by Glenn Cooper
“My brother came here.”
“Not tonight he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
“My partner would’ve turned him away.”
Joe tried his brother’s mobile again and drove off, meandering through the dark, deserted town then back south to the state road he had taken to get to Clarkson. With high beams on, he kept his eyes peeled, and halfway back to Dillingham he noticed a deer-crossing sign bent at a sharp angle. He pulled onto the verge and got out, using the flashlight on his cell phone to explore the darkness. The air should have been country-sweet, but it wasn’t. Was that exhaust fumes he smelled?
He saw something, swore, and started to sprint.
Brian’s Ranger was well off the road, nestled in a thicket. It was still running in drive, and were it not for a good-sized tree in its path, it would have kept on going.
Brian was belted in. The passenger door was open, and Seth wasn’t inside the vehicle. Joe opened the driver-side door and reached over his dazed brother to put it into park and turn off the ignition.
“Brian? What happened?”
“I’m not. I’m just not.”
“Not what, bro?”
“It’s not.”
“Where’s Seth? What the fuck happened to Seth?”
Brian opened the center console and rummaged inside.
“What are you doing, man?” Joe shouted.
He looked up and coughed. “I’m hungry.”
“For fuck’s sake, stay put. I’ve got to find Seth.”
There was a proper flashlight in the tool box. It had rained heavily earlier and it wasn’t hard to follow the trail of wet footsteps into the woods.
“Seth? Seth! It’s Joe! Where are you?”
An owl called in the distance. The air was damp and weighty. It was warm for the time of year, and he was sweating in his beat-up leather jacket. He heard a small snap.
He aimed his flashlight. “Seth?”
The boy was beside a huge elm, frozen by the beam.
“Seth, it’s Joe. Don’t be afraid. You hurt?”
Seth took off running. Joe knew the kid was quick and he thought it would be tough catching up, but the boy tripped on a root and splayed out. Joe knelt beside him and put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. At the touch, Seth let out a curdling yell, rolled over and tried to bite him.
“Damn it! What are you doing? I’m trying to help you.”
Seth tried to get up, but Joe held him down with an outstretched arm. The boy tried to bat it away with furious swings.
“Come on, Seth! We’ve got to get back to Brian.”
What followed was a period of vigorous wrestling as Joe tried to bundle up his brother without getting smacked in the face or bitten. He eventually got the boy slung over his shoulder just out of back-biting range and carried him to the car. There, he laid him out in the bed of the truck using tie-downs to stop him from jumping out or falling. Then he parked his own truck well off the road, slid his confused older brother into the passenger’s seat, and sped home in Brian’s truck.
The Edison farmhouse was situated down a long, rutted dirt road. Joe took it easy so as not to rattle Seth too badly. The house should have been dark at this hour, but light was pouring from most of the windows. When his headlights fell on the front porch, he saw his father sitting on the stairs with his sister, Brittany. He parked and got out and was about to explain why Seth was in the truck bed, but he stopped himself. His father looked stricken and the little girl was wailing.
“What’s going on?” Joe asked.
Edison looked up at him. “All hell’s broke loose in there.”
14
Every time Jamie’s call went to Mandy’s voice mail, he got more agitated. His daughter was infected, Mandy was in dire straits, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do for either one of them.
When Linda Milbane came down the stairs, he asked if the girls were okay.
“They’re quiet. They’re scared.” The corner of her mouth was twitching. She was scared too.
“Should I go up?” he asked.
“I think they’re okay for a minute. Can I make some more coffee?”
He showed her where he kept it.
“Did something else happen?” she asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“It’s a friend of mine. Her husband’s infected. While I was talking to her, he attacked her.”
“Christ. If you need to go over there, I’ll watch the girls.”
“She’s in Indianapolis.”
“Oh.”
They both watched the coffee drip through the paper filter. He redialed Mandy and ended the call before the voice mail prompt.
“This is a nightmare,” he said.
“Is she a close friend?”
“Yeah.”
“Hopefully she’s okay.”
He went upstairs. She joined him in Emma’s room with two coffee cups and an open sleeve of chocolate chip cookies she found on the counter.
“This is black. I didn’t know how you take it,” she said.
“It’s fine.”
The girls were sitting next to each other on the floor, their shoulders touching. Six eyes tracked the cookies, counting the dog.
“I heard you talking to them through the door. What were you saying?”
“I was trying to teach Emma her name.”
Kyra sprang to her feet and snatched the cookies from her mother’s hand and began shoving them in her mouth, three at a time. When one dropped to the floor, Emma was there to get it, beating Romulus by a hair.
Linda sat on the bed and watched them.
“They’re so hungry,” she said. “I’ll make them sandwiches. Can I use your kitchen?”
“You don’t have to ask.”
“Thank you. Did she?”
“Did she what?”
“Learn her name.”
“I just started. I’ll keep at it.”
“Can she?”
“I think so.”
At the door she asked if he could try to teach Kyra too.
When she returned with a platter of sandwiches, the girls went for them.
