by Lukens, Mark
“Craig. Are you still there?”
Ray thought about calling Craig back, trying to get a better connection. But if he hung up right now, he might lose him for good.
“Sorry,” Craig said, the static gone for a moment.
“Is there a plague?” Ray yelled into the phone.
The man was running back from the gas station store to the car, signaling wildly to the woman to start filling up the car. There were two car seats in the back of the car, and Ray could hear one of the children calling for his mother as she pumped the gas. The father opened the back door and was either consoling the children or yelling at them.
“I don’t know what your plans are,” Craig said. “But if you need a place to go, get to my house. I won’t be there.”
“If I need a place to go?” Ray said. “Why would I need a place to go? Why would I leave my house?”
Another blast of static, and then Craig continued like he hadn’t even heard Ray’s questions. “. . . I’ve got a place we can go . . . get your family out and . . . to safety . . .”
“You’re still breaking up,” Ray said. “I can’t hear you. Can you hear me?”
“. . . make it to my house . . . I left something there for you . . . the roses . . . are some answers to all of this . . . Avalon . . .”
“What’s Avalon?”
Static.
“Craig. What answers? What’s Avalon? What’s happening to people?”
The phone was dead now.
Ray checked his phone. No signal at all now. He dialed Craig back, but the call wouldn’t go through. He tried to dial Kim, but that phone call wouldn’t go through, either.
He turned the phone off, and then turned it back on as he waited for the woman in front of him to fill up her gas tank. The phone came back on, but he could see that he had no service bars. He tried again, dialing Craig, then Kim, then Doug, anyone—but none of the calls went through. He tried to bring up Google on his phone, but the internet wasn’t coming through, either. The phone was useless.
Again, he turned the phone back off to conserve the battery. Maybe it would work somewhere else.
But Craig had just told him that the cell phones were going to go down. How did he know that? But obviously he was right.
The woman finally finished pumping the gas. The man who was with her was already seated behind the steering wheel, ready to go, both of them buzzing with nervous energy. She hung the nozzle back up and jumped into the car.
Ray pulled up next to the pump. He got out on rubbery legs and walked over to the pump, already reaching for his wallet, for his bank card, an automatic reflex. But then he stopped when he saw the white piece of paper duct-taped to the pumps with two words scrawled on it in large letters: CASH ONLY.
There were already three other vehicles in line behind his Toyota, and he saw the impatient look on the driver’s face in the car behind his. All of the other pumps now had at least three cars waiting in line.
Ray didn’t make eye contact with the people in the cars behind his as he hurried to the gas station store.
The store was chaos. The shelves were nearly cleared of food and supplies. Ray knew that the gas was going to take up a lot of the seventy dollars that he had on him; gas prices had gone way up over the last few weeks, and who knew what they were going to charge right now. He figured he could put forty dollars in the tank and still have thirty dollars left. Maybe it was the panic all around him, but he felt the urge to buy something while he was here, at least something to drink. He still had the coffee in his thermos, but he was suddenly thirsty, suddenly craving water.
But there was no water left. This was like people preparing for a hurricane.
He would buy something other than water—whatever they had left in the store.
Ray hurried down a few of the aisles, grabbing things and adding them up in his mind: two packs of peanuts, a few packages of beef jerky, a dented can of Spam. From the coolers set in the walls, he grabbed a six-pack of orange soda and a six-pack of cream soda; almost all other varieties were gone. All of the beer and milk was gone.
Ray took his armload of groceries to the line at the cashier counter where two Indian men were quickly totaling up the customers’ purchases. Both men looked nervous, and there was a third man who waited behind them in a doorway, watching over everything. Ray could only assume that the third man had some kind of weapon within easy reach just inside that doorway.
A young woman and her child waited in front of Ray. They were behind several more people. She held her child’s hand. The child was quiet, staring at the people all around her with wide eyes. The people in line and the others hurrying around in the store were all pretty calm so far, at least compared to the mob at the bank. Maybe the fact that these clerks were at least taking cash and letting them buy groceries and gas was enough to soothe them for the moment.
Maybe Craig was wrong, Ray thought. Maybe this, whatever was happening, was only temporary. Maybe after a few weeks, things would return to some kind of normalcy.
Ray wanted to believe that, but he didn’t. Deep down he felt the fear wanting to rise again. And he knew he wasn’t ready for whatever was beginning to happen, he and his family hadn’t prepared at all.
He thought of Doug and that smug expression on his face this morning, Doug who had been the butt of everyone’s jokes for so long now, Doug who had spouted his doomsday scenarios for so long now they had become background noise to Ray. But Doug had been right . . . Doug had seen this coming.
I hope he’s happy, Ray thought.
They moved a little farther in line. Ray adjusted his stash in his arms and wondered how long this collapse might last. A few days? A few weeks? Months? How long would it be before he could get money out of the bank? And then he wondered how much food they had in their pantry at home. When was the last time they’d gone shopping? A chill ran through his body, fear dancing like live electricity along his skin as calculations ran through his mind. His mouth suddenly went dry and he was tempted to open one of the bottles of soda right now and drink half of it down.
