Brushfire Plague Read online

  “If she doesn’t come to the door, there’s a key in a fake rock just to the left of our stairs. As he finished, the nagging voice of responsibility pulled at him, “Wait!” he shouted.

  “What?” Dranko responded.

  “I can’t ask you to check on her. You might expose yourself to this thing that is going around.”

  Dranko chuckled, “No worries, brother. First, you’re a good friend, so it’s a risk I’d take. Second, I’ll take precautions. And, third, I saw Elena already today. If she has it, then I’ve already been exposed to this bugger.”

  Relieved, Cooper exhaled, “OK, thank you. I had to call it out.”

  “Yeah, brother. That’s why you’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

  “Thanks. Let me know what you find out.”

  “Got it, I’ll call you in ten.”

  Cooper inhaled and blew out a long, low whistle. He felt better now that someone was in motion to help Elena. He felt helpless being over two hours away. Dranko was a good man. Dranko was stocky, worried brown eyes and shoulder-length hair the color of walnut. Despite his semi-paranoid leanings, he was one of the most solid, reliable men that Cooper had ever met. He also knew that the report he would get from him about Elena would be straight. He wouldn’t sugarcoat nor exaggerate the situation. It wasn’t in his DNA.

  The reprieve was short-lived.

  Within ten minutes, and three different AM stations, he had heard a litany of cities that sounded like a heavy metal band’s summer concert tour list where reports of the new, strange, flu-like illness were popping up: Boston, New York City, Providence, Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Wichita, Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver, San Diego, San Francisco, Omaha, and on and on. The list included scores of cities, both large and small. The only major city that hadn’t appeared on the list was Washington, DC. Then, as if he needed another blow, there were some reports coming in of the flu hitting foreign cities throughout Europe and Asia as well. So far, Africa and Australia were untouched.

  Almost to the second, ten minutes after he had hung up with Dranko, his cell phone was ringing.

  “How is she,” he asked.

  “She’s got it. No question. Fever is 104. Lungs are filling up pretty good. She’s very weak. Lisa just came over to take a look. Jake is OK though. He’s been around her all day, so I don’t see any reason to separate them.” Lisa Moore was another friend who lived in the neighborhood, just across the street. She was a registered nurse, and a good one at that.

  A stifled, “No!” was all Cooper could manage. His grip tightened further on the steering wheel.

  “Brother, how fast are you going right now?”

  Cooper glanced down at the red-illuminated gauge. “Ninety.”

  “Get it to a hundred.”

  ******

  The white markers that lined the side of the highway stood as silent sentinels, whipping past at a hundred miles per hour, telling anyone who would listen not to drift off into the barren landscape that lay beyond. Cooper kept the car’s engine pressed hard, alternating between one-twenty and eighty, depending on the curves in the road and the slickness of the wet asphalt. He drove expertly, a man possessed with a single-minded purpose. His mind raced, but he did not panic. He felt like he did the few times he had been in combat in Iraq when his unit had come under fire or had been hit with an improvised explosive. His heart raced, breath deep and rapid, eyes alert and darting from the front and then to the side, and every muscle stood taut and at the ready.

  An hour later, he was at the foot of Mt. Hood. In the dim moonlight, he could see the majestic mountain towering above him. The snow-capped mountain glowed in the eerie moonshine. Cooper loved this mountain. He admired its strong, yet elegant, beauty. He couldn’t look at it without recalling the winter trips to the snow where he and Elena—and now Jake—would trek across her meadows and wind along her trails. He would always smile to think of their summer journeys; backpacking or simply day hiking. When he gazed her visage from the streets of Portland, he could almost smell the sharp tang of the pine in summer or taste the clean fallen snow in winter. To him, Mt. Hood personified all that was good about the Pacific Northwest.

  Tonight, he cursed her like a no good flea-bitten bitch.

  Tonight, the winding roads of the mountain were a hated adversary, forcing him to slow down to navigate her curves. Tonight, she was delaying him from being with his deeper love, Elena, in her desperate time of need.

