The Things That Keep Us Here

by Carla Buckley

The man hooked the radio back into place. “Mind moving your truck?”

  “Sure.” Peter stepped back from the fence. “You’re done here, then?”

  The man crunched over and retrieved his shovel. “Haven’t even started. The tower went down again.”

  “So, the power’s back off downtown?”

  “Looks like it.” He stood by the gate, shovel in hand, and waited. He wasn’t going to move until Peter was far enough away. Peter backed up and the man worked the lock on the gate. “I’m not looking forward to trying to get back into the city.”

  “I hear I-71’s closed.”

  The man looked up. “You been down there?”

  “No. Is it bad?”

  The man shook his head. “Worst thing I ever seen, all those burned-out cars jammed end to end.” He slammed the gate shut. “There was nowhere for anyone to go. They just sat there and let the fire take them.”

  THE SLEDDERS WERE GONE. ALL THAT REMAINED OF THE TWO men stealing firewood was a scattering of fir tips staining the snow where they’d been working. Headlights blinked in the distance, then vanished. The sky above was turning black. Peter headed west, drawing the night with him.

  By the time he pulled onto his street, it was full dark. His headlights threw up slanted cuts of snow and shadowed the gray slush hardened now into ridges. Windows flickered with candlelight. The brick house with the columns stood somber and unlighted. Was it better wherever that family had fled to? The small house beside it stood dark as well. Peter eyed it as he drove around the corner.

  Light burst from a window onto the snow-packed bushes below, illuminating the wooden windowsill, a section of brick wall, and the spiky holly bushes beneath. Then just as suddenly, the light winked out.

  Peter braked. There was no mistaking what he’d seen. He hesitated, then bumped the truck up onto the sidewalk. Anybody trying to get under his fuel tank would have to tunnel through the snow first.

  He worked his way through the unshoveled snow and pounded on the door.

  A dog barked from inside.

  “Finn? It’s Peter Brooks. Your neighbor from down the street.”

  “I know who it is,” said a voice behind him.

  Peter wheeled around. A figure stood by the back gate. There wasn’t enough starlight to discern the man’s features, but he’d recognized the brusque voice. Walter Finn.

  “What do you want?” the man asked.

  “I saw your light. You have a generator, don’t you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “All I want is some information.”

  A curt laugh. “Here’s some information for you, free of charge. Hell’s freezing over.”

  “What about the vaccine they’re working on? You hear anything about that?”

  “Come on, Brooks. You don’t really think there’s a vaccine, do you? They’re just shining us on, big G’s way of keeping the little people from complaining and asking too many questions.”

  Big G must mean the government. “I know the guy leading up the effort. I’ve worked with him. It’s not a lie. There really is a vaccine in the works.”

  “I wouldn’t have taken you for such a fool.”

  “I can prove it.”

  A pause. “How?”

  “Let me online. I can show you.”

  A beat, then Finn said, “Get your mask first.”

  He meant a respiratory mask, and he was right. Peter should be wearing one. “Hold on. I’ve got one in my truck.”

  A minute later, the front door creaked open as Peter worked his way back up the walk toward the house. A flashlight suddenly switched on. In the long beam of light, Peter saw heavy boots and work pants, four brown paws. He glimpsed the heavy black respirator strapped to Finn’s face. The light moved up and flared in Peter’s eyes.

  He blinked and threw up his forearm. The light dropped away. The dog tried to push past, but Finn shoved him back with his knee. The door banged open. The dog panted happily up at him.

  “This way.” Finn led him downstairs, shutting the door after them and switching on the light. In the sudden brightness, Peter saw concrete-block walls, small windows covered with black plastic, and a naked lightbulb screwed into the middle of the low ceiling. He rounded the steps and saw Finn’s work space. The man had everything.

  On the large wooden table tucked into the corner sat a desktop computer, a short-wave radio, and a small television set. A portable heater glowed beneath, and a table fan whirred on top of the small bookcase. A sleeping bag had been unfolded across a narrow cot. Finn was living down here. It was definitely warmer. Barney trotted over to the folding chair and sat on the floor, looking expectant.

