by Tosca Lee
The third is the onslaught of greasy-good smells.
There are maybe eight people in the place—including the bartender, who’s pouring drinks in a surgical mask and pair of latex gloves.
We’re the only other ones in masks.
“Welcome, strangers,” he says, glancing up. A guy at the bar turns and, after sizing up Chase, nods.
“Thank you,” Chase says, gesturing to an empty table near the door. He kicks out a chair for me without touching it.
I sit, staring at the TV, where the anchor is reporting an estimated ten thousand infected and a growing number of fatalities across the country under the headline “Nation in Crisis.” News scrolls across the bottom of the screen: stores operating by candlelight, allowing only one or two customers in at a time. Looters of mom-and-pop stores being shot. Off-duty first responders reporting in by the hour. Footage of soldiers rolling into New York City as the president mobilizes the National Guard.
“What are you hungry for?”
“Anything without meat. Except grilled cheese.”
He looks at me for a minute. “I’m pretty sure the vegetarian option out here is chicken, but I’ll see what I can do.”
He goes to the bar to order, at which the bartender informs him there’s a five-dollar generator fee. Chase pulls out his wallet, and a few minutes later the bartender goes into the kitchen.
“You a military man?” one of the guys next to him asks. It’s barely ten and he’s already slurring.
The man goes on to regale him with some tale about some place he and his buddies were stationed. Chase nods and listens good-naturedly, and when the bartender comes back, the drunk guy says, “A shot for my friend here, on me.” And then he’s introducing himself and the guy hunched over his drink next to him and calling for the bartender.
“Jim, we got a Marine here—better pour us a couple more. And one for his lady.”
“Essie, come say hi,” he says.
Essie?
I get up awkwardly.
“This is Esmeralda,” he says. I give a little wave as Chase hands me a plastic shot glass.
“Screw the Russians!” the drunk guy says. A few at the end of the bar lift their drinks. The rest ignore him.
Chase lowers his mask enough to drain the glass. I do likewise, take a sip, and sputter.
“That’ll take care of more germs than that mask will,” one of the guys says to me.
“Thank you,” I say hoarsely.
“You guys had any cases around here?” Chase asks.
“Sure,” the guy says. “Fella stole a neighbor’s horse and went riding into town buck naked in twenty-degree weather. Local dentist. Used to take care of my kids’ teeth when they was little. He’s at the tri-city med center now. Guess he don’t recognize his family anymore. Sad deal.”
“When was this?” I ask.
“ ’Bout five days ago.”
“There was another one in Ord,” the guy next to him says.
“Oh, yup,” the first guy says. “It ain’t nearly as bad out here. Think I heard Lincoln had close to a hundred cases. That was a week ago.”
We thank them for the shots. I carry the remainder of mine back to the table near the door.
“What is this?” I whisper, pretty sure I’ve burned out the lining of my esophagus.
“Fireball,” he says.
“And who’s Esmeralda?”
“The girl I promised to marry.”
I straighten. “Oh.”
“Until fourth grade started and she decided she liked my best friend better.”
“Ouch.”
The TV is replaying footage of an explosion, of the president condemning the attacks, telling Americans to be smart, be safe, and stay inside. That the Red Cross is establishing protocols for those needing water, food, assistance.
“You know who stands the most to gain from all this?” Drunk Guy at the bar says loudly. “North Korea! No one goes in, no one comes out. All they have to do is wait this whole thing out—or hurry it along with a little ballistic missile. Before you know it, that crazy Kim Jong-whatever’ll be ruling the world.”
“They’re not going to need missiles,” I murmur, looking at Chase.
“What do you mean?” he says, staring at me.
I can feel the alcohol spreading warmth through my stomach as I talk.
“The disease is spreading with the flu,” I whisper.
“It’s a flu?”
I shake my head. “Not the flu itself—something spread by the flu that started in Alaska with some pigs.”
He sits back hard in his chair, his expression blank. “Do you know how many people get the flu each year? The season’s just getting started!”
“Where’s your family?” I ask.
“France,” he says, distracted. “My parents and one of my sisters are. So they’re safe.”
“You said you had two sisters. Where’s the other one?”
He shakes his head. “Lost her to breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Took it three times to get her. She was a warrior. So . . . what you’re saying is we’re looking at tens or hundreds of thousands of cases—of deaths—by the time this thing runs its course?”
I say nothing. The silence does it for me.
He straightens as the bartender comes over with our food in Styrofoam containers—cheeseburger for him, veggie burger for me. Fries all over the place.
The aroma is more than I can take. I peer at the sandwich, then push my mask aside and take a bite right there and before I know it, we’ve wolfed down half our food and Chase is calling for two more shots.
“No. I can’t,” I say.
“If you can’t drink at the end of the world, when can you?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Trigger time?”
“All Magnus talked about was the end of the world. Everything we did was to prepare for that. To survive—or not—to the new Earth to come as the rest of the world burned, died, drowned, or whatever, around us. So, yeah, you could say the end of the world triggers me. It makes me want to walk all the way to Fort Collins if I have to.”
“You probably didn’t know what to do with yourself once you got out,” Chase says, considering his glass.
