Most of us expected another wave, but not that a freak mutation of the virus would increase its lethality tenfold—except perhaps those orchestrating the whole shebang. But that’s just a conspiracy theory, about the orchestrators. And it doesn’t matter either way, whether it was all planned or not, since the outcome is the same. We are under strict lockdown, indefinitely, living off our provisions and ration deliveries until a newer, effective vaccine is developed. The first ones did shit-all.
I hear the rumble of an engine and go to the back door to check on Katerina. She’s sitting dejectedly amidst tangles of long brown grass on the overgrown lawn. Chlorophyll is fading from those many thousands of blades. Autumn deepens, and with it comes the cold, diminished immunity, increased susceptibility to the pathogen we fear above all others.
The rumble again. That shiny white SUV pulling into the next driveway. Bastards, flaunting lockdown, risking their own lives and even ours, separated as we are from their potentially viral-shedding bodies by only a gap-ridden wooden fence. The virus doesn’t obey property dividers. Its intended property is the entire human population, along with our pets, ever since the damn thing made the leap to cats and dogs.
“Back inside, Katerina.” Someday, when she’s older, I’ll call her Kate, but I’ll hold out speaking her full name during these precious years.
“But dad…” she starts, turning her little head to take me in sideways.
“Now.”
My daughter rises with a curious and frustrating mopiness. Her purposefully lethargic stride, slow even for her short legs, makes my anger rise like spring sap. I don’t want to feel this anger, but it’s what my blood delivers to my head when it boils with nervous energy and fear. The doors of the SUV slam beyond the fence. I nearly run to Katerina and scoop her up to carry her inside myself.
“Now, young lady!” I keep my voice low yet full of threat—at least what a child will perceive as threat. She’s at last across the threshold, and I follow, closing the door and locking it behind us. As an extra precaution, I slide the jerry-rigged deadbolt into place. Installed it myself. Locks only deter the honest and strong, but double locks can deter the desperate and weakened.
“Mom’s watching TV in the basement,” I say, and without a word the girl disappears down the wooden stairs to our subterranean family room, auburn hair swishing behind her into the gloom. “Join you both in a minute,” I call after her.
Into the kitchen, smelling like hot aluminum and canned tomato sauce. Seems this canned food is always in some tomato-based sauce. Soup, noodles, chili, beans. At least they have crumbs of mystery meat for protein. Can’t do much about vegetables until Albert arrives with his bi-monthly delivery.
I close the curtains, get a chair, and stand on it to elevate myself to the top pane of the kitchen window, where I part the curtains just slightly—enough to allow one eyeball to peer through the glass, over the top of the divider between front yards, to that of the neighbor’s. The kids are hooting and running around with their mottled black and white mutt, glad to be free from the confines of the vehicle. The boy whips a dead branch against the oak tree that drops acorns into my yard at this time of year, the former shattering into lichen-covered pieces against the strong trunk. Normally we step on those fallen acorns and they stab the bottom of our feet, but there’ll be no frolicking around the front yard in bare feet anytime soon.
Plague rats, I think, looking at the kids. None of them are even masked. I don’t hate them, of course. They don’t know any better. I hate their parents.
I go down into the basement. The stairs have that creaky ghost movie sound, but the furnished room at the bottom, lit softly by table lamps, is the epitome of warmth and coziness. Elise and Katerina are watching a Simpsons rerun on one of the cartoon channels we get. It’s that or the endless news cycle, which now dominates nearly all non-cartoon programming, so Elise watches back-to-back Simpsons reruns, sometimes for half a day or more. It makes her laugh. Passes the time.
I see Katerina stiffen as I reach the bottom of the stairs. I can tell she just sat down on the carpet as she heard me descending. She was probably fiddling with her mother’s mask again. Elise insists on wearing her special mask, sealed to block out nearly all particulates, viral or otherwise.
“What were you doing, sweetheart?” I ask.
“Nuthin,” Katerina mutters.
“To start, press any key,” says a confused Homer, reading the cartoon words on his cartoon computer monitor—a screen within our screen. “Where’s the any key?”
Elise laughs at this, a few seconds late, with her usual strained and gasp-like chuckle. She claims the fall didn’t damage her head as much as her lower body, but I know otherwise. She’s slow to get jokes. She’s slow with a lot of things.
“Hon, is your mask okay?”
My wife’s eyes swivel toward me after a beat, their whites yellowed with some unknown jaundice that Albert says is nothing to worry about. “Uh uh,” she says, turning her head cautiously back and forth, avoiding any sudden twists of her injured neck.
I take the chair next to her and begin to remove her mask—only temporarily, she understands.
“Remember, just like taking off a Band-Aid.”
