Plagues

Chapter 9

I found inactivity after school was not helping my situation. Being alone with my thoughts, I’d just wrench myself up with frustration and then finally snap on my pillows and bed. Needless to say, studying had become impossible. My parents wouldn’t let me out of the house until I had done a sufficient amount of studying. I’d study for two hours then my mind would have had enough and I’d report in. But they’d guilt me back into continuing to study. It should’ve been easy to slip out with them being gone so much, but they had mastered the art of coming and going at unpredictable times. But as the night before my exam crept up ever closer, stress managed to satisfy my need for activity. The combination of the importance of the final exams of the semester, as well as the looming of parents, kept my mind quite occupied.

Thursday was my first exam, the class Darwin and I have together second period. He was there but he made a point, to me it seemed, of not sitting near me. Maybe I was just being paranoid.

I finished first and it was only 11:30 when I left. I decided to take a trip down to Cherry Beach. I don’t know if I was hoping to run into Darwin, or just enjoyed the apocalyptic isolation the abandoned area offered. The bus came into the area of Lakeshore and Leslie and my heart and stomach evaporated when I saw the huge congregation of police and BIOTRANS vehicles, and numerous officers combing their way down to the beach. I stayed on the bus right to the subway. Instead of going home, I went uptown to get tea.

I had both hands clutching the large, round mug and sipped cautiously, tensely watching everyone around me. No one looked at me. They had no reason to look at me, but I felt like they knew about the activity going on at Cherry Beach. I knew that to them it was just a news story, but to me, as any person who has done wrong in the eye of the law would feel, I imagined, I felt like every eye was on me and my name, face, or ythe memory of the sound of my voice was in every mind. My only peace of mind came from knowing the shotguns would not be found in my room.

The guilt surged in on the thought as Leo had not only saved my life, but taught me most everything I know; from how to survive those final days of the outbreak and civilization’s eerie and unjust reconstruction, as well as how to become top of my class in maniac defense and disposal, graduating with honours in Defense and Tactics. If he was arrested, I don’t know how I’d look myself in the eye and be satisfied with how far I've come. I took another sip of tea. I exhaled slowly into the fading steam. I imagined my own breath mixing with and contaminating the serenity of the tea’s warmth.

My phone rang in my pocket, drawing every eye to me. I hopped up out of my seat and darted outside before answering. I checked the screen. It was Darwin. My heartbeat turned to the fast trot of a galloping stallion.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hey.”

“Cherry Beach is out,” I said.

“I know.”

A collective sigh of defeat emanated from us both.

“We’ve got a lot of heat, man,” I said, “but we need to stick together. You need to apologize to Mikaela.”

“No.”

“No? What the hell do you mean no?”

“If we stay too close, they’ll figure us out. It’s why we’ve got heat in the first place.”

“Darwin, c’mon.”

“Look, I’m not calling to discuss this. Remember Lira?”

“Yeah. What about her?”

“Well, I did some digging into Rochester’s online public record to find her. She existed, and was admitted to a hospital, after falling gravely ill and collapsing at work. So I called a few hospitals in the area until I found the one she had been admitted to. I asked about her and why she was admitted. The only told me it was because of a serious infection and she was quarantined. She was discharged, as the records and the secretary put it, December 14th, 2046, a week before we found her.”

“Well it was obvious she was sick.”

“So would you then agree that those two guys on the beach looked like her?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then from what I’ve found out, you’d agree there’s probably more.”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to L.A.?”

“What?”

“The news was all over L.A. Now when was the last time you heard anything?”

“So? Trends come and go.”

“What about trends that are kept from rising to the surface?”

“What?”

“I’ve been doing some research on my time off and there have been several blacked out cases of infected attacks on mass that were leaked on the internet. Most have been in low income areas. All the witnesses talked to, as well as the few survivors, say these infected were swift, and strong. A few even said some talked.”

“But no one mentioned maniacs did they.”

“Not one report said anything specifically about maniacs.”

“Shit.” I sighed and threw a glance over my shoulder.

“We need to get back to Cherry Beach, Al,” he said.

“We can’t right now, but I’ve got the next best thing. Queen Street, east of Kingston Road comes down very close to the lake. Everything passed there, south of Kingston, is all crack houses and shanties; it’s basically a slum. If these attacks really are most common in poor areas, we’ll find something.”

“Good call. Let’s head down tonight. That’s our best bet of seeing action.”

“Okay.”

“Just you and me though, Al. We can’t tell Mikaela, nor should we, for obvious reasons, but also…Kali worries about you and this isn’t meant to be a solo mission.”

I sighed and shook my head, stifling a chuckle. I agreed and continued discussing the plan before my mind could try and over analyze what Darwin meant by “Kali worries about you”.