A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

“No,” he says dryly. “You’ll just be living like the rest of the country, without ovens, washing machines, or flushing toilets.”

  A few minutes later, Truly’s voice comes through the headset.

  “Winnie?”

  “Hi, Truly. How are you? Is it dark there? Are you okay?”

  Otto points: Smoke on the horizon. Soot, staining the sky.

  We’re headed straight for the haze.

  “Yes,” Truly says. “We have a flashlight.”

  “Good. You hold on to that. Is Rima down there with—”

  “Did you find it?” Lauren.

  “Not yet,” I say.

  When she doesn’t respond, I say, “Lauren? I’m coming back. With your mom’s medicine. I promise.”

  “Hurry.” It’s all she says before Delaney’s back on the headset.

  • • •

  EAST OF SIDNEY, the highway broadens into four lanes at the junction of Interstate 80. Beneath the bypass, a train sits like a slumbering thing on the tracks near a grain elevator. From here we can see three individual plumes of smoke rising from the edge of town.

  Chase points to a blue H sign, and it takes me a minute to realize what it means.

  Hospital.

  My heart accelerates, and my pedals with it. Never mind that my legs feel like Jell-O.

  Static. “Looks like the system was set to run on solar if the ark door was open,” Irwin says. “Except there’s been no solar ever since the plane took out the inverter. So it’s been running on the battery, trickle-charged by the generators, the last twelve hours until it ran out just now.”

  “Can you switch it back to the generators?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but we’ll run out of fuel.”

  “How much do we have left?” Chase asks.

  “Ahh . . .” Irwin blows out a ragged sigh. “I’d say enough to last two, three days, tops.”

  We veer into town on Highway 30 past a seed company on one side, mobile homes on the other. Garbage in the street.

  And then I see something up ahead that makes my heart skip: a woman sitting on a stoop. No mask, no gloves. Never mind that there’s something shell-shocked about her expression. That she’s wearing a sweatshirt and it’s well over eighty degrees.

  There’s a kid playing at her feet, rolling a green tractor through the dirt, a bandanna over the lower part of his face. Even from here I can tell he’s far too thin. There’s something unsettling about the way they stare as we go by.

  But they’re alive. The place isn’t a ghost town.

  I slow to a stop at the edge of the property, pull my pack around. Farther down the street Chase and Otto make wide turns and start back.

  I’ve just grabbed the zipper to the main compartment containing the MREs. And then I hear it:

  The unmistakable cock of a pistol.

  I look up to find the barrel aimed right at me where the woman sits, weapon in her hand. The lifeless expression in her eyes hasn’t changed.

  “Hey, whoa,” Chase says, coming to a stop beside me, palm lifted.

  The barrel doesn’t move; only her eyes swing in his direction.

  “I’ve got food,” I say. “For your little boy. I’m happy to share.”

  “Keep going,” she rasps.

  I hesitate, glance at the kid staring at me from the dirt, tractor forgotten in his hands.

  “You sure? They’re sealed,” I say.

  “One . . . two . . .”

  “Wynter,” Chase says, warning in his voice.

  “Okay.” I slowly sling the pack over my shoulders.

  My back prickles as I imagine the barrel following me down the block.

  When I glance back, both the woman and the boy are gone.

  Lauren’s last word echoes in my mind.

  Hurry.

  I stand up and pedal. It’s the closest thing to running.

  And then I see it. The hospital campus with its parking garage and portico over the concrete drive, the SIDNEY REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER sign across the brick, the logo like a three-petaled flower—no, a wind turbine—beside it.

  Then I notice the windows, which should reflect the June sun.

  Half of them are broken, dark soot around the second-story sills.

  4 P.M.

  * * *

  The drive is piled with garbage bags and littered with trash: food wrappers and Git ’N Split cups, a stained pillow and a dirty-faced doll. A red car is crumpled against a pillar at the entrance, the driver’s side door open, shattered glass on the concrete like crystal confetti.

