Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Raven slumped in a metal chair six feet from her father’s bed. Afternoon light slanted through the windows. It bathed the room in warm shadows. Her father groaned, tossing and turning in misery. His limbs were slick with sweat, his face gaunt, and his eyes hollowed.
“Ten feet,” he’d growled when she tried to come closer. The CDC broadcasts had recommended maintaining a six-foot distance from any suspected infected persons. Her father thought it was best to extend that number. After all, social distancing hadn’t saved the masses.
They were dead. Almost everyone was dead. It was too horrific to contemplate for longer than a few seconds at a time.
To distract herself, she brought him a damp washcloth to press against his fevered forehead, and a pitcher of water for his aching throat and rasping cough. Without power, the water was lukewarm. She couldn’t give him ice for his parched throat.
It wasn’t enough. How could it possibly be enough?
She stared dully at the bare log walls. Zachariah had died yesterday. This morning, her father had collapsed at the breakfast table. Whatever her plans had been, she couldn’t leave her father now.
She knew what the bloggers, newscasters, and influencers had repeated on social media, on podcasts, and in the news: the parade of scientists and virologists and CDC experts, their technical terms masking the true horror: the Hydra Virus destroyed the human body from the inside out.
There was a seventy-two-hour incubation period after infection. Initially, there was coughing and sneezing during the first week, sufficient to spread the contagion.
As the disease advanced through the later stages, the high fevers, breathing difficulties, chronic coughing, and hemorrhaging from the mouth, eyes, and ears started on days ten through twelve.
Between days twelve and fourteen came the respiratory failure, followed by an agonizing death.
Some infected experienced what Zachariah had—an adrenaline surge during the last stage, coupled with memory loss and aggression, much like dementia—the last-ditch effort of the virus to spread itself.
A small percentage of the population was immune. For the rest, the mortality rate was 100%. There was no cure. No escape once you were infected. No reprieve. No hope.
Which meant she was watching her father die.
Raven hunched over a pine log she’d chosen from the stack of firewood next to the fireplace and placed in her lap.
With her new whittling knife, she scraped at the wood with trembling fingers, barely seeing the object taking shape in her hands.
Several times, her fingers slipped. The blade nicked her thumb, cutting into her knuckle.
She wiped the blood on her pants and kept working, carving deep into the soft wood, wood shavings tinged with red falling into her lap, drifting to the floor like shriveled petals.
Her legs were shaking, aching to run, to flee, to escape this grotesque stench of sickness and her father’s awful rattling breaths. The darkness closed in on her, seeping into her skin, her pores, her cells.
The sight of him lying there, quivering and helpless, his body wracked in pain, sent a hot spike of panic through her gut. She’d never seen him anything but capable, self-contained, strong and stoic, needing nothing and no one. Now he was weak, suffering, a stranger with her father’s face.
He may not have been the father she’d wanted—but he was the father she had.
He was dying. And she was helpless.
She closed her hands over the wooden bird she’d carved—a raven.
One rough-hewn wing was stained pale red from the nick in her finger.
When she had been small, only four or five, she used to collect things—stray buttons, ribbons, pretty stones, bottle caps, magnets, anything shiny and bright and lovely.
Her father had called her a little karasu, a raven. Her mother had laughed merrily—back when she still laughed—and the name had stuck.
Her real name was Emiko, but no one had called her that in years.
She loved that her father had given her a nickname.
As a girl, she’d adored it, clung to it like one of the bright little pebbles she’d tucked under her pillow, hoping with all her heart that the bestowing of a special name meant he truly loved her.
Raven blinked away the burning in her eyes, shoved the knife and the bird carving into her cargo pocket, and stood abruptly, nearly knocking over her chair. “I’m going into town. I’ll find a doctor.”
Her father opened his eyes slowly. His jaw muscles clenched and unclenched like it took an incredible effort to unhinge his jaw to speak. “There are… none.”
Of course, he was right. Millions of people were dead. Tens of millions. Billions. A number too large for her brain to process. Those who weren’t dead were taking care of themselves and their families. The hospitals were turning away patients.
Even if doctors and hospitals were functioning somewhere, they wouldn’t be able to save her father. The best hospitals in the world hadn’t been able to save anyone.
Yet her fear was an irrational thing. A part of her mind clung to the reality of the old world with desperation.
After all, she hadn’t seen this new bizarre world with her own eyes. Worse than anything the world had dealt with before. Worse than the other pandemics. Worse than the Black Death.
