Free This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) by Robert Chazz Chute Page A

inside the Bendham’s house to ask if the old couple needed groceries. Every lamp had a lacy bit of cloth under it. The house had a smell Jaimie associated with the dwellings of old people. Thinking of it brought back boiled cabbage doused in lavender queasiness. Perfect recall is more a curse than a gift.
    Fresh from the hospital, Mr. Bendham lay on a flowery couch, a jug of green juice on a TV tray beside him. He was the most chatty Jaimie had seen him, like he was just back from an adventure and anxious to repeat it before he’d forgotten anything. Later, the boy looked up the words “retropubic prostatectomy”. Then he looked it up on the Internet. The boy started eating more tomatoes after watching a YouTube video of the surgery.  
    “Al was in such a rush to get his checkup,” Mrs. Bendham said, “but I don’t know when we’ll get any results. Did you hear? There are a lot of doctors and nurses who are refusing to report to work. When we were there, the hospital was packed with people, but I didn’t see many white coats. There was a lot of coughing going on and the triage nurse told everyone with a fever to go home.”
    Jack wasn’t standing close to Mrs. Bendham. It was as if they were calling back and forth across a wide stream. Still, Jaimie noticed his mother take another step back.  
    “A few years ago, the government tried to get the doctors and nurses to sign a pledge to go to work if there was ever a pandemic,” his mother said. “As I remember, they refused. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
    “It’s all over the radio now,” Mrs. Bendham said. Half the callers are saying they should get back where they’re needed and the doctors are saying that for this to blow over, everybody should stay home. They are doctors, so I think they should go to work. Whatever risk there is, they chose it.”
    “Yeah, but their husbands and wives and sons and daughters didn’t choose that risk.”
    Mrs. Bendham seemed about to speak but thought better of it.
    “I should get back to the garden,” Jack said.
    “You’ve bitten off quite a bit of yard there. What are you planting, Jacqueline?”
    “Oh, lots of flowers and green things,” she tossed back over her shoulder. “I’ve decided to take this time to work on my green thumb.”
    That was the second lie Jaimie heard his mother speak.

At the end of the world and miles away
    J aimie retreated to the books laid out on his bed. He leafed through the pages, comparing the new one from the library to the thick, old one his father bought at a yard sale. His father had reinforced the binding with gray duct tape. Until the Sutr Virus came, his life had been regimented. The doctors said he would do better in school if he knew what to expect. Now no one knew what to expect and so, very little was required of him. Jaimie disappeared into the words on the page, surrounding himself with alphabetized columns and walls. There was no boredom. Only hunger, sleep and the need to go to the bathroom could drag him from Word World.
    Sometimes he looked into one word and the richness of another word waiting nearby would pull him in to taste its curves and softness — words with more than one s or m often felt that way in his mouth.
    Jaimie closed his eyes and pointed at a random page of the thickest dictionary. His finger found cacophony . To the Greeks, the word connoted not merely a harsh sound, but something evil. In medicine, it referred to an altered state of voice. In music, a combination of discordant sounds. School had often been a cacophony for Jaimie, but he could not detect evil. The ambient sounds in his classroom had been more like the musical definition, loud at times, but organized around lesson plans, bells and learning new things.
    Next to cacophony , cacoplastic waited. The term referred to pathology, “susceptible to a low degree of organization.” Since the Sutr Virus, the neighborhood had become quiet. It was certainly much quieter than the