by Glenn Cooper
Joe asked his father if he wasn’t worried about letting her play with an infected kid.
“She hasn’t got it by now, she’s not getting it. Same goes for us. That’s the way I see it.”
Edison was spooning out seconds of chili when the lights died. In the distance, they could hear the generator fire up outside the dry-aging barn.
“Bound to happen,” Edison said.
Joe and Mickey were with him. Gretchen was upstairs, taking her food with the sick. Brittany was trying to get Cassie to dress the Ken doll, so he could go out on a date with Barbie. The darkness sent Brittany into fits, and Joe set her up with a battery-lamp, which quieted her down.
“Short blackout or a long one?” Mickey asked.
“Time will tell,” Edison said, “but this could be the way it’s gonna be.”
“Like the pioneers,” Mickey said. “They didn’t have no electricity and they did fine.”
“They were used to it,” Joe said. “We’re not.”
“Way I see it,” Edison said, excavating bits of meat between his teeth with a toothpick, “we’ve got an advantage over most. We’ve always lived close to the land. We grow our vegetables, we hunt, we butcher our meat. Folks in towns and cities—they don’t know how to survive. They’re the ones up shit creek.”
Mickey was being a good little sycophant. “That’s a fact, Mr. E.”
“Our problem’s different,” Edison said. “We’re taking on new people. The more we got on the farm, the more mouths we gotta feed.”
Gretchen came down the dark stairs carefully, carrying a tray of dirty plates. She took them to the sink, avoiding eye contact with the men around the kitchen table.
“Everyone chow down?” Edison asked.
She didn’t answer, prompting Edison to tell her she had better be civil if she knew what was good for her.
“They all ate,” she spat out. “They try to steal food off of each other. I had to take ’em one by one into the hall and feed them there.”
“Well, you got to teach them table manners,” Edison said.
She asked if Cassie had eaten. When Joe told her she had some chili, Gretchen complained she’d never eaten something like that—it was too spicy.
“Looks like she forgot she doesn’t like it,” Joe said. “She wolfed it down.”
“Let me ask you something, Gretchen,” Edison said. “You know all about the folks in town. Who’s got the most food stocks?”
Her eyes were fiery in the light of the kerosene lamp. “I’m not going to help you steal from good Christian folk.”
“Well, that’s fine, Gretchen. Tell you what, then. I’m going to put your lot on half rations, or maybe zero rations, or maybe I’ll just shoot them in the fucking head and be done with the problem.”
Her mouth went into the kind of spasm a person gets right before they start crying. “Pastor Snider and his wife stockpiled quite a bit the first day there was the news about the virus.”
“That’s the truth,” Mickey said. “I’m over the grocery. I seen them loading their truck. Filled the bed.”
“Then that’s where we’re going tomorrow,” Edison said.
“We should talk about Ed Villa,” Joe said.
“What about him?” Edison said.
“He’s a huge prepper, has been for years. His son, Billy, was a year ahead of me at school. He was always bragging that when the zombie apocalypse hit, they were going to be sitting pretty. They say there’s a year’s worth of supplies, maybe more, at his compound.”
Edison said, “I didn’t know nothing ’bout his food stocks. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Didn’t come to mind until you asked,” Joe said.
“Well did you know he’s also got his extended family up there with more guns than the National Guard?” Edison said. “He was always talking up his armory when he came down here to buy meat—’course, that was before he boycotted us. Sounds like his food store’s a prize, but maybe it’s not something we want to take on in our present circumstances. We’d be outmanned and outgunned.”
From the living room, they heard Brittany shout, “That’s my doll!”
Cassie tugged on the Barbie doll’s legs and shouted back her first words since she got sick, “Doll my!”
Gretchen ran to her and gave her a hug. Edison pushed his chair back and sauntered over, carrying the kerosene lamp.
“Well that’s damned interesting,” he said to Gretchen. “Seems they can learn shit. She got that from Brittany. Looks like you’ve just got yourself another job to add to your list of responsibilities. You’re gonna teach my boys and my Delia how to talk again.”
Later on, the household slept. Edison was snoring loudly on the living room sofa, Brittany and Cassie were curled up in comforters on the floor, Mickey was outside in a tent, shrouded in a mummy bag. Joe had started the night on the pull-out love seat in his father’s office at the back of the house, but he got restless and crept up the stairs.
He shone his penlight inside the females’ room. Alyssa was nearest the door, under a thin blanket. Gretchen was sound asleep on the mattress next to his mother. Craig’s wife, Trish was closest to the bathroom. It was Alyssa he was after. He gently touched her bare shoulder and when she opened her eyes and mouth at the same time, he put a hand over her face to make sure she didn’t scream. He came prepared. A rag in her mouth, a good wrap of duct tape, and she was silenced. She weighed more than he expected but he was strong, and he carried her down the stairs without too much trouble.
His father was standing in the hall. By the light of the kerosene lamp, the girl looked terrified.
“Figured you were up to no good,” Edison said.
“I tried not to wake you.”
“Where you fixing on taking her?”
“Your office. You stopping me?”