Elise processes this thought and closes her eyes. I seize a loose flap of duct tape along her upper check and give a sharp tug. Shhwip!
“Oh!” she cries.
“Two more.” I tear the tape from her other cheek, then the strip beneath her chin. Duct tape forms an excellent seal around the edge of the mask. Airtight, more or less.
“How come you can touch her mask, but I can’t?” asks Katerina.
“Because you’re a child and you’ll do it wrong.”
“I’m not!”
“You are.”
Sometimes I can’t believe she has the gall to speak to me like this. Who taught her? I wonder, and feel that frustration rise in me again, because it’s not really a question I’m asking myself. Her mother. Elise. Poor, broken Elise. I glare at her, and she glares back with her dilated pupils in their yellow, filmy globes. Black globules, those pupils.
Her lips are getting their pink hue back. They’re always a little bluish when the mask comes off.
“I’ll get you a fresh one,” I tell her. Then I think better of it. Katerina will like the responsibility, and it will temper her attitude a bit. We’re all strung thin, I admit, cooped up in here. I only gave her ten minutes out on the grass earlier.
“Sweetheart, go up and get your mother a mask.”
Katerina stands, not making eye contact with me.
“Wash your hands in the sink before you touch it. Use the special soap.”
She moves toward the stairs.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
Katerina trudges up the stairs, if such a young girl can be said to trudge. Seems like she was taking her first steps yesterday, and she’s already trudging.
“I dun—I don’t wanna p-put on another m-m-ma—”
“Shhh, shhh, hon, relax.” I stroke Elise’s greasy hair. “You know you need to.”
“Ah’m ‘kay without it.”
“No, babe, that’s just the damage talking. Before the fall, you were sure you needed the mask. You insisted on it, to me, to everyone. Even to Albert. So Albert brought all those masks for you and told us about the duct tape trick.”
One of the problems from the fall is that Elise forgot she’s chronically immunocompromised.
The uneven wood of the stairs creaks as Katerina comes back down bearing a fresh mask. These masks are thicker than the average, apparently able to stop 99.8% of germs. I take the roll of duct tape from the floor behind Elise’s chair, place the new mask over her lips and nose, then bind the fabric to her cheeks and chin with those strong grey adhesive strips. Her eyes are watering. They must be itchy from the jaundice. I’ll ask Albert to bring mentholated saline drops next time, if he can find them.
“She’s crying, dad,” says Katerina, who sounds on the verge of tears herself.
“She’s not.”
“Why does she have to wear the stupid mask? Neither of us have the virus, so how could she get it from us?”
“The mask isn’t stupid, but you’re being stupid if you think you can’t be an asymptomatic carrier.”
“Carrier…you mean that I might have the virus? How? How? It’s fucking impossible.”
“Don’t you dare use that word with me! I saw you a week ago touching that mutt’s nose through a hole in the fence.” I’m seething. It’s the fear again—the fear that gives way to rage. “The backyard. You think I didn’t see you, but I did. I watch you when you’re out there.” A painful lump in my throat. My face is burning. “I watch over you, always, because you don’t know what might happen. You’re a child in an insane world. You—”
“Stop calling me that!” erupts Katerina, stamping her foot hard on the carpet, face contorted with fury and bitter rebellion. “Stop calling me a child.”
“You are a child!” I roar.
“I’m fucking thirteen!”
“You are not!”
A distant but distinct popping sound makes us stop. Katerina listens, visibly confused.
Papp-papp-papp…papp.
I imagine she hasn’t yet guessed what it is, even though we’ve heard it before, always muffled by distance and the walls of our home. She’s never been hunting, or to a shooting range. Never lived in a bad neighborhood.
I rush toward the TV. On screen, Homer has his thumb out to hitchhike, holding a sign that reads, GIVE ME RIDE OR EVERYBODY DIES. I used to burst into peals of laughter at the absurdity of this scene, a lifetime ago, but now I feel nothing but a vague disgust. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this episode in the last year. It’s mocking us. Mocking our days in the world we lost, the world that reshaped itself one aspect at a time into a new beast.
Behind the TV are the bandages. I pull them out and toss them to Katerina’s feet.
“Go up to your room and wrap these around your chest,” I say quickly, my voice rising, nearly breaking with the onset of panic. “The way I told you to do it before. Make sure they’re tight, then put on the big shirt—the white one with Grover or Cookie Monster, whoever the hell it is—and stay in your room.”
“Again? Dad, what the f—”
“Do not question me! Upstairs, now, and bind your goddamn chest! Do as I say!”
Something in my words, or maybe just my face, drives the seriousness home for her. She scoops up the bandages with a scowl of unmistakable loathing and scampers up the stairs. A loudspeaker is blaring somewhere down the street. How close are they now? A couple hundred yards?
