Unwelcome Dental Advice

If anyone has read my work, specifically I-I: Departure, you may remember a few blurbs about something the people of Earth have coined “The Arrival.” This is a supplemental work that, in better detail than James Harrington provides, gives some insight into the events of the Arrival and the Cleansing.

December 19^th, 2018, 4:17 pm.

“Over 5,000 more dead in New York City, and an expected 10,000 or more are infected, even after the military quarantine procedures have been put in place. This strain of Ebola has decimated millions worldwide, and unless the citizens can come together and –.”

Steve flipped off the newscast and sat up from his worn recliner with a grunt. Steve, a 55-year-old black man with bad knees, put pressure on the cane that sat to the side of his recliner to give himself the leverage he needed to stand all the way up. It was difficult to imagine that only fifteen years ago, he retired from the Navy. How quickly the body could fall apart after years of stress. Despite the bad knees and the necessity of the walking cane, Steve was still a good-looking man. He was tall, well-built, and had a thick head of curly, but short-cut hair. Not an ounce of gray, yet, but his father didn’t start graying until his mid-60s.

After retirement, Steve and his wife Edith moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to be closer to Edie’s parents. Her father’s health had been failing, and only a few weeks after they moved was he put on hospice. He had tremendous respect for her father, another veteran – though he was in the Army – named Richard. Rich, as he liked to be called, served as an infantryman in the Korean War and had so many stories to tell. It was an easy decision to move to Wisconsin to be closer to Rich and his wife than it was to move anywhere near his own family. Steve and his folks didn’t quite share the same ideas.

The condo they purchased, using Steve’s veteran’s benefits, was located near Lake Michigan, and even had a small marina nearby to leave the boat he’d bought while he was still in the Navy. It was a well-kept brownstone, three stories tall and narrow. The family room, where Steve spent much of his time reading and watching the news, was on the second floor. The kitchen was on the first floor, and all the bedrooms were on the third. There was a guest bedroom on the second floor, near the family room.

Steve turned to face the guest bedroom. The French doors had been taken down in the last weeks, and now a thick sheet of plastic, cold, opaque, and sterile, covered the archway. As he inched near the plastic sheet, he began to hear beeps and whirs coming from the medical machinery inside.

Before he could reach the door, a woman in white nurse’s outfit and a mask blocked his progress.

“I’m sorry, Mister Glenwood, but she’s too far gone to have visitors unless they’re in full HAZMAT.”

Edith, who had gone to Chicago a few days prior to visit their son, Shawn, had contracted this new strain of Ebola and was well on her way to the grave. What he wouldn’t give to just touch her cheek again and assure her that she would be with God soon enough. But the nurse who had been assigned to her quarantine wouldn’t allow it. The young girl, a tattooed girl with pale skin and dyed hair named Erika, had been adamant that no one go near Edie. She was assigned to several patients in this section of the quarantine zone, and there were armed soldiers patrolling the streets, enforcing a strict curfew. Residents were allowed to leave their homes, but only to go to the commissary that had been set up by the military or to get exercise and walk their pets. Otherwise, they were relegated to their homes until the threat of this pandemic passed.

Steve furrowed his brow at the young nurse. “I just want to see her face…”

“I understand, Mister Glenwood, but we’re still waiting on the next batch of rental HAZMAT suits to come in. They’re supposed to be here today, but the convoy is late. You’ll just have to wait outside this area until then.”

He understood. He hated it, but he understood. This pandemic had ravaged the population of every major city across the world, and there seemed to be no end in sight. With a huff, Steve turned to go up to their bedroom and choose a book. Most of what was on the bookshelf of his room had been war history and crime documentaries, but today, he reached for a bible. There was a sneaking suspicion that he might not see Edith again after today, and instead of grieving, he wanted to reach out to the Lord and let Him know that he was accepting of this.

The stairs that led to the third floor were worn and creaky, but they reminded him of better times. He remembered back to when Shawn and their other son, Eric, were still at home and had tried sneaking up those stairs to surprise Edith on her birthday. She heard them coming from a mile away and wanted to prank them in return. Instead of lying in bed, when they arrived, she hid behind the door and spooked them as soon as they entered. There was fresh fruit, orange juice, bacon, and eggs everywhere, but the mess seemed worth it at the time. Edie so rarely got an opportunity to scare the kids.

