Rare Air
Part Eight
Drew went a month later.
The real shitty part about type two is how fucking unpredictable it can be. Drew was the king of outdoor allergies. It seemed like he was always sniffling or sneezing. He and a few others like him blitzed through our antihistamine supplies early on and as it became harder and harder for us to make it down the mountain to get supplies well, they just learned to suck it up and suffer and the rest of us just learned to accept that some of us looked sick but were just allergic.
Kelly was religious with the checkups; she would go over to Drew’s cot and force feed him vitamin C and check his temperature just about every morning. I could assume that it was my lack of coming by to check on him that caused the issue but in reality, I know that’s bullshit.
Like I said before, most folk were long past trying to place blame and play the who gave it to who game. People weren’t past being reactionary when someone they thought they knew came at them mumbling nonsense and swinging a hammer though.
I was still in camp, watching over a child who was going type one. The parents were out, they couldn’t stand by and just watch. They went out to prepare a grave. No one should judge them for handling it that way. This thing isn’t like standing around the death bed watching grandma gasp her last. Even type one is ugly, messy, and miserable. More than a few people have asked me to end it for their loved one or friend before the end actually came for them. It was pretty much implied with them after I arrived and they realized their little girl wasn’t going to get better. I was just about to take a pillow and smother the mostly lifeless little girl when the howls of pain and the calls for help erupted from our HQ. The mayor, try hard as she might, found a replacement for Kelly while I was forced, entirely against my will, to temporarily take up the mantle of sheriff.
Henry was a nice kid but he didn’t have any instincts for police work, neither did I. As communities go, we were a rudderless ship in more ways than one by then. I heard Henry call out, I heard him yell and them scream for help and then I heard someone else calling out.
By the time I reached HQ the damage was already done. Drew had bashed poor Henry’s brains out and followed that up by caving in the skull of one of the nurses from the embarrassingly under equipped “infirmary.” He was already onto victim number three, some one else from the infirmary who I didn’t even know, when I finally reached him.
I grabbed him and I could feel how hot and sweaty he was right then and there. He was fine that morning. Type two didn’t usually present that fast, so I have to wonder if Drew knew something was wrong and simply refused to accept reality. If that’s the case then that is absolutely something that I can fault him for. We knew better, the three of us knew better, we had seen people hide it before, we knew the cost of playing that stupid game.
I managed to pull Drew to the ground and pin him down, but just barely. I wasn’t even in the room and fully on top of him before people were coming in with their machetes and bats and the rare, still functioning pistol with ammo.
I was barely able to hold Drew down, the bloody, brain coated hammer was thankfully out of his reach, and all the nosy, angry people flooding in wasn’t helping anyone. I shouted at most of them to get back, begged a few others to help subdue Drew. They all stayed back and suddenly there it was.
There are those moments that absolutely define the untethering of a community. Back at the apartment complex it wasn’t the lights going out or the radio turning to static, it wasn’t even the food running low, it was Sadie. When people realized that their kind hearted abuela could become a murderess pyromaniac well, zip up your fly, kids, game over.
Down at the base of the mountain I watched the same thing happen over Drew. What happens when someone who was sworn to protect the community, al be it in name only, devolves into a murderous animal?
I didn’t need to plead any further or yell at the mob to back away.
My friend was sick, so sick there was no helping him. He either didn’t recognize how sick he was or he knew and hid it anyway and none of that mattered anymore because he had murdered people and the mob wasn’t going to back away from that truth.
I didn’t smother Kelly; I didn’t push a pillow over her face and wait for the squirming to stop. I’m not sure I could have done that, even if she had asked me. I couldn’t imagine killing Drew either, but I knew sure as shit I wasn’t going to let the naïve settlers do it instead.
Drew was ranting, hysterically, about his uncle, about something that happened to him as a kid. That theme floated in and out around something about a summer camp sleep over. Type two is a hell of a drug.
I didn’t know which one of those awful threads to follow so I tried reaching to the heart of the matter while I watched the mob file into the tent with their weapons at the ready.
I looked down at Drew and heard words coming out of my mouth that I couldn’t believe I was saying, “Drew, buddy. I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to kill you now.”
Already members of the mob were trying to crowd in and take the situation away from me. Voices were shouting for me to get up, to get away, to back off. Drew was two hundred pounds of flailing fever induced nightmare and I was the only thing keeping him on the ground.
I was still saving their dumb asses and they were closing in and trying to pull me away, some were even shouting that I was in on it, I was sick too, or just as bad in some way. All of a sudden it wasn’t we, it was, “those three refugees who showed up late to the party” never mind all the ragged refugees who came after us. We were different, three sore thumbs, us and them.
Drew never responded to my words but he stopped flailing so much. Maybe hearing his name calmed him, maybe I’m just dying out here in the cold and making up cheap excuses. Either way, he stopped flailing around so much and I had just enough time to pull my knife. The cut was clean, thorough and deep, ear to ear. My only remaining friend was dead before his fever struck brain had time to catch up with the damage report.