by Rob W. Hart
“Hey, Junebug.” I touch her cheek. Still hot.
She rolls over and looks up at the ceiling. “How was patrol?”
“Good,” I tell her. “Uneventful.”
Looking at me again, she squints. “You’re lying.”
“Couple of the kids being loud. Nothing.”
She still doesn’t believe me. She readjusts herself on the pile of mattress pads and exhales, unable to get comfortable. The effort of it saps her energy. She places her hand on her chest and presses, like she’s trying to force the air in.
“Can we please go up to one of the houses on Evans Road?” I ask. “Some of them even have furniture. We could get you in a bed.”
“Remember what you said when we first moved in?” She lowers her voice, trying to imitate mine. “‘I need these people to respect me. And they’re not going to respect me if I go live in some fancy house. If there’s a problem I need to be here to address it’.”
“This is different.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not. You have a job to do. The people here are nicer anyway. I don’t want to live with those people in their stupid fancy houses.” She sees something in my face I’m trying to hide. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“I have to go.”
June squeezes my hand. “Where?”
“Security drills. Need to keep everyone sharp. I probably won’t see you until tomorrow. I’m going to tell Mister Franklin to keep an eye on you.”
She tries to work herself up to a sitting position, wincing and huffing, and finally gives up. I lean down and kiss her, the paper mask still in place. Even through it, I can smell the rot on her breath. Whether that’s us being out of toothpaste or the infection, I can’t tell. I’m not a doctor. And our doctor is barely a doctor.
I break away from her and go to the window, look down at the road and pretend there’s something to look at for a few minutes. Then I pull off my shirt and root around for a fresh one. The cargo pants and boots will be fine; they’re getting a little grungy and if they’re going to need a wash, I may as well spend the day covering them with viscera.
June lies on her back, looking up at the ceiling, and I take that as a chance to dig through the steamer trunk underneath the window, looking for the shoebox hidden under some spare clothes.
My SIG Sauer P226 is nestled inside. The one I won’t keep in the armory under Fort Jay because this one is mine. The stainless steel body is cold and heavy. I put the gun into the front of my pants, pull my shirt over it. I twist so I can get two boxes of bullets into the pockets of my cargo pants without letting them rattle.
When I turn around, June is smiling. She says, “So do you think you’ll be able to look for some antibiotics?”
“Doc has tried two different courses. Neither of them worked, and that’s all he has.”
“I mean when you go across the water.” I begin to say something but she shakes her head. “Please don’t lie to me. I know you’re doing it to protect me, but please don’t lie to me.”
I squat down on the floor next to her. “I’m sorry.”
“Is everything all right?”
“No,” I tell her. “There’s some stuff I want to check out and some supplies that we need. I’ll take someone with me and be back soon. I just didn’t want to worry you.”
“I worry about you every time you walk out through that door.” She reaches up and places her hand on my arm.
“You’re beautiful. As long as you’re here waiting, I’ll get home.”
“Who are you taking with you?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Sophia?”
“Probably not. I’ll keep her in charge here while I’m gone.”
June nods. “Okay.” Not even trying to hide the relief in her voice. “You know. Maybe when you get back and if I’m feeling a little better…” She slides her hand on the inside of my thigh.
She knows she can’t follow up on that and that I’d never push the issue. But she also knows how Sophia looks at me. I take her hand in mine and hold it. “Get some rest, Junebug. I’ll be back soon.”
I stand in the hallway and make sure I’m alone and cry into my hands for a little while.
She doesn’t deserve this. It should be me, is what I tell myself every day.
There’s a black trash bag sitting on the floor, just outside the door. I swing it onto my shoulder, rip off the paper mask, and trudge down the stairs.
*
Sophia is waiting. She says, “I spoke to Doc.”
I wave down one of the kids playing outside and hand him the bag. Tommy, I think. He takes the bag and doesn’t ask, just runs south, where we have people to sort through the trash, repurpose everything we can repurpose, then toss the rest into the harbor. It makes me feel a little guilty, but there’s no place else to put it.
When the kid is out of earshot Sophia asks, “How did it get onto the island?”
I set off toward Upper Gov and she follows. “Wish I had an answer. Then I wouldn’t have to go find out.”
She nods. “I’m coming with.”
“You’re staying here.”
“You need me. I know this isn’t just about reconnaissance. You’re going to scout for supplies. You’ll need me.”
“If these things are getting onto the island then I need someone keeping things locked down while I’m away. I don’t trust anyone else.”
Sophia smiles when I say this, her face flushed. That’s all she needed to hear, but she presses anyway, because she doesn’t want me to know she took the compliment. “What are you going to do, take one of the kids? All they’re good for is throwing at the rotters so you can run away.”
“If need be.”
She stops walking. “How’s June?”
“Not great.”
She nods, looks me in the eye. Not like a soldier. She places her hand on my arm and blood rushes around my body. She says, “If you ever want to talk.”
