Chapter 39 Chapter 38

After the super flu faded away, a second two-week epidemic emerged.Such epidemics are common in a technological society like the United States, but rare in underdeveloped countries such as Peru and Senegal.The second epidemic claimed the lives of 16% of survivors in the United States.In countries like Peru and Senegal, less than 3% of people died because of it.Since the symptoms of the second epidemic are different for each case, I don't know how to call it.Sociologists like Grant Bateman might call a second pandemic "natural death" or "emergency room depression."In a strictly Darwinian sense, it was the last - some would say, most ruthless - blow.

Sam Tauber is 5 1/2 years old.His mother died on June 24 at Murfreesboro General Hospital in Georgia. On the 25th, his father and two-year-old sister April died. On June 27, his brother Mike also died, leaving Sam alone. Since the death of his mother, Sam has never been without shock.He wandered about Murfreesboro restlessly, finding something to eat when he was hungry, and occasionally crying.After a while he stopped crying, because crying was useless, and crying could not bring the dead back to life.At night he was often awakened by horrific nightmares in which Papa, April, and Mike died over and over again, their faces swollen and blue, their lungs clogged with phlegm gurgling horribly.

At 10 o'clock in the morning on July 2, Sam walked to a wild blackberry grove behind Hatty Raynor's house.He walked into the blackberry grove almost as tall as the two of him with dull eyes, and he began to pick and eat blackberries until his lips and cheeks were stained black.The blackberry thorns snagged his clothes and tore his skin, but he didn't feel it.Bees fluttered around him with a drowsily monotonous sound.He didn't see the old, rotting manhole cover hidden under the grass and blackthorn vines.The old manhole cover crunched under his weight, and Sam fell 20 feet down the dry floor along the stone walls and broke his leg. He died 20 hours later from fear, impact, starvation and dehydration.

Irma Fayette lives in Loday, California.She was a 26-year-old unmarried woman with a morbid fear of rape.Her life since July 23 has been one long nightmare.There was a robbery in the town at that time, and no police came out to stop it.Irma lived in a cottage on a side street where her mother used to live with her until her death in 1985.When the looting started, gunshots rang out, drunk men dashed up and down the street on motorcycles, making horrific noises, Irma locked all the doors and hid in a small barn under the stairs.From time to time she crept up the stairs like a mouse to get food, or to stretch herself.

Irma doesn't like being around people.She would be really happy if all the people in the world died and she was the only one left.However, this is not the case now. Just yesterday, just as she was beginning to wish Loday would be left alone, she had seen a rude drunk.It was a hippie in a t-shirt muttering, I'm abstinent, I'm abstaining from booze, and that's the last 20 minutes of my life.He walked down the street with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, his long blond hair streaming down his shoulders from under his hat.A pistol was stuck in the waistband of skinny blue jeans.

Irma peered at him from behind the bedroom curtains, staring at him as he came out of view, then hurried down the stairs and into the cramped barn as if just released from magic. They didn't all die.If there is one hippie alive, there will be a second hippie.They could all be rapists.They will rape her.Sooner or later they would find her and rape her. Before dawn this morning, she climbed into the attic.In a cupboard in the attic were her father's belongings.Her father, a former merchant sailor, abandoned her mother when he was in his sixties.Irma's mother had told her everything, very frankly.Her father was a drunken beast who tried to rape her.Men are like that.Being married is equivalent to giving a man the right to rape you at any time.Even during the day.Irma's mother always used six words to evaluate her husband's departure, and these words were used by Irma to almost every dead man, woman and child: "It's nothing."

The boxes in the attic contained little more than a few trinkets his father had bought in foreign ports: souvenirs from Hong Kong, souvenirs from Saigon, souvenirs from Copenhagen.There is also a photo album, and most of the photos in it are his father smiling at the camera with his arms around his companion's shoulders on the boat.Well, it was probably what they called "The Captain's Journey" that killed him.It's nothing. Inside, however, was a wooden box with a small gold hinge, and in the box was a gun.It was a .45 caliber revolver.Lying quietly on the red velvet cloth, there are a few bullets in a secret box under the flannelette.The bullet had grown a patina, but Irma figured that was all right.Bullets are made of metal and won't go bad like milk or cheese.

She loaded the gun under a cobwebbed light bulb in the attic, then went downstairs to sit at the kitchen table and eat breakfast.She's not hiding like a mouse in a hole anymore, she's got a gun, and she's going to make her rapists realize that. This afternoon she walked out of the room and sat in the corridor in front of the room reading a book.The title of the book is "Satan is doing well on Earth".This is a book of horror and joy.As the book says, both criminals and villains deserve what they deserve, and they are all screwed.There were only a few hippie rapists left, and she figured she could handle them.The gun was by her side.

At two o'clock, the blond guy came by.He was so drunk that he swayed from side to side.When he saw Irma, his eyes lit up and he thought he was lucky to have finally found a little beauty. "Hey chick!" he yelled. "It's just you and me here! You're here..." Suddenly his face showed horror, and he saw Irma put down the book and raised the .45 caliber pistol. "Hey, listen to me, put that guy down...is it loaded? Hi...!" Irma pulled the trigger.The gun exploded, killing her instantly.It's nothing. George McDougall lives in Nyack, New York.He used to be a high school math teacher.He and his wife, who is Catholic, had 11 children, 9 boys and 2 girls, by Harriet McDougall.

