If he was going to die, he wanted to feel a terrible pain in his chest and be dead before he hit the ground. He didn’t want to have days and days where he knew he was dying. That was when you took stock, when you had nothing to do but think about your past, and he didn’t want to think about what a waste his life had been to this point.
He’d always thought he was just slow getting started, that he’d leave Ravine and Burger King for bigger things. His first plan had been to hit it big with the band, then it was opening his bar and grill. His savings, the house, a little inheritance money was the kickstart he’d been counting on for the past decade or so, except, surprise: his Dad had his own dreams, even at seventy-one and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Dad was staring out at the big white screen through the window, his hands in his back pockets, smiling.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Wait and see.”
No one showed up. Not one car. Johnny would have choked on his Coke if a vehicle had pulled through that gate with this hell-virus crawling through their town. The marquee said they were showing Green Lantern tonight, but Johnny went back to the claustrophobic little office next to the restroom and pulled the reels for Ghostbusters out of a pile of old films his dad had bought on Ebay a month before they opened. He didn’t think he could sit through GL again, but a comedy, especially an old, actually funny comedy, fit the bill.
Johnny sat in his Mustang while Pop manned the snack bar.
At 7 a.m., Johnny spotted Kelly loading containers of water into her trunk. He set his coffee mug on the kitchen counter and slipped on his sneakers. He’d promised to check on her, after all.
“I should start calling you Florence Nightengale.”
Kelly smiled, but it was the smile of a Burger King cashier toward the end of a shift. She looked exhausted; there was a sheen of sweat on her face, as if she hadn’t washed up in a while.
“You were studying to be a nurse, weren’t you?”
“For a little while.”
“Why’d you stop?”
She shrugged. “Because I was too stupid. Couldn’t pass the biology courses.”
Johnny cringed, wishing he hadn’t brought it up. He wasn’t sure what to say. “Shit, that sucks. You seem like a natural.”
Again, she attempted a smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re really going door to door?”
Kelly pushed her hair out of her face. “If you get it and I don’t, you’ll be happy to see me and my water bottle.”
Johnny raised his hands. “I’m not criticizing. I’m just worried about you.”
That made her smile. “It’s nice to know someone is.”
He watched, arms folded, as she slid into her dad’s SUV.
Maybe he should be going with her. If he made it through this, for the rest of his life people would ask what it was like, what he’d done. It would be nice to be able to say he worked tirelessly to help people, that he hauled water and fed his friends and neighbors, and even strangers. And if he didn’t make it through this, maybe God would look more favorably on a man who wasn’t there for his kids if that man had died helping other people’s kids.
Kelly was putting the SUV in drive. Johnny raised his hand, jogged down the driveway. “Hang on.” She braked, rolled down the window, her eyebrows raised. He ran around and hopped in the other side. “Let’s go.”
Kelly smiled brightly. “When this is over, I swear, I’m gonna buy you a steak dinner.”
As soon as Johnny set the spoon of farina—or whatever this gruel was the soldier had given them—on the kid’s tongue, his mouth closed around it. Johnny drew the spoon out as the kid chewed and swallowed. He didn’t know the boy, who was about ten, the same age as his son Danny.
Johnny tried to ignore the stale urine smell, the wet crotch of the kid’s pants. It would take too long to change all these people; they had to focus on keeping them alive. Johnny was both relieved and sorry for that.
The boy watched him, watched Johnny’s face instead of the spoon, and Johnny couldn’t help thinking the kid was as desperate to have someone look at him, to have someone notice him, as he was for the food.
“I know. It breaks your heart,” Kelly said.
Johnny glanced at her, not sure what she was talking about. A tear plopped onto his forearm, and he realized he was crying, and when he realized it, it was like something inside him burst open, and he was sobbing.
Kelly gave him a hug, patted his back. It felt good—safe, warm—to be in her arms. “I cried all day yesterday. Eventually you run out of tears, and all you’ve got is a big lump in your throat.”
The lights went out; the picture on the TV contracted to a dot and vanished.
“Shit,” Kelly said.
Something in the boy’s eyes told Johnny the TV had been a huge comfort to him, that he’d be so much more terrified with nothing for company but his frozen family.
“Come on in,” Kelly called when Johnny knocked. As he climbed the stairs he heard her speaking softly.
“I’ll check on you at lunchtime. Try not to worry; everything’s going to be okay. Help is coming.”
He paused as he passed Kelly’s room. She had a billion CDs, a big Union Jack for a bedspread, a Black Sabbath poster on the wall, and a long shelf up near the ceiling crammed with hundreds of Beanie Babies.
Johnny nearly shrieked when he found Kelly’s parents standing in the middle of their bedroom.
“Jeeze,” he breathed.
Kelly, in a Luzurne County Community College t-shirt and jeans, was brushing her mother’s hair. “I figure they’ll feel better if I stand them up once in a while, exercise their muscles a little. Can you help me?”
Johnny hurried over to help ease Kelly’s mother back into a chair.
“I didn’t realize they could stand,” he said. They stayed in pretty much any position you placed them in, but he’d figured standing would take too much coordination.
“They can. You ready to go?”
Johnny followed her out, steeling himself for another day of playing Florence Nightengale’s sidekick.
They started with the first house on the left on Princess Lane. When they knocked, an upstairs window creaked open.
“What do you want?” it was a woman, Johnny’s age or a little older.
“We’re checking for people who need help,” Kelly said. “Anyone around here that you know of?”
“I haven’t gone out.” They turned to go. “If you were smart, you’d stay in your house, too.”
“Somebody’s got to help these people,” Johnny shot back, self-righteous anger rising in him. As they headed back to the van it occurred to him that two days earlier he’d been that woman. If he hadn’t seen Kelly loading water into her van, he’d still be that woman.
Watching Kelly walk beside him out of the corner of his eye, Johnny wondered what it was about her that made her different from all the people hiding in their houses, worrying only about themselves. It was like discovering there’d been a saint living across the street from him all these years, a saint with a shaved head, smoking a cigarette.
“So what happened to the shaved head and the combat boots?” he asked as they slammed their doors closed with a double thunk.
Kelly studied his face. “You thought I was a joke, is that what you’re saying?”
“No,” he laughed. “I thought it was great. There’s not enough shock and awe in Ravine.” He tapped her knee. “Come on, I’m in a band. Or I was, until all the other guys moved away. I live for rebellion.”