  I ride past the car to the front entrance, climb off the bike, let it drop to the pavement. The open door is plastered with notices like those in Gurley, the most recent of which reads only:

  WE DO NOT HAVE VACCINES!

  “Otto, stay with the bikes. Wynter, wait!” Chase says, running to catch up to me as I step inside.

  No one sits at the front desk. A yellowed article calling Sidney “One of America’s Top 100 Rural Communities” hangs on the wall, the glass in the frame shattered. The staircase and second-story walkway beyond it are littered with debris, the ceiling charred black.

  I hurry past a row of open rooms with desks but there’s only offices down here. I whirl around, start for the stairs.

  “You’re not going to find anything left up there,” Chase says, catching up to me.

  “You don’t know that,” I say.

  “Nothing could have made it through that fire.”

  I ignore him.

  “Hey,” he says, grabbing my arm. “You could fall through the floor!”

  I turn on him, jerk my arm free. “I don’t have time to wait for the building inspector!”

  “You’re not going to be any help to Julie or the girls if you’re dead,” he says flatly.

  I hesitate then, if only because that thought is the one I’ve been trying to ignore since we left. Not that I could die, but that if anything happens to me, Truly and Lauren will be at the mercy of whoever will take them in.

  “If I die, get back to the silo and take care of the girls. Please,” I say. “You owe me that much.”

  It’s not true; he doesn’t owe me anything. But I have no doubt that he’d defend them, help them find a safe place. Might even look after them himself for a time. He and Truly genuinely took to each other—another reason I’m angry with him, for my having to break her heart as I explained that we wouldn’t be living in Green River with Chase. He might have lied to me, but I’ve never doubted his feelings for her.

  He stares at me with an unreadable expression for a moment.

  “No,” he says finally.

  “Excuse me?” I say angrily.

  “Truly would never forgive me. And I could never look at her without seeing you and wishing I could do it all over again. Better. The way you deserve.”

  I look away.

  “Chase—”

  “Which is why I’m making sure you get back. Alive.” He pushes past me, pistol drawn, and heads upstairs.

  Something inside me boils up.

  “No.”

  He pauses, and when he turns and looks back at me, I rip off my headset and stalk to the foot of the stairs.

  “No. You do not get to play hero, go off and get captured again, or shot—or whatever it is that fuels your addiction!”

  “Wynter, my only addiction is you!” he shouts, tearing off his own headset. “Don’t you see that? I could’ve left by now! I promised you I would. So I guess in that regard I’m a liar all over again. But I can’t. Because I can’t fathom not being around you. Not being with you. Or worse yet, the thought of you being with someone else. And you’re right. I would take care of Truly. I love that little girl, like—” He wheels away with a curse, cords standing out on his neck as I stare. Trying to parse what he’s just said.

  He rounds back. “But you know what? I don’t think you want to be away from me, either. I think something inside you is saying, Prove it. Make me believe you the way you made me believe we met
by accident. And has been saying that since the night of that witch trial in the storage room. So I am. Because I might not have told you the truth about who I was, but I’m not usually wrong—and I’ve never been wrong about you.”

  I take a step back at the onslaught of those words. The emotion behind them tightening his jaw and the set of those lips.

  I don’t know what to say about his obvious egotism. His vehemence.

  The fact that he’s right.

  Coming down the stairs, he takes my hand, brushes my knuckles with his thumb. Stares into my eyes. “So I won’t let anything happen to you—not because I have to be a hero. But because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. Because I don’t want to live without you.”

  I take in those turbulent blue eyes, the strong lines of his brows. The hair curling behind his ears. It was military short the day we met.

  “Give me a chance,” he whispers.

  His gaze falls as my hand drops from his—then abruptly lifts as I close the distance between us, his eyes going to my mouth as my fingers slide into his hair.

  It takes me a second to register the sound of an incessant bell ringing from the direction of the entrance.

  We fall away from each other, startled, pistols raised toward the front desk.