On June 22, his 9-year-old son Jeff died of what was later diagnosed as "pneumonia caused by influenza". On June 23, his 16-year-old daughter Patricia (oh my! She was so young and beautiful) died of what everyone alive now calls "tubular neck." He watched 12 of his favorite people die while he was alive, healthy and feeling good.He used to joke at school that he couldn't remember the names of all his children, but the order in which they died was firmly etched into his memory: Jeff, 22; Marty and Helen, 23; wife Ha Liat, Bill, George Jr., Robert, Stan, 24th; Richard, 25th; Danny, 27th; Francique, 3, 28th; and finally Pat.Pat seemed to be starting to get better at the time, but then it stopped.

George thought he was going crazy. He started jogging 10 years ago as prescribed by his doctor.He never played tennis or handball, paid the kids (his own, of course) to mow the lawn, and usually drove to buy bread for Harriet.The doctor told him that you have gained weight.Sitting in a chair all day long.It's not good for your heart.Try jogging. So he bought a tracksuit and started jogging every night.In the beginning, the run was not long, and then gradually increased the distance.At first he felt embarrassed, and always felt that the neighbors would slap their foreheads and rub their eyes in disbelief, and then a few men who only had acquaintances would come over and ask if they could run with him—maybe it would be safer to run with a few more people .George's two sons also joined in.Running became a neighborhood affair, and although it was sometimes more and sometimes less attended, it was still a neighborhood affair. Everyone is gone now, but he's still running.I run every day, for hours at a time.Only when he was running could he think of nothing but the clack of his tennis shoes on the pavement, the swing of his arms, and the steady sound of his own breathing.Only then will he lose the feeling of going crazy.He couldn't commit suicide because he believed in Catholicism, and Catholicism considered suicide a heinous sin. He thought God would save him, so he ran.He ran for almost 6 hours yesterday until he was completely out of breath and almost collapsed to the point of throwing up.He's 51, he's not getting any younger, and he knows running too much isn't good for him, but in another way, in a more important way, it's the only thing that's good. So when the first whiteness appeared on the horizon this morning, he got up after a sleepless night and put on his tracksuit (that night, "Jeff-Marty-Helen-Harriet-Bill-George-Robert-Jr.- Stanley-Richard-Danny-Frannice-Petty and-I-Think-She-Okay was on his mind all the time). He ran down the street, stepping on shards of glass and tripping once over a broken TV set strewn across the sidewalk. He ran through the closed residential streets and across the Main Street intersection. The site of the horrific accident where 3 cars collided. At first, he was jogging, but he had to run faster and faster because that was the only way he could put that thought behind him.He jogged, then trotted, then loped, and finally he sprinted.A gray-haired 51-year-old man in a gray tracksuit and white tennis shoes raced down the empty street like all the devils in hell were chasing him. At 11:15, a massive myocardial infarction knocked him down, a grateful look on his face, as he lay flat on the corner of Oak and Pine Streets near a fire hydrant. Mrs. Irene de Lumont of Clewiston, Florida, was very drunk on the afternoon of July 2nd, drinking gin.She wished she was drunk, because if she was drunk, she would stop thinking about her family.Gin was the only strong drink she could stand.The day before, she also found a bag full of marijuana in the room of her 16-year-old daughter, and managed to find the feeling of flying in the clouds, but this feeling seemed to be something worse.She sat in the living room all afternoon, blissfully flipping through albums and crying. So this afternoon she drank a whole bottle of gin, then felt sick, ran to the bathroom and puked all over the floor, then lay down on the bed and lit a cigarette, and fell asleep before finishing the cigarette.As a result, the house was set on fire. She doesn't have to think about anything anymore.It was so windy that she nearly burned Clewiston to the ground.It's nothing. Arthur Stimson lives in Reno, Nevada. On the afternoon of the 29th, after swimming in Lake Tahoe, he stepped on a rusty nail.Soon the wound began to rot, and he felt that something was wrong from the smell of the wound, so he tried to amputate his own foot.He passed out during the operation, and died of blood loss in the Toby Harrah casino where he had the operation. In Swanville, Maine, a 10-year-old girl named Candice Moran fell off her bicycle and died from a skull injury. Milton Kraslow, a cowboy in Hardin County, New Mexico, was bitten by a rattlesnake and died an hour and a half later. In Milltown, Kentucky, Judy Horton is happy with what's going on. Judy is a beautiful girl of 17 years old.Two years ago she made two serious mistakes: She impregnated herself and, after some persuasion from her parents, agreed to marry the boy who impregnated her: a bespectacled State University engineering student. At 15, she felt vanity gratified when even a college student (even if he was just a freshman) asked her out. For the life of her she could not recall why she had allowed Waldo's - Waldo Holden's - desire to get her way.Even if she wanted to get pregnant, why did it have to be him?Judy will let the desires of Steve Phillips and Mark Collins get her way too; cougar), and she was a cheerleader.If it wasn't for that annoying Waldo Horton, she would have easily been a cheerleader her freshman year.Then again, either Steve or Mark could have been more acceptable husbands for her.They both had broad shoulders, and Mark had long, blond, shoulder-length hair.But it was Waldo, anyone was better than Waldo.All she