David Morrell - NightScape

Time blurred. When he regained consciousness, he found himself on a chair in the parlor. Marion was on the couch across from him, a throw rug over her. Her chest rose and fell. She coughed. A plate of stale bread and a pitcher of water were on a side table. Someone found us, Bingaman thought, coughing. Someone came in and helped. But during the next few effort-filled hours, he was forced to realize that he was mistaken, that no one had come, that somehow he had shifted Marion into the parlor, that he had brought the bread and the pitcher of water.

The bread was so old and hard that he had to soak it in the water before he could gently insert it into Marion's mouth and encourage her to eat. He breathed a prayer of thanks when she swallowed. When she coughed, he feared that she would expel the food, but it stayed down, and then he, too, was eating, rinsing a crust of bread down with the unbelievably delicious water.

Again time blurred. It wasn't bread but strawberry jam and a spoon that he now found on the table beside the couch. He remembered having seen the jam in the ice box. Marion was coughing. He was rubbing her fiery brow with a towel that held the last of the ice. He was spooning the jam into her mouth. He was raising a glass to her lips. He was drinking from another glass, feeling his parched mouth and throat seeming to absorb the water.

Darkness. Light.

Darkness again. The cellar. Stumbling. Opening the door to the root cellar. Despite the coolness, sweating. Groping for two jars of Marion's preserves on a shelf. Coughing. Swaying. Stumbling up the cellar steps, reaching the kitchen, squinting from the painful brilliance of blazing sunset, discovering that the preserves he had expended so much effort to get were dill pickles.

Darkness. Light.

Darkness. Light.

Light again. Marion was no longer coughing. Bingaman later concluded that what saved her life was her robust constitution, although when she was alert enough she insisted that he had been the reason she stayed alive. Because of his ministrations, she called them. She told him not to be so modest.

"Hush," he told her lovingly. "Don't waste your strength."

In the reverse, however, he had no doubt that Marion's own ministrations in the initial stage of his illness had been what saved him. The ruthless disease could be attacked only on the basis of its symptoms. After that, the patient would live or die strictly on the basis of his or her own resources, and now that Bingaman had endured the intimate experience of the influenza's devastating power, he marveled that anyone had the strength to resist it.

Perhaps strength was not the determining factor. Perhaps it was luck. Or Fate. Or God's will. But if the latter was indeed the case, God certainly must have turned against a great many people. To a Presbyterian such as Bingaman, who believed in a contract that linked hard work and prosperity with salvation, the notion that the influenza might be God's display of worldwide disapproval was disquieting. Surely, even taking the war into account, the world couldn't be that bad a place. Or was the so-called world war, with its machine guns and tear gas, chlorine gas, phosgene gas, mustard gas, the mounting horrors, the millions of needless casualties, in fact the problem?

But in that case, did it make sense for God in turn to inflict millions of other casualties?

" Dr. Bingaman." The nurse stepped back in fear, her face suddenly drained of color, almost as white as her uniform. "It can't be!"

"What on earth?"

"I was told you were dead!"

"Dead?" Bingaman took another step toward the nurse in the hospital corridor.

She almost backed away. "After Dr. Powell died and Dr. Talbot, I-"

"Wait a second. Dr. Powell is dead?"

"Yes, and Dr. Talbot and – "

"Dead." Shock overwhelmed him. Dizzy, he feared that he was having a relapse and placed a hand against the wall to steady himself. He took a deep breath, repressed a cough, and studied her. "What made you think I was dead?"

"That's what I was told!"

"Who told you?"

"A lot of people. I don't know. I don't remember. It's been so terrible. So many people have gotten sick. So many people have died. I can't remember who's alive and who isn't. I can't remember when I slept last or when.

Bingaman's fatigue and his preoccupation when he entered the hospital had prevented him from realizing how exhausted the nurse looked. "Sit down," he said, realizing something else – the reason no one had come to his house to find out if he needed help. Why would anyone have bothered if everyone thought I was dead? And there must be a lot of people who have died.

"You need to go home," Bingaman said. "Get some food. Rest."

"I can't. So many patients. I can't keep the living straight from the dying. They keep going out and others come in. There's so much to do. I…"

"It's all right. I'm giving you permission. Go home. I'll speak to Elizabeth." He referred to the head of the nursing staff. "I'm sure she'll agree."

"You can't."

"What?"

"Speak to her."

"I don't understand."

"Elizabeth's dead."

He found himself speechless, staring at her, horrified by the thought of being told that whoever else he referred to would also be dead. So much had happened so quickly. Stretcher bearers passed him, carrying the corpse of Mayor Halloway.

A further horrifying thought occurred to him. "How long?" he managed to ask.

The weary nurse shook her head in confusion.

"What I mean is…" His brow felt warm again. "What day is it?"

Confused, she answered, "Wednesday."

He rubbed his forehead. "What I'm trying to ask is – the date."

"October ninth." The nurse frowned in bewilderment.

"October ninth?" He felt as he had when he'd been struck in the face. He lurched backward.

"Dr. Bingaman, do you feel all right?"

"A month."

"I don't understand."

"The last thing I recall it was early September."

"I still don't-"

"I've lost the rest of September and…A month. I've lost a whole month." Frightened, he tried to explain, to give the nurse a sense of what it was like to spend so many weeks fighting to breathe through congested lungs, all the while enduring a storm-tossed black sea of delirium. He strained to describe the unbelievable thirst, the torture of aching limbs, the suffocating heaviness on his chest.

The disturbed way the nurse looked at him gave him the sense that he was babbling. He didn't care. Because all the time he struggled to account for how he'd lost a month of his life, he realized that if it had happened to him, it must have happened to others. Dear God, he thought, how many others are trapped inside their houses, too weak to answer their phone if they have one, or to respond to someone knocking on their door? When he'd left his house an hour earlier, he'd knocked on the doors of his neighbors to his right and left. No one had answered. He had been troubled by how deserted his elm-lined street looked, a cool breeze blowing leaves that had turned from green to autumnal yellow with amazing rapidity in just a few days – except that he now realized it had been a month. And those neighbors hadn't gone away somewhere. He had a heart-pounding, dreadful certainty that they were inside, helpless or dead.

"Jonas, you look terrible. You've got to rest," Dr. Bennett said. "Go home. Take care of Marion."

"She's doing fine. Others are worse. She insisted I help take care of them."

"But-"

"You and I are the only physicians left in town! People are dying! I can't go home! I'm needed!"

Every church in town had been converted into a hospital. All of them were full. The cemeteries no longer had room for all the corpses. Gravediggers could not keep up the labor of shoveling dirt from fresh pits. Corpses lay in rows in a pasture at the edge of town. Armed sentries were posted to stop animals from eating them, each man wearing a gauze mask and praying that he wouldn't catch the disease from the corpses. Funerals were limited to family members wearing masks, ministers rushing as fast as dignity would allow while they read the prayers for the dead.