Chapter 2: The Market

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The eyes were the first indication that you had the sickness. Bloodshot eyes would be followed by increasingly erratic behavior and frequent nose bleeds. Extremely violent tendencies would persist until a total organ system failure ended the life of those would had caught it just days before.

At least that’s the bits and pieces of news we’d managed to gather from what the media is saying. The news reporters aren’t really sure as to the exact symptoms either, simply that it’s extremely deadly and is transmitted by body fluids. The scientists are saying it isn’t air transmitted, which would otherwise be good news if not for the fear gripping the nation by its balls for them to heed the assurances of the scientists. They were calling it the P15 Virus, P standing for Pakistan, the country of origin of the virus and 15 for the day it was announced, on the 15th of May.

It had been two weeks since the outbreak of the sickness and ever since then, most countries had in some form or another established lockdown procedures prohibiting entry for anyone coming from anywhere near the affected areas.

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Her name is Abby Trettle. Her dad is one of those scientists and he told her that they didn’t have anything to fear. They’d set up extensive measures to ensure the safety of the citizens and the sickness had little to no chance of entering the States without the authorities knowing about it and stopping it. She believed him but the news, screaming till kingdom come that every single one of their lives are at risk, wasn’t doing much to help the general public who didn’t have fathers that worked with the government.

It was a Thursday two weeks after the outbreak and she’d been assigned in her English class to write an essay on the virus as a current event analysis assignment. Her entire family was down with a cold so they stayed home that day instead of going to school. She’d just finished the essay when her younger brother Joey yelled for her to come downstairs. Slightly annoyed, Abby ran down the stairs and asked, “What is it? This better be important if you’re going to be bursting our eardrums this late in the evening.”

However, her brother didn’t entertain her goading to start a healthy sibling dispute and just motioned for her to come to the sofa where the television was on.

“Look at this.” He simply said.

Abby walked up beside him and looked at what the T.V was saying in big red letters at the banner on the bottom going from right to left: ‘FIRST CONFIRMED PATIENT OF P15 VIRUS ADMITTED AT SAINT GEORGE’S HOSPITAL’. She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. Her eyes widening in surprise as she asked, “When was this?”

“20 minutes ago.” He replied. “There’s a bunch of police and guys in hazmat suits there.”

Saint George’s Hospital was one of the largest hospitals in the city jointly run by the government and the local university that used it for clinical and medical research.

The virus that was supposed to be some far off danger in a foreign country had terrifyingly shown up at their very doorstep. This thought left her hands shaking and all the blood to drain from her face. She quickly ran to the phone and dialed the only person she knew who could give her a proper explanation on what was going on.

The phone immediately played the tone signalling all lines were busy. Silently cursing under her breath for having just experienced first-hand a classical movie cliche, she wisely ran back up to her room and retrieved her smartphone.

Turning it on, she quickly sent her dad a text so that he could respond once he saw it. It was a simple text of six words that held both her fears and her hopes that her dad could make it alright, that with a simple text, he could wash her fears and doubts boiling in her heart away: “WHAT IS HAPPENING. ARE WE SAFE.”

She put her phone down and waited for her father to reply. Each second felt like an eternity and her consciousness slowly tunnel visioned to only see her phone.

“ABBY!” She nearly jumped out of her own skin when she heard the shout, turning to see a very disheveled middle-age woman with dirty blonde hair and almond shaped blue eyes who looked a lot like her standing in her doorway. It was her mother.

“Good heavens, girl I called you three times already. Come with me, we need to go right now.” Her mother impatiently said as she grabbed Abby’s wrist and pulled her out of the room.

Abby, seeing her mother’s state, quietly followed after grabbing her phone and shoving it in her pocket. It was still raining so she put on her red hoodie and pulled up the hood to block the rain as her mom, Joey, and she got into the old station wagon and pulled out of the driveway.

Thinking this was the right time to ask while she had the chance, she tentatively raised her voice to ask a question, “Mom, where are we going?”

Without looking away from the road, she replied, “We’re going to pick up your Aunt Jenna to run some errands.” This left Abby confused, as she could not understand why they had to pick up Aunt Jenna if they were simply going to get groceries.

Joey leaned over and whispered, “People are scrambling to the markets. They’re clearing out the shelves like madmen, it’s almost borderline rioting out there. Mom wants to get in and out fast enough to get us enough food before everything runs out in case things run south.”

She nodded, finally comprehending the situation.

