A selection from "The Virus of Memory" by Gerard Daniel Houarner

The Virus of Memory

by Gerard Daniel Houarner

C

larence woke to his wife Sylvie shaking him. He blinked, shaded his eyes against the light from the hurricane lamp behind her on the side table.

“What?” he said, his throat raw.

“You were talking in your sleep,” she answered. She wiped her eyes, brushed back grey-streaked hair. “‘Something’s going to happen,’ you kept saying.” She glanced at the ticking clock beside the lamp. “It’s four-thirty in the morning.”

Clarence grunted as he sat up and shook his head. “Dreaming...”

Sylvie froze. A tremor started in her hand and spread rapidly down her arm. By the time Clarence grabbed her shoulders, her entire body was shaking.  She cried out as his grasp tightened. Her eyes opened wider, as if to take in something vast and terrible coming at her out of the shadows behind him.

“Not that, not that,” he said, voice growling. “It was— I can’t remember now, but it wasn’t that.”

Sylvie wept, and Clarence cradled her face in his big, rough hands. Tears flooded the wrinkles around her eyes, dribbled around the black mole at the corner of her mouth.

“Something already happened,” he told her, searching for the words to reassure her. “It’s over. We’re fine.”

“No, we’re not,” she said, tearing herself away from him and throwing herself back on to the bed. She curled up, honey brown knees peeking out of her night shirt as she drew them up to her chin. “More’s coming. I can feel it. I can’t stand no more.”

“Stop it,” he barked. He had no comforting words for her when she let herself fall apart. All he had was strength. That had been enough for him, for his family, for all these years. His strength had carried them through the worst of it over the past year. There had to be enough for the rest of the way. Wherever the rest of the way was taking them.

Clarence reached over and turned down the flame. He rolled over to give her his back, closed his eyes, and eventually went back to sleep.

Sylvie woke him up again, this time standing beside the bed and waving a piece of paper in his face.

“She’s gone,” said his wife. “She left this. You were right, something did happen. This is just the start of something else, isn’t it? More’s going to happen.”

The world shifted in Clarence’s mind, leaving a desert where once there had been life. Connie missing. Another piece of the life he had built for himself taken away.

 Be strong. Like with everything else that had happened, he had to fight for what was his. And if he lost the fight, adapt, as he had done all his life. And particularly since the Swarms had come. Clarence swallowed, roused himself to the task at hand.

“I’ll go look for her,” he said, sliding out of bed. He had ideas where his daughter Connie might have gone.  Sixteen was a tough age. It wasn’t natural for a girl that young to be cut off, away from others her own age. Clarence remembered his own loneliness from that time. Of course, it was different for a girl. Boys could pass for all right being big and strong, even if they didn’t move too fast or didn’t have much to say, and had to work with all their heart just to get passing grades. Boys didn’t need so much attention. Not really. Girls, they needed people. Just didn’t have the strength to be alone. He could see it in Sylvie: the weakness, the ache for her long dead family, for her sons, even for neighbors and people with whom she had once worked. Same for poor little Connie, crying for school mates and even teachers.

“She’s not coming back,” Sylvie said. “She was dreaming, she says here. Remembering things. You know, from the other life.”

“No such thing,” Clarence answered. He got into his coveralls as quickly as he could, anxious to get out. He didn’t want to have to tell Sylvie to shut up. “You go ahead and have breakfast. I’m going now, try to catch up with her.” He raised the flame in the hurricane lamp and looked over her. The flesh of her cheeks had sunk into the hollows of her skull. “You need to eat. There’s plenty of stuff in the storeroom. I’ll get us all steaks out of the freezer when I get back with Connie.”

Sylvie held the paper out to him. “You should read your own daughter’s note.”

“Does it say where she’s going?”

“No.”

Clarence left her in the bedroom, lit a candle outside and made his way across the bunker he had carved out from a corner in one of the hospital’s sub-basements. He passed the sealed rooms of his two sons, Mark and Damon, without a glance at the locked metal doors. They hadn’t even had the chance to come down. The Swarms had taken them topside, along with almost everyone else. He had managed to seal off enough space below to give them their own, empty tombs. It made him happy to think at least their spirits had a place to rest.

He walked, holding the candle before him, past the storerooms and lockers, the main lock, the old, tiny morgue powered by a small generator that served as their freezer for as long as the gasoline from the abandoned cars jamming the streets held out. When he reached his daughter’s room, the one she’d picked out for privacy, the door was open. The smell of sweet incense hung in the air. He poked around. Her down winter coat was missing, though it was only early Fall. So were a new pair of Timberland boots, socks, jeans, a couple of sweaters. And her favorite Sandman T-shirts and shorts, for the summer. Knife, machete, her Glock and M-16. Her journals were still on the make-shift bookshelf above her metal desk. Her dolls, pictures of friends and family, her radio and CDs were all over the room. Only one picture, with herself and Damon and Mark, was missing. A framed picture of Connie with Sylvie and Clarence was on the floor, its glass broken.

