Remains Among the Infected

1. Morning News & Dark Truths

Morning News & Dark Truths

The air in the kitchen was filled with the scent of dark roast and toast – normal, expected.

The light from outside filtered through the blinds in stripes that moved across the table, where Mark sat, half-obscured by the paper.

Over the counter, the television provided its usual background chatter, delivering with cheerful briskness a report of "an early and aggressive flu season" with infection rates rising, hospitals reaching capacity and patients having nowhere to go.

Josie walked into the kitchen in bare feet, hair just washed, hanging wet and plastered to her forehead, drab scrubs clinging to her form. She took a mug from the cabinet and, despite the ominous warning coming from the television, the sound of the porcelain seemed to rise above it.

She glanced over her shoulder at her husband.

"I really don't think this is the flu, love," she poured herself the coffee and her hands only trembled slightly. "Janson said the ER has been swamped. It's… pretty deadly from what I've been seeing."

Mark looked up from his reading with tired eyes and flashed her a smile that never quite touched them.

"I'm sure it's nothing, love," he turned another page as though dismissing whatever worries this news may bring. "They always blow this stuff out of proportion."

Josie frowned, feeling something coiling in her guts like fear.

She had seen enough flu seasons to recognize normal and abnormal.

Patients coding minutes after admission.

Delirium becoming violent and uncontrollable.

Confusion to the point when grown men forgot their names.

Persistent fever resisting all their efforts to cool it.

But she did not press further. Why would she? There was no way Mark would listen until he had to and something in her refused to say this words out loud—as though saying them might make it real.

She chose safe topics instead.

"I need to take Layla to dance class tonight," she said, spreading butter on the toast quickly. "But I have late surgical consult with the new patient. Could you take her?"

"Mm-hmm," he nodded and went back to his reading, eyes already sliding back to the paper. "I've got it."

The sirens sounded in the distance – one and another. Josie stopped in her tracks and looked out the window, counting them the way she would seconds between the lightning and thunder.

Mark remained oblivious to that as always.

She picked her toast and moved behind him, kissing him on the cheek, breathing the aftershave she always knew since before they married. "Hold down the fort," she whispered.

"I always do," he replied, lost in his paper.

She managed to make it halfway out of the kitchen before hearing it – a cough.

It tore from his chest, the sound of something deep inside him. The newspaper slipped in his hands, corners folding in.

Josie reached out to the doorframe and grasped it.

Mark cleared his throat again, harsher this time, took a sip of his coffee and his wedding ring clinked against the porcelain.

"Just dry air," he said and his voice sounded a bit higher than usual, off.

Her medical education assessed everything before her heart could catch up – the flush creeping up his cheeks, the sweat on his forehead, the way his shoulders hunched forward as though bracing against something.

Everything that she charted on patients in the previous days sat right there in front of her – symptoms of her own husband.

Outside, another siren sounded and the neighbor's dog started howling with it, mournful and long.

She paused in the doorway, not knowing whether she should go or not, looking at golden stripes of light, the toast crumbs, the spilled coffee, and her husband who pretended he was not sick.

There was something about this late summer that brought a deviation which was yet to be named—but looking at Mark she understood with chilling certainty that this morning would be the last time when everything was normal.

Seth bolted upright in the bed, breathing heavily, sweat dripping from his body.

His t-shirt stuck to him, damp and twisted around his chest as if the nightmare was trying to drag him and hold him there.

They haunted him now - every night, the same unbearable moment when everything he loved slipped through his fingers while he could not do anything about it.

Even awake, the nightmare remained, filling his veins and refusing to go away.

The aisle of the store appeared around him, shelves full of canned food and boxes of goods in silent rows. A single cart stood in the middle of the aisle and hung over the handle of it – AJ's baby blanket, blue and covered with rockets.

Molly bought it before they even knew if they were having a boy or a girl.

"Molly?" he whispered, looking around in the dark.

No answer.

He started to move, his boots sticking to the tiles and his steps growing heavier until he could not walk anymore. He turned the corner –

And there she was.

Molly with baby AJ in her arms.

