“Jesus, what are you doing?” Johnny asked.
Kelly held out a mask. Johnny took it, pulled it over his mouth and nose. It was one of those little plastic jobs you wore when you mowed the lawn, probably not worth shit against a virus that the news described as incredibly resistant, able to survive on surfaces for days.
“What are you doing?” Johnny repeated. “The more houses you go into, the more likely you are to catch this thing.”
She shrugged. “My folks have it. I know I’ve been exposed.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know that for sure.” Johnny did not want her words to be true, for his sake as well as hers. “You’re dancing with death, coming in here.”
Kelly chuckled. “Dancing with death. That’s poetic.”
Actually, it was a line from one of his band’s songs, but after saying it out loud he was too embarrassed to admit he’d just quoted his own band’s lyrics.
Kelly wiped Parker’s chin with a kitchen towel she had hooked through her belt. “I kept thinking about Mackenzie and Parker. I babysit them sometimes. I kept picturing them in their rooms, all alone, scared to death. Not able to move. Hungry. So I came to check on them. Parker was just like I pictured him—all alone in his room. Probably since yesterday.”
“You touched him? Jesus.”
Kelly put her hands on her hips. “He can hear you, you know. So can his mom and dad.”
“Sorry,” Johnny muttered. They were looking at him; all four of them.
Kelly squatted in front of Lara Pointer, guided the straw into her mouth. Immediately, Lara began pulling on the straw, her mouth suddenly animated, looking completely normal. The news had described how the virus keeps people from initiating movement, but not from reacting; seeing it, however, was another thing completely. If she could drink, why couldn’t she talk?
When she’d finished, Kelly went to the Pointer’s sink and refilled the big plastic water bottle before heading for the door. Johnny followed her out, closing the door behind him.
Instead of turning right, back toward her house, Kelly headed left across the lawn.
“Where are you going now?” Johnny called after her.
“When’s the last time you saw the Cucuzzas?”
“What are you gonna do, go door to door?”
She stopped, turned to face him. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You’re out of your mind. It’s like you want to die—”
She held up both hands to ward off his words and shouted, “They’re all alone. They’re scared. Can’t you see it in their eyes?”
He stood on the Pointer’s front stoop, not wanting to think about their eyes.
“Can’t you?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah. I can see it.” He would see it for the rest of his life. And, God, he didn’t want to go through it. Johnny looked at his watch. “Look, I have to take my father to his drive-in, or he’ll try to drive himself. Will you be okay?”
“No,” she said, like it was the dumbest question she’d ever been asked. “Will you?”
“No,” he admitted. “I guess not.”
A pickup cruised by. They both watched it in silence. There were fewer vehicles passing every hour.
“They’re saying three percent of people seem to be immune to the virus. Did you hear that?” Kelly said.
“I don’t love those odds.”
“No, they suck bad.”
It was a chance, though. There was hope.
“Neither of us has it yet, and lots of other people do. Maybe that means something,” he said.
Kelly nodded. “Maybe it does.”
Johnny had a sudden urge to give Kelly a hug, but he was afraid it would be awkward, or Kelly would think he was weird. “I’ll check on you in the morning,” he said. “That okay?”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
• • • •
Back at the drive-in, Johnny was terrified he was going to start nodding at any minute. He was actually glad to have something to do to take his mind off it, even if it was filling popcorn boxes for no one.
He wondered what it felt like, to be trapped in your frozen body. Were you numb?
If he was going to die, he wanted to feel a terrible pain in his chest and be dead before he hit the ground. He didn’t want to have days and days where he knew he was dying. That was when you took stock, when you had nothing to do but think about your past, and he didn’t want to think about what a waste his life had been to this point.
He’d always thought he was just slow getting started, that he’d leave Ravine and Burger King for bigger things. His first plan had been to hit it big with the band, then it was opening his bar and grill. His savings, the house, a little inheritance money was the kickstart he’d been counting on for the past decade or so, except, surprise: his Dad had his own dreams, even at seventy-one and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Dad was staring out at the big white screen through the window, his hands in his back pockets, smiling.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Wait and see.”
No one showed up. Not one car. Johnny would have choked on his Coke if a vehicle had pulled through that gate with this hell-virus crawling through their town. The marquee said they were showing Green Lantern tonight, but Johnny went back to the claustrophobic little office next to the restroom and pulled the reels for Ghostbusters out of a pile of old films his dad had bought on Ebay a month before they opened. He didn’t think he could sit through GL again, but a comedy, especially an old, actually funny comedy, fit the bill.
Johnny sat in his Mustang while Pop manned the snack bar.
• • • •
At 7 a.m., Johnny spotted Kelly loading containers of water into her trunk. He set his coffee mug on the kitchen counter and slipped on his sneakers. He’d promised to check on her, after all.
“I should start calling you Florence Nightengale.”
Kelly smiled, but it was the smile of a Burger King cashier toward the end of a shift. She looked exhausted; there was a sheen of sweat on her face, as if she hadn’t washed up in a while.
“You were studying to be a nurse, weren’t you?”
“For a little while.”
“Why’d you stop?”
She shrugged. “Because I was too stupid. Couldn’t pass the biology courses.”
