Linda Andrews - Extinction Level Event

She inhaled. She hadn’t worn her mask, hadn’t thought about the Rattling Death’s return in hours. She’d just been relieved to be… normal for a while.

And her selfishness could get them all killed.

“Are you alright, dear?” Nani Colombe crunched across the gravel and mesquite pods. With lines streaking her cinnamon-colored face, she reminded Mavis of an ancient apple-head doll—worn, leathery skin, and always wearing a smile, if not her false teeth. They clacked together now; denture adhesive hadn’t been a priority.

“The first years are always the hardest. Getting out of bed, eating, even breathing.” Nani set her hand over her flaccid chest. Veins popped under the loose flesh. “That emptiness of losing both your husband and son within a month of each other can never be filled.”

Mavis sucked on her bottom lip and tried to breathe despite the bands constricting her chest. Jack and Joseph. Her family. Gone. She shook her head to clear the thoughts.

“And then to have the dying time on top of it.” Nani rubbed Mavis’s shoulder. Her black eyes lost focus as if she looked back in time, comparing the eight people in the street to the forty there used to be.

So many vanished in the dying time—such a benign name for the carnage. Yet wasn’t worse to come? One in a thousand would survive. And if her simulations were correct, Nani would be among the first to go. The statistic wore her friend’s name. Medical dependence tagged the eighty-year old’s face. Tears closed Mavis’s throat and stung her eyes. “Oh, God!”

“Here, now.” Nani’s arm crept around Mavis upper back. “Let’s join the others. It’s not good to dwell alone in the house of grief. You begin to talk to yourself and smell.”

Walking toward the others, Mavis smiled and swiped at an escaped tear. “Are you saying I stink, Nani?”

“Who me?” Nani’s teeth clacked before she sucked them back in her mouth.

Ducking under a low branch, Mavis sniffed herself. She detected soap and powder fresh deodorant under the smoke. For a while there, the old woman had her going. “I can’t believe I fell for it.”

“It’s nice to see you smile again.” Nani patted her again. “You should practice it at least once a day. You’d be surprised what it will do to kick the dickens out of the mopes.”

“I’ll remember that.” Turning her head, Mavis kissed Nani’s hair and inhaled the scent of smoke, sunshine and shampoo. She wouldn’t let the Rattling Death’s return get her, get any of them. There must be a way to warn them and she’d find it. What was the point in having a genius IQ if you couldn’t help those you loved?

“Oh.” Nani touched the spot before sniffing and swiping at her eyes. “Now who’s causing trouble?”

Red flames flickered over the last of the yard scraps burning in the center of the street. Two clumps of three people chatted and gestured while Mr. Quartermain and his grandson, Justin, separated the recyclables—plastics, glass and cans. Always cans. Their rations came in ten-pound cans and sacks. The sacks had many uses thanks to Nani’s nimble fingers. The rest, they lugged to the recycling center a mile up the road for disposal. It had taken fewer and fewer trips as the influenza had worn on.

Where it used to take six of them two days of trips, now, one person could do it alone, in one trip.

“There she is!” Mr. Quartermain tossed an empty conditioner bottle into the half-full twenty-gallon tote. His spine creaked as he straightened. “I’d thought you’d fallen into the coffee pot and we’d have to fish you out.”

Dressed in a clean, red Superman tee shirt, Justin stacked the bin of cans on the one containing the plastic. “Can we go home now?”

She ignored his stink eye. The kid had been right to fear the Rattling Death’s return.

Mr. Quartermain shook his head. “In a bit, Justin. Don’t you want to enjoy the company of others?”

“No.” The boy thrust out his peach-fuzz covered chin. “I’d rather be home. You should be at home too, Grandpa. The smoke isn’t good for your COPD.”

Red surged into Mr. Quartermain’s cheeks. “Those eucalyptus branches that Nani Colombe has us burn are helping open up my airways just fine.” He coughed into a red and white handkerchief.

Mavis’s mouth opened. He actually did sound better than he had last night. Could smoke actually help?

Nani shuffled forward. “Infusing hot water with the leaves will help more. Just be sure to use a towel to tent the vapors, so they don’t escape.”

Of course! Mavis resisted the urge to smack her forehead. The oils could open the airways. Not that it provided a permanent fix, but it would help until his medicines arrived. Time ticked on her heart. Maybe some could last longer than their medicines. “I have some vapor rub. Probably better than inhaling the smoke to get the essential oils.”

“That would work, too.” Nani’s false teeth bulged against her lips.

Li Hao bent over the bin of glass and pulled out the two bottles. His thick, black hair hid his brown eyes. The middle-aged Asian was so slight; he could fold himself inside the tote and disappear. The loss of his wife and three children hung in the rings under his eyes. “I’ll help take these to the recycling center, and then we’ll harvest some of those eucalyptus leaves for your grandfather and Nani.”

“Wait!” Mavis raised her hand and everyone’s attention turned to her. The warning of the impending outbreak stuck in her throat. Scanning their faces, alit with hope and haggard with grief, she knew. They wouldn’t believe her. They didn’t want to. She raked her hand through her hair. Their physiological survival depended on the promise of normal.

And without a healthy will, the body would die. The high suicide rate proved that.

“Does anyone need anything?” She stuffed her fists in her pockets. God, that was so inadequate. Yet, what else could she say? Nothing, not until the dying started again.

Metal rattled when Justin lifted the can bin. Hefting it to his shoulder, he rolled his eyes and stalked across the cul-de-sac to his bicycle.

Li tossed the glass bottles into the plastic bin. His smile strained to make forays into his cheeks. “A steak would be nice.”

“Or hamburgers.” Malak Altair stopped leaning on the broom in his hands and swept a few stray leaves toward the glowing fire.

“Or anything that doesn’t come out of a can and taste like tin.” His wife Jasmine separated from two other women and pushed her wide broom. In their mid-thirties, the couple was the youngest of the group besides Sunnie and Justin. And the newest to the neighborhood.

Being immigrants, they had feared leaving their house when the pandemic hit. God knew the televangelists had blamed them, gays, women’s rights and everyone else who dared think for themselves. It had taken a month to coax them out of the house. A couple more months to earn their trust. Now they belonged as if they’d always been.

Justin dropped his bin into the modified child trailer attached to the back of his black mountain bike. Cans clattered to the ground and the plastic tenting quivered. “Mrs. Spanner already had her burger yesterday.”

With fresh tomato and beef. Mavis’s mouth watered at the memory. There was definitely something to be said about fresh meat and vegetables. And it didn’t exactly make her eager to throw together the soy beef stew she’d planned to solar cook in her backyard for dinner.

Twin sexagenarians, Rhea and Pearl Signey shuffled forward, shoulder to shoulder. Their velour sweat suits matched in style but Rhea always wore some shade of green and Pearl always wore white. The color coding helped to distinguish the two as they both had loose jowls, a ready smile, bottle brown hair swept up into a tight bun and identical maps of wrinkles. In addition, they either spoke in a chorus or they finished each other’s sentences. This time it was the former. “You went out?”