by Mike Chen
“Are you the girl’s father?” Kelley asked Rob.
“Yes. Sunny is my daughter.”
“I’m very sorry, but we all need to get somewhere that’s not public right now. The CDC has advised everyone to stay inside and avoid travel unless absolutely necessary to get home. They’ve put all types of limitations on—”
“Travel!” Rob’s voice pushed past Frank’s mom’s words, catching everyone’s attention. “Travel—she got a bus schedule at the market, but she wouldn’t need that to get here.”
“Would she try to go anywhere else?” Moira said, ignoring her fiancé and his family. “Any hint about where she wanted to go?”
“Krista’s uncle.” The words could barely come out from Rob. His brow crinkled, as if dots connected with every passing second. “Your uncle. She looked him up.”
“Oh, no, no, no.” Krista bit down on her lip before beginning to pace back and forth. “Not him. Anyone but him. She asked about him, what he does. If I was going to see him.” Her eyes flared as she turned to Rob. “She probably thinks Dean can cure Elena. That’s what her whole wedding idea is about.”
“You’re getting married?” Frank’s dad asked.
“No. My wife...my wife is dead.”
“Right, his wife is dead, and he lied to his daughter about it. Goddamn it, Rob, see what you’ve done—”
“Krista, not now. I think she’s gone one step further. I tried telling her the truth last night, and she got it all mixed up.”
“Why weren’t you just clear to her? ‘Sunny, your mom is dead. Dead. No cure. Let’s move on.’”
“No, no, no. Do you think that works on kids?” Rob adjusted, still stretching his thighs. “And why the hell would you tell her about your uncle?”
“Because she asked. And I didn’t want to be yet another adult lying to her about everything.” Krista moved directly in Rob’s way, her arms crossed, though they might as well have been loaded for punching. “She’s had enough of—”
“Stop!” Moira’s yell rattled the entire lobby, catching the attention of just about everyone. “We can blame later.” Moira flashed a cool expression first at Rob, then at Krista. “We’re losing time.” She tapped her forehead, as if it would speed up the already pounding connections in her mind. “Okay, we have to cover our bases. Best-case scenario, she’s calling the hospital from somewhere in the city. Worst case...” She took a deep breath and tried not to imagine the possibilities. “Worst case, she’s got a bus schedule, and she’s trying to actually go see him up in Seattle. And if that’s true, we have to find out before the transportation lockdown goes into effect.”
“Muni doesn’t go to Seattle. She’d need something else.” Krista pointed behind them. “There’s a bus station downtown, about two miles east.”
“I know that one. It’s by our office. Well,” Moira said, “if she made it there, there’s no way she’d be able to buy a bus ticket. Maybe they’d just hold her?”
“She has cash.” Rob’s palms came up with a defeated shake of the head. “I don’t know where she got it or how much it is, but she has some. She bought bananas at the corner market.”
“Oh, fuck.” Everyone, from Frank’s silent family to the other frantic adults standing by, looked at Krista. “I gave her cash.”
“What?”
“I gave her cash in case of emergency. Forty dollars.”
Rob’s eyes went wide. “Why would you give a child that?”
“I was teaching her to be prepared. In case of another outbreak, which you promised her would never happen, but see the mess we’re—”
“Blame later.” Moira grabbed Rob by the hand. “We’ll never make it by car in this traffic. It’s two miles—thirty minutes if we walk, much less if we run. Can you run?”
Rob bounced from side to side, his movement a little looser than a few minutes ago. “I don’t know if I can, but I’m going to.”
Krista glanced down at her phone, her mouth forming a thin straight line. “Okay, you two go. I’m going to try to get through to Muni security in case they’ve seen her. And,” she said, giving a slow blink, like her thoughts stuttered as they formed, “I’ll call Uncle Dean. I’ll try his hospital to see if she’s called there.”
“Thank you,” Rob said, his volume pulled down by his solemn tone. “I appreciate it.”
“Right,” Moira said, her British accent slipping out, as it did occasionally under duress. She caught it and self-corrected. “If I’m going to run, I’m going to need these.” She reached into the bag held by Frank’s sister and pulled out the pair of white running shoes. “Might as well break them in now.” Her heels landed on the floor a few feet away, and she started lacing up.
A small smile cut through Krista’s flat look. “I knew there was a reason you wanted those.”
“Wait, Moira, what are you doing?” Frank walked over and put his arm around his fiancée as she stood up from tying her shoes. “The CDC is telling us to stay inside. Our whole family is here—”
“They’re a family too.”
“But they’re not your family.”
“There’s no time for this right now. But you have to understand, I’m more like them than anyone knows.” She gave the laces one hard tug before looking at Rob. “I think we’re all family these days.”