“No. I didn’t,” I say. “I daydreamed about it, lots. What it’d be like to do what I wanted when I wanted. Turns out I didn’t know what I wanted. I hate to say this, but right now is the best I’ve felt in longer than I can remember. It feels good having a purpose in this life. In this moment, right now. I feel wrong, admitting that. With Jackie . . . all that’s going on.”
“Yes, it does feel good,” he says quietly, lifting an intense blue gaze. “Thank you, Wynter Roth. You may not believe this, but we have more in common than you think.”
I tilt my head, not sure how that could be.
He lifts a broad shoulder. “I didn’t know what to do with myself after I decided not to re-up. I took a gig consulting on a movie set. Couldn’t stand it. Got into fighting. Got out of fighting. I wasn’t going to Cheyenne to just wait this thing out. The idea was to go figure things out. Figure myself out. Get a plan by the time the electricity came back on and the world started up again.”
“Thank you, by the way,” I say, studying him. He really is handsome. And I don’t know whether it’s the Fireball or the end of the world, but I don’t mind letting my eyes tell him so.
“For what?” he says, his gaze drifting down to my mouth.
“Coming along when you did. And this.”
He doesn’t answer but reaches over to take my hand. The gesture sends an electric charge up my arm. A good one. So good, in fact, that I think I ought to pull away.
So good that I don’t.
“You believe in God?” I hear myself ask.
“Pretty much have to,” he says, though he doesn’t explain why.
The bartender comes over with the shots. I’m actually disappointed when Chase lets go of my hand to
pay him.
“What should we toast to?” he asks, after the bartender leaves.
“Saving the world,” I say.
“To saving the world.” We clink plastic cups and I shudder down another sip.
“Maybe when this is over . . .” He shrugs, turning his cup on the table. “You should try your hand at ice fishing.”
“It could be a while,” I say, drinking half the shot and sliding the rest toward him.
I don’t say that I won’t be around to ask. That I’ll have a child to worry about.
“Should we get on with this world saving, then?” Chase says.
I grab the duffle and the food container with the last of my fries.
But I stop cold at the image on the TV.
It’s a photo of Jaclyn.
CHAPTER THIRTY
* * *
Chase,” I whisper as I move unsteadily toward the bar. Dreading, bracing myself for what I’m about to hear. That she shot up a neonatal unit, rammed a bus full of people off a bridge, started a fire that burned down an entire building full of people—any act of madness so heinous as to warrant national coverage.
Anything other than what the anchor says next.
“. . . what controversial religious leader and ‘agricultural archaeologist’ Magnus Theisen claimed was a promising lead in the ancient roots of the virus causing rapid early-onset dementia. The potentially life-saving research was stolen in a violent break-in at the New Earth lab in Ames that claimed the life of Theisen’s wife, Jaclyn. Theisen was found dead yesterday morning in the office where she worked as an administrative . . .”
What?
I stagger back, Chase catching me by the arm as my knees threaten to buckle.
Jackie . . .
An off-site lab in Ames? Magnus claiming the research as his own?
Jackie dead.
No. She can’t be. How could she have been found in Ames? She was going east.
I look at Chase, my eyes wild as he comes to stare at the TV.
“. . . thought to have been murdered by twenty-two-year-old former organization member Wynter Roth . . .”
I swing my gaze back to the screen.
And find myself staring at a picture of myself.
“Federal authorities are asking that if you have seen this woman, please notify local law enforcement.”
I turn away from the bar, checking my mask as Chase takes me by the elbow.
“They’re lying,” I whisper, unable to catch my breath.
“Go close up those takeout boxes,” he murmurs, pulling me behind him.
I walk woodenly to the table and fumble with the boxes, fingers stupid on the Styrofoam tabs.
“Thanks, guys,” Chase says, hand raised in a wave as he comes to collect the duffle bag.
“Need one for the road?” the bartender asks.
“Nope, we’re all set, thanks.”
“Hey,” the man at the end of the bar says.
Chase pulls the keys from his pocket, puts them into my hand.
“ ’Scuse me,” the guy says, sliding off his seat. He walks over. “What did you say your name was?”
“Crawford,” Chase says, holding out his hand.
“Not you. Her,” he says, pointing. Behind him, another man gets up from the bar.
Chase passes me the duffle.
“I wanna see her face!” the man says, pushing toward me.
“Whoa,” Chase says, hand against his chest. “I think there’s a misunderstanding here.”
“Then let’s clear it up. Let me see your face, miss.”
“Essie,” Chase says. “Go.”
I shove my way out the front door, skip the icy sidewalk and plow right through the snow, cutting the corner down the side of the building. A shadow skirts from the back door of the bar as I round the bumper, steps camouflaged by the generator’s engine. One of the guys from the bar. He grabs me as I lunge for the door. I turn, lash out with a fist full of keys. Drive my shin up into his groin. Bring the hard part of the duffle down on his head. I don’t stick around to see whether he gets up but click the fob and yank open the driver’s-side door.
I climb in, shoving Buddy out of the way. Start the engine, throw the Jeep into reverse. Back out from behind the bar and shift into drive. Barrel toward the corner as Chase comes running out the front door. “Go!” he shouts, leaping up onto the running board, not even bothering to climb in.
