The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to Disillusionment

The Fever

The land here is vast. I am a speck upon it, lost and immobile. Geology, geography, and climate shout from horizon to horizon. How did we ever convince ourselves that we could overcome these giants? All our clever mechanisms have earned us only a temporary reprieve.

– The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide, Vol. 2, excerpt from line 793

The order in which the natural disasters befell them seemed calculated to do maximum damage. Mere hours after Bryan screamed his frustrations hoarse from the rowboat on the Hudson, three tornadoes touched down in the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. The sky turned to pea soup and houses exploded at random, touched by thin fingers of destruction extending downward from sickly clouds. Too few people knew the signs growing up in the relative safety of the Northeast.

The twister attack ended as suddenly as it began. As the inhabitants did what they could to accommodate the newly homeless over the next few days, extreme cold descended from the North, concentrating the beleaguered inhabitants into crowded homes and abandoned municipal buildings. Fires were kept ablaze in fireplaces with lumber from the rubble. Buildings without fireplaces filled with smoke as people did what they could to save themselves from the killing sub-zero temperatures. Frostbite threatened to gnaw away extremities. A few unlucky individuals, mortally subdued by the tornadoes and cold, were carried out to the frozen streets to await burial. Clustered together, the survivors coughed and sniffled, shivering under layers of clothing, stuffed into sleeping bags and under blankets, waiting out the onslaught.

Bryan huddled together with Avra, Maimonides, Barbara, and Gordon, joined by a dozen others in the Barneses' small home, feeding lumber into the wood stove. Temperatures fell to -30°. The air was thin and dry. The clear stillness of the cobalt sky outside made the house feel like a crowded capsule in space.

The coughing and nose-blowing increased. Fevers, exacerbated by the cruel temperatures, weakened already anguished members of their party. Understanding what was happening, Bryan, Gordon Barnes, and a few others ventured to the local hospital to the north, looking for antibiotics and syringes. Finding none, they checked the nearby animal hospital but couldn't decide if any of the vials would be safe to use on humans. They took them anyway and headed back south. They fared better at the dental center, where supplies had not yet been exhausted. Heading back to the relative warmth of the Barneses' two-story clapboard home, Bryan stopped momentarily to gauge the destruction. The town was deathly silent. The empty streets looked too wide, the houses too small. He imagined the remains of the town's inhabitants, clustered in small isolated groups like his behind those closed doors, shivering with cold, fever, and fear. The sun, high above, felt too far away to spare any warmth. It was as if the earth had left its orbit.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Hoping to see Jake arriving with a contingent of other Zadeka employees, he turned to see a dozen deer huddling close together by an abandoned gas station. Realizing his husband was still upriver miles away, unreachable, and facing an angry mob, filled him with helpless despair.

He ran to hand the supplies he was carrying to Gordon, who looked at him from under his fur-lined hood, perplexed.

"I'm walking north," Bryan said.

"To Croton?" Gordon was stunned. "In this?" He pointed at Bryan's borrowed down coat. "You'll die."

"I have to." The air burned Bryan's lungs as he drew enough breath to speak. "My husband's in trouble. I told you about that gang of men. They could be attacking right now. I have to."

"You won't make it in that," Gordon returned. "You need a Jeep and supplies. When it warms up we can get a group together. Those of us who are healthy can help you put up a fight. Don't go off half-cocked. Think it through."