The happy ones quickly became a vast majority of the global population. For a few wonderful days the world was a better place than it had ever been in all of history. Sal had to watch it all from his boring, stuffy house.
Then the happy ones began to act too happy. They acted out in extreme ways and indulged in every vice and appetite to excess. Quickly the world turned into a frenzied, bacchanalian nightmare. No one went to work anymore. No one seemed to sleep anymore. No one spoke, but the world was a constant clamor of laughter, screams of joy, and blaring music. The streets were full of people doing drugs, having sex, gorging themselves, and indulging in every vice. They were fighting, raping, speeding—everything and anything imaginable.
Sal watched the news, and it seemed that infected individuals appeared all over the globe at once. They quickly infected those around them, so most of the world became infected at the same time. As he watched the news, he realized what his wife had been telling him for days: this was some serious shit.
The infection spread so fast that within hours the world descended into chaos. Despite the fact that civilization was shutting down, many people still thought a good thing was happening. They took no precautions and suffered the consequences.
Many times over the next several days Sal would hear the same things on the news that his wife had already told him days ago. It seemed that the main cause of infection was the exchange of bodily fluids. Apparently, even the sweat from a hug had a significant chance of passing on the infection. As their fever spiked, the infected began to sweat profusely. As they hugged, fought, and fornicated, they infected.
As a result of the uncontrolled indulgence, people were dying in great numbers. Serious accidents were ignored. There were overdoses, neglected medications, and injuries resulting from violence. Many people were simply crushed, suffocated, and/or trampled to death. The happy people may have been happy, but not necessarily good. Some people were happy when they were inflicting pain and killing. Sal saw all this and more from his front window.
At first, he panicked that he might lose his job. As the days wore on, his panic shifted from concern over his job to concern for his wife, friends, and family. He put his hand on the bottle, withdrew it with a grimace, and slouched back into the easy chair. He didn’t drink much and hated getting drunk. It would be too easy to drink himself into oblivion. He had to stay alert.
Sal was a solid, tanned ball of natural muscle. His physique wasn’t from a gym, but from genetics and manual labor. He was of Italian heritage and had grown up on Spaghetti Hill in Monterey. The hill was so named for the large number of Italian immigrants that had settled there. Scars and burns covered Sal’s massive hands. His appearance was deceiving. He was handsome but looked like a lowbrow common laborer, a knuckle-dragging hammer jockey or pipe bender. In reality he was a gentle and artistic soul. He loved reading and watching old movies with his wife. He took pride in his semi-artistic job at a local body shop. He had made a decent living for most of his life as a carpenter but made a career change a few years back. He took a low-level job in an auto body shop so he could learn to do custom paint jobs. He got very good at it.
Sal was particularly proud of an article featuring his work. He was on the cover of a major trade magazine with the owner of a restored muscle car. He got credit, and the shop got mentioned. The shop’s owner was a good guy and used the publicity to increase his business, which allowed him to give Sal a raise. He also gave Sal a small stake in the shop with the option of first right of refusal if the shop was ever sold. Sal was happy with his life and loved his wife more than life itself.
His appearance could be a blessing or a curse. People usually gave him a wide berth and often expressed their fear of him overtly. He couldn’t help it if his face looked angry even when he was happy, or that he looked as if he could rip a tree from the ground with his bare hands. People assumed he was a stupid and violent man, a bully who used his fists and intimidation to get his way. This made people afraid of him, and he was often treated better than the average person. But often there were the fight-pickers, the men who really were the way many people assumed Sal was. When he went to parties or bars, a drunk almost always started shoving him to provoke a fight. He couldn’t fight if he wanted to, so he just put his arms up in a defensive position covering his face. He turned away from his attacker and asked him to stop. This often emboldened the drunkard to punch harder and faster. Others always stepped in to stop the abuse, but they looked at Sal with pity. Sal was never angry or scared; he was just ashamed.
