Текст книги "The End Is Nigh"

Автор книги: Jack McDevitt

Соавторы: Nancy Kress
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

She told Lucita to follow her joy, even if that joy wasn’t in the sciences. She told her she was sorry they had argued so much and not to hold on to those memories. Neta called Lucita Lucy in her final goodbye to her, to Paul. It was her way of apologizing, of saying all the things she didn’t feel strong enough to say aloud. She could only pray it was enough.

It was only at the end that she broke down a little, her eyes burning with tears she refused to show to the camera.

“Love her, Paul,” she whispered. “Give our little light all the love I won’t be there to give. And don’t hang on to me. I want you both to live, to be happy.”

She shut off the tablet after marking the file. She would be long gone before her family saw the video. NASA and the government would have to review everything, but she trusted they would let the message through. It was the best she could do.

Neta made her way back to the common room. Ray was there with Graham, both of them looking as though they’d aged a decade in the last hour.

Ray poured her a cup of tea and Neta stirred powdered milk into it, staring at the swirls as she worked up the courage to ask more questions.

“What happens after the moon and this rogue dwarf planet collide? How safe will Earth be? How safe will the coasts be?” She asked, thinking of her daughter in California.

Ray shook his head. It was Graham who answered her. “We aren’t sure. We don’t have the programs and time we’d need to model it. The moon will be knocked out of orbit. Or at least into a new one. Or it might break apart. And yes, there will be a hell of a debris storm back on Earth. They have atmosphere to protect them, but this could get bad.”

“Bad?” Visions of Hollywood apocalypse movies churned through her brain and fear for her family wrapped freezing fingers around her ribcage.

“Well, it won’t be good. The tides and weather might go haywire, but the moon is going to save the Earth. At least in the short run.”

“True,” Kirill said as he ducked into the common room. “Without moon getting in way, everything would

bchwhew

.” He emphasized the exploding noise with a large gesture.

“I think we call it a ‘global extinction event,’” Graham said.

“So we’re lucky,” Neta said. She glanced around the room and saw the confused stares. “I mean, ‘We’ as in the human race.”

Ray nodded. “More or less. We should give our governments enough notice to move people out of low-laying areas and stuff like that. We’ve got a lot more man-power and computing power on Earth to deal with the fallout. I think we’ll come out okay.”

It went unsaid that all they could do was warn Earth and hope. That the four staying behind could do nothing at all.

The goodbyes were subdued. The four who were staying handed Anson their tablets containing their messages home and their data from the Array. There were no speeches. Tears were sniffled back or quickly wiped away. If anyone was panicking, they kept it deep inside.

Graham, Shannon, and Anson ascended the ladder for the last time, and Neta didn’t stay to watch them go. She returned to the common room and drank the gritty dregs of her cold tea.

“What now?” Ray asked when he came back in.

Neta shrugged. “How long?” She didn’t have to specify.

“Thirty-four hours-ish.”

“Ish? And they call you a scientist.” Neta smiled at him.

“I am going to bed,” Kirill announced from the doorway.

Neta agreed. It was too long to wait, staring at blank walls. She returned to her bunk and tried to sleep. She turned fitfully; the light gravity that usually let her sleep with a comfortable weightlessness she never felt on Earth was instead a constant reminder that she was here, not home. Her mind gave her disaster scenarios, visions of the Earth’s surface turning to giant, moon-barren craters and the seas churning and rising up, drowning her house. When she did sleep, she startled awake multiple times, thinking she’d heard Lucita calling for her.

Finally she gave up. Her little clock told her in bright green light that she had twenty hours left to live. Ish. Her mouth was thick with sleep-fuzz, and her nose caught the ghost of Paul’s citrus-laced aftershave as her brain struggled to shake off her dreams.

No one was in the common room. Neta made soup, forced herself to drink it, and then washed out her metal bowl. She rested her fingers in the dish, remembering her plans for when she returned home. The tepid water gave her an idea.

Neta pulled on her moon-walking suit for one final time. She climbed up the ladder but did not go outside. Pluto’s big brother would be visible to the naked eye now, from what Ray and the others had told her, but she didn’t want to look that closely at death, no matter how impressive it might seem. Besides, she wasn’t sure if it would bring debris with it, or if it would be safe to be out on the surface of the Daedalus crater.

