A Matter of Days (25 page)

“Hello!” I shook her hand, trying not to let my unease show.

“Is your husband with you? You must come in for refreshments.”

“Oh, we don’t want to interrupt your plans,” I said.

“Nonsense, it’s only a silly tennis game. They’ll understand. Not every day I get to meet the neighbors.”

I waved toward the woods and Zack joined me. I knew he kept Rabbit and Twawki away on purpose.

She prattled on, “I can’t tell you how nice it is to meet you. Jack will be so happy to see you when he gets home at six.
I do hope you like to play couple’s tennis? When we moved out here our usual duo couldn’t make the drive—such traffic these days. Would you like some lemonade?” We followed her inside.

She continued as if pattering on and making invisible lemonade was part and parcel of normal. She served us very dirty, very empty glasses and then laid out a plate of invisible cookies served from an empty box in the cupboard. “Please help yourself. I know they’re not home baked, but I simply haven’t been able to get to the market this week.” We ate and drank, like one of Patty’s tea parties, and made small talk about the weather, local schools, her husband’s job as a traveling sales rep for medical devices.

The overwhelming smell of human waste inside her house made my eyes water. I guessed the toilets stopped flushing weeks, or months, ago.

After the most bizarre pantomime ever, we walked over to “our” house and waved to her as she disappeared back into her living room. Zack checked the ground and found a faux rock that held a spare key. “Lesson number one: if you don’t have any other plastic rocks in your landscaping, your key hide is probably pretty obvious.”

I laughed. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Rabbit came out from the woods behind the house. “That was creepy! What took you guys so long?” His voice full of worry. “There can’t possibly be anything left in here, can there? She has to have scavenged everything.”

“Not if she really thinks her world is normal. She’s not going to break into her neighbors’ houses,” Zack disagreed.

A finished pool in the backyard was green and slimy, but
with a little ingenuity, the sacrifice of five-hundred-thread-count sheets, and an inflated kiddie pool, we cleaned out the chunks and got clearish water boiling over the built-in fire pit in the backyard.

The pantry was still fairly full, but we started with bland crackers and added fruit punch powder to the water to cover the nasty taste.

“Why doesn’t she raid these houses?” Rabbit asked.

I didn’t answer. I knew there were people who simply couldn’t handle change, who shut down. She was stuck in a weird
Groundhog Day
replay. How she managed to live this long I didn’t know and I really didn’t want to ask.

Taking turns cleaning the water from the pool for each other took hours. However, the squeaky-clean and scrubbed feeling afterward was worth all the work. With crazy-high humidity, the feeling only lasted a few minutes before sweat replaced shower dampness. We washed up, dressing in designer-label cotton pajamas. No air conditioning, but we ran a battery-powered fan and opened windows to keep from smothering in the heat.

I slathered ointment on my blisters and stuck Band-Aids on all of them.

I knew I’d have to wrestle Zack to get him to let me poke at his arm again, so I went on the offensive first and found rubbing alcohol, bourbon, and supplies to stitch the wound. I gathered them together in a basket and took them downstairs.

“I found the gun safe,” Zack greeted me.

“That’s good, right?” I asked.

“It’s locked.”

“Oh …”

“They have to have written their combo somewhere, right?” We hunted through desks and drawers.

“Hey, guys, this mail—it all says the same thing.” Rabbit held the mail up and flicked on a flashlight as if he wasn’t sure of what he was seeing.

“What are our names again?”

“No, not that. We’ve made it into West Virginia.” The awe in his voice was part puzzlement, part excitement.

“Really?” I shuffled through the stack, checking both the mailing and return address sections.
West Virginia
. “You’re right.” I went to the desk in the kitchen and pulled out the massive Yellow Pages phone book.

“We did it! We’re in the state!” Rabbit squealed and tossed unpaid bills in the air, doing a happy dance. I joined him bouncing around. Twawki barked and chased his tail with enthusiasm as Al did a head-bopping, leg-lifting dance to his own tune.

Zack waited until we calmed down slightly to ask, “So, uh, where’s Pappi from here?”

I wasn’t sure, but I knew it depended completely on how far into the state we’d come.

Rabbit’s face fell. He held up a single finger. “We’re here.”

