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by Al Macy

  “Follow us!”

  “Follow them? Can’t they just do a water rescue?” Alex had to yell over the sound of the rotors.

  “No. They can see that I’m injured.” The helicopter headed behind them to a tiny island, not much more than a sandy outcropping with no trees, and landed. Alex turned the boat around, and with the strong tailwind, soon beached the canoe.

  Martin wanted to walk, but the emergency medical technician insisted that he be loaded onto a stretcher. In under a minute, they were off, watching the canoe and the tiny island recede. The paramedic quickly started IVs and hung banana bags loaded with vitamins and electrolytes. The pilot turned his head. “Which one of you is Martin, and which is Alex?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  June 17, 2018

  Kansas City was dying. The city was dark. Three buildings on seventh street burned, and the fire department couldn’t do anything about it: no water pressure.

  Drug Lord Louis Corby had profited greatly from the die off. Just before dawn, he and his chief assistant trudged up thirteen flights of stairs to the roof of the civil courts building. They passed two bodies in the stairwell on the fifth floor. Louis carried a bottle of expensive champagne. Despite the drugs that had kept them awake for seven days, their bodies were shutting down. Louis’s headache exceeded the capability of the Vicodin he’d been pounding. On the roof, he found a pair of lawn chairs, set them up, and looked out over the city.

  Wish I had earplugs. Manny was once again in his manic, talkative stage. “Went too far, Louis. Know what I mean? I mean, shit, a lot of people dying here, know what I’m saying? We’re on a mission. Yes, but I don’t know. I don’t know. We—”

  Louis clamped his hand over Manny’s mouth. “You’ve been saying that for three days now, and I’m getting sick of it. Maybe you should’ve considered that before you started dealing.”

  Pulling his boss’s hand down, Manny said, “Back then, just letting people make their own choices. You know? I mean, bad choices, right? We didn’t make the choices, though. No. Gave them the drugs, didn’t force them to use them. See my meaning?”

  “I know what you’re saying, but it doesn’t make any sense. You know it doesn’t make sense.” Louis lit up a cigarette and sucked in a lungful of smoke and then chased it down with a swig of champagne before exhaling.

  “Now we’re killing them. Blowing some up, shooting some. Different now.”

  “Most of them would have died anyway.”

  “Worth it?” Manny said. “Is it? I feel like shit. My body don’t like these drugs. Been dealing them for years, but now they’re in my body. My body. Don’t like it. Don’t like them.”

  “Manny, look. We’re set for life. This is what God wanted. Do you realize how much money we’ve made in the last seven days? We’re set for life.”

  “Till we fall asleep. That’s what I want to do. I want to fall asleep.”

  “If we die, we die. If we live, we never work again.” said Louis.

  Manny finished off the champagne and threw the heavy bottle off the roof. Manny sighed. “You know you’re crazy, right?”

  Louis stared out at the city.

  Manny continued. “How you feel?”

  “Bad. And weird. ”

  “Don’t know about you, Louis, I’m ready to fall asleep. Don’t care what happens. I’m wired, but I’m tired. Wired but tired. Wired tired. Any hallucinations?”

  Louis looked at him and paused before replying. “I saw Jesus.”

  “Hell, Louis. You been seeing Jesus for years. You seeing Jesus is like a window washer seeing windows. Like a jockey seeing horses. Know what they call a day when you see Jesus? Tuesday. Get it? Like it’s just another day of the—”

  “This was a little different. What he was wearing.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  Louis was silent for a long time. Manny poked him. “What was he—”

  “A tutu.”

  “A tutu?” Manny stared at him. “What’s that, a tutu?”

  “You know, like what ballerinas wear.”

  “He was wearing a ballerina thing—”

  “And water wings.”

  “Mean like an angel?”

  “No. Shit. Asshole. Like you wear in a swimming pool.”

  “Yeah. I’d say that counts as a hallucination, Louis. Crap on a cracker. Jesus Christ in a fucking tutu with fucking water wings. What did he say?”

  “Who, Jesus?”