“No!” Jamie said with an outstretched hand.
Startled, they stopped dead.
He took one of the sandwiches and gave it to Kyra who began devouring it. Emma got agitated and lunged for the plate.
“No!” Jamie said again, halting her rush with an arm. “Wait!”
She pushed forward against his arm and when she tried to bite it, he took her by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the bed.
“Emma, sit down! Wait!”
The girl looked at him in anger and bewilderment. When she had been still for several seconds, he rewarded her with a sandwich, which she wolfed down.
“Good, girl,” he said. He realized he was speaking to her the way he talked to Romulus. One more wave of grief lapped the shore.
Linda passed out the other two sandwiches.
“What’s going to happen to them if we get sick?” she asked.
He told her he couldn’t bear to think about it.
“If you get sick, I’ll look after Emma. Will you do the same for me?”
“Yes.”
The corded landline in Emma’s room rang. His hand clamped down on it.
“Jamie, it’s me.”
He let out a breath. “Mandy. Hang on.”
He left the phone in the room, whispered for Linda to hang up when he picked up the extension, and went across the hall to his bedroom.
“I was beyond worried,” he told Mandy.
“It was awful,” she said. “He came at me. It was Derek, but it wasn’t him. He tried to rape me. My own husband tried to rape me.”
“Oh, God,” was all he could say.
He let her sob. When she could speak again, she said, “Oh, Jamie.”
“Are you safe?”
“I had to hit him. I had to hit him hard. I’m not even sure what I hit him with. He’s bleeding. I pushed him i
nto the guest bedroom and shut the door. All he has to do is turn the handle to get out, but I don’t think he knows how. I don’t know what to do.”
“Get out of the house. Find a friend who’s okay and go there.”
“I can’t leave him. He’ll starve.”
“Leave food out for him and open the door a crack.”
“What happens when it runs out?”
“I don’t know, Mandy. All I know is it’s not safe for you there.”
“He won’t catch me unawares again. I know what to expect.”
“I wish I could help you.”
“If he falls asleep, I can bandage his head. He’s bleeding a lot behind his ear.”
He told her that scalp wounds bleed heavily, but he’d probably clot on his own. Just then, Linda called him through the door. He asked Mandy to hang on the line for a minute and put the phone down on his bed.
“Emma is trying to go to the bathroom,” Linda said. “What should I do?”
“Lead her to the toilet,” he said at the doorway. “I think she’ll be able to go herself.”
“How?”
“It’s automatic. It relies on memory stored in a part of the brain that’s not affected by the virus.”
He got back on the phone.
“I heard a woman say Emma’s name,” Mandy said. “Your Emma?”
It wasn’t serving any good purpose to keep lying. He let it out. When he was done there was silence on Mandy’s end.
“You still there?” he said.
“Barely,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
Inside Emma’s room, Linda picked up the phone and muted the line. If Jamie heard the click, it didn’t register.
He did hear Mandy’s breathing oscillate and thought she might be in the throes of a panic attack. “We’re being punished,” she said. “We’re being punished because of what we did. It’s our fault, Jamie.”
“If it’s anyone’s fault it was Steadman’s. What did we do wrong?”
“Maybe we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong, but you can’t deny it. It was my virus and your payload. Without us, Derek and Emma and everyone else would still be okay.” Her voice got small. She sounded far away. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Oh, he broke my mobile phone. Here’s his number. I’ll be using his, I guess.”
Linda hung up after he did.
*
Later that night, Linda came downstairs and joined Jamie in front of the TV. He muted it. How many times could you listen to the same grim statistics paraded out by tired, stressed-out anchors?
“They’re asleep,” she said. “The dog’s in between them.” They had pulled a second twin bed from the guest bedroom into Emma’s, so the girls could be together. Every time they were separated, even briefly, they became agitated. Jamie didn’t think they had any memory of their friendship, but it was undeniable there was some sort of connection.
“You left the door open, so we could hear them, right?” he said.
She sounded distant. Cold. “Yeah. Do you have any beer?”
“There’s a twelve-pack in the fridge. Help yourself.”
She came back with two cans and sat on the sofa next to him.
“No thanks,” he said.
“They’re both for me,” she said. “Save me getting up again. Is that okay?”
“No problem.”
“Anything new on TV?”
“Lots of additional cases. Political chaos in Washington. Looting. Gas lines. Supermarket shortages. First-responder delays. Want more?”
She snorted a no thanks. “I guess I’m part of the problem,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“My deputy chief’s been texting me all day to report for duty if I’m able-bodied. Not going to happen now.”
“There’s a need for doctors too. You’ve got to make choices, set your priorities.”
“Family first,” she said. “It’s what you sign up for when you have kids. How long have you been single?”
“My wife died thirteen years ago.”
“I wish my husband were dead. He put us through the ringer with the divorce and child support. Classic dead-beat asshole. He’s somewhere up in Maine at last sighting. He hasn’t contacted me since this went down. He either doesn’t give a shit or he’s got it.”