Clarence went back to the main lock and took out an environment suit, noting Connie had taken her own and one of the reserves. Smart girl. With a bag for clothes, another for food and supplies, she’d be able to travel far and light on one of the mountain bikes he had upstairs. If she was as serious as her preparations showed her to be, he would never catch her. If she was as strong as he had been at her age, inside, she would make it. But she wasn’t. There had to be a friend, even a group, she’d planned to meet. There would be problems. Jealousies. Conflicts. It would all end badly. Her only hope was a moment of weakness, a need to say goodbye to old things. He could catch up to her, then. He was sure he would catch up to her.

 Clarence zipped the plastic environment suit he had taken from the Army depot, checked the seals and filters, and picked the Sten gun and clip bag from the weapons locker. The suit smelled of sweat, and the filters replaced the closed, stale bunker odor with a chemical taint. But a Swarm couldn’t touch him in the suit. He was safe for topside.

He reached for the lock door, stopped. The latches were sealed from the inside. She hadn’t left this way. He glanced up at the air duct. No, not that way either. She would have wanted to leave quietly. The emergency exit.

He moved carefully back through the bunker so as not to tear the baggy suit. He took a side passage that led away from the main living area. He came up on the old service door he had rigged as an emergency exit in case the bunker was discovered or its seals breached by a Swarm. The door was open.

Stupid girl.

He lifted the suit’s face plate and called for Sylvie. When she didn’t answer, he went back to the bedroom. She was sitting on the bed looking at the letter.

“She went out the back and didn’t lock the door,” he said.

Sylvie ignored him.

“I’m going out that way after her. Close the escape door after me. Leave the latches on the main lock open so I can get back in. And fog the bunker out, in case something got in.”

Still, Sylvie didn’t answer. He went down on one knee, took the note from her and let if fall to the floor. He took her hand in his plastic glove, squeezed. “Go to the main lock first, get into a suit. Just in case. They don’t come out at night. They wouldn’t have gotten down here so quick in the morning. We would have heard them.”

Clarence lifted Sylvie’s head by the chin and tried to meet her gaze. She stared through him. He slapped her once, and her eyes closed, opened, focused on him.

“You have to be strong, Sylvie. I can’t take care of you and Connie at the same time. You got to hold down the place ‘til I get back. You’ll do that, won’t you? Come on, Sylvie. You will.”

Sylvie smiled, shook her head, reached with her fingers through the suit opening and stroked Clarence’s cheek. “You were right, honey,” she said softly. “Something happened.”

“You’ll do it, won’t you?” He took her hand away from his face.

“Yes.”

He stood up and went to the door, waited until she was standing, then left.

As he thought, Connie had taken one of the mountain bikes he had hidden in the dumpster that partially hid the stairs leading down to the bunker’s emergency exit.  He took another and went to Khalid’s shack under the highway by the river.

 The evacuation sirens had stopped a few days ago, and Clarence was glad for the quiet. There was nothing as peaceful as an abandoned city. He threaded his way through the jumble of cars with nothing but the sound of his own breathing and a faint squeak from the bicycle. It was only when he reached Khalid’s shack that he felt the morning’s wrongness.

The outer door of the lock to young vet’s shack was open. Clarence dismounted, slung his weapon off his shoulder. Sun light angled in between the low skyline across the river and the road bed overhead, casting bright morning light on the back of the structure pieced together from loose tin sheets, car and truck panels, doors and cement blocks. Tar and cement seals were still in place, as were the filters over jury-rigged vents. There was no scorch marks or bullet holes that would have indicated an assault by night raiders.

 Clarence moved sideways to get a better look into the boxy extension that served as Khalid’s lock. The inner door open.

It was daylight. Khalid’s home was open to Swarms.

Clarence reached the door, peered in. Called Khalid’s name through the suit. No one answered.

Suddenly, rage spiked through Clarence. Khalid. Connie. Could he have been so blind?

Connie came to talk with the vet all the time, just as Clarence did while he did his food and fuel rounds. Khalid had warned them about the night raiders, the survivors without environment suits who hid from the Swarms during the day and came out at night for salvage and to take from the day travellers, who had the benefit of light in which to loot the city. They had traded, and steered each other to valuable resources. Clarence had even invited Khalid to the hospital, offering to help secure space next to their own bunker. But Khalid preferred topside. There were too many hospitals in his past, he claimed, for him to ever feel comfortable living in one.

Most of all, Khalid had made Clarence talk. Not with questions, or a patter of conversation that tempted Clarence to join in, but with a comforting silence. A readiness to accept anything and everything. A fragility within his wiry, dangerous frame that Clarence understood as clearly as his own vulnerabilities. It was a shame the world had to end, Clarence always told Khalid, before he found someone to talk to.

Clarence moved into the shack, Sten gun in shaking hands, hurt blossoming in his chest. Khalid was too old for his daughter, even if it was the end of the world. Khalid talked to the ghosts of men he had killed during his time in the service. Khalid’s strength failed too often, and he would keep himself locked in the shack for days, frightened of what the world had become. He was not strong enough for Connie, and had always let Clarence know he knew this about himself.

