Shawn whistled. Ness unzipped the tent. “Was Mom there?”
“And scared three-quarters to death.” Shawn grinned ruefully. “The cops had been by. Doctor from Boise, too. You and me, we’re a couple of plague dogs.”
Ness’ blood went as cold as the elevated air. “What do you mean?”
“People are sick all over—Moscow, Troy, Genessee.”
“So the feds won’t care about us anymore, right? Can we go home?”
Shawn laughed. “Ness, you hearing me? There’s an outbreak. People are dying. We’re gonna be up here for a long, long time.”
8
The hospital insisted on an autopsy. Tristan’s mom scheduled the funeral for four days later. The cops questioned Tristan about Pete twice, first to take her statement, then to grill her after the MRI turned up brain damage. They’d found him half-conscious on the Carters’ lawn asking where Tristan had gone. His mom wanted to press charges. Tristan answered the detective’s questions without hesitation, unable to feel fear, anger, anything but a world’s worth of grief.
Two days after the death of their father, Alden’s fever broke. The day after that, their mom began to cough.
She announced the funeral had been postponed, then held a private burial of the empty casket. After, she led Alden to the car, closed his door, and beckoned Tristan to the sidewalk.
“I’m going to the hotel,” she said.
“Do you want me to drop you off?” Tristan said. “When should I come get you?”
Her mom shook her head. “I’m sick, Tristan.”
“Then you should be at home. Not some lonely hotel room.”
She laughed dully, then coughed, turning her chin away. “That’s the point, daughter-mine. I don’t want you and Alden getting sick.”
“Is that why you brought your bag? Just what do you think is going to happen?”
“I think you are going to drive me to the hotel, go straight home, and take care of your little brother until I get better.”
Tristan blinked. The afternoon was a non-temperature, the sunlight touching her skin without warmth. “What if you get worse? Who’s going to take care of you?”
“I’ll be fine.” She exhaled shakily. “And if I’m not, I won’t be the only one. In that contingency, the plan is to shut down the hotel and convert it into a temporary care facility. I’ll have professionals to look after me with medicine even stronger than a daughter’s love.”
“And I’m supposed to stay home and pretend like nothing’s wrong.”
“I’ll call you three times a day. Now drive me to the hotel before I strangle you and have to waste my afternoon hunting down a nanny.”
Tristan was too tired to argue. The funeral had sapped her, withered her. She drove automatically, pulling up in the loading zone in front of the hotel her mom now held sole ownership of. Behind it, green mountains gazed at the bluest sky.
Her mom twisted in her seat to face the back seats. “Alden, I’m going to stay here for a few days. Tristan’s in charge. I don’t want to hear a single complaint against her. Which I would, because I’ve bugged the whole house.”
Alden’s face was drawn, tear-tracked from the funeral. “What’s going on? Why are you leaving?”
“I just need a few days in isolation, that’s all.”
“Are you sick?”
She tipped back her face. Tristan could see the lies forming inside her head. “Yes. But I’ll be better soon. I’d like to give you a hug, but I can’t, so instead I’m just going to tell you I love you very, very much. I’ll see you in a few days.”
She popped her door and stepped into the sunlight, smoothing her black dress over her thighs. Tristan pulled the trunk release. Her mom heaved out her suitcase and walked to the sidewalk, heels clopping, then smiled and waved. Tristan waved back. Alden sat stock-still. Only then did their mom’s smile waver. She waved again, turned, and disappeared inside.
The car idled. How did her mother get so strong? The woman’s husband had just died. She might well be sick with the same illness that had killed him. Yet she’d walked away as if Tristan were dropping her at the airport for a weekend trip to L.A. Had she always been like that? Or was it something she’d become? If so, had that strength been the result of a path she consciously sought, or a coincidental outcome of all that life had thrown at her? It had to be the result of effort, didn’t it? Or had her mom just been born that lucky?
“What are you doing?” Alden said.