But something was wrong.

There was no smile in her face, no eyes that looked at him. She gazed at something far off, filled with terror.

"Molly, baby – come to me," he whispered.

She opened her mouth, the word coming out hoarse:

"Run!"

Then the aisle shifted and darkness wrapped everything except Molly and AJ, illuminated by some invisible spotlight while the shadows behind her moved like some grotesque fun house.

The footsteps echoed in the dark.

A man's shadow appeared behind her.

Seth's pulse swished in his ears. He tried to run, but the darkness fought him, dragging at his legs, and no matter how hard he clawed and fought, the distance between them widened, bending into an impossible gap.

"MOLLY!" he shouted.

The man grabbed her from behind.

AJ started crying – tiny, desperate cry Seth remembered hearing a million times, the sound burned into his soul forever.

Molly fought, kicking, curling her body around their child.

Her hair – the hair he used to pull and twirl in his fingers when he kissed her – got into the man's fist, exposing the pale line of her neck as he dragged her backwards.

"STOP!" Seth shouted.

But he could not reach her.

He could never reach her.

A gun shot rang, distant and muffled, as if fired underwater. But like the day it happened he never saw the actual killing, never saw the ending. He just heard it.

He scanned the room with his eyes and then drew his hand across his face. The dark room held only shadows. Across from him, the window shone with the moisture, condensation forming on it where the warm air met bitter cold February frost.

Late February. Four and a half months passed since his world ended. Since the day when his family – his whole purpose of living – was ripped apart from him in one shot. Yet the nightmares haunted him every night like if grief decided not to let him go no matter how much time passed.

The soft snuffle broke through the silence.

At the bottom of the bed, Watch raised his head and looked at him in the dark with sleepy amber eyes – the shepherd mix who had started to spend most nights there as though he sensed the turmoil in Seth long before Seth did it himself.

Watch whined once, low and soothing, before putting his head back onto his paws.

Seth swallowed, fighting the feeling of tightness in his throat.

This room was too small and filled with ghosts he brought with him from elsewhere.

He laid back on the thin mattress and rested his head on the pillow, knowing that he would not be able to fall asleep.

He stared at the ceiling, tracing the wavering pattern of the cracks over his head, forcing his mind to concentrate on anything – anything at all – to keep it from dragging him back into hell.

Tonight, his mind would not stop. His chest hurt, empty, the grief occupying the place where peace used to be.

Yet he closed his eyes anyway.

Not because he thought he would fall asleep.

But because he had to keep believing that someday he would.

In the morning, long before the sun rose over the tree line, Seth stood in the pale-blue dawn.

Frost glittered in the yard and crunched beneath his boots as he moved to the chicken coop, his breath trailing behind in thin white clouds.

The watch trotted by his side, nose lowered to the ground and tail wagging every step.

"Good morning, buddy," he muttered, yawning in exhaustion. "I guess it's just us and the eggs duty today."

Watch nudged him in his thigh as if to say that he agreed.

Seth unlatched the door of the coop, its hinges creaking softly in the cold air and a whiff of warm air escaped, carrying the familiar smell of straw and feathers. Hens squawked quietly and shifted in their perches, while a couple of bold ones approached with hungry eyes.

"All right, girls," he whispered, crouching in front of them. "Let's see what you brought us."

Watch peeked into the coop beside him and smelled the birds. A hen snapped at his nose in response and Watch backed off, deeply offended, sneezing at that.

Seth laughed, the sound rusty even to his own ears. "Yeah, that's what you get for putting your nose where it does not belong."

He collected the eggs in the basket – fragile, warm treasures—while Watch observed the process.

"You know," Seth said conversationally, "I've seen Addy angry… but if you ever decide to have some snack from one of these chickens?" He paused, holding up a speckled egg between his fingers as an illustration. "She'll skin you alive and make your hide into a welcome mat. And I won't save you."

Watch looked at him, unblinking.

Seth sighed. "Don't look at me like that. I'm serious."

Watch gave him one wag of the tail.

"That wasn't agreement," Seth muttered, closing the coop.