IC
PILGRIMAGE
ARISE AND GO
ARISE AND GO
Plague
AND I SAW another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.
Revelation 15:1
* * *
DOCTOR DEIRDRE COOPER
They could kill me just for talking to you about this. You understand that, right? If you break Quarantine, and they find out that you talked to me at any time in the last fucking decade, they’ll take me out and shoot me behind the post office. You realize that. Revelation 15:1
* * *
DOCTOR DEIRDRE COOPER
Okay. The Plague. Jesus Christ. Okay.
So – it’s more than a year ago now, back in 2017. And we start getting our first – reports. It came out of central Africa, like every other epidemic since 1960. Spread like wildfire. Always the same pattern. A weeping sore, red and livid, opens up, usually on your face. It happens suddenly, in a matter of hours. You develop a high fever. You start hallucinating. You have fits. Then you hemorrhage massively, and die. Ten days from first symptoms to death. No exceptions.
But of course, you know that already.
We didn’t know how bad it was until it left the DRC. Democratic Republic of the Congo. You know: jungles, no roads, no health infrastructure. People die of epidemics there all the time. Or they did, anyway. Now I suppose there’s no one left to die. So at the time, we didn’t think much of it.
But then it started jumping around. Cameroon. Then Nigeria. By then we were starting to realize that something was really, really wrong. Cameroon had better roads, and CNN was bringing us news footage of cars, trucks, mopeds lined up bumper to bumper for miles and miles. All stopped. All silent. And blood from the hemorrhaging bodies inside them was covering the asphalt an inch deep for as far as the eye could see, steaming in the African sun.
And then the Plague hit Lagos, and all hell broke loose.
The Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, the WHO – they did their best. They’d seen the footage from Cameroon by then. They knew what was going on. But they still thought this was a viral hemorrhagic fever like ebola. They set up emergency wings, pumped people full of fluids, appealed to the international community for antivirals.
It didn’t work. A week after the Plague hit Lagos, infection rates were at ninety percent. Mortality rates were at a hundred percent. The Red Cross shut down its hospital because all but two of their doctors were dead. Infected stormed the presidential palace in Abuja. The army fled its posts. People gathered in churches and mosques to pray. The churches and mosques turned into lakes of blood.
That was when we first started hearing the phrase “extinction-level event.”
After Lagos, news coverage got fuzzy for a while. The government censored the media. There were legal challenges, but they got bogged down in the federal appeals courts. All we saw was snippets. Cairo was on fire. The army was called out in Mumbai to machine-gun infected. It mutinied, and overthrew the government. The army was called out in Sao Paolo to do the same thing. It didn’t mutiny. The lights on the Eiffel Tower went dark. The Chinese declared a nationwide quarantine. A Russian nuke went off in Kiev.
Always, everywhere: bodies. Mountains of bodies. Millions of bodies. There was not enough space to bury them all. The living burned the dead.
We didn’t know the exact death toll. We could guess.
As far as I know, no one is sure how the Plague came to the US. Hell, no one is sure exactly how it’s transmitted, or how long it can lie dormant, or what its other hosts are. No one is even sure what it is. It doesn’t respond to antibiotics. It doesn’t respond to antivirals. The Pope called it the curse of God, in the last broadcast before Rome went dark. That seems about as sound an explanation as any.
But however it came, it came.
March 12, 2017. We got cases all over the southwest, from LA to Galveston, dozens within days. It was the Plague. Sores, madness, death. Inevitable as the changing seasons.
March 28. FEMA had a plan. The plan involved a nationwide state of emergency, and suspension of civil liberties. All the TV stations went dead. The Internet went down. Radio died last.
April 10. The National Guard was deployed to Bloomdale. They closed down the roads and started rationing food. We couldn’t leave town limits; the soldiers set up the Cordon around town, a system of searchlights and machine-gun posts. We didn’t know what was going on. We had no cases of the Plague. Why were there troops here?
April 12. We heard jet engines overhead, and lots of them. Pat Graves said they were bombers. Then we heard explosions. They sounded like they were coming from downtown Dayton. They continued all after noon. At dusk, the northern sky was red with flame.
