SIXTEEN

It was August, the days long and dry, when the fires came.

Wolgast smelled smoke one afternoon as he was working in the yard; by morning the air was thickened with an acrid haze. He climbed to the roof to look but saw only the trees and the lake, the mountains rolling away. He had no way of knowing how close the fires were. The wind could blow the smoke, he knew, for hundreds of miles.

He hadn’t been off the mountain in over two months, not since his trip down to Milton’s. They’d found a routine: Wolgast slept each day till nearly noon, worked outside till dusk; then, after dinner and a swim, the two of them stayed up half the night, reading or playing board games, like passengers on a long sea voyage. He’d found a box of games stored in one of the cabins: Monopoly, Parcheesi, checkers. For a while he let Amy win, but then found he didn’t need to; she was a shrewd player, especially at Monopoly, buying up property after property and swiftly calculating the rents they’d bring in and counting her money with glee. Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens. What did the names of these places mean to her? One night he’d settled in to read to her—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which they’d read before but she wanted to hear again—when she took the book from his hand and, in the flickering candlelight, started to read aloud to him. She didn’t so much as pause over the book’s difficult words, its contorted, old-fashioned syntax. When did you learn to do that? he asked her, utterly incredulous, as she paused to turn the page. Well, she explained, we read it before. I guess I just remembered.

The world off the mountain had become a memory, remoter by the day. He’d never managed to get the generator working—he’d hoped to use the shortwave—and had long since stopped trying. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, he reasoned, they were better off not knowing. What could he have done with the information? Where else could they go?

But now the woods were burning, driving a wall of choking smoke from the west. By the afternoon of the next day it was clear they had to leave; the fire was headed their way. If it jumped the river, there’d be nothing else to stop it. Wolgast loaded the Toyota and placed Amy, wrapped in a blanket, in the passenger seat. He had a soaked cloth for each of them, to hold over their mouths, their stinging eyes.

They didn’t get two miles before they saw the flames. The road was blocked with smoke, the air unbreathable, a toxic wall. A hard wind was blowing, driving the fire up the mountain toward them. They would have to turn back.

He didn’t know how long they would have until the fires arrived. He had no way to wet the roof of the lodge—they would simply have to wait it out. The sealed windows at least offered some protection from the smoke, but by nightfall they were both coughing and sputtering.

In one of the outbuildings was an old aluminum canoe. Wolgast dragged it to the shore, then fetched Amy from upstairs. He paddled to the middle of the lake while he watched the fires burning up the mountain toward the camp, a sight of furious beauty, as if the gates of hell had opened. Amy lay against him in the bottom of the canoe; if she was afraid, she showed no sign. There was nothing else to do. All the energy of the day left him and, despite himself, he fell asleep.

When he awoke in the morning, the camp was still standing. The fires hadn’t jumped the river after all. The wind had shifted sometime in the night, pushing the flames to the south. The air was still heavy with smoke, but he could tell the danger had passed. Later that afternoon, they heard a great boom of thunder, like a huge sheet of tin shaking over their heads, and rain poured down, all through the night. He couldn’t believe their luck.

In the morning he decided to use the last of his gasoline to drive down the mountain to check on Carl and Martha. He would bring Amy this time—after the fires, he intended never to let her out of his sight again. He waited until dusk and set out.

The fires had come close. Less than a mile away from the camp’s entrance the forest had been reduced to smoking ruins, the ground scorched and denuded, like the aftermath of a terrible battle. From the roadway Wolgast could see the bodies of animals, not just small creatures like possums and raccoons but deer and antelope and even a bear, folded onto himself at the base of a blackened tree trunk as he’d searched the ground for a pocket of breathable air and perished.

The store was still standing, undisturbed. No lights were on, but of course the power would be out. Wolgast told Amy to wait in the car, retrieved a flashlight, and stepped onto the porch. The door was locked. He knocked, loudly, again and again, calling Carl’s name, but received no reply. Finally he used the flashlight to break the window.

