Suckers

by Z. Rider

  “Nah. I’m good with being Uncle Ray.”

  “Danny,” Jane said, drawing in the dirt with her stick, “you should tell him you want a candy apple for dessert.”

  “Nope. I’m holding on to my teeth as long as I can.”

  She hummed. After a while, she started gathering sticks, piling them around her drawing.

  More memories of being in these woods came as shadows moved to the other side of the trees. Kindling popping in fire. Ray telling him about the day he’d come home from school—sixth grade—and his mother didn’t exist anymore. Buddy’d found her when he’d snuck back to the apartment that morning, playing hooky from high school. By the time Ray’d walked in the apartment with his book bag, the body and the rope she’d used were gone.

  He’d tossed a pinecone in the fire that night and said to Dan, “We’re gonna do this.”

  “Don’t go out of sight,” Ray said to Jane. “Otherwise we won’t be able to find you when it’s time to go back.”

  “Before dark,” she said.

  “Well before dark.”

  When she was out of earshot, Dan said, “What if they don’t figure it out?” Because he’d checked the news while Ray was getting her ready. Because it didn’t look good. Because there were curfews along the entire East Coast, and Congress was talking about a national curfew, and people were attacking each other—either because they were infected or because they were afraid the other person was. Hospitals were jammed with people who’d been attacked, people who thought they’d been attacked, and people who were in such a panic they were breaking down in other ways. The Red Cross pleaded for donations. People on the internet wondered how long it’d be before donations were mandatory, like the draft. The infected being treated by whatever means doctors could come up with were dying, and some morons were going out at night on purpose, trying to get attacked—people believing they were voluntarily becoming a part of the aliens. Or joining God’s Army. Or who the fuck knew what.

  He and Ray watched bare treetops sway against the flat steel sky until it was time to gather Jane and head back.

  † † †

  “Sorry,” Sarah said as she eased herself into her chair at the dining table.

  “Look.” Jane pointed with her spoon. “My chili has a face.”

  “When I was pregnant with Dan,” Faye said, “I couldn’t go ten feet from the bathroom the first few months.”

  Buddy shook hot sauce over his chili as he said, “Yeah, and he’s been making girls sick ever since. Also, ketchup on kidney beans, Ray?”

  Ray shrugged. “She likes it.”

  “I like it,” Jane said. “Can I sing the first song tonight?”

  “Is it going to be the spider song again?” Dan asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Lauren didn’t show up for work today,” Faye said as she spooned chili onto a slice of bread. “Harry called her and she said she was packing up for California.”

  “Does she have family out there?” Sarah asked.

  “She must,” Faye said. “I wouldn’t want to drive three thousand miles with those things out there. What if her car breaks down in the middle of Nebraska? I think her feeling is that they’re not out there yet. But she’s always been flighty.”

  “We’re having problem keeping staff too.” Sarah nudged her bowl of chili away with the back of her hand. “Two nurses called in sick today, but three patients didn’t show for their appointments anyway. I’m glad it’s a surgical center and not a hospital. We’d really be hurting. At least no one we know’s been affected yet. Just a lot of panic and circle-running.”

  “You should eat some bread at least,” Faye said. “Before you start feeling nauseous from not eating.”

  “Do you think it’s true about those things breaking through windows?” Buddy said.

  Ray looked up.

  Sarah said, “Please don’t tell me that’s true.”

  “I heard it on the radio on the way home. There’s so much being reported, you can’t even tell what’s true and what’s panic anymore.”

  They had the curtains pulled shut throughout the house, the lights off in any room they weren’t in. Those things were out there, smacking the windows all night long.

  “I hate this,” Sarah said quietly.

  “I think we have some plywood in the garage,” Faye said. “Leaned up against the front wall. Paul was planning to do something with it, I don’t remember what. We can use that.”

