Jacqueline Druga: Immune

His face wasn’t all that pretty either, scratched and abraded. Max was a mess.

It was apparent to everyone, including the captain. While in the bathroom, he heard the captain instruct the attendant to ‘keep an eye on that passenger, he may be trouble’.

Max hoped it was someone else, but knew better,

Sore and tired, Max found his seat. He accepted the preflight glass of champagne and after downing it, covered up with a blanket, closed his eyes, and hoped that he drew no more attention to himself.

Pittsburgh, PA

Typically, Myron was not oblivious to things around him. Especially when it came to the Game Shop. It opened at ten, closed at nine, and was the ‘go to’ place for used video games. Myron worked at one of eight in the city.

He worked at the one in a mall south of the city. He thought maybe it was just a bad day when the other employees called off of work, that, along with the manager phoning in sick. After calling his grandmother and regretfully telling her he wouldn’t be home to take her to temple, Myron dreaded running the busy store alone.

But it wasn’t busy.

They didn’t have a customer all day. In fact, he saw about three people in the mall. When he went to get his lunch at the food court only two of the places were open and they seemed more engrossed in chatting about the slow day than making him food.

Just before five PM, mall security dropped by and informed him the mall was closing. When Myron asked why, the guard called him an idiot and kept on walking.

What had he missed?

Myron was far from an idiot, and he knew he actually had missed something. Some event of sorts had caused people not to leave their homes.

There wasn’t any television playing in the video store and Myron wasn’t a fan of social media or the internet, so he didn’t have one of those fancy phones.

His only option was to forgo playing his music in the car on the way home and listen to the radio to find out what might be going on.

After locking up the store, Myron headed to his car. It was the last one in the parking lot. Sirens filled the air, people drove like maniacs down the road, all going somewhere.

Myron didn’t live that far from the mall. His first floor apartment was two miles away in a suburb, located half a block from the tiny town square. A place called Mount Hallow.

Myron loved his location, he could walk to the ice cream store or get a pizza. It was a great little neighborhood.

After leaving the parking lot and merging into traffic, Myron turned on the radio. There wasn’t any music. In fact, several of the stations were just dead air.

The ones that were on were hard to decipher. No one filled in the blanks.

Myron got bits and pieces of debates. He listened while driving, fearful of getting into an accident. Everyone was in such a hurry, cars were colliding left and right, causing more traffic jams.

“No one knows. No one is saying,” a DJ said.

“They did know. It’s been in South America for how long? It had to reach here.”

“I have to disagree. This is fast moving. One person turns to two, two into four and so on.”

“Then it has to be a biological weapon. It’s not just here, it’s everywhere. It just popped up. Nothing in nature moves that fast.”

“That we know of.”

Myron slowed down for the light to take his right turn. He started to fill in the blanks himself. Some sort of illness, an outbreak, based on that South American mystery virus from the previous year. That was what he guessed.

“They’re saying it’s like a rabies.”

“It’s not rabies. It’s something that hits the brain, but it’s not rabies. You have to be alive to have rabies. I hear these people are dead.”

“Really?” Myron spoke out loud in disbelief. “Seriously? Come on. Dead?” He lifted his foot from the gas and quickly slammed the brake when a man walked between his car and the one ahead of him.

About to blow the horn, Myron froze when he looked more closely at the man. He walked oddly, almost robotic with his jagged movements. He turned his head and looked at Myron. Myron’s heart raced. The man was pasty white, his mouth bleeding around the lips, and his eyes didn’t focus. The man tipped his jaw and snapped several times at the air quickly, before finding another focus and running for the car next to Myron.

He lunged on the vehicle, slamming his hand against the windshield and pounding relentlessly.

“Oh shit,” Myron uttered.

Though he wasn’t convinced the bleeding and psychotic man was dead, he did realize it was something he didn’t want to be around and understood right then and there the reason for the panic. With a greater focus on getting home and making sure his grandmother was all right, Myron drove faster.

It didn’t take him long to get to his neighborhood, and Myron saw things on the way home he wished he didn’t. People fighting, attacking each other, pulling men and women from cars. He was too scared to stop and help.

His quaint little town square was blocked off with abandoned cars and so were any roads to go around. So Myron, like many others, had to abandon his car. At the start of the town square it was two blocks to his apartment.

He could make it.

Manbag draped over his head, Myron moved quickly through the cars. Nothing much was happening in his neighborhood, and he didn’t see the violence there, which was a good sign.

He paused before his building, which was a huge old house converted into individual units. Out on the sidewalk was a huge pool of blood.

His heart jumped to his throat and all he could think of was his poor defenseless grandmother. Even though he didn’t see any of the ill people around, clearly there were signs they had been there.

He rushed through the main door, hurrying up the steps.

Myron’s apartment was immediately there on the left and he reached for the door. When he did, it opened, an arm reached out, grabbed Myron, and yanked him in.

“Bubby, thank God!” Myron’s grandmother slammed the door. She held a cast iron frying pan. “Help me barricade this and the windows. This is insane. Some sort of germ has everyone going nuts. It happened so quickly.”

Myron hurriedly moved the bookshelf in front of the front door. There was nothing he could do about the windows but pull the blinds. He’d figure something out when he took a moment to breathe.

“You’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Bubby. It’s been harrowing. Mr. Stevens took a leap from the third floor to get to some man outside.”

Myron looked out the window. “I don’t see the bodies.”

“Oh, they took off running. Here.” She handed him the frying pan. “Take over. I need some sherry.”

When Myron took the frying pan he noticed the blood on it. “Gram? Why is this bloody?”

“Don’t ask. It’s not my fault. That crazy girl across the hall came in here trying to get me. Luckily, I was frying fish. I hit her. I need a drink.” His grandmother walked into the other room. “Bubby, put on the news, see what they’re saying.”

Myron’s head spun. He had been so removed from everything it was hard to comprehend. His grandmother especially. She recited the events as if she were recounting an episode of Dancing with Greatness.

Myron walked to the television and did as his grandmother requested. It was a good idea to look for the news, get informed. Myron would be able to process and make a plan much better if he knew exactly what he was dealing with.

At that moment, he was still in shock.

Earlier in the day Paul had planned to finish his Chinese food, go home, pack, and drive north, but curiosity got the best of him. He couldn’t resist.