The Things That Keep Us Here (5 page)

SEVEN

P
ETER STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF HIS LAB, CELL PHONE
pressed to his ear. Ann still wasn’t answering her phone.

People rushed past in the corridor carrying folders, books, boxes. They nodded at one another, barely stopping. He wondered how many of them would be alive next month, next year. The air was filled with abbreviated conversations.

“Did you get …?”

“They’re in there….”

Behind him, Shazia was wiping surfaces and turning off equipment. She’d managed to get through the neuraminidase testing. She’d greeted him with the news—the teal influenza had been H5N1. He’d greeted her with his own announcement. She’d been sequestered all afternoon behind the hood and hadn’t heard. Somehow the bird and human variations had simultaneously picked up speed. Both viruses were busy tearing through their respective host populations.

Peter tried the home number, but the answering machine picked up. He hung up without leaving a message. He’d call again shortly. Ann would have heard the news. She’d be out getting the girls. “You put everything in the freezer?”

Shazia shut the cabinet. “Yes.” Her navy wool coat was folded over the back of a chair. Her briefcase leaned against the rungs. Black-bound manuals sat stacked on the desk. She saw him looking. “I hope it’s okay that I borrow those.”

“It’s a good idea.” He eyed them, crossed to the shelf, and pulled down several more. “You’ll need these, too.”

In his office, he began fitting books into one box, papers into another. He’d take his laptop, of course. And his tape recorder.

“You get the rough draft I sent you?”

He looked up and saw Lewis leaning in. His curly blond hair was more vertical than usual, giving him an alarmed look. “I’ll work on it at home and email it back to you.”

“Fair enough. We can submit it online.”

A voice boomed from down the hall. “Let’s go, people.”

Lewis swore softly and pushed himself away from the door-jamb. “See you, Peter.”

Now a series of knocks, getting louder. “Locking up in five minutes.”

Peter slid his laptop into the case and zipped it up. Where was the folder with Liederman’s notes in it? “You too, Dr. Brooks.”

Peter looked over. Hank filled the doorway, a tank of a man. “Sure,” Pete said. “Just give me a minute. I need to find something.”

“No can do. I was supposed to have secured the building fifteen minutes ago.”

“All right, all right.” He shuffled through the papers on his desk. Here were the minutes from last week’s preparedness meeting. How ironic. Here was an invitation to the division holiday party. His secretary was always despairing of the condition of his office, always warning him that she was going to sneak in one day and clear everything out. Now Peter wished she’d gotten to the mess before she’d gone on maternity leave.

“Dr. Brooks.” Hank had his jacket open now, showing the gun holstered at his hip. A subconscious move on Hank’s part, or was he making a point? Peter looked into the security guard’s small eyes. The man was afraid. Fear could make people do stupid things.

“Fine.” Peter picked up the entire pile and shoved it into his briefcase. The weathered leather bulged with the effort of containing it all.

Hank moved aside to let him out, reached back and drew the door shut. A jangle of keys and the door was firmly locked.

Struggling under the weight of two boxes and the overstuffed briefcase on top, he made his way down the corridor. Shazia stood waiting for him, under the weight of her own box and papers. They came to a stop by the elevator. She frowned at the numbers above them, watching them glow in sequence.

“You should call your family as soon as you get settled.”

“Yes.” She shifted the box in her arms. “Do you think the H5 we’ve been working with made the jump to human form?”

“Unlikely. But even if it had, I wouldn’t be concerned. We took precautions.”

“Right.”

There was something in her tone. “Shazia.”

She looked at him.

“You were careful, weren’t you?”

The elevator door wheezed open, and she stepped inside. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

EIGHT

M
ICHELE SAYS THEY’VE CANCELED THE WINTER
Dance.” Kate sat at the kitchen table with her laptop opened in front of her. She frowned down at her cell phone.

“They’ll reschedule it.”
Though probably not until the following year
. Ann slid her arms through the sleeves of her coat. This was just the beginning. What about report cards, birthday parties, dental appointments?

“Get ice cream,” Maddie said. “And goldfish crackers.”

