Adam smiled. As always, the NA meeting had settled his nerves and made him feel better. “I won’t,” he said. “I promise. It’s just hard to get out of the house sometimes.”
“If you’re feeling depressed, this is the best place for you,” David said seriously. A short, wiry ex-heroin addict, David was now ten years clean and the leader of Adam’s group. He tried to make time at the end of every meeting to circulate and talk to each member of the group as they chatted and ate cookies. Adam looked up to him. Kicking the habit was one thing, but devoting your entire life to helping others do the same was really something.
“I’m not depressed,” Adam said. “I can see why you’d think that, though. It’s just hard to get out because someone takes a picture of me every time I do.”
“Really?”
Adam laughed. “You sound so surprised.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that, well—”
“I’m not that famous?” Adam grinned. “You’re right. If I’d just aged out of being a child star without causing any drama, everyone would have forgotten about me already. I mean, look at the kids who played my siblings on Juniper Creek. You haven’t heard anything about them lately, have you?”
“No,” David agreed.
“That’s because one of them is married with two kids and a house in the suburbs and the other one moved to Omaha and works a desk job. I’m the only one who lives in California, and I’m the only one who had a well-publicized drug meltdown.”
“But that was six years ago,” David said.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re vultures.” Adam took a cookie. “But I don’t think they saw me today. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it in next week with no trouble. Anyway, I’m going to try.”
“Good,” David said. “I hope you do. It’s really good for our newer members to see someone like you, who’s doing so well.”
David drifted off to speak to someone else, and Adam thought about what the man had said as he bit into his cookie. Was David right? Was he really a role model for the newer members of the group? A role model for junkies. Still, he had to admit that it felt good. Adam hadn’t felt like a role model for anyone in years.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud squeal and a crash. Adam jerked his head up. “What the hell was that?”
The rest of the group was already stampeding for the door, eager to get a look. Adam followed. It had sounded like a car screeching to a halt and colliding with someone. But who would be driving that erratically in the church parking lot?
He crowded out onto the steps in front of the church, standing on his toes to see over the heads of the people in front of him. A white SUV sat in the middle of the intersection right in front of the entrance to the church. It had been struck broadside by a flatbed truck.
No one seemed to want to approach the accident.
“What’s going on?” Adam asked the woman standing in front of him. “Did anyone see?”
She nodded. “I’d just parked my car and was about to go inside and drop off a donation,” she said. “Suddenly I heard screeching tires. It was that truck, trying to stop. The SUV…I don’t know. It rolled right through the stop sign. It was like the driver didn’t even see it. Didn’t even try to stop.”
“Freaky,” Adam said. “They must not have seen the sign.”
Even as he said it, Adam wasn’t altogether convinced of that. There was a playground out in front of the church, and little kids had been known to chase balls into the street. Either the staff or the city—he wasn’t sure which—had taken great care to prune away all shrubbery near the stop sign to prevent exactly this kind of incident.
Besides, anyone who crossed that intersection would have been coming into the church lot itself. And churches were the kind of places that attracted repeat visitors. Whoever was in that SUV was probably driving a route they’d driven plenty of times before. How could they have suddenly just forgotten that there was a stop sign there?
“We should make sure they’re okay,” a woman said. Adam thought she was a pastor at the church. He had often seen her sitting in one of the little offices on his way to his NA meetings. “Everyone stay here.”
The pastor descended the steps and crossed the lot to the cars. Adam stepped forward slightly as she reached the cars and peered in. If she gave the signal, he would go and try to help pull the drivers from the cars.
But she stepped back, a hand covering her mouth.
“What is it?” someone called. “What do you see?”
The pastor shook her head. “They’re dead,” she said. “Both drivers are dead.”
A low murmur ran through the crowd.
“Are you sure?” the woman in front of Adam asked.
The pastor nodded, her head bowed. “It’s…it’s pretty clear. Listen, you should all go inside.”
“There must be something we can do to help,” Adam protested.
“I think it’s best if we just call the police,” the pastor said.
David raised his hand. “They’re already on their way.”
“Good,” the pastor said. She sounded deeply shaken, and Adam wondered how badly mangled the bodies in the cars had been. “Everyone, please go inside. The police will probably want to speak to us about what we saw and heard. You can all wait in the nave, and…and I’ll see if there are any bottles of juice left over from Sunday School.”
The crowd seemed glad to have someone telling them what to do. Adam turned and allowed himself to be propelled back into the church. Inside the nave, he found an empty pew at the very back and sat down to wait.
It wasn’t long before they heard the wail of sirens, and in spite of the pastor’s advice, people began to make their way outside again to see what was going on. Adam hesitated for only a moment before joining them.
Catching up to the crowd, he saw that two police cars had pulled up on either side of the intersection, blocking the road, and two officers were clearly preparing to direct traffic if it should prove necessary. A third officer was on the phone, walking around the collision and examining the vehicles. Adam thought he was probably providing a description of what had happened.
