Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

What the hell was Kelly doing? She wasn’t the type to be ripping off her neighbors while they were in there dying. Whatever it was, she was all but guaranteeing she would catch the virus.

Cursing under his breath, Johnny pulled on his Steelers windbreaker and headed out. “I’ll be right back, Pop.”

“We gotta leave by three, don’t forget.”

Clutching the doorknob, Johnny opened his mouth to tell his father that people were dying, that no one was going to the frickin’ movies. He didn’t, though.

“I won’t, Dad.” He closed the door and headed toward the Pointer’s house.

For once, Johnny wanted to go to the drive-in. Not just to escape the nightmare unfolding in his town for a few hours, but because it was the only place his dad seemed like himself. It was the only thing keeping his dad going.

The Pointers’ front door was ajar. Johnny knocked, called, “Hello?”

“In here.”

Hands in his pockets, feeling like he was surrounded by the virus, Johnny followed her voice down a hallway covered in water fowl-patterned wallpaper, into the Pointer’s living room.

The four of them were sitting on couches and stuffed chairs, hands in their laps, all perfectly still except for Parker, whose lips were wrapped around a straw, sucking greedily from a water bottle Kelly was holding, his throat pulsing as he swallowed. The TV was on, showing some Pixar flick. Wet stains bloomed on the couch cushions beneath each of the Pointers. The smell of piss was overpowering.

“Jesus, what are you doing?” Johnny asked.

Kelly held out a mask. Johnny took it, pulled it over his mouth and nose. It was one of those little plastic jobs you wore when you mowed the lawn, probably not worth shit against a virus that the news described as incredibly resistant, able to survive on surfaces for days.

“What are you doing?” Johnny repeated. “The more houses you go into, the more likely you are to catch this thing.”

She shrugged. “My folks have it. I know I’ve been exposed.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know that for sure.” Johnny did not want her words to be true, for his sake as well as hers. “You’re dancing with death, coming in here.”

Kelly chuckled. “Dancing with death. That’s poetic.”

Actually, it was a line from one of his band’s songs, but after saying it out loud he was too embarrassed to admit he’d just quoted his own band’s lyrics.

Kelly wiped Parker’s chin with a kitchen towel she had hooked through her belt. “I kept thinking about Mackenzie and Parker. I babysit them sometimes. I kept picturing them in their rooms, all alone, scared to death. Not able to move. Hungry. So I came to check on them. Parker was just like I pictured him—all alone in his room. Probably since yesterday.”

“You touched him? Jesus.”

Kelly put her hands on her hips. “He can hear you, you know. So can his mom and dad.”

“Sorry,” Johnny muttered. They were looking at him; all four of them.

Kelly squatted in front of Lara Pointer, guided the straw into her mouth. Immediately, Lara began pulling on the straw, her mouth suddenly animated, looking completely normal. The news had described how the virus keeps people from initiating movement, but not from reacting; seeing it, however, was another thing completely. If she could drink, why couldn’t she talk?

When she’d finished, Kelly went to the Pointer’s sink and refilled the big plastic water bottle before heading for the door. Johnny followed her out, closing the door behind him.

Instead of turning right, back toward her house, Kelly headed left across the lawn.

“Where are you going now?” Johnny called after her.

“When’s the last time you saw the Cucuzzas?”

“What are you gonna do, go door to door?”

She stopped, turned to face him. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You’re out of your mind. It’s like you want to die—”

She held up both hands to ward off his words and shouted, “They’re all alone. They’re scared. Can’t you see it in their eyes?”

He stood on the Pointer’s front stoop, not wanting to think about their eyes.

“Can’t you?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah. I can see it.” He would see it for the rest of his life. And, God, he didn’t want to go through it. Johnny looked at his watch. “Look, I have to take my father to his drive-in, or he’ll try to drive himself. Will you be okay?”

“No,” she said, like it was the dumbest question she’d ever been asked. “Will you?”

“No,” he admitted. “I guess not.”

A pickup cruised by. They both watched it in silence. There were fewer vehicles passing every hour.

“They’re saying three percent of people seem to be immune to the virus. Did you hear that?” Kelly said.

“I don’t love those odds.”

“No, they suck bad.”

It was a chance, though. There was hope.

“Neither of us has it yet, and lots of other people do. Maybe that means something,” he said.

Kelly nodded. “Maybe it does.”

Johnny had a sudden urge to give Kelly a hug, but he was afraid it would be awkward, or Kelly would think he was weird. “I’ll check on you in the morning,” he said. “That okay?”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

Back at the drive-in, Johnny was terrified he was going to start nodding at any minute. He was actually glad to have something to do to take his mind off it, even if it was filling popcorn boxes for no one.

He wondered what it felt like, to be trapped in your frozen body. Were you numb?

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?”