“I will.”

A car horn sounded. The television in the family room showed long lines of people standing in an airport, waiting to have their temperature taken. Ann lifted the remote and turned off the television.

“Mom,” Maddie said.

“Just while I’m gone, honey.” Who knew what they’d see in her absence? “Kate, lock the door behind me.”

Kate moved her thumb across the mouse pad. “Okay.”

Ann checked her purse for her wallet and her cell phone. Here was Maddie’s medicine. That shouldn’t come with her. “If anyone rings the doorbell, don’t answer.”

“Not even for Libby?” Maddie said.

“Libby will be with me. Mr. Finn might come by for me to sign another of his petitions. You can call through the door, but don’t open it.”

Maddie shook her head. “He’ll be mad.”

“That’s all right. Kate?”

Her daughter was focused on the laptop screen, her hands typing busily. “Kate!”

She glanced up. “What?”

“What did I just tell you?”

“Something about the door and Mr. Finn.”

Ann looked at her with exasperation. “You need to stop fooling around with your laptop and watch your sister.”

Kate pushed herself away from the table and stood. “Why don’t you just take Maddie with you if you don’t think she’ll be safe with me?”

“That’s not—”

But Kate was stomping up the stairs.

Libby’s SUV waited in the driveway. “Thanks for coming,” she said as Ann opened the car door.

“No problem. It makes sense to go together.” Ann climbed in and glanced back. Jacob sat nestled in his car seat behind her, bundled in navy corduroy and wearing a scarlet cap. He saw her and pumped his legs, his cheeks bunching around his pacifier. He was grinning.

“You little sweetie,” she said, smiling back at him before turning around to pull the seatbelt across her lap.

“I hope you don’t mind me bringing him. Smith’s not home yet.”

“Of course not. He can help us choose cereal.”

Libby swung the steering wheel and they bumped onto the street. “I don’t get it. Why are they closing school for three whole months? The flu’s not even here.”

“It’s in the state preparedness plans. A lot of things are going to start happening because we’re in Phase Five.” The announcement had been so sudden. Ann still couldn’t believe it. She’d thought there would be some indication, but maybe she’d been so preoccupied that she’d missed the warning signs. The Health Department would start closing everything, including Peter’s university. She wondered how he was doing. She wondered if he’d seen this coming. No. He’d have said something. Despite everything, he’d have wanted her and the girls to be prepared.

Libby honked at the car waiting to make a turn in front of her. “How am I going to get any work done? I have a major deadline coming up.”

“Maybe your boss will let you work from home.” All the lights were on at the bank and the lot was filled. Cars stood in line for the ATM. How much cash did she have? As a rule, she didn’t keep much on hand. So, maybe twenty bucks.

“Yeah, sure. That’ll happen. He about had a heart attack when I took maternity leave. He must’ve called ten times, asking when I was coming back.” Libby gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe my mom can come and stay with us for a while.”

“There you go.” Ann’s parents hadn’t answered the phone. Of course, they didn’t have a cell. They had to be out, doing just what Ann was doing. Getting groceries, stocking up on cash. She’d try them again as soon as she got home.

Libby glanced over. “What about you? Do you even have a job anymore?”

“I don’t know.” Another worry. “We’d better stop at an ATM on the way home.”

“Good idea.” Libby turned into the shopping center and braked hard at the sight of cars packed into the sprawling space, lined up against the curbs and across the grassy median. Still more cars prowled around, headlights shining, exhaust puffing behind them in weary streams. “Jesus.”

Ann pointed. “There’s a car pulling out over there.”

Libby slid the SUV into the spot and turned off the engine. She lifted the car seat from the backseat.

Ann slammed the door and, glancing around, spotted an abandoned cart nearby. She dragged it over and helped Libby fit the car seat on top. Another cart stood at the curb. She grabbed it. “You take the baby. I’ll start in the bread section.”

The doors glided open. Libby wheeled her cart to the right while Ann swept left.

