by Glenn Cooper
“Can you help me get him inside?”
Rosenberg wasn’t a robust man, nor was he a young man—he had to be eighty. He weighed maybe one-forty, but he was surprisingly strong for his size, and he bore most of Derek’s mass, lifting him by the shoulders. They got him onto the sofa and Rosenberg, without asking, went looking for a towel to put under his bleeding head, as if the furniture needed protection.
Mandy sat on the floor and grasped Derek’s hand again. She whispered a thank-you. Rosenberg asked if he should stay, then declared, before she could answer, that he would stay.
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
That sent tears flowing.
There were a few bottles of spirits on a trolley. He asked if he could have a whiskey and she said, of course.
“Was he, you know, sick?”
She nodded.
“You’re not wearing a mask,” he said.
“Neither are you.”
“My wife has it,” he said. “She’s had it for two days. I don’t know why I don’t have it. Maybe I will. But you’re young. You should have a mask.”
“I want to get sick,” she said.
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
He was standing over her, a glass of Scotch in his hand. There was a red smear on white whiskers from carrying Derek.
“There’s blood on your beard,” she said.
“Oh.”
He pulled his polo shirt up from the waist and used it as a towel. His belly was tight and muscular, his chest a tufted mat of gray.
“Do you need to be with your wife?”
“She was in bad shape before she got the bug. She had a stroke last year.”
Her eyes were on Derek. His breathing was guttural. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t broadcast it. We hardly knew you folks. She didn’t want to go on like she was. She wanted me to help end her life, but I wouldn’t do it. She got the bug from one of the home-care nurses, I think. She’s better off now, not remembering, if you ask me.”
Mandy opened her palm and Derek’s hand slipped out. His chest was still.
“I’m sorry,” Rosenberg said. “Do you pray?”
She answered, “No.”
“Normally, I don’t either.”
15
The next day, Jamie repeatedly called Mandy on her home line and Derek’s mobile. There was no answer.
Just when he feared he might never hear her voice again, she called.
She knew he’d be worried, but she was unable to bring herself to speak to him until much of the day had passed. Her voice was dry and constricted. Bony fingers of guilt were so tightly wrapped around her throat that she had trouble getting words out. Guilt for her virus. Guilt for being healthy while Derek got sick. Guilt for locking him in a room unattended. Guilt for secretly wanting to be with Jamie for the past year.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh Jesus, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
He was sorry. Sorry for her. Derek meant nothing to him. He let her anger stand.
“What happened?”
She told him. The fall. Rosenberg. Rosenberg’s surreal suggestion, no his insistence, that she let him dig a grave in her backyard. No one was going to be coming for the body, he had told her. She chose a spot in the shade of the apple tree. The old man had labored for hours, dealing with the tangle of roots, never once complaining or suggesting an easier plot of ground. It was more or less half a grave, Rosenberg had said when he was done. Derek wouldn’t be six feet under, maybe three. He wasn’t making a joke.
Jamie asked what she would do now. Do? She would go back to work, she supposed. As long as she was healthy, she would work. She asked him the same question, but he wasn’t as certain. He couldn’t bear to leave Emma with this woman, Linda Milbane. There was a lot about her that didn’t sit well.
The day after Derek’s death Jamie dialed in to a CDC conference call. No one knew at the time that it would be the final one. Dr. Hansen didn’t lead it—he had gone missing. A junior epidemiologist took charge, delivering his report in a shaky voice. Data collection from domestic and international partners had slowed to a trickle. The young physician conceded to the small number of attendees that unfiltered reports from social media and cable news were at this point going to be the best sources of information on the epidemic.
A man who identified himself as the director of public health for the state of Oregon asked about the most up-to-date case count.
The epidemiologist answered, “At this point, I wouldn’t like to say. Case reporting got unreliable pretty fast. Even before systems started completely breaking down, the numbers were suspect—on the low side. However, I’d say we’re looking at very large numbers from virtually every state. Internationally, the data looks similar. Dr. Abbott from Boston was the first to give us data on the incidence of infection in an exposed population in quarantine. Dr. Abbott, is the eighty-percent incidence still holding?”
Jamie unmuted his phone and said, “I’m not in quarantine any longer, so I don’t have better numbers. I’m still okay so it’s not a hundred percent.”
The epidemiologist added that two other quarantine sites were also showing a seventy- to eighty-percent infection rate several days post-exposure.
“That’s pretty much all we have at this time. Please dial in to this number at the same time two days from now. If anyone is here at the center, we’ll answer. If not—well—”
Jamie and Linda started off in solidarity, but problems developed before long. He had nothing against a few beers, but in the morning, after her first night at his place, he found six empties in the trash. He assumed she would have wanted to stay sharp in case there was an emergency, but he assumed wrong. He’d let it go for the time being.
The next morning, she was up before him and had a pot of coffee going.
“They’re still asleep,” he said.
She replied, “We need a plan.”
He nodded and turned the TV to a local station. Instead of the news there was a signal pattern.
“That can’t be good,” he said.
