I learned, for one thing, that we had been wise to avoid big cities. Major cities were disaster areas—not because of looting and violence (there had been surprisingly little) but because of catastrophic infrastructure collapse. The rising of the red sun had looked so much like the long-predicted death of the Earth that most people had simply stayed home to die with their families, leaving urban centers with minimally functioning police and fire departments and radically understaffed hospitals. The minority of people who attempted death by gunshot, or who dosed themselves with extravagant amounts of alcohol, cocaine, OxyContin, or amphetamines, were the inadvertent cause of the most immediate problems: they left gas stoves running, passed out while driving, or dropped cigarettes as they died. When the carpet began to smolder or the drapes burst into flames nobody called 911, and in many cases there would have been no one there to pick up. House fires quickly became neighborhood fires.
Four big plumes of smoke were rising from Oklahoma City, the newscaster said, and according to phone reports much of the south side of Chicago had already been reduced to embers. Every major city in the country—every one that had been heard from—was reporting at least one or two large-scale uncontrolled fires.
But the situation was improving, not deteriorating. Today it had begun to seem possible that the human race might survive at least a few days longer, and as a result more first-responders and essential-service personnel were back at their posts. (The downside was that people had begun to worry how long their provisions might last: grocery-store looting was a growing problem.) Anyone who was not an essential-service provider was being urged to stay off the roads—the message had gone out before dawn over the emergency broadcast system and through every radio and TV outlet still functioning, and it was being repeated tonight. Which helped to explain why traffic had been reasonably scarce on the interstate. I had seen a few military and police patrols but none of them had interfered with us, presumably because of the plates on my car—California and most other states had begun issuing EMS license plate stickers to physicians after the first flicker episode.
Policing was sporadic. The regular military remained more or less intact despite some desertions, but Reserve and National Guard units were at fractional strength and couldn’t fill in for local authorities. Electrical power was sporadic, too; most generating stations were understaffed and barely functional, and blackouts had begun to cascade through the grid. There were rumors that nuclear plants at San Onofre in California and Pickering in Canada had come close to terminal meltdowns, though that was unconfirmed.
The announcer went on to read a list of designated local food depots, hospitals still open for business (with estimated waiting times for triage), and home first-aid tips. He also read a Weather Bureau advisory cautioning against prolonged exposure to the sun. The sunlight seemed not to be immediately deadly, but excessive UV levels could cause “long-term problems,” they said, which was about as sad as it was funny.
I caught a few more scattered broadcasts before dawn, but the rising sun obscured them all with noise.
The day dawned overcast. I did not, therefore, have to drive directly into the glare of the sun; but even this muted sunrise was dauntingly strange. The entire eastern half of the sky became a churning soup of red light, as hypnotic in its way as the embers of a dying campfire. Occasionally the clouds parted and fingers of amber sunlight probed the land. But by noon the overcast had deepened and within the hour rain began to fall—a hot, lifeless rain that coated the highway and mirrored the sickly colors of the sky.
I had emptied the last jerican of gasoline into the tank that morning, and somewhere between Cairo and Lexington the needle on the gas gauge began to sag alarmingly. I woke Simon and explained the problem and told him I’d pull into the next gas station…and each one after that, until we found one that would sell us some fuel.
The next station turned out to be a little four-pump mom-and-pop gasand-snack-food franchise a quarter mile off the highway. The store was dark and the pumps were probably dead, but I rolled up anyhow and got out of the car and took the nozzle off its hook.
A man with a Bengals cap on his head and a shotgun cradled in his arms came around the side of the building and said, “That’s no good.”
I put the nozzle back, slowly. “Your power out?”
“That’s correct.”
“No backup?”
He shrugged and came closer. Simon started to get out of the car but I waved him back in. The man in the Bengals cap—he was about thirty years old and thirty pounds overweight—looked at the Ringer’s drip rigged up in the backseat. Then he squinted at the license plate. It was a California plate, which probably didn’t win me any goodwill points, but the EMS sticker was plainly visible. “You’re a doctor?”
“Tyler Dupree,” I said. “M.D.”
“Pardon me if I don’t shake your hand. That your wife in there?”
I said yes, because it was simpler than explaining. Simon shot me a look but didn’t contradict me.
“You have identification to prove you’re a medical doctor? Because, no offense, there’s been some auto theft happening these past couple of days.”
I took out my wallet and tossed it at his feet. He picked it up and looked at the card folder. Then he fished a pair of eyeglasses out of his shirt pocket and looked at it again. Finally he handed it back and offered me his hand. “Sorry about that, Dr. Dupree. I’m Chuck Bernelli. If it’s just gas you need, I’ll turn on the pumps. If you need more than that, it’ll only take me a minute to open the store.”
“I need the gas. Provisions would be nice, but I’m not carrying a lot of cash.”
“The heck with cash. We’re closed to criminals and drunks, and there’s no lack of those on the road right now, but we’re open all hours to the military and the highway patrol. And medical men. At least as long as there’s gas to pump. I hope your wife’s not too badly off.”
“Not if I can get where I’m headed.”
