Cruel World(14)

He sat back, taut muscles going languid, the stress of the moment crashing down on him and then peeling away. He couldn’t move him, there was no way to do it without killing him. The way his father’s body felt in his hands, like a sack of rags wrapped around sharp rocks, he would puncture something internally simply carrying him to the door.

Quinn moved to Teresa’s room and checked on her. She hadn’t so much as turned in her sleep, and he propped her door open to the hallway when he left. The TV called to him, the promise of more terrible knowledge almost unbearable to resist, but instead he went to James’s side and opened his book and began to read out loud again so that his voice filled the empty space in the air.

~

The morning dawned bright and clear, another admission of spring in earnest. The sun rose from the eastern horizon, climbing up from the depths of the ocean until it broke free, burning away a mist of fog that had settled overnight.

Quinn had slept fitfully. The chair was comfortable at first, but by the first light of day, it was an instrument of torture, its edges and cushions biting into him as if it were made of hungry mouths. He’d checked on his father and Teresa whenever he’d woken, dabbing their brows with washcloths and offering water, which neither of them drank.

When he stepped from his father’s room in the early light, there was no familiar sound of breakfast being made downstairs. That was over. He would have to cook something for himself. He tried the numbers for the hospital as well as the emergency line again. Nine-one-one had the same result as the day before, innumerable tolls and still no answer, but Portland General didn’t even transfer him to a recorded message; he simply received a busy signal over and over.

He ate a cold breakfast of cereal and milk while a pot of chicken broth heated on the stove. Balancing two bowls on a tray, he made his way upstairs when he finished eating and first spoon-fed some to his father and then to Teresa. Their jaws were locked tight in similar fashion, and he used the trick of dribbling some in the pocket of their cheeks and teeth to get a small portion of the broth down. He took their temperatures a short time later, first his father’s, then Teresa’s. After reading his teacher’s he paused, staring at the numbers blinking on the display. Walking like someone in a dream, he returned to his father’s room and retook his temp, waiting until the little unit beeped before reading it again.

104.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Their temperatures were identical.

Quinn lowered his shaking hand and placed it on James’s forehead. The skin was cool and moist, condensation on a thawing piece of meat. He let his hand rest there another moment and yanked it away when his fingers began to sink into his father’s skull.

The cry that leapt to the back of his throat came out in a breathy moan. He hadn’t felt that. It had been a hallucination. Something brought on by lack of sleep and stress. Stepping forward, he leaned in and studied the area where his palm had rested.

The outlines of his fingers were there in the skin, faint and fading but there.

He backpedaled, nearly tripping over his own feet as he fled to the upstairs bathroom, barely making it before vomiting into the toilet. His heart banged in his ears like an angered child slamming a door continuously.

“What the hell’s happening?” he said, before his stomach heaved again.

When the nausea subsided enough for him to sink away from the toilet, he sat with his back against the claw-footed tub, his head resting on its curved lip. He remained there until he knew he could stand and washed his mouth out with water before moving down to the living room.

The television screen bloomed into life, the same news channel from the day before coming into focus. A man wearing a suit that looked as if he’d slept in it stood before the camera. His dark hair stuck up on one side of his head, and he kept attempting to smooth it down as he spoke.

-tion-wide panic has erupted overnight. The streets of Washington are full of protesters, many of them carrying weapons, firing guns, and clubbing those who try to subdue them. The death toll this morning is unknown since many of the major treatment centers have been unreachable, but we do know that those afflicted with H4N9 began dying late last night. The CDC hasn’t released a report on their efforts to create a vaccine or what the conversion of infection to death rate is at this time, but we expect them to within the hour. Early analytical reports have stated that the mortality rate could be as high as seventy-five percent.

Quinn tried to catch the remote, but it slipped from his hand. And when he knelt to retrieve it, the strength fled from his legs and he crumpled to the couch behind him. He stared at the screen as the reporter listed off emergency centers that were still accepting the ill.