Текст книги "The End Is Nigh"

Автор книги: Jack McDevitt

Соавторы: Nancy Kress
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“There aren’t enough hazmat suits, are there?” he asked the soldier. “Not enough doctors and nurses.”

Johnny could barely hear the soldier’s words through the faceplate: “There’s nothing doctors can do for them.”

• • • •

Johnny spotted movement out the picture window: Kelly, wearing one of the white surgical masks from the survival kit they’d been given. He watched as she went three doors down, to the Baer’s house, and knocked. When no one answered, she let herself in.

Ten minutes later she came out and went to the next house down. The Pointers lived there: old lady Pointer, always digging in her flower garden out front; her son Archie, who worked at the body shop; and Archie’s kids, Mackenzie and Parker.

What the hell was Kelly doing? She wasn’t the type to be ripping off her neighbors while they were in there dying. Whatever it was, she was all but guaranteeing she would catch the virus.

Cursing under his breath, Johnny pulled on his Steelers windbreaker and headed out. “I’ll be right back, Pop.”

“We gotta leave by three, don’t forget.”

Clutching the doorknob, Johnny opened his mouth to tell his father that people were dying, that no one was going to the frickin’ movies. He didn’t, though.

“I won’t, Dad.” He closed the door and headed toward the Pointer’s house.

For once, Johnny wanted to go to the drive-in. Not just to escape the nightmare unfolding in his town for a few hours, but because it was the only place his dad seemed like himself. It was the only thing keeping his dad going.

The Pointers’ front door was ajar. Johnny knocked, called, “Hello?”

“In here.”

Hands in his pockets, feeling like he was surrounded by the virus, Johnny followed her voice down a hallway covered in water fowl-patterned wallpaper, into the Pointer’s living room.

The four of them were sitting on couches and stuffed chairs, hands in their laps, all perfectly still except for Parker, whose lips were wrapped around a straw, sucking greedily from a water bottle Kelly was holding, his throat pulsing as he swallowed. The TV was on, showing some Pixar flick. Wet stains bloomed on the couch cushions beneath each of the Pointers. The smell of piss was overpowering.

“Jesus, what are you doing?” Johnny asked.

Kelly held out a mask. Johnny took it, pulled it over his mouth and nose. It was one of those little plastic jobs you wore when you mowed the lawn, probably not worth shit against a virus that the news described as incredibly resistant, able to survive on surfaces for days.

“What are you doing?” Johnny repeated. “The more houses you go into, the more likely you are to catch this thing.”

She shrugged. “My folks have it. I know I’ve been exposed.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know that for sure.” Johnny did not want her words to be true, for his sake as well as hers. “You’re dancing with death, coming in here.”

Kelly chuckled. “Dancing with death. That’s poetic.”

Actually, it was a line from one of his band’s songs, but after saying it out loud he was too embarrassed to admit he’d just quoted his own band’s lyrics.

Kelly wiped Parker’s chin with a kitchen towel she had hooked through her belt. “I kept thinking about Mackenzie and Parker. I babysit them sometimes. I kept picturing them in their rooms, all alone, scared to death. Not able to move. Hungry. So I came to check on them. Parker was just like I pictured him—all alone in his room. Probably since yesterday.”

“You

touched

him? Jesus.”

Kelly put her hands on her hips. “He can

hear

you, you know. So can his mom and dad.”

“Sorry,” Johnny muttered. They were looking at him; all four of them.

Kelly squatted in front of Lara Pointer, guided the straw into her mouth. Immediately, Lara began pulling on the straw, her mouth suddenly animated, looking completely normal. The news had described how the virus keeps people from

initiating

movement, but not from reacting; seeing it, however, was another thing completely. If she could drink, why couldn’t she talk?

When she’d finished, Kelly went to the Pointer’s sink and refilled the big plastic water bottle before heading for the door. Johnny followed her out, closing the door behind him.

Instead of turning right, back toward her house, Kelly headed left across the lawn.

“Where are you going now?” Johnny called after her.

“When’s the last time you saw the Cucuzzas?”

“What are you gonna do, go door to door?”

She stopped, turned to face him. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You’re out of your mind. It’s like you want to die—”

She held up both hands to ward off his words and shouted, “They’re all alone. They’re scared. Can’t you see it in their eyes?”

He stood on the Pointer’s front stoop, not wanting to think about their eyes.

“Can’t you?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah. I can see it.” He would see it for the rest of his life. And, God, he didn’t want to go through it. Johnny looked at his watch. “Look, I have to take my father to his drive-in, or he’ll try to drive himself. Will you be okay?”

