Two by Two

Two by Two

We go in twos to get the bodies, the two Diseased.

Been eighty-two years now, since the Disease swept the nation like cell phones and iPods, 'xcept it does only one thing: turns a human being into a Parasite, latching onto a Host, another lucky hunk of flesh and stifled evolved instinct.

Then it took the world, drawed and quartered it by every corner until it wasn't anything but dust and people. People scattered to the mountains, to deserts, oceans, few took off for Antarctica, and there's rumors going around still that Australia never got swept. Say they still don't know, that the second day media shut down maybe shut down before it got to Australia.

Rumors of dust.

Say it cut the population of the world in half in ten days, with the chaos, no one knows really.

People scattered. To old apartment buildings, office buildings, museums, dormitories, factories. To small towns with guns. Anywhere with guns. Anywhere. Government officials, they say they got their own community in their houses of White. Breeding government babies to be born into nothing.

Anywhere, people gathered themselves, where they thought they could keep people on the outside at least six feet away. It takes six feet to spread and six feet to jump. More than six feet, you're clean. Six feet to make you a parasite, six feet for a parasite to make you a host.

Don't know how it started. Miracle cure gone wrong. Excavation, hit somethin' buried that was meant to stay so. Spore from a meteor. Say aliens themselves are comin' down, a race of them livin’ in us. Attach onto - into’s more like it- a human or maybe it's two of them, spirits livin’ together within two beings who are locked together until death.

They do, lock you until death. The Parasite at least. See, the Disease takes a person, makes them a Parasite, and the first person they come in contact with, six feet contact with, they bond to, never separate from. Parasites live on Hosts, through their impulses. Instincts, initial feelings. And the Parasite draws those impulses to the front, makes the Host act on them, and the Parasite, they act too. That's what they feed off of, every twitch of the mind and jerk of the knee.

Here in the shelter it's hard to understand. We been taught, those of us who were born here, and they say its like when we're holding something and want to throw it, or when we see the rations and want to eat it all, though we know we got to share. But we ain't even seen rations for a while.

Most of all here in the shelter we been taught the Diseased are dangerous. That they ain’t human anymore. They’re not worthy anymore, now they can’t control.
But a couple people here, they tried to pass on somethin’ different. Tried to say the Diseased are human. That they still feel human. That they could still live normally, want normally. That they still breathe, eat, love, run, fuck, drink, dream, cry, think, walk and sleep; they just do all that along with the impulses of the Host.

But those founders of our little shelter that tried to spread that were made example of by the other founders, the ones who said the Diseased are animals. Now the ones who said they were human are just more rumors. I’m not even sure they existed. Just rumors of dust.

Some say great wars broken out in the wild. Pure madness and no-hope drove impulses and instincts to war.

Tribes formed, armies formed, and they drawed and quartered the corners of the dust till the world outside be nothin' but specks you see just when the light hits 'em right.

Say that when any of the Diseased find a community, they try to tear it down. That they’re evil. That they find ‘em and stop tryin’ to survive outside and keep us clean. They want us. They want in.

And they drag the disease in with 'em.

Cause they want to be inside alone, think maybe they won't catch it. Think maybe it'll jump - jump like some say it do - into somebody else but them, to somebody clean inside, that maybe somebody else would be just as close the moment they did the deed. Me, I think it takes the Host too, sits there soaking in your skin while livin' in the Parasite, the Designated Diseased.

That's what happens you know, when they catch the disease - I say them because I don't intend on ever becomin' one of 'em - attach onto another human, fuse magnetically, some say spiritually to another person, permanent. Get connected by the nose, your nose will never break, invincible noses and you'll never be away from the Parasite, that person ever again, constantly facing them, straight on. One movin' forward, one movin' back.

Get connected by the arm. Never break your arm. Stand alongside each other forever.

Never break from 'em until the Parasite is cured and the only way to cure 'em is to kill 'em.

They say.

Only one who can kill the parasite is the host. Well, 'sides the parasite himself. The parasites invincible somehow, the body, if the mind survives the attachment at all. I heard rumors of the founders who said they were human. Saying they’d talked to some, by telephone, seen ‘em in the distance. That the mind survives. But that’s not supposed to be said in the shelter anymore. That’s what we were taught. Though all that’s left now is the taught.

I was born here. Here in our structure of small rooms. Only seventy people made it in, though a lot more built it up - lots died in the gettin’ ready. And ‘bout fifty two years ago I was born here, thirty years after it swept, into the shelter. I heard of some places set up pretty nice in the little time people had to scatter. Heard military, these government run groups of gun-holding people they had, bombed areas around places that were clean and set up walls, flew in supplies. Our people, they set up their own place up pretty nice, group of people with guns in the city used to be Chicago. They claimed them a nice sized building with some space they cleared around it, went in numbers and trucks and guns to get supplies, even brought them in some sort of machine and broke down buildings around us, pushed it all together to make four walls. A wall to watch from and defend. Went and got seeds and some animals, cows and cats and chickens, pigs and dogs. Went and raided and brought things in before the wild took over.
But the breedin' stopped workin’ fifty years ago, animals died off or we got too greedy with the eating.