April 15. Carly Paxton – you remember Carly? She went to school with your kids – hacked into the Army’s wi-fi network and stole a FEMA report. It said that two-thirds of America was already dead. Carly stole a ham radio and broadcast what she had learned. A lot of people heard it. Her parents were hysterical. They looked everywhere for her.
April 16. Easter, 2017. The National Guard put a noose around Carly Paxton’s neck and strung her up from the flagpole right here in Bloomdale, Ohio. She kicked her legs a lot. She was a long time dying. Her mother rushed a soldier and he shot her in the belly. She was a long time dying too.
I think, for me, that was the day that Quarantine began.
* * *
Quarantine
AND THEY WORSHIPPED the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
Revelation 13:1 – 8
* * *
CAPTAIN PATRICK GRAVES
We have only ever done what we had to do. We aren’t some jackbooted horde. We are the National Guard. We are your friends, your neighbors. Citizen-soldiers. I’ve lived in Bloomdale my whole life. This is my community, and I have only ever done what was necessary to protect it.Revelation 13:1 – 8
* * *
CAPTAIN PATRICK GRAVES
We were the only ones who knew how bad it was, at first, back at the start of April. The governor of Ohio activated us on the fifteenth, and we deployed on the twentieth. They briefed me that there had been a few cases in Cleveland. Then, two days later, they briefed me again. They said that the situation was bad. They wouldn’t say just what that meant, but they told me to be ready to operate autonomously.
Right after that, we were told that we were moving to a decentralized system of quarantine. All National Guard officers were ordered to seal their communities: nobody in, nobody out. That way, even if all levels of government collapsed, the Plague could be stopped at the most local level. If nobody enters or leaves a town, the Plague has no – what did they call it? – no vectors of transmission.
Those were the last orders we ever got. We kept telling people – I’m sorry. We kept telling you that there was nothing on the TV or the radio because of a DHS blackout. Truth is, there’s just nothing on the TV or the radio anymore. No broadcasts. Silence.
That’s part of the quarantine protocol, of course. Total radio silence. So there could be lots of other towns out there just like Bloomdale, following the protocol.
Or we could be all that’s left. All that’s left in the world, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that there’s no word coming in from Columbus anymore, or from Washington. There hasn’t been for more than a year. I have no idea what the world looks like beyond the Bloomdale Cordon.
But it was the knowing that was hardest, I think, much more than the not-knowing. We wanted to pretend that everything was fine. We wanted to convince you that the world could go on like normal. That was why we killed Carly: she was telling people that things couldn’t be normal anymore. We had to kill her. If people listened, if people knew what we knew, everything would fall apart.
It was okay, at first. Kids still had birthday parties at the Putt-Putt. The Methodist Church celebrated four weddings. We had no mass graves in Bloomdale, no crowds hemorrhaging to death in the streets. We had potlucks and high school talent shows instead.
We did our best, is what I’m trying to say. It was doomed; I know that now. But we did our best.
It was November when it all started coming apart. We hadn’t been rationing strictly enough. We figured – I don’t know. Maybe that someone would come on the radio, sooner or later, and tell us that Quarantine was over, and that FEMA would show up with trucks of food and fuel. But the radio just stayed silent. And because of Quarantine, we couldn’t go outside the Cordon to look for food. All we had was the produce from five farms, and what had been in the supermarkets in April.
By Thanksgiving, we were almost out of everything. We had to tighten rationing hard, on everybody, all at once. That was when the Jacksons tried to run, when we had to kill them. Had to. I didn’t know she was pregnant, though; you have to believe me about that.
So we put everyone on cornbread and water. Twelve hundred calories a day. And then winter came, and those blizzards, and there wasn’t enough heating oil, either. People burned their furniture for heat, and then started trying to break Quarantine to find firewood. We did what we had to do. People started to hoard what canned goods remained. We raided houses. I don’t feel bad about Seth Lewis. He shouldn’t have hoarded those green beans. And yes, stringing his body up in front of the high school was my idea. The kids needed to be reminded that Quarantine is the only thing keeping this town alive. Nobody knows what’s out there beyond the Cordon. We could be all that’s left. There’s no room for selfishness, no room for taking chances or challenging authority.