A friend, a fireman and retired marine, taught Sal the trick to avoiding fights. He explained to him that if he simply looked like a badass, bullies would always back down. A bully, he explained, was a coward, and if they thought there was a possibility they would get hurt, they would back down. He taught Sal how to look at someone like “I am taking pity on you, poor fool who dares to touch me.” Sal was giving the bully a chance to reconsider his actions and he would back off. Sal practiced the posture, stance, eye contact, and expression to back anyone down. When he tried it, it worked! In fact, it worked especially well for Sal. The foolish attacks soon stopped altogether.
He shifted in his seat. His wife was in the kitchen, talking to someone on her phone. It seemed the entire neighborhood was in the street, screaming and dancing. Some were naked, and at first he liked watching the pretty females. They almost always danced when they were nude, but within minutes he saw many neighbors and family members in the crowd. He stopped looking out the window after that first time and sat in the chair. It had been days.
There was a loud knock on the door. Sal looked out; it was his cousin Tony. He was smiling, sweaty, acting a little weird, all the things Sal’s wife had told him to look for. She had also told him not to let anyone in, period. But she wasn’t from Monterey. She had no family or lifelong friends here.
“Sally!” Tony’s voice was kind of flat, lifeless.
“Hey, uh, sorry I can’t let you in.”
“Sally!” Tony didn’t seem to have heard him. “Hey Sally, let’s play.”
Tony and Sal had grown up just houses away from each other. For as long as Sal could remember, Tony had come to his door almost every day, beat on it, and said, “Hey Sally, let’s play.” Even to this day, with both men in their thirties, it was still the same. But this time Tony was off. He looked happy, smiling, knocking and repeating himself. Sal turned and slouched to the floor and started crying. Tony was infected. Tony was his friend, relative, and a giant part of his life—of who he was. Sal sobbed.
“Oh my God! Honey, what’s wrong?” His wife came to his side to comfort him.
“It’s Tony,” he choked.
His wife sat next to him and they hugged, “I am so sorry.” That was all there was to say.
§
Hours later, it was dark. Tony had wandered off. Sal was still sad, but he was all cried out. He was back in his chair, his wife was in the kitchen, and everyone was still outside acting crazy. Suddenly there was a horrendous roar, and a bright light pulsed from the street. He ran to the window, and the flashes illuminated people as they exploded, their bodies getting torn to bits. Sal watched as arms disappeared, leaving red jagged stumps. Heads exploded into red mist clouds. Bodies were almost cut in half and entrails streamed out onto the street, and through it all the people laughed and danced.
Sal tried to see the source of the flashes from inside his home—impossible. He saw tree branches and leaves raining down. One tree was hit in the trunk, and a huge gap appeared. Splintered wood filled the air. The thick old tree cracked and fell in the street. Why the hell were they destroying his street?
He could see the flashes but not the source, even when he pressed his face to the glass. Several loud crashes startled him, and he jerked away from the window. The room was filled with dust. There were three holes in one wall and three holes across the room from them. Pictures, knickknacks, and mementos were scattered all over the floor.
Everything went quiet again, dark. The faint rumble of an engine came from the direction of the flashes. A moment later he heard the roar again, not quite as loud. Flashes of light illuminated the underside of the trees on the next block. People were being mowed down. Why? What if there was a cure for this? They were killing his family and friends. He wanted to run out and stop them. He was seriously considering doing so.
He went to the kitchen to tell his wife what he had just witnessed, and stopped in the doorway. His mind couldn’t process what he saw. For a few long seconds he just couldn’t make sense of it. His wife was sitting at the kitchen table, but her head was gone. Then it hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut, and he let out an agonizing moan. He ran over to her and knelt, not sure what he should do. He held her hand. He saw the wall behind her, covered in red gore, chunks sliding down the wall. He hugged her body and sobbed.
Sal held Maria for over an hour, wishing he would wake up from this terrible dream. He didn’t want to let go of her, as that would be the moment he formally acknowledged this tragedy and would then have to face life without her. He had no idea what he would do once that moment came. Would he go kill every soldier he could find? Kill himself? Or do something that hadn’t even occurred to him yet?
