by Cross, Amy
"It's gonna be cold up there," I point out.
"We'll wrap up," he says, clearly recovering a little of his usual enthusiasm. "Come on, Elizabeth, we need to know what's going on. With these, we can get an idea of how far the blackout's spread and what's happening in the distance."
I open my mouth to argue with him, but finally I realize that maybe he's right. It would be good to get a general view of what's going on, and at least we'll be safe up on the roof.
"Okay," I say, shrugging. "But not for long. Seriously, Henry, it's gonna be freezing up there, so maybe put on two coats."
It takes me a few minutes to find a key so I can lock the door, but soon we're wandering along the corridor and heading up to the roof. The elevators are out of action, of course, so we take the emergency stairs. It's kind of weird to be doing this, but at least we're doing something; it already feels like a million years since the power was working, and I'd go crazy if I had to spend the whole day cooped up in the apartment. I guess my attention span is pretty much shot to pieces.
"Remember to prop the door open," I say to Henry as we step out onto the roof. He hurries over to the edge, so I have to grab a nearby bucket and use it to prevent the door from closing behind us. The last thing we need, right now, is to get stuck up here. Taking Henry's phone from my pocket, I switch it on and wait for it to power up. I know it's a long shot, but I can't help hoping that maybe the phone network's back up and running by now. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of waving the phone in the air, I have to accept that there's not going to be any signal. Sighing, I turn the phone off, put it away, and walk over to join Henry.
"Jesus, it's cold up here," I say, as the wind blows gently around us. The folds of my coat are flapping slightly, and in normal circumstances I'd never stay outside like this. "You see anything?" I ask.
"Nothing," he replies, using the binoculars to scan the horizon.
"Oh well," I mutter. "Worth a try."
"No," he says, handing the binoculars to me. "I mean, I see nothing. That's what I see. A whole lot of nothingness. Nothing moving, no-one doing anything. See for yourself."
When I take a look through the binoculars, I see what he means. The freeways are all dead, packed with stationary cars. There's no sign of anything or anyone moving about, although I'm pretty sure I can make out the vague shapes of people sitting in some of the vehicles. I train the binoculars on one particular car and try to see if the person in the front seat is even moving, but when I try to zoom in, the image gets too blurry.
"Where is everyone?" Henry asks.
I don't reply. I turn and look toward the airport, where two separate fires are still raging. Again, though, there don't seem to be any people there at all. It's almost as if everyone just vanished.
"What if there was an evacuation?" Henry says.
"Why would there be an evacuation?" I ask.
"Hey," Henry says, tapping my elbow, "what's that?"
Lowering the binoculars for a moment, I see that he's pointing at a nearby building.
"What's what?" I ask.
"The window on the top floor, at the end," he says. "There's someone in there, on the floor."
I train the binoculars on the window, and I immediately see what he means; there's a male figure, wearing black trousers and a white shirt, flat on his back on the floor. I turn the dial on the binoculars, which allows me to zoom in a little, and I realize that there's something slightly odd about his face, as if his complexion is a little pale or even slightly yellow.
"Is he dead?" Henry asks.
"I don't know," I say quietly.
"Give me the binoculars."
"In a minute." I need to get a better view of the man, because right now he looks to be dead. I mean, I already knew that there must have been deaths during the blackout, thanks to the plane crashes, but I've never seen a dead body before and now I'm feeling really strange and blank. There's definitely something wrong with the man's face, as if his skin has turned the wrong color, and I've got this mounting series of dread at the thought that this clearly isn't a coincidence. I've been wondering all morning about the strange lack of people in the streets, and now this dead body hints at the possibility that maybe there's something more serious than a blackout.
"Give them to me!" Henry says, trying to grab the binoculars from my hands. I struggle to hold onto them, and somehow we contrive to both let go; I turn and watch in horror as the binoculars fall over the railing, plummeting down the side of the building.