“No,” she said, like it was the dumbest question she’d ever been asked. “Will you?”

“No,” he admitted. “I guess not.”

A pickup cruised by. They both watched it in silence. There were fewer vehicles passing every hour.

“They’re saying three percent of people seem to be immune to the virus. Did you hear that?” Kelly said.

“I don’t love those odds.”

“No, they suck bad.”

It was a chance, though. There was hope.

“Neither of us has it yet, and lots of other people do. Maybe that means something,” he said.

Kelly nodded. “Maybe it does.”

Johnny had a sudden urge to give Kelly a hug, but he was afraid it would be awkward, or Kelly would think he was weird. “I’ll check on you in the morning,” he said. “That okay?”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

• • • •

Back at the drive-in, Johnny was terrified he was going to start nodding at any minute. He was actually glad to have something to do to take his mind off it, even if it was filling popcorn boxes for no one.

He wondered what it felt like, to be trapped in your frozen body. Were you numb?

If he was going to die, he wanted to feel a terrible pain in his chest and be dead before he hit the ground. He didn’t want to have days and days where he knew he was dying. That was when you took stock, when you had nothing to do but think about your past, and he didn’t want to think about what a waste his life had been to this point.

He’d always thought he was just slow getting started, that he’d leave Ravine and Burger King for bigger things. His first plan had been to hit it big with the band, then it was opening his bar and grill. His savings, the house, a little inheritance money was the kickstart he’d been counting on for the past decade or so, except,

surprise

: his Dad had his own dreams, even at seventy-one and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Dad was staring out at the big white screen through the window, his hands in his back pockets, smiling.

“You’ll see,” he said. “Wait and see.”

No one showed up. Not one car. Johnny would have choked on his Coke if a vehicle had pulled through that gate with this hell-virus crawling through their town. The marquee said they were showing

Green Lantern

tonight, but Johnny went back to the claustrophobic little office next to the restroom and pulled the reels for

Ghostbusters

out of a pile of old films his dad had bought on Ebay a month before they opened. He didn’t think he could sit through

GL

again, but a comedy, especially an old, actually funny comedy, fit the bill.

Johnny sat in his Mustang while Pop manned the snack bar.

• • • •

At 7 a.m., Johnny spotted Kelly loading containers of water into her trunk. He set his coffee mug on the kitchen counter and slipped on his sneakers. He’d promised to check on her, after all.

“I should start calling you Florence Nightengale.”

Kelly smiled, but it was the smile of a Burger King cashier toward the end of a shift. She looked exhausted; there was a sheen of sweat on her face, as if she hadn’t washed up in a while.

“You were studying to be a nurse, weren’t you?”

“For a little while.”

“Why’d you stop?”

She shrugged. “Because I was too stupid. Couldn’t pass the biology courses.”

Johnny cringed, wishing he hadn’t brought it up. He wasn’t sure what to say. “Shit, that sucks. You seem like a natural.”

Again, she attempted a smile. “Thanks.”

“You’re really going door to door?”

Kelly pushed her hair out of her face. “If you get it and I don’t, you’ll be happy to see me and my water bottle.”

Johnny raised his hands. “I’m not criticizing. I’m just worried about you.”

That made her smile. “It’s nice to know someone is.”

He watched, arms folded, as she slid into her dad’s SUV.

Maybe he should be going with her. If he made it through this, for the rest of his life people would ask what it was like, what he’d done. It would be nice to be able to say he worked tirelessly to help people, that he hauled water and fed his friends and neighbors, and even strangers. And if he didn’t make it through this, maybe God would look more favorably on a man who wasn’t there for his kids if that man had died helping other people’s kids.

Kelly was putting the SUV in drive. Johnny raised his hand, jogged down the driveway. “Hang on.” She braked, rolled down the window, her eyebrows raised. He ran around and hopped in the other side. “Let’s go.”

Kelly smiled brightly. “When this is over, I swear, I’m gonna buy you a steak dinner.”

• • • •

As soon as Johnny set the spoon of farina—or whatever this gruel was the soldier had given them—on the kid’s tongue, his mouth closed around it. Johnny drew the spoon out as the kid chewed and swallowed. He didn’t know the boy, who was about ten, the same age as his son Danny.

Johnny tried to ignore the stale urine smell, the wet crotch of the kid’s pants. It would take too long to change all these people; they had to focus on keeping them alive. Johnny was both relieved and sorry for that.