She hadn’t left Haven in weeks, since before the Hydra Virus reared its ugly head.
First, she hadn’t had a reason to do so.
Then her father hadn’t allowed it.
Her mind didn’t want to believe it. Surely, it wasn’t that bad. There were still people going to work and coming home, and kids riding hoverboards and playing virtual reality games all day, and stores still open, their shelves stocked with Doritos, Little Debbie snacks, and Mountain Dew.
“Let me get you some medicine. Something to ease the pain,” she choked out.
“It’s not safe.” He turned his head with great effort to look at her. His dark eyes were glassy. His sweat-damp hair was slick against his forehead. “I’ll be fine.”
She let out a bitter laugh at the irony of his words. “I’ll be back before nightfall. I’ll make sure the animals are taken care of.”
“Don’t take stupid risks,” he said. “Not for anyone. Not for me. You will not do this. It’s too dangerous.”
She’d heard that argument a hundred times. Keep to yourself. Keep your head down. Don’t make waves. Take care of yourself, first and only.
That may be the way her father lived, but it didn’t mean she had to live the same way. Not now. Not like this.
She’d obeyed him, only to watch her mother leave and Zachariah die.
She’d been dead set on leaving this place for good—for months, maybe years. But that was by choice. That was leaving someone healthy and alive, someone you knew would continue to move and breathe and do all the things they’d always done while you were gone.
This was different. This was a giant hand reaching inside the cage of her ribs and wrenching her heart out, squeezing the blood from her veins while she watched. This was a weeping wound in her soul that would never heal.
“It won’t take long, I promise. I’ll come right back.”
“I said no.”
Raven stood. Some dark thing twisted inside her. “You can’t stop me this time.”
“I forbid it,” he croaked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going.”
His fingers scraped the bed sheets like claws. Tendons bulged in his neck as a wave of agony pulsed through his body. She watched, frozen and helpless, sickened and horrified, but unable to look away.
Looking away felt like a betrayal of both herself and her father. She would watch his suffering because that was the only thing she could do. To bear witness. To be present and unflinching.
The pain released him. He sagged against the mattress, panting. She retrieved the damp washcloth from the nightstand and approached him, intending to press the washcloth to his forehead, but he waved her away.
He pointed a frail finger at something across the room. The tranquilizer gun lay atop the dresser beneath the window, steeped in golden sunlight. “You want to ease my suffering? That’ll do it.”
She recoiled in horror. “No!”
“I want you to do it.” He took several ragged, rasping breaths. “I’m asking you to do it.”
“I—I can’t.”
He worked his jaw, like he sometimes did when he was chewing on words he’d rather keep to himself. The kind of words that cost something, that took something in return. “Let me go out on my terms. Not like… that.”
Revulsion settled in her stomach like a block of ice. She shook her head, tasting acid in the back of her throat. “I’ll be back. With medicine.”
“Raven!” he shouted at her back. “Don’t you go!”
She unhooked one of the solar lanterns from the hook on the wall by the door, brought it to the nightstand, and placed it next to the water pitcher. He’d have light even if she came back after dark.
They saved the generator for critical items, like the electrified fences, to keep the carnivores inside where they belonged.
“Don’t you dare leave!”
She headed for the door. Her throat tightened, frantic to escape that claustrophobic room rancid with sickness, shadowed with grief and bitterness and regret. Once she brought the painkillers back and eased his torment, he would forgive her. He would.
“Raven.”
She stilled, one hand on the door handle.
“Take the tranq,” he said behind her, defeat in his voice. “For protection.”
She stiffened. Then she pivoted, seized the gun from the dresser, and fled her father’s bedroom.
Rushing through the shadow-darkened living room, she paused to grab her dad’s key fob on the shabby coffee table so she could use the battered Camry. It was a hybrid. Her father used the precious generator to keep it charged for emergencies.
Frantic thoughts churned through her mind. Her father was dying. He’d begged her to kill him. She hated thinking about his suffering; she hated thinking of aiming a gun and pulling the trigger even more.
That it was a dart and not a bullet didn’t mean much. The result was the same: death.
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind. She needed to focus. Step A led to Step B, which led to Step C.
If she found strong enough painkillers, he wouldn’t need the tranquilizer. She would get medication to ease her father’s pain. Then she would tackle the myriad chores of feeding and caring for the wild animals at the sanctuary. One task at a time.
Key fob in hand, Raven hurried out the front door.