Survivor Song(2)
They don’t know what they’re doing. We’re so screwed.
We have to stay together and share information. Good information. No more wild rumors, and don’t use the word zombie, and just obviously false bullshit here please.
None of this is gonna work. We should kill all the animals, kill all the infected. Sounds cruel but if we can’t save them kill them before they get us all sick.
The bathroom window is latched shut. The white shade is pulled down, and Natalie keeps both eyes on it. Urine rushes out of her, and though she’s alone, she’s embarrassed by how loud it is without the masking drone of the bathroom fan.
AM radio crackles through the smart speaker on the kitchen counter as though the poor reception and sound quality are nothing but a special effect from a radio play, its time and hysteria getting a reboot.
One radio host reiterates that residents are to stay in their homes and keep the roads clear, only using them in the event of an emergency. She reads a brief list of shelter locales and hospitals within the Route 128 belt of metro Boston. They move on to reports of isolated power outages. No word from National Grid as to the cause or expected duration of service interruption. National Grid is already critically understaffed because the company is mired in a lockout of a significant number of its unionized field electricians and crews in an effort to eliminate employee pensions. Another newscaster speculates on the potential use of rolling brownouts for communities that are not cooperating with the quarantine and sundown curfew.
Paul went to Star Supermarket in Washington Plaza, which is only a little over a mile from their small, two-bedroom house. He is supposed to pick up a solar-and-hand-crank-powered radio with other supplies and food. The National Guard is overseeing the distribution of rations.
Rations. This is where they are fifteen days before their first child’s due date. Fucking rations.
It’s an overcast, gray autumn late morning. More out of superstition than fear [at least, that’s what she tells herself], Natalie has turned the lights out in the house. With the bay window curtains drawn, the first floor is a cold galaxy of glowing blue, green, and red lights, mapping the constellation of appliances and power-hungry devices and gadgetry.
Paul texted fifty-seven minutes ago that he was almost inside the store but his phone was at 6 percent battery so he was going to shut it off to save the remaining juice for an emergency or if he needed to ask for Natalie’s “suggestions” [the scare quotes are his] once inside the supermarket. He is stubbornly proud of his tech frugality, insisting on not spending a dime to upgrade his many-generations-ago, cracked-screen phone that has the battery-life equivalent of a mayfly’s ephemeral life-span. Natalie cursed him and his phone with “Fuck your fucking shitty phone. I mean, hurry back, sweetie pie.” Paul signed off with “The dude in front of me pissed himself and doesn’t care. I wanna be him when I grow up. Make sure you don’t come down here. I’ll be home soon. Love you.”
Natalie closes the toilet lid and doesn’t flush, afraid of making too much noise. She washes her hands, dries them, then texts, “Are you inside now?” Her screen is filled with a list of blue dialogue bubbles of the repeated, unanswered message.
The radio announcer reiterates that if you are bitten or fear you’ve come in close contact with contaminated fluid, you are to immediately go to the nearest hospital.
Natalie considers driving to the supermarket. Maybe the sight of a thirty-four-year-old pregnant woman walking to the front of the ration line and dropping f-bombs on everyone and everything would get Paul in front of Piss Pants, into the store, and home sooner. Like now. She wanted to go with him earlier, but she knew her back, legs, joints, and every other traitorous part of her body couldn’t take standing in line with him for what they had assumed would be an hour, maybe two.
She’s mad at herself now, thinking she could’ve alternated standing in line and sitting in the car. Then again, who knows how far away Paul had to park, as his little trip to the mobbed grocery store is going on three hours.
She texts again, “Are you inside now?”
Her baby is on the move. Natalie imagines the kid rolling over to a preferred side. The baby always seems to lash out with a foot or readjust its position after she uses the bathroom. The deeply interior sensation remains as bizarre, reassuring, and somehow heartbreaking as it was the day she felt her first punches and kicks. She rubs her belly and whispers, “Why doesn’t he text me on someone else’s phone? What good is saving his battery if we have an emergency here and I can’t call him? Go ahead, say, ‘You’re fucking right, Mommy.’ Okay, don’t say that. Not for a couple of years anyway.”
Natalie hasn’t left the house in four days, not since her employer Stonehill College broke rank with the majority of other local colleges and closed its dorms, academic, and administrative buildings to students and employees, sending everyone home. That afternoon camped out at the kitchen table, Natalie answered Development Office emails and made phone calls to alumni who were not living in New England. Only four of the twenty-seven people she spoke to made modest donations to the school. The ones who didn’t hang up on her wanted to know what was going on in Massachusetts.
Natalie is jittery enough to pace the first floor. Her feet are swollen even though the prior day’s unusual heat and humidity broke overnight. Everything on or inside [thanks but no thanks, hemorrhoids, she thinks] her body is swelling or already in a state of maximum swollen. She fills a cup with water and sits on a wooden kitchen chair, its seat and back padded with flattened pillows, which are affectations to actual comfort.