THE CONTAGIOUS
© Copyright 2010 James Andrew Wilson
1
In the backseat, the boy with a blue goatee said, “I’m flat, black, and hard.” He ran his tongue up the side of a popsicle. “What am I?”
Will Carver glanced at the blue-bearded boy in the rearview mirror. Bradley didn’t just resemble him with his chestnut hair and midnight blue eyes—he was the undeniable duplication of him. His son was a walking, talking, five-year-old version of himself.
Will didn’t have to ponder the answer to Bradley’s riddle, but he waited a few seconds before saying, “The road.”
Bradley’s eyebrows popped. “How did you know?”
“The aliens told me what you were thinking.”
“No they didn’t,” Bradley protested, sucking on his popsicle.
“Okay,” Will admitted. “You’re right. It wasn’t the aliens. I used my mind-reading superpowers.”
“Dad,” Bradley groaned.
“Tell him, Lauren.” Will looked at his wife in the passenger seat. She was hunched over her foot, applying a second coat of purple nail polish to her big right toe. “Tell Bradley about my superpowers.”
Bradley chimed in, “Dad doesn’t have any superpowers. Right, Mom?”
Lauren smiled but remained focused on her feet. “Of course he does, Sweetie. Your father has all sorts of amazing abilities.” She pulled her eyes from her toes and winked at Will.
His lips tugged into a smile as memories of last night glowed in his mind. His chaotic race to keep up with med school and waiting tables at Italiano’s had made it difficult for him and Lauren to have much of a romance lately. But last night had been glorious.
They had planned this weekend camping trip two months ago. A much needed escape and time for Daddy to play with Bradley and Jacob, their two-year-old in the car seat behind him. And hopefully a few more glorious hours of uninterrupted time together for him and Lauren.
“Like what?” Bradley asked.
Will pulled into the left lane to pass a semi truck creeping up the hill. “Lots of them,” he said, taking a bite from his Big Mac.
His mind kept trying to wander back to his schoolbooks. The WSU extension campus in Spokane offered first year classes for med school students, which allowed them to stay in their home city. Next year they would be moving to Seattle where he would continue classes at UW Medicine.
It wasn’t the fantasy of a big paycheck or status that invoked in him the desire to become a doctor. He wanted to be a doctor because he liked helping people. He only wished that there was another way to achieve that position without bringing so much separation and stress to his family.
Pushing thoughts of school aside, he brought himself back to the here and now. He was speeding east on I-90 toward the beautiful Idaho wilderness, driving his 1987 Subaru, amazing wife in the passenger seat, two gorgeous children in the back, and a weekend on the Coeur d’ Alene River without schoolbooks or low-tipping Sunday afternoon patrons to wait on.
Yes. This is what life was about. This is what really mattered.
“Can you climb walls like Spider-Man?” Bradley asked.
“Spider-Man?” Will passed the semi and shifted the car back into the right lane. “Your dad is way cooler than Spider-Man.”
“Can you breathe underwater like Aquaman?”
“Come on, breathe underwater?” Will shrugged. “Piece of cake.”
“Okay,” Bradley said, voice escalating with excitement. “Then can you fly, and shoot fire out of your eyes, and catch bullets like Superman?”
“Superman doesn’t even come close to your dad.”
“Then who are you?” Bradley tried to maneuver the last piece of the popsicle from the stick to his mouth, but it dropped into his lap. He picked up the blue blob and put it on his tongue. “Batman?”
Will cleared his throat and spoke in a deep voice. “Yes, Son. I am the Batman.”
Jacob squealed a laugh and threw something at Will’s head. Lauren bent back and said, “Jacob! Don’t throw things.”
Bradley sighed loudly. “But I thought you said you had superpowers.”
Will kept his Batman voice on. “I do. Lots of them.”
“Dad, Batman doesn’t have any superpowers.”
“So?”
“You can’t be Batman if you have superpowers.”
Lauren put the cap on her nail polish. “He’s right, Honey. Sorry, but you have too many superpowers to be Batman.”
“Okay, okay. So I’m not Batman. I’m someone way better than that. I’m Daddyman.”
“What?” Bradley scrunched his face as a drop of blue dribbled off of his chin.
