EXCERPT FROM HARD TIMES: THE WRATH OF AN ANGRY GOD BY
JACK RANDOM
THE FEVER
I go to sleep early with
Cinn snuggled at my side and awaken in the darkened, early hours of the morning
with a cold sweat covering my body. I
struggle to get up and throw some water on my face but I lose the battle. The next thing I know I’m in the community
room on the cot that Oleander once occupied.
Suddenly, instead of caretaker I’m among the cared for. I will learn firsthand the horrors of this
virus that creeps into your body and holds it for as long as it can until it
releases you. One way or the other.
At first I fight back as
everyone else does, following a stubborn and irrational instinct, refusing to
believe that I’ve fallen victim. Again
and again, as Jo or Zar try to talk me down, I try to get up but my body
refuses. The pain is so acute and runs
so deep that any movement triggers a cascade of agony. The fever takes hold of my mind so that I no
longer know where I am or why or how I got here. Often as not, I can’t remember who I am. At times I think I’m being held hostage by
people who want to enslave me or steal the organs of my body. I’m being tortured. I’m being held against my will. I’m a soldier in the hands of an unknown
enemy. They inject me with drugs that
stop me from moving or thinking or trying to escape. They want answers but I have none. I cannot understand their questions.
The only thing that can
bring me back to earth and reality is the worried gaze of my loyal friend and
companion. Cinn is with me
constantly. She lays her head and paws
on my chest and I never doubt her purpose is to comfort and heal me. When the mind suffers it takes little
comfort. It seizes it and casts it
away. When the body suffers it seizes
pain, pulls it in and holds it like a toxic treasure. She alone is my salvation and comfort. She alone can ward off the unseen demons
attacking my mind and body even as I sleep, even as I run, even as I hide in
the darkest corners of my subconscious mind.
The sickness comes in
waves, washing over me, drowning me, dragging me through a dark landscape with
shadow creatures, yellow eyes and snarling, scowling lips, surrounding and
devouring me. I’m blue flame hot and
shivering cold. Then, just as I think I
can bear no more it releases me, offering a glimpse of wellness before it
resumes its punishing march.
My sickness takes a toll
on everyone in the camp. They are
already numbed by the deaths they have endured and the struggle they have
overcome. I have become more than a
friend. I’m someone they have come to
respect. I’m part of their family. I am a brother. I never talked much about my own family
before the sickness grabbed me. I told
them who they are and where they are and why I left them but that’s all. I’m afraid that if I talk about them too much
it will consume me. I don’t want to go
back until things are better, until I can be sure that my presence will not add
to their hardship. So I didn’t talk
about them. But now that I’m sick that’s
all I talk about. I fade in and out of
consciousness and every time I awake I wonder where I am and I ask for Madge
and Denim and Charlie. I demand to know
where they are and if they’re safe.
Oleander holds herself
personally responsible for my illness.
She believes she infected me.
Whether that’s true no one can say but she feels it. Sooner or later what you feel becomes the
truth. She and Janis sit by my side
around the clock and of course Cinn is there too. That little dog just lies by my side with her
head on my chest looking at my face for signs of life or the shadow of
death. When I wake up she licks my face and
reminds me I’m loved.
They send someone on a
solar crawler to check up on my family.
They had a long discussion about whether or not to tell my wife that I’m
sick and might die. They decide not to tell
her because they’re afraid she would come to care for me and the sickness would
take hold of her too. They don’t want to
leave our children orphans. They aren’t
sure if it’s the right thing to do. In
her place most people would want to know.
Most of them would have wanted to know but it comes down to the children
and that’s what they decided. They just
want to be able to tell me that my family is safe. If they aren’t safe they will hold on to that
knowledge until I’m fully recovered or until the end draws near. None of them had faced such decisions in
their prior lives and nothing about it comes easy. It is the blessing and the curse of the
times. We’re not bound by the laws or
the moral codes of the state, the nation or the media. We make our own laws and live with the
consequences.
They faced the same
decision regarding a professor from the university who came down to observe
their progress and offer advice. She was
close to Jo and a number of other students.
Jo said that without Dr. Arakawa none of this would have happened. She was a brilliant physicist with practical
knowledge in energy systems – particularly solar energy. She had a husband and two children who stayed
behind in Davis. She was more than pleased
with what they had accomplished but she came at exactly the wrong time.
It was the week the
illness hit so no one knew how bad it would be.
She held on for a long time. Like
so many others it seemed she would recover.
She was up and walking around in late autumn. But she had a relapse and it hit her
hard. They had already informed her
family that she was ill. They were frank
about the seriousness of the illness though they were confident of her recovery
chances at the time.
