Year One

by Nora Roberts

  At the sound of the voice—male with a twang of an accent—the dog raced back, raced around the man who stepped out from behind the scrubby brush at the edge of the lot.

  “Hands are up, dude. Way up. Just a couple fellow travelers here. No harm. Don’t hurt the pup, okay? Seriously, man, don’t plug the pooch.”

  “Why are you hiding back there?”

  “I heard the car, okay? Wanted to check it out. Last time I wanted to check it out when I heard a car, asshole tried to run us over. I barely grabbed up Joe and got us clear.”

  “Is that what happened to your face?”

  His narrow face showed some yellowing bruising under his left eye, some still purple around the scruffy beard dangling off his jaw.

  “Nah. A couple weeks ago I hooked up with this group. Seemed okay. We’re camping out, got some brews. Second night, they beat the crap out of me and stole my stash. I had some prime stuff, man, and I shared. But they wanted it all. Left me there, took my pack, my water, the works. After they took off, that’s when Joe here came up. So we hooked up. No way he’s going to kick the shit out of me. Look, just don’t hurt him.”

  “No one’s going to hurt him.” Lana crouched down, and Joe flew to her, covering her face with kisses. “No one’s going to hurt Joe. You’re so sweet!”

  “He’s a good dog, that Joe. Can’t be more’n three months, I figure. Some Lab in him. Can’t say what else. Could ya not point the gun at me? I really don’t like guns. They kill people, whatever the NRA says. Used to say.”

  “Take off your pack,” Max ordered. “Empty it out. And your coat, turn out your pockets.”

  “Oh, man, I just restocked.”

  “We’re not going to take anything. But I’m going to make damn sure you don’t have a gun of your own.”

  “Oh. No problem! I got a knife.” Hands still up, he pointed at the sheath on his belt. “You need one when you’re hiking and camping rough. I had a tent, those bastards took it. I gotta put my hands down to take off the pack, okay?”

  At Max’s nod, he shrugged off the pack, unzipped it, pulled out a space blanket, a pair of socks, a hoodie, a harmonica, a small bag of dog food, a couple of cans, some snack food, water, two paperback books.

  “I’m hoping to find me another bedroll, maybe a truck—four-wheel drive. I haven’t found anything I could get started. Snow’s coming in. I’m Eddie,” he said as he kept pulling things out. “Eddie Clawson. That’s what I got,” he added. “Can I put my coat back on? It’s freaking cold out here.”

  He was thin as a rail—a long, bony man, no more, Lana thought, than twenty-two or -three. His hair, dirty blond, trailed down in tangled, half-assed dreds from an orange ski cap.

  Every instinct in her told her he was as harmless as his dog.

  “Put your coat back on, Eddie. I’m Lana. This is Max.” She started to walk toward him.

  “Lana.”

  “We have to trust someone, sometime.” She stooped over to help him pick up his supplies. “Where are you going, Eddie?”

  “No clue. Had a compass. They took that, too. I guess I’m just looking for people, you know? Who aren’t dead or trying to kill me, who won’t beat the shit out of me for a bag of weed. How about you?”

  He looked up when Max stepped over to study him up close.

  “Dude, you’ve got fifty pounds on me easy—and it looks like muscle. And you got a gun. I ain’t going to try anything. I just want to get somewhere nice. Where people aren’t crazy. Where are you heading?”

  “Into Pennsylvania,” Max told him.

  “Maybe you’ve got room for two more. I could help you get there.”

  “How?”

  “Well, to start.” Eddie hauled up his pack, jaw-pointed at the car. “That’s a nice ride and all, but it ain’t four-wheel drive and snow’s coming. Main roads are mostly blocked, and the side roads, a lot of ’em haven’t been plowed since the last snow. I bet there’re some chains inside the gas station.”

  “Chains?” Lana said, baffled. Eddie grinned.

  “City, aren’t you? Snow chains. You might need ’em on the way. And a couple shovels wouldn’t hurt. Sand if we can find it. Or a couple buckets of this gravel maybe. I’m handy,” he told them. “And I’m gonna be straight. I don’t want to travel alone. It’s getting weirder than shit. The more people traveling together the better, I figure.”

  Max looked at Lana, got a smile. “Let’s see if we can find some chains.”

  “Yeah?” Eddie lit up. “Cool.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Eddie found chains, some tools—whoever had abandoned the gas station had left behind a well-stocked toolbox.

  Then he dug out a three-gallon gas can, filled it.

  “Don’t generally like carrying gas in the trunk,” he said as he stowed it there. “But, you know, circumstances. Say, okay if me and Joe go relieve ourselves before we hit the road?”

  “Go ahead,” Max told him.

  “He’s all right, Max. I just don’t sense any harm in him.”

