Fear the Reaper - Andrew Vanderbeek

Starting at age 4, my education includes preschool, kindergarten, six years in primary school, three in middle school and three in high school.  Add a four year bachelor’s degree and then five additional years for my masters and doctorate to round out my schooling. 

Unfortunately, nowhere in all that education, did I learn to use a simple camp stove.  

I sit leaning over a contraption made for the basic camper, quietly but eloquently cursing the thing, trying hard not to attract unwanted attention and/or a nervous breakdown.   I am cave man cold, refugee filthy and rabid dog hungry.  I am hiding in the last structure which could be clearly identified as a house in this burnt out neighborhood of Waverly, Nebraska. 

The reality of the last month attempts to overwhelm my thoughts and emotions, but with skill borne of hourly practice, I push these thoughts to the back of my mind where they can mingle for a bit with my terror and disbelief, a growing emotional Molotov cocktail. 

I focus instead on the goal of warm food and a contented stomach.  

Another ten minutes and I finally coax the small stove into life.  The fuel can was inserted wrong and I likely wasted half of it.  I put a can of chili into my dirty pot and add some water to thin it out.  This can of chili is all the food I have left, tomorrow I have to go hunting for supplies. 

I huddle as close as I dare around the tiny flames, partly to warm myself, and partly to shield stray rays of light.  The heavenly scent of the slowly warming food mostly masks the reek of my body.  Under the setting sun the autumn wind whistles through the broken structure above me. 

The warmth and smell are hypnotic and somnolent.  Slowly my tight muscles and fragile mind begin to relax.  Experience with exhaustion during medical residency tells me very soon I will sleep long and hard.  A month of frantic flight, dehydration and malnutrition has refined both my abilities and priorities, but I am not a hardened soldier.  I am a pediatric fellow.  My normal physical stress never exceeded Pilates at the hospital gym followed by a liter of Evian.  

My adrenaline has worn off from a day of fleeing and I catch myself dozing over the fire.  A months’ time of running, hiding and sometimes fighting was taking its toll on not just my nerves but my body as well.  To stay conscious I finally allow myself to remember.  The memories chase away sleep quite effectively, at least for the moment.

I was a pediatric fellow at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Lincoln Nebraska. 

“It” started with severe respiratory illness in children.   At first we thought we had an outbreak of whooping cough or RSV.     Within a day we had a hundred cases, and the governor declared a medical emergency for all of Lancaster County. 

“It” got worse.  The adults began catching it too, but the severity was worse and included high fevers and raving.  We got reports of cases all over the country.

I was tending a young girl, maybe 19, in the throes of a fever sweat.   She kept repeating the same thing, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”  I didn’t know what she meant.  One of the chaplains was giving last rites to the body in the second bed in the room.  He told me what it was, “Matthew 9:37, where Jesus talks about the harvest of human souls.”  Right then the girl turned and looked at me and smiled in her fever.

“Fear the Reapers!” she whispered. 

Then “It” got worse.  The mortality rate was 100% at least, we had no survivors.   The symptoms changed from just respiratory illness to what appeared to be hemorrhagic fever.   The bodies of the dead were coffee grounds black, caused by the blood that had been fighting to escape the victim visibly decaying near the surface of the skin.  

Then “It” got worse.  The contagion rate went up as it spread.  I had been so busy I hadn’t had time to watch the news.   When I finally stopped to look at a waiting room TV, “It” wasn’t just the United States.  “It” was all over the world.   The major cities were reporting massive population movement as whole cities attempted to relocate to rural areas to escape “It”.  Moving didn’t help, at that time estimates placed the death toll at nearly 25% of the human population, and “It” was growing. 

Then “It” got worse.  St Elizabeth’s had beds in the hall ways and the lobby.  The morgue filled up entirely and soon those of us that were still coming to work were stacking bodies wrapped in bed sheets on top of the first layer of body bags piling up in the underground parking structure. 

Then “It” got worse.  Six days after the first mortality the CDC ordered all bodies buried ASAP.  A work crew arrived in hazmat suits and with front loaders scooped all of the bodies into the back of a dump truck and took them away.  They hosed down the bloody stain on the floor of the garage with disinfectant that smelled like minty petroleum.  They left behind a rusty old dump truck for us to put bodies in so they could be hauled away daily.    The city dug mass graves in parks and golf courses.  They were full as soon as they were dug.  The term “Black Plague” began to be passed around but “It’ presented none of those symptoms. 