  † † †

  Dan lay in the pitch black of his bedroom, plywood nailed over both windows. The sweet smell of fresh-cut wood lingered. The house was quiet, everyone in bed, lying awake, thinking about the latest news reports.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Christmas Eve, the federal government put everyone back on daylight saving time. More day to the day, supposedly, though really it was the same amount of daylight, just shuffled around. Dan guessed they had to look like they were doing something.

  For Christmas they had a ham—Faye’d thought ahead during one of those early trips to the grocery store. With that and Jane’s excitement, they were able to pretend—for a few hours—they were together that day on purpose, even if gifts were sparse: a mended shirt, a door rehung so it would stay open, some old Matchbox cars Faye had dug out of the attic. Dan spent half the morning building a car wash and garage to go with them, hanging tinsel in the car wash bay to mimic the mitter curtain of a real car wash. Jane drove cars in and out all afternoon, collecting a penny for each wash, and taking the job very seriously.

  By Christmas night, the boards were back on the living-room windows. The limbs on the tree drooped. Crumpled bits of tinsel gave the place the look of a strip club after the girls had gone home.

  The next night, Sarah’s cellphone rang while she carried a fresh pitcher of water to the table. They all looked up in surprise. Sometimes the cell towers were so jammed up all you got was a fast busy signal—they’d halfway started to think of that as the norm.

  She dragged the phone out of the pocket of her sweater. “Hey, Dad. Everything all right?”

  Ray handed the bag of corn chips across to Buddy.

  Jane scooped up the second-to-last bite of hot dogs and beans and shoved it in her mouth, the backs of her legs swinging against the chair.

  Dan refilled his mom’s glass, and Sarah sat suddenly, the phone to her face. She clutched the edge of the table. “What? Dad, slow down.”

  Everyone looked in her direction.

  “Is that Grandpa?” Jane said.

  “Are you sure? When did it happen?”

  Buddy clenched his spoon, watching her.

  “Are you okay? Besides that, I mean. Did you get hurt?” Her fingers moved to her sweater as she listened, tugging at a button. “I don’t know. I don’t know if you should go now or wait till morning. What does the news say to do?”

  “Has he been bitten?” Ray said.

  “Jane.” Dan’s mom took her hand. “Janie, why don’t we go pick out something to watch tonight?”

  “All right,” Sarah said. “Which hospital are you going to?”

  Dan shot his chair back, flattening his hand on the table. “Tell him not to go to the hospital.”

  Buddy and Ray’s heads swiveled.

  “Yes…I…Dad, I really don’t know. If you don’t feel well, you should definitely go once it gets light.”

  “Don’t go to the hospital,” Dan said.

  Sarah raised her eyes. The tinny, faraway sound of her dad’s voice came through the speaker.

  “Don’t let him go to the hospital.”

  “Dad, hold on.” She put her hand over the phone.

  “We can take care of him here,” Dan said. “Better than they can.” They’d brought the needles, the tubing. Alcohol, swabs, Band-Aids. They hadn’t even asked each other if they should. Of course they should have that stuff on hand.

  “What are you talking about?” Buddy said.

  “Tell him to come here. We have enough people. W
e can get him through this.”

  His mom had come to the doorway, her fingers at her throat. “Dan, what are talking about?”

  He glanced her way before looking back to Sarah. They hadn’t said a word about what they’d been through—why worry them? Save that card till they needed it.

  They needed it now. He said, “Ray and I can do it. We’ve been through it already. I got bit at the end of our tour. I’m fine now.”

  “You were attacked?” his mother said.

  “We know how to deal with it,” he said to Sarah.

  “Dad, let me call you back. Don’t go anywhere until you hear back from me, okay? Keep your phone close. Love you too.” She clutched the phone between her hands like a pocket Bible and looked at Dan.

  His mom said, “You were attacked and you didn’t say a word?”

  “It was kinda—”

  “You were attacked and you didn’t say a word, and you let me worry my head off about you being sick? That time you came over here for dinner and you could barely walk a straight line—was that this?”

