Read White Flag of the Dead for Free Online Page B

could barely talk.
    “No, John. Please don’t. This is hard enough as it is. If I know you and Jake are safe, it will make things easier. Please don’t come for me. I don’t want you infected. Promise me, John, please.”
Watching Jake with tears in my eyes, I promised my wife I would not come to her rescue. “I won’t. You’re right.”
“Thank you, John.” Elli sounded relieved. “John?”
“Yeah, babe?”
    “Could we just talk? The phones have been going in and out and I don’t know how much time I have.” Ellie sounded like she did when we first started dating. My eyes watered up again, and I almost couldn’t talk.
    “Sure, babe. Sure.”
    So Ellie and I talked for the next hour about everything we had done, all of our happy memories, our regrets at not being able to do the things we wanted to do. I must have told her I loved her a thousand times, and she did the same. I brought the phone over to Jake again, and with the phone on the floor, I tickled Jake so his mother would have a memory of her baby laughing as she went into the long night. I asked her about what was going to happen and she told me that the doctors have been giving massive doses of morphine to anyone who was infected so they would die peacefully. I found this to be of some comfort, morbid as it seemed.
Suddenly the phone started to have static and Ellie and I realized we did not have much time left.
“John, please remember me as I was.” Ellie asked
“Of course,” I said. “Nothing else.”
“Take care of my baby.”
“He’ll grow into a fine man.” I said, my voice catching.
“Just like his daddy.” Ellie said, starting to cry again.
The phone buzzed again and for a second I thought I lost her. “Ellie? Ellie?”
“I’m here, John. We may as well stop, as I’m not feeling well, and I need to go see the doctor.”
“I don’t know if I can do this without you, babe.” I cried, trying to hold back my sobs.
    “John, be strong. You’re much tougher than you give yourself credit for.” Ellie tried to console me, but it was hard. “Jake needs you.”
    That brought me back into focus. “I miss you already.” I said.
    “Me, too.” She said.
    I didn’t know what else to say, except, “I promise you, Jake will survive this. On my life, he will survive this.”
Ellie cried again. “Thank you, John. I love you.”
“I love you, too, babe.”
“Give Jakey a hug for me.”
“Will do. Ellie?”
“Yes, John?”
“Thanks for all the joy you’ve given me.”
“My pleasure, sweetheart. Good bye, John. Love you.”
“Love you.” I started crying again. “I’ll see you again.”
“Promise?” She asked, crying herself.
“Promise.” I said, and I meant it with all my heart.
The line crackled once, and went dead.
With that, I never saw my wife alive again. I went over to where Jake was, sat down, and just started crying.

4

    For the next week I was on auto-pilot. I woke up, I fed Jake, I changed his diapers, I ate, and I went back to sleep. I couldn’t think of anything past what I was immediately doing and Jake’s needs. I didn’t try to go anywhere, and I didn’t even turn on the news. I was in a fog, lost in a pit of depression and self-pity. All I could ask was why? Why did this have to happen? Why did I have to lose my wife? Why did Jake have to lose his mother? That depressed me a lot, that eventually Jakey will not remember his mother in a little while. I was all he had.
    I was all he had . That thought began to stick into my head and I began to realize that I was all Jake had. I was all that kept him alive, all that prevented him from maybe turning into one of those things. I remembered a line from a very good movie once, and it stuck in my thoughts, so much so that I wrote it on a piece of paper and placed in on my fridge so I would never forget its truth. Very simple and more poignant than ever these days. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” I thought about Jake and remembered my promise to his