The Albatross Did Follow

I held my brother’s hand in both of mine and rigorously rubbed his fingers. Their cold rigidity reminded me of the roots we used to scrape from the frozen ground on the harshest nights. I would be grateful now for even these bitter morsels. The skin along my ribs carved stark lines above a concave belly that pulsed rapidly against my shrivelled organs. It had been a week since we ate our last handful of unripe blueberries. Now, even the roots that once would bear us from one scarce season to the next had either been gnawed through by starving animals or long since shrivelled from dehydration. As I furiously worked at Silas’ fingers, the orange of the late afternoon sun filtered through the tall pines and into the cabin. Even in the waning light, his swollen and curled hands looked strangely mottled. To light a fire in the fireplace would mean we were saved from any further frostbite but it would also mean accelerated dehydration. This scared me more than anything else. We could likely survive several more days without food or loss of limb yet without water, I knew we would both die tonight.

I hate to think that we were so frivolous with water before. Our life, as far back as I can remember, seemed to revolve around it. I spent the mornings lugging it to and from our well to help Mama water the garden and the few chickens that we kept on the land. In the summers, Silas and I lived in water. After our chores, we scurried down to the lake settled at the bottom of the property line. I spent those summers practicing dives or teaching Silas to float on his back. Although he never spoke, Silas was a quick study and listened earnestly to every instruction. Mama despised rough housing with him, especially in the water. If I splashed him too hard, she always swooped in, “Alva, you are your brother’s keeper.” I did not understand but her words carried a gravity which settled on my shoulders. Mama liked to sit on the bank with only her toes touching the water while Papa tried to coax her in. He fawned and swooned in the lake, masterfully playing the drowning man but Mama would hide her smile and pretend not to notice. Finally, we would all drag ourselves onto the bank and allow the dusky afternoon rays to dry our pruned skin.

Cocooned as we were within our bliss, we were the last to hear about the end of the world. The cities were the first to fall yet we were so far away that the few snippets we heard on the news floated to us as muted soundbites peddling the same fear-mongering events as always. As we later learned, all the major cities contracted municipal water filtration to a single company, ECOFilt, in an effort to save money. ECOFilt, in turn, found their own ways to cut costs by dismissing quality assurance managers as obsolete. Meanwhile, urban animals seemed to disappear into the sewers overnight, where they died at an alarming rate. Hoards of rats washed up first, bloated and ringed by a strange foam. City-dwelling pets began to fall ill with mysterious symptoms, causing them to flee to the nearest source of water and gorge themselves without pause until they vomited froth and died. By the time anyone realized what had happened, it was already too late. All the while, the phrases “new epidemic” and “death toll rising” struck us as faraway, like the gentle waves of a passing boat. Those were city-folk problems, as my father would say, nothing to do with us. And he was right, for a time.

A muted popping noise brought me back to the chilled cabin. With a start, I realized I must have let my mind drift longer than I thought. The light had taken on an aggressive ochre hue which contrasted so starkly with the faded feeling that clung around my head like cobwebs. The popping sound emanated from Silas’s throat as he lay slumped in my lap facing upwards. His tiny mouth as his cracked lips parted to choke out the noise, which sounds so much like a throaty ‘k’. His dark sunken eyes latched onto mine, imploring me to understand. There was a time when I could read Silas’ sounds and expressions with ease, even interpreting at times for my parents but as horror after horror buffeted our family, I watched him regress. Inwardly, he tucked himself away until the dark eyes that once kindled with understanding became flat and opaque like the doors to a tomb.

Silas began to choke with frightening urgency now, flicking his eyes between mine and the front door. With a sharp intake of breath, he focused resolutely on the door and groaned in hopeful recognition. My thoughts still swirled in a strange haze and I strained to figure out what drew his attention. Silas shivered all over now and his brittle body rattled against the floorboards. The only time I had seen him behave so was when Mama would return from one of her longer foraging trips. He would position himself by the front window every time and anxiously swish his eyes back and forth, groaning deeply as she made her way up the path. On the front steps, Mama would beam at Silas as she clicked the heels of her boots against the edge of the porch before peeling them off to dry. It occurred to me now that Silas was obviously seeing someone I could not.

