I’m sure everyone knew this saying…
“You never know what you have, until it’s gone.”
Everyone knew that one, or some variation of it.
But did anyone, before Infernal Friday, or even before Reaper’s Sabbath, truly understand what it meant? Did anyone really see how true that saying actually is?
Somehow, I strongly doubt it.
I’m not saying people didn’t know grief, loss, and the pain that comes with losing something or someone. Of course everyone did. I’m not saying they didn’t. What I’m saying is… oh hell, sometimes I’m not sure what I’m saying. I talk big, act so sure of myself, but I’m not. I just try not to let anyone see that.
People knew loss… but what about the fear? The fear that comes when you personally see civilization as you knew it crumbling down around you? The panic, at realizing you might be the only person left alive, at knowing you may truly be alone for the rest of your days.
Lastly, the agonizing regret. Regret, at all the sacrifices you made. Friends, relationships, family, everything you pushed aside, now gone for good… for something that was suddenly worthless.
So I know people before didn’t know the meaning behind that saying. It’s a good thing; they were blessed not to. Believe me.
But I do know. We all do, those of us left, know now.
I just wish I didn’t.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
10:15 p.m.
“Hello? Hello? Dad, come on, it’s Riley; answer the phone!” She slammed her phone shut and sped down the quiet, abandoned highways. She didn’t want to take a good look outside her window. She didn’t want to see what she knew she would at that point. It was a dark night, despite the full moon shining above her. All the lights were gone, and she had to drive with her brights on, just to make sure she wasn’t going to crash into anything.
It was colder than normal for an April evening, but Riley knew that wasn’t why she’d started shivering. Still, as she pulled up to a stop sign, she tugged down the sleeves of her hooded sweatshirt. Her eyes drifted towards the rearview mirror, even though she knew she shouldn’t let them.
“It’s not worth looking at. Don’t torture yourself…” she scolded herself sternly, but her eyes wandered to the windows again rebelliously. Riley couldn’t stop staring.
Cars were haphazardly scattered along the roads. All throughout her drive, she’d been forced to drive around them. Inside, if she looked hard enough, she could see the bodies of people who had succumbed to the disease that had rapidly spread around. There were too many bodies for the morgues to keep up with, even if people weren’t too sick to run them.
Part of her wondered why they had attempted driving to begin with. But as soon as that question entered her head, the answer followed. They were trying to outrun the virus, trying to get to a hospital that wasn’t falling apart. With the media blackouts, how would most of them have known that it was like that up north, too? And if it had hit them so soon after it spread through the northeastern US, surely it would have hit the rest of the country soon enough. But they had still tried, and Riley was there to see their final resting places upon the road.
She hadn’t been awake for long. After a long night getting footage at the hospital, she had gone back to her apartment to crash as the sun rose and slept till about eight in the evening. She hadn’t meant to, as the report was supposed to air earlier in the day. However, when she’d tried to call the station, she’d received no answers. She had tried calling her boss, her coworkers, and nothing.
Her father had called while she was at the hospital last night, at least. And she’d held on to that shred of hope that he was still okay. “Riley Anne Blake, you worry too much. You should know by now your old man can handle himself. You sound just like your mother used to…” But she kept asking herself, had he been hiding it from her so she wouldn’t worry? Or had he really been all right when he’d called her?
After an hour of attempting calls to work, her friends, and her family, she’d decided to head out, after grabbing a bag of chips. Much to her annoyance, she’d found the power to be out as well, which meant no cooking. She’d kept trying to reach her father’s cell phone, a gift from her to bring him up into the twenty-first century. He hadn’t answered, so she was making the drive out to the house, feeling there was no room for brushing off concern at this point.
“Keep yourself together, Ri. It…it’s not as bad as it seems…” she repeated to herself again and again, in a hushed tone. She could feel the panic rising. What if it had hit her family? As busy as she kept herself, as isolated as her life was, due to her own career goals, she still relied on her family to keep her grounded. She still managed to call every weekend to check on her brothers, on her father, on her nieces and nephews. Even though she rarely saw them because she was always working, she always kept them on the fringes of her life, if nothing else.
She flipped open her phone again, having forgotten her Bluetooth at home. She called the number once again, desperate for some type of answer.
“Dad? It’s me again. Look, I’m just really worried. I know I probably do sound like Mom, but just… call me back. I love you…bye.” It hurt to think of her mother, even so many years after her death. She was told she looked just like her, that she had her determination, and that she worried like she had. Riley didn’t know if it was true or her father’s wishful thinking, but she didn’t like being told that all the same. She loved her mother, but being told those things just reminded her that she was gone.