“I’m not stopping you. It was my idea, remember? Just not in the house. I don’t want this business happening inside the house. Not with your mother and sister here. Take her to the hay barn.”
“You think I’m going to catch the virus by—you know?”
“Do I look like a doctor?”
Joe looked paralyzed by indecision.
“Hell,” his father said. “You haven’t got it by now, you’re probably ain’t going to get it by dipping your quill in the ink.”
Joe liked the answer. “Want a taste?” he asked with a grin.
“I’m too fucking tired. You go on. It’s been a good day. You earned your fun. She’s all yours.”
24
Almost all the cars that Jamie passed, or that passed him by, had passengers jammed into tight spaces by their belongings. In ordinary times, highway motorists weren’t much interested in what was going on inside other vehicles, but this was not an ordinary time. In the moments that cars came alongside, drivers and passengers looked over and stared, as if peering into a mirror. What were the others doing? The same as them? Were they running away from somewhere? Heading to meet up with loved ones? Did they think that things would be better elsewhere? Did they think there would be electricity? Safety?
The traffic on the Mass Turnpike was sparse and they would sometimes go miles without seeing anyone else. The sat-nav wasn’t acquiring a signal. A good old-fashioned road atlas took its place. Jamie had the first driving shift. Linda was beside him in the shotgun seat—literally the shotgun seat, as she insisted on having a loaded AR-15 between her legs.
“Is that necessary?” he had asked.
“How about you play doctor and I’ll play cop.”
Kyra and Emma were pressed against each other from all the baggage on the back seat. Romulus slept on the pillow on their laps. Neither girl seemed to mind in the least being scrunched. They were best friends before; they were even closer now. They slept together in a tight cuddle. They brushed their teeth together. If one was given a pink top to wear, the other pointed at a pink top.
Jamie saw each moment as a teaching moment. Emma was learning new words every day; lan
guage was going to be her gateway to learning who she was and what the world was all about. Linda didn’t share his sense of urgency, but he wasn’t going to leave Kyra out in the cold. He didn’t know the before Kyra all that well. When she visited, Emma would usually spirit her away before he could exchange more than a perfunctory greeting. Sometimes, he would see her in the kitchen when Emma sent her down to score some snacks. On these occasions, she had always been stiffly polite but incurious about his life. Their typical conversation was:
Jamie: How’re you doing tonight, Kyra?
Kyra: Good, Dr. Abbott.
Jamie: What are you guys up to?
Kyra: Not so much.
Jamie: Lots of homework?
Kyra: You know, the usual. Emma said I could bring up the hummus and carrot sticks. Can I?
Jamie: Knock yourself out.
The Kyra he could not help overhearing through Emma’s door was a different girl—loud, profane, with a decided mean-girl vibe, much like his own daughter.
In the back seat, the girls quietly petted the dog. Jamie adjusted the rearview mirror to get a better look. The illness had softened both their faces and made them seem younger. Not wearing all that makeup probably had something to do with it. They looked sweet and gentle, like two innocent angels who had lost their wings on their descent from on high.
A car passed him at speed, the female driver in a surgical mask, her passengers with uncovered faces. Was she the only sick one? She was driving with purpose. Did she have a plan? Her rear bumper had a faded Obama for President sticker.
“I see a red car,” he said to the girls. He had been working on colors.
“I see a red car,” Emma repeated.
“Do you see a red car, Kyra?” he asked.
“I see a red car,” she said.
“Very good!”
A road sign was up ahead.
“I see a green sign,” he said.
Linda looked up. “Do they know what a sign is?”
“It’s not a word we’ve used, but they know green.”
Emma squealed and pointed. “Green!”
“Very good,” he said. “A green sign. Say green sign.”
They both repeated it.
A mile later, an exit sign came into view.
“What is that?” Jamie said, slowing a bit and pointing.
“Green sign,” Kyra said.
Emma made a pouty face and said, “My green sign.”
“You’re both correct,” he said. “You are both very clever girls.”
Linda seemed irritated by the inanity of the conversation. She turned on the radio and scanned the frequencies for a signal. There was only static and more static.
“You got any CDs?” she asked.
“I’ve got a playlist on my otherwise useless phone,” he said. “What do you want to hear?”
“What do you have?”
“The classics.”
“I don’t like classical music.”
He laughed. “Not those classics. These classics.”
He scrolled down and hit play. The car filled with ‘Born in the USA’.
“Fuck me, you’re a Springsteen freak,” Linda said.
Emma shouted over the music, “Fuck me, you’re a spring freak!”
Both girls swayed with delight to the beat, Romulus lifted his head, then went back to sleep, and the car chewed up westward miles.
*
They were only a couple of hours into the trip when clouds rolled in and it began to rain. The dog began to fidget, and Jamie told Linda they’d have to look for their first rest stop before too long. Springsteen had given way to Eric Clapton and she turned down the sound enough to let him know that in her opinion, dogs were a pain in the ass. She was a guest in the car and Romulus was family, but he deflected her comment with humor and asked her to check the atlas for the next exit.
Before she cracked the book, Kyra said, “Green sign,” and sure enough, there was a road sign for Exit 5 Chicopee – 2 Miles.
