The China Pandemic Read Online Free Page B

led the small procession out to her last resting place. The boy followed, crying.
    “Stop that, or you’ll attract more of the dogs,” Graham warned.
    However, the boy couldn’t suppress his grief. The closer Graham got to the grave, the more he struggled to pull the quilt away. With his arms full, Graham ordered, “Knock it off.”
    He lowered her down to the edge of the hole and the boy pulled more of the quilt off, exposing her feet. Graham pushed him away, landing him on his rear. He sat there, crying and rubbing his eyes.
    Graham took a look around for any more predators and jumped into the hole. “Give me a hand, kid,” Graham whispered, but the boy ignored him.
    He pulled the body over the edge and lowered her to the bottom. The boy scrambled over to the edge and yelled again, “No, No!”
    Graham quit worrying about the kid. Instead, he shoveled the dirt into the grave as quickly as he could because nightfall meant predators. He continued to shovel with the boy crying out. He felt awful having to do it this way, but the circumstances left him with no choice.
    By the time he finished, it was nearly dark and the child’s sobs had faded to whimpers. Graham, exhausted both emotionally and physically, began to smooth the mounded dirt over the grave. To his surprise, the boy shoved his hands away and began smoothing it himself. Graham let him do it.
    Another howl pierced the backyard silence, sending a chill up Graham’s spine. Not knowing the kid’s religious beliefs, he said, “Okay, kid, hurry up and say goodbye.”
    The boy said something in what Graham assumed must be Korean, but he wasn’t sure. He knelt down beside him, bowed his head, and hoped bringing her into his home had allowed her to pass peacefully. Out loud so the boy could hear him, he said, “Just like I promised, I will look after your son.” Graham heard another howl, then reached over and picked up the kid who leaned, spent and tearless, against his shoulder now.

4 The Lucky Ones
     
    They were the lucky ones, being able to bury their dead. Most families without someone in the two percent living were left unburied. They lay in hospital beds, their own beds and sometimes in vehicles, trying to reach a destination or escape from the travesty of a life they had once known.
    Early on, ailing and dying people overran the hospitals and after attempting to encase every single dead body in plastic body bags, workers soon ran out of those supplies. As things progressed, they resorted to simply burning them in parking lots. There were dead bodies everywhere—corpses left to decompose as nature intended. Natural elements either sped up or slowed down the process of decay, depending on daily conditions.
    This encouraged the animal kingdom to descend in droves out of the forests and into the normally forbidden land of man. They peered around houses and onto the black asphalt-topped roads, lining the maze of streets beyond their borders. Tempted in by the lack of manmade noises that had formerly kept them at bay, they now were enticed by the aroma of rotting flesh. Out of desperation, neglected family pets soon either became prey or reverted to their feral state. They formed large packs, which often tangled with the wild side.
    Coyotes, wolves, bears and bobcats chased their natural prey, the deer, which were once only seen at dusk and dawn. The sound of the ruminants’ clip-clopping hooves on the hardened road surface and concrete sidewalks were heard by few people now. Those humans who remained would then hear the sound of savagery as the prey suffered death by fang and claw. This left those who endured to the end with an intense fear of being hunted by beasts. So they remained in the shadows of their shelters, running out of resources day by day.
    ~ ~ ~
    Graham put the boy down and locked the door. The wind picked up and the rain started again. The child just stood there, dazed. Graham looked out at the graves, which now totaled six. He leaned his