“Daddyman!” Will said. “Haven’t you heard of him?”
“Nope.”
“You haven’t heard of Daddyman? Well, Daddyman is the best superhero of all. He can play with you, brush teeth with you, read bedtime stories to you. He has all sorts of amazing superpowers.”
“Those aren’t superpowers, Dad.”
“Maybe they aren’t,” Will said. “But I love you, Bradley. And love is the strongest superpower of all.”
He connected with his son’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Bradley blinked, gears grinding inside of his five-year-old mind. Then he smiled. “I love you too, Daddy.”
Lauren reached over and softly touched his arm.
He didn’t deserve them, he thought. By human standards he was a good guy, maybe great to some, but no amount of greatness could deserve the beauty and commitment of Lauren, or the admiration and love of his two beautiful sons.
He vowed that he would never take them for granted. Life was just too cruel and too short to expect tomorrow.
The van in front of them was going fifteen under. Will flicked on his blinker and moved the car into the left lane.
Lauren’s hand tightened around his arm. “Will, watch out!”
He looked out his left window in time to see the front wheels of the semi truck he’d passed only minutes ago. He tried to yank the steering wheel to the right, but the Subaru was already drifting underneath the bed of the truck.
Panic electrocuted his heart. His mind raced for solutions and found none.
The top of the Subaru crunched as the bottom of the semi truck scraped through it.
Jacob and Bradley screamed.
One second.
Will saw the rear wheels of the semi truck racing toward their now-sideways car. He reached out for Lauren and ducked. The hood and back portion of the car deflated as the semi rolled up and over the top of them.
Lauren screamed his name.
His boys cried in agony as the weight of the wheels squished their little bodies.
Terror exploded across his nerves. Jacob! Bradley! Were they dead?
Two seconds.
Lauren.
The windshield shattered, shooting pieces of glass inward. They implanted themselves into Lauren’s face and throat. Her screaming faltered.
Three seconds.
The car tipped and flipped upside down. Will’s head rammed into the ceiling, into the ground. Spinning. The world flashing around outside.
Four.
His wife silent beside him, bleeding, turning pale.
Bradley, blue-chinned, mangled and lifeless in the back. Jacob, his brother beside him, no longer crying. No longer.
The concrete wall splitting the freeway in half filled his view.
Five.
Crash.
He felt his legs shatter. Pain raced across his face. A hot agony burned in his stomach. In his heart.
Six.
Darkness consumed Will Carver.
2
The man rolled off of her, stood from the bed, and walked into the bathroom. Kate Ross remained under the covers, naked, cold. Crying.
Through tears, she saw the man flick on the light bulb in the bathroom and head for the toilet.
She stared at the ceiling, moving her eyes from the yellow cauliflower-shaped stain to the strip of curled paint hanging from the drywall. The sounds of midnight Los Angeles moaned through the bent blinds half-concealing the fourth-story window of their apartment.
Their apartment: the three tiny spaces called rooms that she lived in with the man relieving himself in the bathroom.
She twirled the plain gold band wrapped around the finger on her left hand. That circular piece of metal brought no joy to the process of consummation that David Ross demanded from her three or four times a week. It never had and never could.
David turned off the bathroom light, and darkness returned to the room. Lights from the city beyond slid through the blinds. Kate could see his silhouette walk across the carpet and pick up a dark bottle from the nightstand on his side. He tilted it into his mouth and swallowed twice.
She could almost see his face in the dark. He didn’t deserve that mysterious allure hidden behind boyish charm. A face that lied of steady character and a commitment to love. A face that had taken her away from the life she used to live, the life that she could never return to, no matter how badly she wanted to.
“You awake?” David asked.
Still crying, she rolled over so that her back was to him and didn’t answer.
“Hey,” he said, nudging her in the bottom. “What’s your problem?”
Just go to sleep. Please, go to sleep.
“You pregnant again?”
She clenched her eyes, but it couldn’t stop the tears from squeezing through. If only she was pregnant again. It would give her an excuse to run back to her parents. To run away from David.
“No,” she whispered.
“Better not be.”
“Like it’s my fault.” The words came out louder than she intended.
“What?” he hissed.
She just shivered.
“What did you say?” He grabbed her shoulder and yanked her onto her back.