Instead she went through to the big bay where they stored equipment for repairs and extra supplies for the Array—the items that didn’t need as much radiation shielding. They didn’t bother to keep this spares shed full of air. Neta searched the large NASA bins and found something that would work for her plan. She spent long sweaty minutes clearing out a barrel and hauling it to the ladder.

She dropped it down. On Earth, she wasn’t even sure she could have moved the plastic and steel barrel. Here, it was awkward, but not impossible.

Scraping and hauling it through the narrow hallway brought Kirill and Ray out of their room.

“What are you doing with that?” Ray asked. What little hair he had was mussed from sleeping; it looked as though he’d been as restless as she.

“Taking a bath,” Neta said. “It was something I planned to do first thing when I got home.”

Kirill laughed, and even Ray was able to crack a smile. They helped her get the barrel down to the women’s bathroom just past Neta and Shannon’s room. It didn’t quite fit in the tiny shower pan, so they left it just outside. Duct tape, some wires, a repurposed length of lab tubing, and a lot of swearing later, they had a way to fill the makeshift “tub.”

“I don’t know how clean this thing is,” Ray said.

“What’s it going to do, give me cancer?” Neta waved them both out of the bathroom. “Go away so I can bathe in peace.”

The water was stale, and calling it tepid would’ve been generous, but she climbed into the barrel and sank down, curling her tired body up until only her nose and eyes were above the surface.

She half-floated and finally let herself feel the panic, the grief, the crushing weight of knowing she was going to die. She hung inside the barrel, her body wedged down in the water, and let herself breathe through the complete helplessness.

The tears that had been burning inside her eyes and throat all day broke free and were lost into the bath, her cries muffled by the water, her face washed clean even as she wept. She wanted to scream, to tear at her hair, to beg God or the universe or anything for a way to change her fate. Finally, exhausted, she just let herself cry until no more tears would come.

The water was cold and her fingers stiff and pruned when she finally climbed out. She dressed in clean clothing, pulled on a light blue sweater, and combed out her hair. She pulled out her small cache of pictures that she’d brought from home and went through them one last time, her wrinkled fingers tracing the lines of faces she loved and would never see again.

When her clock told her there were only a couple hours remaining, she pulled out the final item. Her nana’s rosary, the turquoise and wood beads smooth and dark from years of praying. Neta couldn’t bring herself to say the words aloud, so she touched the beads one by one as she mouthed the prayers. It felt weird to seek God now, when she’d devoted her life so thoroughly to science, but she had never turned her back on Him, only on the Church that she’d felt had no place in her modern life.

Neta set aside the pictures and tucked the rosary into her pocket. It couldn’t hurt to pray now. She hoped the dying would be forgiven a little hypocrisy.

She found Kirill and Ray in the common room. They’d exchanged tea and coffee for vodka, judging from the empty bottles and the smell that greeted her as she sat at the table. The men were in the middle of a game of Gin Rummy.

“Where’s Jie?” she asked.

Kirill and Ray froze. Kirill raised his cup and drained the vodka from it. Ray fidgeted with the cards in his hand.

“In his bunk,” Ray said when Neta half-rose, intending to go look for Jie.

She sank back down. “Not joining us, is he?”

“He left early,” Kirill said.

“Pills,” Ray said. “Went to sleep and wanted to stay that way, I guess.”

Suicide hadn’t even crossed Neta’s mind. She waited to feel anger or betrayal that the quiet young man would do that, would go without saying goodbye to her, to them, but she couldn’t find it in her to blame him. He had faced death his way. She had to face it in her own.

“The others will be well clear of the moon now,” Ray said.

“Going home,” Neta said softly. She appreciated Ray’s attempt to bring good news in the room.

“Vodka?” Kirill offered her the remaining bottle.

“You’re a walking cliché, Kirill,” she said with a smile.

“Some clichés are for reasons,” he said, playing up his accent and waggling his bushy eyebrows at her.

He poured a generous measure into her tin cup and then picked up his cards again. Neta watched them play in silence, cupping the alcohol between her hands as though she were warming them, but didn’t drink. It was strange, but she found she wanted to face the end sober, calm.

“I’m glad,” she said, as Ray dealt her into a new game of Rummy. “I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“I will drink to that,” Ray said.

“I too,” Kirill said.

The whole Den shook, a tremor like an earthquake rattling dishes and jouncing them well out of their chairs.

Neta left her cup after the shaking stopped and went to sit on the floor. Kirill and Ray joined her. They sat knee-to-knee in a tight circle as another tremor began. When she reached out her hands, Ray and Kirill took her cold fingers in their own warm ones.