  Letting off the accelerator, he let loose with a fierce invective, “Damn you and your godforsaken crooked roads!” The few times his right foot touched the brake pedal, he screamed hell’s wrath into the night air. He knew his oaths made no difference and would do nothing to straighten the roads, nor give the tires better grip. But he knew no other way to combat the weary helplessness that threatened to engulf him if he didn’t keep it at bay with righteous anger.

  He used the barely suppressed rage to keep the other thoughts at arm’s length as well. Part of his mind coaxed him to comfort with platitudes about Elena not being sick with this new flu. This voice urged him onward to denial with questions about the real odds of Elena in Portland, Oregon having some deadly bug that had just broken out. She hadn’t been on a plane recently, had she? The questions came further and faster the more he let them be asked. Elena was in superb health, wasn’t she? This was probably just some run-of-mill cold she had picked up. Your friend Dranko always jumps to the worst-case scenario, right? No, the voice told him, don’t you worry, everything will be all right. You’ve had enough ill fortune in your life already, dear Cooper.

  Yet, another part of him knew, was one hundred and twenty percent sure, that Elena not only had this new illness sweeping the land, but that she would die. Whereas the one voice reassured and dripped sugar from its lips, this other voice tormented him and its tongue stabbed him in the heart with each word. Yes, she had it and you better get your ass home in time to see her last breath. Tears welled up before he consciously pushed them away. He refocused on his driving as a distraction.

  These two voices battled it out for the entire drive home. Cooper cursed again. I need to get home. There, I can do something and can get out of this steel box where I’m trapped and can’t do a damn thing to help her.

  When he emerged onto the west slope of Mt. Hood, he regained his breakneck speed to a hundred miles an hour, or more. He was well onto I-84 and nearing Portland, when it struck him.

  Accounting for it being a little after four in the morning, the highway was still far too empty. Nary a car or truck were moving in either direction. Except for his car and a handful of other vehicles, nothing was moving. Cooper had been on these roads in the early hours many times before, usually heading out for one of his trips. It had never been this empty.

  What he did see were a dozen emergency vehicles, both police and ambulances racing to and fro. Moreover, the police cars—despite his excessive speed—didn’t give him a second look.

  When this all sunk in, his stomach shriveled up inside him. This was something different. This was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

  ******

  A short time later, he pulled into his driveway, cranked his emergency brake and brought the sedan to an abrupt, lurching stop. The first shreds of sunlight were just beginning to light the eastern horizon and only a thin and cold light made its way to his home. The windows reflected darker than the rest of the home, like gaunt, open wounds. His eyes locked onto the upstairs window, into the loft area that adjoined their bedroom. He did so with some meager hope that, somehow, Elena would have recovered and would be at the window, looking down and awaiting his arrival. The window only stared back at him, harshly vacant.

  He sprung from the car and raced inside. He wrenched open the door, barely hitting a step on the way up. He sped into his kitchen, his sneakers sliding on the green linoleum floor. When he arrived at the landing, he whirled around the corner, ready to fly up the stairs. Dranko stood at
the top of the stairs and beckoned him to halt with his hand upturned in the universal sign for “Stop”. Surprised, Cooper involuntarily did so for a moment.

  Dranko kept his hand up and talked to him in a strong hushed voice, “This thing is bad, brother. I don’t think you can help Elena much. Both Sally and Walt are already dead from it and another dozen, just on our block, have come down with this thing. You might not have been exposed…”

  Cooper, hearing Dranko’s words, became furious and began again to mount the stairs in rapid leaps, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Nothing…nothing could keep me from her and my boy.” The last words came as his face came parallel to Dranko’s and he nearly spat the words at him. He brushed Dranko to the side with his left arm and finished making his way up and into the bedroom. Dranko moved aside without resistance, lowered his head for a moment in understanding, and then turned back up the stairs to follow his friend at a respectful distance.