Excerpt from Police Report #4ADSIRE:
Records show that Freda Greenwood acquired the pistol two weeks before the incident. During that time, neighbors reported Thomas discussing an impending move to Reclaimed Territory while Kay was seen spending more time at the local church. Freda’s intent, as detailed in email and phone records, was to travel east after being recruited into the Rocks looter gang following Thomas’s announcement that the entire family was moving to the San Luis Obispo Reclaimed commune. On the morning of the fourth, Thomas discovered the weapon and tried to confront Freda about her plan. The pistol discharged during a struggle, shooting Freda in the forehead just as Kay returned home. In distress, Thomas barricaded himself in the bathroom while Kay remained with the body of her daughter. Kay called her local pastor, and while on the phone with him, Thomas turned the gun on himself (timing of gunshot audio confirmed by pastor). Cit-pats arrived first to find Thomas’s body still locked inside the bathroom door while Kay sat by herself on the kitchen floor. After her release from questioning, she left the San Francisco Metro. Her last known words were “There has to be another path.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Rob
“Can you keep up?” Moira’s voice rose over the chaos, reaching Rob half a block back.
“Yep,” he yelled in return, but the truth was that adrenaline had only carried him so far. What about those stories of mothers lifting cars to save their babies? That wasn’t happening, maybe because he’d actually considered that adrenaline would restore his high school shape, he’d jinxed the whole damn thing.
Moira stopped at the crosswalk, but there really wasn’t any need—cars inched along, if they moved at all. The cool San Francisco air didn’t do anything to keep him from sweat-soaking his undershirt, and when he caught up, he bent over at the waist, hands on knees and pockets of air fighting into his lungs. “You all right?” she asked him.
“I call bullshit on the whole emergency adrenaline thing. I feel terrible.”
“We have three blocks to go. Can you make it?”
“Just go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you in front of the bus station. I’ll peek inside and come back out. Otherwise, we might get lost in the mob.” And just like that, Moira spun and floated off, deftly swerving around the few people lingering on the street.
Sunny. Push forward. Find Sunny. He took a few more deep breaths and stretched out his aching quads as he checked left and right; the main street offered complete gridlock, but the side streets showed signs of relief. Just go, he told h
imself, and his legs started moving again, the muscle burn reminding him with every step that he wasn’t seventeen anymore. Rob couldn’t even remember the last time he’d actually exercised; the quarantine softball league and driveway soccer with Sunny didn’t count. When he looked up, the bus station now seemed farther away.
Moira returned when he still had a block to go. “It’s packed. We’ll have to push our way through.”
Rob forced himself to sprint past the cross-traffic of random people, finally arriving at the bus station’s front entrance. As he opened the door, a blast of noise nearly knocked him over. “Holy shit,” he said to Moira. Even the air was thick from the dense crowd.
“Maybe a ticket agent knows. They’d have to remember a little girl buying a ticket.”
Rob flashed a thumbs-up and began to slither his way through the labyrinth of men and women, a stew of body type, race, and height. The crowd surged and swelled, swaying with a regular rhythm as people bought their tickets and were released out to the waiting area.
“Look,” Moira yelled in his ear, tapping on his shoulder. “Seattle bus leaving in fifteen minutes.”
“Okay,” Rob yelled back, and he snuck his shoulder in between two people and pushed himself forward.
“Excuse me,” a young woman said, her angry volume betraying the polite words, “but you better not be cutting in line.”
“I’m not buying a ticket. I’m trying to find my daughter.”
“Right, and I lost my dog up there too. Get your ass back.”
“Listen, I’m serious. My daughter is lost and I need to get through.”
An older man, the pale lights reflecting off his dark skin and curly hair, pushed his own way between Rob and the woman. “Jesus, let the man find his daughter.”
“He’s full of shit.”
“How do you know?” The man and woman soon ignored Rob and sank into the meaningless back-and-forth arguing that captured the vibe in the room. Rob kept his head low and shoulders sideways, slipping and sliding past people to the edge of the front counters.
Moira got there too, seemingly without any of the problems he’d encountered.
“Have you seen a little girl here today?” Rob said, yelling at the ticket agent who refused to turn his way.
“Sir, you’re going to have to wait.”
“Listen, I’m not here to buy a ticket. I just need to know if you’ve seen my daughter. Did you sell any tickets to a little girl today?”
“Little girl? How old?”
“Seven. Black hair. About this high,” he said, waving his arm around his ribs.
“No, go to the back of the line.”
Rising up on his tiptoes, Rob counted six ticket agents, each separated by about two feet, but in this place, it might as well have been a thousand miles. “Excuse me,” he yelled, trying to get the attention of the next ticket agent over. “Hey!”
The crowd continued to push and pull, a dense beast in constant flux. “This isn’t going to work.” He turned to check with Moira, but she was gone.
Not lost in the crowd. Not arguing with a ticket agent. Instead, he caught a blur of movement over the counter, and suddenly she was on the inside, working her way through each agent.
Had she just done a gymnast vault over everything?
“Rob!” Her voice flew through the chaos, and she waved her arm over the third agent—a small, older woman with a bad perm, just like his own mom used to have.