“It’s the middle of the night in Montana,” she said. “I bet there is a warm wind coming from the Southeast. I wish I could tell Paul goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Neta,” Ray said, squeezing her hand.

“Goodnight, Ray,” she said. “Goodnight, Kirill.”

“I love you both,” Kirill said with a hitch in his voice. “Goodnight.”

As the Den shook, Neta closed her eyes and held on to their hands with all her strength forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Annie Bellet is the author of the

Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division

and the

Gryphonpike Chronicles

series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh. Her short fiction is available in multiple collections and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horse-back riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.

Will McIntosh – DANCING WITH DEATH IN THE LAND OF NOD

Taking it slow so the ruts in the dirt drive didn’t ruin his Mustang’s suspension, Johnny cruised past the Lakeshore Drive-In’s worn neon sign, past the faded and battered red and white ticket booth, into the big open field.

Dad was at the snack bar getting the popcorn popping, putting hot dogs in their aluminum sheaths for no one. It was a half hour before showtime, the sky halfway between blue and black, and there were no customers yet. Toward the end of the second feature, Johnny and his dad would end up eating dried-out hot dogs. He was

so sick

of hot dogs. Every night, Dad prepped the snack bar like they were going to have a full house, and every night, maybe half a dozen vehicles rolled through the gate.

Tonight they’d be lucky to get anyone. Everybody was glued to their TV sets, watching the news, scared shitless by the nodding virus. Johnny was scared shitless too, but he still had to drag his ass out to babysit his father.

Every time he took the hard right off Route Forty-Six and passed that old neon sign, it gave him a sick feeling of indigestion. When the Alzheimer’s finally took his father, Johnny would inherit 11.27 acres of useless land, a snack bar refurbished to resemble a 1950s diner, a shiny new movie projector, and a shitload of frozen hot dogs. He would also inherit a sixty-six thousand dollar business loan at eight percent interest, the loan guaranteed by the house he’d lived in his entire life.

Kicking up dust as he pulled in, Johnny parked by the walk-up window. He slammed the Mustang’s door, strode past old picnic benches squatting under a roof that extended from the squat building like the bill of a cap.

“Don’t park there,” Dad said as he set boxes of fresh popcorn beside the machine. “You don’t want anything obscuring the customers’ view of the snack bar. I read that on the internet.”

“I’ll move it when the movie starts.”

Dad put his hands on his hips. “People buy half of their snacks

before

the movie starts.”

Johnny wanted to point out that half the snacks they sold on an average night amounted to about twelve bucks’ worth. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he let it go. At least his dad was making sense. When he’d dropped him off that afternoon, Dad had been sure it was nineteen seventy-six, and was contemplating decorating the drive-in to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial.

“You watching the news?” Johnny asked. “The virus broke out in Wilkes-Barre. Something like two thousand people have it.”

“Is that the swine flu? Or the bird one?”

Maybe Dad wasn’t having such a good evening after all. “No, Pop. The new one, the nodding virus.”

Dad took it in like it was the first time he’d heard about it. “How many dead?”

“Hard to say. It doesn’t kill you, it paralyzes you. You can’t move.”

Johnny would be less scared of the virus if it killed you outright. The thought of being aware of what was going on, able to breathe, even eat if someone fed you, but not able to move…Johnny didn’t even want to think about it.

“You remember seeing

Spaceballs

here?” Dad asked.

“I remember, Pop.” Here we go, off on a ride down memory lane.

Johnny was so tired. So sick of giving up four nights a week for nothing. He spent all day walking on that greasy floor, listening to people’s complaints about their fucking fish sandwiches while his back ached. He resented having to waste all his time off so his father could live out his dream and reminisce about how much better the world was when everyone loved to watch movies through their dirty windshields while mosquitoes ate them alive.

Dad looked at the big white screen. On the day he’d brought Johnny out here to tell him he had Alzheimer’s—and that he was buying this beat-up drive-in as some sort of big carpe-diem fuck you to the universe—the screen had been peeling away in squares, exposing the rusting steel latticework underneath. Now it was bright white and flawless.

“The day after this place closed, the marquee out front said, ‘The End. Thanks for thirty years.’” Dad shook his head. “It broke my heart, to think your kids would never get to go to the drive-in.”

