The elephant was sitting on my damn chest again. I closed my eyes and heard the memory of my mother’s voice echoing across the decades since I was young, calm and cool.
“Tiny sips through the nose, push it out through the lips. That’s it Gertie, let it go, good girl.”
The vise around my lungs began to let up, but I lay there still, unwilling to move in case it started up again. Outside my window, I could hear the neighbor scraping the snow off the sidewalk with his shovel. There must have been chips in the blade, because it made an awful racket. Damn fool, how hard would it be for him to sharpen it, or at least replace it? Instead he’ll keep grinding away on the sidewalks, at all hours of the day. My irritation at the neighbor must have shocked my system into cooperating, as the asthma attack quickly faded this time.
Sighing deeply now that my breath was back, I rotated the joints in my shoulders and neck, and rolled my legs over the edge of the bed. Groaning under my breath, I shuffled my feet back and forth across the rug, warming up my legs before requiring them to hold my weight. I gripped the handle of my cane and levered myself upright, then hobbled into the kitchen to start the coffee.
I snapped on the radio as I walked past, then paused with a grimace on my face as the too loud voice of some disc jockey blared out at me, the jangly sound of what they considered music these days in his background.
“It’s a SNOW DAY FOR SURE kiddies!! So get out there and –”
My fingers angrily punched the button to swap it back to the preset channel, a much more tame news program.
My coffee was ready, and I sipped it as I listened to the weather forecast predicting a clear sky day, though cold. That wasn’t a great start for me, the chilly air tended to agitate my lungs more. It had also snowed heavily overnight, so the kids would be out in force. And that explained the scraping sounds outside my window this morning. Well, I supposed today was another day of staying indoors for me. That was fine, I had no desire to mingle with the neighbors or call a ride to the senior center to pretend to socialize so the damn home health nurse that stopped by twice a week would stop worrying herself and threatening to take me out of my home.
An excited screech outside my window drew my attention several hours later, pulling me from the world of soaps I’d been absorbed in on the television. Scowling, I pulled myself off the couch and shuffled to the window, grunting in discomfort as something in my knee protested loudly. I slid a finger through the blinds and pulled them down a few inches so I could peek out.
A little boy, one of the neighborhood brats, stood in the center of the street, hands raised to the sky in ecstasy. Snow was pouring down from the heavens, soft tiny flakes floating down like a million goose down feathers, coating the ground and houses. More children squealed like pigs as they raced around, jumping up to catch the snow, opening their little yaps to catch some on their tongues.
I opened my mouth to mumble a complaint at the noise and the sheer ineptitude of weather forecasters, but suddenly felt the familiar vise clamp down on my lungs once more. I quickly waddled backward to my chair and flopped into it, then reached inward for my mother’s voice once more. Panic began to set in as I realized I couldn’t reach her, and I began gasping for breath. Clawing at my throat, I moved my chest up and down in exaggerated movement, trying to will my airway open through sheer stubbornness. Was this is? Was this the attack that would finally kill me? I wasn’t ready!
The edges of my vision began to go fuzzy, and my eyes flew around the room, looking at the empty house I had made my home. No one here to witness my last moments. No one would care when I was gone. I hadn’t even got a pet to dote on in my old age. Just a bunch of useless knick knacks and a worn recliner. I was suddenly grateful that one of my last visions would be the joy of a child catching snowflakes on his tongue. My mind rolled back in time, to when I had been a child doing just the same thing. At least I had a bit of peace in that, I thought as my eyes went dark.
A lifetime later, my bleary eyes cracked open. I was slumped to the floor at the foot of my recliner, and everything hurt. The tears that had bled from my eyes as I struggled to live glued them partially shut, and I raised my shaky hands to rub them free. Then I began a self inventory. Lots of stiffness in my back and legs, but my lungs felt ok. More open than they had in months, actually. I sucked a deep breath in through my nose, testing my airways.
