiling and her chestnut-colored hair pulled back, tumbling over one shoulder. The smile on her face as she looked at her husband’s camera showed nothing but health and happiness. Chad suddenly felt the warmth of tears rolling down his face as he gently held the picture of Mom.
When he did cry,
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