Commune: Book One (Commune Series 1) Read online

  I can’t really give you a percentage of people who died due to the Plague (because The Flare/Plague 1-2 combo killed all statistics too) but out of my whole neighborhood, I’m the only…

  -

  Jake’s narrative trails off abruptly at this point. I know what has happened, of course. The look on his face tells me all I need to know.

  “I think we’ll stop there tonight, Brian. It’s late. There is a long day ahead of us,” Jake says quietly as he gets up and moves to the door. I know there will be no discussion on this. I carefully collect my papers into a neat bundle, wish him goodnight, and walk quietly out into the evening.

  2 – Cedar City

  Amanda

  Amanda Contreras is a single mother in a world where all parents from before the Plague have been rendered single by default. She is a compact 5’5” woman, 26 years old, with naturally brown skin and hair from her Hispanic heritage. Her eyes are a striking light-grey with sharp cheekbones. Her daughter, Elizabeth, is 9 years old and favors her mother’s appearance. If there is still such a thing as a helicopter parent in this world, Amanda is of the Apache Longbow variety.

  I am sitting with Amanda on the porch of the small, three-room cabin that she built with the help Oscar and some of the others who live in the commune. Her daughter sits a short distance off from us on a stump, happily making cordage by twisting together the shredded leaves of cattails. She hums a tuneless song to herself as she works in the dying light of the day. There is already several yards of the strong coil at her feet. Her feet are bare; she uses her toes to control and coil the rope as it is produced.

  Amanda has served us both a cup of tea, a rare delicacy. It is possible that someone somewhere is still cultivating the crop but the resurgence of the beverage is not something we anticipate seeing any time soon in Wyoming. She has produced some scavenged bags of Lipton and boiled water over a fire. There is no sugar to spare for this treat but it does not matter. It is delicious and I feel myself invigorated by the caffeine almost immediately.

  I inform her that we can take as little or as much time for this as she would like and that I am at her service for as long as she is willing to go. She smiles at me, sips at her drink, and watches Elizabeth a while. Finally, she says, “That little girl is the only reason I’m still alive, you know?”

  -

  The plague took everything from us. I mean more than just the people it took. It took our certainty. I’ve been thinking about this a really long time, now, and I think I have a good idea what it was that made it so horrible besides…the obvious.

  I got pregnant with Elizabeth when I was 17 with my boyfriend, Eddie. Before that, I wasn’t certain about anything. I didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going. Everyone around me from my parents to the counselor at school, all my teachers; everyone told me I had to get ready for college but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I didn’t really have any hobbies besides hanging out with girlfriends. I was just a kid, anyway.

  I wasn’t certain about Eddie. He wanted to be a Marine. He told me we were going to get married and all the rest but I knew how that went. He goes off to Basic, then training for his MOS. At some point he ships out on a boat, maybe spends time in the Philippines. The whole time I’m back here being not with him. Not a recipe for a strong marriage. I knew where I was going to be in a week but I didn’t have any idea when it came to a few years later. No matter what, the smart money said I’d still be stuck in Beaver, Utah.

  Then Lizzy happened and things started getting “certain” real fast. I certainly wasn’t going to college, for one thing. I was certainly keeping the baby, though my dad pleaded with me to “take care of it” when I told him about it. I also learned that Eddie was certainly the man I was going to marry, as you’ll see.

  I was afraid to tell him the most out of anyone – even more than my mother. I had seen this happen before (Beaver is a small town with not a lot of privacy). The boyfriend always gives the same lines. “Yes, I’m going to be involved. I want to be a part of the kid’s life. I’m going to contribute. Do my part.” All that. They’re gung-ho during the pregnancy and maybe a few months after but that all dries up once the whole situation becomes more work than fantasy. I loved Eddie and he was always good to me. He said he loved me but I was terrified to put his future as a Marine up against my need. A part of it was that I didn’t want him to have to give up that future but, in my secret heart – that place I don’t like to admit exists - I was mostly just afraid to see which would win out: the Corps or me and the baby. I really, really didn’t want to know what it felt like to be discarded. Not telling him at all was tempting but also not possible. At some point he was going to notice something different about me.

  I told him before anyone else. We were over at his place (actually, his parents’ place) in the back yard sitting on his little brother’s swing set (“I never got a swing set, the little shit,” Eddie used to joke while messing up the kid’s hair…Dillon was his name). There were a lot of things I admired in Eddie but there were none so much as how he reacted to the news. Keep in mind: he was seventeen like me. The plan was for him to head down to the recruiter’s office in Saint George on his birthday to enlist and, if I remember right, that was coming up in something like three months. He’d been talking about this for years – for as long as I knew him – like some people would talk about a guaranteed spot at MIT. I was a part of his planning too, but the way he talked was always that the Corps was something that happened first and then he could have me (like I was the prize at the end of the ordeal or something). I liked that he included me in his future but I also knew that a lot happens on deployment; I had spoken to some military wives on the Internet and what I heard made me feel scared. And honestly, I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to sit around waiting for a husband I rarely saw to come home and spend short stretches of time with me before shipping out again.