I hooked the handle of my cane with my foot and pulled it toward me so I could climb up off the floor. Groaning heavily, I pulled myself onto all fours, then awkwardly shuffled my feet toward my hands until I could lever my way upright. I slowly made my way into the kitchen, noting the dark sky outside the windows. I’d been unconscious for several hours it seemed. No wonder my mouth was so dry. I filled a glass of water at the sink, then shook several of the over the counter pain pills into my palm. Tossing them back, I drank the cool liquid as if I’d been in the desert for days, wandering without an oasis in sight. Then I hobbled back out to my chair and settled down, content to watch my stories while the medicine went to work.
As I pressed the tv remote button to bring up my recorded shows, I noticed the bright Breaking News banner running along the bottom of the screen. Ignoring it, I made my selection and settled back into the cushions, levering my feet upright to take some of the pressure off my aggravated sciatica.
Eventually my stomach got the better of me and I made my way back into the kitchen to warm up leftover chicken pot pie in the microwave. Carrying the too hot plate with a lacy edged tea towel, I swapped the television over to the nightly news coverage.
“Breaking news. People the world over have been struck by some mystery illness. These images are graphic, viewer discretion is advised. We go now to Ken Barrington in the field. Ken?”
“Charlotte, Ken here, coming to you live from Mercy Hospital, where the emergency room has been flooded this evening with people all presenting the same mysterious bleeding symptoms. I don’t want to alarm anyone, but the doctors say it looks like anthrax, but there is no common point of contact. The police have not ruled out terrorist attack as the culprit, and doctors are busy at work trying to decode these gruesome symptoms. People of all ages have found their bodies have betrayed them.”
The camera panned out, showing a plethora of patients sitting on benches, leaning against the wall, even laying on the floor. All of them were trickling blood from facial orifices. One man who looked very healthy, and was in fact wearing a wind resistant running suit, leaned over suddenly and vomited bright red blood all over the floor between his worn running shoes. A teenage girl looked directly at the camera, crimson tears leaking down her face as she shoved a tissue into her nostrils trying to stem the bleeding coming from them. A mother held her young son, still bundled in his coat, as he emitted a gurgled cry. I could see the pink on his lips and teeth, still wet blood trickling down the corners of his mouth. With a start, I realized the little boy was the same one I’d seen this afternoon outside my window, catching snowflakes on his tongue.
I looked down at my plate, then set it on the end table, having lost my appetite. What in the hell was going on?
“Ken, what kind of precautions can the people at home take?”
“The police say the best rules to follow are stay indoors as much as you’re able. Don’t gather in large crowds, though if you’re actively bleeding, get immediate medical attention. You may have to find your way here, as emergency transport services are overloaded at the moment.”
In the background, a nurse hurried by, a semi frantic look in her eye, as she ushered the next patient into the triage area. She sneezed suddenly, as she passed the camera, and a wad of thick red mucus flew from her mouth and hit the floor in front of her. She stumbled back a few steps, into the patient she had been leading to triage, and the news correspondent’s microphone picked up her quiet, agonized “No…”
I watched as she began to have a panic attack and crimson leaked from the edges of her mouth as another nurse rushed to her side. The camera finally cut away, back to the on site reporter. He looked stricken as well, suspiciously eyeing all of the people around him. “Charlotte, I’m gonna have to get back to you when more information comes in.”
The camera feed returned to the woman in the smart pantsuit behind a desk at the main news set room. She looked startled, but recovered quickly, and rambled on about some other trivial news item. I tuned it out and instead sat there puzzling it out. That nurse had looked absolutely horrified and defeated when she saw she had the same symptoms as the patient’s she’d been seeing all day. She looked like she had been handed a death sentence, which made me wonder what they were hiding. Were all of those people dying behind the closed hospital ward doors?
Whatever this was, maybe it was contagious. Well, good thing I never went anywhere and certainly didn’t plan to start now. I should be safe enough if I just stayed at home where I’d be protected. I gathered my plate and tidied the kitchen, then headed to bed.