  She was exaggerating—or he thought she was exaggerating. It wasn’t the time to argue it either way. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Mom, I’ve kinda started drinking blood, and I just look like shit because I’m running a little low right now?’”

  “You could have said something!”

  With one hand on her belly, Sarah leaned forward. “Tell me what you can do for him that the hospital can’t.” Her eyes searched his.

  He wasn’t sure they could do anything the hospital couldn’t; all he could promise was that here her father wouldn’t run the risk of being a guinea pig—and he’d have blood. With five adults, they should be able to get him through this. “We have the supplies, and Ray can draw blood.”

  “Since when do you know how to draw blood?” Buddy asked.

  “Since my crash course after our tour.” Ray slipped Jane’s plate onto his, started gathering silverware.

  “Moss taught him,” Dan said. “Ray did most of the blood drawing when we went around getting donations.”

  “Sarah can draw the blood,” Buddy said.

  “Now hold on,” Sarah said. “We need to think this through.” But her eyes went right back to Dan’s, looking for something there. Something that could assure her that this was the better choice.

  “Who did the blood screening?” Dan’s mom asked. “What if those people had HIV or hepatitis?”

  “I wasn’t really in the position to be picky,” Dan said.

  “What about Jane?” Sarah asked. “Those people who’ve been bitten have attacked people. What’s to keep Janie safe if we bring him here?”

  “Those people weren’t getting blood,” Dan said.

  “I don’t think Dan should donate,” Buddy said. “No offense, but if you’ve been getting blood from strangers…”

  “Drinking it,” Ray said. “Not mainlining it in his arm.”

  “I still wouldn’t want to take the chance.”

  Sarah shook her head slowly. “No, me neither.”

  “Plus he’s been infected by these things,” Buddy said. “Who knows what that does to you?”

  Faye hugged herself.

  “That still leaves four adults,” Dan said. “Four’s enough.” He hoped. If they alternated. If he gave up his share of food with iron in it.

  “What do you think?” Sarah said to Buddy.

  “My better sense says he should go to the hospital, but if it were me… I mean, you’ve seen the news. Maybe it’s not happening in New Hampshire yet, but people are dying in hospitals. Shit, they’re killing each other in hospitals.”

  “And I’m still here,” Dan said. That’s what he thought every time they stared at the news: People went to hospitals and died, but I’m still here. “They’re out of my system. It wasn’t fun. He’s not going to have a great time over the next couple months. But we can get him through it.”

  “It’s not really our call, though,” Buddy said. “It’s Faye’s house.”

  “Well of course bring him here,” Faye said.

  “The Red Cross is hurting for blood,” Ray said.

  “I know.” Sarah didn’t take her eyes from Buddy, as if she was trying to suss out what he’d really do. If it were him. “We donated at the center today.”

  “When there’s not enough to go around,” Ray said, “who are they going to give priority to? You think old guys are going to top the list? And how safe is he in a hospital? They’re quarantining the infected—together.”

  “You just said they weren’t violent if they were getting blood!”

  “And I said what happens when they don’t have enough blood to go around?” Ray said.

  Buddy sat back, tapping his spoon against the table. He and Sarah had one of those wordless conversations couples had, studying each other’s eyes.

  “We’re already imposing,” she started to say to him.

  “You call your dad,” Faye said. She put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Tell him to come out here. We have to stick together. We’re all we’ve got.”

  Buddy gave a nod finally, and Sarah picked up the phone.

  Ray got up with the plates and silverware.

  “Hi, Dad,” Sarah said. “First thing in the morning, head out here, okay? I’ll give you directions. We’ve got people here who can help you.”

  Faye told Buddy she thought she had some camping mattresses in the attic, maybe an old Army surplus cot. It wouldn’t be Serta Sleeper comfortable, but they’d find a way to make him feel at home. “Will Sarah’s mother be coming too, do you think?” she asked.

  “She passed when Sarah was a teenager,” Buddy said.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks for letting us all invade your space,” he said.