“Waiting for you to get up front,” Tristan said. “I’m not your chauffeur.”
He switched to the front seat. She drove home. The fridge hummed from the kitchen. She set down her purse and gazed at the floor, searching for the spot where Pete had bled and bled and bled, but there was no trace of red soaked into the grout between the brown and pink marble tiles. Her mom had called a cleaner as soon as the police were through.
That night, she made spaghetti, but Alden didn’t eat much, and she didn’t try to force him. Her hunger was far-off, too. She watched it the same way she’d watch a loose dog at the far end of the street. It wasn’t her problem.
Her mom called at eight sharp.
“How are you feeling?” Tristan said.
“Tired,” she said. She sounded it. “But I don’t know if I know how to feel anything else right now.”
She nodded, then realized her mom couldn’t see. “I made spaghetti. If you could burn noodles, I think I would have.”
“Give Alden a big hug for me.”
Alden sat blankly through another hour of TV, then went to bed. Tristan absorbed another hour of news. The flu had begun to get press. A handful of deaths around the US and Canada. Bird flu, they thought; vaccines were on the way. It was only ten, but Tristan clicked off and went to bed. She had missed a class that day, but couldn’t remember which one.
Alden slept late, then spent the morning motionless on the couch, the TV tuned to cartoons he hadn’t watched in years. Their mom called. Alden stayed planted on the couch through three that afternoon. Tristan hovered over him. On the TV, a cartoon squid fled from an exploding pineapple, the squid’s ten legs whirling.
“Why don’t you show me some kung fu?” Tristan said.
Alden turned his hip to indicate the sling on his right arm. “Can’t.”
“You’ve got two arms, don’t you?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Well, if you do, I’d like to learn.”
He looked at her for the first time that day. “Why?”
“Why do you like it so much?”
“It makes me feel good.” He leaned forward. “I like the way the warriors think. I think they’d make the world better.”
She forced a smile. “Well, this is your chance to boss me around.”
He gazed at the TV. She sighed and turned to go. He shifted, couch springs creaking. “Do you know how to punch?”
“Sure.” She made her face serious and threw a right hook.
“That’s not how you punch.”
“Really? I made a fist and everything.”
“That’s not how we punch.” Keeping his slung arm perfectly still, he extended his left fist straight from his chest, elbow pointed down. “If you wish to be my student, you must first forget all you once knew.”
“You watch too many movies,” Tristan laughed. She mimicked him, but her elbow flared to the side. “How do you do that with your elbow? You look like one of those boxing nun puppets.”
He walked around the couch and pushed her elbow into position. “Call me sifu. Then I will teach you the Way.”
The next two hours, he taught her to punch, how to position her feet—an awkward stance, the toes tucked in, the knees bent, fists held at her ribs with her elbows poking behind her—and how to throw a half dozen of the basic blocks. Alden giggled more than once, adopting his wise master persona whenever she asked a question about what to do with her elbow or how to roll her wrist. When they finished, she was hungry for the first time i
n days. She warmed up a frozen lasagna and poured them each a glass of milk. Their mom called again. She felt no better and no worse.
After Tristan hung up, Alden let her watch the news. The flu was the lead story. A CDC spokeswoman told the anchor people should wash their hands often and get their vaccines. Outbreaks had emerged on both coasts, with similar cases reported in Germany, Brazil, and Singapore, but the CDC woman reminded the anchor that new strains of flu evolved every year and the government anticipated this evolution accordingly.
“Is that what Dad had?” Alden said.
Tristan glanced over. His face was blank. “They haven’t told us yet.”
“He runs a hotel. He probably got it from a Chinese person staying the night.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because that’s where the bird flu comes from.”
“Oh.” Her college-honed instincts to leap on anything racial receded. “Guess I’d better cancel our trip to Beijing.”
“You think we need vaccines?”