“Tiffany moved the kids to Baltimore before they were old enough to go to the drive-in,” Johnny said, bitterness leaking into his tone. He wanted to go home, crawl under a blanket with a six of Pabst and watch porn until he fell asleep.

A truckload of teen-agers pulled through the gate. Johnny headed off to collect their admissions. If they were super-lucky, the kids would smoke some weed and get the munchies. They could sell some hot dogs for a change.

• • • •

In the car on the way home, the radio played some Springsteen then gave way to the news. Johnny wasn’t in the mood to hear any more about the outbreak, so he stabbed one of the preset buttons and caught a Charm City Devils song in progress.

The sound of their success only reminded him of his own faded rock star dreams. He turned the radio off.

Dad stared out the side window, watching the street lights pass like they were the most fascinating things in the world.

It was past time to put him in a home, but Johnny just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was having such a ball, running his drive-in. It was killing Johnny, though, getting home at one in the morning, then his alarm going off at six.

And the place was bleeding money.

“How much did we gross tonight? Forty-something dollars?” Johnny asked.

“Something like that.”

Johnny waited for his dad to offer some excuse, some airy-fairy optimistic spin on the two of them working their asses off for forty-three bucks, minus utilities, minus the film rental fee, minus taxes, minus gas, minus five hundred and sixty-three dollars a month in interest on the loan.

“If this virus thing gets any worse, people will stop going to the indoor theaters, cause they’ll be afraid of the germs. They’ll start coming to the drive-in instead.”

“The virus is in

Wilkes-Barre

. If it gets any worse, people will

have

it, and they won’t be able to go anywhere.” The thought sent an electric dread through Johnny. “Come on, Dad. We gave it a good try. It’s just not working.”

Even if he could convince his dad to sell the drive-in, who would buy it? Especially now. Maybe after the virus scare blew over he could at least get three thousand an acre for the land and pay off part of the loan. He’d have to use his savings to pay off the rest, which meant his new, post-rock star dream—opening up his own bar and grill—was never going to happen.

Johnny cruised to a stop at a red light at Aker Street, waiting, silently beseeching his father to see through the fog in his brain and agree it was time to put this business out of its misery.

“First movie I ever saw there was a monster flick.

Them

, it was called. Giant ants. I don’t remember the second feature. They put real butter in the popcorn then.”

Johnny felt like he needed to scream. “Yeah, yeah. Everything was great, back in the old days.”

This time Dad caught the sarcasm. He looked at Johnny. “You know why I keep saying things were better back then? Because they were. That’s the thing. Things really were better.”

“I’ll give you that, Dad. Back then, they gave you a pension. Health insurance. You got paid a decent salary. How much were you pulling down, your last year at the Goodyear plant? Fifty-five? That’s seventeen grand more than I make

now

.” Johnny slapped the steering wheel so hard his palm stung. He was forty-one years old, and even getting promoted to manager of Burger King was out of reach, because he didn’t have a college degree. “‘Would you like to get a large for only fifty cents more?’ I’m so sick of saying that, Dad. You have no idea how sick I am of saying that.”

Johnny took a deep breath. He shouldn’t be talking to his dad like this, but he was tired and angry. And scared. “I’m sorry, Dad.” He touched his Dad’s shoulder. “You never raised your voice to me. Never once, the whole time I was growing up. I’ve got no right to raise my voice to you.”

Around the curve, in front of the old brick schoolhouse—which was now a plumbing supply warehouse—red lights were flashing. Two police cars and an ambulance were parked beside a Taurus wrapped around a telephone pole.

Johnny slowed to a crawl as they passed. The driver was still in the car. “That’s Arnie Marino. He works at the post office.”

Paramedics were easing him out from behind the wheel. His nose was bloody, and it looked like he was resisting them, trying to stay in the car.

Johnny realized he wasn’t fighting them, he was jerking, having a seizure.

“Poor bastard,” Johnny said under his breath. He sped up, knowing if he watched any longer he’d look like a rubbernecker, not someone slowing down in the name of safety.

The poor guy. He’d been jerking like a puppet on strings, almost like—

Johnny missed their turn. His hands felt numb on the wheel, like blocks of wood.

Arnie Marino’s head, especially, had been jerking up and down. Nodding.

Johnny took a big breath, tried to relax as he took the next left to double back around. It could have just been a seizure. Or there were other things that would look the same as the virus.

Of course there was also no reason to think it

wasn’t

the nodding virus. It was out there, and it was still spreading. He glanced at his dad, but he seemed like he’d already forgotten the accident.