  “Don’t even think of it. And you.” She jabbed Ray as he passed with the baked beans pot. “You didn’t say a word either!”

  “Sorry, Faye.”

  “‘Sorry, Faye.’” She sighed.

  “Isn’t it way better knowing it happened and I came through fine than worrying the whole time what would happen to me?” Dan said.

  “What if you hadn’t come through fine? You’d have been dead, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to hold your hand and be there with you.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “I came through fine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “How long do you think this will work?” Ray asked, catching the hammer as its handle slid through his grip. He sat on the old Army cot they’d set up in the walk-up attic after they’d cleared out enough space to make a room out of one half of it. Despite the crispness of the air outside, upstairs was stuffy. It would have been nice to have the window open, but the first thing they’d done after they’d moved boxes to make a path to it was board it shut. They didn’t know Sarah’s father well, and they couldn’t take the risk that he’d open the window in the morning and forget about it as the day grew dark.

  “What do you mean ‘how long’?” Dan dropped a box of books at the foot of the cot, old paperbacks of his dad’s. Horror, mostly—unfortunately, considering the situation. Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, some creased old Stephen Kings. It was something to read when the nights got tedious at least, and with the sun setting so early, they got tedious fast. He fished out a few non-horror paperbacks, dropping them on the bed for Sarah’s dad. The rest he’d bring down to the living room. “We should have enough people to get him all the way through it.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  When Dan didn’t answer, Ray said, “Hiding. How long do you think we can hide out here?”

  Dan still didn’t say anything. Until they couldn’t scrounge up any food? Until the National Guard came and forced them into some sort of camp? Until everyone was dead? He tossed The Sound and the Fury on the cot and picked up the box. “I guess we’ll hide out here as long as we need to. You got anything more pressing at the moment?”

  “Fuck you,” Ray said with
out any rancor.

  “Let’s go listen to the radio,” Dan said. That’s what they did after Jane went to bed. Sat around the living room with all the windows blocked, listening to bad news and thin hope while trying to ignore the patter of black bodies against the glass behind the boards. The TV wasn’t good anymore—none of them wanted to watch it play out. They just wanted to know how bad it was getting. If there was any hope on the horizon.

  “I’m gonna have a cigarette,” Ray said.

  “Okay.”

  The cot creaked as Ray pushed himself up. When they got to the main floor, Ray turned the corner and kept going, heading to the garage.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “You’re home early,” Ray said as Sarah came in. It was barely ten in the morning. Ray’d been reading to Jane on the living room floor while Dan tried to concentrate on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, a story about the survivor of a pandemic that turned people into vampires. Like maybe he could get something useful out of it. All he got was that it was easier to be in fiction. At least someone knew what was going on then, even if it was only the author.

  “I gave my notice,” Sarah said.

  “How much notice?”

  “About thirty minutes.” She dropped her bag on the end of the couch. “No sign of my dad yet?”

  “How long’s the drive from Seabrook?” Ray asked.

  “Two hours, a little less.”

  “He would have had to pack too,” Dan said. “There might be traffic.” People out trying to get food. National Guard and police out, trying to keep things from getting out of hand.

  “Relax. Have a glass of wine,” Ray said.

  “Do we have any?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. I shouldn’t be drinking it anyway.” She sat beside her bag to take off her shoes.

  “So why’d you quit?” Dan asked.

  “This man,” she said. She set her shoes aside and sat up, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “I was stopped at a light, and he came out of nowhere and started pounding on my windshield. I had the doors locked, and it was bright as day, and he scared the—” She glanced at Jane. “He scared me. The rest of the way to work, I was shaking. All I could think about was Jane out here alone—I mean, with you guys, but not with me. And the baby.” She put her hand to her belly. “I thought, is it really worth it? Showing up for work every day? There’s talk they’re going to move the infected in, use the surgical center as a quarantine. No more surgeries, just—I should be there, but I can’t do it. Not with…” She hugged Jane’s dark head to her stomach.