She pulled hard on her beer and crushed the can. Jamie hadn’t seen someone kill a beer that fast since college.
“You know what’s funny?” she said. “If his memory got wiped out, he’d be a much nicer person. I could probably stand to be in the same room with him. What should we do sleeping-wise?”
“Take my room. I’ll sleep down here on the couch.”
She cracked the other can. “I don’t want to do that. The sofa’s good for me. You a light or heavy sleeper?”
Light, was his answer.
“Then it’s better if you’re the one across the hall from them in case they wake up and start roaming. It takes a Chinese gong to get me up. By the way, your house is nice. Kyra told me it was.”
He acknowledged the compliment.
“I’ve got a rental in the ass-end of Brookline. I had a nice house when I was married—not as nice as this, but it was all right. We lost it.”
“What happened?”
“I trusted my husband, that’s what. He was a stockbroker at some shitty company—I didn’t know how shitty till later. All I knew about money was that debt was bad and savings were good, so I let him take care of our finances. Well, he got himself convinced that some stupid stock was going to the moon and he put most of our savings into it. What’s the opposite of going to the moon? It wiped us out. I never recovered.”
It was like a magic trick. She was crushing the second can of beer and he hadn’t taken notice of her draining it. She told him to hang on and came back from the kitchen with another one.
“Ever since, I’ve been treading water,” she said, plonking herself back down. “Detectives in Brookline don’t do half-bad, but I’m a single mom and Kyra’s got friends like your Emma who’ve always got nice things. She wants them too. I can’t give her everything, but I do what I can. After taxes and living expenses, there’s not a lot left every month. On top of that, my nose gets rubbed in it all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t need to tell you that this is a rich town. I get domestic-violence or burglary calls. I go into these mansions to help people, and I get treated like one of their fucking servants. It makes me want to—oh hell, you don’t want to be listening to my bitching and moaning.”
“It’s late,” he said. “I’ll get you some bedding, towels, toothbrush, toothpaste, et cetera.”
“Thank you. I hope I remember how nice you were to me and Kyra in the morning.”
He wasn’t sure if she was worried about forgetting because of drinking or coming down with the virus.
*
Mandy was holed up in her bedroom, unable to sleep. Derek’s room had been quiet for a few hours and it was nearing midnight. Jamie had texted her to Derek’s phone when he went to bed, and she had texted back that she was okay, but didn’t feel like talking. Now, she wanted to, but was disinclined to wake him.
It seemed inconceivable that she had to arm herself against her own husband, but that’s what she did in case he got out. She had three tiers of defense. The first and most benign was a large broom to push him back if he approached aggressively. If that failed, there was a pickax handle from the garage. The last resort was a large chef’s knife. She had her weaponry arrayed on and around her bed and she was listening to night sounds through her screened windows. She’d heard some sirens earlier, but now it was dead quiet—there wasn’t even the usual hum of cars from Westfield Boulevard.
She thought about Derek and how her flings with Jamie the past year had opened fault lines in their marriage. She thought about getting sick and she wondered how she would feel when the last
sands of memory fell from the top of the hourglass. Would she have a sense of who she was, who she had been? She thought about Jamie and how she felt lying in his arms, and then sleep came.
The noise confused her.
It sounded like it was coming from inside her head, because she had been dreaming about a bookstore with impossibly tall bookcases. When she reached for a volume on tiptoes, the case toppled and crashed onto her.
Sitting upright in bed, she wasn’t so sure it was in her head after all. There wasn’t any glass in her dream, but the noise was that of breaking glass followed by a dull impact. Her master bedroom had front and rear-facing windows. She got up and peered out windows onto a front lawn partially lit by a street lamp. Seeing nothing, she looked into the backyard. There were no lights in the back and the crescent moon was no help. There was a hint of movement on the barbecue patio. She picked up Derek’s cell phone for its flashlight, and when she shone it down, she screamed.
She ran downstairs, switched on the patio lights, and opened the sliding doors. She made out an open wound. There was bone, and deeper, the glistening lining of brain. She hurled impotent screams into the night. Derek’s right hand was moving in a weak grasp and release. His chest was rising and falling like a shallow bellows.
She said to Derek, “I don’t know what to do. What should I do?”
She called 911 on Derek’s phone, and got a recorded message saying that because of unusual levels of activity in Marion County, callers should leave a message and a dispatcher would try to respond. She left a frantic message but knew it was pointless. All she could do was sit beside him, speak to him, hold his hand. A puddle of blood reached the hem of her nightdress.
“Oh, good Lord.”
The voice startled her. When she turned, she saw it belonged to a neighbor. He was a man with whom she and Derek exchanged pleasantries, but he and his wife had always kept to themselves, standoffish in the nicest possible way.
“I heard the fall,” he said. “Is he?”
“He’s alive,” she said.
“What happened?”
“I locked him in. He must’ve gotten scared.”
“Did you call for help?”
“I tried but I don’t think anyone’s going to come.”
“They said on the TV that the 911 system is paralyzed. What can I do?”
