I shook my head when Jake approached me. He gave me an approving nod then gently squeezed my shoulder. I smiled broadly at him, staring at his hand.
“Hi,” I said.
“That was so nice of you.”
“What was?” I said. “What’s on tap for breakfast?”
“You’re going to be the glue that holds this place together. I can feel it.” His face was worried and gaunt. “It’s oatmeal,” he said sadly. “I tried to get cinnamon, but…you know. People will be so disappointed in me.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case.”
“More importantly, we have to bunker down,” he said. “I wanted to let the two of you know first, but don’t say anything to panic anyone.”
Robert stared at him, then me. “What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes we have to put the quarantine under lockdown,” Jake said quietly. “It’s because of the Wanderers.”
“The who?”
“They wander and pillage,” he said. “They’re ruthless. They came a few weeks ago, made an awful noise and terrified us all. They also killed an old man.”
“And you say they’re coming?” Robert asked. “How do you know this?”
Jake started to shake his head. “We have access to a weak satellite signal,” he said. “We know when they’re coming.”
“So what happens?” I asked.
“We’re going to cut the power,” Jake said. “Soon. We hope that if they think there’s nothing here, they’ll pass by it.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “Have you seen how many people are packed in?”
“It worked once,” Jake said. “There were less of us at the time. That’s the key. But people tend to put aside their fears in times of trauma.”
“According to who?” I asked.
“Let me know if you need help.” Robert offered his hand.
Jake shook his hand. ”I’ll remember that.”
Word spread and rather quickly. I expected pandemonium, but instead, people seemed to take it in stride. In the afternoon everyone carried boards in a single file line toward the outside of the quarantine. We watched it for a while before Robert joined in. It was at that point I noticed a woman my age, chin-length short, dark hair, stocky build, wearing a University of Texas sweatshirt. She stared at me.
When the sun started going down, that’s when the lights began to shut off. I sat in the same sleeping spot as the night before and waited for Robert and Jake to come back. Robert came by first and Jake joined him as the last lights were being turned.
“Have you seen Destiny?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Destiny?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know who that is. Unless it’s that weird guy who tried to sell me semen earlier today.”
“You have to make the most of your potential.” He tapped his risk management book.
I grimaced. “I didn’t think I looked that desperate.”
It was now completely dark and there was a loud bang that came from the outside, which startled me, but Jake jumped up and stood at attention. He then collapsed to the floor and burrowed his head in my lap.
“I hate this part,” he said. He started to shake, and I realized he was crying. I knelt and put my arm around him.
“Don’t cry,” I whispered. “Its getting too sad and I’ll have to start cracking jokes again.”
“If we could only reach out to these people,” he said. “We could just make it all go away.” He sobbed now with big audible gasps as he slumped over my lap. “I just wish things were the way they used to be.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“If people could just smile at each other,” he said. “I hear the sounds of fighting and it gives me nightmares.”
“Fighting?” I asked. “Everyone seems so calm. This can’t last, can it? I keep hoping, but it won’t last.”
My left leg had fallen asleep under his weight and I tried to shift it, but it was pinned without any hope of release any time soon.
“Just the weight of the world is so heavy.”
“I know what you mean.” I tried to shift again, but there was no moving it.
The darkness was becoming overwhelming, and the entire area was filled with the sounds of heavy breathing, the quiet sobs and shuffling of limbs that were in better shape than mine.
So in that dead quiet, the fact there was a crash came as a bigger shock and opened a chasm of panic that quickly erupted. Jake suddenly jumped up from my lap. The blood returned with stabbing prickles.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“The doors!” someone shouted over the panic. “One of the back doors didn’t get boarded!”
“We’re all dead!” Jake screamed. “We’re all going to die!”
I frantically looked around. “What was all that talk about staying calm—”
It was at that moment when the fires of human emotion in their most extreme form broke out and I had to fight to cling to a pole to prevent being trampled on. There were the sounds of more crashing, screaming, when suddenly a fire broke out and part of the tent went down with it. It occurred to me, I was terrified someone was going to smash my head with thick-toed soles. Someone ran by who was completely on fire, then a gun shot went off followed by more screams. Some people on the other side were getting trampled. I sat on the floor, clutching the wall, hoping for some kind of safety when a large woman with a heavy bag bulled her way through. She swung it.
“Are you okay?” I asked, reaching out to her.
“Get out of my way!” she screamed.
Her bag, which must have been filled with bricks or cartoon anvils, hit me on top the head. It hurt like a mother and made me cower even more near that wall. “Ouch!”
She marched on and didn’t give me a second thought, so I snuggled under a blanket and closed my eyes. I was aware of the jostling of other people around me, but I tried to concentrate on a memory, scanning through as many as I could until I stopped on Christmas when I was seven years old. I unwrapped a box while my parents looked on and beamed. I opened the box and saw a puffy paint sweatshirt with two goofy reindeer holding a wreath.
When I woke up, it seemed as if everything had calmed down. Most people were sorting through their belongings, and cleaning up the gruesome mess from the night before. I was processing the sight of dead bodies, blood smears on the walls and then the smells of blood and excrement. The last time I had seen a dead body up close was my grandmother’s funeral and even then I could only keep a safe distance from it. There was a pain in the side of my head where someone or something had dropped that heavy weight on me and it was now bleeding sporadically. I wrapped it with a dirty pillowcase I had found on the ground. While I did so, I saw Jake crawling out of an overturned box. I considered saying something, but let the moment go.
