Hot Zone (8 page)

He interrupted, “They’re princesses now? When did that happen?”

I ignored him. “Who lived in the dark old tower knew there were trolls living in the town now. The sickness had turned some of the people into trolls. The princesses were joined by a handsome prince who helped them get groceries.”

Tucker made a show of standing and bowing.

“But the princesses were afraid the trolls would burn down the tower where they were, so one princess convinced the others to sneak out of the tower and go to the cottage on the other side of the village.”

“Did that help?” Tucker asked.

“It did. That very night, a fire was set, and if the princesses hadn’t left, they all would have been killed in the fire.”

“Darn trolls.” Tucker shook his head. “Can’t trust them. So then what happened? Did the handsome prince set up some kind of kinky harem with the princesses?”

“No!” I threw a dishtowel at him. I faltered now. The story, which had been floating around my head, was dissipating. “I think he married one of the female trolls and was unhappy ever after.”

“Ugh,” Tucker said. “Don’t like that idea.”

I smiled and said nothing. I was thinking about the story. I was also thinking about my parents’ house. “I need to go and check to make sure Mom and Dad’s place is still okay. There’s an alarm system and all, but I promised them I’d keep an eye on it.”

Tucker glanced at Meri. I shrugged. “Maybe if she wakes up and feels better, I mean. Or, Mr. Prince, I could go alone. Before my rise into royalty, I used to venture out in the village alone all the time.”

“Yeah, but there were no trolls then. Besides, you don’t want to make the prince feel he’s unneeded and give him a complex.”

We fell silent. He dipped some carrots into the dip I’d bought and ate them. “Madde,” he said finally, “have you thought about going and staying at your parents’ house?”

Until he said that, I really hadn’t. I was thinking about their house, but I really don’t remember the thought of going there entering my mind. “It seems silly, but I really hadn’t,” I admitted.

“Would your parents mind?” he asked.

I felt a rush of gratitude that he had assumed they were alive and returning. “No, they’d be glad, especially in light of all the stuff that’s happened. But if I went, we’d all go. I’m not leaving Meri and Phil here, and you are welcome as well.” That seemed a little less inviting than I’d meant, so I added, “You can protect us from trolls.”

He was quiet for a minute. “I don’t mean to sound like a commando, but is it defendable? One thing I like about this place is that it’s on the third floor—not accessible by window.”

I thought about it. My parents lived in an old remodeled barn. “It has windows all along one side—the south side that faces the lake. But those windows are on the deck, and it can be shut off. There are motion detector lights too, mostly to keep the deer away from Mom’s garden and the flowers.” I paused. “But do you really think that we might be attacked?”

“No,” he drew out the word, sounding anything but sure. “I was just thinking that with all this crap going on, people might decide to do a little looting.”

“You don’t loot houses,” I said quietly.

“No, I suppose not.” He let the matter drop. “What do you say? Shall we move this little campout over to the house?”

I thought about Meri, who was still sleeping. I thought about Phil, and all our stuff here. There wasn’t really any reason to move right now. Except … except I wanted to go. Maybe I just wanted to be in my home, or maybe I felt closer to Mom and Dad there. But I couldn’t make everyone move just because I wanted my mommy. “I guess we have what we need right here.” I couldn’t keep the disappointment out of my voice, although I’d intended to do just that.

Tucker was watching me. “When did you come up with that story?”

“What? Oh, that’s just me being strange. Don’t let it worry you.”

“I didn’t say I was worried. I just asked when you thought of it.” He sounded as if he didn’t intend to let this go.

“I’ve been thinking about Mom and Dad’s place all day, all right? I don’t know why, but maybe it’s the gunshots last night. Maybe they spooked me or something. It’s nothing.”

Tucker was still watching me. “You’re going to think I’m paranoid, but I think we should go there.”

I hadn’t expected this. “Why?”

He shrugged, a little self-conscious. “Now that you said that about fire, I just think we should be in a place we could … okay, that’s bullshit. I think we should go because you don’t feel comfortable here.” He folded his arms across his wide chest.

“I’m fine.”

“No, Madde, you aren’t. And who’s to say that you aren’t having some kind of premonition?”

“That’s impossible. Next you’ll be saying that I’m psychic since my illness.” I knew I was being difficult, but I waved my fingers at him. “Oooh. Madde becomes the foreteller of doom.”

