Word Count: 70,339

I slept that night, continually shivering just as I had been while speaking with that man. I was slightly worried that this shivering would become the equivalent of my eyebrow-raised face, because I was shivering so much that night. I lay awake in bed for hours after encountering that teacher. All of the children were gone from the school. All of their parents were gone, save a few of them. Now they were all in a death pile on top of a mountain, waiting to awaken. It had been a gruesome process to watch, and had happened all too fast.

The next phase happened fast as well. The day after my rouse with the last living teacher I visited the ski lift, only to find that the husband was missing. I searched around the ski life, but found nobody there. I assumed he’d gone to take another body up the mountain, though I was sure that everybody in the town that was going to die had already done so. The ski lift was moving, as it always was – did it ever turn off? I sat on one of the chairs and waited for it to lift me into heaven. It was a very slow ski lift.

At the top of the mountain, I could hear another man’s shrills and screams. I began to walk faster around the mountain path to reach the top as quickly as possible. At the top, there was indeed a man there. It was still raining, and on the mountaintop it was worse because there was more wind. I had to squint, but I could still make him out. It was the husband, moving bodies around the pile, seemingly in search of something. “I know it’s here…” he kept repeating to himself. I wasn’t sure if he’d lost something or if he was looking for a body he’d once brought up.

He was looking for a body.

The pile was becoming discombobulated. Bodies were tossed around the top of the mountain, and it was becoming less of a pile and more of a flat, spread mass. I saw how many bodies had really been brought up the mountain. Hundreds and hundreds of bodies stretched across the top of this mountain. Some fell into the nearby trees, and some were close to the edge, close to falling down into oblivion. But the husband was looking only in the center. Looking, I soon found out, for his dead wife. He stopped saying “it” whenever he thought he was close to her body, and began to say “she.” He was either referring to his daughter, or to his wife. I knew he knew that his daughter had died – but I’d never heard word from him about his wife. He looked more devastated now than he’d never looked, although I’d never seen his face after he was exiled.

“God damn it! Where is her body…” He was beginning to cry, although I could not tell the difference between the drop of rain and drops of his tears. “I’m so close, she’s around here! Why isn’t she here? I know she is… the whole town is here… she is here.” He burst into a sorrowful rampage and began kicking bodies. He might have been searching for half an hour. There was no guard on duty in the rain, in the darkness. They probably didn’t listen to intently to the machinations of the hospital’s owner. If they had, they would have been on watch then and stopped the husband from tearing up the pile of bodies in search of his wife.

When he found her, his screams were so loud that I was surprised the owner himself didn’t hear them. He knew she was dead, but couldn’t believe it. I decided to stay out of the way of his agony and watch from the sidelines, remaining as hidden as possible on the open mountain. He was too absorbed in his grief to notice that I was there. Eventually I would realize that it was not grief, but anger. He was angry at his wife. He kicked her body, screamed at her and wished that she’d never wake up. He cursed all bacteria and all illness. He shouted to the sky, angry at God. He shouted to the ground, angry at it for giving him and his wife life. “Why!?” he shouted. “Why couldn’t you be merciful? Of all the people to spare from this, couldn’t you have picked her? Couldn’t you have picked my wife?” He kicked her body again, lavished the moisture that fell upon him. It brought him calmness, coolness. It washed his face – and, in part, his troubles.

But not completely. Because he cleared other bodies away to make a shrine for his wife, that she should lay alone on the ground and not be touched by other soaking, dank, dripping, disgusting cadavers. It was an altar. A tribute to his wife. A tribute to her horrible death. A death that he did not want her to awaken from.

I saw him gather up large branches – several of them large enough to be clubs – from the trees surrounding the cleared patch of land where the bodies were placed. He hit each of them once on the ground, as though to test their stability. With those branches in hand he moved over to his wife, and looked at her.

“Darling, I am so sorry. I am not sorry for what I am about to do, only sorry that you fell ill with this horrible sickness. I am sorry that our daughter also fell ill. But you cannot be left to endure all that I have. I will not allow you the pain that comes when all Westendorf turns against you. I will spare you this fate, out of my own kindness, and spare nobody else. Do you hear me? Hear me from beyond the dead! You will be freed, and never have to suffer what I have suffered!”

He lifted one of the braches high above his head, and let it drop. It hit his wife’s head, which was face-down, and broke in two.

He took another club-sized branch. He hit his wife’s head as hard as he could, and spared her no mercy. Her skull began to cave; he got several very good whacks out of that club. When that one broke, her skill was decently destroyed. But it would take another two clubs before her skull could no longer even be called that. He so thoroughly destroyed her that when he fell to his knees, crying and screaming in pain and shame, that both he and I knew that his wife would never be coming back from the dead this time. That now she was truly gone, for good, and forever.