“Lexington V.A.? Samaritan?”
“A little farther than that. She needs special care.”
He glanced back at the car. Simon had rolled down the windows to let some fresh air in. Rain spackled down on the dusty vehicle, the puddled oily asphalt. Bernelli caught a glimpse of Diane as she turned and began to cough in her sleep. He frowned.
“I’ll get the pumps going, then,” he said. “You’ll want to be on your way.”
Before we left he put together some groceries for us, a few cans of soup, a box of saltine crackers, a can opener in a plastic display pack. But he didn’t want to get close to the car.
A racking, intermittent cough is a common symptom of CVWS. The bacteria is almost canny in the way it preserves its victims, preferring not to drown them in a catastrophic pneumonia, though that’s the means by which it eventually kills—that, or wholesale cardiac failure. I had taken an oxygen canister, bleeder valve, and mask from the wholesaler outside Flagstaff, and when Diane’s cough began to interfere with her breathing—she was on the verge of panic, drowning in her own sputum, eyes rolling—I cleared her airway as best I could and held the mask over her mouth and nose while Simon drove.
Eventually she calmed down, her color improved, and she was able to sleep again. I sat with her while she rested, her feverish head nestled into my shoulder. The rain had become a relentless downpour, slowing us down. Big plumes of water rooster-tailed behind the car every time we hit a low place in the road. Toward evening the light faded to hot coals on the western horizon.
There was no sound but the beating of rain on the roof of the car and I was content to listen to it until Simon cleared his throat and said, “Are you an atheist, Tyler?”
“Pardon me?”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I was wondering: do you consider yourself an atheist?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Simon had been helpful—had been invaluable—in getting us this far. But he was also someone who had hitched his intellectual wagon to a team
of lunatic-fringe Dispensationalists whose only argument with the end of the world was that it had defied their detailed expectations. I didn’t want to offend him because I still needed him—Diane still needed him.
So I said, “Does it matter what I consider myself?”
“Just curious.”
“Well—I don’t know. I guess that’s my answer. I don’t claim to know whether God exists or why He wound up the universe and made it spin the way it does. Sorry, Simon. That’s the best I can do on the theological front.”
He was silent for another few miles. Then he said, “Maybe that’s what Diane meant.”
“Meant about what?”
“When we talked about it. Which we haven’t done lately, come to think of it. We disagreed about Pastor Dan and Jordan Tabernacle even before the schism. I thought she was too cynical. She said I was too easily impressed. Maybe so. Pastor Dan had the gift of looking into Scripture and finding knowledge on every page—knowledge solid as a house, beams and pillars of knowledge. It really is a gift. I can’t do it myself. As hard as I try, to this day I can’t open the Bible and make immediate sense of it.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to.”
“But I wanted to. I wanted to be what Pastor Dan was: smart and, you know, always on solid ground. Diane said it was a devil’s bargain, that Dan Condon had traded humility for certainty. Maybe that’s what I lacked. Maybe that’s what she saw in you, why she clung to you all these years—your humility.”
“Simon, I—”
“It’s not anything you have to apologize for or make me feel better about. I know she called you when she thought I was asleep or when I was out of the house. I know I was lucky to have her as long as I did.” He looked back at me. “Will you do me a favor? I’d like you to tell her I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of her when she got sick.”
“You can tell her yourself.”
He nodded thoughtfully and drove deeper into the rain. I told him to see if he could find any useful information on the radio, now that it was dark again. I meant to stay awake and listen; but my head was throbbing and my vision wanted to double, and after a while it seemed easier just to close my eyes and sleep.
I slept hard and long, and miles passed under the wheels of the car.
When I woke it was another rainy morning. We were parked at a rest stop (west of Manassas, I learned later) and a woman with a torn black umbrella was tapping on the window.
I blinked and opened the door and she backed off a pace, casting cautious looks at Diane. “Man said to tell you don’t wait.”
“Excuse me?”
“Said to tell you good-bye and don’t wait for him.”
Simon wasn’t in the front seat. Nor was he visible among the trash barrels, sodden picnic tables, and flimsy latrines in the immediate neighborhood. A few other cars were parked here, most of them idling while the owners visited the potties. I registered trees, parkland, a hilly view of some rain-soaked little industrial town under a fiery sky. “Skinny blond guy? Dirty T-shirt?”
“That’s him. That’s the one. He said he didn’t want you to sleep too long. Then he took off.”
“On foot?”
“Yes. Down toward the river, not along the road.” She peered at Diane again. Diane was breathing shallowly and noisily. “Are you two okay?”
“No. But we don’t have far to go. Thank you for asking. Did he say anything else?”
“Yes. He said to say God bless you, and he’ll find his own way from here.”
I tended to Diane’s needs. I took a last look around the rainy parking lot. Then I got back on the road.
