They also had plenty of that most precious of emergency resources, bottled water, for the same reason. But what they—meaning Red’s mother and father—did not have was appropriate footwear or clothing for such a long hike.
When Red and Adam were young, Mama had occasionally gone camping with them, but she’d given it up by the time Red was ten. And while Dad still enjoyed a walk in the woods, he usually wore sneakers while doing it and it had been quite a while since he’d carried a pack full of gear. They both needed sturdy waterproof boots and rain shells and sleeping bags. There was a sporting goods store in town that carried all of those things, and so it was proposed that they take a trip to acquire them.
“No way,” Red said, when Dad announced that they were all piling into the car for this purpose.
Dad just looked at her with that patient way that he had, and waited for the explanation.
“As Adam pointed out yesterday, more than half the stores were closed last time he was in town—what, two weeks ago?” Red said. “That means there’s been an outbreak here too—we’ve just been lucky enough to avoid it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go into population centers unless we absolutely have to.”
“I can’t hike in my sensible three-inch heels, Delia,” Mama said.
“Well, you shouldn’t start such a long walk wearing shoes you haven’t broken in, either,” Red said. “You were worried about me getting blisters. If you try to hike three hundred miles in new hiking boots you will definitely get blisters.”
“Okay, fair point,” Dad said. “But we still need sleeping bags and rain gear and packs to carry it all in.”
“What about your old stuff?” Red asked. “Isn’t it in the attic?”
“We sold all that on Craigslist a few years ago,” Mama said. “It was just taking up space in there.”
Red refrained from asking why they had sold useful things, like camping gear, but left so much random crap (like her little red wagon from childhood and three different models of lawn mowers, only one of which actually worked) in the shed outside. That wasn’t the point, really. The point was to keep them away from town. If they went into town they might be infected.
“The whole point and purpose of this plan is to avoid large groups of people and places where there might be infection,” Red said.
“I understand what you’re saying, Red, but we’re not remotely prepared for this. We aren’t like you,” Dad said. “We aren’t even like Adam, who at least has camping gear.”
“What if there are government soldiers there?” Red said. “Sweeping the area for survivors to take to one of their quarantine points?”
“So what?” Adam said. “Then we go to the quarantine. I’d rather go to a camp than on this loony trip through the woods to Grandma’s house, anyway.”
“You’d rather be imprisoned by the government in a place that is a breeding ground for illness instead of walking free and healthy?” Red asked.
“We’re not going to make it, anyway,” Adam said. “We’ll get about twenty or thirty miles or so and then one of us won’t be able to walk anymore, and when we stop for the night some platoon will see our fire and pick us up anyway. Let’s just skip the long hike and go straight to camp.”
“We already decided, Adam,” Dad said, frowning at him. He held up his hands to Red. “And it’s already been decided that we’re going to town to get the gear we need, Red. If you and Adam want to stay here and avoid possible infection you can do that, but Mama and I must go.”
“I don’t think we should be separated,” Red said immediately. That was another thing that always happened in stories. People were always like, “You wait here while I go check out some meaningless thing two miles away,” and guess what? They never came back and then their party would have to go on a foolish search that would endanger everyone.
Red knew that if Mama and Dad went into town alone, they wouldn’t return. Something Would Happen. But if they all stayed together, then everyone would be perfectly fine. Those were the Apocalypse Rules, and Red was going to abide by them until they were all delivered safely to Grandma’s doorstep.
It never occurred to Red that Grandma wouldn’t be there when they arrived. Even though hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were dying every day, it seemed impossible to contemplate Grandma dying from the thing that was killing everyone.
Grandmas didn’t die from stuff like that. Grandmas went on and on, enduring year after year, shriveled and worn but somehow ageless. Grandmas outlived grandfathers and after they grieved they just rolled up their sleeves and got on with it. Grandmas knew how to do everything (except maybe with their smartphones—they would need a little help there but in this new world smartphones were just garbage anyway, so that meant grandmas were now without flaw) and get through any crisis. So of course Grandma would be there at the end of the road.
And Red was going to do her damnedest to make sure all four of them got there, too, whatever the odds might say.
But her father insisted that they drive into town. And of course town was where Mama got sick.
• • •
One of the many things Red had managed to acquire early on in the Crisis was a pack of surgical masks and another of vinyl gloves. She’d ordered them online and had them shipped to the house long before the local pharmacy ran out of them. Before they climbed into the car for that ill-advised trip into what Red thought of as the Contagion Zone, she handed one of each item to her family members with all the solemnity of a priest handing out the host.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Adam,” Red said. “You are an idiot, but I don’t want you to die. So put the damn mask on.”
“You really think this flimsy thing is going to help?” Adam asked, giving the mask a doubtful glare as he held it in front of his face.
“It’s an airborne disease, isn’t it?” Red said. “At least, the CDC sounded pretty sure that it is. I suppose it’s possible that it mutated.”
“Into the Thing from Another World!” Adam said in his best horror-movie-announcer voice.
“The mask can’t hurt,” Dad said, in that deceptively mild tone that meant Adam ought to listen.
Adam put the mask on.
Mama also gave her mask an uncertain look but she put it on without complaint, carefully arranging her hair around the elastic band. Red was very tempted to make a remark about no one caring what her mother’s hair looked like, but she bit her tongue because there was still a little frost in the air between them and she wanted things to thaw instead of escalating to polar vortex.
Besides, Mama had always been sensitive about her hair. She always stroked Red’s smooth fat curls with longing, repeating a thing that Red hated to hear—that she had “good hair.” Mama’s hair was kinky—if she let it grow out like Red’s she would have a proper Pam Grier Afro, and Red thought it was gorgeous.
But Mama, she didn’t like it. She wanted it straight and smooth, the exact opposite of everything that she was born with. So she subjected herself to chemical treatments and salves and oils and smoothers and watched vigilantly for a hint of frizz. She took great pride in her appearance generally, and a little thing like a worldwide pandemic wasn’t going to result in lowered standards.
Despite the fact that the whole family was together as they should be, Red couldn’t shake her trepidation as the car coursed slowly along the winding back roads. Her father always obeyed the speed limit, even when her mother sat gnashing her teeth beside him (Mama was well known by the local police as a lead-foot driver), even now when there was no one around to enforce that speed limit.