by Ronald Malfi
The sound of the back door closing jarred him from his reverie. Ellie stood there with dirt on her knees and her braid undone.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s tough work,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Looking for birds.”
“You still worried about those eggs? You’re being silly.”
“They won’t survive without a mother.”
“Mama bird will come back.”
“Not if someone touched the nest. Birds can smell if a human touches their nest. They won’t come back, not even if there’s babies in it.”
“Did you touch the nest?”
“No way.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t. And I’m pretty sure Mom didn’t, either. So you’ve got nothing to worry about. She’ll come back.”
“I don’t think so,” Ellie said. She went to the fridge, took an ice pop from the freezer, and proceeded to peel the wrapping off as she leaned against the dishwasher. “Haven’t seen a bird all week.”
“Yeah?” he said, still gazing at the charred struts and blackened brickwork of all that remained of Deke’s house across the street.
“Nope. Not a single one,” she said, and disappeared with her ice pop into the living room.
19
There was a staleness to the air, a gray moldiness that seemed to clot halfway along his nasal passageways. He thought about the events of the past several days, then stopped Ellie in her tracks with a single hand to her chest.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Be careful.” She sounded like an adult.
He crossed over to a display of camping gear, a trio of mannequins seated in camping chairs outside a bright orange pup tent, camouflaged knapsacks at their feet. He was alerted to a ghostly moan that started out low, then ascended through the octaves. He froze in place, looking around. The store looked empty; there was no movement from the rear of the shop, where darkness encroached upon racks of clothing and shelves laden with camping gear.
“There,” Ellie said, pointing to a spot on the ceiling just above David’s head.
He looked up and saw a set of bamboo wind chimes swaying from an acoustical tile; a gentle breeze was issuing in through the hole he’d punched in the glass and causing the bamboo chimes to howl.
In no time he was able to locate a battery-powered lantern, which he used to check out the rest of the shop before inviting Ellie to join him. Briefly, he fretted over the idea that the lantern’s light would be visible to anyone who happened to stroll by the shop, but then he convinced himself he was being paranoid. Besides, it was important he execute a thorough check of the place, lest he come across any undesirable scenario at the end of one of the aisles or in one of the darkened corners of the shop. He’d seen some in the past, and he didn’t want Ellie stumbling across anything perverse.
But there were no horrible scenes lying in wait for them. The place hadn’t even been ransacked, as far as David could tell. He wondered if this was a good sign or a bad sign—why hadn’t the place been ransacked?—before convincing himself that if he continued to overthink everything, he’d eventually blow a gasket.
The only time he paused was when the lantern illuminated a bright orange extension cord coiled like a cobra on a shelf. The sight of it caused sweat to pop out on his forehead. The hand holding the lantern began to tremble. He turned quickly away from it.
“There’s snacks,” Ellie said, peering down into a glass display case. On the top shelf were boxes of protein bars.
“Grab a handful,” David told her. He snatched two sleeping bags from a shelf and carried them over to a second tent display set up in the center of the store. This tent was larger, with a zippered flap at the front. He set down the lantern, then unspooled each sleeping bag, tucking them partway into the tent so that only their legs would poke out.
“I got a bunch,” Ellie said, coming over with an armful of protein bars. She set them down beside her suitcase and shoe box, then examined David’s setup.
“It’ll be like camping,” he said.
“Okay.”
He took the baseball hat off her and rubbed a hand along her head. Her short hair felt strange to him. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a sec.”
At the front of the store, there was a multitude of small items by the register—little cylinders of Mace, a display of plastic lighters, key chains, a rack of embroidered wallets, brightly colored whistles, and slender metal canisters whose labels suggested the product was made with actual deer urine. David stuffed several cans of Mace into his pockets, then grabbed two fistfuls of lighters. He returned to the door, where broken javelins of glass sparkled in the moonlight across the floor. Meticulously, he went about placing the canisters of Mace and the plastic lighters in tidy little rows in front of the door.
“What’s that for?” Ellie asked.
“In case someone comes in,” he said. “They’ll knock these over and we’ll hear them.”
“Like a trap?”
“More like an alarm system.”
“Who would come in?” She was gazing out the window at the darkened street beyond.
“No one,” he said. “It’s just to be safe.”
“Smart idea,” she said.
“Yeah? Well, I got the idea from you, you know.”
“From me? How?”
He stood up, his back aching. Wincing, he went over to a rack of hunting magazines and selected one. He nodded toward the counter and told Ellie to go back there and find him some tape or something. She returned with a spool of electrical tape.
“Perfect.” David took the spool and tucked it under one arm while he tore the cover off the hunting magazine. He proceeded to tape the cover over the hole he’d knocked in the glass. “When you were around three years old,” he said, “you used to set up some of your little toys in the front hall of the house, right by the front door. You did this every night before bed, without fail, for the longest time. One night I asked you why you did that, and you said it was in case someone ever tried to get in while we were asleep, they’d trip over the toys and we’d hear them and wake up. Do you remember?”
Ellie shook her head. Her eyes were huge in the semidarkness.
“Your mom and I called it the Night Parade—all those little toy figurines marching across the floor, keeping watch over us while we slept. Protecting us.”
“Did anyone ever break in?”
“No. But I nearly broke my neck over them a few times, stumbling around in the middle of the night for a glass of water or to go to the bathroom.”
“What was I so afraid of?”
“I never thought of it that way. You were just a smart kid,” he said. “You still are.”
“Were you there when Mom died?”
He felt something stick in his throat. The question had caught him off guard.
“Dad?” she said when he didn’t answer. “Were you with her?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How did it happen? Did she get the disease?”
“No,” he said. “Those doctors, they used her up, Ellie. They were . . . they were too hard on her, and her body, it just gave out. She had gotten so weak. But those doctors, they didn’t listen.” He could summon a picture of Dr. Sanjay Kapoor’s face now, and all the anger, still fresh and boiling and very near the surface, welled up inside of him as quickly as if he were being inflated with air. He briefly closed his eyes.
“Did she hurt?” Ellie asked. A single tear slid down her cheek; it shimmered like a jewel in the moonlight.
“No, baby, she didn’t hurt.” Yet he was picturing Kathy’s face now and knew that she had. Down deep.
“Those doctors should have listened to you. If they thought Mom was the cure, they should have been more careful with her.”
“Yes. They should have.”
She hugged him, her face pressed against his chest. “I’m sorry you had to be there,” she said.
“It’s
okay,” he said, rubbing her head. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Then he pawed at his eyes, cleared his throat, and smiled down at his daughter. “We’ll be okay,” he promised.
“Okay,” Ellie said.
“Let’s go lie down.”
They returned to their little campsite in the middle of the store. Ellie pulled off her shoes, then crawled into the tent, carrying the shoe box of bird eggs with her.
David felt grimy, but his exhaustion made the little door with the word RESTROOM on it at the back of the store seem a million miles away. He stripped off his own shoes and pants, already feeling the chill in the air prick his bare thighs. After a moment of consideration, he wrapped the Glock in his jeans and tucked it beneath his sleeping bag. He bent down and parted the tent flaps. Ellie sniffled quietly in the gloom inside the tent.
“How ’bout a bedtime story?”
She sniffed again and said, “Okay. What story?”
He undid the clasps of the little pink suitcase and rifled through the items he’d taken from the Langstrom house. Without thinking, he had dumped a few books in there; looking at them now, he saw that many of them were probably too immature for Ellie. But then he saw the crinkled dust jacket and recognized a book from his own youth—a hardcover edition of Where the Sidewalk Ends.
“This,” he said, climbing into the tent to join his daughter, “is a great book. I had a copy when I was about your age.”
“Where’d you get this copy?”
“Just someplace. Hey, do you want me to read or what?”
“What’s it about?” She snuggled closer to him as he turned on the electric lantern. Their shadows bloomed like great arching beasts on the walls and ceiling of the tent.
“Poems. Do you like poems?”
He felt her shrug against him. “Some, I guess.”
“Well, you’ll like these. They’re pretty clever.”
He opened the cover, and before he could turn to the title page, Ellie’s hand was up, her fingers splayed across the book.
“Wait,” she said. “What’s that say?”
It was a handwritten inscription on the blank white page. David adjusted the book so that she could read it for herself in the lamplight.
To our little Moon-Bird,
Wishing you the happiest of birthdays!
Love, Mom & Dad
“Who wrote that?”
David had an idea, but he pretended like he didn’t.
“Who’s Moon-Bird?”
“Just someone’s name, I guess,” he said. His exhaustion was like a physical weight pressing down on him now. It was a struggle just to keep his eyelids open.
“Strange name,” Ellie said.
“Probably a nickname. Like how I call you Little Spoon.”
“But not anymore, remember?”
“That’s right. I remember. Not anymore. So can we read a bit so we can get some sleep?”
She curled up against him. He could smell her sweet-sour breath, the odor of her unwashed hair, the heat radiating from her body. Again, Kathy’s face flashed before his eyes, and it was all he could do not to groan in utter grief at the thought of her.
When his heartbeat slowed and the jitteriness of the day seemed to evaporate from him, he realized Ellie was touching his arm with both hands.
“Are you doing it now?” he asked.
“Yes. Is that okay?”
It was a level of peace, of comfort, that he hadn’t experienced since he was a child. Yet something else invaded his thoughts. “What is it doing to you?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“How does it happen?”
“I don’t know. I’m just taking the badness out of you.”
“So where does that badness go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s doing something bad to you,” he said.
“I don’t think it is.”
“But you don’t know, do you?” he said. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Do you, El?”
“No.”
“Let’s maybe not do it until we understand it better,” he said. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Her palms lifted from him. She encircled his arm in an embrace. A moment later, he felt a tremor of anxiety pulse through him. The heaviness of it all was back, just as quickly as Ellie had chased it away.
“Okay,” he said, turning to the first poem. “Let’s read.”
So they read, and David was halfway through the third poem when Ellie’s breathing softened and she began to snore quietly against him. He paused in midverse and said her name aloud. When she didn’t respond, he closed the book, turned off the lantern, and shut his eyes.
For a time, the whole world was comprised of the whooshing sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He focused on Ellie’s gentle snoring, but after a while, it seemed that her snores grew more and more distant, as if some great expanse of space had gradually begun to separate them. He dreamt. And at some point, his dreams segued into a nightmare, which concluded when men in dark suits stuffed Ellie into a nondescript white van and drove her away.
20
Ten months earlier
After a number of other students and two teachers got sick at Ellie’s elementary school, David and Kathy decided to pull their daughter out. Many other parents did the same, which made it difficult to find tutors. The few tutors Kathy was able to locate were already setting up mini-classrooms in their homes and tutoring anywhere from five to ten kids at the same time.
“That’s no different from sending her to school,” Kathy argued. “She’s still around other kids who might be carrying something.”
“Well, it’s still less kids. The chances of exposure are much, much lower.”
It was a pointless thing to say, and David recognized that the second the words were out of his mouth. To date, it was still not known how the illness was transferred from one host to another. There had been countless reports where only a single member of a family had contracted the illness; on the other hand, there were the nightly reports that told what U.S. cities had the highest rate of infection, though no one could understand what made those particular cities more susceptible. The National Guard had moved in to some of these areas to maintain control and to begin quarantine procedures. The images of quarantined suburban neighborhoods on the nightly news were disturbing—street corners and intersections no different from any other throughout the country patrolled by military vehicles; soldiers in fatigues wearing gas masks, assault rifles strapped to their chests; children with masks over their mouths playing soccer behind a fence capped in concertina wire surrounding the perimeter of the quarantined zone.
“What happens if someone wants to leave?” Kathy asked him on one of the rare nights she agreed to watch the news with him.
“I suppose they don’t let them.”
“But what if they try to leave?”
“They’ll stop them.”
“How?”
“However they can.”
“Do you think they’d really shoot someone?”
“Probably not,” he said, although he didn’t know this for sure.
“Then what’s with all the guns?”
“Intimidation factor,” he suggested.
“What about kids?” she said, and for a split second David thought she was changing the subject. Back before this whole mess had started, they had contemplated having a second child. Wanderer’s Folly had put their intentions on hold, but he wondered now if she had been thinking about it all along.
“What about them?” he said.
“If some kids tried to leave, do you think they’d shoot them?”
“Those guards?” he said, nodding at the TV. On the screen, a National Guardsman who looked no older than nineteen stood frowning at the camera. He was waving the cameraperson away and pointing toward something offscreen. David wondered if the news crew was actually attempting to get inside the quarantined perimeter. “I don’t know, hon. Like I said, I think those guns are mostly for intimid
ation. They’re probably not even loaded.”
“Bullshit.” Kathy got up and went into the kitchen.
Her blood test from work had come back clean, but in the time since, her attitude hadn’t improved. She’d remained agitated, nervous, quick to bite his head off. Her behavior had caused an opposite reaction in him, as he felt responsible for maintaining some stability, some normalcy, in the household and not to spiral into panic. He kept trying to rationalize the situation, to present her with facts that might ease her mind. Maryland boasted some of the lowest numbers of infected persons. Things would be okay.
He got up and went to the kitchen in time to see Kathy throw a pill into her mouth and follow it up with a glass of water.
“What’s that you’re taking?”
“What’s it matter to you?”
“Please,” he said. “Please stop.”
She set the glass down on the counter, then folded her arms over her chest. She was wearing just a tank top, and David could see the tiny braille knobs of gooseflesh pimpling up on her shoulders. He, too, felt a slight chill in the air.
He picked up the medicine bottle, read the label.
“Zoloft.”
“So?”
“These aren’t even prescribed to you. Who’s Jeanette Vasquez?”
“A secretary at work.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re taking someone else’s antidepressant meds?”
“I just wanted to see if they would take the edge off. I’ve got an appointment with Bahethi next week for my own prescription.”
“You really need these?”
“I’m losing it, David. I’m a paranoid mess. Haven’t you noticed?”
“You’re overreacting, is what you’re doing.”
“How many students at your college have died?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He’d stopped counting after the first dozen. “But none of them were ever my students.”
She made some snorting sound that approximated a laugh. “So? What does that mean? Tell me.”