The boy watched him, watched Johnny’s face instead of the spoon, and Johnny couldn’t help thinking the kid was as desperate to have someone look at him, to have someone notice him, as he was for the food.

“I know. It breaks your heart,” Kelly said.

Johnny glanced at her, not sure what she was talking about. A tear plopped onto his forearm, and he realized he was crying, and when he realized it, it was like something inside him burst open, and he was sobbing.

Kelly gave him a hug, patted his back. It felt good—safe, warm—to be in her arms. “I cried all day yesterday. Eventually you run out of tears, and all you’ve got is a big lump in your throat.”

The lights went out; the picture on the TV contracted to a dot and vanished.

“Shit,” Kelly said.

Something in the boy’s eyes told Johnny the TV had been a huge comfort to him, that he’d be so much more terrified with nothing for company but his frozen family.

• • • •

“Come on in,” Kelly called when Johnny knocked. As he climbed the stairs he heard her speaking softly.

“I’ll check on you at lunchtime. Try not to worry; everything’s going to be okay. Help is coming.”

He paused as he passed Kelly’s room. She had a billion CDs, a big Union Jack for a bedspread, a Black Sabbath poster on the wall, and a long shelf up near the ceiling crammed with hundreds of Beanie Babies.

Johnny nearly shrieked when he found Kelly’s parents standing in the middle of their bedroom.

“Jeeze,” he breathed.

Kelly, in a Luzurne County Community College t-shirt and jeans, was brushing her mother’s hair. “I figure they’ll feel better if I stand them up once in a while, exercise their muscles a little. Can you help me?”

Johnny hurried over to help ease Kelly’s mother back into a chair.

“I didn’t realize they could stand,” he said. They stayed in pretty much any position you placed them in, but he’d figured standing would take too much coordination.

“They can. You ready to go?”

Johnny followed her out, steeling himself for another day of playing Florence Nightengale’s sidekick.

They started with the first house on the left on Princess Lane. When they knocked, an upstairs window creaked open.

“What do you want?” it was a woman, Johnny’s age or a little older.

“We’re checking for people who need help,” Kelly said. “Anyone around here that you know of?”

“I haven’t gone out.” They turned to go. “If you were smart, you’d stay in your house, too.”

“Somebody’s got to help these people,” Johnny shot back, self-righteous anger rising in him. As they headed back to the van it occurred to him that two days earlier he’d been that woman. If he hadn’t seen Kelly loading water into her van, he’d still be that woman.

Watching Kelly walk beside him out of the corner of his eye, Johnny wondered what it was about her that made her different from all the people hiding in their houses, worrying only about themselves. It was like discovering there’d been a saint living across the street from him all these years, a saint with a shaved head, smoking a cigarette.

“So what happened to the shaved head and the combat boots?” he asked as they slammed their doors closed with a double

thunk

.

Kelly studied his face. “You thought I was a joke, is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” he laughed. “I thought it was great. There’s not enough shock and awe in Ravine.” He tapped her knee. “Come on, I’m in a band. Or I was, until all the other guys moved away. I live for rebellion.”

“You live for rebellion because you played covers of Tom Petty and Korn at the fire station’s social club?”

“Hey! We played in bars in Wilkes-Barre and Binghamton. And we played a lot of our own stuff.”

Johnny pulled up to a house that looked too quiet. He opened his door, then noticed Kelly was staying in her seat.

“What?”

“Remember when you asked why I left nursing school? I didn’t flunk out. I chickened out.” She propped a foot on the dash. “I got homesick and came running home to my old room and my Beanie Baby collection.”

Johnny nodded. He was afraid anything he said would trivialize what she was telling him.

Kelly tilted her head back, looked up at the SUV’s ceiling, her brown hair sliding down her shoulders. “I always hated this town. It’s not even a town, it’s just a few houses and lame stores strung out in an ass crack. I was always talking about how I was going to get out of here as soon as I could. And I did, but then I came right back with my tail between my legs.”

Johnny shook his head. “I never even tried to leave. When I was in the Ravine Raiders, we always talked about how we were going to hit it big. We drank beer, were rock stars in our own minds, then we got married, had kids, and I found myself at Burger King. This town has a way of sucking you in and hanging on to you.”

It was strange: this suddenly felt like a date that was going better than any of Johnny’s actual dates ever did. Maybe it was their fear, stripping away all the pretense, but Johnny didn’t think that was all of it.

He put his hand on his head. “Wait, what does this have to do with you letting your hair grow out?”

