Hydrophobia

The last thing I heard as I pulled out of the driveway was the sound of my sister’s screams ricocheting in my ears.

Ever since Emma’s water had broken early yesterday evening, I had been trying my best to monitor the progression of her labor. My obstetric expertise was limited to delivering puppies, kittens, cattle, and the like; human babies were unfortunately not a part of my veterinary repertoire. Still, even I had enough sense to know that zero contractions when you were nearing the 24-hour mark since your water had broken was not a good sign. If Emma’s contractions didn’t show up on their own very soon, I knew that we’d have to make the trip to the hospital in Eureka to get her induced—and fast.

It was in thoughts such as these that I was lost, as I anxiously awaited our mother’s return by the living room window. In clearer weather, my seat would have offered a full view of the street and driveway, but on this particular late October evening, all I could see was the mist rolling in from Silver Lake, just a few miles out of town. With my head resting against the pane, I observed my breath as it turned to swirling tendrils of water on the cool glass. This mist was no stranger to me. I had grown up with it. It was the kind of fine, wet fog that dewed on your skin as soon as it kissed your body’s warmth; the kind that left you feeling damp through your clothes and penetrated all the way into your bones. Never in my life would I have thought that such a minor annoyance in my childhood would turn into such a lethal threat in my adulthood.

I turned my attention momentarily away from the window and towards my sister instead. For the past twenty minutes, Emma had been slowly pacing around the room at my instruction. With both of her hands cupped beneath her protruding belly, she looked as though she’d swallowed a watermelon whole and was ripe and ready to burst at any minute. My normally neat and tidy older sister was a disheveled mess. Her long blonde hair was tangled and tousled behind each ear, and I could see the sweat stains growing under her arms as she continued on her rounds. She lumbered slowly past the entrance hall, glowing red and yellow from the flames as she moved towards the fireplace on the opposite wall. Mid-step, however, she let out a sharp, sudden shriek and doubled over by the mantle-place.

I rushed over to Emma’s side and helped her into a chair. My poor sister leaned back in her seat, beads of sweat collecting over her pale forehead. She was breathing heavily, trembling as though she’d done a thousand years of hard labor in a single night. She grabbed my hand as her brown eyes shined up at me.

“Cathy, something’s wrong. I don’t think the baby’s moving enough.”

I squeezed and kissed my sister’s hands before ordering her to lean back farther in her seat. A baby not moving this close to birth could never be a good sign. I ran through all of the possibilities in my head: maybe the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around a limb and was restricting the baby’s movement, or perhaps it was perinatal asphyxia and it wasn’t getting enough oxygen, or—oh God, please, no!—

Perhaps it was already dead.

I tried to get a feel of the baby’s position from Emma’s belly. First, I pressed her bulging stomach right under the ribcage. Emma winced as I felt round a large mass that should have been the baby’s bottom. I pressed down, searching for tiny legs kicking on either side of the mass, but was so far unsuccessful. As I continued my progress lower and lower down Emma’s stomach, following the shape of what I assumed was the baby’s torso, I caught a weak flutter of movement near her lower abdomen. Relief and worry cascaded over me at the same time—the baby was alive, thank God, but it was in breech. Breech babies were notoriously difficult to birth naturally, and as time went on, the baby’s risk of infection continued to increase now that it no longer had the amniotic sac to protect it from the outside world. I looked up at my sister’s exhausted face, wishing I could order her to take a warm shower to ease her discomfort—but oh, that damn water! What was taking Mom so long?!

Just then there was a loud banging at the door. My mother tumbled in, lugging a huge pack of 24 water bottles behind her into the hall. She dumped the pack by the fireplace before rushing to kneel by me at Emma’s side. Turning herself towards me, concern etched into the lines of her face, she asked, “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened to Emma?”

I reached for the pack of water bottles and pulled one out, holding it to my sister’s lips as I stroked her limp hair. Looking down at my mother, I sighed. “The baby’s breech, Mom. She needs to go to a hospital immediately; she might need a caesarean. I can’t help her anymore, we need to get her to Dr. McKenna, pronto.”

The lines of worry in my mother’s face deepened. “But the ambulance from Eureka is going to take at least 45 minutes to get here, maybe longer with the fog. Cathy, do we have that much time?”

I felt the blood suddenly rush into my face. Fuck the ambulance! Fuck Eureka! Fuck Senator Payne—fuck the whole lot of them! “Mom, do you honestly think we’re a priority for anyone anymore?! Nobody’s going to send an ambulance out to this ghost town on a night as fogged-up as this, okay? Ever since our lovely Mr. Payne screwed with the water supply in Silver Lake, nobody wants to come round these parts and risk getting infected. It’s Flint all over again—and that lasted two whole years before anybody started to give a damn!”

