No Man's Land

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We had been prepared, ready. We had done everything right.

It was supposed to be a happy day, not one filled with fear and worry. It was supposed to take place in a bright sterile room in a medically stellar facility, not a dark, vile, and dilapidated tool shed in a stranger’s backyard.

I envisioned my wife, lying in a clean bed, monitors strapped to her tight and large abdomen, the watery, swishy sound of a fetal heartbeat ringing loud in the room. Instead I watched her fight a birthing position, holding on to her stomach, while screaming to me, “Make it stop, Calvin, make it stop!”

The happy blessed event was to be witnessed not by nurses and doctors, but by mine and Leah’s family who impatiently waited in a room, not far away, for the arrival of their first grandchild.

We were supposed to be surrounded by those we trusted and loved. Instead we were surrounded by the dead.

While they had many names, the Infected, the Formers, Virally Exposed or VEs, as Officials named them, most of the time I called them what they were… dead.

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