Where Do We Go From Here?

It all started simple enough, a patch of red irritation in the back of my throat. I admit I was shoving some French fries down my throat as I drove home the other day and nearly choked to death. My throat has become raw and sore and I swear sometimes I spit up blood. I asked around at the bar after work last night and no one seemed to care. It’s just a sore throat they told me and teased me about being able to claim some sick time.

At least it ain’t that flu, kind of deadly this season, some whole towns getting sick and then disappearing. The government comes in, burns the places down, bulldozes them and then they plant trees. And like that, the place is wiped off the official map. This winter it has been tough to keep up with all the new releases of the official map.

My girlfriend, she's a nurse, okay not a real nurse, but one of those nurse's aides at a clinic. With all of us on the government health care, it’s a take a number and hope you don't die before someone sees you kind of clinic. You could travel over to Bixby to the hospital, but from what my girlfriend tells me, you sure as hell don't want to go to a hospital. Those places are all over crowded with people on the plan.

I had my girlfriend look at my throat and she swore that she couldn't see anything. I told her how it kind of felt all raw and scratchy, as if I was choking from the inside out. “When I cough, I cough up blood.”

“Where's the proof?”

“Proof?”

“Yes, evidence that you brought up blood? I ain't seen no bloody tissues or even heard you cough.”

“Damn. I'm coughing all the time, just about ten minutes a go I coughed, while you were in the john.”

“So, where's the blood? I don't see no blood. Be a doll and run down and get us a delicious meal at almost no cost.” She sounded just like the official government commercial.

“Get some fries for me and some of those chocolate shakes. There's money in the cookie jar.”

I sat in my car warming up the engine. It had been cold out, below freezing for some six months now. No more seasons, the sky always gray with clouds. No sun meant little farming, so they have to make most of our food in factories and serve us at what use to be fast food joints. There are rumors that food and drinkable water are getting in short supply. I don't see how that's possible; the government provides us with both.

The other day I snuck over to Bixby to see a friend. He has this theory that the flu is fake, just a way for the government to control the population, so that the survivors will have enough to eat and drink. He said that when a community showed signs of the flu, the place would get quarantined, and then slowly shut down as the people died. “How come you never hear any stories of any one having fully recovered from the flu? Cuz, they don't. Their bodies get burned and bulldozed and then they come in and plant trees. Bunch of sick looking tree farms all clogging up the exits off the interstate.”

The coughing got pretty bad while I sat in the car, so I decided to run over to the clinic and have someone take a look at my throat. I told the doctor the story about the French fries.

“Healthy, as far as I can tell.” He spoke loudly so that others in the clinic could hear that he was giving me his seal of approval. He clapped me on the back, “Just a raw throat, probably from swallowing a handful of those tasty fries the wrong way.” He moved cautiously over to a sanitizer dispenser on the wall and pumped a large blob in to his hands.

At the desk a nurse was completing my file on a computer. “Did you hear about Bixby? Got them a case of the flu over there. Shut the town down this morning. That flu is some nasty shit. No charge, I see you are on the plan. Doc, he ain't really a doctor you know, never finished med school,” she whispered. “The doctor suggests some rest, no prescriptions, and stay away from French fries for awhile.” She laughed, “Did you really choke on some French fries?”

“Yeah, sure I guess so.”

I was in Bixby last week, now my throat was sore, I had all the symptoms. No one, not my friends, my girlfriend, the doctor, no one wanted to be the one to say the f word or go on record with a diagnosis.

The burger place was packed, it was Tuesday, that meant with your ration cards you are able to get double the allotment. I picked up our free burgers, some fries and a couple of shakes. As I pulled up to the house I coughed again. Some blood filled my hand so I wiped it on my jeans. Inside my girlfriend looked at me and joked, about spilling some ketchup on my leg.

“That's what you get for stealing some fries and trying to eat and drive. Don't you know that's against the law?”

She continued, “Didja hear about Bixby? There putting up the fences now. I was watching on the internet some man videotaping a family trying to get out. The medical police had to shoot them because they were trying to violate the quarantine zone”.

The next morning, another official map. I studied it closely, the town of Bixby was now gone.