“I should visit her…” she murmured, suddenly feeling the need to visit her mother’s grave, something she hadn’t done in years. Riley just had the urge for the slight comfort visiting and talking to the tombstone gave her.
She weaved through the messy roads, and the sight grew more gruesome, the further she drove. Bodies were lying out upon the sides of the roads, people whom she guessed had tried walking once the roads started getting jammed. The roads were getting worse; she was starting to have to drive along the sides and ignore the occasional bump, trying to also ignore what she knew it was.
Before long, she pulled up to the familiar place she had once called home. She parked and climbed out, trying fiercely to get her heart to stop beating so wildly in her chest. Taking in a deep breath, she started walking towards the house. Her gaze caught sight of a familiar car. Tommy’s car. Her baby brother’s car. She ran over to it, thinking maybe he’d pulled up moments before she had.
Maybe he knew if everyone was okay. She knocked on the window, peered inside, and her voice caught in her throat before she could utter even one single word.
He was slumped over the steering wheel, his blonde hair matted to his forehead, his blue eyes open and unblinking, staring at something beyond her now. His skin was covered in purple lesions, and she knew she didn’t have to open the door to see the truth. Her brother was dead.
She stood there, frozen by the realization. If Tommy had died out here, that meant he had been either coming or going. If he had been going…
Riley bolted for the front door, not caring if she got sick. If she was going to, she knew that night filming at the hospital was what was going to doom her anyway. She burst through the door, not bothering to knock. Her dad could yell at her, and she’d be thrilled.
“Dad?! Hello?! Chase… Randy… Nate… anyone hear me?!”
She saw the silhouettes, illuminated by the moonlight coming through the bay window. Bodies that didn’t move. Bodies that she knew belonged to members of her family. She could check, she could find out who, which members. Yet to Riley, it didn’t matter. She knew one of them was her father, that the others were some of her brothers, and that the rest of her family was dead as well, even if not here. They were dead. Everyone was dead.
That was when the tears finally began to fall.
***
An hour passed, and it found her driving down the road again, aimlessly. She didn’t understand it. Any of it. She liked finding the truth; she liked knowing things. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be a journalist. Yet nothing would come to her, nothing to help her understand it all. Although her family was technically religious, technically Catholic, Riley had never found herself truly a devout follower, growing up. But then, seeing all this, she found herself questioning God, wondering what she did to earn such salvation.
Or was it really damnation?
Riley pulled out her small camera, uncaring if she crashed her car then. She’d do anything to distract herself, anything to stop the questions pounding her brain. Besides, she had just lost her entire family in one swift stroke. Would it matter anymore if she died, too? With one hand, she aimed it at herself, while the other navigated the car down the road.
“I’m… I’m filming this just in case I’m not alone. For someone to find. This is in case in the end I don’t make it, though right now, it looks like I will. I won’t assume anything right now. ”
She sniffed, willing the tears to stop. They had been coming since she found the bodies. Bodies… not her family, just empty shells. It seemed easier to think of them like that. But she had to stop crying. She had to film this, just in case, so someone who came upon this mess, clueless, would know what had happened.
“I… I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why. I just know some virus swept the eastern half of the country, maybe the rest of it, too. It’s killed everyone. I haven’t found anyone alive yet. Everyone’s dead. My family, my friends, my coworkers… everyone.”
She pulled off to the side of the road. Riley deep down knew she still didn’t want to die. No matter what depressed thoughts were plaguing her right then. Riley’s trademark determination flared in fury at even considering giving up and dying. How could she even give credence to such a thought? However, she knew if she kept driving like she was, she’d crash. She sighed, keeping the camera on her. She could see the college and the hospital not too far in the distance. Maybe tomorrow, she’d see if anyone was alive there. She pointed the camera outside the Jeep’s window, filming all the bodies scattered upon the ground.
“People were trying to outrun the illness. No one knew what was happening. People panicked… It spread so quickly, killed so quickly. No one could figure out what it was, why it spread here. No one knew how to cure it; hell, did anyone have time to even try?”
She aimed the camera back at herself, feeling oddly like she was doing a bad imitation of that movie, The Blair Witch Project. “What I don’t get… what I don’t understand is, why didn’t I get it? I walked through the hospital, surrounded by the virus. Why didn’t I get it? Why didn’t I die?”
She turned the camera off, lying down across her front seat. Suddenly, Riley felt exhausted, drained emotionally. She didn’t bother with the idea of driving back to her apartment. Why should she? She bet everyone was dead there, too. She felt the urge to drive as far as she could tomorrow, escape this hell and find out if it had happened everywhere. Tonight, though, she would sleep.
Staring out the window, she could feel the tears come again. Everyone was gone, and she had no answers as to why.
“Mom… why didn’t I die, too?”