Instead I went to find Robert. I pushed past the crowds of people until I found him at a makeshift infirmary, getting his wrist tended to by a pretty petite brunette woman, mid 20s, in an Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt and black leggings with a stethoscope around her neck and a needle in her hand. He waved me over the second he saw me.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
I joined him on a table made from aluminum siding and cinder blocks.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Mostly just fighting not to get any internal organs smashed.”
The woman pointed at my head. “What happened to you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Something or someone hit me. I don’t know.”
“Does it hurt?” Robert asked, tilting his head to get a better look.
I nodded. “About as much as you’d expect.”
“May I?” She gestured to my head wrap.
I nodded, and she unwrapped it.
“Well,” she said. “You get points for resourcefulness.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t realize pillowcases would become so valuable in the future.”
She looked over my wound. “I wish I had some real bandages for you,” she said. “But I can give you some Neosporin and an injection for the pain.”
She ripped up the case and made a more appropriate dressing. “Do you mind if I keep this?” she asked. “Someone else might need it.”
It’s kind of stained and dirty—”
She stared at me blankly, then blinked.
I shrugged. “But go nuts.”
She smiled and applied the medicine, then gave me the shot.
Robert elbowed me. “This is Rebecca,” he said. “Isn’t she something?”
“She’s great,” I said, then turned to her. “How long have you been a nurse?”
She wiped the blood off me. “Oh, I’m not a nurse,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I’m just a little old Pilates instructor,” she said. “I decided I was bored in this tent and started giving people shots. And now I’m in charge of all this.”
She smiled at me with serenity, gesturing to the expanse of the quarantine.
“That’s a horrible story.”
“You coming with us?” Robert asked.
I looked at Rebecca, who beamed.
“Wait, what’s happening now? Where are we going?”
“We’re heading up north,” he said. “Rebecca heard about a commune that has been completely unfazed by all of this. They grow their own potatoes.”
“You heard?” I asked. “From where?”
“Lots of people come through here,” she said. “I’ve heard about it more than once, so that makes me think there’s some truth to the rumor.”
“I don’t think that’s how fact becomes established.”
“You want to hang around and wait for another attack?” Robert asked.
“Not really—”
He leaned forward. “Listen,” he said. “There’s a priest over in the east section of the quarantine.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Rebecca says that if we’re married,” he said. “Officially married, that is. We get a pass to travel into any government sanctioned roadway where it’s safer.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How does she know—sorry, how do you know all this?”
Robert shrugged. “You hear things. Like that thing with the guy who lost a kidney. Woke up in a tub full of ice. And now we all know what to do when people steal our kidneys.”
I shook my head, got to my feet. “This is all nonsense—”
“Rebecca and I,” he said. “And you. You’ve been so loyal and helpful. I wouldn’t dream of leaving you behind at this point.”
I balanced myself on the shoddy tables. “Wait, you and Rebecca are getting married? What has it been, like, a hot minute?”
“Don’t be judgmental,” he said. “Our current changing times are changing social morays. And when you know, you know.”
“Shouldn’t you two go on a date or something?”
He stroked her cheek. “What we shared last night was worth ten thousand dates.”
She giggled. He turned to me and beamed.
“He read me this beautiful passage. Something about risk management I think,” she said. “Those words went straight to my heart.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve met each other’s parents, gave each other a clueless gift for Christmas, accidently called each other the wrong name at a bad time. Ever had a miscommunication on what time to meet each other at the movie theater?”
“What are you doing?”
“You said it felt like a ten thousand dates,” I said. “I’m wondering if all this happened last night.”
Robert shook his head. “That’s ridiculous and you know it. This is the real thing. You’ll see.”
I stared at him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, getting closer to my face and standing over me.
“Don’t even start,” I said. “You’re single, time is going by, and it’s the Apocalypse. But if you think I’m going to sister wife you—”
He profusely shook his head. “Sister wife?” he asked, confused. “What are you talking about? I don’t want to marry you too.”
“Oh,” I said, confused. “That’s not what this is about?”
He shook his head. Rebecca looked at me with pity.
“W-Well then,” I stammered. “Sometimes I get mixed signals. Like when you give a girl a fancy Brookstone meat thermometer.”
“When did that happen?” he asked.
“Last Christmas,” I said. “I won the gift raffle and got to pick out of the bag you had, but…” I let my voice trail off.
“But what?” he raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you think it meant something?”
“Oh no, of course not,” I said. “I thought maybe it was a little more deliberate, but I’m not begging for it, and I’m certainly not desperate.”
I smiled awkwardly as he put a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he said. “We all make bad choices. Sometimes late at night when you’re sitting in a bar in Philadelphia. You can either make conversation with that brunette waitress with the weird limp or you can go back up to your room and see what’s playing on the hotel’s specialty channels.”
“Robert—“
“If you’re lucky, that waitress will never learn your last name or which conference you were there for.”
“Okay, you’ve made your point.” I took a step backward. “Congratulations,” I said. “I hope you’re both very happy. Mazel.”
He opened his arms to me. “Want a hug?” he asked.
A man passing by stopped in front of us. He opened his arms to Robert.
“I’d like a hug.”
Robert waved him away. “Keep moving.”
The man sadly dropped his head and did.
“I appreciate the pity,” I said. “And thanks for these last memories of you.”
I slid off the table and walked away.
“You’ll be back!” he shouted.