What We Do

It started with another pandemic. We had seen this all before, so we thought we were ready. The news alerts came out. This time, it began in a small country nobody had ever heard of and spread the same way the last one did. Somebody who was infected got on an airplane, and the virus infected everyone on the plane. The plane landed in Los Angeles, some people got on other flights, and some went into the city.

The first symptoms started to appear seven days later.

It started like most viruses with flu-like symptoms. The second stage was the real problem. In some people, the virus attacks the nervous system, causing severe muscle contractions similar to tetanus. The virus would attack brain cells in the remaining people, causing madness similar to how rabies acted in animals. They became violent and attacked anyone who happened to be near them. That's how my wife died. We were sitting watching something on Netflix, and she stood up, looked at me for a moment, and went to the kitchen. There was something different in how she looked at me, like I had done something to her without realizing it.

"Are you OK?" I asked as she went into the kitchen.

She said nothing.

I heard a drawer open, and she lifted something out of the drawer. I did not hear her close the drawer.

She stood in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room, looking at me.

"Drew? You OK?" I asked.

She screamed and rushed at me, raising a small steak knife as she lunged.

I reached my hands up, using one of them to grab her wrist that held the knife and then to try to push her back. She ran her other hand down my face, and I felt her nails dig into my cheek right below my eye, and I screamed in pain.

"Mommy?" My five-year-old daughter said to my wife when she walked into the room.

My wife looked at my daughter, and I thought she would stop. Instead, she pulled away from me. I tried to hold on to her arm with the knife, but when her whole body moved away from me, my hand wasn't strong enough to keep her close.

She swung the knife down at my daughter, making a deep gash across her face. Blood poured out from the cut, and my daughter started screaming.

I was already rushing at my wife, and I tackled her, knocking her to the ground. I felt the knife stab into my shoulder. There was so much adrenaline that there was no pain.

When I rushed her, I'd had the TV remote in my lap, which landed on the floor next to us.

She struggled beneath me, and I yelled for her to stop.

Her knee smashed into my balls, and I felt a sharp pain in my stomach.

I knew she would kill us if I got off her, so I held on. Her free hand was hitting the side of my head, and it stopped for a moment after she hit me when she grabbed the remote and started hitting me in the side of the head with it.

It broke, creating a sharp edge that she kept hitting me with.

Blood covered her hand, and she kept hitting.

I focused on my daughter, crying as I used my weight and pushed on my wife's neck with my forearm. I tucked my head down by my arm as she continued using the remote to stab at me. My arm absorbed the blows now, and I felt the remote cut into the side of my arm.

I kept pressing down with all my weight, and eventually, I heard something crack in her neck, and she made a gurgling noise. The blows slowed down and finally stopped, and her body went limp.

Seven Years Later

I approached the man who had set up a small fire beside a burned-out car. He held a pistol by his side and watched me as I came. A small rat with a stick was going through it, sitting angled over the fire, slowly cooking. That's how I found him. The smell of the cooking rat was a dead giveaway. Only a few people ever came this way. Rats were the easiest to catch and eat, so most people ate them.

The animals had long ago reclaimed the area outside the city's remains, and even though I wasn't sure which ones, some animals still carried the disease. They would pass it on to some of the people who came through, but a lot of the people who were still alive were the ones who were immune to it.

If I had to guess, maybe five percent of people had been immune. The virus infected everyone else. The disease eventually killed you, but for a few days, you'd become a monster, killing anyone around you.

"Get the fuck away," he said as I approached. I watched his grip tighten on his gun.

"Sorry, I smelled the rat cooking, and I was hoping you could share," I said.

"Get the fuck away," he said, raising his gun.

My daughter came up behind him, put a shotgun to his ear, and fired. His head blew apart like a balloon popping, and blood sprayed out in front of him, and he slumped to the ground.

I stepped up and looked down at his body.

"I'm going to make sure there isn't anyone else around, and then I'll start cutting him up. You go back and get the smoker ready so we can start getting the meat ready," I said.

"OK, Dad," she said as she faded into the dark. She had learned well.

I reached into my pocket, felt the broken remote, and told myself we did what we needed to survive.

I picked up the man's pistol, took my rifle off my back, and ensured I was alone.

The Car

The alarm went off at 4 a.m., and Logan sat up. He waited a second and then said, "Bedroom lights on." The lights came on, and he stood and went to the bathroom. His clothes were laid out on the back of the toilet, and he put on his pants and a thick, warm shirt.

He bet today would be the day.

He went out to his car, and his mom and brother were both there like they always were.

"I have a good feeling about today," he said.

His mom let out a long sigh.

"You say the same thing every day," she said.

He looked at her, ignoring her pessimism.

"Mark, did you make the changes?" Logan asked.

His brother nodded without saying anything.

"Are you sure you want to do this again?" His mom asked.

"I want to be the first," Logan said as he grabbed a thick white suit from the car's back seat and put it on over his clothes.

He climbed up onto the roof of the car and lay down facing up.

His mom and brother went to either side of the car, and his brother started throwing wire mesh straps over him, which they used to secure him to the car's roof.

His brother then slipped a large helmet over Logan's head. A hose ran from inside the car into an oxygen mask inside the helmet that covered his mouth and nose. The helmet wasn't airtight, so the oxygen mask would be the only thing keeping him alive.

Mark got in the driver's seat.

He turned on the car, backed out of the garage, and pressed the gas to the floor, accelerating.

When he was going fast enough, he pressed a button on the top of the gear shift, and the rockets on the back of the car kicked in, and the car pulled up towards the atmosphere.

Once past the atmosphere, he pressed the button again, and the car accelerated to thirty thousand miles an hour. It still took almost an hour for them to circle the earth.

Once they had finished circling the earth, Mark brought the car back to earth and found a place near their house where he could safely touch down.

He drove back to the driveway and pulled into the garage.

The car, as usual, had performed without issue.

His mom was on the car's passenger side as he got out.

She took off Logan's helmet, and he didn't move.

"Dead again," she said, resting her fingers on Logan's neck, feeling for a pulse.

"He's still freezing to death," she said.

"I don't know why he wants to do this so bad," Mark said, injecting a shot into Logan's neck.

"One of these times, he won't wake back up," Mark said.

"Then you better figure out how to keep him from freezing to death," his mom said as they undid the straps and took him off the roof of the car.