A Beginning at the End

by Mike Chen

  The impact of Moira’s words—simple, straightforward words delivered with a force more powerful than anger or rage could have—made Rob want to thank her and carry whatever pain caused it in her away. But instead, they both remained quiet, waiting to see if her speech resonated the same way with the man who held Sunny’s future in his hands.

  Bernard sat still, not taking any notes, until his phone rang. He glanced over, a look of surprise on his face, and then picked up the receiver.

  Rob couldn’t tell what was being said but based on Bernard’s body language, it wasn’t good. Rob looked at Moira, exchanging uncertainty when the phone hung up. “I’m going to have to end this,” Bernard said. “We will be in touch.”

  From the hallway, a door slammed and a rush of footsteps whizzed by.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure. But our offices are closing. We’ve been told to go home.”

  With that, Rob and Moira shuffled out into the main thoroughfare of City Hall, the lobby area now completely empty except for two people.

  A large older man standing with hands on hips, eyes scanning the space. And in front of him, a younger man holding a camera up.

  The older man pointed up the stairs and started walking.

  “Oh, fuck,” Moira said. She pulled Rob into a corner with a strength that shocked him, then wrapped her arms around his waist. “That’s my dad. He’s here. I knew he’d come,” she whispered into his ear. “Act natural.” She pulled back, then shot a look over her shoulder. “He’s gonna pass us. We need to get past him, get out of here.”

  Rob tried to not be conspicuous as he continued holding her back. “What if we duck into a hallway?” he whispered back.

  “He’s got a cameraman. We can’t let him catch my face on it.” Still locked together, she angled so that her back was directly against the stairway. “How far is he?”

  “Halfway up the stairs.”

  “I’m so sorry about this.”

  “What are—” Rob started until he was cut off by the force of Moira’s lips pressing against his. He sank into it, realizing what she was doing, and kept one eye barely open to gauge her dad’s distance. They remained, an intensity to the act that was different from passion, until Rob tracked him safely at the top of the stairs and away.

  “He’s gone,” he said after pulling back.

  She nodded, then without a word grabbed Rob’s hand and pulled him to the exit.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Krista

  By the time Krista pulled up to the Donelly house, she recognized the beat-up Jeep parked in front of it. For such a together woman, Moira sure drove a clunky car, one that even had symmetrical holes on the door frame, like something used to be bolted on there. Car manufacturing hadn’t restarted, but plenty of recovered and scavenged vehicles were available, most with high-MPG options, so why choose a gas guzzler with fuel prices so high?

  More importantly, why was she even here? The mere sight of the vehicle chipped away at the resolve Krista had been building up.

  But no. She was going to make that phone call. Her home, her whole life depended on it.

  Krista opened the unlocked front door. “Knock, knock,” she said. She met eyes with Rob, who’d only sent a vague text about the audit being done. Moira sat next to him, though something on her expression read off.

  “Hey. We just got here. Sunny?” he asked. His daughter jogged over to the couch, eyes trained on Moira the whole time. “I brought someone who wants to see you. You remember Moira?”

  “I...” Sunny said as she stood still. Her lips pursed, and she glanced back at Krista.

  “It’s all right.” Moira took Sunny’s hand and leaned in. “I’m going to let you in on a secret. A grown-up secret. Can you keep one?”

  Krista’s eyebrow arched up.

  Was she really going to go there?

  “I can,” Sunny said.

  “Okay, you can’t tell your friends or your teacher or even Frank. You remember Frank, right?” Frank? She was bringing up Frank?

  Sunny nodded, and Moira sucked in a heavy breath. “When I was around your age, I started singing. I practiced and practiced, and eventually I started to perform in shows. And when I was fifteen, I met some people who wrote music, and we decided to work together. They gave me the name MoJo, and we recorded two albums, but after the quarantine, I started a new life and put that behind me.”

  “Quarantine?” Sunny’s focus shifted for a moment before she snapped to attention. “Oh. Before everyone got out?”

  “Right. After everything got better, I had new things to focus on. So I haven’t sung MoJo songs in years, but I came here to sing some for you. Would you like that?”

  “Daddy, did you hear that?” Sunny said, her shoes clapping on the floor as she jumped up and down.

  “I did, Sun. What do you say?”

  Sunny straightened up, hands behind her back and chest pumped out at full attention. “Thank you, Moira.”

  “No problem, Sunny. Remember, you can’t tell anyone about this.” She turned to the adults in the room. “You guys want to hear this too?”

  “No offense, Moira, but I heard these songs enough in the car.” Krista looked at Rob and mouthed the words How was it? straight at Rob.

  “Let’s talk. Kitchen.” He stepped past the living room couch, squeezing Sunny’s shoulder as he passed her and whispering “Thank you” to Moira.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I’m not sure.” Behind him, Moira started singing, her full voice expanding out to all corners of the living room. “I was honest. Moira came along. She was honest too.”

  “I can see that.”

  “She said she told you?”

  “Yeah.” Krista turned her eyes to the living room, the pull of the reward tugging at her mind.

  “We ran into her father at City Hall,” Rob told her.

