Grants Pass (15 page)

“
Mother of God,
you scared the crap out of me,” he blustered. His accent was American, and I
put him in his forties, but fit with it. He carried himself with the
self-confidence of a man who’s in peak condition and knows it. That and the
small cannon at his hip made me think he might be ex-military.

When he pulled off his hat to run
his fingers through his hair — a gesture of disbelief at what he was seeing — I
knew I was right. A buzz-cut, dark but graying.

“
Where the
hell did you come from?” he asked, repositioning his cap and pulling it on
tight.

“
I was just
going to ask you that,” Diane said. The grin she was rewarded with intensified
her own.

“
Germany,
via France,” he replied. “Been stationed with the Krauts for a couple of
years.” He shot out a hand, transferring the weight of the boxes to his leg.
“Sergeant Aldo Quinn, at your service, Ma’am.”

She returned the handclasp. “Diane.”

“
Will,” I
chipped in, taking his proffered hand. I winced slightly: he had one of those
handshakes that grinds your knuckles together in a passive-aggressive show of
strength. Diane hadn’t reacted to it. Maybe Aldo had saved it especially for
me.

“
Just
passing through?” Diane asked, like that was still a perfectly normal thing to
be doing.

“
Needed to
pick up some things,” he declared. “Didn’t expect to see anyone, that’s for
damn sure!”

“
You alone?”
I asked.

“
Sure am,
boy.”

“
You’ve not
seen any other survivors?” asked Diane.

“
Not til
you. Hoping to change that, though. Got a big trip planned.” He fixed us with a
look that was both amused and cagey. “What say you help me get this gear back
to my boat and I’ll tell you all about it?”

It was strange: you’d think that in
the face of an eternity alone Diane and I would want to spend every waking
moment together. I knew that being alone was what she feared most. She thrived
on company. To have that taken away from her…I sometimes wondered if she ceased
to exist when there was no one else in the room.

But enforced loneliness and
voluntary time out are entirely different things, and from the offset we both
seemed to understand that little breaks were not just necessary, but essential.

“
We can’t
live in each other’s pockets,” she’d averred one morning as I asked nervously
if she minded me going for a little walk. “That way madness lies.”

The time alone took on a huge
importance for me, if only because my “little walks” gave me the chance to see
to my old problem. All the time I was bed-ridden I’d had to wait for Diane to
go out for supplies before I could deal with it. Even then I had to be careful
— I couldn’t risk passing out and her coming home to find me flat out with a
needle in my arm. Now I was finding that I could just slip away any time and
see to my needs, no questions asked.

I hated doing it, tried hard to
justify why I did. The whole reason I’d gone looking for survivors in the first
place was that I couldn’t manage the problem on my own, yet there I was,
sneaking around, keeping it secret. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell her up
front.

That’s not true, I know exactly why.
I’d been living with it for so long, living with the looks people gave me when
they found out…

I didn’t want to see the same thing
in her eyes.

Below decks the boat was
surprisingly welcoming. The hatch led straight into a living area and
kitchenette, each making full, intelligent use of the available space. A short
passage led off the cooking area to the front of the boat. There were three
doors coming off it — one was a washroom the remaining two would be cabins, I
guessed. While Diane was eyeing the rest of the interior appreciatively, I was
wondering how I could get a look through the doors, just to be sure. Aldo may
have been the model of the genial host, but we still only had his word for it
that he was alone.

“
Please
sit,” Aldo offered, gesturing to the seats in the dining nook. Diane slipped in
behind the table, but I perched on the outside, just in case I needed to move
quickly.

“
Coffee?”
The big American struck a match and lit the gas on the compact stove, before
filling a kettle from a small tap and clanging it onto the hob. “I tell you, I
can just about cope with the annihilation of the human race, but soon as I run
out of joe…” He chortled throatily.

“
You could
always make do with something else,” I muttered as he popped open a cupboard
and reached for the coffee tin. The brief glimpse inside the storage space
revealed it was also loaded with bottles — scotch, bourbon, vodka. The majority
were down to half volume or less.

 “
You said
something about a trip?” Diane prompted.

“
So I did,
so I did.” He clinked a trio of tin mugs onto the work surface. “How’s about
your boy there reaches over into that cabinet.”

Prickling, I remained seated. Aldo,
busying himself with the drinks, seemed to interpret my lack of movement as
confusion. Or idiocy. “That one there, boy, by the radio.”

I stood and pulled open the wooden
panel. Inside, the cupboard was stuffed with papers, from charts to handwritten
notes. A second handgun, smaller than the one on Aldo’s hip, sat atop the pile,
alongside a tin with a red cross painted on it. Antithetic paperweights.

“
That
print-out on top there,” Aldo coached. “If you’d be so kind as to bring that
over to the table…” He spooned dark, aromatic powder into a pot, not even
looking up at me. “That’s the one. Now have yourself a seat and read what it
says.”

I scooted back into the dining nook
and smoothed the paper out on the table. Diane shuffled in closer to me. Her
leg pressed against mine as she scanned the words.

It was from a website, the top of
the sheet dominated by a map and two words in a bold font.

“
Grants
Pass,” Diane murmured.

Aldo set a tray of steaming mugs
down in front of us and grinned. “Grants Pass.”

It was maybe three months after
she’d rescued me from the marina when it all came out.