  Chapter 3

  Cooper cleared the doorway and stopped dead in his tracks. Elena lay sprawled on the bed, groaning in restless motion. The moaning sounded like a wounded cat curled up in some dark corner of a dead-end street desperately tending its wounds after a losing fight with the alley cat and calling to the world for sympathy. Her eyes were closed, but he could see them moving frantically to and fro behind her eyelids. Her black hair was damp and matted, her face flushed. The sheets clung to her body, soaked in sweat. Cooper almost imagined seeing steam rise from her body; she was so clearly burning up.

  To the right of the bed, focused so intently on his mother that he was unaware Cooper had come in the room, sat Jake. A surgical mask, too large for his face, sloppily covering the nose and mouth. But, his eyes told Cooper everything he needed to know. They were sunken in and ringed by sorrowful lines. They were thick with worry, narrowed down to slit-like focus, twitching with every movement or noise of his mother. He hadn’t slept all night. His head lay propped by his hand at his chin, with the arm on his knee.

  Cooper took a step toward the bed and for the first time saw Lisa. She rose from her sentry post to the left of the bed and stopped Cooper with a wave of her hand. The scene had so unsettled Cooper that he offered no resistance. Lisa had a mask on as well and her hands were covered by blue latex gloves, the kind so ubiquitous in hospitals and medical offices. She reached to Elena’s dresser and produced a mask and gloves. However, her eyes too were clouded with worry, her brow furrowed so deep that her eyebrows almost touched.

  “Here, put these on. I honestly don’t know if they’re helping, but they are worth a try. Put them on, say hello to Elena and Jake. When you’re done, we should talk in the next room,” she said as she handed him the materials, and then exited the room.

  Cooper’s gaze followed her as she left. Her tired steps spoke volumes. At the doorway, Dranko met his eyes, returning a deep reservoir of sympathy. His look shook Cooper to his core. She isn’t dead! “Don’t look at me like that!” he hissed. Dranko didn’t display his surprise at his friend’s harsh words, but instead turned, and left the room.

  Cooper stood there, pondering for several seconds. Then, he set the mask and the gloves down on the dresser. He took Elena’s hand into his own. Her hand felt light. Withered. The skin was so dry he worried it might flake off in sheaves if he touched her too firmly.

  Cooper shifted and looked toward his son. Cooper’s outburst had roused Jake from his intense watch. His round, young face had turned toward his father. His gaze still rested on Cooper, but the faint brown eyes and tense face flew wide in disbelief at seeing him here. Cooper looked at his son and their eyes locked. Cooper moved quickly to his side. He knelt down and caressed his boy’s head into his chest, kissing him on his mash of curly black hair. Jake’s chest heaved deeply once and then he began weeping uncontrollably, the pent up emotion of the last day finally unleashed in a furious torrent. Cooper gathered him in, wrapping both arms around him in a comforting bear hug. Already, he could feel the warm tears on his chest, quickly soaking through his shirt. His own eyes filled with tears, and they remained in their soothing embrace for some time.

  Finally, Cooper pulled his son’s face from his chest and cradled his face in both hands. Jake’s eyes glistened and his face was flushed beet red. Instinctively, he knew his son wanted him to tell him things would turn out alright and not to worry. Cooper desperately wanted to comfort his son. But, he was not the kind of man to say ‘everything will be OK’ when those words might well be proven to be untrue. To Cooper, honesty was a sacred trust, never broken. As a young teen, he had seen deceit destroy his father’s life. It had cost him much of his own as well.

  ******

  The teenager shifted uncomfortably in the front row of the courtroom. Knees on gangly legs kept bumping into the wooden wall in front of him. The fluorescent lights bore down on him, the light made harsher by the circumstances that had brought him here. The room was abuzz with the murmurs of an excited crowd; punctuated by the occasional gibe shot across the aisle.

  The room was divided by a phalanx of bailiffs down the middle aisle. Cooper was young, but he knew the rift in the room was miles wider than that. On the left were those who supported his father, incensed by what they all knew were false accusations levied by a political opponent. On the right were those who backed Denny Smith; said rival.