The memories brought a smile to Steve’s face as he finished his climb and turned the corner to their room. The room, too, held many memories, but Steve didn’t dwell on them. His mission now was to pray; pray for Edith, pray for those who were going through the same thing he was, and pray for an end to this pandemic.

The bible he reached for was his father’s. It was leather-bound and weathered. Cracks formed in the binding indicating areas and passages that his father and he spent the most time reading. As he once more opened his favorite book, and whooshing sound broke his concentration. The sky above darkened, too dark for midday, and there was an eerie silence that followed, as though all sound ceased for nearly ten seconds. Steve set the bible back down on the side table next to his bed and rubbed his ears like one might if they were experiencing an altitude change and the fluid in their ear shifted, causing temporary dullness in their hearing.

When sound did return, he could hear neighbors and the military patrols outside gasping and shouting. Curious, he opened the blinds on his window and checked. Above the lake, which was to the east of his apartment, hovered an enormous spherical object with concentric rings that orbited the central orb. Within that central orb was something that looked like an eye. From that eye, a flat layer of light emitted, as though it was scanning. The object made no sound other than a steady thrumming noise that was barely audible over the excited and terrified shouts from those in his neighborhood.

For a few minutes, all anyone could do was stare. The sight was so awesome that it couldn’t even be believed. All those years of wondering “are we alone?” and “is there any other life out there?” had been answered in seconds. Something was out there, and it came to them in their darkest hour. What would be the response from the military? Would they try to hail it and make friends, like they do in so many movies? Or would they find it immediately threatening and attempt to nuke it out of the sky?

Steve didn’t have to wait for an answer. The strange spherical object had finished its scan, and the concentric rings quit their orbit. Once again sound ceased, even the low thrumming noise the construct had been emitting. Now, instead, was light. A light as bright as Steve had ever seen poured forth from the entity in gorgeous waves. Suddenly, all over the city, pillars of light began to form. It seemed random where the pillars would land until Steve saw the several neighbors’ homes that he knew contained people with the Ebola virus.

“Edie!” he shouted but could not hear. If the words truly escaped his lips, no one would ever know.

He ambled down the stairs as fast as his terrible knees could take him. There were no creaks, no groans in the wood this time. At the bottom of the stairs on the second floor, he could see light pouring through the plastic curtain that hung along the double doors. Through the opaque plastic, he could see Edith floating in a ray of light that came through the ceiling, but did not damage it. Everything that could possibly have been infected with the Ebola virus also floated in said light: her bed, the bedspread, and any other medical instruments floated helplessly in the mystical light.

As he reached out for the plastic curtain covering the door, Erika, the young nurse, pulled his hand back. But to Steve, this was the word of God coming down to save his wife. He wasn’t going to let some little girl keep him from witnessing this miracle. Steve summoned his strength and pulled away from the girl, ripping down the plastic sheet in the progress. There was still no sound which was oddly deafening to him. As he entered her chamber, Edith looked down upon him from her shaft of immaculate light.

Through that light, he could discern a slight smile upon her face. As he reached out for his beloved, everything caught in the web of light began to dissipate and disappear. First, the bed sheets and bed dispersed into smaller particles of light, which further dispersed until they were completely gone. Then his wife’s hand began to disappear in the same manner.

“No,” he soundlessly muttered.

But Edie was at peace. She continued to smile at Steve through the ray of light as it consumed her and dispersed her physical being into minute particles of light until nothing was left. When it was done, the shaft of light disappeared and all traces of infection that might have been in the room were gone. Sound returned and all Steven could do was fall to his shattered knees and weep.

Days later, the quarantine would be lifted and the standing governments around the world, who all witnessed the same phenomenon, would call this day the Arrival. They would call the entity in the sky, which now seemed to slumber, the Savior. The cleansing of the Ebola virus would only be the beginning. A new world was on the horizon, and Steve Glenwood was there to witness it firsthand. He mourned for Edith, of course, but also he mourned for the passing of an era, for the world would never be the same.