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“I don’t like you even touching it, Maya,” her dad said, knowing what she was going to do. “There isn’t any point in cleaning it.”
She ignored his last comment. “You know it’s only spread through bites and scratches.”
“It’s bloodborne, sweetheart.”
“I’ll wear gloves, like I do every time. I’m not going to let it fester without trying to make you comfortable.”
Her dad smiled sadly and didn’t argue anymore. Good, because she wouldn’t deviate from what she wanted to do.
“Here, honey,” her mother said as she walked into the room, carrying a bowl of steaming water. Her mom set it on the table and grabbed an apron. “Wear this, just in case.”
Maya put the apron on, tripled-up on the latex gloves, and pulled up the blanket. She exposed her father’s legs first and continued lifting until she got to his thighs. He wore a pair of boxers, and the leg that had gotten the bite was patched with a thick white bandage—one that was seeped through with black and red fluid.
The smell was intense, that of rotting, decaying flesh. That was what happened with the infected, with someone who was bitten. The infection spread throughout their body quickly, turning usually happening within a week’s time.
The person rotted from the inside out… literally.
“Here,” her mother said and handed her a mask. “I don’t want any risk of you catching it.”
It wasn’t airborne, and although the likelihood of the blood or fluid getting into Maya’s mouth was low, she knew this had been her parents’ biggest fear since the infection spread. She was their only child, and with her father on the brink of turning, life seemed hopeless.
She held in her gag reflex as the wound was revealed. The bite mark had been nasty when he first got it, and now because of the infection spreading, it was god-awful. Necrotic tissue was all the way around the wound and spreading throughout his legs.
Even his veins were now black and visible. There was blood and gray fluid oozing out, and the flesh that wasn’t grossly rotting was ashen, as if corpse-like.
She made quick work of cleaning it with peroxide and alcohol, of spreading ointment on it, and then bandaged it back up. Of course this wouldn’t heal or cure it, but she felt better knowing she was at least trying to keep it clean.
“How did it look?” her dad asked, but he sounded exhausted. When she looked at him, she saw he had his eyes closed, the wear and tear of what was happening taking him over.
“The same,” she lied. It looked so much worse than it had just hours before. The infection was spreading fast.
“Even though my eyes are closed, I can still tell when you’re lying.” Her father’s voice was distant, sleep taking control of him.
“Get some rest, Dad.”
Her father was asleep before she even got the rest of the words out.
“Come on, Maya. Let’s eat something.”
Maya followed her mom out of the room, shutting the door behind her, and that’s when she couldn’t stop her tears. But she wiped them away, not wanting to start that floodgate.
“He won’t last much longer,” her mother said with a detached voice. She turned around and gestured for Maya to sit at the table.
Sherman, her old and graying black lab, came trotting into the kitchen and lay down by Maya’s feet. He was going on ten years, but he had a lot of energy and spirit still. She reached down and ran her hand over his head, scratching behind his ear.
Maya didn’t respond to her mother, because she knew that was the truth but didn’t want to think about it. Her mother set some rationed food in front of her, and once Maya’s mom was seated, they ate in silence. The sound of her father’s wheezing and gurgling as his lungs filled with the fluid, as he was dying, surrounded them.
This was her life, her reality, and the sooner she fully accepted that, the better chance she had of surviving.
2
“This is fucked,” said Brandon, one of the scientists who had been working on the immunization from the ground up.
Marius was shoving items into a large backpack, intent on getting out of the bunker they’d been in for far longer than he could even comprehend.
Brandon was walking back and forth, pacing the small confines of the room. The underground bunker had been government issued, a place that held several scientists as they worked on a cure.
But there was no cure, and despite telling the government officials that, informing the president that there was nothing that could be done, they still kept working. What else were they supposed to do this deep below the earth?
Besides, Marius didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to be a part of why humanity had fallen.
“We’ve done all we can, Brandon.” Marius kept his back to the other man as he shoved in bottles of water, canned and packaged food, and grabbed medical supplies.