Sophia is beautiful. But I think of June, of her smile, and how she’ll look at me when I find her some working antibiotics. I tell Sophia, “Double the foot beats while I’m away. Don’t tell anyone what’s going on. If anyone asks, say it’s a training exercise.”
She asks, “Who are you taking?”
The rook runs past us. I call him and he stops and turns so quick he nearly falls down. Sophia laughs. I tell her, “That’s my man.”
He looks at the two of us. “What?”
*
Reginald sits deep in his hardwood Adirondack chair, a sweaty glass of lemonade perched on the arm. His head is dipped back and he’s staring across the green, rolling field opposite the Admiral’s House.
Out front, toward the road, is a placard that explains the history of the house. There are placards like that all over the island, installed after it became a park.
The Admiral’s House was built in the Greek revival style, completed in 1843. Historically it housed the island’s top ranking officer, first from the U.S. Army when they ran it, and then from the Coast Guard, when they took it over.
It’s a big, beautiful home with white columns out front and ornate woodwork inside. The house could fit twenty people comfortably. Reginald lives there alone. The joys of leadership.
He’s still staring across the field and I think he’s forgotten we’re here. I’m about to kick him in the shin when he says, “I don’t think you should go.”
“If something about the condition of these things is changing, we need to know.”
Reginald lifts his head up and looks at me. He’s handsome, his dirty-blonde hair flat against his skull, his eyes blue and pale like crystal. He says, “And this has nothing to do with your wife’s condition?”
“Of course I’m going to scout for supplies. If I find antibiotics, that’s a win for everyone.”
“And nobody wins if they’ve figured out a way onto the island. We need you here, keeping things organized.”
“I have thirty men and women. Trained and ready.”
“To defend three hundred people we need every hand on deck. I need you here. You’re barely keeping things under control as it is.”
That one makes me smile. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s food missing from the upper gardens. Again. It’s going to keep on happening until you find and punish the people who are responsible.”
I exhale, will my blood pressure down. “I’m sure you’d love to mandate public executions for starving people, but it’s not going to happen.”
“Don’t say it like that. We have a rationing system in place.”
“One that favors you and everyone else who lives up here.”
Reginald gets up from the chair, says, “That’s simply not true.”
The rook starts to say something but I put up my hand. Not the place for him to talk. “Look, Reg.” He hates when I call him Reg. “I don’t have time for a socio-political debate. I’m not asking. I’m letting you know. Get me?”
He stares at me hard, like maybe he has some hope of intimidating me. I know a couple of my men play on Reginald’s team. And I’m sure if he snapped his fingers I’d fall off the wall of Castle Williams during the next heavy thunderstorm.
But I’m responsible for protecting this island as much as I’m responsible for protecting my wife. I turn to the rook. “Make sure the tank on the personal watercraft is full. Then head down to the armory. I’ll make you a list of what I want…”
Reginald laughs and puts up his hands. The tension disappears from his face, like it was never there. “Fine. Go mainland. Bring back what you can. If you find a bottle of Scotch while you’re there, all the better. I’ll even give you a hand. I’ll gas up the watercraft for you.”
“Very charitable. You’ve got gloves, right? Wouldn’t want you to get those smooth hands dirty.”
He ignores that. “It’s clear I can’t stop you. But we should at least get you back before dark, right?”
He smiles again. Something about his smile makes me wonder if I should check behind his back for a knife, but I nod and he saunters off the porch and toward the docks.
The rook asks, “What’s his deal?”
“His deal is, don’t fucking worry about it.” I rattle off the list of weapons I want him to get from the armory. “Meet me at the docks. I want to be on the water in a half hour.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see the Librarian.”
The rook looks at me with a mix of bewilderment and disgust.
*
I smell the man in the final casemate before I get there.
Castle Williams is round, because supposedly that made it harder for ships to hit during the Revolutionary War. Circled around the inside wall are a series of casemates—domed rooms designed to hold up the walls of the fort and support the huge weight of the cannons pointed out into the harbor. A little like a honeycomb.
Years later they were fitted with bars and used for prisoners. Sometimes up to forty men in a room, so many they’d have to sleep in shifts. Plenty of room for one guy, so I feel less bad about this. When it’s warm out, at least.
When I get to the bars outside the cell I can’t even see him. His latrine bucket is overflowing, spilling onto the floor, but the casemate looks empty otherwise. Then a shadow in the back moves, and he comes shuffling toward me, dragging a chair.
He’s still holding onto some weight, even though rations have been cut. I know the guards aren’t sneaking him food. I’m one of the few people on the island trying to keep him alive. Probably the only one. His skin is pale and ragged, his head bald on top, with long strands of greasy hair hanging from the sides.
He sits in the chair so hard he almost falls out of it. When he’s composed himself he says, “Are you here to kill me?” His voice is high, nasally, and a little hopeful.
“We’ve been over this,” I tell him. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Then let me out.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I’m better.”
“People like you don’t get better.”
“Then why don’t you kill me?”
“Because you’re still useful,” I say. “The main branch of the library. The one near Times Square. You know it?”
He nods. “I remember it well.”