Kelly smiled. “When I moved back home, I imagined having a kid one day, and that kid seeing a picture of me and saying, ‘Mom, you were one of those edgy rebellious kids when you were my age?’ And I would have had to answer, ‘No, I just dressed like one’.”

• • • •

The army vehicle was gone. So was the delivery truck full of grain, and the tanker truck of water.

Kelly called the national emergency information number. The woman on the other end told Kelly they were spread too thin, that the Interstates had been shut down to slow the virus. She told Kelly to use a lake or pond, and boil the water before drinking it. Kelly suggested the woman boil her ass, then disconnected, and completely lost it. She pressed her hands over her ears and wailed, her face bright red.

Johnny held her and patted her back, shushing. He told her they’d be okay, and other comforting things he didn’t believe.

“What do they expect us to do with all of these people, without food, without doctors?” Kelly asked, drawing back into her seat.

“I think they expect us to let them die.” Johnny watched as another vehicle slowed in front of the empty parking lot, then drove off. “That’s why the soldiers left. It’s spread too far; we can’t take care of this many people, so they want them to die.” Johnny rubbed his eyes. He was so tired they were burning all around the edges. His head had this dull achy feeling that wasn’t quite pain, but was still unpleasant. Another couple of hours and he’d take his father to the drive-in. It was

Stripes

tonight. With each day that passed, Dad was more out of it. Most of the time Johnny felt like he was alone at the drive-in.

“Why don’t you come out to the drive-in tonight? You need to rest or you’re going to—” he was going to say

get sick

, but he bit back the words.

“How are you even showing movies, with the power out?” Kelly asked, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“The place came with an old generator. Power outages are a great time to sell tickets, because no one has anything else to do.”

Kelly laughed dryly. “Assuming people can move.”

“Right.” If they could move, Johnny would invite everyone to come out and watch

Stripes

for free, and for one night his Dad would think his goddamned drive-in was a success.

He sat up ramrod straight in his seat. “Wait. I just got an idea.”

• • • •

A plume of dust followed the Ford Taurus as Johnny cruised along the drive-in’s back aisle, to the very last spot. He swung the Taurus into the spot, the front rising on the hump until the screen was framed inside the windshield. He turned off the engine, then twisted to look at the car’s four passengers. It was an older couple, in their seventies, and two kids, two girls. Grandparents raising their grandchildren, maybe. Or maybe the girls had just been visiting. It smelled bad in the car—really bad—but Johnny smiled and tried to ignore it. “I’ll be back with food and Cokes later. As soon as the sun goes down we’ll start the first show.” He looked at his watch. “That’s about an hour from now. I hope you enjoy the movies.”

Kelly was waiting in the aisle. “That’s it.” She pressed her fists into the small of her back. “God, my back is killing me.”

How many people had they carried to their cars? Too many to count. On the tail end of three endless days of feeding people, Johnny was so exhausted he’d traveled beyond tired, into a manic, hungover netherworld.

There was just one last trip to make.

• • • •

“

Holy shit

,” Johnny’s dad shouted when they pulled into the drive-in. “Holy, holy shit.

It’s packed

!” He looked at Johnny, and for the first time in days Johnny was sure his dad knew who he was. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you? It’s catching on.”

“You told me, Pop.” He caught Kelly’s eye in the rear view mirror, and they exchanged a smile. “I didn’t believe you, but you were right.” Johnny pulled up in front of the snack bar. He felt like laughing and crying at the same time. “Kelly and I are going to run concession orders right to the cars. People don’t want to get out, on account of the virus going around.”

“Oh, okay,” Dad said. “Smart idea.”

Johnny led him into the snack bar, where they had a hundred boxes of popcorn lined up and ready to go, dozens of hot dogs turning on spits in the warmer. His dad’s steps were so tiny, so tentative. When had he lost that broad, assured stride Johnny had known since he was a kid?

They kicked things off with

E.T

. Kelly started feeding people in the front row, Johnny in the back, figuring they’d meet in the middle.

They hadn’t had the time or space to bring all of the afflicted to the drive-in. Ninety percent of the town had it now. But they’d done what they could.

Heading back to the snack bar for another armload, he passed Kelly. She looked exhausted, but there was a fire in her eyes as she smiled at him.

“Can I ask you something?” Johnny said.

Kelly paused, swept her hair out of her eyes.

“If things ever get back to normal—” he paused, realizing how inappropriate his words sounded as they stood surrounded by people suffering from a horrible disease.

But Kelly smiled. “If things ever get back to normal, yes.” She headed off toward the cars.