I was interrupted in my furious diatribe when Emma let out a deep, anguished groan. My mother pulled me down so that my head was now level with my sister’s waist. She pointed at a nasty deep red stain growing between Emma’s legs. “Cathy! Cathy, there’s blood! Oh God, what do we do now?!”

In that moment, I made my decision. There was nothing else to be done.

“We help ourselves, Mom; God knows help’s not coming any other way. I can make it to Eureka in 20 minutes if I floor it—ah!” I held my hand up at my mother’s protests. “The fog doesn’t matter. It’s a relatively straight road, and there’s never any traffic on there anymore, not since people started to leave town. I’ve been on that road a million times. I’ll be fine. Call the ambulance in the meanwhile if that makes you feel better, but I’m leaving.”

I got up off the floor and started gathering my things. From the living room table, I grabbed my phone and keys and put them in the front pockets of my hoodie. After tying my hair up into a ponytail, I reached for the plastic visor that my mother had left on the same table as she had rushed inside. The doctors had said that the infection from the lake wasn’t airborne, that it could only be transferred via water, but I didn’t want to take any chances in this mist. After all, what was mist except for suspended water droplets? Visor intact, I pulled on my knee-high boots—the waterproof kind I wore for veterinary trips to the farm—pulled up my hoodie, and finally tightened the drawstrings under my chin before walking out the door.

I could still hear Emma screaming bloody murder as I sped out of the driveway.

The fog was thicker than I had anticipated it to be from my seat at the living room window, and it got thicker still as I headed out of the town limits. Something inside of me couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling that not only was I trying to chase down Eureka and its doctors; I was also fleeing unnamed hidden specters of the night as they chased after me. When I finally got to Silver Forest, so named for its namesake lake hidden within, I turned on my high beams. My entire body shivered from head to toe, and I suspected it wasn’t entirely from the cold.

I had entered the blackest night I had ever known. The ancient beeches and firs overhead completely blocked out whatever semblance of sunlight was left in the day, and as I continued down the dark forest tunnel, my heartbeat couldn’t help but accelerate. Tree branches dangled over my car like bony fingers trying to reach me, hurt me…drag me screaming out of my car. I rolled up the windows of my truck—no God forsaken creature was going to grab me if I had anything to do with it.

So far, I had been completely alone on the road. I checked my speed: I was going 85 mph on a country road with a maximum limit of 70 mph! A sudden morbid thought entered my mind—if I were to die here in the forest…would anybody ever find me? I quickly shook the thought out of my head. I didn’t have time for such silliness.

I leaned back in my seat. I was beginning to enjoy the adrenaline a little. What would Derek have said to me now in all of my dare-devilish glory? He had always been such a stickler for the rules at vet school, it had made dating him such a pain. I smiled to myself at the memory—when out of the corner of my eye I saw a lightning flash of red and white. Barely thinking, I made a hard swerve to the left. My foot pumped on the brakes as my body thumped up and down in my seat—the world was spinning before me, and someone was screaming in my ear. I could hardly breathe—what was this pressure on my chest? —God, I was going to die! I was going to die right here and there was nobody to find me! —Oh, Emma!

Eventually, the world finally came to a halt. I unbuckled my seatbelt so that it no longer dug into my chest. Panting for air, I shook as I touched my face and opened my eyes. My visor was still intact, but it was cracked by my left eyebrow and was making it hard to see. I undid my hoodie to take it off—and gasped. The front of my car was totaled; I had slammed it into the trunk of a large birch tree. By some blessed miracle, I wasn’t very far off the road—the car seemed to have been caught in some brambles and bushes by the roadside. I rubbed the sides of my aching head as I cautiously stepped out, checking for any broken or dislocated bones. So far, so good.

I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone. It only had 8% battery left, but there was still one service bar available. I shakily dialed 911 and waited for someone to pick up the phone, but the line dropped mid-call. Holding the phone up to my face, I peered at the screen—no bars. Shit. Tucking the phone back into my pocket, I went to sit by the roadside.

How on earth was I going to get out of here?

