I left the others in the kitchen and joined the psychologically wounded in the living room; fully aware that I was the reason they were offended and unhappy. Neither Margaret nor Jesse acknowledged my presence; they just stared wordlessly at the blank flat screen television in the corner. “I’m sorry I was harsh back there,” I said to both of them. “I took my stress out on you and I was wrong.” I mostly meant that for Jesse. The wicked side of me wanted to keep poking at Margaret’s sense of self-importance so I could watch her insecurities flow out.
There was no response to my apology. Instead they chose to carry on staring at the opaque screen like they were totally absorbed in their favorite sitcom. I gingerly sat down next to Jesse on the couch, avoiding the dark and malodorous stain on the side. It was on a part that would have been known as “Sheldon’s spot” if we were watching The Big Bang Theory. It made me suddenly wish we had something to entertain ourselves with. The pseudo-apocalypse turned us into telly addicts and that plasma screen made me feel like I was going through withdrawal. We didn’t have much else to do when we were trapped inside our homes waiting out the microbe invasion. The government helped that addiction along by making sure we had a steady supply of syndicated shows to soothe our nerves. It also managed to sneak in a lot of propaganda under the guise of information to show us how to stay alive. They must have been monitoring our habits because they soon dropped the programs we could no longer bear to watch. No one seemed interested in the shows that made hay out of homicide like The Killing or CSI. There were too many dead in real life, too many loved ones lost, so who cared about some fictional character that died at the hands of a jealous lover or jilted drug baron? That was just one or two people dead. Big deal. We had hundreds of thousands of stiffs walking around trying to get us to join them. There was no mystery to solve in how they died. They got infected with those Vostok Parasites through tainted water or the bite of the Infected dead and they were gone. Case closed.
There were still enough people who wanted those shallow Desperate Housewives shows to remind them of how good they thought life used to be before The Lost Day. Those programs were now nostalgia pieces. They made people think that the years before we lost two-thirds of the population were the good old days. And if you were young enough, you could tell yourself that you would have enjoyed the same life as those people on TV if The Lost Day never happened. Well, the same life minus the drug use, murder, cheating, stealing, and bullying that went on in those days…and keeps going on today.
The rest of us used TV as a distraction instead of a reminder of how things used to be. I think my family fell into that category. We regressed into little kids wanting to get our minds off our environment. We watched fun things like SpongeBob or Parks and Rec, anything that would make us stop thinking and start laughing. I remember there were a few weak attempts to make sitcoms and shows for the world we live in now, like when MTV tried to revive The Real World, but no one really left the safety of the house/apartment and it got boring really fast. There were no more programs that pushed the envelope, no more shows that surprised us with fresh ideas. All that was left to watch was for entertainment or reminiscence.
I didn’t see a remote lying around, so I got up to try my luck with the TV. I told myself it was for Danny’s sake. I was certain a bit of Spongebob would cheer him up and get his mind off his leg. But as soon as I reached the TV, I heard Margaret say, “Don’t bother.”
“Yeah, we already tried that,” added Jesse.
And with that came two commotions from the kitchen, separate and yet related.
“There are flies coming out of Danny’s leg!”
“There’s an electric fence around us! We’re trapped!”
I wanted to find whoever said, “It can’t get worse than this,” and smack them silly.
The three of us ran back in the kitchen and sure enough, there were flies crawling out of the rancid holes in Danny’s leg. Jesse covered her eyes and fled the room. Mouse turned around and dry heaved into the sink. Nemesis’s face drained of blood. I looked away and out the kitchen window. There in the distance stood nightmare number two: a red laser fence shining out between the houses.
Dan immediately started to pull the flies out of his son’s legs by their wings but froze when Margaret yelled, “Stop! Leave them alone. We need those flies!”
“What on earth would we need flies for?” barked Nemesis. “We’ll never be that hungry.”
“They could be the answer to Danny’s gangrene problem. The flies will lay maggots…”
“Stop it. Just stop it,” said Nemesis, but the rest of us were listening intently.
“Go on,” urged Dan.
“The maggots from a blow fly will eat necrotic tissue and leave the healthy tissue. They’ve been known to fix a wound in as little as a day or two. Why didn’t I think of this earlier? The Mayans used them, the Aboriginal tribes in Australia used them, even Napoleon’s surgeon used maggots during France’s Egyptian campaign while they were in Syria…”
“Focus, Margaret, focus. How do we know those are Blow Flies?”
“That’s the kind of fly that target the dead. They must have come with the corpses.”
“That explains why the well-rotted corpses found us,” Houston said to himself. “I’m starting to buy into your mutualism theory.”