"Well done!" Henry shouts angrily, shoving my arm. "What did you do that for?"
"If you hadn't grabbed them -" I start to say.
"Idiot," he spits at me, turning and walking back over to the door.
"Hey!" I shout, following him into the stairwell. "I was going to give them to you if you'd just waited a few more seconds!"
"So instead you decided to toss them over the side," he replies, pushing the door open and heading back into the stairwell.
"Don't blame me!" I reply, keeping up with him. "You're the one who grabbed them!"
"We need to go outside," he replies, storming through the door and into the corridor. "We should go and find out what's happening."
"No," I say firmly. "We're staying in the apartment. If something's wrong, we should just stay right where we are and not take any risks."
"Like that dead guy in the other building? He stayed inside, and he's still dead!" He stares at me. "We're not safe up here. We're not safe anywhere. What if that plane last night had been slightly lower? It would have hit us and we'd be dead. Sitting around here isn't going to help. We should go out and see if there's anyone who knows anything."
I shake my head.
"You can't stop me," he says, turning and heading through to the corridor.
"You can't go out there!" I say, running after him. "We just have to sit tight and wait for help to arrive!"
"Help's not arriving," he says, hurrying to our apartment and heading inside. "If we sit around here, we'll just starve."
"You're not -" I start to say, before suddenly stopping. I turn and look down at the door handle. "I locked it," I say quietly, before looking over at Henry as he starts putting on a pair of socks. "Henry," I continue, "I locked the door."
He glances back at me. "You must've got it wrong," he says.
"No," I reply, turning to look across the hallway. "I double-checked it as we left." I reach into my pocket and pull out the key. "You saw me. I locked this door."
Chapter Five
Oklahoma
"She sounds sick," my mother says, looking up at the ceiling as we sit down for lunch. Having spent the whole morning pottering about in the kitchen, it's clear that she's concerned about Lydia's continued deterioration.
"Of course she's sick," Joe says, sounding as if he's already anticipated the conversation. He grabs a bread roll and places it next to his soup. "I told you she's sick. Why's it such a mystery? People get sick all the time. You get sick, you act sick for a while, and then you get better. It's not rocket science."
"I think it's flu," my mother continues, turning to my father. "I took some food up for her earlier, and she was an awful color. We need to be very careful and wash our hands." She looks over at me. "You keep out of her room altogether, do you understand? I don't want her germs spreading to the entire family."
At the head of the table, my father starts to laugh. "Sounds like it's gonna be a fun old time here while I'm in Scottsville. It'll warm the cockles of my heart to be sitting in some old bar down there, thinking of you lot bickering about some sick bint in the spare room. Just try not to kill one another, okay? I'd hate to come home and find a bunch of corpses littering the house."
"There's nothing wrong with her!" Joe replies, raising his voice a little. "Apart from being sick, I mean. She's perfectly nice. She's a really good person. You've just seen a bad side to her, that's all. You've seen her all snotty and sick, but she scrubs up real well. Wait 'til she's better, you'll see what I
mean."
"Are you sure you want to go to Scottsville today?" my mother asks, turning to my father. "Perhaps it'd be better to wait until things are more settled?"
"I want to find out what's going on," he replies. "Besides, I need some supplies. I sent these two off to get some wire yesterday, and they came home empty-handed."
Upstairs, Lydia launches into another coughing fit. We sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sound of her hacking and hacking, and I'm pretty sure that everyone else can tell that she's sicker than just flu. Every time I hear a sound coming from the spare room, it seems to confirm my theory that there's some kind of sickness going around. After all, everything seems to fit: it's as if there's been some kind of virus or plague that's caused everything to go crazy. I've read a lot of books about things like that, and I know the signs. I just wish the others would realize too, though I know I can't raise the subject; they'd just dismiss me as some kind of fantasist. I'm rarely taken seriously in this house.
"That poor girl," my mother says quietly as Lydia continues to cough.