  “Go on.” Finn’s voice was muffled behind the mask. “Show me about the vaccine.”

  Peter tugged his gloves off and pushed them into his jacket pocket. He flexed his fingers. It felt good tapping the keyboard, seeing the screens pop up one by one. “Do you mind if I look around a little?”

  “Two minutes.”

  Barney nudged his cold nose into the palm of his hand. Absently, Peter rubbed the dog’s head, tugged an ear. He scrolled down the WHO website. The hourly bulletins had slowed, coming now every day or so. The last update had been over twelve hours ago. He scanned the headlines. They were still in Phase Five. Good to know they hadn’t reached Six, the final, irreversible phase. Vaccine trials were ongoing, but preliminary results showed that two innoculations might prove necessary. Peter wasn’t sure how to interpret that. He wished he could talk to Liederman directly.

  He moved on to the CNN website and halted at a photograph of uniformed soldiers rolling bodies into a huge pit. Men, women, children, they were all jumbled together. A jolting sight, one that instantly reminded him of all those poor dead birds heaped along the shore. Mourners stood on the bank, their faces covered with shawls. He glanced at the caption. Cairo. Shazia’s hometown. My whole family lives there, she’d said.

  Finn nudged him and made a circular motion with his hand. Wind it up.

  Peter let out a breath, moved to the university website, and followed a few links. Liederman’s bearded face grinned out at him. “See? The man works for a private company.” Peter accessed his email system and found the last message Liederman had written to him. “Check the date. It’s not a long message. He was too busy for that, but in it he refers to how far he’s gotten on testing the vaccine.”

  Finn leaned nearer to read. Then he straightened and jerked a thumb upward. Visiting hours were over.

  Reluctantly, Peter stood. He had no idea whether he’d been persuasive. He’d have to finagle another visit somehow.

  Barney pushed alongside as he walked up the stairs. A slight tug at his pocket made Peter look down to see that the dog had one of his gloves in his mouth.

  “Hey.” Peter took a few steps after him and stopped suddenly. He was in Finn’s kitchen. Cabinet doors stood open. The counters were heaped with cans, boxes, bags of food.

  Peter stared. The man even had those military rations, the smooth white packs clearly labeled in black. Meat loaf. Chicken cacciatore. “Hey, how’d you get those?” He turned.

  Finn stood there, a long black rifle pointed straight at Peter’s face.

  EIGHTEEN

  LIKE THIS, MOMMY?” MADDIE LOWERED HER CHIN TO the floor, her bottom sticking up to the ceiling.

  Her daughter looked like an inverted V. “Perfect,” Ann said, suppressing a smile. “Ready, Kate?”

  “Ready. But I’m only doing ten.”

  “I’m doing twelve,” Maddie said.

  “Suck-up,” Kate said.

  “One, two, three, go.” The girls levered themselves up and down, collapsed to the floor. They both needed their hair trimmed. Maddie might oblige, but would Kate? “Time for sit-ups.” Peter had been gone over an hour. He’d be back any minute now. She’d hated to see him leave the safety of their home, but it would be good to know what was going on. “Remember how I showed you?”

  “This is so boring.” Kat
e flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Do some sit-ups with me. You’ll feel better if you get moving a little.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe we could clear the driveway and you could work on that backhand of yours.”

  Kate turned her head and looked at Ann with narrowed eyes. “I told you. I hate tennis. I am never playing tennis again.”

  The season was over anyway. “How about playing a board game? How about Clue?”

  “Maddie cheats.”

  “I do not,” Maddie said.

  “Ugh.” Kate pounded the carpet with her fists. “I am so bored.” “You said that already,” Maddie said. “And I do. Not. Cheat.”

  “Why don’t I see if Shazia will play with us?” Ann asked. “I guess.” Kate rolled back to stare at the ceiling. “She can help make sure Maddie doesn’t cheat.”

  “Mommy!” Ann fled.