I couldn’t move. I was shivering. I was scared to death and didn’t want to speak, to scream or even squeak for fear of the man hearing me. I knew at that moment that I had to get out of Westendorf. There was nothing further I could do for that godforsaken town. Luckily, I knew that I was scheduled to get a call from Pharand soon, relaying to me information about my departure from Westendorf and where I would be going to next. Thinking about it, I remembered that I should have already gotten the call. Before taking the time to wonder why I hadn’t gotten the call, I ran down the mountain. The husband, now the widow, never saw me. When I left he was in a position about to bend down and kiss his wife – if there had been anything there to kiss. Instead, he just remained, looming above her, completely still. It didn’t look like he was going to commit suicide. It looked as though he thought that his disease was his burden, and that he was the only man in Westendorf that had the right to be sick with it. He would take all of Westendorf’s sickness – nobody else should have it, he probably thought. He wanted to whisk it away and send it somewhere else. Knowing that he could not do that, he simply remained still on top of the mountain, the chorus of dead bodies all around him, waiting for the day when they too could awaken and join him in his still, silent lamenting of their deaths.

As if my thoughts automatically turned to action, the phone in my pocket rang. I didn’t even know I had it with me, and now thought that if it had rang a few minutes ago the widow would have discovered me and surly killed me long with his wife. I touched the phone’s screen, which was displaying a picture of Dr. Afalsi’s smiling face. Finally, I thought, a sane mind to speak to.

“Hello, Dr. Hemmings?” he said through crackling reception.

“Yes, Dr. Afalsi! Hello! Can you hear me?” I wanted to make sure I was loud and clear on the other end. I wanted to leave, and never return to Westendorf.

“I can hear you, Hemmings. Why haven’t you been returning any of my calls? I’ve already sent the plane ticket for you to get to India.”

“India? I haven’t gotten a single call from you.”

“Ah, well, that can’t be helped now. Just make sure to get that plane ticket and be off to India as soon as possible. We want you going to Srinagar. They’ve been having some serious troubles and need your antibiotic right away. Your supervision while the antibiotic is distributed is critical. The ticket should have arrived today. If not, they’ll be there tomorrow.”

“You got it, Afalsi. Have you been speaking with anybody else who might have gotten the ticket for me? I could imagine you doing that. You like things done quickly – I hope you didn’t call somebody else and let them know about where I was going.”

“I might have spoken with the man who owns the local hospital building, but I don’t think he knew that your plane ticket was coming. At any rate, I have to go. I’m due for a meeting, and only had this quick minute to contact you. Believe me; I prayed that it would go through this time!”

“Take care,” I said, and hung up. I went to the hospital before going back to the hotel to pack my things. I wanted to make sure that the deranged hospital owner didn’t have my plane ticket. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I caught him watching TV with his feet up, covered in a cloud of smoke, with an open envelope by his desk. I opened the door, meaning to interrupt anything he might have been doing at that time.

He jumped, and put his feet on the ground. I pushed the “mute” button on his television set before speaking with him. “By any chance,” I began, pacing the room, gradually getting closer to him, “have you been accepting called from somebody named Mr. Afalsi?”

“I’ve only taken calls from one man, and he’s nobody that you care about,” he quietly yelled. “But if you’re wondering who I’ve gotten messages from, I did get one from a Dr. Afalsi. He said you were going to be leaving soon. That made me quite sad. To tell the truth, I don’t really want you to leave! You’re such a big help, that I think you should stay forever.” He smirked, and then grinned. It was a grin to wide that it could have been his smile that reached out and opened the drawer below him. But it was really his arm doing the action, and out this time came a single, medium-sized slip of paper, only to be compared in size and decoration to a plane ticket. My plane ticket.

“Give it to me. I need to leave and help other people. Westendorf isn’t the only town that I needed to give my medicine to.” I stepped closer, but I began to shiver again. I knew that he was probably stronger than I was, even if he was older. If he wanted to fight be for the ticket, I was scared he would win. That would have left me stranded in Westendorf for the rest of my life, surrounded by people sick with Athan’s. I knew he didn’t mind keeping me here. I could plainly see that my antibiotic was taking far too long to work to have any noticeable effect. He must have simply thought I was a failure and didn’t need to go anyway. But he was insane all the same, and I had to get the ticket from his disgusting, dirty hands.

“How about this… I’ll let you have the ticket if you stay in Westendorf another week. By then you’ll be infected and I’ll want you gone just like everybody else. You see, with everybody sick there aren’t many good, wholesome people left in this village. We need population. Right now, you’re one of them. Westendorf won’t do well with tourism in the winter and summer if everybody has been exiled.” He stood up. “I think I’ll just get rid of this nasty little piece of paper. It’s useless anyway.”

“No!” I screamed, and rushed toward him to stop him from ripping the ticket. I dove straight into his gut, and punched him so hard that he doubled over and dropped the slip of paper. He managed to get up and grab it again, then try and rip it. Every time he tried to rip it, I tried to kick him down. He would never stay down for long, and eventually we simply got caught in a fist fight. One of us would have the ticket in the end, and I was praying every moment that it was I who would walk away victorious, even with the bloody nose, bloody mouth, black eyes, and various bruises all around my body.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he told me while we were still fighting. “You’re staying right here. I’m going to be the one who’s getting out. Like hell I’ll let you take advantage of this ticket when I’m the one who needs it most!” He shouldn’t have said that, because I knew then that he wouldn’t actually rip the ticket. It was all a bluff. He just wanted to knock me out and steal the ticket so that he could go on the flight.

