End Time (49 page)

“Just us,” Little Maria repeated. The young man's hands trembled in his lap. The two little whisperers, Angel Kid and Devil Kid, hovered on his shoulders. Now they began to argue as they always did, in those high tinny voices.

Devil Kid:
There's more Dalekto in the living room. Go look for it.

Angel Kid:
That's just talk. The Devil's scared. You've kicked Dalekto and you don't even know it. It's been days and days. You're beating it.

Devil Kid:
Which means you can have one and it's not gonna matter. If it wasn't for Mr. P. you'd still be on Room Time getting bumped ugly. Turn away now and he'll give you to the Russians in Orchard Beach, who'll sell you to Middle Eastern pimps for a boi-harem. What's the Kit-Cat clock say, Time for a Tab, right?

The Kit-Cat clock began ticking very loudly in his room, the bug-eyes darting back and forth, the tail wagging madly. Without warning the Kid leapt from Lila's bed, barged through the bathroom, and confronted the thing.

“I never should have listened to you.”

The clock grinned,
tick-tock,
showing minutes to midnight.

Kid's tense fingers hovered over its smiling face. When it got loud like this, did it mean Mr. P. was about to bust in for Room Time just like Dimples? Gritting his teeth, he yanked the cord from the socket, unplugging the thing. The eyeballs stopped moving; the tail stopped wagging. Nice dead kitty. Stay that way.

Kid stepped backward out of his room, one foot after the other, until he found Lila's bed again and the two girls just as he'd left them. His face streamed sweat, limbs trembling with the Craze. Lila ran cold water over a facecloth and mopped his brow while the younger girl kept petting his thigh, telling him everything was going to be okay. Maybe they were right; maybe everything
was
going to be okay—

Inside Kid's room, the Kit-Cat clock started ticking again, kitty's eyeballs clicking back and forth, even unplugged.
Tick-tock.
Maria hopped off the bed and closed the far door. The sound diminished.

“Lock it,” Lila told her. Maria threw the dead bolt, climbed back on the bed, and took the Kid's soft hand in her own. Petting his clenched fist, she glanced shyly into his eyes. “Can't I just hold your hand? Is that so bad?”

Maria gently peeled fingers loose one by one to study his palm, like Senora Malvedos used to. “Shall I tell your fortune? Should I see your future?”

He quivered in doubt, but he let her hold his hand. She stared hard at his palm, touching the tips of his fingers. Could she really see the future?

The Craze made his hand a jumble of confused and contradictory lines. However, the little girl did see something. An extra lifeline—what some called a “fate line”—parallel to his lifeline. Kid's life and fate ran side by side, the two deep lines extending to the very edge of his palm. Unlike so many others whose lifelines crawled off to nothing, his life and fate penetrated the future. His life and fate ran off the map, life and fate extending into infinity.

Kid's life was going to mean something. Not just here now. Forever.

But before Maria could tell him what she saw—

Even as she stared into his hand, the two lines seemed to smooth away and disappear, leaving a youthful, blank palm. No more to see.

Future unknown, all ends undone.

 

26

Quarantine

Lauren sat in a chair in the Keeping Room, staring out the front window at Mr. Fenniman's house. She'd been sitting for some time, watching for any sign of life. If she'd seen even the slightest twitch, she might have risked going outside to check on the old man. Mr. Fenniman hadn't moved since she noticed his feet sticking out from under a bush by the side of the house.

And she couldn't help thinking of the Wicked Witch's legs poking out from under Dorothy's house. No red-and-white striped stockings and no ruby slippers, but still, more real than those fake prosthetic arms frat boys stuck out of their car trunks for a gag.

Guy joined her at the window, along with Corky and Peaches, who came for pettings.

“Anything?” He meant old Fenniman, feet sticking out on the grass.

Lauren shook her head. “No.”

Across the street, a rat ran up the curb, zeroed in on Mr. Fenniman's ankle, and tugged at his sock. Then another rat joined him. Guy turned away from the window, putting his hand on Lauren's shoulder. “C'mon. There's nothing we can do.”

When exactly Mr. Fenniman fell sick, no one could say. Perhaps his ticker gave out while trying to fix a gap in his taped window seals. But he died outside; and that's where he stayed.