We took to hunting, not so much anymore with guns, but arrows and stones and bows. Stray dogs and deer, anything that wanders by. But they're going to stop comin’ by. The numbers are gettin’ lower. Nobody's taking care of the wild and they're getting hungry and greedy and killin's become the only way to eat on the outside, I bet.

Maybe the Diseased have communities too, maybe some control it, use it to survive. Some say there's hope.

Took us fifteen years of dwindling fields and stray animals to really miss meat. Not sure how many hands it took to pass the vote to start eatin’ the Diseased.
Up from the fifteenth floor, arrows fly down to hosts and parasites. Kill the host, the parasite dies.

We take the chance that most the time the Disease goes with the corpses. It's only jumped four times in the last five years, I can remember, and before those five years, never did. Every other time we just get the bodies. People are sent in twos, out to get the corpses. If just one person goes out to get the bodies and the Disease survives, it's not going to jump. It'll jump to the Host if it's the one who does the killing, always did, because it's already latched on, maybe expects it to take care of it like it has been. But it just consumes the Host/new-Parasite, if its alone and never finds a parasite, slowly breaking down the body from the inside. But if a clean person goes out and drags the bodies in, and we don't know if the Disease survived or not, well it could jump inside when its safe, and then it would take us all.

So we go in twos outside.

We can't let the bodies lie and hope the disease fades that way, too possible wild will come and claim, and we get too hungry to wait.

So we send two. Way we get sent is random, a number in an old hat, baseball, we were told. I'm number 15.

Two numbers are picked and we ask the two what they want if the Disease jumps. If they become Parasite and Host. They want to keep livin’? No one's asked to be shot, too scared. But the first two that got it, they came back ten days later, started running toward the shelter. So they're dead now anyway.
It was twenty days ago now the fifth jump happened. Arrows from the fifteenth over the remnants of the piles of rubble. It had been ten days since we'd eaten the last scraps of our latest kill. There were twenty-five of us left. All of us born here.

Two wandered up. A child no more than ten - humans are still being born, we have to realize this, maybe there’s survival - his body bare and rough, his ungainly fuzzy carrot legs sprinting, his arms in tandem with a woman by his left hand/her right: they ran toward us like fire.

Arms and legs and matted carrot hair, and dust flyin’ up behind ‘em.
Arrows flew. Hit the woman's chest. They tripped. The boy got up. The woman got up. It was the boy's mind we were killing, his mind ran them toward us, the Host. They sent arrows. The boy tripped. The woman fell. They sent two.
The two ran up to the bodies and stopped a pile of stone away, stood rigid then turned toward us. Their eyes aglow, their legs running furiously toward us. The Disease did not go with the bodies.

But why did they run toward us?

That was the boy's impulse.

The others went into the wild, looked back to us for a moment and took their chances outside.

But they ran at us with the same fire the boy had.

Arrows flew.

Then two more.

Each time the two never reached the corpses to drag them in.

Each time they turned toward us and ran in.

Each time arrows.

Twenty, by twos, went down.

They kept marching down in twos though they'd sent the arrows to kill the last two.

The numbers we pulled, that was the way, that was who went. No longer did we care to live, just to eat.

I screamed.

Leave them.

Leave them lie.

I screamed.

A line of paired corpses led right up over the eighty-two year old rubble piles to our building.

Five of us stood on the fifteenth floor.

Our shots perfected by years of hunting, the fallen bodies of twenty-two Diseased crawled a line of dust up to the feet of our shelter.

And five of us stood left.

Still number 8, the oldest by twenty years, our leader, reached his wrinkling calloused hand into the hat and pulled out numbers. Number nine.

We never learned names.

But hers was Julianna.

Julianna.

In our building, in our small rooms. We made weapons for the fifteenth floor. We passed time. There were books scattered around. I can’t read.

We live civilized like. We knock on doors.

Each of us to our own room.

Julianna.

Julianna had her own room. It was my favorite.

He put his hand into the hat.

His wrinkled hands clutched the smooth paper. And his eyes met mine.

Whether it said fifteen or not, I did not know.

But his eyes met mine and I flew.

An arrow in my hand I slid it into his stomach. Julianna jolted. The other two stood their, young, twenty something, two brown-haired boys, brothers, Sam and Son. He smiled and the paper dropped. A lonely eight fell to the floor.
The four of us stood in a circle around his body.

Maybe they'd wanted to do it. Maybe they'd become so used to death that my flight hadn't made them flinch at all.

I was the new leader. Or no one was.

We sat down around his body. It'd been twelve days since we'd last eaten.

We ate for six days.

We lived civilized like for six days.

Julianna and I took to the same room and the Sam-Son boys took to themselves. We never knocked.

Eight lasted us six days.

Meanwhile Julianna and I tangled.

And in twos we watched the wild. None of us went down the stairs, the line of bodies reached up to the front door. None of us risked the six feet. None of us knew how long the Disease would survive, waiting for us.

We didn't talk about going down. But I felt my hunger growing. I hungered.

What was keeping us civilized?