Aunt Jenna’s house was only a few blocks down from theirs so it only took a minute to get there. “We better hurry, Mary, looks like the folks are working up a shopping frenzy.” Aunt Jenna said to her mother as they sped down the road towards the local supermarket.

“Where’s the money?” Aunt Jenna inquired of her mother.

“Glovebox.” She replied. Aunt Jenna opened up the compartment and took out a white envelope and divided the cash, handing each of the two siblings a wad of bills. After counting, Abby was astonished to see there were over 500 dollars in her hand.

“This is…” Abby was at a loss for words.

“...a lot of cash….” Joey completed her thought.

Aunt Jenna ignored the two comments and proceeded to look directly in their eyes and said, “Alright listen up. Each of you grab a cart and go in there and grab everything we may need. Things like water, milk, and nonperishables are the first things on your list, Abby. Joey, you go and get the toiletries and see if you can’t grab all the supplement pills you can find. Money isn’t an issue so just grab as much as you can, and fill it up to the brim.”

Apparently, the closed ports had basically ceased trading and so new goods weren’t coming in. In the end, the market owners had just decided that they would take two hundred dollars per cart.

Whatever they could fit in one cart would be theirs. As they made their way into the parking lot, they could see other adults wildly pushing carts to the market and others pushing full cars to their car, unloading, and then quickly returning to the market for another load. They parked and grabbed a few carts and headed in.

Abby went straight for the beverages section and seeing the fast dwindling water supply, madly grabbed for a case of water bottles. Several moms were fighting in the background for what looked like the last of baby formula and diapers, crashing into other “customers” and generally making a huge scene causing the people around to be distracted. Using this opportunity, Abby sneaked past and grabbed as cases of water she could before moving on to get milk.

To her dismay, none were left so she instead got powdered milk and, on a whim, added a few jugs of Gatorade. She rolled her cart over to the canned goods section and without looking or caring much for what she picked, grabbed as many cans as she could and filled up her cart.

Once the cart was full and noticeably heavier, she went to the cashier. In all the chaos, the customers were just throwing the money at the poor cashier to run out to their cars. She also threw a few bills at the cashier and made her way to the car.

As she was halfway to the car, a man with dark brown hair and eyes ran up to her, eyeing the car.

“Hey, kid. Let me buy that cart off you. I’ll pay twice as much as what you paid for it.” He said while pulling out a wad of Benjamins.

“Not interested.” Abby said while continuing to roll the cart past the man but the man grabbed the cart and stopped it, looking at Abby with frantic, bloodshot eyes.

“Look, I have a wife and two boys, one’s even about your age, and everyone’s already grabbed most of the good stuff. I need these. Looks like you’re not here alone and I’m sure they have plenty of the stuff that you all need. You’d be saving my life.” The man pleaded in mad desperation. Somewhat scared of the man but also somewhat sympathetic of his plight, she hesitated. Turning her head back to the mart, she said to the man directly.

“I’m really sorry but there’s a lot of carts left and you can go in and find stuff yourself. There’s plenty left.” She tried to reason with this man while trying to move the cart forward, unable to do so under the man’s vice-like grip. The man started shaking and his face was in panic as if he’d die if he didn’t get that cart.

“Please, I’m begging you.” He still held onto the cart and even tried to move it towards him.

“Get your hands off my cart!” She yelled loudly, hoping some figure of authority, a cop, hopefully would hear her and come to her rescue.

No such help came.

The cops were too busy containing the situation elsewhere. As he was much bigger, he wrenched the cart from her hands. Panicking and not knowing what to do in such a situation, she did the only thing she could do. She kicked him as hard as she could between the legs.

The man doubled over and fell down. Overcoming the shock of what she just did, she quickly hopped over the incapacitated man and pushed the cart, running towards the car.

When she got there, the others were already loading the food into the ladened station wagon, trying to fit everything in like a 3D tetris game. Her mother turned to her and asked, “What took you so long?”

Panting, Abby could not reply. Her mother after sparing only a second to look at her daughter, shrugged and took Abby’s cart to load onto the car. Once it was full, they filed in and drove off.

As they drove out of the parking lot, Abby remembered her message and took out her phone to find that her dad had sent her a reply.

Opening the message, her breath caught in her throat as she read the capitalized letters on the screen: “SITUATION BAD. STAY INSIDE. LOCK THE DOORS.”

No sooner had she read the text did she look up to see a car shooting down the four way intersection on their right side, heading in a collision course straight for them.

She screamed at the top of her lungs, “LOOK OU-” but was stopped short as the car rammed into the right side of their station wagon.

Everything went dark as she lost consciousness.