Perhaps the outline from the lights outside was morphing reality, but David appeared wider and more muscular than even his well-formed body could boast. The stench of beer was strong on his person.
“You got a problem with this?”
She didn’t know exactly what he was referring to by this. Him? Their marriage? Their love-life? Yes, she had a problem with all three. “No,” she said.
“Then why are you crying?”
Because it feels like rape.
“Hey, you answer me. What’s your problem?”
She swallowed. “We . . . you don’t—”
“What?” he demanded, leaning forward.
Kate wanted to stop the tears leaking from her eyes, wanted to appear strong—but they continued to spill down her cheeks. “You don’t like me.”
She imagined that he was blinking in the darkness, probably confused. Maybe he was smiling. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Kate shrugged her shoulders. “Do you?”
“That doesn’t matter. I married you, didn’t I?”
“But you don’t . . .”
“What? Like you?” He pulled another sip from the bottle to wet his throat. “You do the job good enough.”
She shuddered. “Is that all I am?” Stop it. Stop saying what you feel. It’s dangerous.
“What are you talking about?” David asked, an edge to his tone.
“That’s all I am to you. Just a body between the sheets. You don’t love me. You don’t even like me. You only married me because of the baby.”
David pointed a finger at her face. “Shut up about that! I don’t want to hear about that stupid baby.”
Kate sat up, concealing herself with the blanket. “I don’t know why I ever went with you. You never cared about me. All you cared about was getting my clothes off.”
David lurched forward and grabbed her wrists. He slammed her against the headboard. “So what if I did? You shut up!”
“Get off of me.” Kate tried to free her wrists.
“It’s your fault,” David said.
“What’s my fault? You lied to me.”
“You should have taken the pill like a good girl. Then you wouldn’t have made that worthless baby.”
“We made that baby,” she said, and the tears came even harder. “And you made me kill it.”
He spit into her eyes. It stung, but she forced herself to keep them open so she could stare into his face. “You don’t love me at all, do you?”
David pursed his lips and shook his head. “I never have. You were supposed to be easy. But then you wanted to keep that stupid baby!”
Kate thrashed her arms and screamed, “Get off of me!”
David let go of her wrist and punched her in the forehead with enough force to blacken her vision for a moment. She recoiled. He pulled back as well.
He’d never hit her before. She couldn’t count how many nights he had abused her verbally, but he’d never reached out a hand and actually struck her.
She stared at him now, crouched on the bed, glaring at her but also seeming surprised at his own outburst. His hand was still curled into a fist.
Kate dropped her hand from her forehead. “You hit me.”
David exhaled breaths of air through his nostrils. “You pathetic little girl.” Then he lashed out and punched her again.
This time she reacted, blocking his punch and slapping the side of his face as hard as she could. He swore, clutched his face, and crawled off of the bed. He continued to press a hand against his cheek as he paced the carpet, cursing.
Kate touched her forehead and found a small slit in the skin.
“What did you do?” David asked, pulling his hand away and staring at it. He cried out in pain.
Kate hadn’t hit him that hard. But even in the darkness, she could see that there was something wrong with his cheek. It looked . . . burnt?
David touched his cheek and winced. “Kate?” She’d never heard such desperation, such utter fear in his voice before. He started to shake, then fell forward onto the mattress.
“David?” She reached out and touched his shoulder. His trembling intensified. He rolled off the bed and onto the floor. “David!”
He was convulsing down there.
What was going on?
Kate jumped up and turned on the bedside lamp. David was shaking all over the floor, eyes pulled back into his head, mouth foaming white and red. She screamed when she looked at his cheek. The skin was shriveled, charred, disfigured—like the skin of someone who has suffered from a serious burn.
The burn was in the shape of a hand.
3
There was a plastic cone covering his mouth and pumping oxygen into his lungs. Will realized this before opening his eyes to see a white ceiling aglow with lights and instruments. His arms and legs were strapped to a board. Faces hidden behind white masks were bending over him.
Lauren. Lauren!
Where was she? Was she alive? He strained to say her name but a burst of pain plugged the word in his throat.
There was something wrong with his body. He couldn’t feel or move either of his legs. His face and neck stung with fire. He was thirsty. His stomach was sore.