Shoppers clogged the front of the store. Ann pushed through them to reach the bread aisle and stopped, staring in disbelief down the long, empty space. The shelves were completely bare. Not a single loaf or package of buns in sight. She’d never seen anything like this, not even after Phase Four had been announced. Maybe there was some in the back—

A man in a white windbreaker strode past, a name tag pinned to his chest.

“Excuse me,” Ann said. “When will you be restocking the bread?”

“You gotta be kidding.” He walked away.

All right. So there wasn’t bread here. But sometimes there was bread at the deli counter. She swung her cart around.

Sure enough, two racks stood by the swinging doors beside the shining glass deli cases. People were pawing through the shelves. Ann waded in among them and reached to grasp the necks of plastic bags. She didn’t know what she had until she brought them to the cart. English muffins. Cinnamon-raisin. She removed her coat and tossed it on top of the bread and went back in for more. Rye. Wheat. Everyone was pushing now and using their elbows.

“Hey.” A loud voice from nearby.

“You can’t stop me.” Another voice, just as loud. “Long as I pay for it, I can take as much as I want. This is America!”

Ann took some loaves from the bottom racks. She stepped back out of jostling range with relief. Stuffing the bread beneath her coat, she turned. Forget taking a ticket for the deli counter. One look at the long lines there convinced her—any lunchmeat she wanted would have to come from the refrigerated section.

Milk.

The meat section was on the way, and she reached in among the other shoppers for chicken breasts and ground beef. Not stopping to sheathe them in plastic first, she dumped packages in the cart and moved the bread up to the top. How much was enough? A glance to one side showed a woman stepping back, balancing a tower of Styrofoam packages in her arms. Ann took armloads of everything. She’d split them with Libby.

People thronged the dairy section. She jogged her cart as close as she could and tried to peer around people’s shoulders and heads. Was she too late? She couldn’t get close enough to see anything.

“There’s a line, you know,” a woman snapped.

All right
. That was good. Some sort of order had been imposed here. Ann got in line and waited her turn. Slowly she inched closer, bringing her cart with her. At last she glimpsed the rounded shapes of milk cartons. From behind the shelves, a hand was pushing containers of milk through the plastic flaps. Gallon after gallon thudded into place, just as swiftly grabbed away.

She took a gallon in each hand and heaved them into her cart. She turned for another two. The girls drank a lot of milk. Six wasn’t too much.

“That’s it,” the guy behind her said.

Oh. So there was a limit. Ann nodded. “I’m getting some for my neighbor.” She took four more. She was beginning to sweat. She removed her sweatshirt and tied it around her waist.

She steered her cart along the back of the store, piling stuff in as she went. Yogurt. Cheese. Juice. What was she forgetting? She’d circled the perimeter of the store and now she began to try and push her way into each packed aisle. When she reached the cereal section, she couldn’t even get two steps into the aisle. Down the crowd of people, she saw Libby’s blond head, heard her voice. “You push that cart into me one more time—”

“Lady,” a voice said behind Ann, and she swung around to see a store employee wheeling a tall stack of boxes toward her. The dolly nudged the back of her heel. “You the one looking for Merry Berries?”

“They’re mine!” A short woman with a pixie haircut waved her arm. “I’m the one who asked for them. I’m the one who should get them first.”

“Libby,” Ann called. “Get me cornflakes.”

“Got it.”

The frozen-food section was welcomingly wide. Shoppers stood two abreast. Ann was reckless in her choices, tugging each glass door open and pulling something out. Pizza, toaster waffles, ravioli. She stood with a bag of peas in her hand. No place to put it. She had things wedged in everywhere and piled along the bottom of her cart.

When she reached the front of the store, she came to a stop at the end of a line that snaked into the aisle. She looked at her cart. It looked foreign to her, someone else’s shopping cart filled with things she would never buy. Marshmallow Fluff, cocktail wienies, diet milkshakes, candy-flavored vitamins. Raisins, though the girls hated them. She dialed her cell phone.

“Hey,” Libby said.

Over the phone, Ann heard voices raised in anger. “Everything okay?”

“A fight over batteries.”

“Grab as many as you can. I’m in line for register”—Ann peered over the heads in front of her—“twelve.”

