“What?” quizzed Dan, letting the lounge curtain swing back into place.
“They saw our rations.”
The innocent curiosity vanished from Dan’s face. They’d let their guard down.
“How much did they see?” he asked, catching her up in the kitchen.
“All the packs on the counter. All the water. This cupboard door was open, so I guess all the tins in here. Fuck!” she cried.
Dan paced up and down. “This isn’t good.”
“No, no, it’s OK,” quavered Lucy. “The power’s back now, so actually we don’t need to worry. Right?”
Dan pursed his lips. “New rule,” he decreed. “We keep nothing valuable in sight of the windows. Or the door, for that matter.”
Lucy’s shoulders dropped. “Agreed.” She closed the cupboard and started to shift the gallons of water up against the wall, out of sight. “Hey – the radio should work now.”
Dan seized the radio, flicking it on and immediately switching to longwave, scrolling until he found KGO 810. Somehow, it was still broadcasting. As he turned the dial up, bringing the babble into focus, it sounded like they were attempting an outside broadcast; the studio commentator’s clear voice was being interspersed by terrible-quality audio from a number of interviewees, presumably passing by the street outside the studio.
“What do you think about the power coming back on?” asked the reporter on the ground.
“It’s fucking amazing!” cried the random interviewee. “It’s – I don’t know, aaaah! We’re back baby, we’re back!”
“Yeah, and we gon’ get wasted!” interrupted another, sending both into fits of laughter. “Party on the streets! Street-light party!”
“Street-light party!” echoed the first, laughing wildly.
“So you’re planning on disobeying the curfew tonight?” probed the reporter.
“Fuck the curfew, the power’s back yo’, it’s party time!” yelled the more excitable one. “Laters!”
“Laters!” repeated the other, as they disappeared out of the microphone’s range, with diminishing cries of “Street-light partaaayyy!” cutting through the background hubbub.
“For those of you just tuning in,” resumed the anchor, “you’re listening to KGO 810. Our reporters are live on the streets of San Francisco, getting your reactions to the restoration of power. I’m going to remind listeners again of the statement we’ve received from the authorities, because it is somewhat different to the responses you’re hearing on the street. And I ought to reiterate that the curfew has not been lifted, so please do not take risks. I know many of you will be excited tonight, but I would personally urge you to be cautious.”
Lucy slumped down on a bar stool and faced the radio.
“The authorities,” continued the anchor, “say they’re ‘proud to have achieved partial restoration of power’, but are warning that the supply remains limited across California. So as I understand it, we’ll be sharing the supply with other cities on a rotational basis. I’m told that City Hall is working towards publishing some sort of power timetable, to help citizens plan accordingly, but as it stands, I’m afraid that power will be supplied for two-hour periods only. I repeat, there’ll be two hours of power, then that’s it until the next round, folks. You heard it here first.”
***
“It’s the hydroelectric plants,” declared Lucy the next day after work. “I heard one of the officers talking about it. They’ve managed to get some of them generating again, but they can only have so many plants online because they’re on manual, which apparently takes like five times the number of staff, and we don’t have enough people trained yet. Plus you need loads more people overseeing the actual grid distribution twenty-four seven to make sure the rotation’s working. So yeah, fun fact: turns out automation was really friggin’ useful.”
“What about Diablo Canyon?” asked Dan, while jimmying open a ration tin. “Surely a nuclear plant’s the obvious place to start?”
“No idea,” said Lucy, “but that’s probably because I work in a bottle factory, and only get my highly classified information through rumors and by flirting heavily with the military escorts.”
Dan pulled a less-than-impressed face and returned to his unedifying meal.
“Oh relax, jeez!” she chuckled. “I’m only kidding. If it’s any consolation, I picture you every time.”
“You’re the actual worst. What if I’ve got some sexy army mistress down at the depot? For all you know I could be having dozens of wild affairs in the warehouse.”
“I think we both know that the thing turning you on in that warehouse is the neat, orderly rows of itemized boxes.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” winked Dan.
“There are a couple of things, actually.”
“Hey, can you imagine what this is gonna be like come winter? We’ll be OK, but what’s it gonna be like for some place like Chicago if there’s still no power?”
“I imagine they’ll do what people in Alaska are probably doing right now. Burn things,” replied Lucy, bluntly.
“Sure-fire way to lose the deposit,” Dan retorted, looking around the apartment.
“I could go for some fire-making. It’d be … nostalgic. Relive the glory years of a misspent youth.”
“I hate to break it to you, Luce, but when people say ‘misspent youth’, they normally mean they wasted it playing video games or something, not cattle ranching. That’s called ‘child labor’.”
“Yeah, but it means come winter, I’ll be the one making us a mean bonfire,” she grinned back. “Although my source at the bottle factory informs me it’ll all be fixed by next week,” she added, cracking open a tin of tuna from the cupboard, “and so far he’s only been wrong one hundred per cent of the time. Dinner?”
