As We Know It (III)

Another sickness . . . .

I

I heard the virus was going around and I didn’t think much of it. I’d dealt with one like it before. The government blew that last disease out of proportion, and when this new one hit, folks didn’t pay attention to it. The feds had blown their load on the last one, and the people weren’t keen to let them do it again.

Funny thing is, it started from monkeys. The kids named it “AIDS II”. It was transmitted by blood at first, which the public health department saw as an easy solve - don’t share needles; don’t let the infected donate blood; get less tattoos. Oh, and don’t fuck anybody who has the disease. Same as dealing with regular AIDS, they figured.

The first few that caught the virus died fast - like days fast. And given how quick it grabbed hold and its need for blood to be spread, they expected the thing to burn itself out in a jiffy. To our surprise, this second wave of sickness had evolved, and by the time we saw it for the vile, evil thing it was, there was no way we were going to stop it. Soon we were breathing it in, and in a few months, half of the world was gone, and the other half was left to fight over what remained.

You’d ride the bus in those early days and hear a man coughing something that sounded like rattling. Phlegmy and disgusting, like pneumonia. It rattled their lungs, and they’d look at you with a hope for pity in their eyes. Put me out of my misery, their eyes said. And you’d want nothing more than to jump off the bus, whether it was moving or not.

Those buses emptied once the disease was making good progress, because everyone was afraid they’d get sick. It’s a wonder any of them went outside at all. Soon there were only one or two of us left with the bus driver, each holding our mask in terror as we watched the others breathe. They’d listen and wait for that awful rattle.

Society crumbled once the virus got in full swing. You’d think that 4 billion alive would still be enough to keep the machine running, but with the sudden drop in workforce and rise in the unburied and recently deceased, everyone simply lost their fucking minds. Jobs stayed unfilled, millions of homes were empty, and with the help rioters, mobs, looters, and hooligans the population was reduced by another quarter.

The bad people didn’t last very long. Once the public had figured out what those gangs were about, they opened up a sort of hunting season. We (myself included) killed quite a few of them in just a couple of months. Serves them right for being as awful as they were. Now you’d have to look pretty damn hard to find one of those gangs roaming around. I hear they may still be out there, somewhere southwest of Kansas.

Looking at how things are going now that we are several years in, I’d say we’re better off than we were before the virus. Everything was too damn crowded before, and now we have room to breathe.

II

Not many doctors are left, but the ones that remain are saying that the damn virus is coming around again. They’re saying that it has come for the last one’s survivors, and that it’ll likely be the end of us that are left. I don’t want to believe it. How the hell could this happen again?

I don’t know if it is true. I hope it’s not. I can’t believe I live in a world where it would be. It doesn’t matter much though, does it? We may all die, taken out by the thing we managed to escape only a couple of years ago. I wish I could have predicted this.

III

The wife started coughing a few days ago; it was that cough. I shook my head and prayed it wasn’t true. Only, I knew it was. She hasn’t stopped hacking since then. She seems to see the writing on the wall, as do I. So she locked herself in the bedroom and told me to stay the hell away. She said she doesn’t want to get me or the kids sick. I told her it we’d get it anyway, so she said not to be so pessimistic. I didn’t think it was pessimistic at all; I thought I was being realistic.

I talk to her through the slit under the door, and leave food for her on the outside window. I can’t touch her, I can’t see her, and I get the feeling that I won’t ever get to again. On the other side of the door, I can hear that throaty curdle of that cough. I told her that I think she’ll get better, and I think she can tell that I am lying.

IIII

She died yesterday. No last words, just a soft rattle and then silence. I wanted to break down the door to see if she was alive, but she had blocked it well. She had the window closed off, too. I peeked in and saw her laying there, peaceful-like. And I couldn’t have wished for her to have gone more at ease, but it still hurts like hell.

I tried taking an axe to that door, but it’s no use. I can’t break the furniture that’s stuck on the other side. I’m not sure I want to see her, just yet; not like that. I know what’s on the other side of that door and it frightens me. And what if that damn virus leaks out? I couldn’t live with myself if it did.

V

I heard that cough again, but it came from my son’s lungs, and now I have to watch him die as his mother did. Then his sister. Then me. Why can’t it just be me? Take me, you son of a bitch! Not them, not now. I don’t want them getting sick. They haven’t lived anywhere near as much life as I have.

Take me instead.

VI

Suppose I walk out this damn door. Suppose I blow my brains out on the front lawn for people to see as they walk by. Not like it matters much - most of them are far dead anyway. Corpses in houses, in cars, and on the streets. Dead, like everything I’ve ever loved. Who would even be around to see me there in a pool of my brains, lawn painted red with my blood?

And what the hell is there left? Why was I chosen, out of the goddamn millions of candidates for survival, to be the one that remains? Why me?! This civilization is gone, completely gone. And I haven’t seen another person in weeks. I wonder if they even exist anymore.

Not a soul will ever read this, because there aren’t any still around to do so. So I’ll end this life the best way I know how.

-The Red Diamond

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