  “No, Julius Fucking Caesar. Yeah, shit, Jesus. That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it? What did he —”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Manny nodded. “Yeah, you know, you’re right, Louis. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what the Tutu Jesus said.”

  “What should we do, Manny?”

  “Take the money. Split.”

  “But—”

  “Why not? Take our cut, get in the Hummer, and drive the hell out of town. Drive somewhere clean, get some cabins, go to sleep.”

  “Together?”

  “No, not together. Jeez. Are you losing it here, Louis? You can have your own bed. Have your own cabin—”

  “And if we don’t wake up?”

  “We don’t. That’s life.” Manny shrugged.

  “That’s death.”

  “Yeah, whatever. It’s going to happen in a few days anyway, and …”

  After a moment, Louis turned, waiting for the rest of the sentence that would never come. And … ding. Manic, talkative phase over.

  They both watched the fire burning on seventh street. The sun came up, and Louis walked to the edge of the roof. There was no railing, no wall. Four military busses turned onto twelfth street. “Well, Manny,” he said without turning, “it looks like the national guard has arrived.”

  He went back to Manny. His lieutenant had fallen asleep. Louis walked to him and knelt down. He cocked his ear. A sound like sizzling rice soup washed over him. The sound of steak in a frying pan. A fog surrounded the body and Louis could even see a tiny rainbow as the sun rose. It was a religious experience. The skin caved in against the bones as he watched.

  Behind him, Louis heard an approaching helicopter. He turned and walked to the edge to watch. The aircraft was huge. The largest he’d ever seen. It came right toward the building and hovered only twenty feet from the ledge. In the open cargo bay, Louis saw Jesus. He wore his purple tutu and had a matching tube top. The water wings were gone. He motioned for Louis to jump then positioned his arms to catch him.

  The helicopter morphed into a huge pterodactyl. Wonderful. A purple dinosaur. The creature flew to him, grabbed his clothing with the claws on its hind legs, and pulled him off the building.

  * * *

  June 24, 2018

  Two weeks after the die-off, Charli wandered around the White House’s treaty room, waiting for the start of the meeting. This room is way too cluttered for my tastes. It was filled with too much stuff: a grandfather clock, an intricate rug, and an elaborate chandelier. One wall held an 1899 painting of the signing of a treaty no one had ever heard of. Charli was considering how she’d simplify the room when the president popped in.

  “Sorry I’m late, guys.” Hallstrom was followed by Maddix Young and the twins. He had already recovered much of his Viagra-commercial vitality. He looked relaxed in his comfortable cardigan. “This will be a short, informal meeting. That’s why we’re in this room. The team is now at full strength, and I’d like you all to get to know one another.” The White House staff had arranged the couches and chairs around a central coffee table that looked more like a large ottoman. Hallstrom gestured to the twins. “I’d like you all to meet Alex and Martin Carter. I hope you will help bring these kids out of their shells, because they are extremely shy.”

  “Not!” the twins said together.

  “See what I mean?” Hallstrom tousled Martin’s hair. The mood was more somber since the die-off, but Charli knew Hallstrom. He’d always try to keep things light, no matter wha
t. The twins had lost friends, and she’d heard they lost a love interest on the canoe trip, but their mom had survived the disaster and was on her way to DC. The dad had died when the twins were five.

  The White House servers came around taking orders for coffee and tea. The twins were the only ones under thirty. Alex requested sippy cups for his brother and him. It was such a perfect deadpan delivery that it confused the server until Charli winked at her. These guys will fit in fine.

  After the coffee, tea, and pastries arrived, Charli tapped her glass and cleared her throat. The conversations died away.

  “I’m just going to give a quick summary of where things stand right now.” She had her tablet on her lap, and her coffee cup in her hand. Her expensive, light-wool slacks were a little warm for June. “Most of the states are doing well. Redistribution of the workforce has gone well, due to Google’s work on USA.gov. Most people have not had to move far, and since housing is not an issue, families have been kept together.”