Carl and Martha were dead. They were spooned together in Martha’s hospital bed, Carl curled against her back with one arm draped over her shoulder, as if they were napping. It could have been the smoke, but the air in the room told Wolgast they’d been dead much longer than that. On the nightstand was a half-empty bottle of Scotch and, beside it, a folded newspaper, like the first one he’d seen, disquietingly thin, with a huge, shouting headline he averted his eyes from, choosing instead to put it in his pocket to read later. He stood a moment at the foot of the bed where the bodies lay. Then he closed up the room and, for the first time, he wept.

Carl’s van was still parked behind the store. Wolgast cut a length of garden hose and drew the Toyota around to the rear, to siphon the contents of the van’s tank into his car. He didn’t know where they might need to go, but the fire season wasn’t over. It had been a mistake, nearly fatal, to let himself be caught off guard. He’d found an empty gas can in a shed behind the house, and when the Toyota’s tank was topped off, he filled this as well. Then Amy helped him go through the store to gather supplies. He took all the food and batteries and propane he thought he could fit, put it all in boxes and carried it to the car. Then he returned to the room where the bodies lay and, carefully, holding his breath, removed Carl’s .38 from the holster on his waist.

In the early hours of the morning, when Amy was finally asleep, Wolgast took the paper from the pocket of his jacket. Just a single sheet this time, dated July 10—almost a month ago. Who knew where Carl had gotten it. Probably he’d driven down into Whiteriver, and then, when he returned, and because of what he’d read and seen, put an end to things. The house was full of medicine; it would have been easy enough for him to accomplish this task. Wolgast had put the paper in his pocket out of fear, but also a fatalistic certainty about what he would find written there. Only the details would be new to him.

CHICAGO FALLS
“Vampire” Virus Reaches East Coast; Millions Dead
Quarantine Line Moves East to Central Ohio
California Secedes from Union, Vows to Defend Itself
India Rattles Missile Might, Threatens “Limited” Nuclear Strike Against Pakistan

WASHINGTON, July 10—President Hughes ordered U.S. military forces to abandon the Chicago perimeter today, after a night of heavy losses when Army and National Guard units were overwhelmed by a large force of Infected Persons moving into the city.

“A great American city has been lost,” Mr. Hughes said in a printed statement. “Our prayers are with the people of Chicago and the fighting men and women who gave their lives to defend them. Their memory will sustain us in this great struggle.”

The attack came just after nightfall, when U.S. forces positioned along the South Loop reported a force of unknown size amassing outside the city’s central business district.

“This assault was clearly organized,” said General Carson White, commander of the Central Quarantine Zone, who called this “a disturbing development.”

“A new defensive perimeter has been established on Route 75, from Toledo to Cincinnati,” White told reporters early Tuesday morning. “That’s our new Rubicon.”

When questioned about reports that large numbers of troops were abandoning their posts, White replied that he had “heard nothing of the kind” and called such rumors “irresponsible.”

“These are the bravest men and women I’ve ever had the honor to serve with,” the general said.

New outbreaks of the illness were reported in cities from Tallahassee, FL, and Charleston, SC, to Helena, MT, and Flagstaff, AZ, as well as southern Ontario and northern Mexico. Casualty estimates provided by the White House and the Centers for Disease Control now top 30 million. The Pentagon placed the number of Infected Persons at another 3 million.

Large portions of St. Louis, abandoned on Sunday, were burning tonight, as were portions of Memphis, Tulsa, and Des Moines. Observers on the ground reported seeing low-flying aircraft over the city’s famous arch moments before the fires broke out and quickly engulfed the downtown area. No one in the administration has confirmed rumors that the fires are part of a federal effort to disinfect the major cities of the Central Quarantine Zone.

Gasoline was scarce or nonexistent virtually everywhere in the country, as transportation corridors continued to be choked by people fleeing the spread of the epidemic. Food was also hard to come by, as were medical supplies from bandages to antibiotics.

Many of the nation’s stranded refugees found themselves with no place to go and no way to get there.