  “I’ve got the same sense. We’re both still getting used to having more than we did. And for now, at least, we’re going to have to deal with strangers. But he fell in with a group of strangers, and I think he’s telling the truth about them turning on him, beating him, leaving him for what he had on him. We’re going to need to hone what we have, hone that sense we’ve started to develop. Because he won’t be the only one we come across.”

  “You’re worried about Eric, because you don’t know who he’s with.”

  “He’ll be with us soon. Get in the car, it’s cold. And I want to start it before he gets back. No point showing him, showing anyone, right now, what we have.”

  They got in. Max watched in the rearview, held his hand over the ignition to start it when he saw Eddie and the dog trotting back.

  “Jump in, Joe.” Eddie slid in after the dog. “Gonna say thanks again. It’s going to feel good making some miles sitting down instead of on my feet.”

  As Max pulled out of the lot, Lana swiveled around to look at Eddie. “How far have you come?”

  “Don’t know exactly. I was up in the Catskills. Friend of mine got an off-season caretaker job at this half-assed resort up there. Like something out of the movie—you know the Dirty Dancing movie with the cabins and all that?”

  “‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner.’”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. This place wasn’t as nice as in the movie. Kinda run-down, you know? But I went up to help him out—we were doing some repairs, too.

  “We didn’t watch much TV, and the Internet was pretty much jackshit, but then we heard about people getting sick when we went into the town nearby one night to toss back some beer.”

  Joe stretched out over his lap, and Eddie stroked and petted with his long, bony fingers.

  “I guess that was about three weeks ago—lost track. I called home—had to go into town for that, too—the next day because I couldn’t get through that night. Cell reception was buggy back at the resort, and the owners shut down the landline phones in the winter. Cheap bastards. Anyway, I couldn’t reach my ma, and got more worried. Then I got ahold of my sister. She said how Ma was real sick in the hospital, and Jesus, I could hear Sarri was sick, too.”

  He kept stroking the dog, but turned to stare out the side window. “I went back, to pack up, tell Bud—my friend—and I could see he wasn’t feeling good. This bad cough. But we packed up, started out before nightfall—left his truck there because he wasn’t feeling up to driving by then. He got sicker, sick enough I detoured off to find a hospital.”

  He shifted back to look at Lana. “It was crazy, man, just nuts. This little Podunk town, and everybody’s trying to get out any way they can. I could see, like, boarded-up houses and shops—and some busted into—but they had a hospital, and I got Bud to it.”

  He took a slow breath. “I couldn’t just leave him that way, but my ma and Sarri … I couldn’t reach either of them when I tried from that place. Cal
led half a dozen people before I got one to answer. My second cousin Mason. He said—God, he sounded bad, too. He said my ma and his both were gone, and Sarri was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. He couldn’t get out, he said not to come home, it was bad there. Nothing I could do. No point trying to call my old man. He took off not long after Sarri was born, and I wouldn’t know where to … Anyway. Bud didn’t make it. Sarri or Mason, either.”

  “I’m sorry, Eddie.”

  After swiping at his damp eyes, he went back to stroking Joe. “I just started driving, wasn’t thinking straight. Then I got to this place in the road, all blocked with cars so I couldn’t get through. Turned the truck around, headed another way. I just kept hitting roads that were blocked up, then the truck broke down on me. Better than two weeks, I guess, I’ve been on foot. Learned to stay clear of your bigger towns—bad shit happening, man, serious shit. Back roads are better. I think about heading home—that’d be a little spot called Fiddler’s Creek, outside of Louisville. But I don’t think I could stand it knowing my ma and my sis are dead. Don’t think I could stand going home knowing they’re not there. You lose anybody?”

  “I lost my parents a few years ago,” Lana told him. “I’m an only child. Max can’t reach his parents—they’re in Europe. We’re going to meet up with his brother.”

  “I pray he’s well. I’m not much good at praying, though my ma tried to make me a God-fearing churchgoer. But I’ve been practicing just lately, so I’ll pray he stays well.”

  Max flicked a glance in the rearview. “Thanks.”

  “I figure we got to try looking out for each other now.” Eddie rubbed his bruised jaw. “Some don’t see it that way. Sure glad you do. You’re city—it shows. What city?”

  “New York,” Max told him.

  “No shit? I heard it was, like, real bad there. When’d you get out?”

  “Yesterday morning, and it is bad.”

  “It’s bad everywhere,” Lana added. “More than a billion people dead from this virus. They keep saying the vaccine’s coming, but—”

  “You ain’t heard.”

  She turned again to look at Eddie, saw his eyes had gone big, wide as an owl’s. “Heard what?”

