by Megan Crewe
A faint but shrill sound pulsed somewhere in the distance. For a second I thought it might be a siren, that there might be actual police officers still there, but as we drew closer I recognized it as the harsh beeping of a car alarm. I wondered how long it’d been going with no one to turn it off. How long it would go before its power source ran out.
“Hey!” Justin said. I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. As I turned my head, two figures darted past one of the stores up ahead. They vanished into the shadows so quickly I would have thought I’d imagined them, if Justin hadn’t been staring after them too.
“They don’t seem too friendly,” Tobias said.
“Let’s put some distance between us and them before we stop,” Gav said grimly.
Beyond the windows, the buildings slipped by like ghosts. I hugged myself. Before, the city had felt big and busy, but also bright and energetic—alive, like all that action was the pulse of a living thing. I’d known it wasn’t going to be the same now, but I hadn’t expected it to feel so empty. So dead.
It had to be better when the sun was up. Darkness could make any place feel haunted.
We’d driven a few more blocks when a scream split the air somewhere behind us. “No, no, no, no, no!” the voice shrieked. “They can’t, they can’t do it!”
I cringed. Someone caught up in the violent hallucinations the virus brought at the end, I guessed.
“Jesus,” Justin said. The shrieking broke off abruptly, as if someone had made it stop.
Leo’s shoulder had tensed against mine, his mouth a pale line. I wondered how much the city reminded him of New York, of what he’d gone through there.
I found his hand, resting by his knee, and curled my fingers into his. He exhaled and squeezed back tightly.
The strip malls gave way to smaller stores and offices, the roofs of a residential neighborhood beyond them. “How about here?” I said, and Tobias nodded, turning down the next street. We passed two-story homes and bungalows as we wound around the corners, leaving the main road far behind. Finally, we picked a detached house with a wide driveway. Tobias pulled around and parked on the back lawn so the truck was hidden behind the house.
“Not much we can do to hide the trail from the plow,” he said. “We should trade off watches in shifts like usual.”
The knob on the back door had been bashed off, but we searched the house from basement to attic and found no sign anyone had stayed. After a hurried meal over the camp stove, Leo pulled a blanket around himself and went to sit on the radiator, where he could see the truck through the dining room window and the street through the living room.
“Wake me up in a couple hours and I’ll switch off with you,” Tobias said, and Leo just nodded.
With no fire, we set up the tent to hold our body heat closer and crawled in, cocooning in our blankets under the sleeping bags. I pulled my hood up and huddled against Gav. Even as my eyes drifted closed, my heart raced on, a frantic drumming in my chest.
We were here. We’d done it.
The excitement lingered, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that was creeping through it. The feeling that we were a bunch of fish swimming into a crocodile’s mouth, and all we could do was pray its jaws didn’t snap shut.
When I woke up, cold and stiff, and poked my head out of the tent, light filled the living room. I shook off the blankets and stepped out, going to the window. The scene outside looked like a normal winter day, serenely white. The sunlight flowed into me, warming the icy tendrils of fear that had sprung up the night before.
Gav was sitting by the doorway. He must have taken over the watch at some point in the early morning. He smiled at me, but his eyes looked tired. I wondered how much he’d slept.
“You should have woken me up for one of the shifts,” I said.
“You needed the rest,” he said, as if he didn’t.
The blankets rustled inside the tent, and in a few minutes we were all up, passing around a box of stale crackers as we packed our things.
“What’s the plan?” Tobias asked.
“I want to see if the hospitals are functioning,” I said. “It’ll be easier to figure out what to do once we know exactly what’s going on here.”
“The truck’s going to be even more noticeable now that it’s light out,” Leo said.
I considered the map book. “There aren’t any hospitals nearby. I think we have to do a little driving. Let’s see what we find, and if we need to stay another night, we’ll look for a good place that’s central, so we’ll be able to do more on foot.”
We clambered into the truck, Gav at the wheel.
“It looks like there’s a pretty big hospital a couple miles west down that main road,” I said. “I’ll let you know when to turn off.”
The footprints outside the stores were even more visible in daylight, but the people who’d made them stayed out of sight. Smoke drifted up from the chimneys of a few houses off the main strip.
As we turned down the street toward the hospital, we passed a couple of figures bundled up in coats and scarves, trudging along the sidewalk in the same direction. They stared at the truck and its plow, nothing of their faces visible except for the glint of a pair of glasses. Then one bent over, gloved hand pressed to where his or her mouth must have been behind the scarf. Coughing.
Tire tracks marked the road in front of the hospital, but they looked old, half filled with fresh snow. The lot was clogged with snow-covered cars. We parked outside the front entrance.
Gav reached for the car door, and I grabbed his arm.
“No,” I said. “We can already see there’ll be sick people here. I’m immune. Leo’s had the vaccine. The rest of you are vulnerable. So you should guard the truck, and we’ll go in.” I looked back at Leo. “If that’s okay with you.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here while you go alone.”