• • • •

That evening, back at home, Johnny heard the sounds of sirens warbling and howling outside, some far away, some nearby. As they grew more persistent through the night, Johnny felt certain the virus must have hit their town.

He turned on the TV in his room, the screen taking forever to warm from black to an image of the CNN newsroom, where a blonde news anchor was talking beside a virtual map of the United States. There were at least fifty red dots glowing on the map. Most were in Florida, but a few ran up the coast, a few were out west, and there was a cluster nowhere near the rest, in Pennsylvania. One looked like it was right where Johnny was standing.

He turned the sound up until it was blaring, watched images of soldiers jumping from the backs of camouflage brown trucks, setting up roadblocks. Pulse pounding in his hands and feet, his tongue and his balls, he heard the word “quarantine,” but had trouble understanding most of what came from the news anchor’s red lips. Her words couldn’t compete with the terror trumpeting in Johnny’s head.

A bang on the front door made him jump. Johnny glanced at the clock (3:13 a.m.), pulled on sweats and headed downstairs.

Dad was up, looking bewildered.

“What’s going on?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know.”

It was Kelly Cramer from across the street—Leon and Patty’s daughter—who’d dropped out of community college and moved back home. Her breath was coming in big, frantic gasps. “My folks. I think—” She let the thought go. “Help me.”

Johnny pushed on his sneakers without tying them and followed Kelly across the street as a voice in his head screamed,

This is not good

.

Leon and Patty were in bed, the blanket pulled up to their necks. Both were nodding, their chins rising and falling. Beneath the blanket their toes were trembling. Leon was making a choking, strangled sound.

The worst thing was their eyes. They were clear and focused, moist with fear, following Johnny as he moved.

Johnny’s knees turned to jelly. “Call nine-one-one,” he said, his lips numb.

“They said they can’t do anything. There are too many. The hospital in Framington is full, and they can’t move anyone out of the quarantined zone.”

It couldn’t be.

It could, though; of course it could. Wilkes-Barre was barely forty miles away.

“We need to get out of this room,” Johnny said, backing up a step. “Out of this house.”

“

Help them

,” Kelly said. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

Johnny took another step backward. Another. “You know there’s not. We need to get out of here.

Right now

.” He took off down the stairs and outside, his loose sneakers slapping his heels, adrenaline pushing him to run faster.

When he reached his door and turned, Kelly was on her front lawn.

“I can’t just leave them. What do I do?”

“It doesn’t help them if we get it, too,” Johnny said, holding the door half-open. He didn’t want to be near Kelly, let alone her parents, but he felt bad closing the door in her face. She was only twenty-two or twenty-three, just a big kid, and she had nobody to help her. At least, he didn’t think she did.

“Do you have any family nearby?” he called.

She pulled out her phone, hit a key and held it to her ear.

Johnny so wanted whatever aunt or grandparent she was calling to answer, but she just went on standing with the phone to her ear, her face streaked with tears, her long brown hair frizzy and tangled.

Finally, she let her hand drop. “No answer.”

“Fill up your bathtub,” someone called.

Johnny turned. Mrs. Mackery from next door was on her lawn in a bathrobe. It was a man’s bathrobe, probably her late husband’s.

“The radio said the power’s bound to go out, so to fill your bathtub,” Mrs. Mackery repeated.

Headlights appeared down the street, accompanied by a rumbling. An open-bed military truck came around the corner, soldiers in yellow hazmat suits riding in the back. Kelly ran to the edge of her lawn, waving frantically, both hands over her head, screaming at the top of her lungs for them to stop.

They blew right past. They barely looked at her.

Behind him, Johnny’s screen door squealed open. He turned to find his dad, dressed in jeans and one of his old blue Goodyear work shirts, heading down the sidewalk carrying a brown bagged lunch. “I told you once already,” he muttered. “I’m not gonna argue about it.”

“Dad. Hang on.” He jogged up the lawn, got his father turned around and led him back inside.

A few doors down a minivan was backing out of the Rosso’s driveway.

“Look,” Johnny called to Kelly and Mrs. Mackerey from his door, “I’m here if there’s anything I can do to help.” He looked at Kelly. “I’m sorry, though, I’m not going back in that house. I don’t think you should, either.”

Johnny closed and locked the door.

He passed Dad, who was peering out the back door, into the yard, his bottom lip working soundlessly. He’d stare out at the aluminum shed and the discarded tires for an hour if Johnny let him.