I ascend out of the basement and hear Katerina thunder down the second floor hall above me, wondering how she can manage to sound so heavy. There’s already shouting going on, practically next to the house. I go back to the chair I set up by the kitchen window earlier and peer out secretly through the top pane once more.
The mutt is barking. The whole family is out on the lawn. A black Humvee is idling on the street, and four camo-clad officers, armed with assault rifles, are standing by at the ready. At the edge of the lawn, his feet half on the grass and half on the sidewalk, as though bridging two realms, stands Albert. I can tell it’s him by his eyes above the N95 respirator he wears. I’ve never seen eyes as close to utter grey as his are; they slide around like liquid mercury until the moment they fix on you, probing.
They are pleading, husband and wife, while the kids look on in terror.
“Shut the dog up,” snaps the dad suddenly, red-faced, and the shoulders of the boy holding tight to the animal’s neck start to shudder, because he knows he can’t do anything to actually shut a dog up.
“Your kids were reported to be playing in the yard by multiple neighbors,” barks Albert, as though issuing directives to his men rather than speaking to a frightened civilian father. “Unmasked at that, with this unleashed dog. You were presumed innocent, but we’ve now recorded footage of this violation with the onboard cams. You’ve jeopardized the neighborhood and the entire community with your reckless actions.”
The mutt barks again, and the bark gives way to a growl, as it senses malicious intent somewhere in the ancestral wolf centers of its canine mind. In a blindingly quick movement, Albert draws a pistol from his holster, crosses to the dog and presses the muzzle to the top of its skull. There is an explosion of gore from the dog’s neck where the bullet leaves its body, and the creature collapses, legs jittering, kicking, treading the air with death spasms. Albert raises the pistol as he steps back to his former position, pointing it at the face of the screaming boy who seconds before had been hugging his pet. The father takes an instinctive step toward his son, and then four rifles are raised behind Albert, each trained on a family member.
“This is your final warning,” bellows Albert, eyes slipping from father to mother to daughter to son, almost seeming to hold a laugh inside their silvery depths. “Get back in your house. And you! Don’t touch that. Dogs are known carriers. We’ll dispose of it.”
Plague rats, I remind myself. They’re a family of plague rats. It could’ve been much worse. Got off easy.
I close the curtains tight and rush the chair back to its place at the table, fishing the mask out of my pocket and strapping it onto my face. A dull roar as the Humvee rolls to the front of my driveway. When I answer the knock at the door, only Albert is there, the vehicle continuing to move slowly down the street behind him.
“Hello Albert,” I say solemnly.
“Hi Terry. Let’s go inside. I’ll catch them on the way back.”
I let him go ahead of me into the dark kitchen. It’s not his first time here. He places a cloth bag full of vegetables on the counter and throws open the curtains.
“I saw you watching a minute ago,” he says.
“I…”
“I see everything, Terry. Don’t try to bullshit me.”
Albert fills a glass with water from the tap and seats himself on the chair that I’d stood on at the window. I sit down opposite him, folding my hands on the table before me, willing them to be still as I breathe deeply, to display to Albert that I’m not afraid. His quicksilver eyes migrate around the room, taking in the surroundings. Evidently deciding there’s nothing of danger or interest, the mercury stops and those metallic irises set firmly on my own.
“Think you could do that?” he asks, voice muffled slightly by the N95. “Put a bullet through a dog’s head? Kill a person? Kill many people?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. “A dog, I guess. About people…some people, yes. Some people I could kill.”
Albert nods, his stare unwavering.
“This virus,” he says, “is the single greatest threat humanity has ever faced. The economic collapse, the communist influence percolating out of China, none of it is anywhere near as dire as the disease. Without humans, without enough humans, there’s no economy, no communism, no democracy, no rights, no nothing. Understand?”
“I do.”
“Which is why you’ll be called on to do your part when it’s time. To join us. Your record has been clean throughout this crisis. It’s clear you understand the stakes.”
There’s a hiss of released suction as he lifts his mask and downs the entire glass of water, then resettles it on his face.
“Your record is more than clear,” he says. “I guess we could call it exemplary. Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know, Albert.”
“Sure you do. Your wife—her name again?”
“Elise.”
“Right. Elise thought it was all one big hoax, didn’t she? It’s okay to swap around conspiracy theories, you know—God knows we do it ourselves in the Compliance Unit. But there’s one theory that’s unacceptable, and it’s the one that says the virus doesn’t exist at all. Elise was out there in the streets blathering her nonsense every single day. You saw it as well as we did. You knew what would happen to her, so you made sure she stopped, didn’t you? Her tumble down the stairs wasn’t an accident.”
