The End is Near

Chapter Nine

Misha's father did not return that night. The children didn't even ask what was going on when they finally arrived home; they seemed to instinctively know. Or perhaps, I had thought with deep dread, they had seen the poor woman as their father drove her off.
     Misha and I had cleaned up everything before they got back. They might have an inkling as to what was going on, but they did not need the full details. Not at their young ages.
     Dinner was made, and still mo questions were asked. We all sat in silence, each person having their eyes on their plates only. Seldom did our glances vary from the safety of the plain white dishes.
     Bedtime approached and the children moved to their rooms without being asked. As soon as it was evident that they would stay upstairs, Misha broke the long silence.
     "Do you think they know?" he asked me. "I hope not. Something like this can really mess kids up, and I know Anya is pinning this all on herself."
     "I think," I began, choosing my words carefully, "that they can assume what is going on, but don't fully know. And how could they?"
     He accepted the answer and we were silent again. We had found out soon after the children arrived home that they had gone down the street to play with some other children. So it was entirely possible that they hadn't seen anything, but were able to sense what had happened.
     The silence was deep, and nothing now broke the sort of vigil we held. Night slipped by slowly, a clock ticking in the distance subconsciously reminding us of the fluid seconds flowing by.
     My eyes felt heavy. I tried to break the silent sound, yet it seemed a curse on us for my voice would not work. And in the attempt to speak out my thoughts on how this may all turn out, I drifted once again into the abyss of sleep.