Johnny cringed, wishing he hadn’t brought it up. He wasn’t sure what to say. “Shit, that sucks. You seem like a natural.”
Again, she attempted a smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re really going door to door?”
Kelly pushed her hair out of her face. “If you get it and I don’t, you’ll be happy to see me and my water bottle.”
Johnny raised his hands. “I’m not criticizing. I’m just worried about you.”
That made her smile. “It’s nice to know someone is.”
He watched, arms folded, as she slid into her dad’s SUV.
Maybe he should be going with her. If he made it through this, for the rest of his life people would ask what it was like, what he’d done. It would be nice to be able to say he worked tirelessly to help people, that he hauled water and fed his friends and neighbors, and even strangers. And if he didn’t make it through this, maybe God would look more favorably on a man who wasn’t there for his kids if that man had died helping other people’s kids.
Kelly was putting the SUV in drive. Johnny raised his hand, jogged down the driveway. “Hang on.” She braked, rolled down the window, her eyebrows raised. He ran around and hopped in the other side. “Let’s go.”
Kelly smiled brightly. “When this is over, I swear, I’m gonna buy you a steak dinner.”
• • • •
As soon as Johnny set the spoon of farina—or whatever this gruel was the soldier had given them—on the kid’s tongue, his mouth closed around it. Johnny drew the spoon out as the kid chewed and swallowed. He didn’t know the boy, who was about ten, the same age as his son Danny.
Johnny tried to ignore the stale
urine smell, the wet crotch of the kid’s pants. It would take too long to change all these people; they had to focus on keeping them alive. Johnny was both relieved and sorry for that.
The boy watched him, watched Johnny’s face instead of the spoon, and Johnny couldn’t help thinking the kid was as desperate to have someone look at him, to have someone notice him, as he was for the food.
“I know. It breaks your heart,” Kelly said.
Johnny glanced at her, not sure what she was talking about. A tear plopped onto his forearm, and he realized he was crying, and when he realized it, it was like something inside him burst open, and he was sobbing.
Kelly gave him a hug, patted his back. It felt good—safe, warm—to be in her arms. “I cried all day yesterday. Eventually you run out of tears, and all you’ve got is a big lump in your throat.”
The lights went out; the picture on the TV contracted to a dot and vanished.
“Shit,” Kelly said.
Something in the boy’s eyes told Johnny the TV had been a huge comfort to him, that he’d be so much more terrified with nothing for company but his frozen family.
• • • •
“Come on in,” Kelly called when Johnny knocked. As he climbed the stairs he heard her speaking softly.
“I’ll check on you at lunchtime. Try not to worry; everything’s going to be okay. Help is coming.”
He paused as he passed Kelly’s room. She had a billion CDs, a big Union Jack for a bedspread, a Black Sabbath poster on the wall, and a long shelf up near the ceiling crammed with hundreds of Beanie Babies.
Johnny nearly shrieked when he found Kelly’s parents standing in the middle of their bedroom.
“Jeeze,” he breathed.
Kelly, in a Luzurne County Community College t-shirt and jeans, was brushing her mother’s hair. “I figure they’ll feel better if I stand them up once in a while, exercise their muscles a little. Can you help me?”
Johnny hurried over to help ease Kelly’s mother back into a chair.
“I didn’t realize they could stand,” he said. They stayed in pretty much any position you placed them in, but he’d figured standing would take too much coordination.
“They can. You ready to go?”
Johnny followed her out, steeling himself for another day of playing Florence Nightengale’s sidekick.
They started with the first house on the left on Princess Lane. When they knocked, an upstairs window creaked open.
“What do you want?” it was a woman, Johnny’s age or a little older.
“We’re checking for people who need help,” Kelly said. “Anyone around here that you know of?”
“I haven’t gone out.” They turned to go. “If you were smart, you’d stay in your house, too.”
“Somebody’s got to help these people,” Johnny shot back, self-righteous anger rising in him. As they headed back to the van it occurred to him that two days earlier he’d been that woman. If he hadn’t seen Kelly loading water into her van, he’d still be that woman.
Watching Kelly walk beside him out of the corner of his eye, Johnny wondered what it was about her that made her different from all the people hiding in their houses, worrying only about themselves. It was like discovering there’d been a saint living across the street from him all these years, a saint with a shaved head, smoking a cigarette.
“So what happened to the shaved head and the combat boots?” he asked as they slammed their doors closed with a double thunk.
Kelly studied his face. “You thought I was a joke, is that what you’re saying?”
“No,” he laughed. “I thought it was great. There’s not enough shock and awe in Ravine.” He tapped her knee. “Come on, I’m in a band. Or I was, until all the other guys moved away. I live for rebellion.”
“You live for rebellion because you played covers of Tom Petty and Korn at the fire station’s social club?”
“Hey! We played in bars in Wilkes-Barre and Binghamton. And we played a lot of our own stuff.”
Johnny pulled up to a house that looked too quiet. He opened his door, then noticed Kelly was staying in her seat.
“What?”
“Remember when you asked why I left nursing school? I didn’t flunk out. I chickened out.” She propped a foot on the dash. “I got homesick and came running home to my old room and my Beanie Baby collection.”