  I told him straight out. I didn’t try to soften the blow or make a little joke or anything. I tried really…really hard to keep the panic out of my voice but I don’t think I did the best job. I just wanted to be straight with him. He was such a good guy; he was always straight with me. He never jerked me around and I just wanted to give him that same kind of respect.

  I’m never going to forget the look he had on his face. I think I counted about five seconds where he looked like the wind was knocked out of him. Like, just literally knocked out of him and he couldn’t breathe or even move. Then, he sucked in air sharply, let it out, and finally nodded his head once. And that was it. That was all it took for him. Five seconds, a breath, and a nod to completely re-plan his whole life trajectory.

  He reached out across the swings and took my hand in his (his hands were one of my favorite things about him; they were strong, a little scarred on the backs from the ranch work he did to earn extra cash, and big – big enough to disappear my hands when he held them) and asked, “Will you keep her?”

  Not “him” or “it”. “Her”. I didn’t even have any idea what I was having yet - I was only something like six weeks in. It was like he knew, though. She was already a person to him. So I said, “Yes”.

  He squeezed my hand and said, “Thank God. Will you marry me, then?”

  I started crying. Not hard or hysterical…just some tears and some effort to keep my voice steady. “I don’t know if I can be a Marine wife AND a single mom, Eddie.”

  “Oh, that shit’s over,” he scoffed. “There are more important things to deal with now.”

  That was when I started to lose it. “Oh, no, no, no, no. You can’t,” I said. “That’s your dream. You can’t. You…baby, you can’t.” I was starting to blubber. He made all the soothing noises you’re supposed to make when your girlfriend falls apart (he was probably also afraid one of his parents would see what was happening out the window and come interrupt).

  When I finally calmed down, he said, “Look, baby. Yes, I wanted to do that and, yeah, it sucks. But this is a big deal. You were always
going to be a part of my life. After the Marines you were still going to be there. You’re the thing that’s most important. And now, with this, well… I’m not leaving so you can deal with it on your own. I’m definitely not missing the birth of my kid. Fuck that.”

  And on that note, he asked me again to marry him and I said “yes”. Not exactly the way I expected my proposal to go but, all things considered, I still felt pretty great about it. We said a lot more to each other out there on the swing set but I’m keeping that conversation for me.

  He insisted we tell my parents first, maybe because he wanted to get that part out of the way. I was dreading it but having told Eddie, I felt like this would be easier and it was. My parents did and said all the things you’d expect. I will say that my dad never tried to get physical with Eddie. He didn’t have any illusions about us; he knew we’d been sleeping together. There were no big blow-ups. But there was the shock, the disappointment, the usual run of unhelpful and pointless questions. My dad tried to talk us into terminating and we both told him that wasn’t happening.

  “I want to marry her,” Eddie said. “I want to take care of her. I want the baby to have a dad.”

  “We’ll see,” my father said, and Eddie showed him.

  He saw, alright. We had a couple of months to finish high school but Eddie started taking all these night classes and got himself set up in an apprenticeship to become an electrician. He got a job up in Sandy along with a little two-bedroom apartment. We got married at the courthouse in this tiny, non-event. Both of our mothers moaned over our lack of big, traditional wedding but they calmed down after I explained that we needed to save money and, given my childbearing condition, the whole big-ceremony-thing with a pure white gown seemed kind of ridiculous. My one concession to my mother was a veil. A veil with a faded, old English Beat T-shirt (I loved my Ska), some jeans, and a pair of Chucks. I still have the picture from that day back inside the cabin, here.

  We moved up to Sandy together, Elizabeth came shortly after, and we did okay. We weren’t rich or even really comfortable but we kept getting better. Eddie was relentless with his work. He was serious and focused. He plowed through his apprenticeship and, by the time Lizzy was three, he was making enough money that I could quit my job at Starbucks and stay home with her. As soon as Eddie made journeyman, he was right back into night classes getting all these specialized certificates. Certificates in fire alarm systems, national code, you name it. Anything he could get a slot in that was relevant. He knocked them down one after the other like he was bowling and, over time, his take home pay showed the results. He wasn’t getting so much that we could buy a house but he was making enough that we were able to save money. All of our Needs were handled and even some of our Wants and, though it was some time out, our own home was on the timeline.

  I didn’t notice it while it was happening but, one day, I realized that everything had become certain. Don’t get me wrong, there were still plenty of question marks, but I was at least certain of my place in life. I was certain my husband would be there. I was certain we loved each other. I was certain Lizzy would be okay and that she’d have everything she needed. I was certain I could go to the store whenever we needed something (whether it was food, clothes, or other things) and, when I swiped my card, there would be money in the account to cover it. I was certain our cars would run and, if there was a problem with them, I was certain Eddie could fix it. I was certain the bills were always going to be paid on time. Things were very, very good.