“I’ll be there in a minute. Sit tight.”

A male clerk slid cases of bottled water onto an endcap. Water. That should have been her first stop. She looked to her cart. It was hopeless. She couldn’t fit in a single bottle.

The clerk was now heaving cases of water directly into people’s carts. They formed a protective barrier around him.

“I’m with her,” she heard a familiar voice say, and turned to see Libby push past a skinny woman in a miniskirt. “We’re together,” she informed the man behind Ann. She was breathless, and her cart was just as full as Ann’s. She gripped a twenty-four-pack of toilet paper. Jacob looked as though he was riding a haystack of paper towels, sucking furiously on his pacifier.

“I forgot water. Watch my cart.” Ann pushed through the people to where the clerk was working.

“That’s mine,” a woman said.

“I’ve been here longer,” someone else said.

The clerk straightened. “Sorry, folks. That’s it.”

The man in front of Ann said, “You bringing out another load?”

The clerk shook his head. “The truck comes Sunday.”

Sunday. Four days away.

Libby had been watching. “No luck, huh?”

“I’ll be right back.”

An empty cart sat in the middle of an aisle, people streaming around it. Ann grabbed the handle and headed to the health food section. It was quieter here. Juices were in a middle aisle. Colorful, bright, unusual flavors, and yes, farther down, a gleaming row of specialty waters.

In the detergent aisle she grabbed distilled water, big jugs of it that she levered into her cart.

The neon video store sign glowed in one corner. No one was there, not even a clerk. She worked her way from cold case to cold case, opening the doors and reaching past the sodas for the chilled bottles of water.

Pushing her cart was hard work now. She gripped the handle with both hands and leaned into it. Without warning, a man stepped in front of her. She came to an abrupt halt, the front of her cart swinging to one side. He grabbed the cart with a hand. He was young and clean-shaven, wearing a football jersey and jeans, and he wasn’t letting go of her cart. He didn’t look crazy.

“Excuse me,” Ann said, trying to move around him.

But he had both hands on the wire basket. And she had a firm grip on the handle. They pulled in opposite directions.

“Let go,” Ann told him. “Are you insane?”

“Joan!” he yelled.

This was a deserted part of the store. No one was rushing over here to stock up on video rentals. He was younger and stronger, and he was slowly but surely pulling the handle from her grasp.

“Joan! C’mere!”

“Stop that!”

Thank goodness. Someone was coming to her aid. A woman ran down the aisle toward them, shopping cart racing along in front of her. Long bleached hair, black leather, heels clacking on the linoleum.

Ann smiled at her.

The woman glared back, her heavily penciled eyebrows drawn down with annoyance. “Good job, Kenny.” She reached into Ann’s cart, pulled out a jug of water, and set it rolling into her cart. “The bread’s gone,” she told him.

“So’s the milk.”

Ann was frozen with disbelief. Without thinking, she slapped the woman’s hand away from a jug of water. “What is
wrong
with you people? Go get your own.”

The woman slapped back. “You haven’t bought it yet. It’s not yours.” She yanked Ann’s cart toward her.

“There’s more back there.” Ann grabbed the cart and shoved it behind her.

“We’re not going back there,” Joan snapped. She took a step forward.

Ann blocked her. They glared at each other.

“Get out of my way, bitch.” The woman shoved

Ann. Ann shoved back. Then Joan leaned back and punched Ann in the chest.

Gasping, Ann stumbled back. Her hands curled into fists. Then she caught herself. Water. This was about water.

From behind her, Kenny said, “We’re done here. Let’s hit the frozen-food aisle.”

Ann wheeled around. Her cart was empty. Kenny had taken it all.

He grabbed his cart, now loaded with bottles of water. Joan reached around and gave Ann’s empty cart a vicious shove. It cracked against Ann’s shin.

The world blinked white.

Then Ann saw Kenny and Joan farther down the aisle, reaching in and helping themselves to a stack of toilet paper from another person’s cart. The single woman pushing that was no match for the two of them, either.

Ann never thought she’d have to shop in teams for safety.