You need to save it, his mind whispered. You need to conserve.
A few of the people in line ahead of Ray were talking to each other, but the woman and child right in front of Ray remained quiet. They looked scared, and Ray wished he could say something to help console them, but he couldn’t even console himself right now.
Ray overheard the grumblings from the people ahead of them in line.
“. . . all the politicians’ fault . . .”
“. . . I don’t think the banks are going to open again . . .”
“. . . they can’t just keep our money . . .”
“. . . unconstitutional . . .”
“. . . this isn’t right . . .”
A few minutes later Ray was at the counter. The younger of the two Indian men rang up Ray’s groceries with lightning speed. Ray glanced over at the mother and her daughter. The little girl looked so frightened. She seemed to be the same age as his own daughter.
“Twenty-three dollars and sixteen cents,” the Indian man said, turning Ray’s attention back to the clerk.
The amount seemed high to Ray for the few items he had, but he was sure all of the stores and gas stations were price-gouging now. He wasn’t going to argue with the man; he wanted the groceries no matter what they cost.
On impulse, Ray grabbed a few maps from a rack just off of the counter. He selected a map of the Washington D.C. area, and one of the eastern United States.
“I need these and forty dollars’ worth of gas out there on Pump Ten,” Ray told the clerk as he pointed at his Toyota parked beside Pump Ten.
The clerk seemed annoyed that Ray hadn’t told him about the gas and the maps as he was adding up the groceries, and for a moment Ray thought he was going to tell him to get back in line, but he rang up the two maps and punched in the amount for the gas on the cash register.
Ray had the amount totaled up in his mind already—he’d always
been able to do math instantly in his head—and he handed the money and some of the change he’d grabbed from his cup holder to the man, the exact amount. He glanced once more at the woman and her daughter, wondering where they were going, wondering what they were going to do. But he couldn’t think about that. He had his own family to think about now.
More people were rushing inside the store, running for the nearly-bare shelves and coolers.
Ray walked past the inflow of people and hurried back to his Toyota. He pumped the gas into his vehicle; the gas was coming out slowly. When he was finished, he hung the nozzle back up and got back into his truck. He started it up. The gas gauge needle moved up to three-quarters now. Not full, but better than it was. Who knew when he would be able to get gas again?
He pulled out of the gas station and headed home.
CHAPTER 5
Kim paced from the living room, into the dining room, and then into the kitchen as she waited for Ray to come home. She had tried dialing him back on her cell phone but the call wouldn’t go through. She tried her sister’s number in Cincinnati, but that call wouldn’t go through, either. Her cell phone had no service now, and the landline phone had stopped working this morning, along with the internet connection. At least the cable was still on, something to occupy Mike and Vanessa for the moment.
They were watching cartoons in the living room, arguing over which show to watch. Kim had watched TV in her bedroom for a few hours, the sound turned down low because the news reports were too scary for the kids to be watching right now. Something big was happening; there were riots in most major cities now, and martial law had been declared in most of those places. There were curfews and checkpoints now. Citizens were urged to stay in their homes.
God, what was happening? The banks had been shut down this morning. She had taken Mike and Vanessa to school only to find out that all classes had been cancelled until further notice. She had talked to another mother while she was there, and that lady told her that the economy had collapsed.
And now Ray told her that his work had been shut down? The CDC? The government? That seemed almost too bizarre for her to comprehend right now.
She was scared, but she didn’t want Mike and Vanessa to see how scared she was. Her mind drifted back to the news reports that she’d been watching only moments ago—she couldn’t stop thinking about it. On TV, she’d seen lines of people waiting at the ATMs, hoping their bank cards would magically work. She’d seen footage filmed from news helicopters, lines of cars and trucks at gas stations, and parking lots full at supermarkets. She’d seen quick shots of signs in store windows that declared: NO FOOD or OUT OF GAS or CASH ONLY. One reporter outside of the White House said that there were rumors that the president and his staff had left Washington, and that all of Congress had left. All of them, gone.
Maybe we should leave, too, Kim thought. If our leaders are leaving, there must be a pretty good reason.
But leaving might be tough because she’d seen on TV that the airports had cancelled all flights, and it was the same thing with trains and buses. Of course all of the highways were backed up right now, long lines of cars and trucks stuck on entrance and exit ramps. Emergency crews were slow to respond, and multiple accidents and abandoned vehicles were jamming everything up. One TV channel showed a man running from car to car with a baseball bat in his hands, swinging it at windshields and at people. Then the man with the bat hit a guy who’d been on his motorcycle, catching him from behind, beating him over and over again with the bat. The helmet protected the motorcyclist’s head, but his attacker had to be breaking every bone in the man’s body with the bat.
What was wrong with that man? Why was he attacking people on the highway? What was happening to people? One woman being interviewed said that her neighbor tried to attack her with an ax—he’d turned into some kind of animal, she’d said.
“Yes,” the reporter said as he turned back to the camera. His clothes were disheveled, his hair messy, his face pale and unshaven, eyes wide with shock. “Many people are beginning to believe this is some kind of an outbreak. People are turning into bloodthirsty animals. Some are calling the supposed infected crazies. Others are calling them zombies and monsters. And others call them rippers.”