We were sitting together in front of
the fire, Diane working her way through a chardonnay that would have been way
out of her price range before the plague, me just trying not to drop off. I
suddenly noticed she was staring at me from her beanbag. Even with her glass to
her lips I could see that smile of hers, tickling the edge of her mouth.

“
Will?”

“
Hmmm?”

“
Why haven’t
you tried to sleep with me?” She took a sip of pale liquid, allowing me time to
answer. After a few seconds of silence, she took pity on me. “It’s just funny,
that’s all. I always assumed that the last man on earth would try to jump me
sooner rather than later.” Her eyes twinkled. “You know, that whole ‘It’s up to
us to repopulate the human race’ thing.”

“
I—”

“
You’re gay,
aren’t you?” she posited. “God, how funny’s that — we could be the last couple
alive and you don’t like girls!”

“
No,” I
jumped in. “I’m not gay. I just…I can’t.”

“
You can’t?”
Diane’s smile was fading. This wasn’t funny anymore.

“
I can’t.”

“
Why not?”

I sat, mouth guppying. At last,
failed by words, I rolled up my sleeve.

For a moment Diane simply stared at
the marks.

Then she hit me.

“
You really
think there’s a community of survivors out there?”

Aldo shrugged. “It’s a risk, sure,
but hell, what do I got to lose? Course, it’d be less of a risk with a couple
of extra pairs of hands aboard.”

Diane gripped my leg under the
table. “You want us to come with you? Just like that?”

“
Way I see
it, I can sail this tub on my own, but it’s a long haul to be doing it solo.”
He stared at us, intense. “And neither of you two can steer a ship to save
yourselves or you’d have found something seaworthy and been off looking for
survivors already. You’re stuck here, I could sure use the help…it’s win-win.”

“
Why not
just use the engines?” I asked. “Got to be easier.”

“
Hell, boy,”
Aldo smirked, “I got just enough juice to get me in and out of harbor. I could
maybe manage sailing in a dead straight line for a couple of hours, all
assuming the weather’s good, then the tanks’d be dry.” He looked steadily at
Diane — obviously he’d decided she was the one who called the shots — and
cranked up his grin another 100 watts. “So what do you say? Are you in?”

“
Are you
insane?” She looked at me with wild, disbelieving eyes. “Everything we’ve
survived, all those people who died and you’re pissing your life away with
drugs?”

“
I’m not—”

She hit me again, raging, tears
running down her face as she landed blow after blow on my head and chest. I was
too run-down, too weak to stop her. All I could do was wait for her to run out
of steam.

When at last she subsided, sobbing,
I flopped back to the sofa. “I’m not doing drugs. I’m sick.”

She raised her wet face, the anger
melting into shock. Shame.

“
There’s too
much iron in my blood. It’s rare for someone as young as me to get it, but it’s
not like we haven’t seen any weird illnesses lately, right?” I smiled weakly,
hoping it’d catch, like a yawn. It didn’t.

“
It makes me
tired. Weak.” I snorted bitterly. “No sex drive, amongst other things. When you
found me, I’d let it get on top of me, let it build up…”

The silence made the air in the room
seem heavier. Diane sat, perfectly still, digesting the information.

“
And you
inject drugs to treat it?”

“
No, I have
to draw blood. Drain it off.”

“
How much? I
mean, how often—?”

“
More often
when there’s more build-up. About the same as you’d take for a blood donation,
except I can’t handle drawing that much by myself. I can only do a couple of
syringes at a time.”

“
That’s it?
That’s the treatment?”

“
Like I
said, it’s a rare type. The doctors were looking into other options, but — you
know. Drawing blood will slow it down, but not stop it.”

“
What
happens if you don’t stop it?”

“
Eventually?
Organ failure. Liver. Heart.”

She looked at me with eyes that
barely masked her emotion. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I sighed. “Before the plague,
everyone treated me like I needed wrapping in cotton wool, or like I was a
freak. As long as you didn’t know, I was…normal. A person, not a patient. I
didn’t want to swap your friendship for your sympathy.”

She slapped me. Hard.

“
You fucking
child! What did you think I was going to do when it got serious? When you died?
Didn’t you think I deserved to know about that? Asshole!”

“
I’m sorry.
I didn’t—”

“
Next time
you draw blood, you tell me. I can help you take the extra if you need me to.
But you fucking tell me.”

And she took me in her arms and held
me tightly. “I can’t lose you, you dickhead. You’re all I’ve got.”

“
God, Will,
there’s hope. If we get to this place and there are doctors — you could
live
.”

Aldo had gone up on deck for a
smoke, to give us a chance to talk things through. I already knew Diane’s
answer. The chance of a few years more life for me was important to her. More
so than the idea of a community full of new people? I pushed the thought away,
disgusted with myself. “It’s not a guarantee, you know.”

“
But it’s
better than sitting here trying to keep you alive one syringe at a time.” She
squeezed my hand. “We’re going, right?”

“
Right.”

“
God, I
can’t believe it. We’re going to America.” She slumped back in the seat, as if
just thinking about it had exhausted her.

“
So you’re
with me then?”

I turned quickly. Aldo was propping
up the wall at the rear of the cabin. We’d been so wrapped up in our discussion
I hadn’t heard him come down from the deck. That or he moved like a ninja.

“
Yes,” Diane
responded. “We’re with you.”

“
Great!” He
clapped his hands together with a sound like a cannon shot. “If we load up now
we can be off at dawn.”