A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  The guard shakes his head. In fact, all of him’s shaking, the back of his T-shirt darkened with sweat.

  “You won’t,” he says.

  “My love?” he says, turning toward me. “Maybe you should go breathe on him.”

  “I’m telling the truth!” the guard says with a fearful glance over his shoulder. “He’s gotten really weird about the fuel. Won’t let anyone but Buckeye or Sidewinder even touch the tanker.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Please don’t breathe on me.”

  I cut a glance to Chase, thinking of what that chick said about Elcannon’s fuel running low. And how the guard tried to turn me away, wanting to spare me the horrors of the asylum.

  “I believe him,” I say. I get to my feet, grab the packet of pills, and glance down at the guard. “You’re not going to get sick. At least not from me.”

  “We should get going,” Chase says.

  “What about him?” I say.

  “Put a bonus pill in his pocket and tell them they can have it when they let him go.” He snorts. “Don’t worry,” Chase says, stepping past the guard. “They’re dedicated addicts. You won’t be here more than a few days.”

  I move to the door, feeling guilty about leaving him here like this. But the last thing we need is Elcannon on the hunt for us as we try to leave the city.

  “Wait!” the guard says, back arching. “Wait. I’ll have access to a vehicle.”

  We stop.

  Chase tilts his head. “You just said—”

  “At ten o’clock. If you let me go, you can siphon out as much gas as you want.”

  “What happens at ten o’clock?” Chase asks, looking at me.

  “My relief shows up. I go home for the night after I return the vehicle to the compound. My daughter and I live in the Days Inn.”

  Chase steps back and studies the man. They’re nearly the same height. “It’ll be dark. I could wear his mask,” he says to me. “Think I could pass?”

  “What? No!” the man says, as though just realizing his mistake. “You can’t just take it.”

  “Your relief won’t know.”

  “Elcannon will know!” he cries. “He’ll know when I don’t show up to return my ride!”

  He doesn’t sound scared.

  He sounds terrified.

  “He knows where my daughter is. Oh, no. Oh, God. Please, she’s all I have left.” He turns his face against the floor and begins to sob, his entire body shaking.

  My eyes well at the sound of those sobs as Chase leans back against the wall and sighs.

  “Tell me the entire routine,” he says.

  “That’s it,” the guard says, words sputtering. “I take the vehicle. I stop by the Store-More, pick up my pay—”

  “He pays you daily?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what?” I ask.

  “Food, mostly. Maybe something for Keira, like a dress if he’s got it. Toothpaste. But always food. It’s how I keep her fed. She’s seven, and already smaller than the kids her age. The ones that are still here, anyway.”

  “Then what?”

  “I go to the Store-More, drop off the vehicle, fill out a report, and walk home. Get Keira from the lady next door. Make her dinner.”

  “I don’t get it,” Chase says. “If you’re afraid Elcannon will hurt your daughter, why do you work for him?”

  “I’ve got no choice!”

  “Everyone has a choice,” he says. It’s the echo of a conversation Chase and I had once, the night we were stranded in the snowstorm and he learned everything—about the samples, about me.

  There’s always a choice, I’d said.

  Not if you want to do the right thing, he’d responded.

  His saying so now, to this man, is a test.

  “No,” the guard says. “I don’t. Keira needs insulin. I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s no pharmacies around here, and the hospital’s been ‘repurposed.’ I know how to live off the land, but what I don’t know is how to make insulin. So even if I stole a truck after my shift, drove off, and kept on going as far as the tank would take us—and don’t think I haven’t thought about it every single day—where would we go? Insulin starts to go bad after a month without refrigeration! I could find a way to keep it cool, but there’s nowhere to get it. Do you know of any places that still have insulin? I’m asking. If you do, please tell me!”

  “And Elcannon does,” I say.

  “It’s the reason he shut down the hospital!” he says. “People think he was tired of spending fuel and manpower to keep the place running when it had become nothing more than a quarantine. That security team wasn’t there to protect the patients or even the fuel. It was to protect the meds! Meds he stockpiled.”

  He shakes his head. “The Warden’s power over people isn’t fuel, or even guns or booze, though there’s plenty of that at the jail. No. It’s food and the fact that almost all his orderlies have a family member who needs some kind of medicine.”

  I feel Chase’s eyes on me as I weigh the package in my palm.

  “What’d you mean when you said I wouldn’t get sick from you?” he asks.

  “Trust me, if I thought there was a chance you could, I’d tell you not to get your kid tonight,” I say. But I’m not going to touch or cough on him, either.

  “What were you doing in there anyway?” the guard asks, twisting enough to look at me.

  I hold up the package. “Looking for this.”

  He blinks. “Are there more meds inside there? They said they were all gone. That—”

  “No. Not the kind you’re looking for.” I lift my chin. “What’s your name?”

  “Simon Mattias,” he says, sounding defeated. “If you don’t believe me, my wallet’s in my back pocket.”

  Chase fishes it out, glances through the guard’s driver’s license and credit cards. A YMCA card and Children’s Museum membership.

  “I used to manage a Bill’s Sporting Goods,” Simon says hollowly. “Hated it. There isn’t a day I don’t wish I could have that life back.”