I can’t find my voice. I open my mouth, unseen behind my cloth mask, but no sound is produced. I succeed in making a kind of rasp, when Albert speaks again.
“I know you pushed her down the basement stairs, Terry. I know she’s down there right now, stuck in a chair with broken legs and a fractured hip. You’ve still got that mask taped to her, right? I don’t need to go check?”
“You don’t need to check,” I say quietly. “She’s got her mask.”
“Good, good. You know,” he adds thoughtfully, “the mask, for her, is more of a message. Call it an expedited gag order in this unfortunate state of emergency. A muzzle. Some people need a message like that, to save their own lives.”
“She needs it. She’s immunocompromised. She’s always been immuno—”
“We’re all immunocompromised now, after this latest mutation. New York is done for. Montreal, Berlin, Moscow, Mumbai, Seoul. Fuck knows about anywhere in China since the blackout. But good—it’s good that you believe there’s something special about your wife’s case. Love will see us through, right?”
“Love,” I say falteringly. “You’re right.”
Albert leans back in the chair. Its dry wood creaks under the weight of his Kevlar armor, his dense muscle, just like the basement stairs creak. Those stairs are uneven, so easy to take a spill on if you’re not watching your step. Elise…
“The reason we’re sitting here,” says Albert, “concerns your daughter. You see, the Draft Ministry has expressed some doubts about the validity of the birth certificate you provided.” His eyes waver, their mercury trembling with predatory anticipation, waiting to catch some break in my composure, some glimpse of weakness. I keep the musculature of my face at rest, bearing nothing that could be interpretable in any direction. The mask helps.
Slow, my heart. I fill my belly with a great and gradual breath through the nose. Keep nice and slow.
“They can’t prove it’s a fake,” Albert continues. “If it is, it’s exquisite. The best they’ve ever seen—so I, knowing you as I do, tend to believe it’s not a fake at all.”
I jump as Albert lifts the assault rifle from his lap, but he only lays it on the tabletop, resting his forearms on it as he leans in, bringing those toxic metal eyes closer to mine.
“Just tell me, Terry. Is your daughter ten years old?”
“She is.”
“You’re aware that upon turning thirteen she will be removed from your home for grooming, and that you, no longer needed as her guardian, will be drafted to join the Compliance Unit?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“So, then, since you’re a model candidate for our unit, to combat the scourge eating away at our civilization, you are absolutely positive your daughter is below thirteen years of age?”
“Katerina is my child. She just turned ten last month. She’s upstairs in her room right now, if you’d like me to call her down here.”
Albert stares at me, animating some undead third eye in the center of his forehead, peering into my own, and straight through me into the grimy walls. Expressionless. The life has drained from his face, all warmth extinguished. Yet behind that invisible third eye of his, well-oiled cogs turn and spin and whir, those clockwork gears machinating what comes next. With eerie graduality, tiny lines sprout from the corners of Albert’s eyes—his real eyes. He’s grinning behind his respirator.
“You know what, Terry? I believe that you believe that, and that’s what really matters, as far as the Unit is concerned. Disturbing her won’t be necessary.”
He shifts his gaze at last, surveying the kitchen with a disinterested air, as though searching for concealed curiosities he doesn’t care to happen upon. He rises abruptly, slinging the rifle over his shoulder.
“Good load of vegetables for you there. Should hold you out for some meals till I’m back again.”
“Thanks a lot for that. Really appreciated.”
Albert nods, strides to the door without another word, and leaves, closing it behind him. I watch him through the window. When he’s entered the Humvee on its return pass up the street, carrying him out of the neighborhood along with however many bodies they’ve claimed today, I rush upstairs.
Katerina is sprawled on her bed, weeping into her pillow. She’s wearing the oversized Sesame Street shirt, as I’d ordered her too. Suddenly I want to vomit, and hover in her doorway thinking I may have to rush to the toilet to do so. When the feeling passes, I come sit on the side of her bed. She sits up and slides away from me in disgust.
“I hate you,” she says.
“I know.”
But someday you won’t, I want to add, though I’m not sure that’s true.
“We have some time,” I tell her. “Three years.”
Three years for what? I ask myself. To bide time? To be a family? To escape?
Anything could happen within that span. It’s already been three years since the pandemic began. The pandemic that won’t go away. The pandemic that washes through us in endless waves, that defines who we are, how we live and die, how we curl up to fossilize in the mud of history. Three years can be an eternity.
Katerina looks at me through her reddened teenage eyes, defiance and anguish battling for supremacy within.
God, what happened to my little girl? Why has the world gone so wrong?
“We have three years,” I say again, but discover I have nothing to add.