"She's not doing that badly," my father replies. "Sitting in someone else's bed, eating someone else's food. If you ask me, she's doing okay. In fact, I might try to get myself a similar kind of arrangement while I'm in Scottsville." He smiles at each of us in turn, as if he's waiting for one of us to start laughing. "Jesus," he mutters eventually. "Tough audience."
"Her throat must be so sore," my mother continues. "I hope she managed to keep the soup down. I left a bucket by the bed with some diluted bleach in the bottom. If she gets much worse, I think maybe we should consider calling a doctor."
Everyone sits silently for a moment, as Lydia's coughing gets worse.
"And how're you gonna do that?" Joe asks eventually.
"She's gonna do herself an injury," my father says. "If she's not -"
"Is this all you've got to talk about?" Joe says suddenly, sounding angry. "Seriously? A fucking jet plane crashes a few miles away, and there's no power, and all hell's going on, and you're happy to just sit here and gossip about some girl's health?" He pauses for a moment. "Jesus fucking Christ, she's sick, but she's not dying! Give her a couple of days and she'll be fine. She just needs to rest. If you want to worry about something, worry about the fire that's still burning out there."
"That's a long way off," my mother says. She clearly doesn't like Joe's outburst, but she knows better than to confront him. In fact, our parents generally let Joe get away with things like this, because they want to avoid a bigger argument. It's a strategy that sometimes works, but most of the time Joe just ends up storming out, and things stay the same. I wish they'd just force the issue and make him leave, instead of tolerating his behavior. The problem is, they've spent the past twenty-something years accepting Joe's stupidity and allowing him to shoot his mouth off; they know it's too late to suddenly start trying to change him now.
"Leave Lydia to me," Joe continues. "I don't want you wasting any of your valuable time looking after her okay? I'll take the food up to her, and I'll change her bucket, and I'll make sure she's okay. You don't have to lift a finger. She'll be out of here in a few days. Hell, maybe I'll go with her."
"Please," I whisper under my breath, although I immediately feel a little bad; after all, it'd be unfair for Lydia to have to put up with Joe's shit. Anyway, even if he did leave, he's be back sooner rather than later. That's just how it goes around here.
"I'd hate for you to have to lift an extra finger," Joe mutters.
"Don't talk to your mother like that," my father says.
"I'm full," Joe replies, standing up and walking out of the room, slamming the door closed as he goes. Moments later, the front door slams too, which means he's gone off to sulk outside somewhere. I swear to God, Joe acts like a spoiled teenager. Turning to look at the window, I can see him slouching off toward the barn.
"I think you'd better stay here, Thomas," my father says eventually. "I know you wanted to come to Scottsville, but I'd like you to stay and keep your mother company. I don't know that it'd be a good idea to leave her alone while we've got company, and your brother clearly isn't going to be much help."
I nod. To be honest, I'm kind of glad not to have to go into town; in fact, I'd like to dissuade my father from going, but he seems determined to go and find out what's going on. The thought of leaving my mother alone to deal with a sick girl and an angry Joe is pretty hard to stomach, though, and I guess the best option is for me to stick around. Anyway, I've got a good track record of being wrong about things, so I'm sure my father will come back from Scottsville tomorrow and report that everything's okay. I just need to keep from getting paranoid, and the first step is to stop seeing lines of causation between coincidental, random events. I'm smarter than that.
"Are you definitely staying overnight?" I ask.
"Probably. At this rate, I won't be done until it starts getting dark, and I don't much fancy driving home past midnight. I'll just park up behind Snooty's or somewhere, take a nap, and head on back in the morning. I'll be home about this time tomorrow, all being well."
"Remember we might still be without phones," my mother points out. "So don't go taking long detours. If you're not back by late tomorrow, I'll send Joe and Thomas out to look for you."
