Hitchers (5 page)

They glanced at each other. “What would you say?” Toby asked Joe.

Joe shrugged. “What? Ten, fifteen minutes?”

“Right in there, yeah,” Toby said.

I tried to wrap my mind around it. I'd been dead. Not unconscious, dead. I had that vision, of being Lyndsay watching the news. A lot of people who had near-death experiences reported vivid hallucinations, and now that my head was clearer it seemed likely that that's what happened.

It had been
remarkably
vivid, though. It hadn't felt like a hallucination at all.

The radio was describing the symptoms of anthrax, but I already knew them from my conversation with Annie.

“Wait a minute,” I said aloud without meaning to. Both men looked at me. “Did they say it started in the subways?” I thought I'd heard that, but that couldn't be right, because I'd heard the same thing during my hallucination that I was Lyndsay.

“That's what they're saying,” Joe said.

I wrapped my arms around myself and trembled harder. “Jesus,” I whimpered.

“What?” Joe asked.

“Nothing.” I was so tired.

We pulled through the gates into the remnants of Toy Shop Village, with its empty bumper-boats pool, rusting rides, rotting streamers, and Toby and Joe were sure I was delirious. Who lives in a defunct amusement center? I directed them toward the drive-in theater toward the back of the Village, assuring them I lived there.

I thanked both men from the bottom of my heart. Joe's eyes filled with tears and he nodded; Toby waved me off, insisting it was no big deal. I got Toby's business card, intending to come up with a truly awesome thank you gift to send once I could think straight. Quivering in front of my locked front door, it took me a moment to remember the spare key over the door frame.

As soon as I got inside I tried to call Annie on my land line, but got no answer. I stripped, pulled every blanket and towel out of the linen closet, threw them on my bed, and passed out underneath them.

I
woke trembling with cold and utterly disoriented. My fingers and toes felt like they could never possibly be warm again. I wondered if I had frostbite.

There were so many people I needed to call immediately. Mom. Annie. Grandma. Jeez, Grandma lived closer to downtown than I did. She didn't go out much, so hopefully she was all right.

I went for my phone on the night stand, then remembered it was in my car, in the reservoir. To call anyone I would have to get up and reach the land line in the kitchen. I tried to sit up; my back and neck blazed with pain. In fact, every single part of me hurt.

Slowly, painfully, I struggled to a sitting position. The blankets slid off of my torso, exposing me to arctic air. I felt like I was in a meat locker.

“I need a hot shower,” I said, tucking my fingers under my armpits.

I slid out of bed. My hip was bruised, and my right knee and ankle hurt, but it didn't seem that I had any serious injuries. I looked longingly at the door to the bathroom before grabbing a bathrobe
and limping into the kitchen to call Annie.

There was no answer.

That didn't necessarily mean anything, I told myself. There were a hundred reasons she might not be able to answer. For all I knew she was taking a shower.

I decided to try again in a few minutes, and in the meantime, called my mom. She sobbed with relief while I trembled and ached, and simultaneously assured her I was fine. When I told her about the accident, she flipped. She wanted to hop on the next plane from Phoenix and take care of me, but all flights into the Atlanta area were suspended.

I never quite understood how my mom turned out to be so well-adjusted. When damaged people had children, it seemed to me their children invariably ended up damaged in some way. Somehow Mom had escaped that fate, or compensated for it.

Mom told me that Grandma was fine, but afraid to leave her house in Ansley Park. Smiling, I promised to look in on her as soon as I was able. Grandma could take care of herself, as she'd demonstrated in negotiating terms for giving me the rights to
Toy Shop.
She didn't need my help or my warm fuzzies.

I asked what was happening with the anthrax.

When all was said and done, the CDC was estimating half a million casualties. Half a million. The city was under martial law. Ten thousand Iraq War vets had been called back into service because they were vaccinated against anthrax, but it was taking time to get them assembled.

“There's a vaccine?” I asked.

“They don't have much,” Mom said. “Antibiotics are supposed to work sometimes as well, but in this case they haven't. They're saying that means it's ‘weaponized' anthrax—designed to be resistant to antibiotics so it's better at killing people.

Half a million people. I still couldn't get that number out of my head. I needed to try Annie again, and then Dave Bash. Two other local friends came to mind.

“I'm so relieved you're okay,” Mom said. “You almost drowning... I can't help thinking of Kayleigh.”

It took me a moment to answer. “She was one of my last thoughts, before I—” Drowned. “It seemed so, I don't know, so fateful that both of us would die in the water.” Whenever I thought of Kayleigh it wasn't her face I saw, it was the pier she'd jumped from, trying to keep up with her twin brother. I could see every knot in the pier's wood planking, smell the fish guts left by fishermen, every time I thought of her.

“I'm so grateful you didn't. I couldn't lose you. Not both of you. When I get up there I want to meet the man who saved your life and hug him.”

“Well, I've got his card, so that can be arranged.”

I got off the phone and limped to the bathroom. There was an abrasion on my forehead, probably from the airbag.

It hit me again, as I stood there in front of the mirror. I had died. I choked up, my throat clenching. It didn't ease up, though—it stayed clenched. It was a strange feeling, as if a finger had wrapped around my vocal cords and was tugging. I gripped my throat, coughed, turned my head from side to side.

Finally, it relaxed.

I parted my hair to examine a cut. It wasn't bad, not deep enough for stitches. Not that I'd be able to get anywhere near a doctor or a hospital right now.