  Today, the jury was coming back to render its verdict.

  The stiff oak doors to his right opened and his father was led into the room by two Sheriff’s officers. The room fell deathly silent as all heads riveted in that direction.

  “Thief!” shouted a voice from somewhere behind, off to the right.

  Cooper was instantly on his feet with balled fists; his eyes scanning the crowd for the culprit. A strong hand landed on his shoulder, pushing him back into his seat, “Sit down, son. We ain’t having none of that here today.” He looked up at a steely-eyed bailiff who outweighed him by a hundred pounds, most of which was muscle. He sat back down, bitter tears of futility burning his eyes.

  Landing back in his seat, he did something he hadn’t done in years: he reached out and curled his mother’s fingers into his own. Their eyes embraced. His mother’s despondency clashing with his own fury.

  He looked up as his father came to the seat just feet away from him. His father’s eyes gripped him, as if to hug him. The connection felt more sincere and warm than most men’s actual embraces would have been. He raised his hands to chest level and clenched them into fists of encouragement. Cooper stared deeply into his father’s eyes, drawing frantically from the wellspring of strength that he so desperately needed. Doing so calmed the room from spinning out of control, but the black pit in Cooper’s gut refused to budge.

  The remainder of the proceedings had always been a blur of disjointed images and scenes. He remembered rising to the bailiff’s call and sitting once again at the judge’s permission.

  Like graffiti blighting an ancient redwood, the jury foreman was forever carved into his memory. He could recall every crag in the old man’s face. The man’s black bolo tie insulted him. The man looked like a caricature of a hanging judge from a cheap Western. Seared deeper into his mind were the man’s chapped lips moving in slow motion and exaggerated form as they condemned his father and pronounced a single word: “Guilty.”

  His father’s knees buckled in shock and he abruptly collapsed into his seat. His father was given a scant second of relief, before the judge rapped his gavel and a bailiff manhandled him back onto his feet. He would never forget how his father gave one firm shake of his head back and forth in disbelief. Then, he regained his composure and stood steadfast once more.

  His mother let out a stifled wail of despair, her body wracked as she refused to let any sound reach her husband’s enemies, who sat mere feet away. Cooper did his best to help bear the tension, gripping her hand more firmly. When that proved inadequate, he pulled her in close, clenching her shoulders under his arm. He felt burning tears on his neck as she mashed her face against him
. He bit down on his lips to padlock his own tears inside.

  He looked to his right and saw Denny Smith in the front row opposite him, smiling widely at his victory. With the jury’s verdict, he knew he had accomplished something he could never have done in an election: taken his father’s leadership position away from him. Denny’s eyes caught Cooper’s. Seeing the boy’s misery, he softened none of his rapacious smile. His eyes became more wolf-like and his mouth worked itself into a snarl. Wanting to strike back, Cooper struggled to mimic a hard man’s stare. To his regret, Denny didn’t seem to notice or care. Dismissively, he’d turned away to accept the congratulations of one of his cronies.

  Thankfully, he could evoke bits and pieces of his father’s speech. He would never forget the day the verdict came down, and certain words were burned into his mind. He liked to call upon them for solace.

  “This travesty comes as no surprise. Many other men, much greater men than I, have been bushwhacked by a legal system written by and for those who own things rather than those who make them. I will confess my surprise that my long-time dear friend Denny Smith is the man who concocted these lies to smear my name and bring me down. This was a man I would have entrusted not only my own life, but the lives of my wife and child as well. That is how deep our bond went. Now, I stand on the other side of a wide river, a river filled with lies, deceit, and false accusations. But, my entire life has been about trust and I will not abandon it now. My entire life I’ve been a part of people trusting one another and it’s been a beautiful thing to see. The men and women I’ve worked with have stood up together, bonded in trust, to protect their communities, and promote a better life for all Americans. So, I tell you today, Denny Smith, I will not allow the craven act of one cowardly worm of a man diminish my trust in others, proven right and true a thousand times over by better men, and women, than you!”