Chatter filled his ears, and he reached with his mind to understand it.
“BP: one hundred over sixty. Thready pulse. Patient is—”
He saw the ceiling of the Subaru deflating like a balloon, imploding and crushing Bradley and Jacob in the back seat. Their screams filled his ears. His boys were dead.
No! They were alive. They had to be alive. They couldn’t be dead.
“Fractures in both legs. Glass fragments imbedded in the face and neck—”
Lauren crawled across the bed and kissed him. She wrapped her arm around his head and curled a finger through his hair. “You’re my hard working man.” There was a taste of chocolate on her lips.
Low blood pressure. Pain in his stomach. Irregular pulse. He knew what this meant. He should know what it meant. His mind couldn’t piece together all the variables he was learning in med school.
Jacob peeked out from behind the couch and grinned. The toddler looked around, searching for Daddy. Will jumped out from the corner. Jacob squealed and turned to run. Will rushed over and tackled him to the ground, tickling him and eliciting bursts of laughter that filled the house.
“Jacob!” It hurt to voice the name. Will tried to raise an arm.
One of the faces behind a white mask leaned closer. “Sir, you need to hold still.” A woman’s voice.
“Will you love me forever?” The candlelight made her look like a painting. Her hair was draped over a bare shoulder, and she was leaning over him, whispering. “Even when I grow old, will you still love me?”
Yes. Forever.
“His BP is dropping.”
“Where do the stars come from?” Bradley asked, curling into Will’s arms as they swung back and forth on the swing. “Why are there so many of them?”
There aren’t any stars out tonight. It’s so dark.
“Pulse: one-forty.”
“We’re losing him.”
“What if we won a million dollars?” she asked as they stared at the ceiling, holding each other in the night. “What would you do with it?”
Marry you and hold you forever.
“I would buy an old house out in the country,” his wife said. “A fixer-upper with plenty of room for the boys to play. You could focus on finishing med school without having to be a waiter. We could raise a few horses and all go riding when the boys were old enough. Have a garden and grow our own vegetables. Someplace away from the city and all the noise. A quiet place where we could just enjoy life. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
That would be nice. As long as we were together, I would be happy.
Then she was leaning over him and kissing him again. He pulled her body close and savored her warmth. The candlelight wavered, blinked, then died, and darkness claimed the room. Their bodies moved together in the night and for a moment they were in that house in the country, two lovers, together without worry of separation, one, together. Forever.
Lauren screamed his name. The semi truck raced overhead, and the windshield shattered. Her face, her smooth and beautiful face, was suddenly mangled as spikes and triangles of glass stuck into it. Tears fell from her green eyes.
“You can do this, Will.” She was kneeling in front of him. “I know this is hard, and you have a lot on your plate. But I believe in you.”
She pulled up his chin and looked into his face.
“You’ve never failed us before. You work so hard for us. You’re our hero, Will. You’re my hero. I love you. Will, I love you.”
But you’re dead. I couldn’t save you.
The white ceiling exploded into view again. The faces were still there, watching him.
A paramedic readjusted his IV. Someone else was talking into a radio. “Possible internal injuries—”
“Lauren!” Will screamed through the plastic mask coving his mouth. “Lauren!”
“Sir, please hold still.”
He looked at the woman speaking to him. “My wife!” he cried. “Where’s my wife? Is my wife okay?”
“Sir, hold still.”
“No! Where’s Lauren? Where’s my wife?” His lip trembled. Tears rolled over his cheeks.
“Will you love me forever?”
Yes. Forever.
The bed started moving. The people with masks took him out of the white box and he saw a blue sky dotted with clouds. Then a grey sky. Then another white ceiling and rectangles of lights that flashed by.
Then Lauren, smiling at him, crying at him. Pieces of glass stuck in her face. And death.
4
David was thrashing back and forth, convulsing, and turning pale. Her husband was becoming a ghost.
Kate picked the cell phone off the dresser and flipped it open. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.
David moaned something and his convulsing slowed. His eyes closed and he rolled his head back and forth, moaning, moaning.
Tears flooded her eyes as Kate pushed the number nine on the cell phone. The display was dark. She pushed the power button. The display remained dark.
Where was the charger?
In David’s car.
