Jacqueline Druga - Reset

The virus ravaged world just didn’t have the modern conveniences.

She could live with that.

Like Malcolm and Amy they had a lot of miles to cover. New York then Connecticut. She didn’t question why she went; after all, she could have stayed back or headed to the meeting place. Meredith was certain she wanted to know what happened to the world.

There were paper maps at Marshal Flight center and Meredith took one of the United States. It wasn’t for traveling, John had that. She used it for notes along with a spiral bound notebook she found.

She started marking the maps with her own, markings she called, “Phases of the Apocalypse’.

When Meredith was nine, the house next to her was tore down. It was nothing but a lot. That same year, in science, Meredith learned about the stages of nature. The ecosystem. She distinctively and always remembered her science teacher saying, “If you see an empty field, watch it. If it is untouched, in ten years there will be trees”

So Meredith noted the changes in the lot next to her house.

Of course, she lived up north, where the climate was different. Devastating winters delayed growth. Had she lived in the south, in the humidity, growth would be different. A real telltale sign for her would be to see Washington DC which was built on swampland. If it was void of humans for ten years, it would be completely green.

All those were factors into why she labeled an area what she did.

Redstone was a Phase One. It was under two years since people had been there. The Medical Camp was also a Phase One. Yet ten miles down the highway it looked like a phase two, vegetation had grown so much it, it could have been five years since a soul had stepped foot there.

Phase three was five to seven years. Phase four took it to ten and Phase five was more than ten years.

Meredith found a quiet spot to spread out her data. John had asked her to keep him informed, and she would. Once the light of day had diminished, she used the lantern to illuminate her reading. It was tough and she had to strain her eyes, but she took notes as she studied.

The medical camp was more than a camp, it was a make shift hospital. From what Meredith read, people traveled hundreds of miles to get there. To be cared for in tents in a barbaric way, tossed into a fire when they died.

She imagined family members just dropping off the ill. Meredith wanted to know the virus, the symptoms, and the time span. How long was a person ill? How ill did they get? Nothing like that was mentioned in the archives of papers she had.

Only, Red, Blue, Yellow.

The color of the flags.

When a person was marked ‘red’, they were without any uncertainty going to die. Yellow was an undetermined fate and blue meant it looked good. So, like the president originally said, the virus wasn’t supposed to kill everyone that got it.

Harrison stated millions died by the day, but at that rate, it would take years for a virus to wipe man into a point of extinction or at least such a minimal population that the world looked empty. And it did.

Where was everyone?

Where were the animals? The birds?

The world was void of life. In Meredith’s opinion it had been empty a lot longer than they could imagine or wanted to know.

Was it guilt that he felt? Malcolm was pretty certain it was sadness as well. He just didn’t know why he felt that way.

He didn’t know Amy all that well, yet he felt the sense of loss and guilt. He wished he knew the woman better. Although technically he had spent a few years with her. The thought of that actually made him smile on such a gloomy day. He likened it slightly to his first marriage, he spent a few years with her as well and never really got to know her before she left either. Perhaps that was why his oldest son, Trey, has such issues with Malcolm leaving for business trips all the time.

Not that Malcolm was gone all that long. It was only for a few days at a time. Sometimes at most a week. And he always made it up to the children when he returned home. But Trey always threw the guilt and anger at him. He hated when Malcolm left and made him pay for it emotionally. A therapist once told him it was Trey’s insecurities with abandonment. He was afraid that Malcolm would go away and would not come back.

Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened and for Trey, who was only 17 years old, it was a confirmation of his fears. Though almost an adult, he was still a child and it would mar him for the rest of his existence.

“Why don’t you just go away for good this time,” Trey told him.

Why was that the last thing he had to say to this father?

Jennifer, his wife, tried to calm him down.

“Malcolm, don’t worry about it. He’s a teenage boy. He will be fine. Take him somewhere when you get back,” she said

Malcolm let it bother him only a little. Then mentally planned a father son outing for when he got back. He finished packing, kissed and told Trey about the plan, despite not getting any response and left. The others were fine.

He had three sons altogether Sam and Jenner, eight and ten years old, were absolutely fine with him leaving. They would be kicked back with their feet propped up playing their video games, Their goodbye was a nod of acknowledgement, telling him to have a good trip, and they knew that they would get reimbursed in a fatherly way when Malcolm returned. Nearly everyone always told Malcolm that he should be happy he had sons. That boys were much easier to raise than girls. Those same people never had a child like Trey. He was always emotionally needy and moody. Malcolm related that to his mother’s leaving at such an early age. Jennifer, was the only mother he really ever knew.

Malcolm thought a lot about his family as he sat parked off the side of the road deep in the brush on his break for the evening. He thought a lot about Amy. And feelings of guilt resurfaced in him. He didn’t have time to bury her, he had to leave her where she was. He also felt bad because one of the last things she said to him was a request for him to find her family.

Please, find them , she said. And Malcolm was again, barraged with feelings of guilt. Not only did he leave her in that field, he took the route to Denver, his hometown, instead of Albuquerque.

His thought process was to find his family first. Perhaps if any of them were alive, he could get answers. If not, he would go to Amy’s home next. He wasn’t even sure where that was.

But going there first was not an option. Malcolm often placed everything before his family. Especially work and leaving for trips. But this time, he was making them his top priority.

Even if he never saw them again, for once and possibly the last time, they would come first.

Unintentionally bragging that we had the shorter journey inadvertently caused a chain reaction of bad Karma to come our way. Suddenly our route was no longer short. There was no way around Nashville. There was no end of the fence in sight and even if we could break through the overgrown wilderness, I was not quite so sure I wanted to see what happened to that city.

It was ground zero.

We learned that the virus was released in air ducts in planes.

The percentage of planes being affected depended on the population of each country.

I’m left to wonder how this happened.

If this was a government plan or some scientific group plan to decrease population, then why did the government step in and set up such an extensive quarantine area to stop the virus is spreading?

I suppose these were just questions on my mind, ones that I hope got answered

After backtracking a good distance, we found a road that veered far west, and could take it around into Kentucky.