I forced him into a position where he would either give me the ticket or get hit by his own television set. It was lightweight, and I had grabbed it from its stand. One whack would have knocked him out. Not permanently, but long enough for me to escape Westendorf and get to a nearby gas station along the mountain roads, where I would attempt to hitch a ride to the airport. Naturally, he refused to give me the ticket. I hit him hard over the head with his television set. The display in front broke when it hit him, and a bit of liquid room the display had drained over the top of his head. He fell to the ground, and I dropped the television on top of him. “Good riddance,” I said, and spat on his head. “A doctor shouldn’t have to fight people. It’s not our job.” I bent down and took the ticket, which he clutched even while unconscious.

I ran to the hotel, not wasting any time, and packed my things. I checked to make sure that I had everything – I didn’t want to lose something potentially as important as my painting. When I was sure that I had everything, I fled Westendorf. I ran as fast as I could along the roads I had walked when coming in, along the roads my taxi had taken me through. Soon the mountain town was far behind me. I had a quarter of the day to continue running as far from Westendorf as I could in the direction of the airport. While running, I looked at my ticket. The flight was for the next day. If I had received this ticket then, I would have had only an hour or so to catch the flight.

I made it to a building before nightfall. It didn’t look abandoned, but I didn’t know who lived inside. When I knocked on the door, nobody answered. I knocked again and again, but still no answer. Was everybody in the mountain area dead? Finding my efforts to be fruitless, I trudged on into the darkness. It had finally stopped raining.

There was a gas station down the road, just as I thought there had been. They were open late. I walked into the general store at the station and looked around for a drink. I bought myself some water and an energy drink, the latter which I knew I would be using later to wake myself up the next day. I asked the man at the desk if he knew of any nearby places where I could stay the night, but sadly he did not. I asked if there was a way I could simply sleep in the store. “I only need tonight, for a few hours. Just some rest,” I said wearily, speaking through the swelling bruises on my mouth and face.

I used my luggage as a pillow that night, and slept in an aisle where they kept potato chips and beef jerky. It was a surprisingly good sleep. At seven o’clock in the morning the next day I awoke and began waiting outside to see if a taxi would roll by. I caught the first taxi that came and, thinking that this was a good sign, told the taxi to go to the airport. I had many hours until my flight that day, but in truth I was simply so afraid of Westendorf that I wanted to be as far from it as possible. The airport in Vienna was quite far, and I didn’t think that the hospital owner would be able to chase me once I was inside, and especially once I’d shipped myself off to India.

I thanked the cab drivers and rushed into the airport. It was cool inside, and the atmosphere calmed me down although there were tourists and world travelers rushing all around me. In essence, the hustle and bustle of the airport was exactly like the hustle and bustle of the hospital back home, but instead of doctors rushing patients to treatment wards, and doctors rushing to get to their patients to rush them to treatment wards, there were tourists rushing to get out of the airport, travelers rushing to get to their flight and leave Vienna, and all manners of human beings running around going every which way. Several probably didn’t know where they were going at all. Yes, it was just like the hospital.

I sat at a café and ate lunch all day. I didn’t eat breakfast, only lunch. All of my meals were lunch, and nothing, I remembered, was under any sort of painting. I still hadn’t gotten over the strange loneliness that came with not eating lunch in the same usual spot, under the same usual painting, in the same atmosphere. The atmosphere around me was always now changing. I didn’t adapt well to change, I thought, even though the world had been changing all around me. I was headed to Srinagar, but I really wanted to go back to Pharand in Wales to retrieve the painting I’d left behind so that I could feel almost slightly at home while eating. Something inside of me told me that half of the horrible things that happened in Westendorf wouldn’t have taken place if I had had that painting with me. It was like my good luck charm, all of my good fortune in a burst of color and acrylic.

After those several hours of eating lunch again and again, my flight approached. I picked up my luggage and, for the first time in nearly a day, walked slowly to my destination. Many were in line to board the plane, although the plane would technically not be boarding for another twenty minutes. I was able to continue sitting. It was nice to sit. It was nice to be able to have the solitude to sit and think. It was nice to know with confidence that I wouldn’t have to deal with the world for the next several hours while I waited to board the plane and while the plane soared in the sky. In the sky there was no Athan’s Disease, there were no stresses. There was nothing but the air and the metal casing of the plane. There was nothing but the cushioned seats and lovely flight attendants handing you drinks in small cups. I deeply looked forward to it.

Of course, a nearby television had to ruin my wondrous silence. It was the news, as it always was. Athan’s was still spreading. It was spreading more slowly now, but the world was taking notice. It was moving out of its isolated areas. Where I was going was supposedly almost entirely infected. Many people were awake from their death already. I prayed that they were not being treated as those in Westendorf had been, and were being, but I was doubtful. I could not imagine the human race ever accepting these strange hybrid creatures into their race of elite beings. Never. A tear or two began to run down my cheek, for the human race. For twenty minutes I watched reports of “a growing biological threat to humanity,” and for twenty minutes watched their reporters show not one blade of sympathy from the grassy field of humanity for those who were infected.