Clarence kicked over a chair, knocked down a shelf, spilling photos and medals on the filthy floor. He looked for matches or a lighter, to set the shack on fire. To consume the pain of betrayals. Then he froze.

Khalid’s environment suit - a black and red rubber body suit with hood and gas mask pieced together from a fetishist sex store’s inventory - lay across his cot. The machete he had brought back from his South American forays still hung beside the door. The mountain bike hung on a wall, the cabinets were full of canned goods, and the rack was filled with rifles and shotguns.

Clarence sat down on the cot. Rage drained away, leaving him weak and feeling foolish. Feeling as if he had betrayed Khalid.

The world shifted, and another piece of life inside him died. Khalid was gone. Infected somehow with the virus carried by the Swarms of strange insects clouding the land.

Madness replaced by memories of places that could never be. Delusions eclipsed, as Khalid used to say during his contemplative periods, by the virus of memories.

An overwhelming urge to take off the suit came over Clarence. He put his hand to the helmet visor, stopped when he caught sight of the open door. He tightened his hand into a fist. All he wanted was to get comfortable, drink one of Khalid’s warm beers, listen to one of Khalid’s black op jungle stories, and perhaps add, in a receptive silence, a story from his own dull time in the Army, or the tale of his discovering Sylvie’s sweet attention focused on him, her basking in his strength. Or stories of his sons and daughter coming into the world, growing, exploring. Falling. Getting up, because they were strong. Crying, because they were stronger than Clarence, and able to let out what was inside of them while they went on to walk the path they wished to walk.

Clarence let the Sten gun fall. No, nothing about Connie, not now. Something simpler. The story of his discharge from the Army, perhaps, putting an end to his wandering days for Sylvie’s sake. Passing civil service exams with her help, moving from porter to maintenance worker to shop manager in the hospital over the years. Khalid had heard the tale many times in the near year they had known each other, but in nurturing silence, Clarence always discovered new details, a moment forgotten, a sensation he had barely felt when first living the experience.

But there was no welcoming silence for him to speak into.

He searched the shack for hope. The open doors mocked his desperation. He turned to the wall beside the cot, where Khalid had taped pieces of the past year’s history: the Time cover with the headline “Vector” splashed across the bulbous and spiked face of an insect; yellowed newspaper photos of riots in other countries; a medical fax alert on an unknown viral infection with sections on genetic damage, brain growths, and thought disorders highlighted; military recon photos lifted from abandoned files depicting the massing behavior of whole town and city populations in the virus’ grip; a single 8 by 10 black and white, shot from a building close by, of a stadium filled, like an over-flowing bowl of candy, with the bodies of infected men, women and children. Lines of the living stood in front of the gates, waiting to file into the stadium and find their place atop the mound of flesh. There were Polaroids, as well, which Clarence had managed to avoid looking at too closely during past visits. Drawn to them now, he noted the city’s familiar landmarks in the background while soldiers in environment suits sprayed chemical fogs at Swarms; or burned piles of bodies; or shot down entire families drawn to the massing sites like salmon to spawning grounds by the false memories, or psychotic hallucinations, planted in the brain by the virus.  Half-hidden under a sweat shirt hanging on a nail, a partially burnt, crudely hand-lettered hand-out announced the discovery of an alien organism, a new type of macrophage, capable of genetic alteration and of producing viral organisms targeted to specific genetic sites. A hazy photograph was included, and on a secondary sheet, lists of statistics and test results in fine-print, as well as the beginning of a fact sheet on hybridization. The rest of the report was missing. Clarence tore the papers down, balled them up and threw them in a corner. It was the kind of thing Khalid sometimes tried to talk to him about. But for Clarence, the scientific babble only gave reasons for people to give up fighting and run away. He had no use for nonsense that sapped his strength.

Sweat crawled down Clarence’s forehead. He turned on the suit’s small, battery operated vent fans. Simpler to take it all off, he thought.

 Strength. He focused on the concept. He had the strength to keep going, to keep the suit on and keep looking for Connie. He was not weak, he did not want to surrender, did not want to hear the clicking of the hive mates, or smell the sulphur stench of regeneration, or taste the enzymes breaking down matter to leach out essential minerals, or feel the sun’s warm radiance on a spread of wing panels—

Fragments of the previous night’s dreams burst into Clarence’s consciousness. Towers, rising from mounds of bodies. A hazy orange sky. A squirming sea of hatchlings. An urge to walk, to meet others, to merge body and soul and mind into a whole, to sacrifice self for the communal good.

 A sensual moment of bathing in decaying bodies, knowing the flesh is only changing state, contributing vital elements to the process of creating new life—

The sharp pain of birth—

Clarence stood up suddenly. He tore down the pictures from Khalid’s wall, ripped files Khalid had said explained the mechanics of the virus’ re-engineering of human chemistry to produce new drives, new memories. He knocked down cabinets, the weapon rack, piled clothes in the center of the shack, doused everything with fuel from a canister. After retrieving the Sten gun, Clarence backed out of Khalid’s old home, lit the book of matches he had found, and started the fire.

He did not look behind at the cleansing fire as he bicycled away. He was stronger than the need to do so.