This is the fourth in a series of journal entries (read the first one) made by the main character in Sugar Scars, written during the weeks just before the events in the novel.
I just put duct tape on my front door and windows. Not to actually seal the house from the airborne virus. That’s hopeless. I mainly did it as a sign to let the religious people know that I wasn’t coming out. I noticed that they didn’t bother people in the sealed houses.
Deaths were reported in Alabama yesterday, so it should be here in Tallahassee soon. The vast majority of people are sealed away, but there’s always a defiant few that stay out and stand as markers of the virus’s progress.
What am I doing with my last few days alive?
I thought about eating a massive sugar filled meal, inducing a diabetic coma. But I looked it up on the internet and it sounds miserable. Plus, I’m not the suicidal type. I want to live.
But no matter how strong my desire to survive is, it’s not the thing that could keep me alive. It’s all a matter of genetics. 0.0104% of the people have the gene for resistance. Hoping for those odds is like rolling five dice betting that they will all turn up six.
Okay, I can’t let that approximation alone. The odds of rolling five sixes is 1 in 7,776.
The virus odds are 1 in 9,600. So it’s an even worse bet.
I think I’m just going to spend the days like I always have. Alone. Watching videos on YouTube or Netflix. I’ve enjoyed the mathematical aspect of tracking the virus, so I’ll keep doing that. I’ve been able to predict its path fairly accurately. The rate of progress follows a few key variables like wind speed and population density. Every once in a while there’s leap, like when an infected person manages to get in a car and drive a ways before dying, but even that’s fairly predictable.
If God is real and I meet whatever the qualifications are for heaven, then maybe I’ll get to see my parents again. They died thirteen years ago, when I was six. I can still remember them clearly.
I’ll pretend like I’m about to go home to see them after a long journey.