  “Right out of New York, too. I found me and Joe a little farmhouse yesterday. My ribs were aching like a bitch, and I thought maybe they’d let me sleep in the barn or something. Nobody there. They’d cleared out, so I stayed in the house. Had a generator, so I got that going, had my first hot shower in a week, and goddamn that was sweet. Had a TV, and I figured to watch some of the DVDs they had—left all that behind. But I turned it on and it surprised the shit out of me I got this news on there. The girl giving the report—ah … funny name.”

  “Arlys? Arlys Reid?” Lana asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. I thought I’d watch awhile, see what was what maybe. Plus, she’s pretty hot. And while she’s talking, this guy comes up, sits down. Skunk drunk. I’ve seen him before. Bob Somebody.”

  “Bob Barrett? He’s the anchor—the main guy,” Max said.

  “Yeah, well, the main guy was skunk drunk, and pulls out a freaking gun.”

  “Oh my God!” Lana turned around as far as she could. “What happened?”

  “Well, like this.” Shifting, Eddie got comfortable for the story. “He’s waving the freaking gun around, spouting off a bunch of crap, threatens to shoot the hot chick. Gloom about the Doom, you know what I’m saying? It’s like watching a damn movie now, scary shit, but you can’t not watch, right? She lets him bullshit on—chick’s got balls—and it looks like maybe she’s going to talk him down, maybe. Then he puts the gun…” Eddie stuck his index finger under his scraggly beard. “And bam. Right on the air. Guy shoots half his face off right on TV.”

  Snow began to drift down, slithering over the windshield. Max turned on the wipers.

  “That ain’t the worst,” Eddie continued. “The hot chick—Arlys? She says to, you know, keep it rolling, to put the camera on her. I guess so people who can watch won’t be looking at the dead guy. She’s got blood on her face where it splattered like, but she starts talking. She’s talking about how she hasn’t been telling the whole truth, but now she will. How she has this—what do you call it—this source? And how it’s not like a billion dead, it’s more than two.”

  “‘More than two’?” As it jumped, Lana pressed a fist to her heart. “But that can’t be true.”

  “If you’da been watching her, you’d believe it. More than two, she said, and how there’s no vaccine coming because it—the Doom—it keeps, like, mutating. And how the guy who was president after the other guy died? He’s dead, too, and some woman—like, the agriculture woman—is president now. How they’re starting to round up people like, well, I gotta figure like us.”

  Max’s eyes narrowed in the mirror. “What do you mean ‘like us’?”

  “Who aren’t sick. Who aren’t getting sick. They’re rounding us up, taking us places to test us and shit. Whether or not we’re okay with it. Martial law and all that happy shit, man. Hell, I saw that for myself a couple times the last week or two. Freaking tanks heading east, big convoys of military trucks and shit. It’s why I started going west. Anyway, she said all that, and how it would probably be the last broadcast, ’cause they’d get shut down for her saying all this, letting it all out. And when she finished, the station went blank.

  “I don’t know if the people still working shut it down or if the military or whatever did. But it was still off the air when I tried later. I thought about staying there, hiding out there, but I got antsy. Me and Joe got antsy and headed out early this morning. Started walking and walked into you guys.”

  “Two billion people.” Lana’s voice came out in a shaky whisper. “How could anything kill so many so fast?”

  “It’s global,” Max said flatly. “We’re global. People travel—or did—all over the world every day. It passes from person to person, and the next person spreads it wherever he goes. A handful of infected—maybe not knowing they’re sick—get on a plane to China or Rio or Kansas fucking City, and the rest of the passengers are exposed, the flight crew, the people at security, in the airport gift shops, bars. And they all spread it. It wouldn’t take long.”

  “You’re saying … We’re saying,” Lana corrected, “that it’s going to keep spreading, keep killing until … Until there’s no one left but people like us. Immune.”

  “That’s the word I couldn’t pull out,” Eddie said. “Immune. I have to figure I am because I was with Bud the whole time. Before he got sick and after. And where I took him, the hospital? A lot of sick people there. But I didn’t get sick. Yet.”

  “From what I’ve read, and heard,” Max told him, “you start showing symptoms between twelve and twenty-four hours after exposure.”

  “I guess I should feel good about that. I guess I do,” Eddie continued. “Even though it all sucks out loud.”

  “What happens next?” Lana turned to Max. “You’re good at figuring out what happens next.”

  “Not fiction but real this time.”

  “You’re good at what happens next,” she repeated. “I haven’t been prepared for the worst. I imagined we’d spend a few weeks in the mountains until things got back to normal, or as normal as they could be. But now … There isn’t going to be anything resembling normal, and I need to know what to expect.”

