“No, Jubal, you listen to me.” Her voice sounded on the edge of tears. Before yesterday, Jubal had seen Fiona cry two or three times in?fteen years. Now the sight and sound of her sorrow had grown too familiar. “I know you want to save me. To save Serenity, I suppose. But pay attention to what I have to say. Are you listening?”
“Yeah.” He pressed harder into the cool wood of the door, dreading what she was going to say, yet needing to hear it.
“You can’t save me. You can’t save this town. You need to leave. Just get in the car and drive somewhere else. Try to?nd a place where this disease hasn’t reached.”
“What? Fiona…no. We’ll stick it out together. I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to, Jubal.” She spoke slowly and clearly, as if addressing a child. Somehow that made her words sting even worse.
“It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
Through the two inches of oak, Jubal heard her sigh.
“Don’t lie to me, Jubal. You’ve seen the blister on my neck, and now there’s one on my leg. Whatever this is, I have it. I’m sick.”
“No!” Now he was the one who was near tears. Again.
“I know it’s hard to hear, baby. But it will go easier if you accept it.”
Jubal turned the doorknob. It was locked. Still, he rattled it several times.
“No. You’re not going to die. We don’t know anything about this thing. Maybe it doesn’t kill everybody. Look at me, Fiona. I feel?ne.”
“I know,” she said. “And I think you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Like any other disease, it progresses at different rates in different people.”
He latched on to that. “See? You might-”
“And some are probably immune to it. I think one of them might be you.”
He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
”Jubal?”
His?rst thought was one that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
It won’t kill me. I’m going to live.
He felt the guilt slam down as if it actually had weight.
“You can’t know that,” he managed to get out.
What if it was true? What if he was immune to this awful plague? Would life without his friends and family be worth a good goddamn? Could he go on without Fiona?
“I know it, Jubal.” She began to cough, and while it wasn’t as wet or drawn out as the sounds Renee and Damon had made, it wasn’t a sign of good health either. When the coughing?t ended, Fiona said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but something is changing inside me. I can tell you’re?ne. You stand out like a splash of color in a black and white drawing.”
Jubal decided that Fiona must have a fever. She was starting to talk crazy. Of course that meant the stuff about him being immune was just bullshit. The brief disappointment he felt was enough to tighten the screws on the guilt.
He had to get her out of the bathroom and put her to bed. Maybe get her some Tylenol to bring down the fever. He thought there were antibiotics in the bathroom from that ear infection his mother had suffered through last year.
“It would have been a nice wedding,” she said.
Jubal stood up and moved to the small curio cabinet his mother kept in the hall.
“Still will be,” he said.
“I would have loved Egypt.”
The airline tickets were in the desk in his bedroom, but Jubal couldn’t dwell on that now. He felt like a mountain climber hanging by one hand over a bottomless precipice. If he allowed himself to think about everything that was going on-and how it was likely to end-then he just might think about putting the business end of one of the shotguns in his mouth. He could never do that to Fiona.
“Egypt will still be there when we get to it, Fee.”
He opened the drawer at the bottom of the cabinet and felt around.
“Sure, it’ll be there,” she said. “Full of plague victims and the dead army.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Where are you going, Jube?”
He knew she meant why had he moved away from the bathroom door, but he couldn’t help but think of the question from a larger perspective.
Where was he going? Where Fiona was. That’s all that was important now. He had to keep them alive for another day, another hour.
His?nger touched something thin and metallic.
Got it.
He removed the bobby pin, black and shiny in the hall light. His mother had kept it in the drawer after a couple of moody pubescent episodes on Jubal’s part.
“Get away from the door, Fee.”
“What, you’re gonna shoot it open?”
The bobby pin had been bent into one long metal strand. Jubal slipped one end through the small opening in the doorknob and felt a satisfying click as the lock disengaged.
He opened the door and saw Fiona standing in the dark bathroom. Illuminated only by the hall light, she looked as sallow and insubstantial as a ghost. He thought he saw the shadows of small eruptions across her forehead and cheeks. He didn’t look too closely.
“Where did you learn to pick locks?”
“I used to lock myself in here when I was a kid. It’s how Ma and Dad got me out. Besides, it’s not a lock that’s really designed to keep anybody out.”
“I never had someone pick a lock for me before.”
“Come on,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
She smiled. It was a?eeting expression, gone as quickly as it appeared. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”
And the rest of the day, they made slow, passionate love. Jubal made a point of caressing Fiona’s neck to show he was not disgusted by her illness-to show that despite it all, he really cared about her and always would. But after a while, he no longer had to make a point of it. He was lost in the depths of a love so strong that nothing mattered but each other’s pleasure and happiness.
Sometime in the middle of the night, long after they’d fallen asleep, Jubal vaguely registered Fiona getting up and going down the hallway to the bathroom, coughing the whole way. Then he drifted back to sleep, afloat on the memory of their beautiful lovemaking.
3
September 3, 2048
When he awoke, Jubal looked over at Fiona, who had scooted to the other side of the bed. All he could see of her was a strand of hair sticking out from beneath the covers. He smiled, patted her bottom through the blanket and got out of bed. He wanted to surprise her with breakfast so he slipped on his robe and tiptoed out of the room.
As he scrambled eggs and brewed coffee in the little kitchen, Jubal wondered what their next steps would be. They could not go north to Carlsbad; that was for sure. Maybe they could go east through Texas or south into Mexico. Maybe the farther away they got from Serenity, the better Fiona would feel. Maybe there was hope somewhere, after all.
He set two plates of hot eggs on the table and poured two cups of coffee. He set one cup next to a plate of eggs and carried the other down the hallway towards the bedroom.
“Breakfast is served, my princess,” he called.
Fiona didn’t move.
“Lazy old cow,” Jubal said jokingly.
He went to her bedside and whipped the blanket off her head. He nudged Fiona’s shoulder with his?nger.
He stopped.
Her shoulder felt wrong. And she wasn’t moving.
Jubal dropped the coffee. The hot liquid splashed across his bare feet, but he didn’t feel it. He placed three?ngers against Fiona’s blistered neck.
“No…”
He took her shoulders and shook her hard. Her head lolled from side to side and back and forth, but she did not awaken. He did this for some time before he?nally made himself stop.
That’s when he noticed the empty vial of his mother’s sleeping pills on the nightstand next to a glass of water.
Jubal snatched the glass and sniffed it. Not water. Vodka.
She must have taken them sometime before he woke up.
“Wake, up, Fee, baby!” he shouted into her unresponsive face, knowing deep down that it was no use. “Please?”
Tears flooded his eyes; he could barely see. They spattered against his dead lover’s face.