Immunity

As I stare across at a peaceful blue sky and watch the birds whiz through the air with a sense of wonder, the wind caresses my face like a long lost lover. Not a single care left, I close my eyes, lean back, and fall from the rooftop to my death. 

Then, something strange happens. Unexpected. It seems the laws of nature have taken a break. My preordained demise is seemingly postponed, for I have stopped mid-descent. I release my eyelids to see the reason for this development: a dark man with panicked eyes and arm muscles rippling in full display holding me up by my shirt collar.

A battalion of emotions attacks me all at once. There is a momentary rage I feel from him ruining a perfectly good suicide, but it is quickly followed by the earth-shattering realization that I’m not the last person on earth. Of tertiary importance was the slow ripping of my shirt -- until it ripped all the way and I continue to fall back, toward the ground head first. The next two things I feel are the stranger grabbing me by the ankles and my head hitting a wall.

...

I wake up with a painful throbbing in the back of my head way too merciless to be called a headache. Some incompetent fool has wrapped a bandage around the wound, I guess, to stop the bleeding. I’d have to fix it later. Realizing I’m in a bed, I curse upon seeing my exact location. A wretched place I promised never to darken the doorstep of twenty years ago: IKEA.

I look across from me to see the stranger from earlier. There’s something different about him that I can’t quite put my finger on. He looks at me intently, waiting for a response.

However, when you’re living in a post-apocalyptic world where survival is of the primary importance, manners and decorum get lost in the shuffle. So one could forgive me for responding to the good samaritan, “Who the fuck are you?”

His calmness is off-putting. Unhuman. He rubs his chin, thinking.

“Well, that’s a good question. I guess no one ain’t called me anythin’ in a while. How’s Randall sound?”

“Well, Randal. I hope you weren’t expecting a medal. I wasn’t some damsel that needed saving.”

“Well, looks like I damaged you pretty good there in the process. So, I’ll take a hold on that medal also…”

He has an ice pack which he hands to me.

“Here, put this on the back of your head. It’ll help.”

I snatch it.

“I know what I’m doing,” I say as I put the ice against the wound. “Christ. Where’d you learn to do a bandage?”

“Well, necessity is the mother of invention. I saw a pretty woman bleedin’ her head out and I thought it’d be rude to let it spill all over the ground.”

“So, if I was ugly, you’d let me die?”

“Nah. If you were a Yankee’s fan, maybe.”

I can’t put up with this unflappable cowboy anymore. I get up and start walking toward the door.

“Where you goin’?” he asks.

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you have a natural immunity to the virus and we have to find out why.”

As we start to walk, I begin to wish this man came with a muzzle. He is continually spinning one of his Southern tales about how “Ol’ Jeffro” got himself into some “shenanigans”. I’m ready to rip off his piss poor excuse for a bandage and bleed out right in front of him.

What is more annoying is how he keeps asking if I’m OK. I guess he was confusing my suppressed epithets for physical pain -- though one couldn’t blame him because it felt like physical pain when he spoke.

By the time we’re nearing the hospital, he asks an estimated one-hundred-twenty-second time, “Are you sure you’re OK?”

I cannot help but lash out, “Despite your shitty job of making this bandage, I’m doing fine.”

I writhe at how innocent he sounds, like a kid, as he asks, “Are you always like this?”

“Like what?” I growl.

“I don’t know. It seems like you ain’t seen a human in forever. I thought you’d be happy to have company.” 

“Trust me. I had my full complement of human interaction before the epidemic,” I rattle off a list to make it clear. “A handsy uncle, a selfish father, a drunken mother, boneheaded siblings, a parade of ignorant, neanderthal boyfriends, and a whole god damned world whose lone message was ‘Sorry, you’re not good enough. Come back when you have a larger set of tits.’”

“Well, looks like you hit the jackpot with this end of the world thing, right?”

“Did you seriously just find a bright side to the apocalypse?” I roll my eyes, “You people are so disgusting.”

“You people?” he says amused.

“Yes. Optimists,” I stop and think. “Maybe if I had one of you around I wouldn’t have turned out this way.”

As I open the door to the abandoned hospital, I make sure to add, “Either that or I’d strangle you to death” so he doesn’t get any ideas.

I lead him into one of the rooms and go to work. Of course, he’s the perfect patient. He doesn’t complain as I attach the EKG wires to the appropriate spots of his body or as I insert the catheter into his peripheral vein. He sees my hands shaking and asks if I’m ok. Of course, I’m not.

As the machine begins to beep and he lays back to relax, he starts to talk about life and love and beauty. About how it’s a shame that nature blossomed so beautifully on the back on man’s demise.  Strangely, at least to me, he never brings up how we’re the last people on earth and how it is of the utmost importance that we make love to carry on the human species. It’s the ultimate come on line that every creep that ever walked to me in a bar would use, but all he wants is someone to talk to.

He tells me about his family. A defiant mother who chewed out a school board on behalf of a homosexual child even before Will and Grace was a thing. A band of brothers who shielded their only sister just enough to be effective and just enough for her to be free. Then he tells me the pain of watching as they took turns dying. The disquieting game of roulette the grim reaper played. One day it was the oldest. Next day, second youngest. The mother, the middle, the sister. Until there were none left.

Then when anarchy came, bands of hoodlums went around burning down the houses and possessions of anyone who had contracted the disease. When the band got around to Randall’s home, this left him with a single memento of his family: a hideous, ill-fitting t-shirt -- marron and grey with just a dash of orange. He explains how he never quite liked that shirt, but once his family died, he felt like it was his lone window to heaven.

The more this gracious man talks, the more I start to shiver. The more I’m forcing back tears. But I have to finish my work. So, with everything in place, I leave the room and let the poison flow into his veins.

When I created the virus twenty years ago, I thought for sure it would wipe out the whole cursed human species. But Randall, just as he was immune to the worries of life, he was also immune to my virus. Sadly, I am a coward and will not look him in the eye as I send him to his death.

I stumble into the bathroom to wash my hands and face. I look at myself in the mirror and see that ridiculous head bandage he made. And then I see the colors: marron, grey, with a dash of orange.

He had torn his own shirt into pieces -- his lone remnant of his family -- and used it to save my life. As I hear him in the other room choking his final words, I gasp.

What have I done? 

...

As I stare across at a clouded sky and watch a lazy bird wafting through the air, the wind pushes at my face. The weight of God upon me, I close my eyes, lean back, and fall from the rooftop to my death.