When he finally stood, he walked back to his chair in a daze, snagging a new bottle of rum on the way. He plopped down and dropped the new bottle in his lap. He grabbed the former sipping bottle, tipping it back and thus transforming it into a guzzler. He drained it in one long, painful pull and dropped it on the floor. He twisted off the cap of the new bottle and twisted it back on. He put it on the side table; he didn’t need it. The first bottle was flowing quickly through his veins. He was passing out and hoped he never woke up again.
3.
Cooper stood for a few seconds, frozen, as he watched the dense crowd of nude bodies forced through the broken windows. Thick jagged triangles of glass slashed flesh to the bone. Unyielding metal frames scraped skin and muscle away. It was horrible, but he couldn’t turn his eyes away. One man lost his penis as it pressed hard against a glass shard and the crowd surged. Another large shard disemboweled several bodies in a row. Each person stepped into his house trailing innards. Several bodies had their skin scraped away in large patches, exposing bloodied muscle. They never flinched, and it was literally more painful for Cooper to watch than for them to experience.
A few of the first to make it through were coming toward him. He had to make himself move. He didn’t want to leave his house, but he knew he had to—there was just no other option. The question now was how. How was he going to escape?
He ran back down the hall, ducked into his room, and slammed the door. He knew it wouldn’t hold long, but any amount of time would be valuable right now. There were no windows in his room, and he hoped to break through the exterior wall to the outside of the house. He kicked through the Sheetrock, breaking it to pieces. That was the easy part. When he reached the exterior wall, he faced thick plywood, and on the other side were two layers of stucco-coated wire mesh. He realized how futile his plan was and abandoned it.
The door began to bend inward, and he could hear cracking as the wood started to split under the weight of the crowd in the hall. Soon the door would burst open. He pushed his dresser over toward the door, another futile gesture, so he stopped before he made it all the way. He felt panicked but tried to remain calm. He looked around his room, wondering what else he could do. The ceiling was too high to get to, and the roof on the other side would be as hard to break through as the stucco wall. He was at a loss.
The door crashed open and slammed against the wall. He reacted immediately and rammed his body against the dresser, smashing it into the crowd trying to pour in. He couldn’t hold it forever, but at least none had gotten into his room. The dresser was sliding bit by bit into the room, and it wasn’t going to be long before they spilled in. He had to do something now.
He planned to go to the last place available, the closet. He jumped away from the dresser and bodies spilled in, falling over each other and piling in the doorway. He was in the closet in a single long step and spun around to pull the door shut. What he saw reminded him of a video he’d seen where a crowd was trying to get out of a burning building. People had been stacked and wedged tightly into the doorway. None of them could move or even be pulled out by the firemen, they were so tightly compressed in the doorway. They were in a full-blown panic, the ones who were still alive. It had been a horrible thing to see, even on a small screen. That was happening now, in his room, but they were all still smiling. Even the ones who had expired, even the ones whose ribs cracked so loudly he could hear them over the clamor.
He shut the door and sat in the dark on the floor of his closet, holding it shut. He dared not move for hours. Eventually he could no longer stand the stale air. His body was cramped and hurting, and things were pretty quiet. Over the hours, the grunts and groans and thumps of the people in the door had slowly subsided as they passed away. All that was left, to his knowledge, were the few people who had made it into the room, but they were being pretty quiet. No one had tried to open the door since he had been in the closet. He was relieved, but he was also still trapped in the house.
He let go of the knob and lay on his side to try to look under the door. All he could see were a few feet moving around. It looked like the three people in the room were all together against the far wall. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
He tried to remember what was in his closet. Clothes, sports gear—he couldn’t remember much of anything else and didn’t want to dig around and make noise. He felt around on the ground around him and felt coarse canvas. It was his backpack and it felt empty, but he slid his hand into several of the pockets. He felt an object he immediately could identify, his buck knife. When opened, the blade was five inches long and locked in place.