Zack nodded. “Okay?”

He lifted another finger and held it at arm’s length from the first one. “Pappi’s mine is here.”

“Shit.” Zack closed his eyes. “We’ve made it this far—can’t you clue me in on why we’re going to Pappi’s?”

“You want to tell him or should I?” Rabbit asked me. “You’re better at it.”

“Let’s heat up the lobster and artichoke bisque for dinner and I’ll do my best.”

“Why couldn’t they have canned chicken soup like normal people?” Rabbit grumbled. “This is so chichi.”

“It’s food. You’re hungry. You’ll like it, Rodent.” Zack ruffled his hair.

I glanced at Rabbit, unsure of what to say and how much to leave out of our family’s story. I must have hesitated too long because he shrugged at me and said, “I heard all the fights too. I probably know more than you think I do. Besides, I’d like to know too.”

I nodded and decided to start at the beginning.

“Uncle Bean joined the navy first because he wanted to be a doctor and the marines don’t have them on staff. Dad followed him into the military two years later. He was already a marine when my mom met him; she hated that he refused to give it up when I was born. He wouldn’t consider changing careers. When the terrorists struck New York, he not only decided to stay in but went for extra training. I don’t really know how it worked, but he became special ops. He was called away more than he was home. When Mom got pregnant with Rab, I remember her telling me that Daddy would have to stay home now.” Sadness broke in waves over my heart. What would our family look like today if he’d left the Corps?

“He said a desk job would kill him. Didn’t he?” Rabbit whispered.

I nodded. “Yes, on your fourth birthday they had a huge fight because he had to leave before you’d had your cake.”

“So your parents weren’t perfect. They loved you both, right?” Zack asked.

“As much as we fought, I know Mom loved me. Dad too,” I answered.

“You have to remember that more than the fights.” Zack spoke toward Rabbit, who nodded.

“I think Mom had this idea from television that we’d spend holidays around a table and get dressed up and everyone would laugh and—”

“Like a movie,” Rabbit agreed.

“Yeah, like a movie. Only she didn’t have much family at all. An older sister who maybe lived in Florida and she never talked about her parents.” Did we ever have photos of them?
No
.

“Ah, so your dad’s family had to be the picture-perfect one?”

“Yeah, I guess she thought Dad would get out of the military if his brother and father would let him.”

“What about his mother?” Rabbit asked. “Did I ever meet her?”

“No, she came to visit when I was little, then she died. She lived with Pappi, though for only a few years when they first married. I didn’t know about most of this until Mom explained it to me. After we were stuck at home.”

“When?” Rabbit asked.

“Those last few days. She made me write stuff down so I wouldn’t forget. Pappi was a medical doctor, and a virologist, who worked in bioweapons warfare during the Cold War in the ’50s and ’60s. He went to Vietnam. Mom says she thinks he was CIA or something, and a spy in Russia. Something bad happened, because he came back to the States and started selling cars.”

“He sold cars? That’s weird. Why come back and work as a car salesman? Why not be a regular doctor?”

“I don’t know. He started talking about secret experiments
and caches of weapons. He wrote letters and tried to get politicians to meet with him. Then when Dad was in high school he snapped. He left his family and disappeared. He showed up at Dad’s college graduation ceremony. Pappi had purchased an abandoned mine and was preparing for the big event. Dad visited him every six months or so to bring him new stuff, even when we were little. Bean did too.”

“They just accepted his crazy?”

“I guess Mom went with him once and it scared her so badly she wouldn’t let Dad take us to visit. Pappi never left his mountain.”

“You’ve never met him?”

“Nope. If things were different, I know Mom never would have told us to go to him.”

“So why?”

“I guess he’s brilliant, and planned for every catastrophe known and unknown. Mom said if anyone could make it through this thing alive
and
thrive, it was Pappi.”

“Is he dangerous?” Rabbit asked in a little voice.

“No, Mom said he hates the government, and most people, but he will protect us. He’s never hurt anyone and he loved us. Dad took him photos and videos on his visits.”

“Am I in danger?” Zack asked.

“Uncle Bean gave us permission to bring friends. I don’t think so.”