  “Oh.” She battled back the urge to ask if the reward had been claimed.

  “He didn’t see us. But she was pretty shaken. I’ve never seen her like that before.” The statement caused Krista to avert her eyes; they pulled away from the image of Moira and Sunny sitting side by side and fell straight to the floor. “The meeting ended abruptly. They said we’d know something ‘soon.’” His fingers formed quotes with the last word. “Which could mean anything. I think Moira feels bad for Sunny. She wanted to give her something kind.”

  “I bought her fries,” Krista said, finally looking Rob in the eye. “She deserved it.”

  “Yeah.” Rob nodded. “She does.” They stood quietly, only Moira’s singing bleeding into the kitchen. “Something weird happened at City Hall. I’m gonna look it up,” he said, stepping to the computer set up in the kitchen nook.

  Krista pulled out her phone and loaded the latest Metronet stories. “Hersh is giving a speech in an hour. Doesn’t say what it’s about.”

  “I have access to other Metro news feeds. Austin is the most connected city now, maybe they have more info. You guys don’t get the whole picture.”

  “What’s that mean?” Krista considered what he’d just said, then shook it off. “You know what, never mind.” She turned and leaned into the doorway, watching the scene unfold in front of her. Moira and Sunny laughed, their voices meshing together as if nothing could possibly trouble them: no Family Stability Board, no father hunting around the globe, no upcoming presidential speeches.

  At least for them. For Krista, questions remained. Promises and commitments digging at her under the surface, the way they always did when things kicked at the careful life she’d built for herself. In fact, no one had quite encroached on her sense of self-sufficiency the same way since Jas did years ago.

  In that moment back in Jas’s dingy Long Island apartment, Krista had stared at him, wondering if he really had said what he actually said.
/>   From his lack of reaction, the way his eyes zeroed in on hers, calm but inquisitive, she knew he was serious.

  “Uh-oh.” He offered a familiar grin, half playful and half caring, usually meant to cut through the bullshit and ground their situation. “It’s that Krista Deal thinking look.”

  “I’m, uh...”

  “C’mon, we’ve been together since freshman year. I know when shit freaks you out.”

  “I’m not freaked out.”

  “The word married came out of my mouth and it’s like an alien took over your body. Seriously, you should see yourself.” Jas laughed, and she knew from his tone that he wasn’t making fun of her but instead trying to bring a bit of levity to the situation. He stood up, setting aside the unplugged electric guitar that he’d been picking at, then came across the room to her, putting his arms around her waist. He kissed the top of her head, his facial scruff scratching her forehead. “I finally did it. I made you speechless. Fuck yeah.”

  Speechless wasn’t the issue. They’d talked about their future now that they were on the cusp of graduation, Jas set to go to medical school in Boston and Krista with a job lined up in New York City. Of course they’d make it work long distance, neither of them feared that. After years of going to punk shows, late-night studying, road trips up and down the coast, they stepped and thought and felt in sync, even if Krista still couldn’t convince him that The Clash was better than The Misfits. It seemed like nothing could tear them apart.

  Nothing, that was, except marriage.

  That was the first time the word had been used. It caused Krista’s entire body to seize up, like strings pulled her muscles taut while walls closed in on her.

  “Hey,” Jas said, “now I’m worried. You never act this way when we talk about the future.”

  Is that what things came down to for Jas? Was it that simple? Flames erupted in Krista’s cheeks, and suddenly every decision over the past years became a question in her mind. Marriage. What kind of old-fashioned horror was that?

  “I can’t believe you’re talking about marriage.” Krista looked for something to hurl or smash or throttle. “Marriage doesn’t work. Marriage is...is...a patriarchal construct. Something designed to take away our identities.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’ve talked about dying together at age ninety-nine and eleven months. How is getting married counter to that?”

  The very word rattled Krista, firing off a torrent of memories, all involving her mother slurring about some new guy she met or getting back together with her dad or so many other bad choices. Krista was not going to be like that.

  She was above that.

  “Krista, it’s a piece of paper that gives us tax breaks.”

  “I don’t need tax breaks. Is that what you see this as? Money?” He didn’t, of course. She knew that. But he put himself in a vulnerable position, which, given the prickly nature of the topic, left her feeling exposed. And her instincts would not have any of that. She was not going to let herself be cornered.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. It’s just, like, one of the benefits of it.”

  “So you are thinking of it that way. And that’s bullshit.”

  At that point, Jas had his hands up, perhaps unconsciously, and his voice shifted to total bedside-manner tone, probably textbook performance from his pre-med classes. “Let’s reset a second.”

  “Nope. You unleashed this, not me. You know how I feel.”

  “No, I don’t! I love you. You love me. People get married when that happens! Why is that word so hard to swallow?”

  “I told you. It’s a patriarchal construct.”

  “Okay, fine. Ditch the word. Life partnership. Or legal commitment. Whatever you want to call it. It’s me and you. Will you let me pledge that? I just want to be with you.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t need a goddamn document to prove it. What are you so afraid of?”

  Jas followed this with various forms of defusing and reaching out, but by then, his words bounced off her layers upon layers of defense. “Oh, no. I can’t believe I’ve been a sucker for so long,” she finally said. “If you’re going to surprise me with this, what else don’t I know about you? Huh? What else are you hiding?”

