End Time (50 page)

Would anywhere be better than Fairfield? Maybe someplace with fewer rats, fewer mosquitoes? Where yellow fever had burned itself out?

Why not rescue Eleanor from the Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown? Bhakti had been sending broken messages for a week. Every time they tried to text him back the Internet became frozen or scrambled; connecting seemed like the bad old days of pongs and whistles. It had been a week, at least, since they'd heard anything from him. Eleanor's own messages floated between coherent and canned asparagus. Why not go get her like Bhakti wanted?

Two hours later they'd stocked the big Honda, doing it all in their bug outfits: cargo cooler, rolled sleeping bags, dog beds, papers like deeds and wills. Add to that, an empty plastic gas can, flashlights, emergency radio, Lauren's laptop—everything they could think of on a moment's notice. Guy didn't own a gun, but suddenly wished he did.

“Let's git while the going's good!” Guy called from the car. Lauren paused before closing the front door. A brisk wind blew out of the north, as if blessing their getaway. Lauren thought about leaving a note:
Be right back
. Then noticed door after door down their street, large black
X
s just like in her dream. With a heavy heart, she found a Magic Marker and drew a black
X
.

Alice, their girl from the stairs, watched silently from the Keeping Room.

“Well, you coming? C'mon, then!”

The young lady didn't have to be asked twice; she skipped out of the Finn House and climbed into the SUV, bug hat and raincoat under her arm.

Inside the car, Alice fished into the backseat pouch and brought out a gaily colored laminated book with the words
My Diary
written on the cover, a “Horse Friends” diary. The girl must have taken it from Shaw's Supermarket along with the Tootsie Pops and the Pixie Stix. The diary cover showed a chestnut pinto near an apple tree by a stream, and the book locked with a cute pink lock. She flipped through the blank pages; found a colored pencil in the seat pouch; then, frowning with concentration, slowly began her first entry.

Lauren was just as happy the child had found something to occupy her; the town of Fairfield was not a pretty sight. Storefronts broken, the liquor store burned out, more than a few bodies slumped in corners or splayed across the sidewalk.
X
s on every other door and plenty of rats to go around. Corky and Peaches saw the rats through the Honda window and shivered in delight. Sheriff Mike's police cruiser had run up on the curb of the Metro-North station, right where Guy had seen the Leprechaun Bus at the beginning of summer on his way home to find his lawn torched and Sheriff Mike outnumbered by a rent-a-mob. Only four months ago? Back then the world still seemed basically normal. Now the cruiser's side door stood open, the cockeyed vehicle abandoned.

No Sheriff Mike.

*   *   *

Eleanor woke up in her pleasant room in the gabled house, a beam of sunlight crossing her face. What day was it? She couldn't quite remember; felt like the place had been on lockdown forever, and up till yesterday things had more or less taken care of themselves. Trays of food arrived; the used dishes removed; a nice word from Mr. Washington. Then the whole process repeated itself, one day flowing into the next. Maybe ten days? The leaves had started to turn. First or second week in October? Close enough. The head orderly's visits always provided her with a chance to find out about the staph infection. When he collected her tray she'd always ask, “How's that upset tummy of yours, Mr. Washington?”

“As good as can be expected,” he'd reply philosophically.

“And the staphylococcus? I didn't see anything on Channel Ninety-eight.”

Mostly she remembered him nodding—fine, fine. But the last time he took her tray, only yesterday, he shook his head with a note of doubt.

“Hard to say, Miss Eleanor.” That didn't sound so good.

And this morning an eerie quiet seemed to have descended on the gabled house. She looked at the walls of her pleasant room: no dancing men, no Rolpens rolling along the stenciled border. And no Mr. Washington either. The remains of yesterday's lunch sat on a tray. So Mr. Washington had missed bringing her dinner last night and she didn't even notice. She must have spaced out again.

Then it came back to her. Last night the Light Tesla took her on another trip right into the laptop screen, down pathways of electrons, to leap great distances in a single bound, only to emerge in Dr. Webster Chargrove PhD's secret cubbyhole in the meatpacking plant. The young scientist was giving his latest mea culpa through a single live telephone wire. And Eleanor tried to follow him as best she could.