Then “It” got worse.  “It” changed again.  The respiratory damage got faster, and the dermal hemorrhaging got much worse.  Victims arrived at the hospital, covered in blood; coughing bloody phlegm and bleeding through their eyes and sweat glands. 

Then “It” got worse.  Social order broke down.  I realized four of the cleaning and support staff.  Parents who were not sick were cleaning and making food.  The hospital was being run by volunteers.  The news said mortality had surpassed 35% of the population.

Then “It” got worse.  Society crossed a sustainable line.  What had it been, 40% dead?  No one came to help at the hospital.  I walked the hallway and saw only the sick and the dead. 

Then it was the end of us.                  

My car ran out of gas a mile from the hospital.  Three days earlier I had not been able to find an open station that still had gas.  I hadn’t had a hot meal in two days.  I had a change of clothes and a purse full of bottled water, chips and candy bars I had scrounged from hospital vending machines.

I walked nearly empty streets.  I saw a few cars weaving in and out of debris heading one way or another.  I dodged my first brush with danger when a truck went by a few blocks down filled with drunken men.  I wasn’t sure if they saw me but I got off the street and into an abandoned deli.  It stunk so badly of rotten meat I could barely stand it.   They apparently had seen me and drove down the street near the deli.  I am sure the stench of the place kept them out; probably kept me from being raped or worse.    

Later I had wandered into a residential area; bodies wrapped in blankets, tarps and garbage bags lay on the sidewalks waiting for the removal service that would now never happen.  I wondered where the mortality rate was now. I saw a few people furtively moving along other streets and in between houses.  Several homes were on fire.   There were gun shots in the distance every few minutes.   The power was out city wide.  If it weren’t for the fact I was in a little bit of shock I would have realized right then that I needed to get out of Lincoln. 

I had wandered for almost an entire day before I saw the first Reaper. 

At first I thought it was a group of refugees or perhaps a group of plague victims seeking aid.  My first instinct was to go to them and try to help. 

Something stopped me; a feeling both basic and deep from the genetic memory of our species that says “DANGER!” in the clearest and most primal language possible.  In modern man it is a sixth sense that we have intentionally blinded with the peace of technology.  In that moment I rediscovered my fear of the dark. 

The group was not moving so much as milling in a slow spiral around a single figure in the middle of the group.   All of them were covered in dried blood and were in various states of undress.  They seemed like they were dazed, and completely unaware of anything except the figure in the middle. 

I realized my fear was derived from the person in the middle.  He was oddly dressed in what I could only describe as a shabby priests cassock with a deep hood.    In his right hand the figure held what appeared to be a long wooden pole.  His back was to me.

Three men cross the street in front of the group of plague victims and the black clad man.  The strange group was between me and the men.    Each newcomer looked healthy, was armed, and carried a large ruck sack; apparently they were looters. 

The man in the center of the victims pointed his long stick at the three looters and the group of victims suddenly found purpose.  They charged the three men at full speed knocking them to the ground.  Even armed the three looters were unprepared for the onslaught.  Dozens of hands found purchase on arms and legs, hair and body and each looter was lifted screaming from the street and carried toward the man in the black frock. 

The wooden stick was raised into the air and now I could see it was not a staff or a pole, but the handle of a scythe.  I had not been able to see the wicked blade of shining metal that was attached on the end nearest the ground.  In one lightening move the scythe swung up and completely through the first man, rending him in half.   The plague victims who had been holding dropped the bloody remains on the ground with a sickening splatter.  At first the other two looters screamed and struggled to get free, but they fell silent as the man in the black frock spoke.

“Feed!”  The voice was remote, disconnected like a shout barely heard across a forest meadow. 

The blood covered plague victims who were not actively holding a living looter fell upon the gory mess.

I don’t remember turning, I don’t remember making the decision, but I ran away.  Before I had gone a block the other two looters began to scream again.

I have seen three more since that day.  Each time the mob of Plagued did the bidding of the Reaper.  Each time the uninfected died horribly, consumed by the mob.  I watched once from a distance as a mob tore down a house with their bare hands to pull out a man and a woman who were hiding inside.  Gunfire will stop them, if they are mortally wounded, but I saw a man empty an automatic weapon into a mob before they lifted him screaming into the air.  Only those grievously wounded stayed down.  Others with wounds in arms and legs merely limped on following the Reaper.

I set down the pot, now empty of chili and pulled my blanket around me. 

Then again, maybe I wouldn’t sleep tonight.