Maybe that's where Annie was—at a hospital or a clinic. Though, wouldn't she have her phone right by the bed? I just couldn't believe she was mortally ill, or worse. Annie was the athlete, always covered with a sheen of sweat, jumping into the shower after a five-mile run when I went over to watch reruns of
The Sopranos.
Emotionally, she struggled mightily, but physically she was a rock. If only I had her parents' number, to see if they'd heard from her. They lived in New York, so I couldn't count on them to get to her and help her, assuming she needed help.

That's what I'd have to do, I realized. If I couldn't get her on
the phone, I had to get to her. I couldn't leave her stranded in her apartment. The first thing I had to do, though, was shower.

As hot water pounded the back of my head I puzzled over my vision of Lyndsay in her apartment. I was sure I heard on her TV that the outbreak began in the subway. Either I had to chalk it up to coincidence, or believe, what, that my soul had left my body and witnessed what was happening?

Maybe as you die your mind unleashes everything it's got, to the point that you can pick up on things around you in an extra-sensory way. When the dust had settled I'd have to check the Internet for any mention of that happening in other people's near-death experiences.

I tried Annie again after my shower. No answer. She'd only been mildly sick when I talked to her last night; was it possible she could be so sick now she couldn't reach the phone? I turned on the news, trying to get more information about how someone might walk through the worst-hit area without getting sick. The emergency personnel were wearing masks, gloves, and clothes that left no exposed skin. I could put together everything but the mask, and one of the shots on the news showed National Guard troops helping themselves to masks from a truly huge pile.

From what the feds had pieced together so far (and were willing to share with the public), the terrorists had used light bulbs filled with “weaponized” anthrax. They'd dropped the bulbs from between moving MARTA cars onto the tracks at the Five Points station, where four separate lines use the same track. As trains flew by, the spores were drawn up into the cars, infecting the passengers. Those passengers got off at malls, bus stations, and the airport and spread the anthrax.

The incubation period was twenty-four to forty-eight hours—time for hundreds of thousands of people to inhale the spores and carry them to other places on their shoes, fingertips, clothes before anyone knew what was happening.

I dragged myself off the couch like an octogenarian and donned
heavy flannel sweats and brown leather gloves. The very last thing I wanted to do was march into the eye of the storm, but someone had to help Annie.

I was momentarily confused by the absence of my Jetta in the gravel drive, then remembered it was at the bottom of the reservoir. I went back inside to retrieve the key to Lorena's Toyota Avalon. It felt strange to drive Lorena's car, especially while using her old flip cell phone after reactivating it to my number. Suddenly things I'd hidden away because I didn't want to deal with them were useful again.

I called Grandma. I didn't tell her where I was headed, but I gave her a blow-by-blow account of my accident. We agreed this anthrax attack was scary, exchanged a few tidbits of what we'd heard on the news, then I told her I was tired and had to go.

I called Dave and got his voice mail. Cursing, I closed the phone. People who were okay would be answering their phones to let people know they were okay.

I couldn't lose Dave. I couldn't lose Annie. That was all there was to it. I'd suffered my losses. Maybe that was a selfish way to look at it, but I didn't care. I was already too alone; my twin sister and my wife were gone, the core of my inner circle carved away. On top of that, when I lost Lorena a lot of my friends went as well. They'd been her friends, it turned out, or they'd been couple-friends who came as a matching set and preferred their friends come in similar matching sets. After that I'd discovered I was no longer very good at making friends on my own. It had come as a surprise; I wasn't painfully shy, but I was somewhat shy, and I learned that in adulthood that was enough.

My agent Steve called my home phone, checking to see if I was okay. He'd grown worried when I didn't answer my cell. Once again I related the story of my death and recovery. Steve interjected with “Oh my Gods” until I finished, then gave a low whistle.

“Unbelievable. So glad you made it, my friend. Sounds like you've had a rough time.”

For an instant the black water was rushing in again. “Do they know who did it yet? I haven't seen anything on the news.”

“They haven't figured it out. I'm thinking Al-Qaeda. My wife thinks anti-government right-wingers. I have a client who's an army colonel, and he's saying Russia.”

“Russia? Why would he think that?” As soon as I asked I realized I didn't care all that much.

“They're the only ones known to possess weaponized anthrax—enough to kill everyone in the world several times over, in fact. The thing is, their supply was loaded onto tanker cars, covered with bleach, and buried on an island in the Aral Sea in 1988. Gorbachev had just signed a weapons treaty with the U.S., and didn't want us to discover it.”

“I just don't see what they have to gain.”

“No, it doesn't make any sense. The colonel also thought some of their supply could have been pilfered long ago and sold to some nut.”

Some Nut. I'd be willing to put money on Some Nut being involved.

“I'll contact the syndicate and tell them there may be a delay on the strips we're supposed to deliver Friday,” Steve said, trying to strike a tone that said the strips were not important in the scheme of things, but sounding panicked nonetheless.

“Okay,” I said noncommittally. Right now the thought of working on the strip was like returning to my upside-down car with the water rushing in.

M
oving southbound, Route 85 was deserted. I breezed along in the Avalon, my unease growing as I flew past mile upon mile of grinding, bumper-to-bumper traffic heading the other way. I had no idea how I'd get home once I reached Annie.

I cleared a rise; the forest of skyscrapers that comprised the downtown area came into view. Dozens of helicopters, like giant bumblebees, drifted among the skyscrapers. My bowels loosened at the sight. I'd seen that skyline a thousand times, but today it looked foreign, like a battle zone in some war-torn country.