That was – what is it now? – almost six months ago. Easter is this Friday: the first anniversary of Carly’s death.
I know that there’s talk of the writing being on the wall. Whispers, where people think I can’t hear it. Talk that food will run out, that it’s inevitable, that we can’t ration forever and that five farms can’t support twelve thousand people. And yes, I know that Doc Cooper’s stock of antibiotics ran out a long time ago, and that we have been rationing electricity to one day per house per week since February. But I will not tolerate defeatism. We’ll make everybody grow a garden to meet the food deficit. We’ll live without penicillin, and without electricity, and those who complain can swing from the flagpole, because I will do whatever I have to do in order to keep this town alive.
And come what may, we will not. Break. Quarantine. Bloomdale is the whole world now. No matter what’s out there beyond the Cordon, whether the lights are on in New York or we’re the last people on the planet – none of that matters. This is our universe. And you – all of you – would do well to remember it.
* * *
Pilgrimage
AND I HEARD another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
Revelation 18:4
* * *
THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL
You have been chosen.Revelation 18:4
* * *
THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL
No, I can’t tell you for what. No, I can’t tell you what is going to happen. The Big Guy is picky like that. But you have been chosen. You, the Miller family, are of Purpose. With a capital “P.”
You thought you were going crazy at first. I know. It’s okay. A month ago, I began reaching out to each of you individually. I spoke to you when you were at work, when you were in the kitchen, when you were exercising, when you said your prayers before bed. Some of you tried to kill me: you saw a middle-aged Arab in a grey robe inside your home, and you went for the nearest lampstand. Some of you tried to ignore me. Some of you asked questions. You didn’t get many answers, did you?
So most of you thought that you were going nuts. Some of you weren’t even surprised. Who wouldn’t go nuts: locked in a prison camp, subsisting on a thousand calories a day, not knowing if you were the last humans on Earth?
But then, last week, I appeared to all of you – while you were eating Sunday dinner together. And when each of you looked at the others, to see if they could see the strange foreigner as well, you all realized it: you could all see me. And, more importantly, you had all seen me before.
I explained that night, over your pitiful bits of cornbread eaten by candlelight in that tidy suburban dining room, that I was a messenger of the Most High, and that you had been chosen for a special purpose. Some of you believed me. Some didn’t. Some still don’t. But when I told you that it was time to leave Bloomdale, none of you disagreed. You don’t need an angelic visitation to know some basic truths.
Why did I choose you? I didn’t choose you.
I told Tolstoy about happy and unhappy families, you know. He plagiarized it for Anna Karenina – never even cited me! Truth is, I’m not quite sure which type you lot are. No happier than most families, that’s for sure. You have your issues, and plenty of them. But you have some potential in you yet, too.
I told you, that night at the dinner table, that you would have to leave Bloomdale in order to serve the purpose appointed for you from the beginning of all Time. I told you that the road ahead would be full of pain and hardship, confusion and loss. I told you that you would not understand why you had been chosen, or what your purpose even was. I offered no reassurance. I provided no explanation. I told you to prepare: pack a bag, make sure your hiking boots are broken in. You have a lot of walking ahead of you.
I told you that at midnight, when Saturday ends and Sunday begins, you will begin. Long before the crack of dawn on Easter morning, you will arise and go: shoulder your hiking packs, and set out for the Cordon outside of town.
I did not tell you how to slip by the soldiers. Still, you do not know how to escape Quarantine. But the One who gave you this task is with you, and with Him, all things are possible.
Or maybe you’re all just crazy. That’s possible too. You think the Archangel Gabriel is talking to you, after all.
It is almost time. I hope you packed well, for the road ahead is long and arduous. There are blizzards ahead, and sandstorms; wild beasts and wilder men; mysteries to test the mind and horrors to try the soul. A blistered foot can kill as surely as a bullet, a waterborne infection as certainly as a bomb, a shattered soul as utterly as a shattered leg. It is a long journey that you are on, and simply to survive it is your greatest task.
Do you hear that? The church bell strikes. This is the first minute of Easter Morning.
Enough of Bloomdale. Enough of Quarantine. Come out of her, O my Millers. Arise: arise and go.
