The End Is Now

The Fever. It makes me nervous that people have given the new pandemic a nickname in which you can hear that same capital letter. It means they’re mythologizing it.

It turns out otters and orcas and elephant seals can all get the flu. And in a warming ocean, that H1N1 sea mammal strain thrives and spreads and mutates quickly. That it jumped to humans in a contagious form in the same season the H10N8 bird flu managed to also complete the hat trick is just damned poor luck.

That they reassorted and turned into the monster that flattened North America and, I guess, the world—though information is scarce . . . that’s something worse than damned poor luck. If I were a religious person, I might call it the wrath of God. I wouldn’t be the first.

Last winter was a bad flu season. This winter was murderous.

At least if we’re lucky, once we recover, I expect the anti-vaxxer fad will have run its course for good. But the question of whether even the people who want to vaccinate will be able to get their hands on the materials is an open one.

The otter flu will be done with us in a couple of years; it’ll burn itself out, even if it takes half of humanity with it. The longer-term problem is that it’s distracted the hell out of us when we should have been dealing with climate change and trying to figure out how to keep everybody fed. How to deal with the new fungal illnesses decimating wildlife and people at the urban-rural interface.

The end of the world was supposed to be gradual. There was supposed to be warning. A long, slow slide. What we got was punctuated equilibrium: a stately wobbling, then a sudden tipping point.

There was plenty of warning, I suppose. We just weren’t paying attention.

* * *

They give me a mask and bring me in to see the patients, who look even worse than you’d expect. Whether their natural skin tone is light or dark, they all have that grayish cast. The conscious ones move and stretch restlessly, trying to ease aching limbs. The semiconscious ones toss—if they have the energy. Some moan or whimper. Some lie still, breathing raggedly, their skin slick with sweat. Some shake in ragged agues.

I have no idea what to do to help any of them. But I pay my tunnel passage the only way I can—boiling willow bark in water and dripping the bitter decoction down swollen throats.

Denver’s been turning people out when they get sick. I knew that. I didn’t know where they were going.

Here, apparently. The Eisenhower Tunnel. Softball Bat, Empty Hands, and Gun were among the first to find their way here.

They’ve survived the Fever. The otter flu, as I prefer to call it. Now they’re trying to help others.

So this isn’t what my racing heart told me to fear at all.

It’s something much more frightening than that.

* * *

Wonder of wonders, the aspirin helps. Two days later, as I’m packing to leave, Empty Hands—turns out his name is Ryan—comes up to me and says, “If you want to stay, you’d be welcome.”

I glance back into the depths of the underground kingdom. “I have a partner and kid in San Diego.”

Ryan licks his lips. “You’re going to cross the Great Basin and the Mojave on foot?”

I shrug. I shoulder my pack. I sigh and look back at the tunnel. I could hole up here, wait for cell service or landlines to come back up. It’s bound to happen eventually. The infrastructure’s still there: it’s just a matter of running it.

Hell, eventually there might even be buses or something.

“I said I’d come home.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but I feel Ryan watching me as I settle into my boots with each stride west along 70.

At least it’s stopped snowing. And the snowing stays stopped for two whole days, which is what I budgeted to get to Vail. It’s only about thirty-nine miles over roads, and I’m fit.

But I’m not moving as fast as I’d like, and the road—well, it isn’t flat, exactly. And it sure isn’t easy going, though I’m grateful again and again and again that you can’t get gasoline for love or money, and the highways are devoid of anything but pedestrians and military vehicles these days.

Well, it’s what they were built for. Civilian uses are—were—well, not just a bonus. Because the economic impact of the interstate system was huge. But they were secondary to military needs. Just like Rome.

Why am I thinking about this? Some combination of the Eisenhower tunnel (get it?), military convoys, and hypoxia. Low blood sugar, too, as I’m trying to go easy on my food supplies.

End of the world as we know it or not, it’s beautiful up here. The mountains hump like spruce-scaled snakes on either side of me, generally rising on the right and dropping into a valley on the left, though that varies. I can see the train tracks on the abandoned right-of-way, and the sky above bright and fragile as a sheet of cobalt glass. I’m getting used to walking. I’m even getting used to the inclines, though my quads and hamstrings and glutes and calves have words with me when I lie down at night.

Vail Pass is only 10,000 feet and change. Piece of cake, right?