He was immovable. “Is that any different from me suddenly gaining intelligence?”

His question hung in the air. I didn’t know what to say. I busied myself cleaning the counters, but he waited me out. “Okay, damn it, I don’t know.” I sighed. “Tucker, I don’t know what to do.”

He gave me a grin. “You know, I’ve always wanted to see the inside of your house. It’s the coolest one around here.”

I considered him, shaking my head. He tried another tack. “I want to go,” he said baldly. “If you insist on staying here, I’ll stay as well. But I am asking you to help me move everyone to your parents’ house.”

There it was. Put that way, I was able to let go gracefully. “If that’s what you want, then I’m in.” Now that we’d made the decision, there was suddenly a whole lot to do. We worked together, Tucker and I, and threw clothes into suitcases and a few bags, and Tucker loaded up his truck. It was snowing gently as I put my own suitcase in my car. It was around four in the afternoon now, and the clouds were hurrying dusk along.

Tucker hadn’t wanted me to drive initially, but had given in on that. We really couldn’t fit everyone in his truck anyway. Meri was awake but obviously not feeling well. We had her sit and rest, so she could help us move Phil. Hopefully Phil wouldn’t make a fuss. If she did, we might have to put this whole thing off until tomorrow. It turned out not to be an issue. Phil was sound asleep, and refused to wake for more than a couple of minutes. I put her coat on over her pjs and Tucker carefully picked her up and put her in my car. He put Meri in the back seat of my little Civic, and she immediately lay down on the seat, her head on the covered bowl of veggies I’d so recently cut up.

Tucker got into the truck, and we made the short trip over to Mom and Dad’s place. As I drove up the winding driveway, I felt a sense of peace, as if I had come home. And of course this had been my home for years before I officially moved out.

I skipped out of the car and put in the numbers for the security system. We let ourselves in, and I turned up the heat. In the meantime, Meri and Phil (who was still playing possum) sat on the couch and kept their coats on.

Tucker unloaded the truck and I opened the bedrooms. The house was too big for just Mom and Dad, and they didn’t use most of it. Dad did pretty well financially, and they both had fallen in love with this house to hear them tell it. Dad was pretty handy, and what he couldn’t do, he hired someone else to do, so the house had some touches that were a bit unusual, including a secret room in the basement off the laundry room that even had a safe room in it. Yeah, Dad had a fear of violence, and we’d always been prepared for the attacks that never came.

I thought Meri and Phil could sleep in Mom and Dad’s room for now. The bed was big, and there was a couch in their room, so if they weren’t doing well, I could sleep in there and keep an eye on things. I turned on the electric blanket and the TV, then got the girls and herded them in. I helped them into bed (Phil was awake now but seemed quiet and subdued and was docile enough), and went off to help Tucker.

An hour later, we were relatively snug. Meri was asleep, but Phil was sitting on the bed, not far from me on the couch, eating an English muffin. We were, as usual, watching the news. Tucker was absent, however. He had been prowling around the house ever since we arrived. I had no idea what he was finding—I’d lived here forever, and it was the same old place to me.

We didn’t keep very well to a schedule since Meri and Phil were sick. Phil (I kept my fingers crossed as I said this, even to myself) seemed to be on the mend, but unlike me, she seemed changed. She was sitting near Meri, sometimes stroking her hair, and singing. Definitely not Phil behavior. And she didn’t talk much. Maybe she was just tired and would get better soon. I hoped so, ‘cause this new Phil was a little creepy.

So it was midnight, and I’d fallen asleep in front of the TV (and what a gorgeous TV it was). Tucker had reset the motion detectors after finding a manual (good for him, I had thought. I could never understand that stuff), so they came on full blast, but not for anything smaller than a dog. He also made them come on in sections, which gave us an idea where the movement had been detected. Good man. Didn’t want to be freaking out all night because a bat flew by. The deer didn’t like the lights, so mostly stayed away, and as Dad said, if they did show up they were nicely spotlighted for a little nature viewing.

There were windows in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, but they were high up and not readily accessible. This was because of two different reasons depending on which parent was asked. Mom said that they didn’t want to bring in a lot of cold from the north side of the house (the place was passive solar, and some other environmental crap, but when Mom started to talk about it, I would snore and pretend to sleep), but Dad? Dad would say that they were crazy in love and things went on in this bedroom that even the birds shouldn’t see. While that response sort of creeped me out, I was so glad they were happy together. Someday I hoped to have the same thing. For now, however, the high windows made the bedroom pretty safe, and the smaller covered windows kept the occasional deer from waking up the household with the motion detector lights.