could do was look at her diary and count the days.She didn't even have to do that after the baby was born.The kid looks a lot like him.Nasty guy. She struggled for the next two years, working odd jobs in fast food restaurants and motels, while Waldo was in school.So she hated Waldo's school more than she hated the kid or Waldo himself.If he needed a family so much, why didn't he drop out of school and get a job?She will drop him out of school.But she and his parents disagreed.If it was just her, Judy could sweet-talk him into doing it (she could make him promise, or else, that he wouldn't touch her in bed), but both parents kept meddling with both of them.They'd say, "Oh, Judy, it'll be better when Waldo gets a job." "Oh, Judy, it'll be better if you go to church." "Oh, Judy. Only by suffering through hardships can one become a Master." When will one be able to become a Master? And then this super flu broke out and it solved all her problems.Parents die, baby Petty dies (it breaks her heart somewhat, but she gets over it after a few days), then Waldo's parents die, and finally Waldo dies too, and she's finally free up.It never occurred to her that she herself would die, and of course she didn't. They had been living in a large apartment on the south side of Milltown.One of the things that attracted Waldo to the place (Judy had no say, of course) was the big freezer in the basement where the meat was kept.They moved into the apartment in September 1988, they lived on the third floor, and who always wants to take the trouble of taking toast and burgers downstairs and putting them in the freezer?Waldo and Petty both died at home.You couldn't get hospital services at all unless you were a big shot, and funeral homes were packed (creepy places Judy would never go to), but there was still no power outage.So she dragged them to the basement and put them in the freezer. Three days ago there was a power outage in Milltown, but it was still pretty cold in the freezer.Judy knew this because she went down three or four times a day to check on their bodies.She told herself that she was checking.What else could it be?Of course she wasn't gloating. On the afternoon of July 2, she went to the basement again, but this time she forgot to block the rubber clip that blocked the door under the freezer door.The freezer door closed behind her, locking her inside.After two years of being in and out, it was only then that she noticed that there was no handle inside the freezer door.So Judy finally died beside her son and husband. Jim Lee of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who connected all the power in his house to a gasoline generator, was electrocuted when he tried to start the generator. Richard Hawkinson is a black youth who has been living in Detroit, Michigan.In the past 5 years, he has become addicted to white powder.During the super flu epidemic, when drug dealers and addicts were dying and fleeing, he was left in the cold. Sitting on the rubbish-strewn steps on this sunny summer afternoon, drinking lukewarm 7-up, he thought it would be nice to come and get a shot, even if it was just a little. He began to think of Ali MacFarlane, the things he had heard about Ali in the street.People say Ali, Detroit's third-largest drug lord, has the best stuff.There is no black soil, no Chinese white and such crap. Richie couldn't figure out where McFarlane was keeping so much of his stuff—it's not a good thing to know—but he'd heard people say it a few times that if the police got hold of the Gross Bowl that Ali bought for his uncle Ali must have slipped faster than a rabbit if he got a search warrant for the house. Rich decided to go to Grosse Point to see it.There's nothing better to do right now anyway. He found Erin McFarlane's address on Lake Shore Avenue in the Detroit phone book and walked over to it.He only walked there when it was getting dark, and his feet hurt from walking.He no longer thought of it as just walking around, he longed to get a needle and experience that feeling. The house was surrounded by a wall of gray stone, and Richie rolled over like a black shadow, and the glass stubble embedded in the wall cut his hand.When he broke the window and was about to go in, the anti-theft alarm went off, scaring him so much that he ran away, only to realize when he was in the middle of the lawn that the police would no longer come.He walked back again, still covered in cold sweat. There was no electricity in the house, and there were probably more than 20 rooms in this damn big house.He would have to wait until tomorrow to examine it carefully, and it would take three weeks to turn the place upside down.That thing probably isn't here yet.God!A sense of disappointment ran through Richie's body as he thought about it.But he could at least look for the obvious first. He found a dozen or so bulging plastic bags filled with white powder in the upstairs bathroom.These pockets go in the toilet tank, old trick.Richie stared at his pockets, addicted to drugs, thinking that Ali must have bribed all the key people if he dared to put these things in the damn tank.The white powder here is enough for one person to enjoy for 16 weeks. He took a bag of chalk into the big bedroom and tore the bag open on the bed sheet.He mixed the poison powder tremblingly, his hands trembling all the time.He didn't even think about how much white powder he should use.The best drug Rich could get off the street was 12% pure, and that was enough to make him sleep like a dead pig.He had never experienced the drowsy phase after taking drugs, and he passed out as soon as he was excited. He pointed the needle at his arm and stuck it in.The liquid concentration in the needle was 96%, and it rushed into the blood vessel like a fireball. Rich fell headfirst on the pocket full of heroin, and the front of his shirt was covered with white powder. It was dead after 6 minutes. It's nothing.