“Great. That’s just…great. I mean seriously, maggots? What’s next? Termites for my splinters?” That was one of the things I loved about Nemesis. Her wit made me want to laugh at the most inappropriate times.
“It makes sense,” added Ghost. “They want to keep us fresh for as long as possible. Danny’s no use to them if he’s decomposing before he’s dead.”
“But where are the maggots?” Houston asked. “I thought flies multiplied faster than rabbits.”
I expected Dan to protest about having this discussion around his son, but he didn’t. Danny had fallen asleep in his arms and was immune to our conversation. Something about flies pricked at my memory and I realized I might know as much as Margaret when it came to cadavers and insects. “Blowflies do not breed until the temperature goes about fifty degrees Fahrenheit,” I said with confidence. My mind was picking up the pieces of research I had done for Notes From a Necrophobe. I didn’t think I’d ever have to use that research again.
“Well I guess it’s a good thing we found somewhere nice and toasty to breed bugs in living flesh,” said Nemesis sarcastically.
“Will they breed faster if it’s warmer?” asked Dan hopefully. “We should turn the heat up, maybe even get Danny into the bathroom and run the shower hot as it will go.”
“Sure, you should do that,” agreed Nemesis. “Whatever will get those filthy buggers in the mood.” Dan scooped Danny up in his arms and carried him upstairs. We heard the sound of a shower and moved on to the next crisis.
Mouse surprised us by speaking up first. “Is there a hospital around here, Ghost?”
He shook his head no.
“Yeah, I thought so. Even if there was, we wouldn’t be able to get out of here.”
“Why would someone want to trap us here?” I asked.
“Maybe they’re not trying to keep us in. I think Dan was right—this was supposed to be one of those new compounds for survivors, but the survivors never came. The fence probably comes on automatically at night.” I knew Houston was trying to comfort us, but by the looks on our faces, nobody was buying it. “Anyway, who’s up for a split-up-and-search-the-perimeter party?”
We all were because we were willing to do anything to get away from decomposing Danny. We left Jesse behind with strict instructions to lock up and not let anyone in until we gave the “Dumb Luck Club” password. Margaret and Mouse walked in the direction we came from so Margaret could figure out how we missed the fence in the first place. Ghost and I headed for the back of the complex to see if there was another way out. And of course, Houston walked off with Nemesis to check for any weaknesses along the fence between the front and the back of the neighborhood. More likely he walked off with Nemesis so he could have a chance to tell her how he really felt about her.
I was up for a little passion myself. “Hey, Ghost,” I said suggestively. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and finally find a house with heat and food.”
He took my hand in his and looked into my eyes. “That would be perfect. We could have a romantic dinner…” but before he could complete that thought, I unconsciously blurted out “…by the glow of our cellphones!” I don’t know what got into me. “Sorry,” I said. “But I really do miss my phone. And my tablet. And television. I miss technology, period.”
“I don’t. Technology replaced common sense and bred a whole generation of stupid,” said Ghost, totally breaking the mood. “You sound just like your grandfather,” was all I could reply. It occurred to me that in another life, a life where the invasion never happened, Ghost would have been a crackpot hipster.
I wish I could say we found something exciting that would have saved the day like a break in the barrier or an on-site clinic, but nothing came of our search. It was just more and more of those cookie-cutter houses, the same five styles repeated, all surrounded by that menacingly glowing red fence. The dwellings were dark and so were the woods and meadows beyond the boundary. I assumed the houses were the same on the inside as they were on the outside: cold, dark, and empty of anything that could keep us alive. How long would it take us to starve? And if Margaret’s theory about the maggots proved wrong, would Danny be the first to die? It occurred to me that if those flies came from the corpses we left behind, then they carried even more of those Vostok microorganisms. Would there be any room left in Danny for his human side if he ended up with more Parasites than the rest of us?
We all returned to the house about the same time and were met by a distraught and tearful Jesse. “We lost all our heat!” she wailed. “The water won’t get hot either!” She didn’t need to say anything because it was obviously colder inside the house than outside. It was as if the air-conditioning had been turned on. The lights were still running so it couldn’t be down to a power cut.
We went inside to an even more tearful Dan. Danny lay in his lap in the living room, his eyes half open and somewhat focused on the TV. Daniel had laid a blanket over him and had another around his shoulders to deal with the cold, but it didn’t stop either one of them from shivering. He looked up with swollen red-rimmed eyes and whispered, “If it stays cold, the flies won’t breed. If it stays cold, Danny won’t live.” He bowed his head and let the tears fall onto his son’s blanket. Danny didn’t react; he was too absorbed with what was on TV.
We no longer had heat or hot water, but we did have SpongeBob.