“We’re stuck, just like everybody else,” said David Callahan, outside a McDonald’s east of Pittsburgh. Callahan had driven with his family, a wife and two young children, from Akron, OH—a journey that ordinarily would have taken just two hours but that night had taken twenty. Nearly out of gas, Callahan had pulled off at a comfort station in suburban Monroeville, only to find that the pumps were dry and the restaurant had run out of food two day ago.

“We were going to my mother’s in Johnstown, but now I heard it’s there too,” Callahan said, as an Army convoy, fifty vehicles long, passed on the empty westbound side of the roadway.

“No one knows where to go,” he said. “These things are everywhere.”

Though the illness has yet to appear beyond the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, nations around the world appeared to be preparing themselves for this eventuality. In Europe, Italy, France, and Spain have closed their borders, while other nations have stockpiled medical supplies or banned intercity travel. The U.N. General Assembly, meeting for the first time at The Hague since vacating its New York headquarters early last week, passed a resolution of international quarantine, forbidding any shipping or aircraft from approaching within 200 miles of the North American continent.

Across the U.S., churches and synagogues reported record attendance, as millions of the faithful gathered in prayer. In Texas, where the virus is now widespread, Houston Mayor Barry Wooten, the bestselling author and former head of Holy Splendor Bible Church, the nation’s largest, declared the city “a Gateway to Heaven” and urged residents and refugees from elsewhere in the state to gather at Houston’s Reliant Stadium to prepare for “our ascension to the throne of the Lord, not as monsters but as men and women of God.”

In California, where the infection has yet to appear, the state legislature met in an emergency session last night and quickly passed the First California Articles of Secession, severing the state’s ties to the United States and declaring it a sovereign nation. In her first action as president of the Republic of California, former governor Cindy Shaw ordered all U.S. military and law enforcements assets within the state placed under the command of the California National Guard.

“We will defend ourselves, as any nation has the right to do,” Shaw told the legislature, to thundering applause. “California, and all that it stands for, will endure.”

Reacting to the news from Sacramento, Hughes administration spokesman Tim Romer told reporters, “This is absurd on its face. Now is obviously not the time for any state or local government to take the safety of the American people into its own hands. Our position remains that California is part of the United States.”

Romer also cautioned that any military or law enforcement personnel in California who interfered with federal relief efforts would face harsh sanctions.

“Make no mistake,” Romer said. “They will be regarded as unlawful enemy combatants.”

By Wednesday, California had been recognized by the governments of Switzerland, Finland, the tiny South Pacific Republic of Palau, and the Vatican.

The government of India, apparently in response to the departure of U.S. military forces from South Asia, yesterday repeated its earlier threats to use nuclear weapons against rebel forces in eastern Pakistan.

“Now is the time to contain the spread of Islamic extremism,” Indian Prime Minister Suresh Mitra told Parliament. “The watchdog is sleeping.”

So there it was, Wolgast thought. There it was at last. There was a term he knew and thought of now; he had heard it used only in the context of aviation, to explain how, on an otherwise clear day, a plane could fall so quickly from the sky. OBE. Overcome by events. That was what was happening now. The world—the human race—had been overcome by events.

Take care of Amy, Lacey had said. Amy is yours. He thought of Doyle, placing the keys to the Lexus in his hand, Lacey’s kiss on his cheek; Doyle running after them, waving them on, yelling, “Go, go;” Lacey leaping from the car, to call the stars—for that’s how Wolgast thought of them, as human stars, burning with a lethal brightness—down upon her.

The time for sleeping, for rest, was over. Wolgast would stay awake all night, watching the door with Carl’s .38 in one hand and the Springfield in the other. It was a cool night, the temperature down in the fifties, and Wolgast had set the woodstove going when they’d returned from the store. He took the paper now and folded it into quarters, into eighths, and finally sixteenths, and opened the door to the woodstove. Then he placed the paper in the fire, watching with amazement at how quickly it disappeared.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 517