As if the solution to all his problems, the answer to the secrets of the universe, could be found in there, if only he looked hard enough.

Sometimes Johnny was sure his dad was looking into the overgrown weeds beyond the shed, trying to locate the stone that marked Buster’s grave. When Buster no longer had the strength to stagger out into the yard to relieve himself, when he just lay curled up on the carpet whining, they’d taken him to the vet and had him put down.

• • • •

By sunup there were twice as many dots on the CNN map. No one was allowed out of the infected areas.

“I’m sick of the news,” Dad said, still in his Goodyear work clothes, the pants on backwards. Johnny wondered if he was going to have to start dressing his father. The thought made him a little sick.

“Put on something good,” Dad persisted. “I want to watch

The Rockford Files

.”

Jesus, Johnny had only the vaguest memory of

The Rockford Files

. He must have been five when it went off the air. He turned off the TV. “Come on Dad, we have to go to the grocery store.” They needed more food; there was almost nothing in the house.

As soon as he hit the driveway, Kelly Cramer was out of her house, running toward them. “Can I come with you?”

Johnny motioned toward the Cramer’s driveway. “You have a car.” It came out harsher than he’d intended.

“I’m scared.”

Scared of what

, he wanted to ask. This was Ravine, not Philadelphia. There weren’t going to be looters and gangs running wild among the six or seven stores that made up what passed for a downtown.

Kelly stopped a few paces short of them, folded her arms. “If you were going to get it, you’d probably have it already. It takes seven days for the symptoms to show up, so all the people getting sick now were exposed a week ago.”

Johnny pictured the drive-in’s few customers handing him money. Christ, Arnie Marino was a mail-sorter; if he’d gotten it, he’d spread it to all the mail.

Kelly was waiting, her eyes pleading with him.

Christ, when had he become such a dick? He’d known Kelly since she was a baby, and he was, what, sixteen? He’d seen her at a hundred neighborhood barbecues, almost hit her backing out of his driveway about twenty times. They’d never been anything like friends, probably because of the age difference. She’d been kind of a rebel back in high school—shaved head, shredded jeans, cigarettes. There was no sign of that side of her now—she was wearing cut-off denim shorts over purple leggings, her hair in a ponytail.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, get in.”

• • • •

Johnny cruised past Burger King just to make absolutely sure it was closed. He was scheduled to work the eleven to seven shift, but it was completely dark inside, as he’d suspected. He drove on down Route 60, which doubled as Main Street in Ravine. There was no mystery about how the town had gotten its name: it was set in a long, thin sliver of flat land, hugged on both sides by steep hills. If you were in Ravine, you could see both hills pretty much wherever you were.

People on the streets were hurrying along, heads down, many clutching handkerchiefs or hand towels to their faces.

“How are your folks?” Johnny asked. He knew how they were, but he didn’t want Kelly to think he didn’t care. He glanced over at her: she was fighting back tears.

“They’re good people,” Johnny said. “Your dad used to take me along to Penguins games up in Wilkes-Barre when I was in high school. You remember that?”

“If you were in high school, I was like, minus two years old.” She wiped under her eyes with her knuckle.

“Oh, right. Duh.” Sometimes he forgot he was almost forty-two years old. It just didn’t seem possible.

He spotted the military vehicle that had passed them, parked in the parking lot of the firehouse, beside a big silver delivery truck.

Johnny pulled in. “Here we go. We can find out what’s going on.”

People in hazmat suits were carrying sacks and boxes to idling cars. Johnny watched as a hazmatted soldier dropped a sack and a small box in the back of an F-150 pickup. The truck took off.

Johnny popped his trunk, waited for someone to carry supplies over. He rolled down his window. “How long is the quarantine gonna last?”

The soldier came around to the window. He was a young guy, Asian. “Two weeks, at least.”

Johnny jerked his thumb toward Kelly. “Her folks are sick. What is she supposed to do?”

“Feed them and keep them hydrated.”

“And what if she gets sick, and I get sick? Who keeps

us

fed and hydrated?”

The solider looked left and right, like he was looking for help. “Look, I’m just handing out supplies. I don’t have the answers. Listen to the radio.”

How

could

they do it, Johnny wondered? Go house to house, carry out the infected and take them…where? To big tents? CNN said twenty-eight thousand people had gotten sick in Wilkes-Barre in two days. Those tents would need to be awfully big.