Нора Робертс - Year One

She ate from her meager supplies. Usually dry cereal, as milk had become nearly impossible to find unless you could stomach the powdered stuff. And she couldn’t.

She dressed for a run, as she’d discovered running could be necessary, even in broad daylight, even for a handful of blocks. She strapped her briefcase cross-body. Inside, she kept a .32 she’d found on the street. She locked her door and hit the streets.

Along the way, if she felt reasonably safe, she took pictures with her phone. Always something to document. Another body, another burned-out car, another broken shop window. Otherwise, she kept up a steady jog.

She kept in good shape—always had—and could kick into a sprint if needed. Most mornings the streets remained eerily quiet, empty but for abandoned cars, wrecks. Those who roamed the nights looking for blood had crawled back into their holes with the sunlight like vampires.

She used the side door, as Tim in security had given her a full set of keys and swipes before he’d disappeared. She always used the stairs, as they’d had a couple of power outages. The climb up five flights helped make up for missing her five-times-weekly hour at the gym.

She’d stopped letting the echoing silence of the building bother her. The lunchroom and the commissary still had coffee. Before she started a pot, she ground extra beans for the plastic bag in her briefcase. Only a day’s supply at a time—after all, she wasn’t the only one still coming to work who needed that good jolt.

Sometimes Little Fred—the enthusiastic intern who, like Arlys, continued to report to the TV station every day—restocked. Arlys never questioned where the bouncy little redhead acquired the coffee beans, the boxes of Snickers, or the Little Debbie snack cakes.

She just enjoyed the largess.

Today, she filled her thermos with coffee and decided on a Swiss Roll.

Taking both, she wound her way to the newsroom. She could’ve taken an office—plenty of them available now—but preferred the open feel of the newsroom.

She hit the lights, watched them blink on over empty desks, blank screens, silent computers.

She tried not to worry about the day she hit the switches and nothing happened.

As always, she settled down at the desk she’d chosen, crossed her fingers, and booted up the computer. The Wi-Fi in her apartment building had hit the dirt two weeks earlier, but the station still pulled it.

It ran painfully slow, often hiccupped off and on, but it ran. She clicked to connect, poured her coffee, settled back to drink and wait—fingers still crossed.

“And so we live another day,” she said aloud when the screen came up.

She clicked on her e-mail, drank, and waited until it fluttered on-screen. As she did several times a day, she searched for an e-mail from her parents, her brother, the friends she had back in Ohio. She’d had no luck phoning or texting in more than a week. The last time she’d been able to reach her parents, her mother had told her they were fine. But her voice had sounded raw and weak.

Then nothing. Calls didn’t go through, texts and e-mails went unanswered.

She sent another group e-mail.

Please contact me. I check my e-mail several times a day. You can phone my cell, it’s still working. I need to know how you are. Any information from you and your location. I’m really getting worried. Melly, if you get this, please, please, go check on my parents. I hope you and yours are well. Arlys.

She hit send and, because there was nothing else she could do, locked it in a corner of her mind and got to work.

She brought up The New York Times , The Washington Post . Reports had thinned, but she could still dig out some meat.

The former Secretary of State—now president, through the line of succession—spoke by videoconference with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the current head of the CDC (the former had died on day nine of the pandemic), and the newly appointed head of the WHO. Elizabeth Morrelli succeeded Carlson Track, who succumbed to illness. Questions regarding the details of Dr. Track’s death had not been answered.

Arlys noted that Morrelli issued a statement claiming that through global efforts, a new vaccine to combat H5N1-X should be ready for distribution within a week.

“Funny, that’s what Track said ten days ago. Bullshit in a hermetically sealed bunker is still bullshit.”

She read about a group of people hoarding food, water, and supplies in an elementary school in Queens firing on others who tried to break in.

Five dead, including a woman carrying a ten-month-old baby.

On the other end of the spectrum, a church in the Maryland suburbs was handing out blankets, MREs, candles, batteries, and other basics.

Reports of murders, suicides, rapes, maimings. And a scattering of reports on heroism and simple kindnesses.

Of course, there were the lunacy reports of people claiming to have seen creatures with luminous wings flying around. Or of a man impaling another man with flaming darts shot out of his fingertips.

She read reports of the military transporting volunteers believed to be immune to secured facilities for testing. Where are they? she wondered. And quarantines of entire communities, mass burials, blockades, a firebomb hurled onto the White House lawn.

The fanatical preacher Reverend Jeremiah White, who claimed the pandemic to be God’s wrath on a godless world and proclaimed the virtuous would survive only by vanquishing the wicked.

“They walk among us,” was his latest cry, “but they are not as us. They are as from hell, and must be driven back to the fire!”

Arlys made notes, checked other sites. More going dark every day, she thought as she surfed.

Checking her watch, she brought up Skype to connect with a source she trusted more than any other.

He gave her his rubbery grin when he came on-screen. His hair sprang everywhere at once, a Billy Idol white slick around his pleasantly goofy face.

“Hey, Chuck.”

“Hey, Awesome Arlys! Still five-by-five?”

“Yeah, and you?”

“Healthy, wealthy, and wise. Did you lose any more?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t seen anyone else this morning. Bob Barrett’s still not showing up. Lorraine Marsh lost it yesterday.”

“Yeah, saw that.”

“I’ll pick up her afternoon report because I don’t see her coming back. We’ve still got some crew. Carol’s in the booth, and Jim Clayton’s been coming in every day for the last ten or so. It’s pretty surreal when the head of broadcasting shows up to pick up as gaffer or whatever needs filling in. And Little Fred’s still stocking the commissary, writing some copy, playing gofer, doing some on-air.”

“She’s totally cute. Why don’t you set me up with her?”

“Happy to. Give me your address and I’ll bring her right to you.”

He gave her that grin again. “Wish I could, but the walls have ears. The fucking air has them. Your friendly neighborhood hacker needs his Batcave.”

“Batman wasn’t friendly, he was a brilliant psycho. And Spider-Man didn’t have a cave.”

He gave her a cackling chuckle. “Only another reason I’m your biggest fan. You can school me on superheroes. Favorite report you read this morning?”

“The one about the naked woman riding a unicorn in SoHo.”

“Man, I’d love to see a naked woman, with or without unicorn. It’s been awhile.”

“I’m not stripping down for you, Chuck. Not even for the buzz you’re going to give me.”

“We’re pals, Arlys. Pals don’t require naked.”

“So, what’s the buzz?”

The grin faded away. “You caught today’s tally?”

“Yeah.” Both the Times and the Post ran a daily updated total of reported deaths. “We’ve topped a billion by five hundred million, three hundred twenty-two thousand, four hundred and sixteen.”