“But you don’t think so.”
“I think a more likely scenario would be that the virus becomes so successful at propagating that it settles into this more deadly version for a long time.”
“Resulting in more human casualties.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The fatality rate of this virus is much greater than the one we saw in 1918 that killed twenty percent of the people it afflicted. We are currently seeing fatality rates approaching fifty percent.”
“That’s hard to imagine.”
“Yes. A couple of factors play into this. First, H5 bypasses nasal passages in favor of digging deep into the human lung, where it can inflict more damage.”
“Which explains the increased incidence of pneumonia.”
“Partially. And then there’s the length of illness. Even though the period of contagion before onset of symptoms is shrinking to twenty-four hours, H5 is living an average of eight days in its human host. This is a significant length of time. The longer the virus can keep its host alive, the more time it has to propagate and infect another host. And then there’s the speed at which it’s traveling. H5 is beginning to spread with the same rapidity that hallmarked the 1918 virus.”
“Which circled the globe in months.”
“Yes. Although in today’s world, I think a more accurate estimate might be more like weeks. Conventional wisdom says the virus could reach the United States in the length of time it takes a plane to cross the Atlantic.”
“So we’re talking hours?”
“That’s right. Six hours. The virus could already be here.”
The Frank Sherman Hour,
WBBS
EIGHT
MICHELE SAYS THEY’VE CANCELED THE WINTER Dance.” Kate sat at the kitchen table with her laptop opened in front of her. She frowned down at her cell phone.
“They’ll reschedule it.” Though probably not until the following year. Ann slid her arms through the sleeves of her coat. This was just the beginning. What about report cards, birthday parties, dental appointments?
“Get ice cream,” Maddie said. “And goldfish crackers.”
“I will.”
A car horn sounded. The television in the family room showed long lines of people standing in an airport, waiting to have their temperature taken. Ann lifted the remote and turned off the television.
“Mom,” Maddie said.
“Just while I’m gone, honey.” Who knew what they’d see in her absence? “Kate, lock the door behind me.”
Kate moved her thumb across the mouse pad. “Okay.”
Ann checked her purse for her wallet and her cell phone. Here was Maddie’s medicine. That shouldn’t come with her. “If anyone rings the doorbell, don’t answer.”
“Not even for Libby?” Maddie said.
“Libby will be with me. Mr. Finn might come by for me to sign another of his petitions. You can call through the door, but don’t open it.”
Maddie shook her head. “He’ll be mad.”
“That’s all right. Kate?”
Her daughter was focused on the laptop screen, her hands typing busily. “Kate!”
She glanced up. “What?”
“What did I just tell you?”
“Something about the door and Mr. Finn.”
Ann looked at her with exasperation. “You need to stop fooling around with your laptop and watch your sister.”
Kate pushed herself away from the table and stood. “Why don’t you just take Maddie with you if you don’t think she’ll be safe with me?”
“That’s not—”
But Kate was stomping up the stairs.
Libby’s SUV waited in the driveway. “Thanks for coming,” she said as Ann opened the car door.
“No problem. It makes sense to go together.” Ann climbed in and glanced back. Jacob sat nestled in his car seat behind her, bundled in navy corduroy and wearing a scarlet cap. He saw her and pumped his legs, his cheeks bunching around his pacifier. He was grinning.
“You little sweetie,” she said, smiling back at him before turning around to pull the seatbelt across her lap.
“I hope you don’t mind me bringing him. Smith’s not home yet.”
“Of course not. He can help us choose cereal.”
Libby swung the steering wheel and they bumped onto the street. “I don’t get it. Why are they closing school for three whole months? The flu’s not even here.”
“It’s in the state preparedness plans. A lot of things are going to start happening because we’re in Phase Five.” The announcement had been so sudden. Ann still couldn’t believe it. She’d thought there would be some indication, but maybe she’d been so preoccupied that she’d missed the warning signs. The Health Department would start closing everything, including Peter’s university. She wondered how he was doing. She wondered if he’d seen this coming. No. He’d have said something. Despite everything, he’d have wanted her and the girls to be prepared.
Libby honked at the car waiting to make a turn in front of her. “How am I going to get any work done? I have a major deadline coming up.”
“Maybe your boss will let you work from home.” All the lights were on at the bank and the lot was filled. Cars stood in line for the ATM. How much cash did she have? As a rule, she didn’t keep much on hand. So, maybe twenty bucks.
“Yeah, sure. That’ll happen. He about had a heart attack when I took maternity leave. He must’ve called ten times, asking when I was coming back.” Libby gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe my mom can come and stay with us for a while.”
“There you go.” Ann’s parents hadn’t answered the phone. Of course, they didn’t have a cell. They had to be out, doing just what Ann was doing. Getting groceries, stocking up on cash. She’d try them again as soon as she got home.
Libby glanced over. “What about you? Do you even have a job anymore?”
“I don’t know.” Another worry. “We’d better stop at an ATM on the way home.”
“Good idea.” Libby turned into the shopping center and braked hard at the sight of cars packed into the sprawling space, lined up against the curbs and across the grassy median. Still more cars prowled around, headlights shining, exhaust puffing behind them in weary streams. “Jesus.”