The news the next morning was gruesome. More and more people were showing up at the hospital with bleeding conditions. Grainy video footage of a pile of corpses wrapped in black body bags and bloodied white sheets stacked behind a hospital on the west coast caught the attention of the world, and all sorts of conspiracies abounded. The more dramatic national leaders were throwing blame at other countries, claiming terrorist attack, but the scientist specialists some programs had on were claiming this bleeding disease was hitting populations all over the globe. Flipping through the channels, all the normal programming had been suspended so every would-be news crew could report their version of events. It was hard to see what the actual truth of the situation might be.
All I knew is people were really dying. The video had been proven true, and that had me terrified. I spent the morning glued to the television, flipping from program to program, trying to discern the truth for myself.
After an hour spent on a strange little talk show on some channel I’d never noticed before, I finally turned it off. The so called expert had been spouting some nonsense about a plot by world leaders to cover up the fact that alien spacecraft had been spotted all over our quadrant of the milky way in the last several weeks, and this new mass poisoning that was taking place at their behest. Was this a new form of warfare? There was some conflict over whether the aliens were working under the Earth’s leadership’s direction or if they were doing their own thing, killing humanity to take over our rich and fertile planet.
“Rich and fertile my ass,” I muttered, then swapped the tv off. Those same so-called experts had been bitching about global warming and how humans were killing the planet just a few days ago. If anything, the aliens ought to just blow us up and be done with it. Humanity was an infestation, and how did you kill an infestation? Poison.
There were too many conflicting ideas for me to settle on just one thing as an explanation. All I knew is I was checking my orifices for bleeding multiple times a day, and so far I’d been clean.
Another day went by, and then another. And the death toll continued to rise. Fully two thirds of the entire world’s population was dead. The hospitals had closed their doors, nothing they could do was stopping it, and most of the medical staff was now dead or dying. Society was swiftly shutting down, and people were dying in accidents now as well. There was no response to car accidents, murders, looting, and general bad behavior. I kept my doors and windows deadbolt locked for my own peace of mind, and every time I had a tickle in my throat I became paranoid that what had been nicknamed ‘The Burning Lung’ had come for me at last. It had a longer scientific name, Ambustio Pulmonum, but only the professionals called it that.
A surprising number of science experts the world over had survived this first onslaught, and before most of the television channels shut down and the power grids went offline in some places, I’d caught a program explaining what they thought was causing the Burning Lung. Something in the snow that day, when we were supposed to have clear skies, had dropped a strange chemical compound over everyone and everything, a layer of microscopic dust that covered the entire world. The strange part was that only human lungs seemed to be affected, and it acted as if a person had breathed in shards of glass. The dust sliced you open from the inside out, jabbing it’s way through the sensitive inner organs until you bled to death, or choked on it.
My thought was that I had been lucky as hell to have that asthma attack when I did. Someone was watching out for me, and by constricting my lungs to not breath the poisonous dust in, I’d been one of the lucky few to remain without symptoms of internal bleeding. My home nurse had stopped by the day before to check on me, trying to cover the blood stains on her teeth and the bags under her eyes, but I knew, and refused to let her in. I didn’t’ want to risk contamination.
No terrorist organization had ever claimed responsibility, and in fact many fights had broken out the world over, groups both infighting and pointing the finger at each other. The never ending conflicts in the Middle East reached a fever pitch, and the first nuclear bomb in eighty years was dropped. Most of the world had no power, but I was lucky. I had a store of food, my emergency blizzard supplies in the cellar, and still had running water, electricity, and even better, a signal for the singular remaining tv channel that was broadcasting.
The channel was being run by a skeleton crew, maybe three people, that took turns with news updates, plus played all what they deemed to be the best of humanity’s film history. Classic movies and television episodes from all genres and time periods. They said they were broadcasting from a small town near Boston, and had somehow connected to a bigger satellite to boost their signal. I left it running all day and night, just to reassure myself I wasn’t alone in the world.