He tuned to a cable station, watched a while and switched to another one, then muted it after a couple of minutes. The main takeaway was that there was a dearth of new information. Reporters in the field had gone missing and the on-air anchors and technical staff at cable news headquarters were thinning. Instead of breaking news there was mostly a repetition of one- and two-day-old stories about a rudderless government and military and National Guard mobilizations that were fizzling due to attrition in the ranks.
“Look,” Linda said, “I don’t know if we’re completely on our own yet, but we need to act like we are.”
He wasn’t sure how he felt about the “we” talk. Maybe it was a good idea to team up, but they hadn’t exactly broached the topic.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“We need food—lots of it, especially non-perishables. We need bottled water in case the municipality stops pumping. We need batteries and candles in case the power goes out. We need toilet paper. We need beer. I checked your cupboards and closets. Hope you don’t mind. You don’t have a lot of supplies.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve always been a lousy shopper. I usually only buy enough for the week.”
“If you look after the girls for the day, I’ll make a supply run.”
“Do you have stored things at home?”
“I’ll start there then branch out.”
They just fell into a team effort and he didn’t know exactly how he felt about it. He was a private person. He liked his solitude. But Linda was undeniably practical in her approach, and with an uncertain future, he wasn’t inclined to cast her off. Besides, Kyra was having a calming effect on Emma.
When Linda was gone, he loaded a tray with two bowls of instant oatmeal and sliced bananas and took it up to
the girls’ room. The two of them were entwined on Emma’s bed. He sat and watched them until Emma sniffed at the cereal and slowly opened her eyes. She shifted her gaze between him and the food tray. Yesterday, she looked at him with abject fear. Today, her face was at least neutral.
“Hello, Emma,” he said in a soft, even tone. He pointed at his chest. “It’s your dad. Dad. You remember me, don’t you?”
He was all but sure she did, something positive to cling to. Carrie Bowman had demonstrated that their patient, Andy Soulandros, could relearn at least some simple things he had forgotten.
“Are you hungry?” he said, patting his abdomen and air-spooning his mouth. “Hungry?”
He held up one of the bowls and Emma slithered out of bed. In doing so, Kyra woke too and eyed the cereal bowl.
“Good morning, Kyra. I’m Jamie, Emma’s dad. Remember? Are you hungry too?”
Emma snatched the cereal from his hands and tried to get at it with her mouth, but the bowl was too deep. He handed her a spoon. She grasped it instinctively and began shoveling. Kyra leapt from the bed and seized the other bowl then took a spoon from Jamie’s hand as her friend had done.
“You guys were hungry,” Jamie said when their bowls were empty. “Let’s do some bathroom chores then we’ll have a lesson. Okay?”
Their lack of comprehension didn’t depress him as much as it had yesterday. He was resigned to the long haul. Emma was alive and physically strong. Her coughing had subsided, and he didn’t think she still had a fever. He would teach her what she had forgotten. He would get his daughter back—in some shape or form.
He opened Emma’s bathroom door and flushed the toilet to attract her. She peered in suspiciously.
“Do you want to pee?” he said.
Her bladder was full after a long sleep and either instinct, or a memory of his lesson from the day before, kicked in. Unashamed, she pulled her panties down and sat on the toilet, and when she finished, she reached for the flush lever.
“Good girl! Way to go, Emma! Now, let’s teach you how to brush your teeth.”
*
Linda lived a couple of miles away in a less salubrious part of Brookline, hard by the Brighton border. The Brookline Police Department required its officers to reside in the city, but a single parent on a detective’s salary had to stretch like mad to live in the wealthy enclave. All she could manage was a top-floor rental in a triple-decker on a noisy and busy street. On the other hand, Kyra was the beneficiary of one of the finest public-school systems in the Commonwealth, so Linda took heart in the situation.
Her street was eerily devoid of cars and people. When she pulled into her driveway, before she had even exited her vehicle, her landlord appeared from his front door and accosted her. At the best of times, she hated the sight of the guy, and this wasn’t the best of times. He was an older fellow with a boorish manner, who usually had a hair across his ass about the volume of Kyra’s music, or the placement of Linda’s trash bins, or some other item of gravity.
“Where the hell’s the police department when you need them?”
“What’s the matter, Dick?” she said.
“What’s the matter? Is that some kind of joke? Wife’s not right in the head and the granddaughter’s sick too. Her mother didn’t come home from work last night and I can’t reach her.”
“How’s that a police matter?”
“She works in Brookline over at the Colony Nursing Home. I want an officer to go over there and find her.”
“They’re a little busy.”
“I pay my goddamn taxes, same as everyone.”
“Sorry. I’m busy too.”
“I need milk.”
She walked away from him.
“I said I need milk. For the baby.”
“There’s a lot of things I need too. Go to the store.”
He followed after her. “Store’s closed. They’re all closed. You got any milk?”
“If I do, you can’t have it.”
“Then I’m evicting you,” he snarled. “I’m reclaiming my apartment.”
She brushed her blazer to the side, showing her pistol. “You try to get inside my place and I will shoot you, Dick. Don’t doubt that.”
