The Bolachek Journals - Part 1



  The Collected Journals of Isaac Bolachek

  From the archives of the American Recovery Corps

  Reprinted with the permission of the Bolachek Estate

  Copyright © 2013 Thad D. Phetteplace

  All rights reserved.

  You are allowed to copy and share this book only in its original, unaltered form. You can download this book in epub, mobi, and PDF formats from https://TheBolachekJournals.com. Visit the website to provide feedback and to download updated and new content.

  This is an original work of fiction. Any resemblance to characters living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.

  March 19 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston

  I've never been one for expressing myself creatively, or at least not artistically. I'm not sure what really possessed me to take a creative writing course.

  Maybe I'm not really being fair to myself. I suppose there is plenty of creativity that goes into the type of engineering we do here at MIT, especially in the type of robotics I'm studying... but writing is something very different. It feels more raw. I feel more exposed. Like I'm peeling back a layer of skin and letting people peer inside at secret things. What I build in the lab... it's the opposite. Its like building a protective layer of armor. I'm expressing myself, but its only what I want others to see.

  Professor Mead insists there is no requirement we let anyone actually read these journals. She claims it is just to "exercise our creative writing muscles." I'm not supposed to worry about how good any of this is or spend a lot of time editing... just get it all out, get it down, and write something every day. That will probably be the hard part; writing something every day. There are so many other things I would rather be doing, so many things I need to be doing, that I expect this will fall rather low on the priority list. I'm only a freshmen in the engineering program here, not even in the really tough courses yet, and I am already feeling swamped. Still, spring break is coming up, and I'll have some time to catch up then. Some of my friends are going off to Florida to spend a week in a drunken stupor, but I'm just heading back home to Oklahoma to visit the family. I just hope I don't catch that nasty flu bug that's going around and spend the whole break sick.

  April 4 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  Well, so much for getting back to my applied robotics project. School is temporarily closed, not just at MIT but pretty much everywhere. This flu epidemic has really kicked up a notch, and there have already been scattered deaths reported. The CDC has put a travel ban into effect, schools are closed, as are many businesses. Others have their employees wearing hospital masks. It's crazy. Mom and Dad both have caught the thing, but they are far from old and frail, and supposedly it's really only people with compromised immune systems that have to worry. I seem to have fought the thing off; had some sniffles for a few days but feel fine now. I've been taking care of the parental units, which mainly consists of fixing them soup and hot tea at regular intervals. I'll admit I'm a little worried after reading some of the more extreme speculation on the Internet, but all the major news networks say it's not really that bad and the economic consequences will probably far outweigh the actual health consequences. Of course the conspiracy mongers on the net are spinning all sorts of tales of secret quarantines and news black-outs and speculation about germ warfare. I'm not sharing any of that with Mom or Dad. I'm sure everything is going to be fine.

  April 17 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  I'm not sure why I brought this journal with me. I'm not sure why I'm writing in it now. What else is there to do though? I wouldn't have believed any of this was real if I hadn't witnessed it myself. If I hadn't watched the virus take my parents. Take hold and not let go. Several weeks into their illness, it got really bad for them. They were shaking and coughing, their eyes had gone yellowish, and they didn't seem to know what was going on around them. Their phone had stopped working days before... nothing but a fast busy signal. My cell phone was equally useless. The Internet stayed up, but many of the sites stopped updating, like the writers had all quit. One morning I woke up, and the house was quiet. Too quiet. I went into their bedroom, fearing the worst. They were so still. And so pale. I checked their breathing and their pulse. I felt their temperature. They were cold. They were dead. I know they were dead. I went back to the living room and just sat on the floor. I should call someone, I thought. The phones were dead. I thought about knocking on a neighbor's door, but my parents had only just moved to this apartment building, and I knew nobody in this neighborhood. Maybe the Red Cross crisis center a few blocks away. I had been there a few days before, trying to get medication for my parents, but they had nothing to give but advice. I could go down and report their death to the Red Cross. They would know what to do. I grabbed my wallet, slipped on shoes, and headed out. The street was eerily desolate. No cars were moving. I heard the occasional siren, a person yelling in the distance. I saw someone stumbling down the middle of the street about a block away. They seemed confused, drunk maybe... more likely sick. I thought I could hear them moaning. The Red Cross was the opposite direction, set up in the community center a few blocks west, so I ignored the shambling figure and took off that way.

  It was closed down. A large hand written sign was duct taped to the door.

  Go home

  Pray

  God help us all

  There was an official looking notice posted next to it, something about emergency CDC directives and quarantine procedures. I didn't bother to read it. I was in shock I think. I headed back home. I thought about buying more soup for my parents.... then I remembered. Nevertheless, groceries were getting low, I should shop. They would want me to shop. Mom always wanted her pantry well stocked. The grocery store near the community center was closed. I detoured north a bit on the way home to swing by a 24 hour convenience store. Amazingly it was still open. The attendant stood behind his checkout counter, wearing a surgical mask and latex gloves, with a HEPA air filter running full blast next to him. There was three other people shopping. One of them kept coughing into a dirty handkerchief. The others kept their distance, though it was clear they wanted to shop in the same food aisle. I figured if I was going to catch the thing I already would have. Grabbing a shopping basket, I charged over and started grabbing random packages of soup mix, cereal bars, and whatever else looked edible. The shelves were already very picked over. Coughing man filled his basket until items were spilling out and then staggered toward the checkout. The other shoppers began approaching. I swept some Ramen noodle packets into my basket to top it off and headed toward the checkout. Coughing Man was dropping cash onto the counter. The attendant, a dark haired guy not much older than me, stood back and handled the money at arms length like it was radioactive. He made change, slid it over, and then scurried to the back of his enclosure. Coughing Man counted his change, putting it back in his wallet a dollar or coin at a time as he counted it.

  "It's all there. Just take your money and go!" The attendant shouted. Coughing Man just silently finished sliding coins into his wallet before slumping off, his two plastic bags of groceries dangling from one hand. I stepped up and started taking items out of my basket.

  Before I could even hand anything toward the attendant, he spoke up. "You need to scan it yourself." He nodded toward a hand held bar-code scanner sitting next to the cash register.

  I thought about all the customers that had touched it, including Coughing Man, then shrugged and began zapping each item. The total was $39.29. I slid over two twenties, and as he moved to give me change I told the attendant, "Keep it". He gave a short laugh, but pocketed the 71 cents. I finally looked at hi
m, really looked at him. His name tag labeled him as 'Todd'. I knew him. He graduated high school a couple years before me. He was on the track team I think. I thought about hanging out for a few minutes to catch up. No. We never moved in the same circles back then. What would we talk about now?

  "Stay safe." I advised as I grabbed my grocery bags and headed out.

  I saw a fight on the way home. Two guys were really tearing into a third. It seemed pretty vicious, so I decided not to play hero and just charted a wide course around them and hurried past. By the time I got home, my shambling sick neighbor had moved on. I though I saw him a couple of blocks away, halfway to the Red Cross center. He would find no help there.

  April 18 - Tulsa, Oklahoma

  Decker interrupted my writing yesterday. Said he needed some help checking all the barricades. I and two other volunteers joined Decker and walked around the interior perimeter of the bus depot, making sure none of the stuff we had piled against the windows and doors had shifted. The piles remain in place, but the noises outside are noticeably