What was keeping us from becoming one of them.

I wanted to, every once in a while, I knew I did. But I didn't want to go down first.
None of us did. We figured once you're a parasite, you cease. That was what we been taught. Sometimes I thought about the rumors of the rebels that had said they were still human. But we've never been close enough to one to ask, never shouted over the stretch between us and them as they hurled their desperate bodies toward our shelter, we'd never asked.

And now it was so deep in our being, not to become one of them. We were born here. We would die before we were in the wild.

So we didn't talk about going down to the door. Even though I thought sometimes.

Eight days after I'd done off Eight, Julianna and I decided the brothers must be watching us when we walked away from them.

Two days after that, we decided to slip in without knocking. But they weren't in
there.

And then we heard.

Running. Heavy footsteps, the footsteps of two.

I looked to Julianna, her eyes empty moons.

She understood just as well as I. In the last eight days we'd both begun to realize, if two went down, the other two would die or kill and become the Diseased.

She understood just as well as I.

Her stringy body flung itself at me, the dagger she'd meant for Sam in her left hand. I let myself fall as she hit me, fell with her body and grabbed her left fist, tight around the blade. Strength was one thing we had here, what little we could cling to as our bodies hungered. But I could still move her arm toward her chest.

The moons became suns.

She screamed out.

The heavy footsteps below us sped.

I couldn't kill her while staring at her, while hearing her scream.

I fit my knee up on her right arm and put what weight I had left in my body on her and slipped my right hand over her mouth.

But those eyes, still burning at me. Eating.

I used her left hand and put them out.

Her stringy body went limp.

The brothers were almost to our floor, but I wasn't worried. The hall was long enough. I was good enough shot. I could stop them before they got within six feet.

The brothers looked no different, flinging the door and standing there in the shadows of the shelter. Somehow, they both looked at me. Both eyes caught me. Their hunger took me.

I knew, it was Son.

And I sent an arrow through his eye.

But they kept running. I sent another through his chest and he stumbled, reached out to me, and the two fell.

-----

It'd been twenty days. I'd been eating enough, but the meat all went bad. So I took all the bodies in, put them on the shelves that used to house the supplies.
I stopped keeping watch, been too long since I'd seen even an animal approach.

I thought about going out. Going out in the wild.

But the walls kept me, the bodies in the basement. It was my duty to keep them safe.

Perhaps it was guilt. I felt I should die here with them.

So I took to myself to just lie down and die. Just go to sleep.

But I did not go to sleep. I lay on my bed on the third floor, the smell of the basement seeping up. It’d been three days since I’d risked eating, torn chunks, scorched to keep the rot away.

Three days. Not too bad yet.

I took it to myself not to move at all from the bed. I would will myself to die by simply ceasing to exist as I had before. If I stopped going, if my legs stopped walking, maybe my heart would stop beating my chest.

But I did not die.

And I did not sleep.

And neither did Julianna’s blue moon eyes.
-----
Two days since I decided to lie down and not move.

Two days that I’ve been awake for, that I know. I know I have slept some, exhaustion, dehydration, the boiling mass of my stomach. I did not close my eyes. Every time I do, she watches me. Though she watches me with my eyes.

No, my eyes closed themselves.

I think its been two days.

Sun comes in through the window and the room feels raw, exposed. This place is too safe. I must go outside.

I must go outside to die. The wild will take me. There must be something left. Either that or the sun will get greedy, not enough life left to feed it, maybe the sun’ll take me.

I drag my body down the steps through the stench creeping up and playing with the thin hairs of my skin. I drag my body to the door and into the raw sun.

My feet ignore the rubble, but I get to the pile and have to climb. I could lie down here and die, but it would not come soon enough. No sleep. Just lying here as my stomach devoured, and the sun didn’t look hungry enough. My thin arms didn’t want to see the other side of the rubble, but if I stopped, my eyelids would drop, and I did not want to see. I can not lie down here.

Certain now that this is the only way, that the wild will kill me, do what I can not, I scramble up over the wide wall they’d built - though it wasn’t so tall anymore, scattered from time and animals and the Diseased.

Once over the pile my body does not stop. My legs are beasts of their own and my heart kept beating my chest. The ground beneath me is broken, I can feel that as I fly over it. But everything else is the air in front of me, just in front of me. The buildings I’d seen sticking up in the debris, some piles like our wall, they were the same. I’d mapped the outside from the shelter, and the parts I hadn’t seen - my feet found their own way.

A scream.

I stop, my chest beaten.

In front of me, a scream.

Over the next pile I see them on the ground, rolling over each other, biting, grappling, kicking. I stand silent.

Two men, thin as bones.

One on top, he’s got him.

I stand. The sun exposes. Julianna’s blue moon eyes watch. I watch. The ground between the two and me is darker than the rest. My shadow reaches out over the sun exposed ground to his hands, tightening into the others neck.

I scream.

He looks up at me as my shadow reaches out to his bloody hands. Or perhaps it is his red fingers that reach my shadow, as they twist around and through the dense particles of air standing still between us, standing still with us, lingering in the six feet of my shadow.