  The guest room door was closed. All was quiet beyond. Ann hesitated. She rapped on the wood.

  “Yes?”

  The chilly room was bright with sunshine. Shazia lay on the bed. She pushed herself up drowsily from her pillow.

  “I’m sorry.” Ann halted halfway into the room. “I didn’t realize you were napping.”

  “That’s all right.” Shazia yawned and swung her feet to the floor. “Do you need my help with something?”

  “The girls and I are wondering if you’d play a board game with us.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She slid her feet into the flannel bedroom slippers unearthed from the donation pile, a pair that had been Peter’s. Lifting her hands, she swept back her gleaming dark hair and tugged the rubber band from around her wrist to form a ponytail.

  The girl was truly exotic-looking, with her smooth skin and almond sloped eyes, her heavy hair and the languid way she slid her gaze to a person and let it rest there. Did she have any idea of the effect she had on people? Ann thought not. She seemed almost careless of her good looks, the way only the truly beautiful can be.

  Ann looked around the room, at the suitcase beneath the desk, the other one against the wall. That was all Shazia had brought with her. Two suitcases. A framed photograph sat on the desk. A chubby boy with black curls grinned out at her. Ann smiled. “Who’s this cute little guy?”

  “My nephew. He just turned two.” Shazia leaned over and picked up another framed picture from the nightstand beside her. She held it out for Ann to see. “These are my parents.”

  Ann came over and saw a man and a woman in elegant clothes leaning toward each other, their clasped hands folded on the linen-covered table before them. “They’re a good-looking couple.”

  “Thank you.” Shazia rubbed a thumb across the carved wood of the frame. “This was taken on my father’s sixtieth birthday. My sister sent it to me.”

  Twelve days. Ann had never gone that long without talking to her mother and father. Maybe Shazia had a different relationship with her family. Perhaps it was normal for them to go for extended periods of time without speaking, but things weren’t normal now. This protracted silence could mean only one thing. “Have you talked to your roommate?”

  “Yes. The dorm lost power, too. She has to walk all the way down to the lobby if she wants to use the telephone. She’s on the fourteenth floor, so I don’t expect to hear from her again for a while.” She shrugged. “She sounded okay, though. Her floor does a different theme every night. Last night was Hawaii. Tonight’s Dungeons and Dragons.”

  Put a bunch of twentysomethings together and that’s what you’d get, Ann thought, luaus and swordplay. Put a bunch of forty-somethings together and you’d get recipes and strategies for organizing your clutter.

  “She says the only lights are in the hallways. She has to leave her door open if she wants to see inside her room.”

  How grim that sounded. “Did she say whether anyone has gotten sick?”

  “The first two floors are reserved for H5N1 patients.”

  You’d stay in your room, then. You wouldn’t dare go past those doors on your way to the phone. You’d keep your door closed and accept the dark.

  Shazia leaned over and set the frame back down on the night-stand. As she did so, Ann caught a glimpse of a navy leather photo album lying open there. It looked like one of hers. What was it doing here? It belonged in the family room.

  Shazia saw her looking and blushed. “I’m sorry. I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t have anything to read.”

  “Not at all.” Ann tilted her head, curious as to which album had captured the girl’s interest. She saw photographs of pine trees, a weathered building, scruffy-bearded men grinning at the camera.

  Shazia picked up the album and held it in her lap. “It’s the lodge at Sparrow Lake, isn’t it?”

  “One of Peter’s favorite spots.” And there he crouched, grinning, his forearm resting on his bent knee. Three other men stood ringed around him, wearing camouflage and ball caps.

  “He took me there my first week to introduce me around. He was worried the old men wouldn’t work with me if he sent me up there to test alone.”

  “Peter told me they could be a rough group.”

  Shazia turned a page. “Once they realized they couldn’t shock me, it was fine.”

  Peter came home from those trips reeking of fresh blood and cigarette smoke. Ann made him change in the garage before she let him in the house. Once she asked to accompany him, when the sky had sparkled blue and the trees shimmered gold and ruby, but he’d shaken his head. You’d hate it, he’d told her.