Death kept its distance from my family, glutted for a time by the massive loss of life in cities throughout the country. On the day it finally came to our door, we were helpless to stop it. I awoke that morning because of the chill. Spring had come early and held onto its morning frost, which clung to the grass like cobwebs and crunched underfoot. Now its tendrils of ice wove around my feet as I scrabbled out of bed and towards the living room. The front door stood ajar where I traced narrow footprints interrupting the layer of frost across the porch. They arced away from Mama’s boots as they leaned against one another. Still shaking off my sleepy stupor, I followed through the lawn and down to where the tree line thinned before the lake. The fog hung heavily on the water and at first, I could not make out the shape bent at the water’s edge. I shuffled closer and froze. My mother’s mud-stained feet poked out from under her pajama pants as she doubled over, her face buried in the water. The heavy sound of slurping sounded in time with my mother’s heaving sides. With a sinking feeling, I rounded her body to see the face and shock bolted to every inch of my limbs. Mama’s mouth stretched unhinged at the jaw as she drank from the lake, unceasingly. The bare skin along her neck and arms was grotesquely bloated and gray as a drowned corpse. Still, she gulped the lake water relentlessly and I watched as the motion sent ripples along her swollen flesh. My scream shattered the stillness. The horror coiled on every inch of my body but I stood electrified to the spot. My father and brother found me then. Papa hurried to pull my mother back from the water’s edge but she remained weighted to her spot even as he yanked at her arms with such force that I knew they must have been dislocated. Finally, Papa knelt in the mud beside her and whispered frantically in her ear. She stiffened and vomited violently into the lake before clambering to her feet. Her corpulent belly stretched tight against her pajamas now and it sloshed loudly as she swayed from side to side, moving deeper into the water. Papa never rose from his knees and sunk deeper into the cold sludge as he watched her. At the midpoint, Mama half-turned to us. She began vomiting over and over, as endlessly as she drank, and rings of foam stood out faintly in the fog. When she finally sank into the lake, I no longer screamed. I had the strange feeling that this was happening to someone else and not me. We had watched the news as the cities reported incidents of rabies-like behavior spreading from animal to human but it had felt like a cheap movie, curious and distant. Papa made no noise but folded his hands in his lap. Silas stood mouthing silently, scanning the lake. I followed his gaze and could just barely make out other shapes splashed across the fog and backlit by the rising sun. Dozens of these shadows bulged above the surface like overturned boats. One drifted close to where we all stood or knelt along the shore and an unblinking eye reflected glassily. The rest of the doe’s head hung open-mouthed in the lake while her body ballooned to a cartoonish extreme behind her. I stared at the horizontal pupil as a fly landed on its surface and knew that our time was up.

After Mama disappeared into the lake, Silas retreated and Papa developed a frantic tic, muttering constantly to himself. We cursed ourselves for not listening closer to the news but even the cities discovered too late that the spreading virus came from drinking putrefied water. As infected animals gorged themselves and died in the sewers, people would unknowingly drink and become ill themselves. Papa figured that eventually animals ran out of water ways in the city and, puppeted by the virus, migrated outwards into the country in search of clean water. Thus, death visited the lake in our hushed corner of the world.

For the next several seasons afterward, the three of us gleaned what we could from old news cycles and watched the valleys carefully. The lake became a no-man zone as animals and neighbors continued to gorge and resign themselves to their depths. Even our well water became unsalvageable as we hoisted the bucket up one day to find a raccoon drowned. The only viable option was to collect fresh water. Even this proved a difficult task. Before the epidemic began, seasons had become increasingly polarized. Summer heat waves became prolonged and winter blizzards plummeted all of us into long periods of darkness. The scientific community fought among themselves and I remembered the doomsday preachers on the corner of the highway into town appearing more and more as the years passed. They always held their bible in one hand and homemade signs in the other. Repent and believe. The end is coming. The virus rippled outwards to devour most unsuspecting animals or people while the summers would pick off those that survived. The lake beds dried up and left piles of bones to bleach in a muddy pile. Those that remained faced a long barren winter. Snow became scarcer and the dry chill only served to inflame parched throats begging for a drink. After two years of this, my family began to stop seeing any other people at all. No neighbors stumbled to the lake and no travellers came to beg for a scrap of food. Once again, we were entirely alone.