Another newscaster on another channel had also labeled these people that had gone crazy as rippers, because so many of their victims had been ripped open. Some of the victims had been eaten. “It’s like a scene from Jack the Ripper,” another newscaster had said, and the name had stuck.
Kim had turned off the TV then. She’d gone downstairs to make sure that Mike and Vanessa were still watching cartoons and not one of those newscasts. Mike liked to change the channel when Vanessa started watching a show, one of his ways of pestering her.
But they were both watching the same cartoon, both mellow—which was unusual. She couldn’t help but wonder if they could tell that something strange was happening. School being cancelled had been a surprise; Mike had been happy about it, but Vanessa had been upset. Vanessa was seven years old and she loved school. But Mike was a little older, eleven years old, and he hated doing schoolwork.
“Why can’t we go to school?” Vanessa had wailed on the way back home earlier this morning.
“It’s closed for the day.”
“I hope it’s closed all next week too,” Mike had said.
Mike wanted to go down to his friend’s house when they got back home. Even though Mike’s friend, Eric, only lived one street over, Kim had told him no. Mike had felt that his “free” day off from school should be put to good use, but she told him that he had plenty of studying he could be doing; his grades had already been slipping since school had started in August. He had lied about doing a few homework assignments last week, and she still wasn’t too happy about that.
Kim went into the kitchen, leaving Mike and Vanessa in front of the TV, stretched out on the couches. They argued a lot, but usually Mike gave in to his little sister.
She poured another cup of coffee. She had already downed four cups this morning, more than she usually drank, but she was jittery and nervous. Of course all the coffee probably wasn’t helping her nerves. Maybe she should switch to tea.
Feeling restless, she paced around the kitchen. She felt like she should be doing something, but she didn’t know what to do. She had pulled her SUV into the garage—there was only room for one vehicle in there because of all of Ray’s gym equipment. She had locked all of the doors and windows of the house like Ray had told her to, including locking all deadbolts. She had closed all of the curtains and drapes, but she peeked out through them every so often. Outside, everything in her neighborhood still seemed pretty normal. There were a few more people than usual walking around at this time of the day, a lot of people home from work and school.
But what was going on beyond their neighborhood wasn’t normal. Something was going on, something bad. The economy had been getting worse over the last few weeks, the stock market crashing. Prices at the stores had shot up seemingly overnight. And now with the schools closing, the banks closing down until Monday, she was sure something really bad was happening.
Ray had told her that some people at the bank had chased his truck into the street. He’d said that they had thrown rocks at his truck.
“God,” she whispered, shivering a little as she sipped her coffee. She felt a little cold even though it was warm in the house.
Her thoughts turned to Ray again, and their arguments over the last few nights. She had told him that she was sorry about her affair with Gary. Ray was analytical; he wanted some kind of rational explanation for why she had cheated on him. But she didn’t have one. It had just happened. She knew that was a lame excuse, an excuse probably used by so many unfaithful spouses, but it was the truth. She and Gary had started out as friends. It was nice to have a man to talk to, a man who was interested in everything about her life, interested in everything about her. He paid attention to her, complimented her, understood her feelings. And the
n one Saturday afternoon, after a few too many glasses of wine, it had just happened. It started with a touch of his hand to her face, then a kiss, then . . . then more.
If it had only been that one time . . . but it hadn’t. She had slept with Gary a few times over a three-week period.
And then she had broken it off.
But then Ray had found some text messages on her phone that she’d forgotten to delete. And after his accusations, she came clean. She told him everything. And it had felt good to tell him about the affair at the time; it felt good to hurt him because he had hurt her when he ignored her. So much of the time he seemed lost in his thoughts, consumed with some inner dialogue. She wanted emotion from him again. She wanted passion from him. She wanted things to be the way they were when they were first together. And maybe that nostalgia was what she’d been chasing with Gary. Even when she and Ray argued, she was the one who did the screaming, the threatening, the crying. Ray was an unemotional statue, always trying to reason and calculate, to analyze and categorize.
Ray was supposed to leave this weekend, go stay in a motel for a few days. It was a mutual decision they had come to. Tonight was the night they were supposed to tell the kids that Ray was going to his brother’s house in Mobile, Alabama for the weekend, a lie they had made up until they could figure out what was going on before telling the kids the truth.
They needed some time alone, she had told Ray, but both of them had come to that decision. They needed some time to think about where all of this was going.
“I don’t want a divorce,” she’d told him, crying as she tried to hold on to him. She didn’t think Ray wanted a divorce either, but he seemed so unforgiving at the moment. And she couldn’t really blame him. Maybe in time these wounds would heal.
“You don’t have to leave,” she’d told him last night. “Please, stay. We can get through this somehow.”
Ray had been angry in his quiet, smoldering way, shutting her off. He was hurt. He’d asked why she had cheated on him. And she hadn’t had much in the way of an answer for him. But she’d told him that she missed their younger days, missed his attention, missed his affection.