“I’ll get some food out of the back when we stop,” Linda said.
The rain began to pelt down, and the visibility diminished. He slowed the car and switched on his low beams.
“Shit.”
There was a pile-up ahead, just past the exit. Cars were strewn across both travel lanes plus the breakdown lane. He slowed to a crawl and put his flashers on in case someone was coming up from behind. When he braked to a stop in the breakdown lane, Linda asked what he was doing.
“I want to check for injuries.”
“It’s not our problem.”
He ignored her and got out. When he got closer, he saw that all the cars were burnt out and primer gray. The interiors were melted. If there were human remains, he couldn’t see any. The vehicles weren’t smoldering, and the metal was cool to the touch. There had been quite the conflagration here, but it wasn’t recent.
Back at the car he said, “This didn’t happen today.”
Linda had been looking at the map. A central barrier blocked the grass median strip, running for several miles to the east.
“We can go through Chicopee to the next on-ramp for the Pike.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.” He took a few seconds for another lesson. “The road is blocked,” he said, thrusting the fingers of one hand into the palm of another.
“Road is blocked,” Emma repeated, rather sweetly.
The exit ramp ran alongside a strip mall and a hotel.
He saw it the same time Linda did.
Just before the ramp forked, the red car with the Obama sticker that passed them earlier, was off the side of the road. All its doors and its trunk were open. A body was lying in the grass near a rear tire.
Everything happened fast.
Jamie heard Linda shout to floor it, and then he heard the rushing air as the window on her side slid down.
He saw two men with pistols step out from behind the red car.
He heard the deafening blasts from Linda’s rifle, the girls’ screaming, and the pinging of brass bullet-casings bouncing off the inside of the windshield.
The shooters dove for cover but when Jamie was past them, he heard pops of pistol fire and the rear window of his SUV shattering.
“Don’t stop!” Linda shouted. “Take the left and keep going!”
“Are they okay?” he bellowed at her.
She strained over the back seat and laid hands on the cowering girls.
“No one’s hit. Not even the damned dog.”
He sped down the road, but in less than a mile, the low-gas warning light came on.
“I’ve got to pull over,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
“Make a right over there,” Linda said, “at the cemetery. We need to be off the road in case they followed.”
He tucked the car into a wooded grove at the St. Stanislaus Cemetery, and he and Linda got out to inspect the damage. There were a couple of bullet holes in the rear hatch door and bumper. When Linda crawled underneath the frame, gas was seeping from a hole in the tank.
“This car’s dead,” she declared.
“Better the car than—” He chose not to finish the sentence.
“There’re some houses over there,” she said. “Stay with them while I try to find another car.” She shouldered the rifle on its strap and unholstered her service pistol. “Take this,” she said, “and stay in the car. You already know how to use it. Just point and pull the trigger. I hear a shot, I’ll come running.”
Back inside the car, the girls had stopped crying, but the dog was whimpering. He took pity on Romulus and let him pee out his open door before pulling him back by his leash and letting him climb onto Emma’s lap.
“Say good dog, good boy,” he said.
“Good dog, good boy,” Kyra said.
“Give him the ball.”
Emma looked for the tennis ball and found it wedged between her and Kyra. Romulus grabbed it and clamped down.
“Emma and Kyra, you are learning very fast.
”
It was only then that it hit Jamie and he began to shake. They had almost been killed and by whom? Highwaymen! A roadblock to prey on travelers? It was almost medieval in its conceit. How quick the descent into chaos; how rapid was the fabric of civil order rent. Would things ever be the same?
A nursery rhyme he used to read to two-year-old Emma invaded his mind: All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.
He waited an interminable twenty minutes. When a large black SUV came slowly rolling up the cemetery drive, he clutched the dimpled grip of Linda’s pistol. The car stopped and in the gloom of the steady rain, Linda got out.
He joined her outside.
“Where’d you get it?”
“One of those houses.”
“The keys were in it?”
“I had to break in.”
“No one was there?”
“Nope.”
There was a reddish dot on one of her cheeks. He mentioned it and she wiped the area with her hand. It left a smear. He was certain it was blood.
“You sure no one was there?” he asked.
“Not a soul.”
He stared a bit too long for her liking.
“What?” she barked. “You got a problem with the way I get shit done?”
He let it slide. Maybe he was letting too much slide. She didn’t give him a chance to think.
“Come on, Jamie! Let’s transfer our stuff then get out of here before the bad guys show up. It’s got less than an eighth of a tank, but we can worry about that down the road a little.”
Once the Chevy Suburban was packed, they got going again. This time they had more leg room and more space for their gear. On the flip side, their gas mileage was going to be lower. They had to cross over the Connecticut River into Holyoke to rejoin the Pike westbound, and they needed to fill up the tank before they got back on the highway. Linda navigated by the atlas and kept an eye out for vehicles to siphon. Older cars were better, she explained. Non-locking gas doors and caps. For all his misgivings and suspicions, he had to admit the woman had useful skills.
Jamie was passing Holyoke High School when Linda told him to stop. An old Ford with body-filler patches seemed like a good candidate, providing it had gas. It did, and minutes later, the Suburban’s tank was three-quarters full.