  Where Otto stands, palm hovering above an old-fashioned desk bell.

  He glances around. Raises his hands.

  Chase lowers the gun. “Otto . . .”

  With two fingers, Otto points to his eyes and then down the hall adjacent to the desk that leads in the other direction.

  “Something down there?” Chase asks. “And what happened to waiting outside?”

  Otto shrugs.

  “Come on,” I say, hooking the headset over my ear.

  Otto slides the bell from the desk, cradling it as Chase moves ahead, pistol raised.

  I gesture Otto to stay close, find him studying me sidelong.

  “What?” I whisper.

  He slides a gaze to Chase and back to me. Wiggles his brows.

  “Shut up, Otto,” I say as his lips part in a toothy smile.

  The hall leads to a separate wing closed off by a set of double doors. There’s a window in each. Through the glass, I see what looks like a waiting area. Or, rather, what might have once been. Today, a tarp draped between two chairs separates the area into two rooms. Clothing, shoes, and a bedpan litter the floor of the nearest, where a backpack and several shirts hang on a wall covered with graffiti.

  A pair of dirty feet protrude from the second.

  “Otto, I think you better stay here. Or better yet, outside. Keep an eye on the bikes,” I say, though what I mean is Guard the fuel. “Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

  He clutches the bell in one hand and nods, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, and then turns and hurries toward the entrance, arms straight at his sides.

  Chase steps back, weapon ready.

  I holster the pistol. Push the bar on the right door. Locked. There’s no handle on the left.

  I bang on it.

  “Hey!” I shout.

  The feet protruding from the tarp twitch. I pound on the door again until a face appears at the window so abruptly that I jerk back.

  He’s maybe eighteen, unruly curls held off his forehead by a sweatband, a dirty surgical mask over his nose and mouth.

  “Yo. What do you want?”

  “I need to find medicine,” I say through the door. “Please. Someone’s dying.”

  He rolls his eyes. “We’re all dying, yo. Ain’t you read the Good Book?”

  More times than I can count.

  “Is there someone there I can talk to? Please. We won’t stay. We’re not asking for food or anything else.”

  “You got food?” he says, brows lifting.

  I pause, curse myself. “Yeah. Some. And money.”

  “Money don’t matter,” he says like I’m an idiot. “Only food. Water. Fuel.”

  I can’t give up the fuel; we’re going to need a car.

  “I have food. Some water. But I need medicine.”

  The kid looks away, rubs his cheek.

  “Lemme see,” he says, nodding toward my backpack.

  I take it off and lower it to the floor, the kid craning to see as I pull out two MREs.

  I hold them up.

  “How many you got?”

  “Six.”

  It’s a lie. But we may need the remaining two to trade for something else. Or to eat, if only for the strength to pedal back home.

  I swear I can see him salivating.

  “Okay, listen. Just you. He stays outside. You come in armed, I shoot you, simple as that. You got me?”

  “No,” Chase says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “You bring the food, I take you to the man in charge.”

  I shake my head. “No. Food stays out here till I get the medicine. No medicine, no food.”

  The kid shakes his head, bobs it once as though angry. “No, no good! I got people to defend, man! You see that? You see them? How do I know you ain’t sick?”

  “I ain’t—I’m not. Sick. Would we be bargaining if I were?”

  He looks around, obviously unsure what to do.

  “Stay here,” he says at last, and walks out of sight. I crane against the window, an MRE in each hand. When he doesn’t return a few seconds later, Chase grabs the backpack.

  “Get those back in here in case we have to make a quick—”

  Movement beyond the window. An East Indian man in a dingy white coat walks over. His hair is rumpled, and even with his glasses on I can see the circles under his eyes.

  I don’t even bother trying to tamp down the surge of hope inside me. It feels disconcertingly like panic.

  “What can I do for you?” he says through his surgical mask.

  I read the name on his coat: Dr. Banerjee.

  I grab the slip of paper in my back pocket. Unfold it and hold it up to the glass.

  He leans in, squints, and then shakes his head.