I came to with a jerk and felt my joints recoil painfully in their sockets. I must have dozed with my mouth open because my tongue sat swollen and dry like a fat toad. The haze clung to me permanently now, pierced only by the throbbing headache behind my eyes. I stroked Silas' overgrown hair and tried not to cry. He stirred listlessly but made no noise. I could feel the edges that stood out on his skull under his hair like soft craters. What a mess I had made of it all since Papa left us, only a few months had passed and look where I had led us. Now I had to watch my brother fade from the world while I prayed for snow. The powerlessness of it all threatened to choke me.

Papa liked to quote portions of old poems or rhymes while he worked. His favorite were sea shanties and he said our ancestors were sailors but Mama always interjected, “More like pirates,” and winked. He often quoted bits of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the plight of the albatross always fascinated me. After the virus took Mama, Papa would mutter under his breath as he affixed the tarps and buckets to collect water before a storm. He developed a habit of mumbling, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” and laughing darkly. As the years volleyed between extremes, Papa began to eat less and seemed to linger in a perpetual daze. I wondered if it had not been for Silas and I, whether he would have followed Mama into the lake. The question would always remain unanswered.

This spring was drier than any before it and though the moody gray clouds drifted with the promise of rain, it never seemed to come. Papa rationed water obsessively and spent much of the day with his eyes turned upwards, praying for a drop. One day, the clouds hung so low that they seemed to wrap the tree line in sooty smoke. The air was so humid that the hairs around your temple curled and stuck to your skin just from walking outside. The charged air seemed to electrify my father, who frantically raced across the yard, stretching and pinning tarps as water traps. He set rows of buckets and bowls across the field, careful to position them so they would not tip over. All of our tongues had grown dry and swollen from lack of use and Silas and I leaned against the porch rails in quiet desperation. When the rain fell, it drummed the cabin roof and slid down in fat streams, which Silas and I strained to catch in our mouths. Papa whooped with joy at the far end of the field, a sound which I could hardly hear above the generous deluge all around me. Neither of us heard the crack of the axe handle or the whooping cut short, we drank greedily until we were satisfied then drank again. It was not until I turned to join in the celebration that I found our water buckets missing and Papa’s fallen form bunched in the grass and the dirt. By the time I reached him, the rain mixed with the blood from his cracked skull and pooled darkly on the ground behind him. Silas helped me turn him over and my father’s unseeing eyes reflected the cracked sky. A smile still played upon his lips, no doubt with the belief that his children were saved.

In the end, we never found the raiders who killed my father for that water. The muddy footprints soon joined to form puddles but I could not have tracked them if I tried. The air in my lungs had been wrung out like a worn sponge and my shoulders ached with the weight of sobs that would not pass.

Silas nudged me from my memories now and the cabin seemed to swim in my vision. A crust of tears fringed my eyes but did not gain enough to fall. With a jolt, I realized that Silas is looking directly up at me and his dark gaze pierced me with such stark lucidity that I wondered if I missed something. His gaunt cheeks pinched at the corners and he smiled placidly, angling his head slightly to hold my gaze. Icy fear settled deep into my gut like a sunken stone. I broke his gaze only for a moment to scan the windows for any hint of snow but the setting sun offered nothing. I felt the exhale against my cheek but could not bring myself to meet the eyes which I knew now lay open and drained of light. I could not bear to stare into the once-vibrant face desecrated by starvation and death. I would not accept that the ghosts in this cabin walked free of the burden of this new world.

After a long period, I pried myself free of the stiffening body and crawled towards the door. My mouth felt wooden and choked though by thirst or grief, I did not know. I simply wanted to be outside, to stare upwards like all the rest when death came to visit me at last. My vision faded in and out but I saw strange feathery crumbs floating down to rest on my hair and eyelashes.

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark.