“Oh, it’ll be fine with Spence,” Jack said. “It’s Theo, I’m worried about. He swore he’d never go back to that farm.”
“Bad blood?”
Jack shrugged. “Theo didn’t get along with his mother and never wanted to darken that door again. I’ve tried to talk to him about it. Theo just says it brings up too many bad memories. He said they wanted him to stay and work in the family business. That wasn’t for him. You know how some families can be.”
“Is Theo’s mother still alive?” Oliver asked.
“No. Helen died a couple of years ago. She divorced Papa Spence and they never reconciled. Suicide. She was bi-polar and sick, as well, so she might have chosen lots of pills over another round of chemo. That’s another family secret rarely uttered. Sometimes talking to Theo or his dad, it feels like they work at the Pentagon or something. When Helen died, Theo was broken up, but for the wrong reasons. He got depressed because he and his mom never worked out their differences. When she died, he cried a little because he thought he should cry a lot. Theo didn’t have it in him to mourn her much. I’m sure it’s his greatest regret.”
“I’m sorry to hear of Theo’s loss, though…now that his mother’s gone, there’s really no reason not to make the run to salvation when the time comes, is there?”
She nodded her assent.
“That’s good,” Oliver said. “Because if Helen was still there, we’d have had to kill her, wouldn’t we, Jacqueline?” He caught her shocked look and patted her arm and waggled his eyebrows at her. “In the spirit of mutual benefit and enlightened self-interest.”
He moved on briskly. “The weather’s warming up. Should turn on the air conditioner and enjoy it while we can. Let’s get back inside. Seems like there’s no point to having a backyard now, not unless you’ve got kids or a dog.” He let out a long sigh. “I miss Steve.”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Jack said as she stepped into the kitchen.
Anna was still sitting across the kitchen table from Jaimie. She’d switched to reading a book about girls in love with the vampires who would inevitably kill them. “Coffee is mom’s solution for everything,” Anna said.
“What? Are you taking over for your Dad?” Jack said irritably.
“Just filling in,” Anna said. “He’s not feeling up to tormenting you.” Jack gave her a reproachful look and Anna added, “For now. He’ll be up and yanking you again in no time.”
Oliver went up on his toes and peered over Jaimie’s shoulder. The boy was studying a dictionary page that went from “reveal” to “reverse”, but he couldn’t discern what could hold a sixteen-year-old’s attention so fast.
“Where’s your coffee, Oliver?” Jack asked.
“Jacqueline, I do not dabble in that inferior ground up stuff in a big can. That’s for commoners. If you’re going to live in my house, you’ll have to elevate the tone. The grinder is on the counter and you’ll find a bag of rich, delicious and not so reasonably fresh coffee beans at the back of the fridge. That’s the way to make hot bean juice, the way God intended.”
“Sorry,” Jack said. “I didn’t know your stance on coffee was a religious one, but it’s a view I happen to share.”
She opened the refrigerator door and stared.
“Find it?” Oliver said. “Look to the back. We’re out of milk of course, but there’s that awful powder that impersonates cow cream.”
“The refrigerator light is out.”
Oliver reached out and flicked a light switch with no effect. The old man cursed. He looked at Anna, suddenly embarrassed at swearing in front of the girl. He shrugged. “Excuse my Polynesian. It’s rusty. I thought we’d have more time.”
Anna put down her book and got up from the table. “That’s okay, Mr. Oliver. I speak fluent Polynesian, in fact.” She breezed past him and stepped out to the living room. “Tell me it’s just a fuse.” She flicked three light switches in the foyer but no lights came on.
Anna cursed heavily.
“She does speak Polynesian,” Oliver said.
Jack’s face fell. “Anyone want the rest of the stew in the pot while it’s still hot?” Jaimie held his bowl high with his left hand, his right index finger still pinned to the word “revelator”.
* * *
Theo woke early the following morning. He gave a hoarse cry for his wife and Jack ran to him first. Anna, Jaimie and Oliver came to the living room in a rush to find him staring out the bay window.
People walked past the house and up the street toward Misericordia Drive’s exit. The loss of power was a signal and the second exodus had begun. It wasn’t quite a parade but it was more than a trickle.
A family of three were just disappearing from view. A young woman pushed a too-pale woman in a wheelchair as her father trailed behind, wearing a crammed backpack and carrying a cardboard file box. Grocery bags, a sleeping bag and a fishing pole lay across the lap of the woman in the wheelchair. She was obviously dead.
“I wonder how long that fool thinks he’s going to carry that box?” Oliver said. “And where are they going with the dead woman?” He went to the front closet, dug around the rear of the top shelf, and quickly left carrying a small leather bag that fit in his palm. He followed the sad trio up the street, calling after them.
Three small cars roared past, racing. Each one was packed full of young people. Their horns blasted as they swerved crazily around Oliver.
Next came a tall man with a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow carried a pile of firewood and an axe. He was wearing a red dress and he wore a long blonde wig.
Precarious and askew, Jaimie thought as he watched the wig. Good words, rarely used.
“You think he chopped up that wood off some neighbor’s tree?” Anna asked.
“Nah,” Jack said. “Must have stolen it from a neighbor’s wood pile. I’d never try to chop firewood in spike heels.”
Theo’s laughter had a coarse edge that was rough to their ears. “Too bad,” Theo said. “That would be pretty sexy.”
“Dad!” Anna said. “Sh! You’re too sick to make jokes like that.”
“Never…never too sick…” Theo said, gasping a little to catch his breath.
“Okay, you’ll make me sick with sick jokes,” Anna replied.
“The power outage has made people crazy,” Jack said. “We’ve had brownouts before — ”
“It’s a signal, Mom,” Anna said.
They all looked to her. Anna shrugged. “It’s the signal we didn’t know we were waiting for. Civil defense sirens are scary but they’re far off.”
“She’s right,” Theo said. “Things have been falling apart…but this? This tells us…something.”
Jack knelt by her husband and patted his shoulder, quieting him. “Utilities are gone.” She looked at Anna and Jaimie and added, “At least for now.”
“No fire department, no police and now no power.”
Oliver appeared at the window. He carried a fishing pole. He stalked through the front door and leaned into the living room. “Somebody put this aside. I got it from those people with the wheelchair.”
“How’d you convince them to give that up?” Anna asked.
“They were carrying too much. A couple little ruby rings are much lighter. Fakes, actually.”
“Teach a man to fish — ” Theo said.
“Don’t feel too bad for them. I wanted to give them one real pearl from a necklace but the kid was quite a negotiator. Put the rod and reel in the front closet. “I’m going to go check on Mrs. Bendham, get her packed up and situated.”
“You want to leave now?” Jack said. “I think we should wait. Stay still and sit this out.”
“I hope we can, but we’ve got to be ready. The wind is still blowing north and the smoke looks much closer. I’m not saying now is the time. I’m saying, just in case.” He ducked back out, quick for his age. Jack began to follow but he was already out the front door with a slam.
She
turned to her husband but Theo had fallen asleep, his shirt soaked with sweat.
Anna didn’t say anything but her eyes told Jack she was afraid. She moved to her daughter and held her, hugging tight.
Through Anna’s long hair, Jack looked at her son, almost as tall as she. He was sixteen going on seventeen in August. Where would they be and how much more would things change by his birthday?
Jaimie sat on the floor in front of the window. He looked so content scanning his Latin dictionary, it was as if her son existed on another plane, a ghost who traveled with them but otherwise kept to himself.
Jack pulled Anna to her even tighter, still gazing at her son. She wished he would think to stand and hug her. Even as a baby, he had never cuddled like his sister had. Once he had discovered books, words were all he wanted besides a steady supply of food and oxygen. She ached for him to need her more.
Jack would have put all her attention to embracing her daughter if she’d known how close she was to losing Anna.
Return to the beginning, man to animal
At three in the afternoon, a car horn blasted from the street. Anna’s boyfriend pounded on the Spencers’ front door. Trent’s father and mother sat in the front seat of their black SUV.
Theo woke and slowly hauled himself upright from the couch. “That boy has something against our front door.” He managed to struggle up and steadied himself against the walls as he staggered to Oliver’s front door.
“Anna! Anna!” Trent yelled. The screen door he had destroyed stood beside him on the Spencers’ front step. The front door shook under his fists.
Jack emerged from Oliver’s kitchen, tying the strings of a hospital mask behind her head. She slipped under her husband’s arm to help him walk into the sunshine.
Trent’s father, Jake Howser, punched his car horn again. Gina, Trent’s mother, spotted the Spencers slowly making their way down Douglas Oliver’s front walk.
Jaimie wandered out behind them. Jack threw a glance over her shoulder. “Your bare face is hanging out, young man. You aren’t wearing a mask.”
Jaimie ignored her, sat on Mr. Oliver’s front step and opened his Latin dictionary. A wasp buzzed in and landed on the white page. Jaimie paused to take in its delicate wings and squinted at the insect’s stinger. He wondered what the insect saw when it looked up at him. He wondered if the wasp saw people at all. Maybe it only saw food and threats.
Jaimie gazed at the wasp, admiring the beauty of its construction for a moment. Then he clapped the book shut. He reopened it, found the same page and picked up the tiny broken body carefully, weighing it in his palm.
“Trent! Trent!” Jack called. “We’re over here!”
The boy looked over his shoulder. When he spotted Theo, Trent’s face was fear. He turned and pounded on the Spencer’s front door even harder. “Anna! Anna!”
“Idiot,” Theo spoke in a low voice only his wife and Jaimie could hear.
“We’re all over here!” Jack called, struggling under the weight her husband put on her shoulder with each small step.
Trent spun around. “You moved?”
Theo smiled and gave a weak wave. “Moron. If it looks like I’m going to throw up on him, stand back.”
Theo’s obviously frail condition startled Trent’s parents. Jake and Gina stayed in the car, rolled up their windows and locked their doors. “Don’t come any closer!” Jake shouted. “Stay back!”
The Spencers stopped. Jack pulled a white and blue carpenter’s mask out of her back pocket and handed it to her husband.
“Great,” Theo whispered. “Now they can’t read my lips when I call them names.”
Trent rushed to Theo and Jack. “Where’s Anna? Is she okay?”
“Stay away from them!” his mother commanded. Gina Howser unlocked her door and stepped out of the car on the far side, looking wary.
She was a strikingly exotic woman with big dark eyes and long, curly hair. She stayed by the car, watching the Spencers with such intensity that Theo suspected she had, in fact, read his lips.
Her husband Jake rocked side to side in his seat. “Gina! Get back in here! They are infected, for God’s sake!”
“Shut up, Jake. You’re talking about our outlaws.”
Jake froze and stared straight ahead, gripping the wheel, knuckles white. He hadn’t turned off the engine. He looked like he was driving along a particularly narrow road at the edge of a cliff.
Trent ignored his parents and stepped closer to Jack and Theo. “Answer me! Is Anna okay?”
“She’s — ” Jack said.
“I’m better now that you’re here!” Anna ran out of Oliver’s front door and into Trent’s arms. “I was sleeping. I heard the car horn.” Trent hugged her. She kissed him on the mouth. Theo and Jack looked away.
“I had a dream. You were in it.” She glanced at her parents and smiled. “And now you’re here.”
“Oh, crap,” Jack said.
Trent spoke in anxious bursts. “Buddy’s dead. We just went by his house and there was a big orange X painted across the door. There are a bunch of those same Xs up the street.”
“What’s that mean?” Anna asked.
“I think it means quarantine. Like don’t come near this house or you’ll drop from Sutr Flu before your next underwear change. Like everybody’s dead inside.”
“Oh, God!” Jack said.
“God had nothing to do with it,” Theo said.
“Trent! Say what you’ve got to say. We are burning daylight here,” Gina Howser called.
“Have you heard from Benny or Sharon?” Anna asked.
Trent shook his head.
“Jenna?”
The boy shrugged. “My cell’s dead. I can’t even text them.” Trent said the last person he spoke to on the phone was his brother Bob four nights previous.
Bob, two years older than Trent, had a part-time job downtown. “His boss made him stay overnight, keeping an eye on his lousy garage. They didn’t even have any gas but he was supposed to stay there and watch for looters. When Bob asked what he was supposed to do if looters showed up, his boss gave him a big wrench and told him to use his imagination.”
“You haven’t heard anything more from him?”
Trent’s face went red. “If he was okay, he could have crawled home by now. We’re driving down there to see if we can find him. Then we’re headed up to our cottage up north. You can come with us.”
“Oh, no,” Jack said. “That’s not happening. You are not going downtown and you certainly aren’t going anywhere with the Howsers.”
Anna held Trent tighter, her face in his neck.
“It’s in the woods,” Trent said, “not far from a big lake. There’s a wood stove for cooking. Dad was a boy scout. We’ll be fine up there, at least until things settle down. You’ll love it. We can go fishing and canoeing. It’ll be great! It’ll be safe. There are too many people around here. Have you heard the gunshots at night?”
Jack Spencer shook her head emphatically but a lump in her throat seemed to be getting in the way of her voice.
“Can my family come?” Anna asked.
“No, no,” Gina called, shaking her head harder than Jack, as if they’d entered into a competition to see whose head would fall off first.
“Mom! We have room for them!”
“It’s a cottage, not an ark, Trent! If you’re coming, we have to go now.” Gina focused on Jack and Theo. “My other son may be bleeding somewhere and we can probably make it to the cottage by dark if we hurry.”
Theo coughed and struggled to maintain his balance, pushing his voice past the razors in his throat. “You’re not taking my daughter on some fool’s errand. Downtown is where the fires are.”
Anna looked at Theo. “Daddy — ”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jack said to Gina, “but there’s an excellent chance your other son is dead. If he’s not, he’ll find you. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but you�
�ve probably already lost Bob. I’m not going to risk losing my daughter while you go look for him. Look at the sky. The city to the south is on fire!”
“You wouldn’t let me go downtown alone on the bus when everything was peachy,” Anna said.
“I didn’t. You’re right. So you’re sure as hell not going anywhere now,” Jack replied.
“I’m going to find my son and we’ll make it to the cottage. We spend every weekend of the summer up there. We’ve got lots of friends there. It’ll be fine,” Gina said. “Staying here is the dangerous thing to do.”
“I could come,” Anna said to Trent. She looked to her mother. “Just until things blow over.”
“No,” Theo managed and then bent over, his hands on his knees, coughing hard. The coughing continued until he pulled his mask off and gasped, taking in fresh air.
“Jesus!” Jake Howser came to life, clawing at his door lock and bursting from the SUV. “Get away!” he yelled. “Get away!”
Jake grabbed his son by the neck and pulled him back across the street toward their car. Gina grabbed something from her seat and rushed forward to join her husband. As she ran forward she tied a winter scarf around her face. She joined her husband in pulling Trent toward the car. Trent couldn’t decide whether to resist or let them take him. He reached toward Anna uselessly.
Theo collapsed to his knees, coughing more but bringing nothing up.
“Daddy!” Anna cried. She froze in a moment of indecision and then moved toward Trent.
“Sonofabitch!” Jack cried and sprang forward, leaving her husband to grab Anna’s arm.
“No! No!” Anna shouted. “Wait!” She almost squirmed away when Jaimie appeared behind her. The boy clamped his arms around his sister’s waist. She leaned back, pushing hard at Jaimie’s shoulders, surprised at his strength.
Anna’s mouth dropped open. Jaimie gazed straight into her eyes. She stopped struggling. He had never looked into her eyes. What she saw there made her a statue. Anna nodded at her brother, her mouth still hanging open. “O-oh,” she said.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 19