“Maybe you should have mentioned paranoid relatives before I left my place.” Zack frowned.

“I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me that he might not welcome you.”

“We’ll make him.” Rabbit’s conviction eased the tension in Zack’s face.

“Mom said if Bean knew enough to get us shots, then he knew enough to make sure Pappi’s mine was fully equipped for the next phases of civilization.”
Whatever those might be
.

“Why didn’t he take you back with him then? I don’t get it. Why make you risk so much getting there now?”

“He couldn’t,” Rabbit answered.

I frowned at my brother. “How do you know?”

“I talked to him, remember? When he called, a second time, to wish you a happy birthday months early?” Rabbit shrank with each word as he remembered.

Oh, that’s right. I forgot
.

“What did you talk about?” Zack asked in a soft voice, as if Rabbit’s recollections could be startled like a butterfly.

“He said he couldn’t take us to Disney World because Pappi was right and there were eyes everywhere.”

“They must have been listening to his phone, too.”

“He promised he’d meet us at Disney World next year no matter what.”

After a moment Zack asked, “Who else had the shot?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“No one we’ve met has mentioned it.”

“No, Bean thought there might be people with a genetic immunity.”

“But if there’s a magical vaccine don’t you think they’d have given it to the president, or rich people, or celebrities?”

“Probably. Maybe that’s why people are heading south. Maybe there’s a city of survivors.”

My stomach fell. Maybe Zack didn’t want to continue on with us. Maybe he wanted to try to find another place. “I mean, if you don’t want to go to Pappi’s with us, you don’t have to—”

His quick grin preceded “Nah, I’ll take my chances with crazy grandpa over the freaks running around with guns and too much power. You’re stuck with me.”

I exhaled the breath I didn’t know I had been holding.
I count on Zack being here
.

Rabbit slurped the last of his soup. “I say we stay here for a few days—let the blisters and arm heal a little before we venture on.”

“Sure. We need to figure out the combo to the safe so we have guns, too.”

I agreed. We were so close, and yet getting here took more out of all of us than I could quantify. If we headed off into the unknown without taking advantage of a respite with shelter, water, food, and medical equipment we might not make it the rest of the way.

“Vote on it?” Rabbit brightened.

“We don’t need to vote, Coyote. It’s the smart thing to do.” Zack shook with laughter.

“Good, now strip off your shirt, drink this bottle, and lie down on the kitchen table,” I said, handing Zack the bottle of booze.

He lifted his eyebrows like I’d asked him to do nastiness. I knew he was simply trying to embarrass me about being demanding, but it wasn’t going to work.
I need him
.

“I thought about peeing on you again, but since they’ve got rubbing alcohol and ointment, sterile bandages and good thread, I vetoed that. It’s gonna hurt, though. I mean, if you don’t want to be drunk first, that’s fine, but …”

Zack lifted the bottle and chugged a few swallows without even hissing. There were things about Zack I didn’t know, a
history that moments like this made me wonder about. But it came back to one thing and one thing only—he’d had my back, saved my life, was an extra set of hands to make my burdens bearable. That was all I needed to know.…

The phone rang. I grabbed it.

“How’s the birthday girl, Nadia?”

Why is he speaking in code? Confused, I replied, “Hi, Uncle Bean.”

“How are you feeling?”

Had I told him I’d been sick? “Better, I think.”

“Good. Rabbit?”

“He’s on the mend too.”

“Did your mom take the medicine?”

I snorted.

“Are you sure you can’t convince her?”

“It would help if I knew what it was.”

“Just migraine medicine, kiddo. Like we talked about.”

Are people listening? He sounds odd. “I know, but you know she flipped out.”

“You tell your mom about the birthday present I left you?”

“No.” I sobered.

“I know it’s hard to keep a secret from her. Thank you. Count down seven, okay?”

 … Mom stumbled into my bedroom. “Nadia, I need to talk to you. It’s bad.” She hung her head as tears fell down her cheeks. “They sent us home tonight. Cancelled all shifts for the rest of the month. They closed the hospital. Even sent patients home.” She hugged me tight against her and mumbled into my hair. “It’s not bird flu or swine flu. It’s hemorrhagic with blue star-shaped bruising.”