Johnny nodded. He was afraid anything he said would trivialize what she was telling him.
Kelly tilted her head back, looked up at the SUV’s ceiling, her brown hair sliding down her shoulders. “I always hated this town. It’s not even a town, it’s just a few houses and lame stores strung out in an ass crack. I was always talking about how I was going to get out of here as soon as I could. And I did, but then I came right back with my tail between my legs.”
Johnny shook his head. “I never even tried to leave. When I was in the Ravine Raiders, we always talked about how we were going to hit it big. We drank beer, were rock stars in our own minds, then we got married, had kids, and I found myself at Burger King. This town has a way of sucking you in and hanging on to you.”
It was strange: this suddenly felt like a date that was going better than any of Johnny’s actual dates ever did. Maybe it was their fear, stripping away all the pretense, but Johnny didn’t think that was all of it.
He put his hand on his head. “Wait, what does this have to do with you letting your hair grow out?”
Kelly smiled. “When I moved back home, I imagined having a kid one day, and that kid seeing a picture of me and saying, ‘Mom, you were one of those edgy rebellious kids when you were my age?’ And I would have had to answer, ‘No, I just dressed like one’.”
• • • •
The army vehicle was gone. So was the delivery truck full of grain, and the tanker truck of water.
Kelly called the national emergency information number. The woman on the other end told Kelly they were spread too thin, that the Interstates had been shut down to slow the virus. She told Kelly to use a lake or pond, and boil the water before drinking it. Kelly suggested the woman boil her ass, then disconnected, and completely lost it. She pressed her hands over her ears and wailed, her face bright red.
Johnny held her and patted her back, shushing. He told her they’d be okay, and other comforting things he didn’t believe.
“What do they expect us to do with all of these people, without food, without doctors?” Kelly asked, drawing back into her seat.
“I think they expect us to let them die.” Johnny watched as another vehicle slowed in front of the empty parking lot, then drove off. “That’s why the soldiers left. It’s spread too far; we can’t take care of this many people, so they want them to die.” Johnny rubbed his eyes. He was so tired they were burning all around the edges. His head had this dull achy feeling that wasn’t quite pain, but was still unpleasant. Another couple of hours and he’d take his father to the drive-in. It was Stripes tonight. With each day that passed, Dad was more out of it. Most of the time Johnny felt like he was alone at the drive-in.
“Why don’t you come out to the drive-in tonight? You need to rest or you’re going to—” he was going to say get sick, but he bit back the words.
“How are you even showing movies, with the power out?” Kelly asked, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“The place came with an old generator. Power outages are a great time to sell tickets, because no one has anything else to do.”
Kelly laughed dryly. “Assuming people can move.”
“Right.” If they could move, Johnny would invite everyone to come out and watch Stripes for free, and for one night his Dad would think his goddamned drive-in was a success.
He sat up ramrod straight in his seat. “Wait. I just got an idea.”
• • • •
A plume of dust followed the Ford Taurus as Johnny cruised along the drive-in’s back aisle, to the very last spot. He swung the Taurus into the spot, the front rising on the hump until the
screen was framed inside the windshield. He turned off the engine, then twisted to look at the car’s four passengers. It was an older couple, in their seventies, and two kids, two girls. Grandparents raising their grandchildren, maybe. Or maybe the girls had just been visiting. It smelled bad in the car—really bad—but Johnny smiled and tried to ignore it. “I’ll be back with food and Cokes later. As soon as the sun goes down we’ll start the first show.” He looked at his watch. “That’s about an hour from now. I hope you enjoy the movies.”
Kelly was waiting in the aisle. “That’s it.” She pressed her fists into the small of her back. “God, my back is killing me.”
How many people had they carried to their cars? Too many to count. On the tail end of three endless days of feeding people, Johnny was so exhausted he’d traveled beyond tired, into a manic, hungover netherworld.
There was just one last trip to make.
• • • •
“Holy shit,” Johnny’s dad shouted when they pulled into the drive-in. “Holy, holy shit. It’s packed!” He looked at Johnny, and for the first time in days Johnny was sure his dad knew who he was. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you? It’s catching on.”
“You told me, Pop.” He caught Kelly’s eye in the rear view mirror, and they exchanged a smile. “I didn’t believe you, but you were right.” Johnny pulled up in front of the snack bar. He felt like laughing and crying at the same time. “Kelly and I are going to run concession orders right to the cars. People don’t want to get out, on account of the virus going around.”
“Oh, okay,” Dad said. “Smart idea.”
Johnny led him into the snack bar, where they had a hundred boxes of popcorn lined up and ready to go, dozens of hot dogs turning on spits in the warmer. His dad’s steps were so tiny, so tentative. When had he lost that broad, assured stride Johnny had known since he was a kid?
They kicked things off with E.T. Kelly started feeding people in the front row, Johnny in the back, figuring they’d meet in the middle.
They hadn’t had the time or space to bring all of the afflicted to the drive-in. Ninety percent of the town had it now. But they’d done what they could.
The End is Nigh (The Apocalypse Triptych) Page 23