"Invisible Terror" A short story by Sara Eddy
The glass door chimed announcing the entrance of a customer. Sammy looked up to see a woman walk in. She pulled her sunglasses up to rest atop her head where the roots of her hair had turned white.
“Welcome in,” Sammy said from his place behind the counter.
The woman said nothing in response and blankly stared up at the sandwich menu. After a couple of minutes had passed, she stepped up to the counter and rashly told Sammy her order.
“Oh, um sorry could you repeat that? I didn’t catch it.” Sammy stammered.
She repeated what she said, but her voice was too quiet and quick for Sammy to hear it.
“I’m sorry could you repeat that one more time?” Sammy asked with a nervous chuckle.
The woman didn’t respond right away. She stared at him with dead eyes for a second, then reached up and pulled her face mask down. “I want the Cheesesteak with extra everything and a fountain drink,” she annunciated to Sammy, her mouth exaggerated and wide as she spit out each word.
Sammy tensed in place. The uncirculated store air was moistened with particles of a middle-aged woman’s saliva floating stagnant in the air. In these droplets, virus the size of a red blood cell was now left discarded in the short distance between Sammy and the customer. Sammy gripped his hands into fists.
He thought back to the year of 1346 when the Mongols sieged Caffa’s walls, by catapulting decaying corpses infected with the plague over the city’s wall. The soldiers of Caffa futilely tried to protect their walls with bow and arrows aimed at the Mongols, but metal and bloodshed couldn’t stop the spread of disease, as blackish bruised bodies landed with thuds on the other side. The Mongols successfully retreated. The plumes of feathers atop their helmets danced in the wind as they rode away. The year of 1763 when British commanders gave two Native Americans a parting gift for their journey to Fort Pitt. The gift, infected small pox blankets taken from the nearest hospital. The Natives took this gift, holding the thick wool blankets in their arms as they headed back to their home through the woods, mindlessly crunching over decomposing leaves that carpeted the forest floor. A hidden gesture of good heart that will infect and kill their loved ones. And in 1995 men in black suits and women in white blouses stood waiting for the Tokyo Metro to whisk them away to work, when the air was suddenly rushed with sarin gas. Blood gushed out of their nostrils and people fell to the ground. At the chosen hands of a cult leader, thirteen people were innocently killed, and thousands were injured. And Sammy remembered hearing about the week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, anthrax was sealed tight in white envelopes, sitting silently in post offices, government mail rooms, and suburban mail boxes. The letters sat in dark stillness, waiting to be torn open by unsuspecting news anchors and government workers. A domestic act of terrorism leaving five gone.
Sammy unclenched his fists and stared down at the cash register. He tapped in her order, taking his time to press each button in. “Will that be cash or credit?”