“Lila Chen is the key. They want to apply her enhanced physiological profile to a new generation of Skeeters. But not to inoculate millions of people like originally planned to counteract the wandering sickness. No, far fewer. Only the elite, the selected, a Noah's Ark of the anointed.”

He gulped for air.

“It's imperative you keep her away, don't let them get their hands on her—”

He paused, something at the door. He began to blurt,
“I love you, Beatrice. Don't forget me, don't forget—“

Suddenly the cubbyhole door slammed open. Booted feet entered the room. The telephone cord yanked from the wall. And a voice said,
“Thank you, Webster. We'll take it from here.”

Back in her pleasant room Eleanor stared at her laptop; a log of the bizarre text messages she'd been trying to send Bhakti and her sister for weeks flashed and repeated like a crazed loop of desperation:

• I want to leave now. I'm not sick. Just please come and get me.

• Bacteria here, Staff-Staph fear. But DON'T come near, dear.

• Don't you dare let her mother's milk back to the birthing chamber.

Sweet Jesus, what nonsense was this? She hardly remembered writing the damn things. Crazy or psychic? Had the Pi R Squared people scrambled her brains
that
badly? The last one,
mother's milk,
made a strange kind of sense. With dead women in beds growing orange fungus, and zillions of mosquitoes feeding off live babies, no, don't let Lila Chen and her perfect biochemistry—her mother's milk—anywhere near the Pi R Squared complex.
Keep her the hell away
.

Eleanor, stop talking to yourself!

And what about that confused writing? Could she write straight if she wanted to? Try doing one coherent text or e-mail:
Come get me. I'm not sick. Come get me.
She tried to type out a more coherent e-mail, imploring them to rescue her and not get infected. Dear Bhakti, Lauren, Guy—but her fingers typed,
No Staff/Staph here, just me dear.…

Dammit! Just type straight. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't do any better. She sent it anyway. For a moment she felt she would faint, lose consciousness—wake up later and not remember what she'd done. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope
,
phzzzzzt, Help
me Obi-Wan—

Face it, Eleanor; nobody is coming.
They ran out of food. Mr. Washington has gone home to Mrs. Washington. Nothing to do but eat paint chips off the wall and die of lead poisoning. What about her neighbor lady, Mona the Moaner in the next room?

Eleanor pounded the wall. “Hey! I'm talking to myself. Don't you want to shout at me?”

She waited for a moment, listening for any reply, then pressed her ear to the wall, but didn't even hear a quiet groan. That was bad. Scary. She pounded again.

“Hey, you alive? Am I annoying you yet?”

No reply. Nothing. Silence.

She stifled a shiver of panic; a frantic butterfly fluttered over her heart. If a door was locked from the outside, how do you get out? If the wood wasn't swollen you could pry the hinge pins out and maybe it would fall inward. Need a screwdriver or a jimmy for that.

Brilliant Eleanor, before you dig a spring out of your mattress check the door. Hah, good! The hinges were on the inside. And her bed was one of those bunk things with thin metal slats attached by springs. Perfect.

She cut her palm getting one of the metal slats free, but who cared about that? She sucked the edge of her hand, the coppery taste of blood. She ripped a sheet and tied a swathe around the wound, then went to work on the door hinges. The pins were stiff, but once she got a little gap going, she could bang at them with the edge of her cafeteria tray. Two hinges done—one stuck partway. Now she was almost wild, thinking,
No way out, no way out
. One stupid hinge pin.
Help me, Obi-Wan!

She kept banging at it with the cafeteria tray until
bing
it came free. Which is when she heard Mr. Washington's pleasant voice calling her name, but she couldn't exactly catch what he was saying. His key turned in the lock—
Jesus, he was coming in
. “Mr. Washington! Careful! There's no—”

“Miss Eleanor, are you all right?” The whole door careened off its hinges and fell inward. She leapt out of the way, and Mr. Washington stumbled forward into the room. “Oh my!” He recovered himself, brushed down his pants.

“Really, Miss Eleanor, you didn't have to do that. I wouldn't forget about you.”