I gun across the intersection and down the residential street. Stop two blocks down, just long enough for him to get in.
And then we’re hightailing it out of town.
We drive in tense silence for several miles, Chase pointing me north and then east a mile. North again.
But all I can see is Jaclyn’s picture pasted on that screen.
Found dead.
“Wynter.”
“I didn’t do it. Someone killed her.” My vision blurs. “She said she thought someone was following her. Oh, God . . . Jackie!” The words spew from my mouth, foul as vomit as I cover my mouth with my arm.
Worse yet, there’s no one to corroborate my story. The lights were out in Naperville. No electricity . . . no security cameras. Julie didn’t see her; Jaclyn parked blocks away. I didn’t even tell Julie why I was leaving. I told her I was going to the Enclave to get Truly—less than twenty minutes from Ames!
“I can’t even prove that Jaclyn came to Illinois. And you—you didn’t even see me on the interstate until we were west of Ames. You can’t even say you saw me east of there, coming from Illinois!”
“I thought you and Jaclyn called Ken?” Chase says, glancing at me.
“Ken’s sick. In a few days he won’t remember his own name!” I clench the steering wheel, run back through that night again. The time the lights went off shortly after midnight. When Ken called after that. When I saw Julie in the RV—what time was that, 1 a.m.? When Jaclyn showed up maybe twenty minutes later. How long was she there? I fumble for my phone, for the time stamp when I finally called Julie to say I was leaving.
2:13 a.m.
“Wynter, pull over.”
“I kept thinking if she had stayed in Ames to hand the samples over they might have killed her . . . Blaine, Magnus’s former business partner, died less than two weeks after the handoff in September. They said it was an overdose, but was it? What if they’re covering up the whole trail!”
“Wynter, let me drive.”
I skid to a stop on the shoulder of a highway. I don’t even know which one. Chase reaches over and puts the Jeep into park.
I get out. Walk around the back of the Jeep where Chase meets and takes me by the shoulders.
“I didn’t kill my sister! She was sick!”
He pulls me against him, holds me tight.
“I’ve never even heard of an off-site New Earth lab,” I say.
“Whatever’s in those samples, somebody wants it really badly. Which means the sooner we get to Colorado and can hightail it back out of there, the better,” he says. “Who did your sister think was following her—Magnus’s men or the people she was supposed to deliver the samples to?”
“I—I don’t know. I thought she was imagining it . . .” Because she was sick. Which means I was going to lose her.
But not like this.
Inside the Jeep, it takes me three tries to click in, Buddy clutched against me, as talons of grief and panic sink into my diaphragm, deeper than before.
Pull it together, Wynter.
Chase turns on the radio, scans the stations past the same tired public advisories to stay home, coverage of the president’s address to the nation, the attack on the electric substation, new cities in the Pacific Northwest under formal quarantine . . .
He abruptly turns up the volume.
“. . . Theisen found dead in an Ames, Iowa, lab where promising research on rapid early-onset dementia was allegedly stolen by a Wynter Roth . . .”
My heart drops. He scans through several more channels and lands on another station a
iring the same story, word for word.
I expect Chase to pull over, kick me out at any moment.
“Interesting that they failed to mention you’re her sister,” he says.
It’s true; they haven’t.
“So you believe me.”
“I’m a pretty good judge of character. I also highly doubt anyone willing to kill for those samples would be desperate to get them to a college of veterinary medicine in Colorado. Wouldn’t be my first choice, considering that the Russians no doubt pay better. The good news is they can’t show your picture on the radio.”
We pass by a small pond off the side of the road. All of a sudden, he hits the window button on his side of the car, grabs my phone, and chucks it out of the Jeep.
“What are you doing?” I shout, as I watch it break the icy surface.
“Making sure they can’t track you any farther than they have. Who else knows about the Colorado connection?”
“No one.” And then—oh, God. How am I supposed to tell Ashley what’s happened to Jackie? Or has he already heard it somewhere on the news? What if he’s called the police?
No. No. He talked to Jackie and me together. He knew she was with me in Naperville and that she was sick.
“How did you find this guy in Colorado?” he asks, glancing at me.
“He’s . . . an old friend of Jackie’s. What if I go to the police?”
“You’ll be taken into custody for an attempted act of bioterrorism in addition to murder. With the grid down, the entire case could take . . . a long time. You could be locked up for years just waiting for a trial.”
And then what would happen to Truly?
“No police,” I say.
“No police. Right now nobody knows where the samples are—”
“Except a bunch of drunk guys back there.”
“Who don’t know where we’re headed.”
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I say quietly. “You need to get away from me. We need to find two new cars. You go to Wyoming, I’ll take the—”
“No. Besides, the only gas you’ve got is now mine.”
“Not if you don’t get me to the panhandle. That was the deal.”
“Are you going to turn me into a kidnapper?” he says, glancing at me.
“Those guys back there know what we’re driving. And that farmer, Mr. Ingold, who fed us this morning? He not only knows what we’re driving but what you used to do, what we look like—and our first names.”