Phil and Meri seemed good enough in there. Meri was feverish, but I had finally gotten some ibuprofen down her, so that was going to help. Tucker had fallen asleep in one of the open rooms (like I said, this house would have worked well for a family of ten instead of just Dick and I). I woke every hour or so and checked on Meri and Phil. At around three in the morning I was up with Meri, trying to get her fever down by putting a cool cloth on her head and wondering whether it was too early for more medicine, when I heard sirens. I went, curious, to the big room with its bank of windows facing the lake, and across the lake, the town. I could barely see some flashing lights, or at least thought I saw them.
At least the police were still on the job
, I thought to myself. Tucker was up now, so I went to bed in my room, and he went on “sick girl watch.” I didn’t think any more about the sirens but went right to sleep.

Chapter 5: Quarantine

We slept late the next morning. I grabbed the clock when I realized how late it was, hoping I had misread the numbers. No, it really was ten. I felt terrible for zonking out and leaving Tucker alone to deal with Meri and Phil, especially since Phil was so scared of him. I needn’t have worried, however. Tucker was sound asleep on the couch, and Meri, bless her, was up and making a mess in the kitchen.

I gave her a big hug and held on until she laughed at me. “Let go! I’m fine. Just a touch of the ‘flu, like you said.”

I nodded, relieved. “Should you be up, though? Aren’t you tired?”

“Not really. In fact, I feel pretty good.” She grinned at me. “And imagine my surprise when I woke up here! I didn’t know where I was at first, but then I remembered everything. Guess what?” she said excitedly, hardly stopping for breath. “Phil’s better too!”

I looked towards Mom and Dad’s bedroom. “Is she awake?”

“Not right now, but she was earlier, and she was so sweet to me. A little forgetful, and a little, um, I don’t know, ditzy, but compared with how she was, she’s great.”

I smiled, happy we had come here, happy my friends were recovering. I went out and threw a pillow at Tucker, who sat up immediately. When he saw me grinning at him, he groaned and flopped back down. “What do you want?” he mumbled, the pillow over his head.

“Go find a real bed,” I laughed. “I can’t be separated from a TV too long, you know.”

Tucker yawned and looked towards the kitchen. “Who’s in there?” He could hear sounds from in there, but from his position, couldn’t see in.

“Meri!” I said with a happy smile. “She’s feeling better!”

Tucker looked surprised and went into the kitchen to see for himself while I turned on the TV and switched it to the local station, which wasn’t all that local, but was the best we had. I watched a commercial of plump puppies playing happy in the knowledge they would live long lives due to their dog food. I watched scrubbing lather clean the kitchen by itself (
need me some of that
, I thought to myself. Mom would be furious if I trashed the house while they were gone), and finally, a commercial on insurance which assumed that if they played loud music, I would buy their product. Finally the program came on, and sure enough, it was another news program. Since so much of this was of local concern, the local stations had experienced a renaissance of viewership. Who wanted to watch reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” when they could find out if we were all going to die tomorrow?

This one was on location, and at first I almost switched the channel, not wanting again to see how the bioweapons had affected the Twin Cities, which was a popular recurring theme. It was all just too sad. Then I recognized the post office, and let out a short scream that had Meri and Tucker running out of the kitchen.

I pointed mutely at the screen, my hand over my mouth. There it was in living color—Catfish Lake’s downtown, or what was left of it. Much of the main few blocks of the city, the reporter said, had been destroyed by fire, and some sort of IED or improvised explosive device had been used as well. I felt a chill run over me as I stared at the TV screen, for on it was the rubble of Henry’s Bar, not to mention the burned remnants of our apartment. My ears roared and I missed most of the rest of the report, but Tucker and Meri filled me in on it later. There had been some kind of car bomb, and when emergency vehicles had been slow to respond because of decreased numbers and other emergencies, the entire block had caught. By the time the fire was extinguished, two full city blocks had burned. There had been a few survivors, but only a few. I thought about Mrs. Frisch and her daughter and felt like I couldn’t breathe.