“Um. I think if we haven’t caught it yet, we probably can’t. We were right there with Dad. But that’s a good question. I’ll see what Mom thinks tomorrow.”
The phone stayed silent throughout the morning. Tristan waited until the microwave clock hit noon, then called the hotel. Ingrid patched her through to her mom’s room. The phone rang fifteen times before Tristan hung up. She waited twenty minutes and tried again.
“I’m going out,” she told Alden. “Don’t let anyone in.”
He gave her a wise look. “The student can’t leave without master’s permission.”
Wavelike, Tristan’s anxiety receded for just a moment, then came flooding back. “Mom needs me to bring her a few things. While I’m gone, why don’t you prepare our next lesson?”
“Silence! The student does not tell the master what to do. The master finds instruction from the Way.”
“And what if the student is part of the Way?”
Alden frowned. “Then she would be too humble to notice.”
Tristan smiled and locked the front door behind her. Traffic was easy, even on the highway. The gas station across from the hotel was empty, but cars brimmed the hotel lot. A fleet of RVs occupied the back. Tristan parked and sat in her car for a long minute. On her way to the sliding doors, a woman in scrubs helped a man in glasses from his car. He doubled over, hands planted on his knees, coughing onto the asphalt.
Tristan covered her mouth and headed to the front desk, pleased to see Ingrid was still working. She explained the situation. Ingrid nodded somberly and passed her an extra keycard.
“Did she tell you she’s converting the entire fifth and sixth floors into a hospice?” Ingrid said. “Your mom, she’s...”
“I know.”
The coughing man and his nurse waited for the elevator. Tristan took the stairs to the sixth floor; elevators were a waste of electricity anyway. People complained about their utility bills, they wished for thinner waists, then they spent all day idling in a lobby waiting for a machine to lift them a few feet off the ground.
The sixth floor had the particular hush of hotels everywhere. She padded down the floral carpet. People coughed apologetically behind closed doors. At her mom’s room, she knocked, waited, knocked again. Heart racing, she keyed the lock and stepped inside.
The room smelled of meat left on the counter. Her mom lay in bed. Blood flecked the wall behind the headboard. Tissues overflowed the tiny bin her mom had set beside the bed, the Kleenex wadded with phlegm and blood. The curtains were open, but the sheers were closed, shrouding the room in dim, overcast daylight that made everything look gray.
“Mom?” She edged nearer. The TV flickered, muted. She took another step. “Mom?”
“Don’t come near me.”
Tristan jolted back, adrenaline bursting through her solar plexus. “Sweet Jesus!”
“Stay right there,” her mom croaked again. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“You didn’t call. I thought something had happened.”
“It has.”
“Mom—”
Her mom rolled over, pulling the covers away. Her eyes were hollow, hungry, recessed lights in the pale wall of her face. “Take care of Alden.”
Tristan’s lips parted. “What are you talking about? In a few days, you’ll be back home failing to get him to shower.”
Her mom laughed like the shuffling of paper. “Tristan. I’m about to die.”
“Mom! You don’t know—”
“I’ve been talking to doctors. Your dad wasn’t the first. Do you know how many people have come to stay in these rooms the last few days? Do you know how many have left?”
“You’re talking like this is the bubonic plague over here.”
“The plague can be cured.” The bedsheets rustled. Her mom fought to sit up, neck corded. “I’m going to say this again because I need you to believe me. I’m about to die. Hoping can’t change that. In fact, when your hope dies, you begin to see things very clearly. Things are about to get worse, Tristan. Much worse. It’s time to stop hoping and time to start doing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tristan’s eyes stung. “You talk like you’ve given up.”
“There’s a safe in the closet in my bedroom. The spare key’s taped inside the bathroom fan. The safe has cash. Your father’s pistol. Don’t be afraid to use them both.”
“Mom!”
“Forget your normal life for now. Keep Alden safe. Keep yourself safe. You’ll know when it’s okay to go back.”