  “If it keeps on spreading, there could be two billion more,” Max said flatly. “It’s impossible to say how many will be left. Half the world population? A quarter? Ten percent? But it’s possible to speculate that, as we’ve already seen beginning, the infrastructure will collapse. Communications, power, roads. Medical facilities overrun with virus patients will struggle to treat them, and other patients. People with injuries, with cancer or other conditions. More of the looting and the killings we saw ourselves in New York. The government collapses or reforms into something we don’t know.”

  He took a hand off the wheel to squeeze hers. “Getting
out of the city was the right call. Cities will fall first. More people spreading the virus, more people looting or reverting to violence. More infrastructure to collapse. More people to panic, the military coming in to try to keep order. And that chain of command frays as those in authority fall to the virus.”

  “It’s the old ‘head for the hills.’”

  Max nodded at Eddie. “You’re not wrong. You find a place, a safe one—or as safe as you can—and you supply it, maintain it, defend it.”

  “Defend it against who?”

  Max gave Lana’s hand another squeeze. “Against anyone who tries to take it. You hope like-minded people come together, build communities and their own infrastructure, laws and order. You scavenge, you farm, you hunt. You live.”

  If she’d hoped Max would offer a less dire scenario, she had to admit the one he painted sounded all too real. “And if you’re like the two of us, and haven’t the first clue how to hunt or farm?”

  “You find other ways to contribute, and you learn. We’ve gotten this far. We’ll survive the rest.”

  “My ma kept a garden—grew some nice vegetables every year. I can get things to grow, I’d guess, and show you how it’s done. I hunted some as a kid, but that was awhile back. I’m one of those rare country boys who don’t much like guns. But I know how to use one.”

  “It’s still possible they could have a breakthrough on the vaccine,” Lana insisted.

  “It is,” Max agreed. “But if there are already two billion dead, there’ll be more before they can dispense and inoculate, even if they broke through tomorrow. The center can’t hold, Lana. It’s already breaking down. Hell, the Secretary of Agriculture is now president. I don’t even know who that is.”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Eddie began, “but we ought to stop and put those chains on before it gets any thicker on the road.”

  Max eased to the shoulder as the snow continued to fall. “You’ll have to show me how.”

  “And me,” Lana added. “If I’m going to have to learn what I don’t know, I might as well start now.”

  “No problem, nothing to it.”

  He showed them how to unkink the chains—simple enough even if the cold, the snow, the wind added a nasty element to the chore. Then how to fit the chains over the top of the tire. Though her fingers felt numb even with gloves, Lana insisted on doing one herself.

  She had to learn.

  She stayed out to watch and observe when Max got behind the wheel to ease the car forward enough to expose the rest of the tire. And, after watching Eddie, listening to his step-by-step, she connected the chains, using the closer link to tighten them.

  “Is that right?”

  Eddie checked her chain. “Aced it, first time out. She beat you to it, Max.”

  Max glanced over and smiled as he finished the connection. “She had a head start.”

  With a cackle, Eddie walked around the car to fix the last chain. “That’ll do her.” He looked to the pup, who squatted on the shoulder.

  “You finished there, Joe?” When he opened the door, the pup jumped right in. “I can drive if you want a break.”

  Max shook his head. “I’m good.”

  “You let me know when you want to rotate. Until you do I’m gonna catch a nap in the back with Joe. Didn’t sleep so good last night after the news show.”

  He started to yank the space blanket out of his pack, but Lana took out a cotton one of her own. “Use this. It’s soft.”

  For a moment, Eddie just stared down at the blanket. Then he got in, waited for Lana to sit, close her door.

  “I was scared for a couple minutes you were going to just shoot me, take my stuff. Maybe hurt the pup, too. Then I could see, pretty quick, that wasn’t going to happen. I could see you weren’t that kind.”

  “You’re not that kind, either,” Lana told him.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not. But I guess you could say we took a chance on each other. I’m real glad we did. It’s a nice blanket.”

  He lay down on the backseat, long, skinny legs tucked up and the puppy curled against him. “I appreciate it,” he said and shut his eyes.

  Lana didn’t sleep. Instead she reminded herself she’d learned to put on snow chains. She’d cooked a decent meal from meager supplies—on a hot plate in an ugly motel office. She could start a fire, for light or for heat, with her breath. She could start an engine with her will.

  And with that will, with the power that grew in her, she was learning to move things—small things now, but that would change. With Max, she’d raised the span of a bridge—and she’d pushed enough power to slow down other cars, even to slap back against those who wished them harm.

  She had learned that, and she would learn whatever else she needed to learn.

  If Max’s speculation became reality, she’d use her will, her wits, her magicks, and her mind to do whatever had to be done to keep them safe.

  And, she thought as the man and the little dog in the backseat snored softly and almost in unison, they’d already started to build a community.

  “I love you, Max.”

  “I love you. Sleep awhile. We’ve still got a long way to go.”