As they stood watching, an ambulance appeared on the scene. Adam felt that the appearance of this ambulance was the most ominous thing he’d seen so far. It hadn’t come rushing in with lights flashing and siren wailing. Instead, it had driven up almost casually, as if there were no particular reason to hurry. Which there isn’t, I guess, Adam thought. Not if the people in the cars are already dead.
“Did you see what happened?” the man beside Adam asked.
Adam shook his head. “I was inside at the time. Just heard a crash.”
“It was awful,” said another man, and Adam and the first man turned to look at him. He was pale and shaking, and he looked as though he might be about to burst into tears. “I don’t know what it was, but something was seriously wrong with that car.”
“What do you mean?” Adam asked. “Which car?”
“The white one. I saw it come screaming through the intersection, but I didn’t actually believe it was going to blow the stop sign until the very last second. Right before it did, though, I saw…” The man closed his eyes and shook his head, as if whatever he’d seen was too horrific to be named.
“What did you see?” Adam pressed him.
“Blood,” the man breathed. “All over the windshield of the car.”
Adam frowned, confused. The blood was awful, might even be considered shocking, but he could see it from here. It wasn’t exactly news. “Look away if it bothers you,” he suggested. “Maybe go back inside.”
The man shook his head. “You don’t understand. I saw the blood on the windshield before the crash.” He waved his hand in the direction of the crumpled cars. “All that blood. All the blood that’s there now. It was there before they crashed.”
Adam felt his eyes grow wide. “Are you sure?”
“I know what I saw,” the man said. “I
think whoever’s in that car must have been dead even before they crashed.”
“But then how could they have been driving?” Adam asked.
“Don’t ask me,” the man said. “They must have already been driving, is all I can figure. They must have died while they were driving. And they never got the chance to take their foot off the brake.” He shook his head. “I’d say they’d been shot, but…this is a nice neighborhood. And we would have heard a gunshot, wouldn’t we?”
Adam had no idea. He’d never heard a gunshot in his life. But that felt accurate. If a gunfight had broken out outside the church, surely they’d have heard something inside, and it would have been that, not the squealing of tires, that would have brought them outside to see what was going on.
Could this man be right? Was it possible that one of the drivers had been dead before the collision had occurred?
And if so, what could have killed him?
The answer hit him like a ton of bricks and he sat down hard on the church steps. The answer was so obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it right away.
The nano flu.
It seemed impossible that it could have been the nano flu. The flu was something that happened to famous people. Rich people. People in LA. People who lived far away, in completely different universes from the one where Adam Parkhead ate and slept and attended NA meetings.
Except that wasn’t really true anymore, was it? Because Henry Pratt had died of the nano flu, and he lived right here in San Francisco. And okay, yes, Henry Pratt was extremely famous and whoever had been driving that SUV probably wasn’t. But fame or lack thereof couldn’t really inoculate someone against a virus.
Suddenly, Adam found it hard to breathe.
Could this really be the nano flu? Right here in front of the church, not ten yards away from him? If it was, he needed to get out of here. There was no indication so far of how the flu spread from person to person. Only people with nanobots had been affected, and Adam was safe on that front—but who could say whether or not that was just a coincidence? The early adopters of nanotech should have been better equipped to fight off disease. Adam would be more vulnerable than they were. He was sure of it.
He really should not have left the house today.
He fished his keys out of his pocket and ran to his car. If he hurried, he could get out of here before others began to reach the same conclusion he had and created a logjam.
He expected to be stopped by a police officer at any moment, but nobody so much as looked his way as he started his car and pulled out of the lot and onto a side street, avoiding the exit where the crash had occurred. That made sense. The police had a lot to focus on right now. They couldn’t be wasting their time stopping random passersby from leaving. Adam did feel a little guilty about bailing before they’d been able to take his statement—but it wasn’t as though he’d actually seen anything, he reassured himself. He hadn’t witnessed the accident. He didn’t know anything that he hadn’t learned from talking to other people on the scene.
He expected the drive home to calm him down, but in fact it had the opposite effect. Suddenly, every car on the road seemed like a threat. If the driver of the SUV had had the nano flu, that meant that any drive on the road might have the nano flu. Cars driving five miles per hour over the speed limit might be carrying dead motorists who hadn’t taken their feet off the gas. Tinted windshields might be disguising splatters of blood. Adam forced himself to drive slowly, even though what he really wanted was to race home, get inside, and lock the door behind him. He wanted a good solid wall between himself and the rest of the world.
He ached for a drink. Even just a beer. Something to take the edge off of everything he’d seen today. But he knew he couldn’t allow himself to weaken.
It’s just a flu, he reminded himself. They’ll probably come up with a vaccine in a few weeks, and then this will all be over with. In the meantime, just remember to wash your hands a lot.