She almost ran out the door before remembering that she was naked. Returning to the bedroom, she yanked her jeans off the floor and crammed a foot into them.
David was still shaking his head back forth and moaning. The sight of the burnt handprint in his cheek sent shivers through her bones.
“Hold on, David.” She zipped up the jeans and slid the button through the slit. Her black tank top was hanging over the foot of the bed. She curled it over her head as she rushed through the living room and unchained the door.
The cell phone!
Kate ran back to the bedroom and swiped the phone off of the dresser. She glanced at David. He wasn’t moving. His skin was pale. Too pale.
She crashed through the front door of the apartment and raced down the stairwell. A man glared at her when she ran out onto the sidewalk in front of him, searching for David’s car.
“Watch it, lady!”
The red Mazda was down the road, parked between a blue minivan and a black Taurus. Her bare feet slapped against the cement as she ran to the car. Halfway there, she realized that it would be locked. And the keys were still up in the apartment.
David was dying up there!
Maybe he’d left the car unlocked.
David always locked the car.
She tried the door handle anyway. Locked.
She looked around for somebody else with a cell phone. The irritated man at the foot of the stairwell was the only person present on the sidewalk at this late hour. He didn’t look like he would have a cell phone.
Kate ran for the stairs. The man jumped out of her way and sent curses following her up the stairwell.
Her heart wouldn’t slow. It was sending a wave of emotion up her throat and slowing her limbs. What if David died? He didn’t love her. Maybe she didn’t love him, but he was still her husband, and when she’d slapped him something had happened. Something terrible that she couldn’t even begin to understand.
His body was still unmoving on the floor. The burn mark on his cheek looked like a sick joke reserved for bloody horror movies—the types David made her stay up with him to watch.
She found his pants on the floor, but the keys weren’t in the pockets.
She was wasting too much time!
Where did he put the keys? She searched the bedroom quickly, looking in stupid places like under the pillows and in the closet.
Get with it, Kate.
The kitchen counter. The ring of keys was sitting beside a six-pack of beer bottles. Only two bottles were left in the carton. She snatched the keys into her hand and flew down the stairwell again. The irritated man was gone.
She rarely drove the car, so she had to try three different keys before unlocking the Mazda and sliding into the passenger seat. Trash littered the dash and floor, but she spotted the black cord poking out of the lighter jack and plugged the phone into the end of it.
She flipped it open, depressed the power button. Still nothing. Did she have to start the car? Maybe the battery was still too dead to even power on the phone.
“Come on, come on, come on.” She kept pressing the power button. The service providers emblem came to life on the display screen.
“Yes!” Kate started to dial. The phone wasn’t responding. She had to wait for another graphic to load before the background picture and the date and time popped into view. Had David not been dying on the floor upstairs, she might have frowned at the picture of the unknown woman in a bikini on the phone, but she was already pushing the number one for a second time and hitting send.
“9-1-1 emergency.”
“Yes!” Kate said. A teenager passing by on the sidewalk looked at her.
“Ma’am? What is your emergency?”
“It’s my husband—he’s hurt. Something happened. I don’t know—”
“What is your name?”
“Kate.”
“Okay, Kate. Where is your husband now?”
“Our apartment, it’s on—” Her mind went blank.
“Ma’am? What is the address of your husband’s location?”
Kate clenched her eyes. They had only been living in the apartment for four months.
“Ma’am?”
The address came. She told the dispatcher.
“Can you tell me what is wrong with your husband?”
“He—he started convulsing. I think he might be dead.”
“An ambulance is on the way to your apartment right now. Stay with your husband.”
Kate closed the phone. Trembling and crying, she ran back up to the apartment and into the bedroom. David still wasn’t moving. Her first thought was to touch his wrist or neck and search for a pulse, but a glance at the ghastly handprint in his cheek made her wary of touching his skin at all.
It didn’t make sense, this bizarre and gruesome injury from her slapping him. It was as if her hand had somehow burned a hole in David’s cheek, but that didn’t account for the convulsing that followed, or the fact that Kate really hadn’t hit him very hard.
She bent down to her knees and crawled beside him, careful to keep her hands away from his arm. Leaning her ear over his mouth, she listened for breath, but heard nothing.
David was dead.