Getting up from the table, my father stretches and then grabs his empty bowl so he can take it to the kitchen. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine, it's -" He stops speaking as Lydia coughs again. I swear, she's sounding worse and worse. I've heard people with bad coughs before, even with whooping cough, and this sounds different; it's as if she's trying to bring up something that resolutely refuses to come out. Even if I'm wrong about everything else, I still think Lydia needs to get some medical attention. The last thing we want is for her to die up there in our spare room. Looking over at my mother, I can see from the look in her eyes that she's thinking something similar. She knows this is more than just flu, even if she doesn't want to admit it yet.
"Poor girl," my mother mutters.
"Come on," my father says, turning to me. "You can carry some stuff out to the truck for me."
"Yes, Sir," I reply, getting up and following him through to the hallway. Lydia's still coughing upstairs, and I keep picturing that cloud of bacteria getting bigger and bigger. I figure I might head out to the barn after my father's gone, and look for anything I might be able to use to keep the sickness from infecting the rest of us. I'm pretty sure there's an old gas mask hanging around somewhere; it might sound extreme, but at this rate, I figure we need to take every possible precaution.
"Don't worry," my father says, smiling as he pats me on the back. "This time tomorrow, everything'll be back to normal."
I sit and put my shoes on, while my father wanders to the truck. I wish I could believe him, but - as Lydia continues to cough upstairs - I can't shake the feeling that things are getting worse and worse.
Chapter Six
Manhattan
"Mom?" I shout, hurrying through to the front room. There's no-one there, but I swear to God I locked that door. "Dad!" I call out, running to their bedroom. Still no-one. "Where are you?" I shout, convinced that they must have come back. After all, they're the only other people who have a key to the door.
"They're not here," Henry says, coming through from the kitchen.
"Then who unlocked the door?" I ask, my heart racing. There's got to be some kind of mistake. I head over to the closet, pulling the doors open. Maybe they're hiding? Maybe they're waiting to jump out and surprise us?
"You obviously didn't lock it properly," Henry says. "Think about it. That's the only thing that makes sense."
"I locked it," I say.
"You're losing it," Henry says, heading back through to the kitchen. "You're really losing your mind. You know that, right?"
I take a deep breath, determined not to snap at him. Someone unlocked that door. I know I locked it properly; I remember turning the key, and I remember double-checking. There's no way I'd just
go out and leave the door open, but I don't understand who could have come into the apartment. We were only up on the roof for a few minutes, but I guess the most logical explanation is that our parents must have come back, found we weren't here, and then gone off to look for us. Why the hell didn't it occur to me that they might do that? We should have left a note.
"They were here," I say, hurrying back through to the front room. "They must have assumed we were gone, and now they're looking for us. We have to stay here and wait for them to come and check again."
"It wasn't them!" Henry says, standing with the fridge door open. He pauses for a moment. "Elizabeth... Come and see this."
"What is it?"
"Just come and see." He turns to me. "Someone was here, but I don't think it was Mom and Dad."
Walking over to join him, I look inside the fridge and immediately see what he's talking about. Earlier, we had food and bottles of water. Not much, and not enough to last more than a few days, but we had something to keep us going. Now, however, the fridge is completely empty. Someone clearly came in, cleaned us out and left. I look over at the drawers, which have been opened; it's the same story with the cupboards. Whoever was here, they took every food item in the entire apartment.
"Who the hell did this?" I ask, stunned.
"Looters?" he suggests.
"There are not looters," I reply.
"We need food," Henry says. "I know you don't want to go outside, but we need food. We can't just sit here and starve."
"We're not going to starve," I reply.
"What are we going to eat?"
"We'll find some food," I say, although as the words leave my mouth I can already tell how weak they sound. The truth is, I don't know what we're going to eat. Our parents left a prepaid card we could use for buying food while they're away, but with no power in the city, I don't see how we can use it; even if we can find a shop that's open and that hasn't been completely cleaned out, we need some actual cash. "Go to your room," I say, forcing myself to stay calm, "and see what money you can find. Anything, even the smallest coins."