The weather had cooled off this second week of October, but mosquitoes still floated under the eaves of the house. Lauren had been a lot smarter to seal up their place from the inside. Neither Guy nor Lauren had ventured outdoors in a week; first, ordering pizza delivery, then switching to the Hunan Pavilion or the Mandarin Palace. But when Mama Mia's stopped answering, so did the half-dozen Chinese places; they wound up eating their pantry bare.

Finally becoming desperate enough to risk a grocery run.

Guy and Lauren wore long-sleeve shirts, long slacks, turtlenecks, boony bug hats, and gardening gloves, making them stand out at Shaw's Supermarket on Black Rock Turnpike. People stared, but not for too long. Infected customers moved slowly in the aisles, examining cans and jars for longer than normal, as though they couldn't focus their eyes properly. No one seemed to have a clue what was happening. An elderly woman suddenly came to a halt behind her shopping cart and sat on a stepped stack of Budweiser twelve-packs. She hugged herself, shivering with chill, and the cart aimlessly rolled toward the bakery section.

A store worker in a red smock stared at the old woman as though considering what to do. The lad seemed to have trouble making up his mind. Words from the public address system
—“Clean up on Aisle Two”
—didn't get his attention. Eventually he approached the old woman and asked woodenly, “Are … you … all … right?”

The old woman barely looked up. “I'll be all right in a minute,” she said.

Lauren pushed their cart past and down an aisle. The girl from the stairs held Guy's hand as they traipsed behind her. She stared in amazement, eyes wide as saucers, awed at the mountains of goods spilling off the shelves. Frankly, Guy, Lauren, and the dogs had gotten used to the girl following them everywhere. So when she appeared in the house or jumped in their large blue Honda SUV, the two adults didn't think twice about it anymore.

Part guardian angel, part adopted puppy. Their ‘Alice' seemed to pop out of nowhere: on the stairs, outside the Walgreens after their hospital visit, visitations in and around the Finn House. Over time, however, their
Alice in Wonderland
girl seemed less an apparition than an unlikely time traveler stuck in an unfamiliar world. Lauren reminded herself to ask Eleanor about Auntie Whitcomb's mother, Great Auntie Whitcomb. Once upon a time, odd things happened to the great aunt—as a little girl—some hushed-up scandal. That she vanished for months, or was kidnapped by elves or something equally improbable. God forbid young Alice blab about all this when she traveled back to her proper time. They'd think her nuts at home and lock her up.

As the young lady lost the aspect of a specter, she took on more substance, able to pick objects up in the real world, examining things on the shelves, then putting them back. She was particularly fascinated with packaged meat: Oscar Meyer bologna, Deli Fresh turkey breast. And Cap'n Crunch in the cereal aisle made her think a lot. She stared at the Cap'n's picture on the box for quite a while, until Lauren doubled back for her.

They must be quite a sight—two adults in bug suits and their
Alice in Wonderland
girl in a nineteenth-century starched pinafore covered in a clear plastic raincoat, her own bug hat and white kid gloves. Guy broke open an enormous bag of Tootsie Pops from the candy shelf, gave Alice a lollipop, and let her carry the bag. Then found an equally large package of Pixie Stix and gave her that to carry too. Never underestimate the power of a Pixie Stix or a Tootsie Pop.

The girl by the stairs smiled shyly, knowing full well this was candy, even if she'd never seen this kind before. He wished he knew her name, but she hadn't spoken yet. You had to wonder whose world was more real: the world of supermarkets, with miles of aisles, or the world of sick-carts piled high with the dead?

No cashiers to be seen. At the self-service checkout counter, they swept their purchases over the scanner. Lauren toyed with the idea of shoving the Charmin TP and frozen orange juice through without a swipe, but innate honesty, the veneer of civilization, made her obey the old rules. The bar code scanner beeped, cheerfully confirming each purchase, but when Lauren hit the total button, the sum total came up $713.00.
Is this Correct? Yes? No?
Only about $650 too much.

“Oh for crying out loud.” She brandished her debit card and pleaded, “Guy! Fix it!”

“Press no. Just press no and cancel the transaction,” Guy said as he bagged. “I'll leave a hundred bucks; that's more than enough.”