     The slamming of a door woke me. I lifted my head, blinking my eyes constantly for a good half a minute before they got used to the bright light coming through the windows.
     It was Misha's father, in the same clothing he had left in yesterday evening. He spoke not, and his face betrayed no emotion. He walked past without taking notice of anything, like a zombie. I heard him tramp up the stairs only to turn around and come back down once he had gone up. He shook the sleeping mass of blanket at my side, motioning for it to get up. Misha rose from this, and was lead out to the back of the house.
     The confusion of sleep hung over me still, and nothing wanted to shake it. I tried pacing, stretching, using the bathroom, even cooking, and all the while I still felt the hypnotic pull of sleep on my mind.
     The scent of eggs brought the children down into the kitchen, and the three of us ate in silence.
     Misha and his father were still outside, and could almost be heard. "I know something is very wrong," said Anya in a hushed voice. I didn't respond. "You're all treating me like a child!" she said a little more fiercely than before. "I can handle the truth, you know? I'm not a helpless little kid like Nik!" She began crying. Nik too began to weep, despite having little to no idea what was even going on. I had no idea what to do, what to say, in order to make this all better.
     The door opened, and Misha stepped inside; his father remained outside. He asked his younger siblings something in his native tongue that they seemed to agree with. They were off, back up the stairs the moment he ceased speaking.
     "We're going to go see my mother," he told me. I nodded, not needing to hear anything more. Sometimes in sad situations, the shortest of remarks can speak the loudest.
     We left as soon as Anya and Nik again descended the stairs.
     The drive was not long, but a few minutes. We rode with doors locked and windows up, for the sick and frightened do unexpected things. No people interrupted our drive, as if they knew we were as damned as they.
     We arrived at the hospital, parked, and made our ways toward the double door entrance. Inside, all was chaos. Nurses and doctors ran wild, trying to be in the right place at the right time. Beds lined the hallways, for the rooms had all been filled long before. Children and adults alike screamed in terror of the unknown and the pain.
     It was not the ideal place for two young children to visit their mother.
     We strode further in, not bothering to stop the frantic staff running by; we knew we'd have better luck on our own.
     Misha handed us all masks from a box laying on the front counter. "Put these on," he strictly told us. "No one wants to die from the Disease." We did as he said, for we all knew he was right.
     As we progressed, the sights grew worse. We went from seeing beds covered in stains to beds with dying inhabitants. Men, women, and children all occupied these, all horrified. Most of the inhabitants were children, small and feeble. Too often we walked by the bed of a child too sick to even scream out in pain, their faces dumb with death, their very skin shedding from bone. While we had been in the sanctuary of Misha's home for three days, people here had been suffering, dying miserable deaths that no person should ever be alive to experience. Decomposition is for the dead, not the living.
     But we continued on, Misha, Anya, and I trying to look only ahead while Nik held his hands over his ears and hummed a lullaby to himself.
     No one even noticed us here. They were too busy addressing the dying, or dying themselves.
     The hospital was as much of a ghost town as one can imagine a building filled with people to be. They were all there, yet mentally they were in a completely different place. It was very much like a book about zombies that my father had read to me as a child, except they held off due to the severity of their sickness. 
     Turning a curve in the hall, we found their mother. She was sprawled on the table-like bed, eyes closed, not a single sign of life in her. Sores now dotted her skin, and her hair had fallen out in many places. Misha leaned down to each child to instruct them to do something unknown to myself, and they agreed to what he had asked. He took his mother's hand in his, but no change moved across her sleeping face.
     "Can you hear, Mother?" Misha gently set her hand down. "It's me, Misha. I have Anya and Nik along with me as well." Nothing changed, as before. He now began speaking in Russian, voice slowly crescendoing until he was yelling in frustration.
     A nurse walked by, shocked to see that there were people in the hospital who were not sick. She shooed us away, leading us back down the hall that we had come out of but moments before. She showed us to the front door and opened them up for us, obviously wanting us gone.
     "'This is no place for healthy folk,' she says," told Misha, "'Especially not children!'"
     We walked back to the car from here. There was no point in trying to reenter the hospital; the staff were in a mass confusion, and Misha's mother would not respond to anything. All four of us somberly entered the vehicle, not a one of us speaking. Like many other recent instances, we were all perfectly silent.
     When we pulled up to Misha's house, he let the children out. When I began to get up he held out a hand to tell me to stay. "We're going back," he said, voice weak but eyes strong and determined. "She can't stay there, not with as sick as she is. No one is getting the personal attention they need. I just need to make sure she ends up alright; she is the children's life, and the only reason we've all turned out so well. And Father relies on her to do most everything around the house, and with bills and the like." He cut off, turning the key once again and igniting the car into life.
     The car pulled into the same spot in the lot that we had left not twenty minutes before. We got out, Misha confident in his unspoken plan and I feeling awkward. The doors were now guarded by a man in a police uniform. He would not let us out of the lobby, regardless of reason. Misha begged, yet the man stayed firm in his actions.
     In an act of desperation, Misha ran past him. The guard followed closely behind, pulling out a tazer as he ran. He was fast, but Misha was considerably faster.
     I lost them at the first curve in the hallways, and began running after them. I sped through the crowded halls, often having trouble avoiding the sick, and tried as hard as I could to catch up with them.
     Up ahead I heard a shout. I put on the breaks, trying to figure out which way it had come from. Another shout, and the sound of something heavy thudding to the floor. I could now hear where it had come from perfectly fine.
     "I dropped him," Misha explained as I came around the corner, eyes wide with shock at the large frame of the man slumped on the ground. Misha was panting. "He threatened to kill me, so I had to act first." I gasped, and he explained himself better: "I didn't kill him, Ev; I took his tazer and used it against him, and knocked him out." It still didn't sound too great to me, but as I began to protest Misha told me, "He'll be fine, don't worry about him. I promise, he'll be up and on his feet in a little while. But at least he's in a hospital!" He erupted into nervous laughter, making everything seem all the more out of control.
     We walked on after his fit ended, found his mother, and took her out of the building. She was still unconscious as Misha slung her over his shoulder. We brought her out to the parking lot, set her gently in the back seat of the car, and returned to his parents' house.
     "Tell no one what we did," he instructed me.
     "What will we tell your family?" I asked.
     He looked puzzled, staring at the road the whole while. "We'll just have to say that they let us take her home, and hope that my father does not phone in and ask about it."
     We got to the house and put her into Misha's bed. No one else was there, or at least not present where we showed ourselves. We searched the house after placing her at rest, only to find that not a single one of those left behind were there.
     "We're safe, for now," said Misha, letting out a sigh of relief. "Now for some rest!"
     He say down on the couch. I stood off to the side. "What's wrong, Evylynn?" he asked me.
     I looked down, my concern fading into embarrassment. "Oh, nothing," I told him. "I'd just rather stay away until we've both cleaned up a little."
     He motioned with a flick of his wrist that it was no big deal. "Trust me, the disease cannot be washed away with water. But if it makes you feel any better, I'll go take a shower." He rose, leaving me behind in the empty room. 
     I heard the water creak on, but all except was silent. I surveyed the room, looking at all the objects with great attention to detail. The lamp I had been seeing for days now seemed more real, the threads in the curtains and couch more prominent, the windows less transparent.
     Misha yelped from the bathroom, startling me from my trance. I ran to the door, asking, "Are you ok in there, Misha?"
      He didn't respond. As I was about to open my mouth to ask him again he spoke. "I'm fine. All fine. Nothing's wrong at all, I just slipped. Yeah, just slipped..." He said it almost as if it were a question, like he wanted me to affirm that ye had, in fact, slipped.
     I stood on the other side of the door for a moment, giving him time to take what he had said back. It wasn't too convincing, and I wished him to realize this and tell me the truth. "So you're ok? You're not hurt or anything?"
     "No, I'm perfectly ok," he said, shutting off the water. "I think I just need some time alone, if you wouldn't mind?" 
     I didn't mind, and set myself back onto the couch. Now I was thinking: what had really happened? Misha's voice had sounded too perturbed for him to have just slipped. Something was wrong, and for some reason he wouldn't tell me. I'd just have to wait for it to come out on its own, even if that took a long while.