  Charli slid her finger up her tablet to advance her notes. “Louisiana and Texas are the exceptions. Power and communications … almost everything is down. I see it as a series of cascading problems. Power and telephone went down and, as a result, people panicked. It was a positive feedback situation; the more people panicked, the more problems they had. People stopped going to work, which just made things worse.”

  “Our ads couldn’t be displayed,” Guccio said.

  “That’s right. We were never able to get the message out that things would be okay. People saw a meltdown coming, and they looted. We’re dropping leaflets and sending in technicians. I hope we can turn things around.” Charli grabbed a handful of almonds from a bowl on a tray. “Most of the other states are doing well. We have a problem spot in Kansas City, and we’re not sure why. We think some gangs tried to take advantage of the catastrophe—”

  “How so?” asked Jake.

  “Well, we have intelligence that says that a drug lord set up systematic looting and destroyed the local power grid to hamper police. Then he sold drugs to help people stay awake.”

  Jake whistled.

  “Right. We’ve sent in a huge contingent of national guard troops and hope to see results soon.” She swiped her tablet again. “The bright spot is California. It’s almost business as usual there.”

  Hallstrom massaged his bad leg. “Why did they do so well?”

  Charli shrugged, “Well, we figure the population is a little better-educated, and we blanketed the area with advertisements—”

  “Propaganda,” Jake said.

  “Yes, absolutely, propaganda. Which you suggested, I might add. But it was propaganda that worked and turned out to be truthful. I mean, it came true.”

  While Charli was speaking, an aide entered the room and handed Hallstrom a piece of paper. He glanced at Jake and handed it to Charli. She also glanced at Jake.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Jake sat up.

  But Charli ignored him, slipped the paper into her pocket, and kept talking. “We sent national guard troops to LA to deal proactively with gang problems, but it turned out to not be an issue. And that’s all I’ve got right now.”

  Hallstrom stood up. “Okay, thank you, Charli. Let’s all head down to the dining room. I’d like to talk to you all about an interesting plan I have for living arrangements.”

  Jake threw a questioning look at Charli, and she put her hand on his knee to keep him seated. The two stayed behind while the others left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Okay, spill it, Charli. What’s in the note?” Jake crossed his arms. It didn’t take a genius to know there was something in there that concerned him.

  The grandfather clock ticked off several seconds. “Jake, I’m sorry. Your brother is dead.”

  “Who, Louis?” Well, duh, who else? He’s my only brother.

  “Do you have any other brothers?” Charli put her hand back on his knee.

  “No.” Jake looked at the floor.

  “Were you close?”

  “No, not at all. Well, yes, when we were young.” Jake continued looking down and pictured his time with his brother. His earliest memory was of playing with Louis at the beach.

  “Do you want to talk about it, Jake?”

  “No. Well, yes, but there isn’t much to talk about. I don’t mind talking about it. I haven’t seen him or thought about him for … twenty years.” He stopped talking and Charli waited.

  “When we were kids, we were always together. We were just one year apart, and most people thought we were twins. Like the Carter twins, only younger. We were a comedy team.”

  Jake sat quietly as memories flooded back. “Anyway, things were fine until Louis started hearing voices. I was the only one who knew about it for awhile. I told my dad, but he didn’t believe me. Then it got worse. We all thought we could deal with it—my dad didn’t trust shrinks—until Louis burned the house down. They took him away, and I never saw him again. When I grew up, I tried to locate him, but he was lost in the system.”

  The old ache for his brother’s comradeship returned. Could he have tried harder to locate him? Jake didn’t try to find the tears he had to be holding back. Charli’s hand on his grounded him, and he looked up into her concerned gaze. “Did he die in an institution?”

  “Ah, no.” Charli stopped and stared toward the window. She still had her hand on Jake’s.

  “What?”

  She turned back to him. “Remember I mentioned a drug kingpin who caused mayhem in Kansas City?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “That was—”

  “That was Louis?” Jake asked.

  She nodded.