“I need a book on corpse decomposition.” I nod toward the haphazard rows of books that line the back wall of the cell like bricks. “Unless you have anything like that here.”
“I do not. Why so interested?”
“Because the world is full of rotting corpses that are walking around trying to eat us. I’m thinking maybe it would be good to learn a little more about them. Which I guess means I need to find the medical reference books when I get to the library. Where do I go when I get inside?”
“Why that library?”
“More books, better odds. Where do I go?”
“I could say anything right now and you’d have no idea if I was lying.”
“You could. But maybe you won’t.”
He leans back in the chair, looks at the overflowing bucket, stretches his neck and runs his eyes along the dome brick ceiling. “Why do you keep me alive?”
I crouch down and lean against the wall opposite the cell, hold the gun in my belt so it doesn’t fall out. He asks me this question every time I visit, ever since the day I put him in here. And I always tell him the same thing. “Because I’m tired of killing people.”
He smiles. The kind of smile that could scar a child for life. “That’s close, but not the whole truth. One day, I hope you tell it to me.”
“The floor plan.”
He closes his eyes and moves his lips, like he’s praying. Without opening his eyes he says, “Go in through the main entrance. The doors flanked by the lion statues. Go up the stairs. At the top of the first set of stairs, next to the display cases, there’ll be a room with the library’s reference texts. Those should help. The stacks are on the floors above that.”
“Good.” I point at the bucket. “How long since someone came and cleaned it?”
“Four days. They drop off food but they don’t always swap out the bucket.” He gets up and winces, doubles over a little, then straightens up fast, like he’s hoping I didn’t see.
“Lift up your shirt,” I tell him.
“If you reprimand them they’ll only make it worse.”
“Lift up your shirt.”
He hesitates, then grabs and pulls. Embedded along his entire side is a bruise running a spectrum of colors, settled mostly around diseased phlegm yellow. I wave my hand for him to lower it, tell him, “I’ll take care of it.”
“You don’t need to.”
“We’re not savages.”
“It would be better for both of us if you just left it.”
I chew on that for a moment. He’s right. Sometimes I am very surprised that no one’s knifed him. Or me, over my decision to keep him alive.
Silence hangs in the air like a sentient being, taunting us. I want to leave but feel compelled to stay. Not that he deserves my company, but the solitude seems cruel. Everything about this is cruel. I ask, “Do you want to die? You ask if I’m going to kill you, but you never ask me to do it.”
He pauses. “I’m undecided, I guess.”
“Sometimes I wonder if keeping you alive in here is the punishment I think you deserve.”
He smiles. “That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me. Still not the whole truth, but better. What’s different about today?”
“Nothing, hopefully. I don’t know. Maybe everything.”
“Is this about your wife?”
I’ve never told him about June. I play it off like it’s nothing but I don’t do a very good job of hiding it, because my fist is clenched and shaking and he sees it. “My wife is not a concern of yours.”
“This isn’t some trick. I overhear things. The way the sound travels in here, it’s amazing. I hear you talking to her, up on the roof. Soph
ia.” He presses his face through the bars, and they pull his white skin taught. “You’ve been kind to me. Kinder than I have any right to. I want to repay you. I want to help save your wife.”
There’s an odd sincerity to his voice. Enough to drill a little hole in my skepticism. “And in exchange?”
“Let me out. I’ll leave the island.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“Do I have your word?”
If I let him out and off the island he’ll die. Whenever I go mainland I’m not convinced I’m coming back alive, and I can still run a mile without breathing too hard. This guy looks like he gets winded taking a piss. He’ll die before he even hits the shore.
And I’ll have my Junebug back.
Seems like a fair trade, even though it doesn’t feel right to make it.
He reaches his hand through the black bars. His other hand is empty, so I’m reasonably certain he’s not going to pull me in and stick something sharp in my throat. I take the proffered hand and shake. It’s clammy, and leaves a thick layer of sweat mine. I wipe it on the back of my pants.
“All you have to do,” he says, “is find a pet store.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? That’s your answer.”
He nods. “Pneumonia, correct? What antibiotics have you been using?”
“Amoxicillin and penicillin.”
“Good ones, but the strain might be resistant. You need to try a different kind, but doubtless the pharmacies have been cleared out. Did you know that fish antibiotics are the same kind as those used on humans, and you can buy them right off the shelf? No prescription necessary.”
“Seriously?”
“Quite. It’s one of those random bits of trivia that you file away and you figure it’ll never be useful, and then the apocalypse happens.” He laughs at himself, a high and unsettling giggle. “On Thirty-Ninth and Tenth there’s a specialty fish store. Not too far from the library. As long as no one else is as clever as us, it’ll have erythromycin and tetracycline and cephalexin.”
He smiles again, turns and walks toward to back of his cell. “I’m tired. Godspeed.”
I stand there for a little bit wanting to say something, wondering if I should thank him, but finally give up and head downstairs, where I catch one my deputies scurrying across the courtyard. I call him over and tell him, “Get up there and clean out his bucket.”