“No, Mama. Here.” Opal takes the cans from her and puts them in the pantry. “Like this, see?”
“I have to get back,” Dillon says. “Check on my mom and dad.”
“Do you think anything’s happened to them?”
“I don’t know. But after what we saw today in the parking lot…,” he says, and stops.
I hug him tight. “Go. We’ll be okay.”
“Don’t turn on the generator,” Dillon warns. “Stay in the house. If you can stay warm enough, Velvet, I wouldn’t even use the fireplace.”
“For how long?”
He stutters at the question. “I… don’t know.”
Dillon looks so bleak, so afraid, I hug him again. I don’t want him to go, but I know he has to. I’d go if I were him. I’d be worried, too.
“Go. Tell your mom I said hi.”
“I will.” He kisses me hard, then lets me go and is out the door before I can say anything else. I hope he makes it.
I don’t hear from Dillon for four agonizing days. I don’t turn on the generator, but we have plenty of flashlights and candles. I turn on the battery-powered radio and listen constantly, but the news reports only list road closings “for construction” and new curfews in effect, nothing about the Contamination at all. That’s scarier than if they ran constant reports on it.
The Voice doesn’t come on the radio at all.
I don’t make Opal do her homework. Instead we pass the time playing board games the way that’s become our habit. I found an old chalkboard in the basement from when we used to play school, and we set that up in the family room so we can keep score. Opal has something like five hundred and three wins, and I’m trailing behind with only three hundred. Mom’s right between us.
She flickers in and out. I can’t tell if she’s getting better or worse. The collar flashes a few times to yellow, but it always goes back to green. It never stops blinking, though, which means it’s either malfunctioning or she’s triggering it nonstop. She touches it often, even though we try to distract her.
On the fifth day, I can’t stand it any longer. Eating cold food. I can live without the lights and good hot water, but I can’t stand another meal of cold tuna on crackers. I light the fire and we gather around it. The days are getting warmer but even so, being around the light and warmth makes this all seem better.
I know I should stop thinking about Dillon and his parents. He can’t call me, and he can’t easily get here, so I have to assume he’ll be all right. I know he’d get in contact with me if he could. I have to think this is a good sign, that nothing bad’s happened, but all I can think is the opposite.
The fire doesn’t bring us any attention and it’s much nicer to be warm and eating cooked food, so I keep lighting it. I do hold off on the generator, though, more because I don’t want to run out of gas than from fear someone will hear it. They locked up the neighborhood, and even the occasional car I used to hear on the street never passes. We’re out here all alone.
I begin to think maybe we’re safe.
Thanks to Dillon, we have enough food to last us for a long time. Water’s not a problem. We can even manage heat. It’s news I’m hungry for, and the radio’s not giving any. And, in fact, a little over a week after Dillon took me to Foodland, the radio goes silent. Not totally—the stations are still playing music and commercials, but that’s it. Nothing live. Not even a DJ. And, after listening long enough, I begin to hear a pattern. They’re just replaying all the same programming over and over again. I run through the dial as slowly as I can. I catch static. I catch voices, but they’re obviously prerecorded. Every station.
I turn off the radio. Opal’s reading a book to my mom, who’s sitting by the window, looking out. I can’t stand it in here anymore. I have to go outside, breathe some fresh air. Give in to the panic I’ve been holding at bay. So I do.
Everything is quiet. I can hear the soft brush of wind in the trees, which are just beginning to get a few leaves. I can hear the crunch of leaves on the ground as the squirrels chase one another up and over and down. I can’t hear Opal’s voice, but if I listen very, very closely, I can hear the low, constant warble of a siren. I think it sounds like a fire siren, but I can’t be sure. It’s not changing or coming closer, at least.
I look up at the sky, which is blue and clear of clouds. I scan it for the white trails of planes. We’re so close to several airports and military bases that even in the best times, they still passed by overhead every day. Today, though, nothing interrupts the endless blue of the sky.
When I hear the crashing of footsteps, I look around to see the source. I expect a deer, or maybe the pack of dogs. I don’t have a weapon, so I back up toward the house. I can see a tiny figure far down at the bottom of the yard, coming through the trees, not even trying to get up the driveway.
It takes me a second or two of terror to see his face. “Dillon!”
He puts on a burst of speed and crawls up the steep hill of my front yard on his hands and knees. He’s covered in mud and briars, his face scratched. His fingernails are coated in grime.
“They’re everywhere,” he says. “They came into my house. They took my dad.”
Dillon bursts into exhausted tears and sits right down on my front stoop to put his face in his dirty hands. I sit beside him and put my arm around him. I have nothing to say. I can only hold him.
“Mom, too,” he whispers against the side of my neck. “They came in with some papers saying they were taking him away, and she… she went nuts, Velvet. She started kicking and screaming. The soldiers took her, too.”
“Soldiers, not cops?”
He looks up at me with tear-blurred eyes, streaks of white cutting down through the dirt on his cheeks. “Yeah. Soldiers. There were cops out, too, knocking on doors, but they’re just serving people with mandatory testing notices. Saying if you don’t report to the testing center within a certain time, you can be arrested.”
“Dillon, I’m so sorry! What are you going to do? What can we do?”
“Nothing, Velvet. There’s nothing we can do. I was in the back bedroom when they came in. I went out through the window. They never saw me.”
“You came here on foot?”
He nods. He’s a little calmer now, and doesn’t even seem embarrassed about crying. “Yeah. They’re all over the place, soldiers, cops. There are ambulances and fire trucks all over, too.”
“Are there fires?”
He nods again. “And I passed some car accidents. I can’t tell if it’s really another outbreak or more looting or what. But we’ll be safer here.”
I’m not so convinced, but where else can we go? “The radio’s not saying anything. Just the same programming over and over.”
“A few hours ago it all switched to the emergency broadcast system. TV, too.” Dillon shivers.
I take his hand. “Come in and get cleaned up. Have something to eat and drink. Get warm.”
A few more days pass. We can’t be on red alert that long—it wears us out. Dillon’s quieter than usual, but I would be, too, so I do my best to keep him distracted and cheerful. Opal, also. Distracting them works for me as well.
My mom doesn’t try to speak, but she does work with the pen and paper. It’s not just that she’s not coordinated enough to draw what she means, I think it’s the mix-up in her brain that makes her put beans in the cupboard and cereal under the sink. She knows what she wants to say, what she means, but it comes out scrambled. Still, she tries, and she seems better every day.