Tristan stepped toward the fetid bed. “Mom, get up. You’re coming—”
“Get the fuck away!” her mom shouted. A cough bent her spine. Blood sprayed her hands. She raised them, red blood and yellow-green mucus sliming to the sheets. “Do you see? Go home. Protect Alden. I love you, Tristan. I won’t see you again.”
Tears gushed down Tristan’s face. She wanted to rush across the room, to sweep her mom’s brittle body in her arms and will her own health into the woman’s ruined flesh. Her mom sounded so hopeless. So alone. Words couldn’t reach her. Only touch could do that.
But Alden was waiting at home. If she touched her mom, what was in her mom would coat her skin, penetrate the liquids of her eyes and nasal cavity, wriggle into her lungs. Maybe it already had.
“I love you, Mom,” she whispered.
Her mom smiled and closed her eyes. She descended back into the comforter, a tide receding from the shore.
Tristan ran down the stairs and drove straight home. She’d forgotten to return the room key. In the driveway, she composed her face. Alden didn’t look up from his cartoons. She brought a chair to the bathroom to get up close to the fan, then went to the garage for a screwdriver. Inside the fan was a key. Inside the safe in her parent’s room were six bundles of cash, a small black pistol, and two green boxes of bullets.
And then she cried again, muffling her mouth with a pillow that smelled like her mother’s hair, her shoulders jouncing, her dark hair spilling onto her face. After, she removed $800 from one of the bricks of bills, locked the safe, pocketed the key, and went to the bathroom to wash her face.
Downstairs, she posted herself between Alden and the TV. “Want to go grocery shopping?”
He gave her a look. “I’d rather go fingernail-puller shopping.”
“Come on. We’ll get whatever you like. Mom gave me some money.”
Alden straightened. “Did you see her?”
“She’s still pretty sick. I think she’s going to be at the hotel for a while. Go get your shoes.”
She took the highway to the Safeway. Inside, the aisles looked perfectly normal. Mothers with young children. Busy for a weekday. Tristan loaded the cart with bacon, boneless chicken breasts, macaroni, spaghetti, and a dozen jars of sauce, alfredo and red. In produce, she filled bags with the things that would last for weeks: bell peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, potatoes. She picked up three bottles of Ibuprofen, four packs of NyQuil, two b
ottles of cough syrup. She had to fight down the giggles. She felt like a crazy person. A hoarder. Someone who owned a bunker. Then she remembered her mom’s fever-bright eyes burning in the shadows of the hotel room, and she no longer felt like laughing at all.
The grocery bill came to $446.27. Part of her wanted to scream and put it all back. Still feeling like another person, she paid with a sheaf of twenties.
Back home, she moved her dad’s car to the street and parked in the garage. She made a list of everything in the house. After dinner, she went to the Walgreens and spent nearly three hundred dollars on toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, floss, hand soap, bar soap, shampoo, deodorant, razors, toilet paper, paper towels, tampons, rubbing alcohol, Q-tips, Band-Aids, and Neosporin. The clerk’s look made her blush, but they’d use it eventually.
She went home and locked the doors.
The news reports began to take on a spooked tone. Pharmacies had run out of vaccines; the vaccinated were still coming down with the flu. Two days later, MSNBC.com reported looting in LA. Fires. Shootings. An automated recording called to inform Tristan that Alden’s middle school had been canceled. At night, gunshots crackled in the streets beyond their secluded subdivision. On FOX, reporters wearing surgical masks stood in front of bagged bodies being loaded into garbage trucks and demanded that Obama roll out the cure.
“That looks like I Am Legend,” Alden said.
Tristan sat transfixed. “I can’t believe they’re showing this.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to stay right here. Wait for a cure. For things to calm down.”
“What if they don’t?”
She gave him a dazed look. “No disease kills everyone. Even the worst plague of all time, the Black Death, only killed a third of Europe. And that was back in the days when they thought the best way to cure someone was to remove all their blood.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 113