  Chase pulls out a picture, holds it toward the stick-on light: Simon, with a dark-haired woman in her thirties and a little girl at a park. Chase turns it over. It’s dated two years ago.

  Keira, age 5.

  I know for a fact the silo has insulin—and that none of the Denizens are diabetic.

  “If you have no intention of letting me go, please,” he says. “Put a bullet in my head now.”

  Chase closes the wallet back up and takes a look around the shed.

  I glance at the Hello Kitty watch. 9:31.

  “Simon, if you help us, we can get you the insulin Keira needs,” I say.

  Simon slowly rolls onto his back to stare up at me, as though unsure whether to hope I’m serious or believe someone could be so cruel.

  When I don’t move, he shakes his head slightly.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  10:02 P.M.

  * * *

  My eyes sting in the darkness, from a combination of grief and the smoke that lingers, like a low-grade fever, in the air.

  We’re not where we said we’d be; have taken position behind a solid wooden fence two lots down from the corner on Oak in front of a house so long and with enough angles and porches to create a veritable maze.

  Ten minutes ago, I was propelled by the certainty that we’d be back at the silo by 12:30, possibly by midnight. Already anticipating kissing Truly’s sleeping forehead, Lauren’s relief. A crash course in IV administration if necessary.

  Confident that we might save not just one, but two more lives in the process.

  But now, utterly still for the first time since waking this evening, I’m bombarded by doubt.

  Maybe Simon was acting. Some people are that good.

  Maybe he and his relief are coming right now to shoot us. Which might be hard for Simon, given that Chase has his magazine.

  Maybe he’s having second thoughts.

  Chase stares up at the sky, head resting agai
nst the fence, holding a cardboard box of stuff he found in the shed, including a length of garden hose, a screwdriver, a box cutter, and a roll of duct tape—a veritable apocalyptic car repair and contingency kit. The crowbar’s in there, too, along with a couple bottles for storing water.

  “Did we do the right thing?” I ask.

  “We had no choice,” he says, turning to smile with the echo of that earlier conversation so many months ago.

  My pulse accelerates at the sound of a vehicle coming up the road. Chase turns to peer through a gap between the boards.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” he says with a grimace.

  “What?”

  I hear the vehicle slow to a stop at the corner.

  “Wait here.”

  He’s gone the next instant, running low against the fence and leaping over the chain link dividing it from the neighbor’s yard.

  I close my eyes. Play a game my mom taught me the first and only time I had to get a cavity filled and played every time I was bored at morning service or stuck for the thousandth time in Penitence: I tell myself it isn’t really now. It’s midnight and we’re almost to the silo and I’m just remembering this moment, like the dentist and those hours spent in service and those nights in Pen—

  A soft, fluttering whistle sounds from the corner.

  I feel along the wooden fence boards, find the handle of the gate, and step out to the curb. Stare at the blue subcompact that backs up to meet me.

  Compared to the big trucks I’ve seen around town, it practically looks like a golf cart.

  I fold myself into the backseat of the Versa, and five seconds later we’re headed north.

  Simon cuts the headlights.

  “I radioed in that I had a flat,” Simon says. “Said I had to change the tire.”

  “So what, uh, happened to the trucks?” I ask.

  “Only the Warden’s inner circle drive trucks,” Simon says. He’s got his mask back on.

  “How’s the fuel situation?”

  “Under half a tank,” he says. “About five gallons.”

  That’s it?

  “Which will get us how far?”

  “A hundred seventy-five, ninety-five miles?”

  I exhale. Far enough.

  The plan is simple: he lets us off a couple blocks from the VNA. We exchange the pills for the antibiotics. Skip the Store-More for rations and go directly to the Days Inn for Keira instead.

  And then head west and cut south through the golf course to avoid the checkpoints.

  That’s assuming this car can off-road. If we have to get out and push, we’re doomed.

  Something in the rearview mirror catches my eye: a bright glow on the southern horizon

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “Portable light tower,” Simon says. “Elcannon keeps the compound lit up at night. Show of power. Also keeps people from thinking they can sneak in and steal stuff, and no one living there can smuggle stuff out.”

  “How many people live there?” I ask.

  “About eighteen. Used to be more, but the Warden’s gotten paranoid and tightened his inner circle. I guess some towns east of here have started posting warnings about this place—the orderlies have to ride out and take them down. You’re the first people I’ve heard of arriving in nearly a week.”

  “What happened to the last ones?”

  “They had a crazy with them. Tallest guy I’ve ever seen. The Warden ordered him into the asylum and the other two with him just to be safe. Took three guys just to get the one in, practically clubbed him to death first.”

  Chewie.

  “There was a man in there,” I say, and pause to make sure I can get the question out without breaking down. “An older black man—do you remember him? Sixties. Has that look like . . .” But how do you describe purpose and serenity? The assurance so few people have about their chosen path?

  I think of the horror of where he is now and feel my chin start to quiver.

  “No, sorry,” Simon says, glancing in the rearview mirror. “I just got moved from the well to the hospital a week ago. The Warden makes sure people don’t get too comfortable in the same place for too long.”