Johnny turned, imagining the two of them sitting together at the Outback Steakhouse in Pine Grove, and for a moment he felt light, and hopeful.

As Dad filled him up with a tray of Cokes, popcorn, Snickers and Milky Way bars, ice cream and hot dogs, Johnny could see the confusion was back, but Dad was smiling, and whistling.

A little before three a.m., Johnny’s dad dozed off on his stool behind the snack bar. Johnny loaded him in the Mustang and took him home, then turned right around and headed back to the drive-in. They showed movies until the sun came up, then left all those poor people sitting in their cars and went home to get a few hours’ sleep.

• • • •

“

Holy shit. This is unbelievable

,” Johnny’s dad cried.

If his mind had been clearer, he might have noticed they were the same vehicles, in the same spots as the previous three nights. “

Another

full house!” He patted Johnny’s thigh.

Kelly was already there, stirring huge pots of “kitchen-sink soup” over open fires, a waist-high pile of discarded soup and vegetable cans behind her. It had taken them six hours to gather the cans from people’s cupboards, another to open them all.

An hour into the night’s feeding and watering, Johnny and Kelly paused in the second aisle, out of his dad’s earshot.

“What are we going to do tomorrow?” Johnny asked. Most of the fresh food in town had turned. The nearest grocery store was outside the quarantine.

“Did you try the Red Cross?” Kelly said.

“Yeah. They aren’t allowed into the quarantined areas.” Calls to the authorities had resulted in awkward explanations about limited emergency response resources, and shock and consternation when Johnny explained how many victims they were trying to keep alive. He’d been right: the plan was to let most of the victims to die off.

“I guess it’s whatever we have left, then.”

Johnny didn’t ask what they’d do after that. According to the radio, the virus was still spreading. There were infected zones from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. It didn’t look like the quarantine would be lifted any time soon.

On the drive home, Johnny’s dad wet his pants. He didn’t seem to notice; he just went on muttering something about a cold can of Pabst and a mad, mad world. There’d been a movie called

It’s a Mad, Mad World

. Johnny had seen it when he was a kid. Maybe his dad was watching it in his head.

• • • •

“Dad,

look

–another sellout crowd.” Johnny tapped Dad on the shoulder.

“What?” Dad looked around as if waking from a dream. “A what? Oh. Right.” He laughed. “That’s good. What are we showing?”

“

Spaceballs

.”

“Oh yeah? Is it any good?”

“It’s hilarious,” Kelly said from the back seat. Her nose was plugged from crying, but she kept her tone bright.

There was nothing for his dad to do—not a crust of frozen pizza left in the snack bar. They sat him in a lawn chair in the front row. It was a perfect drive-in night: just a nip of crisp fall in the air, the leaves on the trees beyond the screen whispering on a light breeze.

As soon as the movie started playing, Johnny and Kelly hoisted the big roll of plastic pool vacuum hose out of his trunk, set it on one of the picnic tables under the eave outside the snack bar. Johnny measured out six or seven feet of hose, cut it with a hack saw, repeated the process until they had several dozen lengths of hose.

They both carried several cut hoses and a roll of masking tape, heading toward the back row, arm in arm and crying. They would have to start in the back and work their way forward. They didn’t want people to see what they were doing.

He set the hose on the trunk of the first car in the row, went to the driver’s side door. Wiping his eyes, Johnny took a few big, huffing breaths, then forced a big smile and ducked into the car.

“How are you folks doing? Enjoying the movie?” One of the people in the back was Mr. Liebert, who’d taught him algebra in the tenth grade, all those years ago. Johnny reached over, turned on the ignition. “I’m gonna turn on the heat so you stay warm. It’s supposed to be a cold night. Cokes and popcorn are on the way in a few.” Using the buttons on the door, he lowered the back, driver’s side window a few inches. Feeling that he was about to lose it, he ducked out of the car.

Choking back sobs, he pulled the hose off the trunk, pushed one end over the car’s exhaust pipe and taped it into place. He slid the other end through the crack in the back window, and moved on.

Kelly was crumpled over the back of the next car, her face in her hands, her shoulders bobbing. She’d already set the hose in place. When Johnny put a hand on her back, she spun, hugged him with all of her might.

“This is the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Not the easy thing, but the right thing,” Johnny said. “Isn’t it what you’d want?”

Kelly nodded, eased out of his embrace. “It is.”

Johnny opened the door on the SUV next in line, smiled big, knowing his eyes were red, his face tearstained. “Hi folks. Let me turn on the heat for you; it’s going to be a chilly night.”