Ann pointed. “There’s a car pulling out over there.”
Libby slid the SUV into the spot and turned off the engine. She lifted the car seat from the backseat.
Ann slammed the door and, glancing around, spotted an abandoned cart nearby. She dragged it over and helped Libby fit the car seat on top. Another cart stood at the curb. She grabbed it. “You take the baby. I’ll start in the bread section.”
The doors glided open. Libby wheeled her cart to the right while Ann swept left.
Shoppers clogged the front of the store. Ann pushed through them to reach the bread aisle and stopped, staring in disbelief down the long, empty space. The shelves were completely bare. Not a single loaf or package of buns in sight. She’d never seen anything like this, not even after Phase Four had been announced. Maybe there was some in the back—
A man in a white windbreaker strode past, a name tag pinned to his chest.
“Excuse me,” Ann said. “When will you be restocking the bread?”
“You gotta be kidding.” He walked away.
All right. So there wasn’t bread here. But sometimes there was bread at the deli counter. She swung her cart around.
Sure enough, two racks stood by the swinging doors beside the shining glass deli cases. People were pawing through the shelves. Ann waded in among them and reached to grasp the necks of plastic bags. She didn’t know what she had until she brought them to the cart. English muffins. Cinnamon-raisin. She removed her coat and tossed it on top of the bread and went back in for more. Rye. Wheat. Everyone was pushing now and using their elbows.
“Hey.” A loud voice from nearby.
“You can’t stop me.” Another voice, just as loud. “Long as I pay for it, I can take as much as I want. Thi
s is America!”
Ann took some loaves from the bottom racks. She stepped back out of jostling range with relief. Stuffing the bread beneath her coat, she turned. Forget taking a ticket for the deli counter. One look at the long lines there convinced her—any lunchmeat she wanted would have to come from the refrigerated section.
Milk.
The meat section was on the way, and she reached in among the other shoppers for chicken breasts and ground beef. Not stopping to sheathe them in plastic first, she dumped packages in the cart and moved the bread up to the top. How much was enough? A glance to one side showed a woman stepping back, balancing a tower of Styrofoam packages in her arms. Ann took armloads of everything. She’d split them with Libby.
People thronged the dairy section. She jogged her cart as close as she could and tried to peer around people’s shoulders and heads. Was she too late? She couldn’t get close enough to see anything.
“There’s a line, you know,” a woman snapped.
All right. That was good. Some sort of order had been imposed here. Ann got in line and waited her turn. Slowly she inched closer, bringing her cart with her. At last she glimpsed the rounded shapes of milk cartons. From behind the shelves, a hand was pushing containers of milk through the plastic flaps. Gallon after gallon thudded into place, just as swiftly grabbed away.
She took a gallon in each hand and heaved them into her cart. She turned for another two. The girls drank a lot of milk. Six wasn’t too much.
“That’s it,” the guy behind her said.
Oh. So there was a limit. Ann nodded. “I’m getting some for my neighbor.” She took four more. She was beginning to sweat. She removed her sweatshirt and tied it around her waist.
She steered her cart along the back of the store, piling stuff in as she went. Yogurt. Cheese. Juice. What was she forgetting? She’d circled the perimeter of the store and now she began to try and push her way into each packed aisle. When she reached the cereal section, she couldn’t even get two steps into the aisle. Down the crowd of people, she saw Libby’s blond head, heard her voice. “You push that cart into me one more time—”
“Lady,” a voice said behind Ann, and she swung around to see a store employee wheeling a tall stack of boxes toward her. The dolly nudged the back of her heel. “You the one looking for Merry Berries?”
“They’re mine!” A short woman with a pixie haircut waved her arm. “I’m the one who asked for them. I’m the one who should get them first.”
“Libby,” Ann called. “Get me cornflakes.”
“Got it.”
The frozen-food section was welcomingly wide. Shoppers stood two abreast. Ann was reckless in her choices, tugging each glass door open and pulling something out. Pizza, toaster waffles, ravioli. She stood with a bag of peas in her hand. No place to put it. She had things wedged in everywhere and piled along the bottom of her cart.
When she reached the front of the store, she came to a stop at the end of a line that snaked into the aisle. She looked at her cart. It looked foreign to her, someone else’s shopping cart filled with things she would never buy. Marshmallow Fluff, cocktail wienies, diet milkshakes, candy-flavored vitamins. Raisins, though the girls hated them. She dialed her cell phone.
“Hey,” Libby said.
Over the phone, Ann heard voices raised in anger. “Everything okay?”
“A fight over batteries.”
“Grab as many as you can. I’m in line for register”—Ann peered over the heads in front of her—“twelve.”
“I’ll be there in a minute. Sit tight.”
A male clerk slid cases of bottled water onto an endcap. Water. That should have been her first stop. She looked to her cart. It was hopeless. She couldn’t fit in a single bottle.
The clerk was now heaving cases of water directly into people’s carts. They formed a protective barrier around him.
“I’m with her,” she heard a familiar voice say, and turned to see Libby push past a skinny woman in a miniskirt. “We’re together,” she informed the man behind Ann. She was breathless, and her cart was just as full as Ann’s. She gripped a twenty-four-pack of toilet paper. Jacob looked as though he was riding a haystack of paper towels, sucking furiously on his pacifier.