Her family came
immediately. All of them. Jo and a friend tried to stop them at the
gate down the road but they wouldn’t listen.
They even had the professor write a letter to dissuade them but it
seemed to have the opposite effect. The
father, a professor of sociology, tried to persuade his son and daughter to
stay behind but they refused to hear it.
They were a family. Their wife
and mother was deathly ill and they would be there by her side just as she
would if it was one of them. It’s
strange that intelligent and educated people, people who dedicate so much of
their existence to reason, yield logic to emotion when it counts most. I can’t say that I would do otherwise.
Dr. Arakawa held on until
Christmas. The winter was mild but a
storm came down from the mountains on Christmas Eve and held for three
days. It snowed. The locals said it hadn’t snowed here for
twenty years. It was comforting. Like chicken soup or fresh baked bread. They stayed inside most of the time, sipping
warm drinks and talking softly about everything that had happened and whether
or not it was worth it.
When Dr. Arakawa died
Christmas morning there was a deep sense of loss. They were gathered in the community room when
the family came in and announced her passing.
Her husband said she was coherent in the last moments before her
death. She said that what we were doing
was important. Her last wish was that we
should carry on and complete the work that she had helped give birth. She said there would always be hardships but
they would succeed as long as they refuse to fail. Those were her last words: Refuse to fail.
Her family returned to
Davis and they hadn’t heard a word since.
They could only hope and pray they hadn’t contracted the sickness.
It’s a solemn
Christmas. Zar comes to see me around
midnight. Oleander is asleep in a chair
with an open book in her lap: McCarthy’s The
Road. He talks to me in soft tones
for quite a while. He tells me what
happened and how sorrow had a grip on the camp.
He says they need me to pull through now more than ever or they might
not make it. He explains how important
the professor had been to everyone. He
says he feels the same way about me and he thinks the others have the same
feeling. He asks me to think about it
and if I can find a way back to them I should.
After that he just stands there looking at my face, wondering what I’m
experiencing, wondering if it’s selfish to ask me to think of others, thinking
that somehow I understand what he’s talking about. I do.
Somewhere in my subconscious I hear every word and I understand.
I die a thousand agonizing
deaths before I finally find my footing.
When I do, Cinn is there, licking my face, welcoming me, and Janis is
tending to me. Only a handful of people
are still sick. The others have
recovered and rejoined the outside world.
When they’re certain I’m well enough, I’m allowed to go outside as
well. A few days later Jo tells me about
the professor who died. The camp is in
mourning and will remain so through the winter.
At one point Zar asks me
what I remember when I was under the spell of sickness. Most of what I remember has no words. There were times when I felt warmth and a
sense of closeness to those around me. I
couldn’t recall what was said but I knew how it felt. It felt like someone pulling me out of a
hole, a deep dark hole. I felt
gratitude. It gave me direction and
fueled my will to fight back. I told him
I remember what he said on Christmas, that I heard and understood though I was
unable to respond.
Zar is deeply moved. He says he doesn’t know if there is a God or
another life after this one. On so many
levels it doesn’t make sense. But he
feels strongly that I had gone somewhere else and made a choice to come
back. He knows it’s irrational. It goes against everything he’s been taught
by people wiser, more educated and smarter than himself. Still he’s come to the conclusion that an
individual has a choice even in death.
Jo disagrees. If wishes and
prayers could bring a person back from death they would have worked on Dr.
Arakawa. She chooses to place her faith
in science and her prayers are scientific inquiries. She is no less grateful that I survived but
she refuses to attribute it to anything but loving care and the laws of
probability.
It comes down to religion.
No objective observer can doubt that religion is a mixed blessing at best and a
scourge on humanity at worst. The
problem with religion is orthodoxy. When
people band together and recruit others on the condition that any knowledge
that is not established in orthodox beliefs must be rejected it becomes the
enemy of social and personal progress and growth. It becomes the enemy of science and a threat
to social order. Jo and Zar agree that
orthodox religion should have no part in their community but that all belief
systems should be regarded with absolute tolerance as long as no one is harmed
or hindered in any way. That is the
unspoken creed of the Sun Camp.
I have missed Christmas
but there’s good news: my family is safe.
They’re struggling like everyone else but they’re safe. That’s all.
They did not make contact and when they explain why, I agree. After all we’ve been through, it is not a
risk I would have taken.
The air seems
fresher, the sunlight brighter and the whole world seems a better place. I resolve to go home as soon as I’m
able. We would work it out. For better or worse, we would find a way to
work it out. It takes a while for Zar
and Jo and Holly and the rest to persuade me that I should wait until spring
when I’m fully recovered and the weather is more forgiving.
Hard Times
is available at Amazon.com. Google Jack
Random. Amazon.
