They sit tight with the radio on. Hearing the same urgent message again and again. “Officials suspect that a Category A bioterrorism agent has been released in this area.” Their father gone to the hospital to make sure their mother is being cared for and not lying unconscious on a gurney in the midst of total chaos, forgotten because there aren’t enough nurses and doctors and no one to advocate for her and make demands in her interest. They sit tight, awaiting his return, for approximately forty-five minutes, at which time (9:22 p.m. EST) the next thing happens. The power goes out.
Everything dark and quiet.
They switch the radio to battery. Turn on the battery-powered lantern. Wake up their phones and learn that the electrical grid is offline — and not just New York according to some accounts, but everything east of the Proclamation Line and even up into New France, which means the system has been attacked. And now a report of a fire at a substation up north and speculation about a bomb in a tractor trailer or possibly a light aircraft; and an hour gone now and still he isn’t back, and he said an hour at most, and no call and no text either, so where is he, and a sense in Dorian that things are coming to an end: an unreal feeling from a dream in which you have glimpsed the fictionality of setting and event but are terrified nonetheless by a seeming realism.
“You okay,” Cliff says.
“I dunno.”
“Here, take your temperature. It’ll still be normal and Dad’ll be here any minute.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
Dorian puts down the thermometer and walks to the closet, opens it and takes out the air rifle. The only gun in the house. Which is nothing really but a toy. Into the wooden stock of which his grandfather (at ten years of age, almost seventy years ago) had carved: 1962. No sooner is it in his hands than they both hear, through the one sealed window, the car in the driveway below. Through the cloudy plastic sheeting: an aurora of halogen light. “See.” Cliff says. “Like clockwork.” Leading Dorian out of the room. Cliff with the lantern and Dorian the gun. Into the hall, down the stairs. Intending to open the garage door manually from the inside — and downstream of consciousness, as they enter the garage, a suspicion struggling against the current of presumption (though too weak to stop the actions), so Cliff already pulling the release cord of the machine, then shining the light on the door handle and Dorian ducking first under the lifting door, stepping out into the night to find that the car idling on the driveway is not theirs and the man standing outside it, a shadow in the backlight, not their father, and also another man on the other side of the car, neither of whom is clear to see, and Dorian thinking suddenly of something from a few years back, a kid from a town far, far away who’d disappeared and they’d found the body finally but never the head, as a hand grabs him by the shirt and seizes the rifle as a voice he recognizes but can’t quite place (the pitch, timbre, and intensity allaying his extant fears while creating a new order of them) says: “Take it easy. It’s just me.”
Meaning: the man Dorian met in Keenan Cartwright’s in-law apartment eight days ago; who called Dorian six nights ago while another man was dead on his lawn and whom Dorian hung up on and then called a day later in an attempt to stop a flow of violence that seems now so trivial as to be meaningless; whom Dorian told Keenan Cartwright four days ago to call and tell to stay away; and who asked Dorian, two days ago, to be there when the time came. So the time, it would seem, has come.
“Who the fuck’re you,” Cliff says.
“The cavalry.”
“Well, just stay six fucking feet away from him.”
“I’m not infected.”
“Just move.”
“Older brother,” Jon-David says. “Chill. We’re not here to sneeze on you.”
“Give me the gun.”
“You planning on shooting some squirrels?”
“Just. Look …” (The belligerence vanishing from his voice.)
“Tell me your name.”
“Cliff.”
“Okay. Cliff. Listen. We’re here to help. We’re not infected. None of us were anywhere near the zone. And just in case, back at my apartment, I have a thousand 100-milligram doses of Doxycycline. That’s the antibiotic for plague and that’s probably what those fucks released the other day and I’m going to give you some and I’m going to give your little brother the gun and all I want you to do first is see something.”
“See what.”
“What I have in the car.”
“Look—”
“No, you look.”
Motioning at the car with the gun. Making it sound like an invitation, a dare, and a command all at the same time. For several seconds, Cliff standing still. Then going to the car. Peering through the front window. Then the rear one. And Dorian walking now across the driveway, looking into the same window and seeing him in the back. Omar. Who had called him the name and hit him in the stomach and then held him while Karim hit him in the face and later apologized via e-mail. Slumped now in the far corner of the seat. Eyes closed. To all appearances: Dead. “Not dead,” Jon-David assures them. Standing now between the brothers. “Here, I’ll show you.” Opening the door, still holding the air rifle. Now pointing the gun at the body. Now pulling the trigger. “See.” (The body twitching once, then shifting position.) “Not dead. Just extremely asleep.”