“I forgot water. Watch my cart.” Ann pushed through the people to where the clerk was working.
“That’s mine,” a woman said.
“I’ve been here longer,” someone else said.
The clerk straightened. “Sorry, folks. That’s it.”
The man in front of Ann said, “You bringing out another load?”
The clerk shook his head. “The truck comes Sunday.”
Sunday. Four days away.
Libby had been watching. “No luck, huh?”
“I’ll be right back.”
An empty cart sat in the middle of an aisle, people streaming around it. Ann grabbed the handle and headed to the health food section. It was quieter here. Juices were in a middle aisle. Colorful, bright, unusual flavors, and yes, farther down, a gleaming row of specialty waters.
In the detergent aisle she grabbed distilled water, big jugs of it that she levered into her cart.
The neon video store sign glowed in one corner. No one was there, not even a clerk. She worked her way from cold case to cold case, opening the doors and reaching past the sodas for the chilled bottles of water.
Pushing her cart was hard work now. She gripped the handle with both hands and leaned into it. Without warning, a man stepped in front of her. She came to an abrupt halt, the front of her cart swinging to one side. He grabbed the cart with a hand. He was young and clean-shaven, wearing a football jersey and jeans, and he wasn’t letting go of her cart. He didn’t look crazy.
“Excuse me,” Ann said, trying to move around him.
But he had both hands on the wire basket. And she had a firm grip on the handle. They pulled in opposite directions.
“Let go,” Ann told him. “Are you insane?”
“Joan!” he yelled.
This was a deserted part of the store. No one was rushing over here to stock up on video rentals. He was younger and stronger, and he was slowly but surely pulling the handle from her grasp.
“Joan! C’mere!”
“Stop that!”
Thank goodness. Someone was coming to her aid. A woman ran down the aisle toward them, shopping cart racing along in front of her. Long bleached hair, black leather, heels clacking on the linoleum.
Ann smiled at her.
The woman glared back, her heavily penciled eyebrows drawn down with annoyance. “Good job, Kenny.” She reached into Ann’s cart, pulled out a jug of water, and set it rolling into her cart. “The bread’s gone,” she told him.
“So’s the milk.”
Ann was frozen with disbelief. Without thinking, she slapped the woman’s hand away from a jug of water. “What is wrong with you people? Go get your own.”
The woman slapped back. “You haven’t bought it yet. It’s not yours.” She yanked Ann’s cart toward her.
“There’s more back there.” Ann grabbed the cart and shoved it behind her.
“We’re not going back there,” Joan snapped. She took a step forward.
Ann blocked her. They glared at each other.
“Get out of my way, bitch.” The woman shoved
Ann. Ann shoved back. Then Joan leaned back and punched Ann in the chest.
Gasping, Ann stumbled back. Her hands curled into fists. Then she caught herself. Water. This was about water.
From behind her, Kenny said, “We’re done here. Let’s hit the frozen-food aisle.”
Ann wheeled around. Her cart was empty. Kenny had taken it all.
He grabbed his cart, now loaded with bottles of water. Joan reached around and gave Ann’s empty cart a vicious shove. It cracked against Ann’s shin.
The world blinked white.
Then Ann saw Kenny and Joan farther down the aisle, reaching in and helping themselves to a stack of toilet pap
er from another person’s cart. The single woman pushing that was no match for the two of them, either.
Ann never thought she’d have to shop in teams for safety.
NINE
PETER FOLLOWED SHAZIA DOWN THE OVERLY BRIGHT DORMITORY corridor filled with people and stepped aside to let an older man carrying a big carton pass by.
“You got everything?” he was saying to the skinny brunette walking half a step behind him.
“I got my laptop, Dad. That’s all I need.”
Shazia paused in front of a door. A piece of paper was taped there, and she pulled it down, unfolded it, and scanned its contents. “Caroline’s already left.”
Peter had met Shazia’s roommate, a tall and imperious girl from South Africa. He’d heard Caroline was a whiz in nanotechnology. “Where’s she going?”
“She’s assigned to Tower West, too.”
Good. Maybe they could room together. That would make the transition smoother for both girls.
Shazia slid her keycard into the box mounted beside the door. Turning the knob, she pushed it open to reveal a small square space filled with the usual scarred oak furniture, doubles of everything—beds, dressers, desks. It didn’t take long for her to fold garments and pack them away. She placed some framed pictures between her sweaters before zippering the suitcase closed. She filled a second suitcase with towels and some personal items.
It felt sad, this brisk uprooting.
She straightened and glanced around. “I guess that’s it.”
Tower West wasn’t far.
The tall dormitory was ablaze with light. Buses idled at the curb, as people scurried across the bright courtyard. Peter pulled the pickup onto the grass at the end of a row of parked cars. Campus security wouldn’t be issuing parking tickets tonight.
Lines of students snaked through the lobby, jockeying for position in front of the three card tables that had been set up by the elevators. A uniformed guard stood there, arms crossed.
The Things That Keep Us Here Page 6
