Arks of Ice

Have you ever wondered what the world would look like without ninety percent of its population? No one walking the streets, no cars driving friendly neighbors, not even the twitch of a curtain pulled tight over houses now as lifeless as the dead. The dead are the ones that have it easy. They don’t have to watch as the world crumbles to pieces all around us.

A world without hope is a very ugly place.

Not that I see much of it anymore, anyway. Those of us that are left have been surviving in bunkers, hiding from the promise of disease on the surface and the lingering stench of death. We thought we knew what a pandemic was, but we had no idea how bad it could truly get. 

No one was safe from this virus.

I hold my daughter’s hand as we drive towards one of the only government labs left in America. If these were normal times, I would have her sit in the backseat where the airbag and windshield weren’t a danger to her in the event of a crash. But these aren’t normal times. 

The chances of hitting a vehicle are slim to none, as we’ve been driving for two hours and have yet to encounter another human being. There’s always the possibility that my old minivan could malfunction and send us careening off the road, but the benefit of having her up here with me outweighs the risk.

I need every second of closeness to her I can get. We don’t have much time left.  

We pass through another town on the way to our destination, and the glassless windows of the ravaged shops and buildings gape at me like the open mouth of a rotting corpse. The people who broke into them are probably rotting as well, now. 

The only ones who had a chance of evading the virus were the ones who were prepared, with cellars full of survival equipment and non-perishable food to last for years. A crowd big enough to cause the destruction I see here likely had at least one person already infected with the virus, maybe a few. They say it only takes a single infected individual to spread the disease to an area as large as a baseball stadium. These shops wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“How much longer, Mommy?” Lucy’s lip is trembling and the skin around her eyebrows is turning a shade of red that tells me she’s on the verge of bursting out in tears. My heart tears at the fear in her voice.

“Only another twenty minutes, sweetie. You could try to take a nap if you wanted.”

I know she won’t though. Her eyes are wide as she takes in the desolation around us. We haven’t been to the surface in six months, not since all of this started, and even I am having trouble comprehending the change in our surroundings.

A part of me is looking forward to what we’re about to do. The idea of our bodies being frozen in time is terrifying, of course, but it has to be better than facing all of this. 

We heard the news on our satellite radio three days ago. The scientists remaining in the world were no closer to finding a cure now than they were six months ago. Most of them had been infected while trying to study the virus, and we were quickly running out of options. A proposal had been made, and all citizens were encouraged to participate.

The only way this virus was going to die was if it ran out of hosts to live in. It was on its way to killing itself off, because it was quickly running out of people to infect. But the viral particles traveled unbelievable distances in the air, and letting it run its course could mean allowing the entire human race to be purged from the earth. No one felt like gambling with the survival of our species.

The solution to saving the human race? Cryonisis. 

Testing proved that the virus couldn’t penetrate the walls of ice, and the person sleeping within would be safe from infection. Cryonisis used to be a very expensive option for survival, saved for rich folks with incurable diseases who wanted to be frozen until a cure had been found. It had saved hundreds when cancer was finally cured, and the people were woken up to receive their treatment and go on to live the remainder of their lives. 

Now it was a beacon of hope, shining out of a world overrun by disease and darkness. If we could get all of the survivors possible into the chambers, we might just be able to save the species. 

We had all but given up on finding a cure at this point. There just wasn’t enough time. The virus had proven it was much more skilled at getting rid of us than we were at getting rid of it. The cryonisis wasn’t being done to the infected in the hopes of curing them years from now. It was only for the living. We would sleep for one hundred years, and by the time we woke up the virus would be gone from the earth, having already eaten through the last of its available hosts.

The lab is in sight now, a long black building that seems to stretch on forever. There are no windows to break up the black walls, and the door is a solid hunk of steel. I shudder slightly as I realize my daughter and I will be entering a tomb after all. 

Lucy must be thinking the same thing. “Do we have to go in there?” Her voice is small, and the tears have finally begun to collect in her eyes.

I pull the car over next to a few other vehicles, a rusty orange truck and a shiny black sedan. I kill the engine and turn, taking Lucy’s face in my hands.

“Do you remember the stories you were taught in Sunday School?”

I smooth the blonde curls back from her face. She nods slowly, probably wondering if I was about to quiz her. In a way, I was.

“Tell me about Noah and his ark.”

Lucy smiles shyly and I share her grin. Noah’s ark had always been her favorite story from the Bible.

“God told Noah there was going to be a big flood, and that he needed to build an ark.” She began.

I nodded at her to continue. The redness was starting to clear from her face, and her eyes no longer sparkled with unshed tears.

“So Noah built the ark, and he got two of every animal into it. Every animal. There were dogs and cats, lions and tigers, even giraffes and elephants!” She squealed at the thought of the elephants marching up a plank into the giant ship.

“Go on!” I urged her. We were both giggling now.

“After he got his family and all the animals inside, it started to rain. It rained for like forty days, and the whole world flooded, but they were safe inside. When it all went away, they got out and God put a rainbow in the sky.”

Lucy looked out the window, hoping to see a rainbow as well. The sky was as gray as ever, but she didn’t seem upset by it. The story had lifted her mood, just as I knew it would.

“What if I told you that we’re just like Noah and his family?”

Lucy’s eyes shoot back to mine, full of questioning. “Are we going to build an ark?” The excitement is evident in her voice.

I smile and take her hands. “Not exactly,” I say. “We have a different kind of ark. Our ark is made of ice.”

Lucy squeezes my hands and I squeeze them back. She knew I was talking about the cryonisis.

“We’re going to enter our arks of ice, just like Noah’s family went into his ark. The world may be flooded with the virus, but we’re going to be safe from it. Then, when our time is up, we’ll come out of our arks and the world won’t be flooded anymore. I bet there will even be a rainbow in the sky.”

Lucy nods her head as she starts to understand what I’m saying. Hope burns in her eyes, like I’ve never seen before. She’s on a mission now, and I know she’s ready to handle it.

We walk towards the lab, hand in hand. She declined my offer to carry her. 

Before we enter the building, I take one more look around. Yes, the world is ugly right now, but I’m starting to realize it has been ugly for a long time. The virus didn’t make us ugly, the people did, with all of their hate and cruelty. 

I can only hope that as the ice melts and the glass clears, a new world will be set out before us, cleansed from the hundred years of slumber like the flood cleansed the earth. I hope a rainbow hangs in the sky, and everyone will appreciate it for what it is: a beautiful ray of hope, a new beginning, and a warm welcome after a century of dreaming within ice.