Survivor Song(59)
They don’t slow at the yellow house and the four dead men in the road. They glide through, the scene already like a memory, one that’s unreliable. Luis doesn’t grieve for the men. If anything, he hoped to find them shambling aimlessly, arms outstretched, mangled faces a comic parody of death, of ridiculous, messy, capricious death, so it would be easier to pretend they are in a zombie movie. He will still pretend.
They ride past the white church. Two dead turkeys are in the parking lot. A pillowful of loosened feathers are massed and they rise and fall in the wind, new birds learning to fly.
Josh’s riding is erratic. He weaves and abruptly jerks his bike at hard angles when the road is clear. He shouts at shadows and he shouts at trees. He lists until Luis calls out his name, then he lists some more. Luis knows Josh will not be Josh for much longer. Perhaps he already isn’t Josh, or the new non-Josh is growing, metastasizing, laying claim. Regardless, Luis will follow Josh and follow him until he cannot lead anymore.
There is no discussion about going back to their Brockton apartment, the one they’ve lived in for six months, the one with a single bedroom and a futon couch. They’ve been making rent with the help of their haunted parents, who are happy to have the almost-grown-up ghosts of their sons out of juvenile facilities and their court-mandated youth programs, and who are equally happy to have those ghosts out of their houses.
Luis knows they cannot go home.
*
What Luis does not know: The virus doesn’t herald the end of the world, or of the United States, or even of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the coming days, conditions will continue to deteriorate. Emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points, exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil. But there will be many heroes, too, including ones who don’t view themselves as such. Dr. Awolesi will be proven correct in her epidemic forecast: the exponentially increased speed with which this rabies virus infects and progresses will aid in its own containment and control. Nine days after Josh and Luis meet Ramola and Natalie a massive pre-exposure vaccination campaign will finally begin in New England for both humans and animals. In concurrence with the quarantine, the vaccination program will be wildly successful and will return the region from the brink of collapse. In the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic [but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem], almost ten thousand people will have died.
*
Luis follows Josh to Borderland’s satellite entrance, past the gate, onto the mile-long dirt road, an artery into one of the many hearts of the expansive park. The knobs on their tires kick and flip small stones. Josh shoutsings a nursery rhyme as they ride deeper into the park, as they become more alone with themselves. The road cuts a rolling swath through the green and growing. The dead and the dying are in hiding, are not showing their empty stares and rictus grins, but they never remain in hiding for long. The sky is a strip of dark gray, another road.
The forest yields and the road empties into open fields boasting dry grasses as high as the teens’ waists. Ahead is an empty, historic [as designated by the state] blue house, tilted and randomly placed as though it had tumbled off the side of the narrowing dirt road. To their right is a crooked footpath through the field. Josh wobbles on his bike and falls into the grass next to the park information sign encased in glass and framed in brown wood. Luis dumps his bike next to Josh’s and he helps his feverish friend onto his feet. Josh begins a new rhyme. It is unfamiliar to Luis and he feels ashamed, as though he doesn’t know his friend like he thinks he does. Josh ties his bandanna over his mouth, making a gag. The red cloth peels his lips away from his front teeth, showing the future. Luis takes a coiled rope out of his pack. Josh clasps his hands, as if in prayer, in front of his stomach. Luis wraps and loops the rope around Josh’s wrists just like he saw them [who are them? characters? actors?] do on a famous television show. He ties it all off as best as he can, leaving enough rope for a ten-foot lead. Josh walks and Luis trails behind carrying one end of the rope and the wooden staff.
Danger skulks undercover in the fields; the tall grass bows and waves, whispering of the epic battle to come. The zombie foxes are the first to attack. The scent of their musk announces their stealthy approach. The zombie raccoons are next. Their snorts and chitters fill the air, broadcasting their immutable intentions. Luis wields the staff expertly, vanquishing the smaller animals using acrobatic parries, focused strikes, and cagey counterthrusts. Despite his limitations, his weakening hold on both physical and mental health, Josh heroically sallies forth, defending with spastic but brutal kicks and double hammer blows. The teens more than endure the tiny terrors, they revel as though there never was and never will be a sweeter time, a greater moment. If not an apotheosis, this is them at their best, and they laugh and they boast and they shout and they live and they know there is no future.