  He pauses.

  “There was a group that came through here nearly a month ago. Camped out in Cody Park near the river, where they could watch their lines, make sure no one took the fish off them. No one wanted them there, thought for sure they must be sick.”

  “What happened to them? The people by the river.”

  “Eight of them turned themselves in for evaluation. Craziest thing—heard the orderlies talking about it that night when I went for rations. Never heard of anyone willingly doing that—until you came along. Most people go kicking and screaming.”

  “And the others?” I ask, wondering if they’re still here, if Mel or Zach might be less than a mile away even now.

  Or if they walked into the asylum with Noah.

  “They were gone by morning. I was on well duty near there early the next day and they never showed up.”

  There’s a glow off to our right as well, though not quite as stark. The sheriff’s office. Where Simon’s told us two guards patrol the outside.

  We stop by the gas station, retrieve Otto’s sketchbook.

  Three minutes later, Simon pulls into an alley between a pizza place and a Mexican restaurant two blocks down from the VNA, cuts the engine.

  “I’m gonna need that flashlight,” Chase says, nodding toward Simon’s vest.

  “Make sure the guards don’t see it through the window,” Simon says as he hands it to Chase. “I know you know what you’re doing. But this is my daughter’s life on the line.”

  He looks scared.

  “We’ve got kids on the line, too,” Chase says before we get out.

  We skirt down the middle of the block to the back of the print shop attached to the VNA office building, the south side and roof of which are aglow in the light of two lamps shining on the sheriff’s office beside it—one in front, one behind. Each powered by a portable generator.

  Chase peers around the corner, rifle ready.

  “Go.”

  I slip around the corner. Run low, to the near side of the trash bin—and then nearly break an ankle as my foot finds and slips through a wooden pallet on the ground. I fall, hands slapping the wooden slats. Grimace, unmoving, as Chase crosses to me in the silence.

  “Was that there before?” he says, reaching for me.

  “I don’t remember,” I say, stepping carefully up on the pallet, testing my ankle.

  “Ready?”

  I nod.

  Static breaks the silence maybe twenty yards away. A mumbled voice on a walkie-talkie giving a status update unintelligible to my ear, except for the “over.”

  We crouch, unmoving, as someone else answers on the channel.

  I can smell it, wafting on the stale night air: smoke. Not of the garbage-burning variety, but the Marlboro kind.

  I wonder how many of those are left, if they get rationed out like food.

  Or in lieu of it.

  The sound fades, and the smoke with it. Chase leans out and then straightens, slings the rifle over his shoulder, lacing his fingers together to give me a foot up onto the bin.

  I land with a soft thud, step onto the pallets, and pull up onto the roof—which I swear was easier before.

  I wait, flat, as Chase joins me, hands planted on either side of my chest. From here, I can see the guard in the camouflage pants and black vest at the far end of the sheriff’s building staring off down the street, hand on his rifle.

  “Where’s the other one?” I whisper.

  Chase points toward the delivery bays around back. And then we wait, to see which direction the guard in front will go.

  After a few seconds and a quick glance around, he reaches into a vest pocket, pulls out what looks like a comic book. Flips it open and, holding it covertly against his far side, ducks his head to read.

  We push to our feet, run low for the
broken window, where I crouch beneath the sill as Chase steps up on it to land with a soft thud in the office below.

  A floorboard squeaks as he moves toward the door. I’m waiting for voices, for sarcastic, hissed comments. A gunshot from a paranoid addict.

  When I hear none of those, I glance up over the sill in time to see Chase silhouetted in the doorway as he shines the flashlight down the hall.

  A garbled voice—a woman’s—issues from somewhere inside, and he disappears around the corner.

  Something’s not right. I know it as I vault over the sill into the office and stride out to the hall, where Chase is crouched over the sprawled form of the woman who’d had the gun.

  Plaid Man lies beside her, in the doorway to another room.

  And then I see it:

  The spray-painted E on the wall.

  10:13 P.M.

  * * *

  “They took everything,” she says, glancing from Chase to me. Her nose is bloody and there’s a black shadow beneath her eye. “Even your stupid antibiotics.”

  There are three other people huddled in what looks like a conference room, a fourth curled beneath a long table.

  I glance at Plaid Man, facedown on the commercial carpet, note the stain beneath him.

  And all I can think is: Now what?

  “They shot him when he tried to protect me. I told you they’d figure out we were here after you broke that window!” she says, blood spraying with her words. Her expression twists and she looks away, lifting her fist to bite her fingers.

  Chase walks off a few steps, hands laced behind his neck. Staring up at the ceiling.

  “Who was he?” I ask. Not that it probably matters.

  “Attorney from downstairs,” she says, not looking at me.

  “Hey,” someone says from inside the room: a scruffy guy who looks like he hasn’t eaten in a week—or seen the sun in years. “You that girl? Is that her?” he asks, looking around. When no one answers, he says, “Did you get the stuff?”

  I look down a moment.

  “Yes,” I say at last.

  The woman’s head snaps up, and she looks at the guy in the room as though they’ve just seen a miracle.

  “Did you bring it?” she says.