“I’m happy to stay away from the sickos,” Justin said, leaning back in his seat. Tobias didn’t say anything, but remembering how he’d reacted when we’d met the infected couple in the other town, I was pretty sure he didn’t mind.
“You don’t know who you’re going to run into in there,” Gav said. “What if two of you aren’t enough?”
“If it comes to that,” Leo said quietly, “I have one of the guns.”
Gav’s shoulders were tensed, and his hand hadn’t left the door. “All right,” he said. “But I’m going to watch the clock. You take more than half an hour…”
“Fine,” I said, raising my hands. “Just be careful. And if you see anyone go by who looks, I don’t know, official, grab them and explain why we’re here, okay?”
I left the cold box with our precious cargo locked in the truck’s covered bed. The hospital doors, high and glassy, stood half open, propped by a couple of concrete blocks. A man slipped out as Leo and I approached, his arms clutching something I couldn’t see. As he disappeared around the corner, he let out a sneeze.
For a second, my legs locked. Even after I’d recovered, I’d never gone into the island’s hospital without protective gear, just in case the virus mutated. And Leo had even less security, only the protection of an unproven vaccine.
I pulled my scarf tightly around my face, and Leo did the same. “Let’s go save the world,” he said.
We eased past the front doors and into the reception area. A girl who didn’t look any older than twelve was pawing through the drawers behind the admissions counter. She stopped to scratch the back of her head. Papers were scattered on the counter and the floor beneath it.
The halls beyond were dim, only occasional streaks of sunlight reaching them from windows within open rooms. Coughs and sneezes echoed from farther inside. We picked a direction and started walking.
Beneath the scarf, my breath felt thick against my face. Down one hallway, out of sight, someone was sniffling and banging what sounded like two metal objects against each other. Farther on, a man with a red nose and flushed cheeks
hustled from one room to the next. Boxes and vials clattered. He jerked around when I peeked in, and snarled, “Back off! I was here first.”
We hurried on.
A moment later, a yell bounced off the walls, and two women scrambled around the corner ahead of us.
“I saw it!” one was shouting. “It’s mine!”
Leo reached for my arm, and we leapt back against the wall as they stumbled past us. The first woman skidded, and the second tackled her. When the second squirmed away, she was gripping an amber bottle.
“It’s mine!” she spat, and ran for the front doors. The first woman pushed herself to her feet, her breath coming in little sobs, and wavered back the way she’d come. I leaned against the wall, my pulse thudding.
Leo was rigid. “I’m starting to think we’re not going to find—”
He stopped, his eyes twitching toward something behind me. I turned.
A different woman had come up beside us. Tangled gray and black hair fell around her face, and a small, sad smile twisted her mouth.
“Looks like we got here too late,” she said.
My shoulders sagged in relief. So we weren’t the only sane people in the city.
“Where are the doctors and nurses?” I said. “What happened to this place?”
The woman shrugged. “What happened to all the hospitals, I suppose. I heard it, but I didn’t know how bad it was. Soon as the medicine started running out, everyone wanted to take what they could while they could.… It wasn’t safe for anyone working here. ’Course, they didn’t seem to be helping much as it was. I don’t suppose I can really blame them for leaving.”
“So they’re all gone?” Leo said.
She inclined her head. “If you wanted to find a doctor here, you should have come a couple months ago.”
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“Beats me. Maybe they’re just sticking close to their families like the rest of us who are still alive.” She sighed. “I don’t know why I’m even here. Wallace and I were fine for so long, you know, but the itch came on him yesterday, and then the cough, and I thought, I can’t just watch. I have to go out and see if I can find anything. But it looks like I’m finding a lot of trouble and not much else.”
Her dark eyes flickered toward the hall and back to us, and narrowed with deeper consideration. “You don’t look sick, either of you.”
“A friend,” I said quickly. “We were hoping someone could help him. I guess we’re out of luck.”
As if to emphasize my words, three men charged around the far corner, hauling an electronic device the size of a bar fridge. What did they think that thing was going to do without electricity? I had the sinking feeling they were just taking whatever hadn’t already been stolen, indiscriminately.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” And, to the woman, “Thanks. Good luck.”
“It’s just one place,” Leo said as we hurried out the doors.
“I know,” I said, and my foot bumped against a solid object in the snow.
The impact jolted some of the snow off the thing I’d hit. It protruded, a narrow brown shape, from the drift beside the trampled path leading to the doors. I’d been staring at it for a few seconds before recognition sank in.
A boot. The toe of a boot. In the rippling of the snow, I could almost see the outline of a leg, a chest—I looked away. There was snow everywhere. How many bodies lay beneath it? My stomach lurched.
“It’s just one place,” I repeated softly. I strode on toward the truck without glancing back.
Gav read my face as I climbed in. “No?”
I shook my head and picked up the map book. The lines and street names swam before my eyes. I blinked, trying to focus.
“Some of the hospitals could still be working,” I said. “And there’d be government labs and corporate ones, right? Those would be more protected; the people working there wouldn’t have had to leave.”