  When the Plague took Eddie, Lizzy and I had to leave our apartment and relocate to one of the quarantine tents just outside the city. Losing him was…hard. I’m a strong girl. I’ve been a strong girl for a long time. But I was mostly strong because I knew he’d be there behind me. Eduardo was the love of my life. I didn’t want to continue to “be” without him. And they wouldn’t let me bury him or anything. A couple of soldiers came in, gave me a bunch of “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and hustled us right out of there. The last time I saw my husband alive was over the shoulder of someone named Sgt. Alvarez as he picked me up and carried me out of my own home, saying, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m so sorry,” the whole time.

  We were told we’d be safe in the quarantine tents; what was being called Cedar City (not to be confused with the actual Cedar City further south) because it was just off the 73 on the way to Cedar Fort. But we weren’t safe. Or actually, most of us weren’t. The flu rolled through Cedar City just as hard and fast as it rolled through Sandy. Lizzy and I watched as everyone around us died off in a period of weeks, no longer than a month and a half at most.

  How can I describe what it was like sitting there waiting to get sick? There was something like 80,000 or so people living in Sandy. I know that probably doesn’t sound like a lot but it was one of the bigger cities in Utah. Sandy was also stacked right next to other cities like South Jordan, Draper, and Riverton, plus it was just south of Salt Lake City itself. Cedar City had to be big enough to support the people from all of these areas (it wasn’t, of course, but they did the best they could to keep up with the number of infected). I don’t know how many people passed away before Cedar City was constructed but even half of all the cities just north would have required a massive amount of area and staff. None of us ever got an official count; communication had been reduced to nothing in those days.

  By the time the Plague was all done killing us off, there were just little pockets of people left, mostly on their own but in some places they were in two’s or three’s.

  The soldiers who were out there with us were all kind but they weren’t helpful in any way. The best you could get out of them was “I’m sorry, we’ll update you as soon as our command tells us” or “I’m sorry, we’re expecting new supplies to arrive any day now”. Everything they said to us always began with the words “I’m sorry”. Despite my situation, I felt bad for them. They all looked like they were just a few minutes away from panic. They all had this universal deer-in-the-headlights look when you talked to them. All they knew was what they’d been told which, from what I gathered at the time, was to guard the camp, distribute food and medicine, put down looters, rioters, or resistance, and await further orders. The actual medical staff seemed to be a lot better off in this regard. There were any number of Army combat medics and nurses in constant motion between the cots; they had all been either bused in or flown in while Cedar City was being put together. At least, they were all there by the time Lizzy and I arrived on our school bus. They all moved from place to place with purpose. They looked like they had a mission. In those days when there were still many of us to care for, there was always one more thing to do, one more task to accomplish, one more battle to wage by the bedside. They had it together and spoke with certainty. They were resolved.

  Then, as people kept dying at the same rate despite their best efforts and especially when the soldiers and medics themselves began to find themselves on their own sick cots, we all saw that certainty and resolve erode away. Despite everything that was going on, despite the never ending fear I had in waiting for Lizzy to get sick, watching the medics and the nurses crumble was heartbreaking. We all loved them – loved them for how hard they fought for us. When they finally found themselves down on the cot among the sick, it was the sick who were reaching their hands out between wracking coughs to soothe and comfort them. Those medical people who were still on their feet began to carry the same expressions as the soldiers and the rest of us understood: there wasn’t much left to do but wait to die.

  We left long before everyone died off, of course. Lots of the survivors did. Once we figured out that the soldiers were no longer confining us to the quarantine area, folks just started slipping away in little pockets. In my case we stayed a bit longer because I was still terrified that Lizzy was going to get sick. I didn’t want to take us too far away from where all the medical supplies and people were. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my health, though, or what it might mean that both L
izzy and I remained healthy long after everyone else gave out. It’s like I said: she’s the reason I’m still alive. If she hadn’t been with me at that time, I think I would have just lay down on a cot and waited for my brain to turn off…or maybe grab one of the rifles from a dead soldier and turn my brain off.

  So, when all the medics started dying off, I was left with a load of medical supplies that I didn’t know how to use and no one to show me. It didn’t make any sense to hang around anymore. The staff stationed with us had dropped off to a miniscule degree; I mean there were maybe one or two people left for every five sick tents. You could literally walk along column after column in the grid and not run into anyone official or in charge. More often than not, you could see people who used to be in charge lying in sick cots. There was no one running the place.

  I led Lizzy to one of the supply tents (you had to lead her everywhere by that time; all she did anymore was sit quietly and stare off into the distance or just sleep) and got what seemed like plenty of supplies at the time. I grabbed a bottle of Ibuprofen, a first aid kit, and so on. I saw a bunch of other drugs and what I guess must have been antibiotics (they all had names I didn’t recognize and couldn’t pronounce, all ending in “-lin”). I saw one bottle that said “Broad Spectrum” so I grabbed that. A couple of sleeping bags, a ruck from one of the soldiers that I stuffed with some MREs and a couple of bottled waters, and finally one of the soldier’s rifles. I didn’t even get any extra magazines for the rifle; I just took it with whatever it had loaded in. I didn’t know about survival or self-reliance or even bug-out bags back then. A backpack with some waters and some food seemed like it was enough.