The Six

The streets are filled from end to end with the dying and the undying.  That was the accepted norm now that the Six virus had spread so rapidly.  In alleyways, on sidewalks, leaning against walls, people in various stages of living decay are in the process of decomposing as they die.  It was winter in New York, and New York was dying.

I was pushing a grocery cart down Seventh Avenue, basically an urban canyon framed by the skyscrapers, trying to maneuver myself among the dying, being wary of the undying.  I knew that all it would take is one touch and my status would shift immediately; I wasn’t touching anybody.  The 12-guage shotgun in the cart helped with that.

I remember seeing pictures of New York before the Six struck, people jammed into subway cars, the sidewalks packed with people ‘like a box of toothpicks’ as my father was prone to say, remembering an old term they used in the submarine during the Second World War.  Now, that memory’s long past: the subways weren’t even running anymore, and the pedestrians never go less than six feet from each other.  A length generally chosen because, even with both parties, arms outstretched, no contact could be made.

Thus was life after the Six.

When the Six first came around, nobody had a clue what the hell to make of it.  It had characteristics of an arenavirus, as well as the hantavirus and Ebola virus.  What made it most fascinating, in a morbid way, was “the rules”.  The rules were simple: it spreads by touch; skin-on-skin is the easiest, but it could go through looser clothing as well.  Once you had it, the disease could spread to up to six people, as that was how the virus reproduced: in every subject, the virus immediately creates just five duplicates of itself, and as soon as contact was made with a sixth person after contagion, the virus abandons the host for the new host, leaving the original subject disease-free and with the antibodies necessary to remain disease-free.  If the host did not do this, he was dead within six days.

Thus, the simple rule: you have 6 days to touch 6 non-immune people, or you’re dead.  You could live, or degenerate into a hollowed-shell, flesh-sagging, eyes dangling from sockets.

The Six was a bitch.

Just a hundred yards away, gunfire erupted, snapping me from the daydream.  Two men, each with automatic weapons, had accidentally bumped into each other, panicked, and immediately opened fire, little pops of blood bursting from their winter coats.  In the immediate vicinity, bodies fell to the ground with bloody sput sounds as the two wildly sprayed rounds all about them.  Up and down the street, people who had scrambled for cover were making physical contact with other people; the shouts, screams, sporadic bursts of gunfire, demanding questions, “You free?  Are you free???” filled the urban canyon.  Many of those shot were probably lucky; it sped up the process for the dying.

I did the smart thing when I heard the first cracks of gunfire: I backed my ass into an alley and ducked my head.  I was really only concerned with the shopping cart: I’d found some of the last canned goods in the city, and was getting home to my wife.  We were pulling an Omega Man: the brownstone was completely barricaded, with a modified gun turret in the upstairs bedroom.  We’d seen the news reports on TV, we weren’t stupid.  In Seattle, chaos had broken out, and people were breaking into homes, dragging people from their cars, anything for the dying to reach the undying.  In LA, when the disease took hold of fourteen million people, the streets looked like a cross between the world’s largest game of tag and a fifty-mile long pinball machine, as people bounced off each other in the streets, desperately hoping to touch their sixth new host.

Like I said, the Six is a bitch.

The gunfire died down; from my angle, I could clearly make out at least eight or nine dead, several people rolling around wounded.  Like vultures, dozens of the dying burst from hiding and dove for the wounded, trying to unload their burdens onto the helpless.  God it made me sick.

The streets were a bit more clear, so I began my trek home again.

The Western US had been decimated.  Seattle, Portland, all of California, Phoenix.  Just imagine it: a seventy percent mortality rate.  The population of the Phoenix metro area went from 6 million to 1.3 million.  In two weeks. South America, where the Six originated, was a wasteland; with refugees streaming northward (final destination: the US of A), the population down there was thought to be five percent of what it had been just a month ago.

Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa.  The first case in Greenland was reported last week.  England was a tomb.

Something tells me that the scientists down in Antarctica, researching glaciers and whatnot, are sitting on ice-chairs in their ice-houses, laughing their asses off at us.

The streets are pretty clear near home; we’re in a more upscale, lower-population side of Brooklyn.  Plus, the sun’s almost down, setting behind the steel-and-concrete canyon walls. So, not many people around. Not to say I didn’t still have my left hand on the cart and my right on the shotgun.  The shops on either side of the street are mostly boarded up.  The smoke shop’s still open; guess dying or undying, you still needed a nic fix.  But I was set: I just spent $1500 on two cases of canned food, and a bag of dog food as “backup” (couldn’t wait to tell that one to the wife). 

“John?”  Hearing my name spoken behind me sent a chill, a ripple down my back.  The first thought was that my wife had left the building.  A thousand images ran through my mind, images of her lithe, hundred-pound frame trying to keep from being touched by the dying.  Her being shoved into an alleyway and raped.  The apartment door, broken down, our food taken.  My heart was already throbbing in my chest; I could see three men, homeless, already gathered around a fire burning in an old drum barrel and wondered, which of you did it?

“John, is that you?”  Now I recognized the voice and turned.  My sister, Christie, the youngest of the five of us kids.  I’d been the oldest boy, her official bodyguard through high school whenever a date had gone bad; I’d always kept her safe.  “Oh my God, I’m so glad to see you!” she cried, running towards me in a rush.  I set all caution aside and enveloped her in a hug as she reached me, a kiss on my cheek.  “God, I was so worried.  Are you okay, you haven’t caught it, have you? Jill?”

“No, I’m free and clear, so’s Jill.  We’re good.”  In my head, I could feel a warning sounding, and my heart stopped.  “How…how ‘bout you?”

My sister, Christie, the one who I once attacked Rick Morton in the school parking lot for, the one who I once beat the starting quarterback with a baseball bat for, looked at me with such mixed emotions, a look of such sadness, and yet, such joy.

She didn’t want to talk.  “Thank you…thanks.”  A single tear rolled from her eye as she turned, and walked away.  There was a spring in her step.  I reached in the cart, tears blurring my vision, hefted the shotgun and steadied it, her back sighted along the gun barrel.

But I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t.  If I’d caught the Six, I’d have probably done the same thing. 

I was only four doors down from the brownstone; in the upper window, I could just make out the light on.  I knew the heater was on.  She probably had some food going.  She would have the radio on, probably the eighties station.  Loved John Mellencamp.  She’d be waiting for me, with open arms, kiss on the cheek.  A few notes from an old song ran through my head, “See the smile, waiting in the kitchen, food cooking and plates for two.”  Summer Breeze, Seals and Crofts.  God I love that song.

My hands shook as I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket (the towers are still up and running, but who knows how long).  The speed dial was number two.

I knew once I’d told her that I had it, I had the Six, she wouldn’t care: she’d want me to still come up.  She’d want to join me.  She would hug me, and kiss me; she would be my first host. 

I couldn’t call.  I couldn’t do it.  She had enough food in the apartment for one, enough to last her at least two weeks.  Jill’d be okay.

I turned toward the alley, with the three homeless men around the barrel-fire. The three men who I’d just minutes before thought to have raped and killed my wife, were now kin to me.  I pushed the cart towards them, a soft squeek emanating from the front right.

“I’m dying…mind if I join you?” I said to them, their sagging skin and oozing sores, their deadness telling me that I was welcome.  I warmed my hands over the fire and, as an afterthought, I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and threw it in the fire.

The man to my left had a voice that came from six feet under the sand in the Sahara.  “We were just discussing Nietzsche,” he scratched, “That old bastard was in-fucking-sane, wasn’t he?”