***
Another three days passed before their city’s turn for power came up again. The only places receiving electricity regularly – according to Lucy’s ever-reliable source – were the hospitals and prisons. Food was concerning her more, though; yesterday’s State-given ration pack had felt lighter than the first, something confirmed by her neighbor’s faces.
That afternoon, however, had brought some relief: it was “payday” for all City Hall employees. Shifts finished early and workers were bussed back to City Hall to collect their bonus rations in person. It also meant Dan and Lucy could take the second bus home together.
The evening was mild – in the two weeks since global satellite failure, temperatures had risen to several degrees higher than normal for mid fall. As they walked homeward, back up their steep road and away from the bus stop, ration parcels tucked under their arms, a gentle tide of feathery seeds danced in the wind – like dandelion seeds, only with a golden hue.
Lucy tracked a twirling seed until it drew her eye to an elderly man across the street. His stooping frame was adorned by a long trench coat which he held together tightly at the collar, his other hand securing a dark blue woolly hat atop his head. His steps were small and unsteady. As the bus pulled away behind them, disappearing behind the next block, the sound of the man’s coughing became louder and more violent until suddenly he fell to his knees, collapsing forwards onto his frail torso, his entire body convulsing on the ground as each retching cough gripped him.
“Oh god!” exclaimed Lucy, watching the man fall.
A young couple nearby ran to him.
“Somebody get a doctor!” cried the young man, as he and the woman rolled the elderly patient onto his back.
“You go to them – I’ll get help!” cried Lucy to Dan, and she ran towards the intersection. She scanned the street in both directions – there was a patrol vehicle, but it was driving away from their block.
“Hey! Hey, help!” she yelled, desperately jumping and waving her arms. She began to sprint after the truck, continuing to shout, until one of the soldiers heard her. The patrol stopped in its tracks and turned around. “Help!” she shouted again, urgently beckoning them to follow.
The two soldiers stood back from the fallen man and watched as the civilians continued their attempts to save him. The sound of the ambulance’s siren approached and Lucy felt Dan’s hand on her wrist.
“We need to get indoors, now,” he said, quietly, pulling her away from the scene and back towards their apartment. “I’ll explain inside.”
Lucy worked to keep up with him as he climbed their stairwell at speed, taking it two steps at a time for the entire eight floors. Her mind was fixating on the image of the fallen man; they’d witnessed the life force vanish from his body, sending his frail, discarded shell crashing to the ground. The last she saw was the ambulance crew scooping him up onto a stretcher and loading him into the back of the vehicle – while the other couple watched on hopelessly.
“Did you see the paramedics?” panted Dan, taking the apartment key from his pocket as they reached the eighth floor. Even in the short bouts of power, he refused to let them take the elevator, insisting that it wasn’t worth getting trapped. At least the stairwell lights were working. “Luce?” he persisted, opening the front door and stepping into their illuminated apartment.
“What? Oh, uh, yeah?” she said, hastily refocusing as she followed him inside.
“They were wearing face masks,” he said.
“OK,” replied Lucy, pulling off her shoes.
“Think about it. What else was wrong?”
“An old guy just dropped dead in the street, Dan. I’m gonna say that’s pretty fucking wrong,” she snapped.
Lucy felt him place a gentle hand on either shoulder. She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Luce, I’m not being flippant. This matters,” he insisted. “Think about what we just saw, and think about what didn’t stack up. Where were the military?”
“They –” Lucy paused for a moment to think, then began to re-evaluate what she’d seen. “They stood back from the old man – away from him. They didn’t help the couple trying to save him.”
“Good. What else?”
“The paramedics were putting him into a body bag. They didn’t even try a defibrillator or anything – they just decided he was dead.”
“Right,” said Dan, relaxing his arms and rubbing his cheeks. “So we both saw the same things and I’m not losing my mind. That’s something, then, at least.”
“Why, what do you think it means?” pressed Lucy.
“I think it means they made two assumptions: one, they knew his death was a foregone conclusion, which itself means they probably know what killed him. Two, they know it’s contagious, which is why they had masks, and put him straight into containment, and the military knew to stay several yards away.”
“But if they know what he died of,” considered Lucy, fast-forwarding through events all over again, “then that must mean other people have already died of it?”
Dan reached into a kitchen cupboard and pulled out two face masks, similar to the ones the ambulance crew had been wearing. “From now on, we wear these at all times outside of the house.”
“Seriously?” balked Lucy. “Where did you even get those?”
“I told you – the night the satellites went down I bought everything I could think of. This is something I thought of.”
“Dan, how will we eat?”
He finished fitting one of the masks to his face. “I don’t know.” His voice was slightly muffled. “We’ll figure it out.”
He held out a mask for Lucy to try on. She looked at her partner, who had in one fell swoop transformed into a surgeon: his mouth and nose covered, all the emotional information vanishing from his face, the only remaining clue being his eyes. As she pulled the elasticated bands of her own mask down over her hair, she felt distant from him. Sealed off from the intimacies and nuances of her partner’s lips.
“It fits but I don’t like it,” she said, taking hers off.
“Me neither.” Dan removed his too. “And mine’s already sweaty, which I’m pretty sure kinda ruins them.”