Her apartment was a mess, but its present condition had nothing to do with the crisis. Her daughter was a slob and Linda resented anything to do with domesticity. Most of her shifts ended with a couple of hours of overtime tacked on, and when she limped home, it was all she could do to microwave a meal and crack a beer. Kyra was no help and she couldn’t afford a cleaner, so they lived in a state of untidiness, unwashed dishes, dust and grime. She got the box of large trash bags from under the sink and began going cupboard by cupboard, bagging food. Then she emptied out the refrigerator, including the carton of milk that over her dead body was not going to her landlord. The entire exercise netted a disappointing two bags of supplies that she lugged to her car. The landlord was standing on the porch, watching her.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“None of your fucking business.”
She loaded her trunk and drove off in the direction of the nearest grocery store, suspecting it was going to be a futile exercise, and it was. She heard the blaring alarm before she rounded the corner. The front windows were shattered. She climbed through the frame, avoiding the jagged edges. Inside, the shelves were completely laid bare. To be thorough, she went around to the butcher’s suite in the rear, but the cooler units were cleaned out too. Back on the sidewalk, she squinted. In the time she had been inside, a cluster of clouds blew to the east, and now the midday sun flooded the block. Two men were peering into her car, their shadows short. They had bandanas over their faces like desperados from an old Western. As she got closer, one of them warned her to keep her distance.
“Are you sick?” the other one said to her.
“I’m not sick,” she said.
“Then how come you aren’t wearing a mask?”
“Move away from my car,” she warned.
“Got anything in there to eat?” the first one asked.
She saw a carpenter’s hammer sticking out of his belt.
“Brookline Police,” she said sharply, drawing her pistol. “Why don’t you get the hell out of here before you royally piss me off?”
They trotted off wordlessly, leaving her to contemplate her next move. She got back in her car and began to drive around, sizing up houses.
Little houses, little pantries, she thought. Big houses, big pantries.
With that in mind, she drove south. Ordinarily, there would have been a long red light to cross over Boylston Street, but there were precious few cars on the road. She zoomed through the red at the intersection with Chestnut Hill Avenue and headed toward The Country Club. The golf club was sufficiently legendary that it got away with that kind of minimalist name. The huge houses surrounding it were the dwellings of Boston’s younger movers and shakers and ossified, old-money types. Driving slowly down a leafy, canopied street, she peered at the gaps between hedgerows, then made a snap decision to pull into the empty, circular drive of a stately brick mansion. She got out and had a look around. The sun was still out, and it was hard to tell if there were any interior lights on.
She rang the front doorbell and waited. She rang again.
It was a property that had been upgraded with smart-house tech. The doorbell had a camera and an intercom, and a breathy female voice answered.
“Who is it?”
“Brookline Police.”
“We didn’t call the police.”
“It’s a wellness check.”
“How do we know you’re a policewoman?”
Linda raised her badge to the camera.
“We’re all okay in here, Officer. No one is sick.”
“I’ve got to check. Open up.”
“You’re not wearing a mask. You’re supposed to be wearing a mask.”
“I’ve been exposed already, ma’am. I haven’t gotten sick. I don’t need a mask anymore.”
“We don’t want to take the chance. Please leave.”
“Do you have enough food in there?”
“We’ve got enough for a few weeks, thanks.”
She tried the door. It was locked. She unlocked it with a noisy blast from her Glock.
The hall was done in black and white marble. A bridal staircase swept to the second level. She never got used to the contrast in lifestyles—hers to theirs. So much space for so few people. So many nice things. She heard screams. A woman’s and a female child. She headed toward a gleaming, white kitchen.
She was surprised how young the woman of the house was—maybe thirty, maybe less. How did someone that age get that rich?
“What do you want?” the woman said. She was wearing skinny jeans, hiding her young daughter behind long legs.
“Some of your food. Then I’ll leave.”
The pain short-circuited her brain. For a few seconds, nothing existed but the pain in her right thigh.
She wheeled around. He was wearing a preppy fleece and was wielding a golf club, poised to strike again. That wasn’t going to happen. The bullet caught him in the shoulder and judging by his howls of agony, it must have shattered bone.
“Why did you hit me?” Linda screamed at him. A white cabinet was smeared in blood where he slid to the hardwood floor.
The man’s wife rushed to him and pressed a tea towel against the red stain on his gray fleece. The child screamed, “Daddy.”
“Please! Call 911!” the woman said.
Linda set her jaw. “No one’s going to come. You’re on your own.”
“What should I do?”
“You’re doing it. Press hard and hope for the best.”
“I need help. You shot him. You need to help him. You said you were the police.”
“It was self-defense,” Linda said. The pain in her leg came crashing back to awareness. She pointed angrily at the groaning man. “You should not have hit me.”
“He’s bleeding badly!”
“It’s not my problem. Now where’s your fucking pantry?”
16
Jamie was impressed with Linda’s haul. The two of them made multiple trips from her car, carrying bulging trash bags and supermarket totes.