  “Okay. Okay, I see I hit a nerve. Look, I just want to be together.” His voice was calm, steady, though the inflection from his native Punjabi held a greater presence, as it always did when his emotions stirred. “However we file the paperwork, whatever works... I mean, come on. It’s us. It’s not like we’re gonna break up.”

  “Look at you. You just assume. Listen, I’ve never relied on anyone my whole life and I am not going to start now.” Images flashed through Krista’s mind, not of her time with Jas, but something buried far deeper: her preteen self, one hand blocking the errant batting and shoving from her half-conscious-but-still-drunk mother, the other hand wrestling a towel to soak up the soiled mess underneath her so-called parent. The memory came and went, only slipping through the cracks because someone she dared to trust snuck past her defenses. “Fuck this.”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “No way. You’re not off the hook that easily.” Krista scanned Jas’s bedroom. A hoodie. A T-shirt. A pair of shoes. Her old iPod. Her stuff. Not his. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Agreed. Let’s talk about this tomorrow—”

  “No. That’s not what I meant. We are done here. You can’t walk this back. This isn’t some dumb debate about bands. I am not going to be subject to your control.”

  “Control? What? Jesus, Krista, you know me better than that. I am not your mom—”

  “Don’t you dare talk about my family. What do you know about them? You’ve never even met them.” Krista grabbed a grocery bag on the floor and began throwing her stuff into it. “This is bullshit.”

  “Krista, wait.” He trailed her as she stormed through the apartment, ignoring the horrified look on Jas’s roommate’s face. “Wait. Just wait a—”

  “Don’t call me,” she yelled before opening the door. She stepped through, slamming the door hard enough that the impact echoed down the hall. Jas had the good sense not to follow her to the elevator, where she hit the button, then tried to hide her tears as some people passed by.

  They talked after, of course. She apologized for exploding. He got it, he understood, but something had changed. Every time he tried connecting, those same feelings came up, so much that she kept him at arm’s length, and didn’t even respond to his farewell text when he left for Boston.

  In front of her, no one was asking for that type of legal commitment. They wanted something simpler than that. Sunny was asking for a friend. Rob, through all of this, though he did pay, was asking for honest support.

  And Moira. Though her voice filled the room, Krista suddenly only heard her plea from the other night, the urgency of her request. And though her eyes were closed in song, Krista only saw the fear in them as she pleaded to keep her secret.

  Did Krista look like that when she paid for a faked death certificate to be sent to Uncle Dean after quarantine? That moment had felt like bravado, like control, but even now Krista understood that same fear had driven it, even if she hadn’t worn it on her face.

  She watched as Sunny held her eyes on Moira, whose voice reverberated across the entire room. Sunny sat captivated, and Moira, through all her stiff interactions and strange politeness, now she seemed like a whole person.

  Krista couldn’t take that away from Moira. Or, maybe more importantly, from Sunny.

  She’d figure something else out.

  Moira held out one last note, imbuing the pithy musings of a pop song with a soul that seemed to come out of nowhere, then went quiet. Sunny bopped up and down with her clapping, then Moira did a double take at Krista. Moira’s cheeks flushed, and her posture straightened. “Something the matter?”

 
“No. Not at all,” Krista said. “Sunny, I just realized that I’ll be able to help you with your project after all.”

  Right when she said that, Rob’s chair rattled on the hardwood floor. He stood up, arms crossed and face ashen, and walked into the room. Moira’s beaming smile fell when she read Rob’s expression, and Krista turned to him.

  “It’s happened. MGS has spread. In Los Angeles. In Detroit. And here.” Rob’s lips pursed, and though his eyes flashed briefly to Sunny, they quickly filled with concern as he looked at the adults. “It’s in San Francisco.”

  Excerpt from President Tanya Hersh’s speech on the mutated MGS 96 strain:

  My fellow Americans. I realize that not too long ago, I addressed the first fatality out of the Miami Metro. I had referred to it as a cause for caution, not alarm. I still believe that we should approach with caution, and in the face of recent news, that level of caution should be upgraded.

  It is clear that something is happening. There are documented fatalities in Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit now. In addition, severe symptoms have been reported in Chicago and Dallas. Our friends north of the border also have reported symptoms in Montreal. Those are the known red-zone locations. Any other cities are purely hearsay and I ask that you keep a level head to not spread rumors.

  With this news, the international community has agreed on steps to contain these outbreaks. We recommend you stay in your homes as much as possible. Wear masks when going to work. If you feel any sort of flu-like symptoms, stay home and call your Metro Emergency Health Line.

  In addition, inter-Metro travel will be halted within the coming week. This is done to contain the spread of the virus and ensure we as a society get a handle on it. Details of this will be announced by individual Metro governments. At the same time, a global coalition of scientists and doctors are continuing their tireless efforts to understand and stay ahead of this new strain.

  Don’t give in to panic. Don’t give in to fear. Many, many people are putting in a round-the-clock effort for the betterment of humanity. And humanity will prevail, I promise you.