Like Every Other Day

He woke at 7:00 AM, showered, brewed coffee, and read the newspaper; dated fifteen days prior, it was the last he’d received and he’d memorized the headline: “Plague Takes Most of Eastern Asia in Single Day, Expected to Spread.” An accompanying article warned of massive outbreaks. His children had died first, in their beds. His wife, while gardening. The neighbors had boarded themselves inside their home and died while playing Old Maid. His parents and sister, while fleeing the state. The last living person he’d seen, an elderly homeless woman, had in a gutter while coughing up black phlegm and crying bloody mucus. That was thirteen days ago, and since, there’d been no other survivors.

Like every other day, he made oatmeal and ironed a shirt, shaved his face, and kissed his wife goodbye. He started his car, pulled out of the driveway, waved at the neighbors, and drove slowly past a covenant swimming pool. (Where bodies floated face down and rabid dogs had ripped flesh from exposed backs, though he did not see it.) On every stretch of sidewalk, in every building and in every vehicle were rotting corpses; some covered in legions and puss, some torn apart and mangled, some intact and untouched. They’d perished holding one another; they’d perished alone; they’d perished suddenly and without warning. The plague had spread over the entire globe in forty-eight hours and caused inflammation on a microbial level, leaving bloated corpses with balloon-faces and puss-filled muscular tissue. They’d collapsed in the center of the street in droves. He took the same path he’d taken for twenty-three years: around the park (where nothing, not insects nor rodents nor lovers had survived) and past the courthouse (where birds had fallen from the sky and carpeted the front steps) to his elementary school (where he’d taught fifth-grade mathematics).

In the parking lot, four of his fellow instructors had fallen halfway out of their vehicles and onto the pavement. He waved a salutation to them and made his way through the playground. There, forty seven children had expired, some still hanging upside down from the jungle gym, some swaying back and forth on the swing set, their heads low and their hands enlarged with fluid. His favorite student, a young girl named Janie, had collapsed over a bed of daffodils, her long blonde hair covering her fissured, purple face.

In the hallways, students had died playing card games. One clutched a cube of milk; another, a notebook with crayon portraits. From the rafters hung construction-paper hand outlines and the female librarian (by a rope of shoestring). He found his classroom and in it his students. Two had taken a sick day and the other twenty-one sat still behind their desks, their lifeless heads cocked back and bloated. The floor had become wet with secretion. He wrote simple addition problems on the chalkboard and sat in his chair.

Alright, class, can anyone tell me what seventeen plus five is? he asked.

That’s a hard one, I know. But I’ll bet someone can figure it out. Janie?

Seven hours later, after eating a packed lunch and completing a crossword puzzle, he returned home, cooked a light meal, and slept.