Of course those labs didn’t publicize their locations on city maps, which was what protected them in the first place.
Drew might have known where some were. He’d explored the city far more thoroughly than I’d ever wanted to. If he was still okay. If we could manage to reach him again.
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. “We could try city hall next,” I said, tapping the curved shape on the map down near the waterfront. “They won’t have labs, I don’t think, but there might be government people around who know where to go.”
“If they haven’t all left too,” Gav said.
“You have a better idea?” I asked him.
He grimaced apologetically. “No. You’re right, it makes sense to try there.”
He pulled the truck back into the middle of the road. We wove through the streets toward city hall, following whichever were least clogged with snow and cars. Some were packed solid with vehicles in a permanent traffic jam, like a parade of ice sculptures.
“Freaky,” Justin said as we backed out of one choked road we’d mistakenly turned down. “Where’d they all think they were going?”
It wouldn’t have mattered, I thought. By the time people had gotten that scared, there wouldn’t have been any truly safe place left.
We were only a few blocks from city hall when Leo stiffened. “Cut the engine,” he said.
“What?” Gav said.
“Just cut it!”
Gav yanked the gear stick into park and twisted the key. The second our engine stilled, I heard another rumbling in the distance.
“Good ears,” Tobias said.
Leo didn’t answer. As we listened, the engine sound grew louder, then gradually faded away without crossing our path.
“Couldn’t that have been some of the government guys we’re trying to track down?” Justin asked.
“Anyone who’s kept a car running in the city this long…they’ll have had to fight to do it,” Leo said. “Fought and won.”
“Let’s not run into them, then,” I said.
The road that ran past the square outside city hall was deserted. Mounds of snow covered the courtyard where in other years a huge skating rink had been set up. My middle school had taken us there on field trips.
Tobias stayed with the truck, taking over the driver’s seat with the rifle across his lap, and the rest of us picked our way toward the building through the shallowest drifts. I tried not to think about what might be lying under the snow.
I couldn’t see beyond the line of windows and wooden doors. As we approached, I realized they were barricaded, cabinets and cubicle dividers pushed up against the glass, crisscrossed with boards where it had started to crack.
Someone had been in there. Someone who’d wanted to prevent anyone else from getting in. It looked like they’d been successful.
Which meant they could still be there.
Justin jogged to the nearest set of doors and tugged on the handles. They didn’t budge. He smacked the wood with his gloved fist.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Open up!”
I hurried to the next door and pounded on it. “Please!” I said. “We have something that can help the city. We just need to talk to someone!”
Only silence answered us. I waited a minute, then banged on the door again.
“Look at the way they shut themselves off in there,” Gav said. “They don’t care about the city anymore.”
“So we force our way in and make them help!” Justin said.
“No,” I said, turning. “We’ll give them time, and if no one—”
My voice failed and my breath caught in my throat.
Gav had taken off one of his gloves and pulled back the opposite sleeve of his coat. He frowned at the building—I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed what his hand was doing.
He was scratching his inner forearm, so hard the pale skin was going pink.
“It’s okay,” Gav said. “It’s nothing, Kae.”
His scratching fingers had stilled when he’d seen my expression, and he was giving me
his usual confident smile. But even as the words came out of his mouth, his jaw twitched and his hand clenched. And I knew. The itch hadn’t stopped.
“What the hell!” Justin said, backing away.
“It’s nothing,” Gav insisted. He yanked his glove back on and shoved his hands into his pockets. “But there’s no point in staying here. We keep yelling, we’re just going to draw attention.”
Attention we had already probably drawn with the truck. I narrowed my thoughts to that one concern, blanking out the fear. “We have to find a place to stay,” I said. “It looks like tracking someone down might take a few days.”
Leo watched me cautiously, but he didn’t argue. “An apartment or condo building would be good,” he said. “More doors between us and the street.”
“We need a fireplace,” Gav pointed out.
“There are condos with fireplaces,” I said. “Real ones, not just gas. We went to a friend of my dad’s place a couple times when we lived here; he had one.”
We all headed back to the truck, but when we reached it, Justin halted on the sidewalk.
“I’m not getting in with him,” he said, cutting his gaze toward Gav.
“Fine,” I said. “Then you can walk.”
“What’s going on with the kid?” Tobias asked as we climbed in. I got in the back with Gav, so Leo took my spot up front. I waited a second before closing the door, but Justin didn’t budge. Tobias was looking back at me. I didn’t know how to answer.
And then I didn’t have to, because Gav jerked forward, sneezing, and sneezing again.
Tobias blanched and Leo flinched, and Gav’s eyes went so wide and frightened he looked more like a little boy who needed his parents than like a guy who’d organized an entire town to save itself.
“Fuck,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He fumbled with his scarf, which was wound tightly under his chin. As I reached to help him, his hands quivered, and he threw up his arm just in time to catch a volley of coughs. When they subsided, he pushed open the door and scrambled out, hauling the scarf up over his mouth and nose.
“I guess I’d better walk too,” he said stiffly.