Eleanor, suddenly shy, wrapped a bathrobe around her jammies and stammered, “What's going on?” She dug some clothes out of the chest of drawers—blue jeans, bra, T-shirt—and went into the bathroom to change.

“People dead all over the place. I didn't go home last night; the staff got the infection and I attended to some, but they're gone now.”

“And the patients?” Eleanor asked out the bathroom.

A silence. That told the story. She came out of the bathroom dressed. “Well, I'm glad you're okay.” Truth was, Mr. Washington looked a little pale—

“My stomach came back this morning. Didn't feel like breakfast. Not sure I want to go to the cafeteria kitchen.”

Mr. Washington's eyes were clouded with doubt. Eleanor could read his mind; he feared the staff's staph infection, staphylococcal food poisoning, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration. With nothing to do for it except Imodium, weak tea, and toast. But what if his symptoms were something different, something stronger, something worse?

A terrible image leapt into her mind: one of M. C. Escher's creepy-crawlies, padding along on their tiny human feet, a Rolpen crawling out of Mr. Washington's belly—

Eleanor squelched the thought.

She looked once more on the pleasant room. No, she wasn't going to miss this place. Out in the hall Mr. Washington had opened all the adjoining doors. Eleanor didn't want to poke her nose into every single room, see the dead in some final horrid repose, but she couldn't contain her curiosity about the woman on the other side of the wall, the mousy librarian from the cafeteria. After all her moaning back and forth:
Eleanor shut up!
One last good-bye.

The woman sat on the floor, legs outstretched, her housecoat fallen open, her head leaning up against the wall. She had coughed up a chunk of lung and died before she could wipe it off her chin. Eleanor silently turned away and followed Mr. Washington down the stairs to the common room.

Kay sat in front of her M. C. Escher jigsaw puzzle. Poor Kay. Eleanor's friend seemed to have succumbed to a more traditional form of staph infection, the mighty itches, scratching her erupting skin raw until she bled out. Eleanor knelt beside her. “Oh, Kay … I'm so sorry.”

“I didn't have the heart to lock her in,” Mr. Washington admitted. “Not with her itching and scratching.” He stood looking down in a bewildered fashion at the weird black-and-white M. C. Escher puzzle
House of Stairs,
with the parrot-beaked lizaroids rolling up and down connecting hallways. Mr. Washington rubbed his belly like it hurt him. “I never liked that one. Makes me think I got a couple of those in my stomach.”

Eleanor blocked that visual. “What's happening outside, Mr. Washington?”

“They locked the main gate. Nobody going in, nobody going out. But then the chief administrator, Dr. Bodine, drove his car right through and knocked it down. He was just afraid, I think. I stayed here to take care of some of the others, but—” He paused, daunted, overwhelmed.

Mr. Washington breathed heavily; he cradled his tender belly. “I'm going to sit down for a minute, if that's okay. There's some Pepto-Bismol in the glove compartment of my car outside. Would you mind getting it, please, Miss Eleanor?”

Outside, Eleanor paused; an early autumn morning, the prettiest October day she could imagine. The red and gold leaves dappled the hospital grounds, rustling when a sudden gust of wind made them laugh. God, she'd hardly noticed the change in season. Stop dreaming; Mr. Washington,
tummy medicine.

The car was one of those decade-old Subaru hatchbacks you occasionally see on the road; the car door wasn't locked. Mr. Washington kept it neat as a pin. A pair of fawn driving gloves lay in the well between the seats. A plastic Jesus stuck on the dash.

The glove compartment squared away as well: registration and insurance in a plastic see-through folder, a pen, a pencil, but not even one lone candy wrapper. The bottle of pink cement, cap tight, half gone. She grabbed it and snapped the glove compartment shut.

Suddenly the sound of car engines broke the quiet October morning. A troop of vehicles rolled toward Eleanor through the hospital grounds, slowly negotiating the fallen gates. A mud-splattered white minivan with the sliding door dented, then a yellow Toyota 4Runner, running very ragged. Next a rumbling Gran Torino muscle car, and last a big boxy Honda Pilot that seemed to catch sight of Eleanor. The Honda jumped the curved driveway, making a straight beeline for her as she stood by the porch of the gabled house near Mr. Washington's old Subaru.