He pulled his car into the garage. That was unusual for him, but suddenly he didn’t feel like stepping out into the fresh air even to cross the short distance between the driveway and the house. He made sure the garage door was firmly closed behind him before exiting his vehicle. Even safe within the confines of the garage, he ran from the car to the door that led into his kitchen, and he didn’t breathe easily until he was inside with the door firmly bolted.
Fucking hell. Who had been in that SUV? Was it a celebrity? A tech billionaire? Maybe it was one of the sponsored recipients of nanotech, one of the ordinary families who’d gotten the injection as a gift from the wealthy.
Adam went to the living room and turned on the news, leaving the TV on mute. The picture on the screen was of a city government building, so either the car crash hadn’t reached the station yet or it had been deemed not important enough to receive airtime. He decided to leave the TV on. If he saw the church or the crash site, he would turn the volume up and see what they had to say about it.
Until then, though, he would try not to worry. After all, the one thing everyone agreed on about the nano flu was that it only affected people who had gotten nanotech injections. It was easy to get carried away, to feel fearful, especially when you saw someone dead behind the wheel of a car like that. But it couldn’t happen to Adam. Adam had never gotten the injections.
He was perfectly safe.
Chapter 3
April 5
“…Mayor will be making a statement sometime this afternoon. Until then, citizens of San Francisco are advised not to leave your homes. I’ve been asked to remind our viewing audience that…that looting will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that the soldiers out on the streets must be obeyed without question. The military has the authority to use force if necessary. Again, citizens are advised not to leave their homes unless it is strictly necessary.”
Adam rolled over in bed and flung an arm over his eyes to block out the light. He wasn’t sure what had woken him up. It wasn’t the light, because he had been sleeping with the lights on for the past two weeks. It felt like a good way to warn off potential intruders, to let them know that someone was still living here. Maybe that was misguided. Maybe he was just drawing attention to himself as a target. But so far, it had worked, and Adam wasn’t going to mess with what was working.
He hadn’t been awakened by the sound of the newscast either, because that had been playing all night. In fact, it had been playing for weeks, ever since the surgeon general had appeared on camera to confirm to the American public that the nanobots had evolved to view human aging as a virus, and had responded by “shutting down the host.”
That chilling announcement had been followed days later by a burst of optimism: a cure had been found! One trip through an MRI machine was supposed to neutralize the nano flu—or nanovirus, as it was now known.
Adam didn’t care for the new name. It made the thing sound so much more serious and official, so much more like an epidemic instead of just a bug that was going around. Then again, he supposed it was an epidemic. To think that just a few weeks ago he’d scoffed at the idea of thinking of it in those terms!
It didn’t seem so funny now. Not now that people were dying by the dozen. Not now that hospitals were packed with people desperate to be put through the MRI machines, desperate for anything that might prevent them from getting sick. Not now that soldiers paraded through the streets with nightsticks and pistols at their hips and eagle eyes sweeping back and forth, looking for anyone who was behaving strangely.
Meanwhile, Adam’s social media feed was full of pictures posted by people who’d tried to get the MRI treatment. At his local hospital, St. Clement’s, the line was insanely long, stretching out the doors of the hospital, down the street and around the corner. People had brought tents and blankets and were camping out while they waited for the poor, overworked hospital staff to get to them. Some people reported that the line hadn’t moved in days, that hospital staffers walked up and down looking for
people who showed symptoms and pulling them out of line. Nobody knew where those people went.
Adam rolled out of bed and stumbled into the living room. If David could see me now, he thought ruefully, he’d be absolutely sure I was suffering from depression. And hell, maybe he’d be right. Adam wasn’t afraid of photographers anymore, that was for sure. Messy publicity was the least of his worries. And yet, three weeks had gone by since he’d set foot outside his house.
His last trip out had been to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. If he hadn’t seen that car accident last month in front of the church, Adam thought, he probably wouldn’t have thought of doing that as early as he had. He would have waited, convinced that the threat would die down even as it continued to mount, until the stores were ransacked and bare. At least, he assumed that’s what they were like now. Why else would the newscaster be warning against looting?
He wandered into the kitchen and opened his cupboard. It was stocked with canned goods and dry cereal, things that would last a while, but things Adam had already grown tired of eating. He longed for fresh fruits and vegetables, for red meat, for anything other than boxed cereal and canned tuna fish.
With a sigh, he took out one of his tuna cans, grabbed the can opener, and sliced off the top. He fished a fork out of the sink full of dirty dishes—he hadn’t had the energy or the enthusiasm for cleaning lately—washed it off, and took it into the living room. Once there, he collapsed into his armchair to see what the newscaster had to say.
“We now take you live to the scene outside St. Clement’s Hospital in downtown San Francisco,” the newscaster said. The visual cut to a high shot above the hospital. It looked as if it was being filmed from a helicopter. “Riots have broken out on the street due to a rumor that one of the hospital’s two MRI machines is now out of commission. Military forces are trying to control the situation, but have so far had no success in quelling the panic. Once again, we urge residents of San Francisco to remain in their homes.”
Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides Page 2