  “You won’t find any of that here,” he says, sounding defeated.

  “But this is a hospital! I don’t need them all. Even just one.” I turn the page around. “Maybe just the piperacillin-tazo-tazo bactim. Bactam. Or the vanco-mycin. Or just the az-aztreo—”

  He stops me as though it’s too painful to listen to me fumbling over their names.

  “We haven’t seen vancomycin or any IV antibiotics for months. Not since the place was overrun. Whatever was left got destroyed in the fire.”

  “Isn’t there a locked cabinet or anything that might have—”

  He shakes his head. “Even if we had any antibiotics, we’d have run through them months ago.”

  Chase leans into the frame. “Can you tell us where we could find some?”

  The doctor sighs, and then stills as the kid leans toward him, whispering something behind a cupped hand.

  The doctor glances at us. “You have food?”

  “Yes,” I say uncertainly.

  “How much?”

  “Six MREs.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  The doctor glances from me to Chase. Chews the inside of his cheek a moment before saying, “Okay. But just you. I open the door, you bring the MREs and leave your gun outside with him.”

  “No,” Chase says, shaking his head. “I’m not letting her come in alone. We’ll put the guns away—”

  Dr. Banerjee shakes his head. “We have a no-gun policy.”

  “We’ll leave them out here,” Chase says, gesturing to the hallway behind us.

  Soft static. “Guys.” Delaney. “I don’t like it.”

  The doctor shakes his head. “You want to know where to find the medicine? Those are my terms.”

  “Fine,” I say, unslinging my backpack.

  “Wynter, don’t,” Chase says tightly.

  “Chase, don’t let her.” Delaney.

  “We have no choice!” I dig out thr
ee packs of MRE pizza, three of bean stew. Hold them up. Transferring them to the crook of one arm, I pull the pistol from my holster. Hold it up, and then hand it to Chase.

  “He waits at the entrance,” Dr. Banerjee says.

  I nod as Chase picks up the backpack, mouth set in a hard line. He backs up several steps, chin lifted to see through the door’s window. Looking, I know, for any threat. Finally, he gives me a last glance and turns on his heel. Strides out of sight.

  Static in my ear. “Anything happens . . . ” Chase says.

  “Hightail it out of there?” I murmur. It’s meant to be a joke; the last time he said that he was the one stepping into a shady situation, and I went in after him.

  “No. Say the word. I’ll find a way through that door.”

  I don’t doubt him.

  Dr. Banerjee unlocks the door, pulls it open. I step through.

  The kid comes to take the MREs as the doctor bolts the door behind me.

  4:30 P.M.

  * * *

  “Hey, these are the ones with the Wet-Naps and little candies inside,” the kid says like it’s Christmas.

  “Come with me,” the doctor says. I follow him past the waiting room, bracing for the stench, the sight of a corpse beyond that tarp. Not at all prepared to find the two feet attached to a teenager in a purple medical mask lying with his head on a bundle of clothing, a book propped on his chest. His eyes lift as we pass.

  “Yo, Gabe, check it,” the kid carrying the MREs says, holding one up.

  The nurses’ station is graffitied as well, doors missing from cabinets crammed full of clothing, the counters piled with junk.

  Thin mattresses line the hallway, some of them canopied by sheets secured to the wall and draped over chairs, others housed in improvised lean-tos and squat, corrugated booths. Through the open end of one, I glimpse several picture frames propped on a milk crate next to an old-fashioned alarm clock, a couple of mugs stacked in a bowl. The woman inside doesn’t even glance at me as I pass.

  Farther down the hall, someone shouts and shuts a door. Music drifts from one of the rooms—a guitar. It reminds me of Jackie, who learned to play when we came to the New Earth Enclave. Until we committed to join—an act that required giving up every influence of the outside world, including our hair ribbons and Mom’s makeup—and Jackie’s opportunities to practice became fewer and fewer. We had important work to do preparing for the coming apocalypse, canning food with holy zeal.