“The alarm will sound when we push the cart out the door.”

“Fine,” Guy growled from behind his bug mesh. Sweat dripped down his face. “Let it.”

And just as Lauren predicted, the alarms went off, lights flashed, bells rang—but nobody came to arrest them. Shaw's Supermarket seemed deader than the public library on Christmas Day. Lauren noticed the balky store worker wearing the red smock in Aisle Two staring down at the linoleum floor. He'd brought his mop and roller bucket for a broken half gallon of tomato juice, but wavered uncertainly over the spill, staring down his mop handle, seeming lost in thought.

Back in the car, Guy and Lauren whooshed off their bug hats with a sigh of relief and cranked on the AC. The girl by the stairs sat in the back and quietly finished her Tootsie Pop. She showed the clean stick around the car, grinning for another from the bag.

“All right,” Lauren gave in. “But it'll ruin your dinner.”

Back home in Fairfield, maybe a dozen pedestrians wandered aimlessly about the village, others merely staring into the shop windows, lethargic and preoccupied.

“Did you ever hear from the agency?” Lauren asked suddenly. “You didn't say anything, so I figured no.”

“Talent Associates?” Guy said, mildly embarrassed. These days when an employer wanted you, they called. Calling them just showed desperation. “Yeah, I called.” He sighed. “Got put on hold for fifteen minutes, then disconnected.”

That night they heard people crying in the middle of the night. A shriek of despair. Two gun blasts. Murder-suicide? Nobody dared leave his or her house to investigate. Later, they heard a car rolling slowly down the street. A woman drove, but they couldn't make out her face. Perhaps because her skin was so bloated, sallow, and yellow—unrecognizable. The car swerved gently from side to side, then jumped the curb and quietly came to a halt. Thankfully, the poor lady died quietly there and then and didn't fall onto her car horn, making someone like Guy come out of the house in bug suit to lift her off the steering wheel.

The next morning Lauren could not resist glancing at Mr. Fenniman once more. A swarm of rats lunged and darted over the body, worrying his limbs, pulling him to shreds. A pang of guilt struck her; regret that she never got to know him better after all the years he lived across the street. Too late now … Corky and Peaches rescued her from her dark thoughts, fetching her with wagging tails; they wanted out.

“Okay, I understand. C'mon!” The happy hounds eagerly followed her as she went through the kitchen and into the den and opened the den doors. Since nobody wanted the dogs to get bit or infected, neither Guy nor Lauren was taking chances. A screened-in shelter filled most of the backyard.

Guy found a great deal on a ClearSpan storage shed, originally designed for cattle, and had it delivered almost a month ago. One of the last UPS deliveries they could remember. The ClearSpan company's Moo-Tel Series was a big tent—perfect for a half-dozen cows or couple of pampered greyhounds when you needed to keep hordes of flying insects away behind plastic and screens. You could even unzip the windows for screened-in cross ventilation. Guy abutted his improvised kennel right up to the den doors and sealed it with duct tape, extra plastic, and tent stakes. Presto, a screened-in doggy run.

Instead of nosing around for a good place to go on the grass, Corky and Peaches leapt into a wild dog dance, skittering about, chasing—oh no! Rats!

A small hole near the ground showed where the nasties had chewed through the tenting looking for food. They found trouble instead. Corky bit around the rodent's head. Shake! Shake! Shake! Peaches neck-snapped her first, dropped it, and went after another. Frantic rats climbed the tent walls, the dogs yelping like some nineteenth-century blood sport.

Young Alice clapped her hands and laughed delightedly, like it wasn't her first rat-baiting. Lauren gave her a wild-eyed stare. God, people really
were
different back when.

Well, what did Lauren expect for a girl who sent her dolls to the guillotine?

Stop thinking; get control of the dogs!

“Corky! Peaches!” Lauren cried, chasing them down. Four rats gone. The fifth squeezed through the hole in the polyethylene canvas about the size of a dime and vanished. The two dogs, immensely pleased with themselves, shivered and laughed with pride. From what she could tell neither had torn or punctured their rodents—more of a game than a feast. Lauren pushed back her flyaway hair. Finally, Guy appeared in alarm.

“Guy,” she said seriously. “We gotta get out of here. Today. Right now.”