  But he’d taken Shazia.

  Ann studied the photographs. They’d been taken a few years ago. Peter’s hair was longer, his face less careworn. Ann had been the one to develop the film and slot the pictures into the album sleeves. No doubt she’d glanced at the images but had never stopped to question Peter about these friends of his. “I don’t know those people.”

  Shazia tapped a short, clean-shaven man. “Victor works in Peter’s lab. So does Sam.” She moved her finger to a slight fellow standing apart from the rest. “Harold works with Dr. Lewis. I can’t imagine how Peter persuaded him to go. Harold hates doing fieldwork. He’s always asking to stay back and monitor the experiments. But Peter says you have to get out and meet the animals you’re trying to save.”

  Ann had always teased him that it was a good thing he didn’t study lions and tigers.

  “I’d never been in the woods before,” Shazia said. “Watching the sun set over the lake … It was amazing.”

  Peter loved sunsets. During their courtship, he’d often show up at her door with a bottle of wine and some cheese and bread, and suggest they go find a view. “Sounds like you had fun. I guess the hunters weren’t too hard on you.”

  Shazia ran a hand down the page and smiled. “They were wonderful.”

  Ann stared at her. How had she missed the signs? The flush on Shazia’s cheeks, the longing in her voice, the way she was looking at Peter’s photograph. This was no schoolgirl crush. The girl was in love. She felt hot and cold at the same time. Beth had been wrong: this wasn’t just something Peter had to get out of his system. He and Shazia shared something deeper. Why was she so surprised? The casual way Shazia and Peter were around each other had fooled her. Well, now she knew. Now she could prepare herself.

  Ann straightened. “You can have those pictures if you want.”

  Shazia sat back, her eyes wide. “Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly take them.”

  “I’m sure Peter won’t mind.”

  Shazia was looking at her. Understanding moved across her face. She looked uncertain. “All right, Ann. Thank you.”

  Something thudded against the wall below. Ann felt the vibration beneath her feet and automatically looked down. There was another shuddering sound of impact, and this time she placed it. “Someone’s banging on the garage door.”

  Oh my God. The girls were alone downstairs.

  Ann whirled around and raced to the stairs, taking the steps down two at a t
ime. “Kate, Maddie! Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  She reached the landing and looked down. Maddie stood by the front door, zipping up her coat, Kate beside her, jamming her feet into boots.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Ann said, running down the rest of the stairs.

  “Outside,” Kate said, eyes bright. “This is war.”

  Ann pushed past her daughters to look out the window beside the door. Brightly garbed figures flitted around the yard across the street. She heard shouts and far-off laughter.

  Shazia said, “It’s children, throwing snowballs.”

  “You can’t go,” Ann told her daughters, watching through the glass as the children crisscrossed one another, ducking and throwing. Where were their parents? What were they thinking? Just because the children were outside—did they think that made them safe? Hadn’t any of them heard? Jodi had died. She’d run around the neighborhood just like these children and raced directly into the flu’s path. She was only eight years old.

  Maddie yanked a hat down over her ears. “Daddy says if we stay three feet away from people, we’ll be okay.”

  Ann turned and looked down at Maddie. “This is different. You are not going out there.”

  Kate tied a scarf around her neck and reached for her gloves. “Right. Like we’re going to get cooties from snowballs.”

  “You don’t know that. I’m sorry, girls, but you have to stay inside.”

  Maddie stared up at her. “Everyone else is outside!”

  “I know, but that doesn’t make it right.”

  Maddie’s eyes shone with tears. She stamped her foot. “I hate you.” She unwound her scarf and tossed it to the floor. Shazia quickly bent to retrieve it.

  Kate looked out the window. She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re gone.”

  Ann hated the hopelessness in her daughter’s voice. “How about …?” she began, but Kate just looked at her, her eyes bottle green and just as hard.

  “What about that game your mom was telling me about?” Shazia said. “The one you wanted me to play?”

  Maddie crossed her arms and stared at the floor. In a grudging voice she said, “Clue.”