I had to stop several times to adjust Diane’s drip or feed her a few breaths of oxygen. She wasn’t opening her eyes anymore—she wasn’t just asleep, she was unconscious. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
The roads were slow and the rain was relentless and there was evidence everywhere of the chaos of the last couple of days. I passed dozens of wrecked or burned-out cars pushed to the side of the road, some still smoldering. Certain routes had been closed to civilian traffic, reserved for military or emergency vehicles. I had to double back from roadblocks a couple of times. The day’s heat made the humid air almost unbearable, and although a fierce wind came up in the afternoon it didn’t bring relief.
But Simon had at least abandoned us close to our destination, and I made it to the Big House while there was still some light in the sky.
The wind had grown worse, almost gale force, and the Lawtons’ long driveway was littered with branches torn from the surrounding pines. The house itself was dark, or looked that way in the amber dusk.
I left Diane in the car at the foot of the steps and pounded on the door. And waited. And pounded again. Eventually the door opened a crack and Carol Lawton peered out.
I could barely make out her features through that crevice: one pale blue eye, a wedge of wrinkled cheek. But she recognized me.
“Tyler Dupree!” she said. “Are you alone?”
The door opened wider.
“No,” I said. “Diane’s with me. And I might need some help getting her inside.”
Carol came out onto the big front porch and squinted down at the car. When she saw Diane her small body stiffened; she drew up her shoulders and gasped.
“Dear God,” she whispered. “Have both my children come home to die?”
The Abyss in Flames
Wind rattled the Big House all that night, a hot salt wind stirred out of the Atlantic by three days of unnatural sunlight. I was aware of it even as I slept: it was what I rose to in moments of near-wakefulness and it was the soundtrack for a dozen uneasy dreams. It was still knocking at the window after sunrise, when I dressed myself and went looking for Carol Lawton.
The house had been without electrical power for days. The upstairs hallway was dimly illuminated by the rainy glow from a window at the end of the corridor. The oaken stairway descended to the foyer, where two streaming bay windows admitted daylight the color of pale roses. I found Carol in the parlor, adjusting an antique mantel clock.
I said, “How is she?”
Carol glanced at me. “Unchanged,” she said, returning her attention to the clock as she wound it with a brass key. “I was with her a moment ago. I’m not neglecting her, Tyler.”
“I didn’t think you were. How about Jason?”
“I helped him dress. He’s better during daylight. I don’t know why. The nights are hard on him. Last night was…hard.”
“I’ll look in on them both.” I didn’t bother asking whether she had heard any news, whether FEMA or the White House had issued any fresh directives. There would have been no point; Carol’s universe stopped at the borders of the property. “You should get some sleep.”
“I’m sixty-eight years old. I don’t sleep as much as I used to. But you’re right, I’m tired—I do need to lie down. As soon as I finish this. This clock loses time if you don’t tend to it. Your mother used to adjust it every day, did you know that? And after your mother died Marie wound it whenever she cleaned. But Marie stopped coming about six months ago. For six months the clock was stuck at a quarter after four. As in the old joke, right twice a day.”
“We should talk about Jason.” Last night I had been too exhausted to do more than learn the basics: Jason had arrived unannounced a week before the end of the Spin and had fallen ill the night the stars reappeared. His symptoms were an intermittent, partial paralysis and occluded vision, plus fever. Carol had tried calling for medical help but circumstances had made that impossible, so she was caring for him herself, though she hadn’t been able to diagnose the problem or provide more than simple palliative care.
She was afraid he was dying. Her concern didn’t extend to the rest of the world, however. Jason had told her not to worry about that. Things will be back to normal soon, he said.
And she had believed him. The red sun held no terrors for Carol. The nights were bad, though, she said. The nights took Jason like a bad d
ream.
I looked in on Diane first.
Carol had put her in an upstairs bedroom—her room from the old days, done over as a generic guest bedroom. I found her physically stable and breathing without assistance, but there was nothing reassuring in that. It was part of the etiology of the disease. The tide advanced and the tide ebbed, but each cycle carried away more of her resilience and more of her strength.
I kissed her dry, hot forehead and told her to rest. She gave no sign of having heard me.
Then I went to see Jason. There was a question I needed to ask.
According to Carol, Jase had come back to the Big House because of some conflict at Perihelion. She couldn’t remember his explanation, but it had something to do with Jason’s father (“E.D. is behaving badly again,” she said) and something to do with “that little black wrinkly man, the one who died. The Martian.”
The Martian. Who had supplied the longevity drug that had made Jason a Fourth. The drug that should have protected him from whatever was killing him now.
He was awake when I knocked and entered his room, the same room he had occupied thirty years ago, when we were children in the compassed world of children and the stars were in their rightful places. Here was the rectangle of subtly brighter color where a poster of the solar system had once shaded the wall. Here was the carpet, long since steam-cleaned and chemically bleached, where we had once spilled Cokes and scattered crumbs on rainy days like this.
And here was Jason.
“That sounds like Tyler,” he said.
He lay in bed, dressed—he insisted on dressing each morning, Carol had said—in clean khaki pants and a blue cotton shirt. His back was propped against the pillows and he seemed perfectly alert. I said, “Not much light in here, Jase.”
“Open the blinds if you like.”
I did, but it only admitted more of the sullen amber daylight. “You mind if I examine you?”
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