It had been three weeks since the snowfall that murdered the world. My power had gone out three days ago, which was fine since the last holdout television channel had gone off the air a week ago. I hadn’t seen another human being in person for two entire weeks. The last one I saw was a young man who had wandered down the road, knocking on doors and screaming for help. I watched him bang on my front door from the safety of my upstairs window, then slump his shoulders in defeat and move on to the next house. I watched until I saw him finally collapse in the melting snow, four houses down.
As was my new habit every morning, I counted the food on my kitchen counter. Three. Even if I rationed them, which I’d been doing now for two weeks, it wasn’t enough to last more than a day or two. A single can of baked beans, which would be interesting to eat cold, an ancient rusted can of pineapple, and a useless jar of minced garlic. I was also down to my last half gallon of bottled water. I’d filled the tub before I lost power, just as I would in a bad storm, but I didnt trust to drink it. I’d been using it to flush the toilet and wash up each evening.
I was going to have to leave my house if I wanted to survive. I’d had two more asthma attacks, both nasty ones that caused me to wake up hours later, disoriented and on the floor. That wasn’t the problem though. Food and water were the problems. That and a rising need to be near other humans. I hoped that maybe I’d run into another survivor if I walked to the neighborhood corner store. I wasn’t confident I could make it further than that. As it was, I’d need to take my walker with me. Luckily most of the snow had melted. I planned to wear a scarf over my face to hopefully catch any lingering lung burning particles before they entered my mouth.
As the afternoon wore on, a wicked windstorm swept through my neighborhood. It pulled all the debris from the winter, leaves, branches, any bits of leftover snow, all rolling in a strange, wet tumbleweed down the street. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Tomorrow,” I told myself as I gripped the blinds with white knuckles, heart racing, peering out of the front window and watching the street be cleaned by the wind. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
I woke up to a bright light shining into my bedroom window. Disoriented, I reached for my glasses and slid them onto my face, then hobbled to the window. It wasn’t the sun, it was an artificial light. Coming from the sky.
The bright spotlight swept over my front lawn, and onto the neighbor’s house. Now I could see where it was coming from. A hovering aircraft, shaped like a medicine capsule, floated about fifty feet above the street. Multiple beams of light emitted from its surface, shining and sweeping in different directions, looking for something. The flying object had no discernible wings or any means of propellant, it simply hung in the sky as if held by a massive invisible figure.
A sudden loud squawk filled the night sky, and then a chittery voice. “HUMANS. EMERGE FROM YOUR HIVES AND GREET US.”
Terror shook through me, and I nearly fell to the floor in horror. What was this?! I watched as the bottom of the capsule swung open, and several dozen black figures with oddly oval bodies and far too many spindly legs dropped to the street below. They moved out in formations, but rather than walking like soldiers in a platoon, they all jumped as one, a singular leap that landed them on the doorsteps of each and every house on the block. Two ended up on my front porch.
I could hear them scrabbling at the doorknob, trying to turn it with their alien hands. No way was I going to play host and let them in. Dread pulled at me, and the panic tightened in my chest.
“No no no,” I whispered, trying to suck in lungfuls of air as the familiar vise clamped down on my torso. “Not now, please not now,” My body disobeyed, and I lost my breath for what was certainly the last time in my life.
I wasn’t sure how long I was unconscious this time. I kept my eyes closed, concentrating on breathing in, exhaling. When I heard the scrape of a foot near my bedroom door, it all came flooding back. The strange floating ship, the insectoid army that had leaped from it and began knocking on doors. My eyes shot open as my bedroom door creaked open. A gigantic bug, the size of a man, scuttled toward me. An involuntary scream left my throat, and I recognized the massively oversized flea shape just as one hairy limb extended toward my face.
This story is brought to you by Diatomaceous Earth, a very fine dust made of sea fossils that I sprinkle on my yard and hardwood floors every summer to combat the freakishly hardy South Carolina fleas.
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