“How d’you know it’s contagious, whatever took the old guy down?”
“I’m guessing. But if the medics are wearing them, it’s a safe bet. Dad hinted something like this was coming. A pandemic of sorts.”
“Wait, but – is it to do with that yellow stuff that was on the ocean? I don’t think anyone’s ever seen that before.”
Dan nodded.
“And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning before now?”
“I wasn’t sure it was ever going to happen!” countered Dan. “We’ve had enough to deal with without worrying about some other unknown. Dad only mentioned it towards the end of the call, then we got cut off, so I couldn’t find out more. He said something about possible contamination from the ISS, but that it was speculative. Honestly, Luce, this was a footnote in the conversation I had with him – it was all about getting rations and preparing for martial law. This scenario didn’t feature highly.”
“But now you’ve decided it’s definitely happening?”
“You saw for yourself! Yellow scum, weird golden seeds, the military staying back, the medics not even trying to save the guy. When have you ever seen any of those things?”
Lucy didn’t have an answer, and instead paused to consider.
“So,” she replied after a moment, holding up her mask, “what do we do with these then? If it’s in the air, we need to wear them all the time, right, otherwise what’s the point?”
Both of them stared at their masks, unwilling to accept the obvious logical truth. It was plain to Lucy that neither of them wanted to be wearing the masks at all, let alone in their own home. After some contemplation, she pulled hers back over her face with purpose.
“Twenty-four hours,” ventured Lucy. “If it’s airborne it’ll spread fast. There’ll be announcements – or bodies. If it’s not airborne, then we can take these off at the end of the day.”
Dan pulled his on too. “Agreed.”
***
When they awoke the next morning, the air was thick with spores. It was like a blizzard, only instead of snow, the haze was comprised of floating seeds, giving it a mustardy hue. Lucy looked at Dan with concern as the two stepped out of their lobby and into the gentle storm, each wearing their protective mask. Lucy put their umbrella up immediately, shielding them from much of the onslaught. Other figures appeared through the haze, some also using umbrellas, although none wearing masks.
As she and Dan reached the bus stop, the wind died down, and the visibility improved slightly. The spores formed a soft, springy layer underfoot, giving the sidewalk a cushioned quality.
“This is my bus,” said Dan, through his mask. “Are you sure you’re gonna be OK?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yeah. Promise me you won’t take your mask off,” he said, as the bus doors opened.
“I promise. Same goes for you,” she replied, grabbing him in a hug before he boarded the bus. Its windscreen wipers pushed squashed seeds from side to side as the packed vehicle pulled away. Lucy turned and surveyed the streets around, trying to process the new sepia blanket that covered everything from the tar to the roof of the bus shelter.
Her bus came, some time later. Lucy stared out of the window as they drove; every soldier they passed wore a face mask. Even though the danger in the air outside was visible, she still had to fight the burning urge to rip h
er mask off as the temperature on board rose with each new wave of workers that got on. A permanent layer of condensed breath had formed a stifling microclimate on the inside of the white shield. Humid droplets now precipitated from the semi-plastic membrane above her nose back down onto her captive lips.
The day was long, her every thought dogged by concerns of hygiene; each second was but another opportunity to be infected by a colleague, by her food, by the very air she couldn’t help but breathe. Her co-workers asked one after another what the mask was for, but Lucy ignored them, wishing neither to invite further conversation nor to risk someone stealing her only form of protection. She couldn’t tell if it was her paranoia, or if her colleague down the line was developing the same rattling cough as the old man, but she kept her distance.
When finally the time came to return home, it became clear the situation had worsened. Fresh bodies lay scattered along the streets, this time not just the elderly, but the young too. Most were surrounded by concerned onlookers either trying in vain to help or attempting to flag down other passers-by in their panic. As the bus drove Lucy began to count the bodies.
“Six bodies,” she muttered beneath her mask, shaking her head. “Six in five minutes.” And zero ambulances.
Lucy’s bus came to a premature halt and the doors opened. She craned her neck to see the owner of the heavy footsteps that reverberated up each of the bus’s metal steps. A sergeant appeared, a white mask covering the lower portion of his face. He said something brief to the bus driver then turned to the passengers, megaphone in hand. The sergeant’s amplified tone was brisk and assertive, cutting through the mask’s muffling effect.
“You are each about to be issued with a face mask. You must wear it at all times. If you know someone who is sick, do not allow them to remove their mask. Do not allow yourself to come into contact with another person’s bodily fluids. Remove your mask only when you need to eat and drink. Do not swap masks with anyone else. And do not lose your mask; as of this moment, your mask is your life.”
With that he departed the bus, to the shock and confusion of the murmuring passengers on board. Their voices quickly mounted into a wall of noise and fears into which a lower-ranking cadet entered, hastily throwing two masks into each row as he traversed the length of the vehicle, not stopping to answer any questions and strenuously avoiding all eye contact. He was off in less than a minute. The doors of the bus closed once again and it pulled away, passing through the makeshift checkpoint that now stood barring the road.
Convulsive Box Set Page 7