Rudy raised his eyebrows. “To a bomb shelter?”
“I know,” Bud sighed. “It doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
3
Mike was helping Keith with his windows and caught himself gazing at the house across the street, wondering what had become of the Navaros. The house was still dark, with the exception of the porch light, which burned both night and day. Mike found it odd that Don Navaro had sat through their initial meeting, nodding his head in agreement and making suggestions, smoking one cigarette after another, only to disappear later that night without a word to anyone, taking his wife and his three young sons with him.
Perhaps something had happened when he returned home, something to do with his in-laws as Rudy had suggested, or perhaps the impact of what they’d been discussing hadn’t hit him until then, when he was sitting down to dinner with his family, and he simply decided it would be easier to run. Hightail it west and hope to God he could stay ahead of it.
Or perhaps he saw something on television he couldn’t quite handle; there was a lot of that going around these days. After Chicago, the programs that aired had become increasingly disturbing, increasingly surreal. He himself had switched the set on yesterday afternoon to find what looked like local coverage of a PTA meeting airing on CNN. The meeting, he learned, was being broadcast from an Atlanta middle school, though instead of discussing school lunches and sex education, they’d chained up a black man infected with Wormwood and were hacking bits and pieces of him away with a cleaver and a saw until he stopped trying to attack and devour his captors. Mike had watched, fascinated and disgusted, until there was nothing left to torment but a bloody ribcage with a head on top, and even then the eyes and mouth twitched sluggishly, as if dreaming. It wasn’t until a fat man with a US flag on his sweatshirt put a gun to its forehead and pulled the trigger did the dreams stop, and that was just about all Mike wanted to know. In fact, he hadn’t turned on his set since.
“You’re slipping a little down there,” Keith said, murmuring around the nails in his mouth, the hammer poised over his right shoulder, ready to drive.
“Sorry,” Mike said, readjusting his end of the board. “Woolgathering.”
The next half minute or so was filled with the sound of the hammer doing its work, a racket that neither of them felt like talking around, but when it stopped Keith took the nails out of his mouth and asked Mike if he was having any bad dreams about the “incident” at 7-Eleven.
“Nothing that precise,” Mike answered, testing the grip of the nails on the siding. “The dreams I’ve been having the past few nights are more… generalized. Like finding myself in some strange, dark house and wondering where I am? Where the people are who live there?” He dusted his palms and looked at Keith. “How about you?”
“I keep finding myself back at those gas pumps with a gun pointed at my face, waiting for Rudy to call out those Stay Free maxi-pads.” Keith shook his head. “Sometimes he never does. Then last night it was you and him holding the guns on me.”
Mike regarded his young neighbor for a long moment. “You did the right thing, you know. They were going to kill us.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Keith nodded. “It’s just that it… it’s hard to get it out of my mind. Right and wrong have nothing to do with it; I just never had to shoot anyone before.” He looked down at the nails in his hand then looked back at Mike. “You know?”
Mike nodded.
“I guess it’s something I’ll have to work out on my own.”
“Sure,” Mike agreed. “If it’s any consolation, I think I’d be more worried if you weren’t having those dreams. It shows you’ve got a conscience.”
Keith flashed a brief smile, looking somewhat relieved.
“To tell you the truth though,” Mike went on, “I don’t think any of us have any right to be looking forward to our dreams. Not for some time to come yet.” His eyes wandered again to the house across the street. “Maybe Don had the right idea there… getting out while he could.”
Keith glanced over at the porch light. “Naomi had an idea about that,” he said.
Mike turned his head. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. She had this crazy notion that they never really left.”
4
Naomi Sturling emptied the shopping bag of all the first aid supplies and medications they’d gathered and spread them out on the Dawley’s dining room table, ready to draw up (as Pam suggested) an inventory of what they had.
“Be sure and check the expiration dates as you go,” Pam instructed. “Anything over four or five years old set aside for me to check. A lot of them are going to have lost their potency or just plain gone bad. It can happen a lot faster if people store their medications in the bathroom cabinet then fill the room up with steam every day from their shower. One year is the standard expiration date for prescription drugs, but if they’re properly stored they can last quite a bit longer. Pain pills and antibiotics we’re not going to have the luxury of being picky about, but there’s no point holding onto a five-year-old bottle of Viagra.”
“Nope,” Naomi agreed. “No point at all.”
The two women looked at one another across the cluttered expanse of the table then started to giggle. The giggles quickly turned to gales of helpless laughter.
Aimee Cheng walked out of the kitchen trailing the good smells of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which she and Helen Iverson were fixing for twelve. “What’s funny?” she asked, a puzzled smile sketched on her face.
“Pam and I were just talking about dysfunctional bottles of Viagra,” Naomi answered, snorting laughter out her nose.
Aimee looked doubtfully at the loose jumble of medications on the table.
It only made them laugh all the harder.
5
Shane Dawley put down the binoculars and turned on the radio. There was a slight breeze over the rooftops that sang with a seashell whisper against his earphones, but the stations were still broadcasting, still pleading with people to stay inside their houses and not participate in the wholesale looting that was occurring in some of the downtown areas. Troops from Camp Walter, a nearby army base, had been alerted and would be patrolling the streets and anyone caught looting would be shot on sight. The cycling message went on to give a list of phone numbers that listeners could call to report incidents or get help with various problems, most of them of a medical or psychological nature, though the station warned of long waits to get through. Two or three hours in some cases.
“As of yet there are no confirmed cases of the Yellowseed virus in this county,” a calm, recorded voice assured its listeners. “I repeat, there are no confirmed cases at this time in Bayard County.”
Shane switched off the radio as the message began to repeat itself. It was much the same up and down the diaclass="underline" calm assurances, yet with a sense that there was no one behind the taped announcements; at least no one but a squad of armed soldiers ordered to secure the station and keep the messages rolling. For the past two days there had been very little variation: stay inside, don’t loot, troops are coming, shot on sight, no Yellowseed confirmed, and call these helpful numbers. Shane was beginning to wonder if any of it was true or simply designed to keep the population docile and off the streets, their doors locked tight as they sat and listened to a prerecorded message or a busy signal on the phone.