Just then, I noticed a white light coming down the road in the distance. There hadn’t been any other soul on my travels thus far, and for a second it seemed more plausible to me that the oncoming light was some ghost or specter rather than another human being. Who could possibly be driving down such a dark road as this in this kind of weather? And then it hit me. The ambulance! Of course, Mom had probably called for it! Oh, thank heaven, I was saved. We were saved. I went to stand in the middle of the road and waved my hands in the air to flag it down. The light came closer and closer, blinding me in the darkness so that I couldn’t make out anything about the vehicle…or who was inside of it.

The light eventually stopped about ten feet in front of me. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the high beams shining directly into my retinas, but once adjusted, I surveyed the vehicle.

This was no ambulance. It was a red Honda, and there were two men sitting in shadow inside. I looked down at the license plate number: LXZ 4374. Wait a minute…I knew this car…

Derek?

Relief washed over me immediately. Of all the people I could have met on a night like this! I jumped up and down and thumped desperately on the hood. “Derek? Derek! Oh God, you’ll never believe what’s happened! Quick, please, I need a ride to Eureka. It’s an emergency, I’ll explain everything in the car!”

The man on the passenger side of the car stepped out. Though my eyes had somewhat adjusted to the high-beams—I wonder why they didn’t just turn the damn lights down— “Derek’s” face was still in shadow. I shone the light from my phone on his face—and my heart gave a sudden leap.

When I was a little girl, we used to have a dear little brown Labrador named Lucy. One day as I was coming home from school, I found Lucy in the middle of our street. She was shaking violently and frothing at the mouth, a pool of sticky drool collecting by her front paws. Thinking she was thirsty, I had reached into my backpack and tried to offer her some water, but my sweet dog had started to growl and bark at me like never before. Before I could try to reach out and soothe her, however, the sound of a gunshot rang through my ears. My uncle Paul had picked me up, kicking and screaming, from behind and asked, “That rabid dog didn’t bite you now, did it june-bug?”

In the blue light of my phone, Derek reminded me exactly of Lucy. His head shook violently every few seconds, and the same disgusting characteristic drool was dripping down his face and onto his neck. We had learned in vet school how rabies used to be called hydrophobia, since its patients developed an intense fear of water that prevented them from swallowing their own spit. A clever trick by a clever virus, to ensure its continuous spread.

Although Derek’s eyes were looking straight at me, they seemed strangely unfocused. He must have definitely drunk the water from Silver Lake. I didn’t know how or why he had done it, but he was displaying all of the symptoms. Luckily, it was exactly for this sort of situation that I’d started to keep a crowbar in my truck since the early days of the outbreak.

I started to slowly back up towards the truck, my eyes glued to the creature that used to be my ex. Derek didn’t move; he just swayed in place, jerking violently in unnatural positions that made me wince. As I neared the shattered driver’s side window, my hand slithered into the cracks between the seat and door until I finally found the venerated crowbar. I pulled it out of the truck and started to slowly inch into the woods.

Yet as I stepped backed into the darkness, Derek’s eyes seemed to suddenly focus on me. He stepped drunkenly forward, looking as though he would topple over at any minute. I held my breath and held the crowbar firmly out in front of my body. He didn’t seem stable enough to chase me, but I had heard…things…about those who had been infected. How much of it was panicked rumor and how much of it was truth, I didn’t know, but something deep inside was screaming at me to run. Run now and not look back.

I listened to the voice.

Tree branches clawed at my face as I ran into the darkness, hardly knowing where I was headed. I had no idea if Derek was following me; all I could hear was my own blood drumming in my ears and the cacophony of leaves crunching underfoot. I wished they would shut up—it was such a conspicuous giveaway of my direction; Derek was sure to find me. Something warm trickled down my cheek…was it blood or my own horrified tears? I had no idea, but I wiped my face viciously clean just as I stumbled upon a clearing.

Silver Lake lay gleaming silently before me.

The voice inside of me desperately urged me to step into the water. You will be safe there, it said. Remember—hydrophobia.

I waded into the silvery water. Moonlight swished round my boots, reaching for my shirt and pulling me down as I stepped deeper and deeper into the water. I held my hands out over its dancing surface, trying my best not to touch the water. Hush--there’s no need to worry anymore.

In the silence, I waited—ten minutes or thirty, I did not know—not daring to turn round and check for my pursuer. Maybe I had lost him. Maybe he was gone.

Suddenly, I felt a searing pain shoot down my neck and shoulders. I was falling, drowning. I sputtered as the freezing water went up my nose and down my throat. Liquid silver burned at my eyes. It will all be over soon, said the voice. I was joining Derek; I knew he was waiting for me patiently on the other side. A sudden peace enveloped me as I soared underwater.

There was no more reason to be afraid.