Moira gestured for him to climb over. He planted his hands on the counter and propelled himself up as swiftly and quickly as he could, though he lacked anything close to Moira’s grace. His feet tumbled into something or someone, and he repeated “Sorry” before landing in the employee’s trench and dashing to her.
“You girl’s father?” the ticket agent asked in a thick accent.
“Yes. Yes, I am. When did she come here?”
“About an hour ago. Buy ticket to Seattle.”
“Why did you sell her that? She’s seven!”
“She pay cash. Say she have to see her mom.”
“We’re getting somewhere now.” Moira put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you remember what bus she took?”
“Think that one.” The woman pointed at the double doors to the boarding area. “Leave in five minutes.”
The crowd surged forward, pushing the first row of people against the counter, causing the computer monitors on them to shake. “Shit. How are we going to get through that?”
Moira looked at him, her face neutral, but not in the same way it was at work. “Meet me out front in five minutes.”
“What?”
“Go. Just work your way out. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“But the buses are over there.”
“Just go.” There was a calm in her eyes, and she tilted her head as if she saw something that no one else did. “I can do this,” she said, though he wasn’t clear who that was meant for. It didn’t matter, because before he asked, she vaulted back onto the counter, made three quick, large strides, and jumped into the wall.
Except she didn’t just collide with the wall like a bird flying into glass; her left leg compressed into it, then pushed out, propelling her sideways. She took two horizontal strides on the adjacent wall, then landed neatly on the other side of the crowd, crouched on the balls of her feet in front of the boarding area door.
“You friend is crazy.”
“Yeah,” he said, watching Moira disappear into the line of buses. “I think so.”
* * *
Getting out proved to be much easier than going in—people were more than happy to release someone from the crowd. Four citizen patrol officers sprinted by while Rob waited, the familiar red vests with a big blue PATROL on them, though he couldn’t tell if they were rushing to control the emerging chaos or if they also wanted bus tickets. The din created by people coming, going, or simply panicking pulled memories out of Rob’s vault, aligning this world with the noise downtown San Francisco used to experience daily before quarantine. Moira finally emerged, and his heart jumped at what he thought was the shadow of a little girl behind. As the light crept into the open door, his hopes were dashed by the shape of a stranger’s rolling luggage.
“It’s no good,” Moira said. “She’s not on the Seattle bus. The security guard says he saw her about an hour ago. A different bus left for Seattle around then.”
All the blood drained from Rob’s face, quicker than Moira flying over the angry mob. “The transportation lockdown. When does that start?”
“Inter-Metro travel is cut off starting tomorrow morning at seven. And I’m guessing state borders are pretty guarded right now.”
Rob’s phone lit up with the time as he pushed a button. “It’s about eleven. We can make it. There’s still a direct highway there. How long of a drive is it?”
A rash of sprinting people blew past them, and a smaller group shortly following. “There,” Moira said, nodding toward a side street. “We have to think this through.”
“What the hell was that back there?” Rob asked when they got to the quiet alley.
“I had a friend who taught me how to do that. It’s been a while.” Moira looked at the shuffling car traffic. She shrugged as she leaned against the alley’s concrete wall and brushed sweat off her forehead. “I should practice more.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Krista
Uncle Dean. Uncle Asshole or Uncle Dickhead or Dr. Jerk or any of the other names Krista had for him growing up. She assigned many nicknames for horrible relatives, but Uncle Dean got the worst of her anger. Not because he necessarily treated her the worst, not directly, but even though he’d actually managed to do something with his life, he didn’t do anything for Krista’s when things went to hell. Now, just like before, she tried to reach him as the world devolved into chaos, one far bigger than the
shit of her childhood home.
Across the lobby, Frank’s family had changed from a serene bit of Americana to a group of discordant talking heads. They each assumed a different personality trait like the fairy tale dwarves of panic: Frantic (Kelley), Confused (Joe), Mopey (Frank), and Drunk (Leslie).
“I know there’s mistrust right now, but I can honestly say that scientists and doctors around the world are working on this,” some important old guy said on the TV over Krista’s head.
“You say that, but we’ve heard this before. What are you expecting? Days? Months? Years?”
“I’m not a medical person. I’m just saying please, don’t panic, and be patient.”
“Whatever,” Krista said as she searched for Uncle Dean’s hospital phone number. Even though hospital, utility, and government sites were supposed to load faster than the usual Metro stuff, the screen still greeted her with a never-ending loading icon. Outside, peace and love failed to prevail, with two fights already breaking out in the gridlocked traffic. A policeman came in, and his weary posture said enough about what he was seeing. She even saw a citizen patrol officer throw her vest off and disappear down the street.
St. Vincent General Hospital’s directory finally loaded and Krista clicked on the Staff link, then again on Doctors, then one more time on Uncle Dean’s bolded name.
His profile came up, with all of the fancy credentials and descriptions like “Specialist in Communicable Diseases” along with a small photo—same Uncle Dean she remembered, only with a little less hair up top and a little more gray. Just as she remembered for years and years, Uncle Dean didn’t smile. His mouth formed a straight line across, like it didn’t know which way to go.