They sat on the picnic table and let the cars in the back row idle for half an hour, then moved on to the next row. Johnny’s first love, Carla Meyer, was in a Honda Civic in that row, with Chris Walsh, the man she’d married, and their teenage daughter.

It got easier by the third row. Not easy, but Johnny didn’t feel quite so much like he was carrying an anvil on his shoulders while someone punched him in the stomach.

They took a water break at the picnic table as the vehicles in the fourth row idled. Two more to go.

“Could we go to jail for this?” Kelly asked.

“I dare them to try. There should be doctors and nurses here with IV bags and truckloads of food.”

Kelly nodded.

The bodies would be in his drive-in. When the authorities investigated—and Johnny guessed when the dust settled they probably would—he would leave Kelly’s name out of it.

“If I have any say in it, they’ll build a statue of you in front of Town Hall,” he went on. “What you’ve done over the past week…” Johnny shook his head. “Mother Teresa couldn’t have done more. You’re a remarkable person, Kelly. I can’t tell you how much I admire you, how much you’ve changed me.”

Kelly went on nodding.

“Kelly, cut that out. You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

“Cut what—” And then she realized what she was doing, and Johnny could see her try to stop as her eyes flew wide and she went on nodding. She held up her hands and looked at them. They were trembling like an electrical charge was running through her. “Oh, God. No, no, no, no.”

But her head kept nodding,

yes

.

Between ragged, terrified breaths, she said, “Don’t you dare chicken out, Johnny. Don’t you dare.”

• • • •

Crying silently, Johnny carried Kelly to her parents’ Avalon and set her in the driver’s seat. He ducked so he could see Leon and Patty, sitting in the back. “I’m so sorry. I thought she was going to beat it. I truly did.” He wiped his eyes before adding, “I’m going turn on the heat; it’s getting cold outside.”

When he’d leaned in to turn on the ignition, Kelly beat him to it, lifting her quavering hand and, on the third try, started the car. A tear was working its way down her quivering cheek as her head went on nodding, nodding.

Holding her head as still as possible, he kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. If he was going to get it, he already had it. “I love you,” he whispered.

He taped a hose to the Avalon’s exhaust. Just as he realized he’d forgotten to crack the back window, it rolled down three inches. Johnny slid the hose through the crack and turned away.

His dad had fallen asleep in his chair.

“Come on, Pop.” Johnny helped him to his feet.

“Huh? William? Let me have a carton of them Pall Malls.”

He led his dad into the snack bar. They sat on stools behind the bar while the cars in the front row idled. On the big screen, Lone Starr was battling Dark Helmet in the climactic scene of

Spaceballs

.

Johnny figured either he was going to start nodding soon, since he and Kelly had been in all those houses at the same time, or he was one of the three percent. Maybe he and his dad were both part of the three percent. Good genes.

If he did start nodding, he thought he’d just go on sitting there in the snack bar, looking out at what he and Kelly had accomplished. He felt proud of what they’d done. Maybe others would think differently when they found all the bodies, but they hadn’t been here. They hadn’t lived through it. He watched as plumes of exhaust drifted up from the front row.

“Another sellout,” Dad chuckled. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel,

Soft Apocalypse

, was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. His latest novel is

Defenders

(May, 2014; Orbit Books), an alien apocalypse novel with a twist. It has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. Along with four novels, he has published dozens of short stories in venues such as

Lightspeed

,

Asimov’s

(where he won the 2010 Reader’s Award), and

The Year’s Best

Science Fiction & Fantasy

. Will was a psychology professor for two decades before turning to writing full-time. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife and their five year-old twins.

Megan Arkenberg – HOUSES WITHOUT AIR

The First Match

Six weeks before the end of the world, a new bar opens on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. The proprietors are a middle-aged West Coast couple, evacuees from Seattle or Portland, Beth can’t remember which. The bar is on the first floor of the building where Beth’s favorite bookstore used to be, but the familiar smells are gone—dust, vegetable glue, and old, acidic paper, all drawn out by the pair of sleek Blueair filters that add their silvery humming to the murmur of the television and the small Wednesday night crowd.

The hanging colored-glass lamps have disappeared, too, replaced by fluorescents; the light from the tall street-facing windows is unreliable now, dirty, gritty and dry. At least the restroom graffiti is unchanged. The back door of the middle stall in the women’s room still says “No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,” an obscure scrap of Whitman in dark purple Sharpie.