  “Man.” Jake took a deep breath. “Well, it’s not surprising really. I could picture him as a CEO. We all knew he would be a smart guy someday. That is, until the voices started. He was smarter than I was.”

  “Are you okay with it? Do you want to be alone?”

  Jake shook his head. “No, stay. It’s been years since I heard anything about him. I can’t really picture him as an adult. How did he die?”

  “He jumped off a building, but a helicopter pilot who watched it happen didn’t think it was suicide.”

  “But he jumped? He wasn’t pushed?”

  “The pilot …” Charli checked the note again. “The pilot said he looked like he was struggling with someone or something that wasn’t there, and then he just fell. As if he were pulled off.”

  Charli sat with Jake while he recounted stories of his exploits with his brother. Stories that had them both laughing and crying.

  * * *

  July 1, 2018

  Marie Keller dragged herself into the town council meeting just as Mayor Myer pounded his gavel. She collapsed into her usual chair and put her head on her arms on the aging conference table. She closed her eyes. “Wake me when we start.”

  The meetings were held in Town Hall, in a small room off the main auditorium. It had been renovated years ago with limited funds. With cheap linoleum tiles, thin wood paneling, stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and a deadbeat piano in the corner, it felt more like a trailer-park fixer-upper than a seat of government.

  Four times during the twenty days following the die-off she’d planned to delegate her sheriff duties to one of the deputies or national guard troops sent down from Bangor. Each time the plan was derailed by some crisis or Marie’s loss of confidence in the potential replacement. She had a lot of energy for an eighty-one-year-old, but she’d hit the wall.

  Mayor Myer banged his gavel. “C’mon people. C’mon, let’s get organized, we have a lot to discuss today.”

  Marie opened one eye and looked at the others who were sitting patiently around the table. Myer needed to see everyone else as disorganized to feel that he was in control.

  “We’re all ready to go, Harold.” Doc Swanson, in charge of food and health care, frowned. Swanson was in his late sixties but looked like he followed all the health advice he gave his patients. He’d brought many
of the Lipton residents into the world and ran his practice with an efficiency gleaned from his military service.

  They started the meeting by holding hands and having a minute of silence for those who had died.

  “Why don’t you begin, Doc?” said the mayor.

  “Okay. Our existing stocks of food are about half of normal. Even with the looting of the IGA on Smith Street, we’ve done all right, given that most of the population is gone. The big dairy in Marysville is at full capacity once more. We’ve imported some farmers from Vermont. For a while they could only milk half the cows since they only had one farmer.”

  “Did the others explode?” asked Myer.

  “Yes, and there’s milk and cream all over the countryside.” Doc said it deadpan.

  “Really?” Myer raised his eyebrows and leaned forward.

  Marie smiled to herself. Did Myer truly believe that a cow’s udder would explode if she wasn’t milked?

  Tom Whitman, a jolly veterinarian from the next county over, chuckled. He had a round face and piercing blue eyes. Whitman had relocated to one of the nicest houses in Lipton and set up practice in the empty animal hospital. “No, their udders didn’t explode,” he explained. “I’ve had to treat a few extra cases of mastitis over there, but in general those cows will simply dry up for the season. They won’t produce for a while, but they’ll be okay.”

  Myer frowned at him. “Okay, back to Doc.”

  Marie was still smiling at Doc Swanson’s exploding cow joke.

  He continued. “Overall, food is not a problem. Some people have just had to change their diet a bit, that’s all.”

  Myer made a note on his pad. “How about health stuff?”

  “I now have a nurse from Vermont to replace Betsy,” said Doc.

  “I’ll bet she isn’t as nice as Betsy was.” Marie put her hand on Doc’s forearm.

  Doc squeezed Marie’s hand. “She’s actually mean as hell, but she’s a good nurse and efficient. There are no significant health issues related to the die-off.”

  “Okay, how about the dogs? Tom, who let the dogs out?” Mayor Myer’s attempt at humor fell flat, and everyone pretended they didn’t hear it. Marie groaned quietly. This is what we get for voting in a mayor based on the sound of his name.