Caretaker

CARETAKER

Richard P. Clem

Copyright 2012 by Richard P. Clem.

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A portion of Caretaker was originally published in 2011. This version has been edited and expanded.

Cover photo courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Land Management

CHAPTER 1

Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It hadn’t been a particularly hard day at work, and as Matt drove home from work, he didn’t know why he felt so tired. But he did feel tired. It wasn’t his custom, but he planned to go to bed as soon as he got home.

He wasn’t especially hungry, but he had only had a small lunch and knew he needed something to eat. He was so tired that the idea of cooking dinner didn’t seem appealing, so when he saw the McDonald’s on his way home, he turned into the parking lot to get something from the drive through. He immediately thought it was odd that the parking lot was completely empty, and when he glanced at the door of the restaurant, he saw a handwritten sign with the words TEMPORARILY CLOSED. The place was normally open 24 hours per day, but was closed today. Then he remembered the flu virus that had been going around. Three of the seven people in his own office had been out sick today, and he quickly surmised that this must have been the cause of the Golden Arches being shut down. There was apparently too much absenteeism in this particular workplace, and they had to simply lock the doors.

Matt pulled back onto the road and continued home. While he drove, he reached over to the dashboard and turned on the radio, just as the national news was coming on. As had been the case for the past few days, most of the newscast was devoted to news about the flu. As Matt had heard on most other newscasts over the lawt week, the announcer cataloged the symptoms, one of which was fatigue. It hadn’t occurred to him until then, but the fatigue he was suffering undoubtedly meant that he had finally come down with the flu, along with half of his office, and most of the staff of the McDonald’s. And if his experience would be like that of his co-workers, he would probably be out sick for the next week or so. At least he had plenty of company, he thought to himself.

Two blocks from his house, he pulled into a convenience store to get himself something to eat. He had been there just that morning to fill the car with gas and buy a cup of coffee, and he recognized the same clerk who had rung up his earlier purchases.

Hi, Mohammed, he told the clerk.

Hiya, Matt, the Arab immigrant said in his most convincing American accent.

You’re working a long day, it looks like.

Yep, everyone else is out with this flu.

The normally well-stocked deli counter was bare, so Matt went to the freezer and took out a TV dinner, along with a couple of bottles of Coke, took them to the counter, and paid for them. Just walking into the store and transacting his business had been tiring, and Matt was eager to get home and get to bed. When he started the car, the noise of the radio was initially annoying, and he started to reach over to turn it off. But the program caught his ear and he stopped and instead started paying attention to what they were saying. It sounded like this flu thing was causing big problems in some parts of the world.

In particular, the Chinese government had been very eager to keep quiet about the epidemic’s effect on that country. In order to prevent the news from spreading, they had taken the extreme measure of pulling the plug on all telephone and internet connections in most of the country. A billion people, more or less, were now incommunicado. Since this had included numerous persons of other nationalities, many other governments, including the Americans, had lodged protests, all to little avail.

The radio station was in the middle of a talk show, and on the short ride home, Matt got to listen to one conspiracy buff opine that the current flu epidemic was probably a weaponized version created by China, that had somehow gotten loose.

It would have been an entertaining discussion if Matt hadn’t been so tired, but he was relieved to pull into his own driveway, lock up the car, and go inside. He put the bottles of Coke into the refrigerator, and put the TV dinner into the microwave to heat it up. Then he went into his room to lay down for a few minutes while the food cooked. He noticed that he had a slight fever. This was his last thought before he immediately fell fast asleep.

It was dark when Matt finally awoke. The nap hadn’t done any good, since he felt even more fatigued than he had been originally. He was also thirstier than he had ever been, and the reason he felt so lightheaded was the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. He remembered that he had cooked the TV dinner, but had not yet had a chance to eat it. He thought perhaps it would make him feel better, so he went to the kitchen to get it.

Matt was hungry-he didn’t really feel much like eating, as much as simply needing to get something into his system. He turned on the light by his bed, but it didn’t come on. He glanced at the digital clock, but it wasn’t working, either. On top of everything else, the power must be out.

He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He felt weak from the lack of food and whatever had caused the fatigue. He took out one of the bottles of Coke, which was still warm. Still, the water and the sugar would make him feel better, so he took the bottle and a glass to the living room, where he sat down on the couch. He poured himself a glass and drank it, practically in a single gulp. He poured himself another glass, and then another, quickly devouring almost a liter of the warm soda. Then, he went back to sleep.

When Matt finally awoke, it was daylight. Now, in addition to being sick and without power, he was probably late for work, but there was no working clock to confirm what time it was. The fatigue had finally ended, so the night’s sleep must have had some good effect. He was still famished, so he quickly consumed the rest of the Coke, which was still on the table beside him.

He had been luckier than most of the other flu victims that he had encountered. Almost all of them had been deathly sick for at least a week. But in his case, it seemed that a night’s sleep had been sufficient to get him through it. He didn’t know what time it was, but from the amount of light breaking through the picture window, he assumed that he was already late for work. He walked to the kitchen again to use the phone there to call in and let them know that he would be late. But when he picked up the phone, it was also out of order. He had set his cell phone near the now dark microwave oven, and picked it up to place the call. But like the other phone, it was out of order. It had power, but showed that it was receiving no signal. The power outage must have been more widespread than just his neighborhood.

He put down the phone and walked into the bathroom to clean up. Even without the lights, there was enough sunlight from the window to illuminate himself in the mirror, and he looked more disheveled than he had ever seen himself. Not only had he slept in his clothes, tie and all, but he was very much unshaven. He had shaved the morning before, but from his appearance, if he hadn’t known any better, he could have sworn that it had been a week.

He turned on the water to wash his face, but like the power and the telephone, it was not working. He went to the refrigerator and retrieved a warm gallon of drinking water, and used it to wash his face the best he could.

Matt had recovered from the flu, but something was terribly wrong. His power occasionally got interrupted, and it wasn’t particularly troublesome that the phone didn’t work. But it didn’t seem right that everything was malfunctioning at the same time: The electricity, the phone, the cell phone, and now the water.

Since the cell phone wasn’t working, this meant that the problem was not just with his house. Even if his power had been out, the cell phone should be functioning, unless every cell tower within range was also malfunctioning. In short, something must be seriously wrong. Undoubtedly, they would be talking about it on the radio, so he got out a portable radio and turned it on. All he heard was static. The batteries were obviously good, but the station to which it had been tuned wasn’t on the air. He tuned up and down the dial and heard nothing. He scanned through both the AM and FM dials, but was greeted only by static.

Normally, in addition to the local stations, he would be able to hear the faint signals of a few AM stations a hundred miles or more away. But even those stations were gone.