Greg Hrbek - Not on Fire, but Burning

“Who the fuck’re you,” Cliff says.

“The cavalry.”

“Well, just stay six fucking feet away from him.”

“I’m not infected.”

“Just move.”

“Older brother,” Jon-David says. “Chill. We’re not here to sneeze on you.”

“Give me the gun.”

“You planning on shooting some squirrels?”

“Just. Look …” (The belligerence vanishing from his voice.)

“Tell me your name.”

“Cliff.”

“Okay. Cliff. Listen. We’re here to help. We’re not infected. None of us were anywhere near the zone. And just in case, back at my apartment, I have a thousand 100-milligram doses of Doxycycline. That’s the antibiotic for plague and that’s probably what those fucks released the other day and I’m going to give you some and I’m going to give your little brother the gun and all I want you to do first is see something.”

“See what.”

“What I have in the car.”

“Look—”

“No, you look.”

Motioning at the car with the gun. Making it sound like an invitation, a dare, and a command all at the same time. For several seconds, Cliff standing still. Then going to the car. Peering through the front window. Then the rear one. And Dorian walking now across the driveway, looking into the same window and seeing him in the back. Omar. Who had called him the name and hit him in the stomach and then held him while Karim hit him in the face and later apologized via e-mail. Slumped now in the far corner of the seat. Eyes closed. To all appearances: Dead. “Not dead,” Jon-David assures them. Standing now between the brothers. “Here, I’ll show you.” Opening the door, still holding the air rifle. Now pointing the gun at the body. Now pulling the trigger. “See.” (The body twitching once, then shifting position.) “Not dead. Just extremely asleep.”

By which time Mitch has not even found Kate, much less confirmed her condition. More than an hour gone and he told the boys he’d be back by now but he hasn’t even found her yet. Having gone to the hospital and waited a half hour for his number (87) to be called, so he could approach the station where a woman with a tablet sat behind a barrier of clear plastic sheeting, so he could say Kate’s name, then spell it, only to be told that she was not in the system … “What does that mean?” “It means she hasn’t been admitted,” the woman said. “So let’s get her admitted.” “She isn’t here. If she’s not in the system—” “She has to be here.” “Mister—” “Wakefield. I just gave you the goddamn name. The ambulance took her a half hour ago. How can she not be here yet?” “What were her symptoms?” (Paralyzed momentarily by the question): “She was vomiting blood.” “She might be in Wilton. The most critical ambulance calls are being diverted to Wilton for triage.” “It wasn’t critical. I mean, they said they were coming here.” “That was before they got her vitals …” With the end result of being back in the car, driving to the other hospital, though not knowing for sure if Kate is even there (“I don’t have access to that database” had been the woman’s last words) and thinking: She won’t be there. I’ll get there and she won’t be in that system either because her vitals were all right though of course she was sick ( is sick, I’m not denying that), just not critically — and the second hospital will have access to the information of the first and confirm that Kate is in fact there, where he just was, admitted and in stable condition, and Mitch will turn around and drive back, strangely grateful for the confusion and the scare put into him, since the resultant clarity and sense of hope will be, by contrast, sharper and more intense. While simultaneously (on a parallel plane of thought): I’ll get to Wilton and her name will come right up, all data entered into the proper fields like words chiseled in stone: KATHRYN WAKEFIELD: CONDITION CRITICAL: QUARANTINED 9:04 P.M. And also (on a third plane): that she will be as absent at the second hospital as she was at the first, her name entered nowhere, her body not to be found in space, and I perhaps to travel for the semblance of all time the road between two hospitals (signifying the interstice between two possibilities), remembering how I loved her at the age of twenty-four like someone under a spell, loved her more than he whose name will not be uttered, more than he ever did or could have. And now, the almost thirty years since then (describable as the period of celestial coloration after the setting of a hot sun, which is the bending of the light of love: in other words, the effort to love in spite of anger and regret and an implacable yearning for a path we didn’t go down), I can feel those thirty years of emotion being compacted suddenly now, like the matter of a dying star, into a mass so dense that a hole opens in my heart, and I falling into it and through its feeling-time even as I park the car and run across the pavement to the doors of the hospital, already thinking-as-saying: I’m trying to find someone. Her name is Kathryn …

While you, in the driveway of your home of the last eight years, stand with two right-wing supremacists alongside a car in the back of which sleeps a kidnapped eleven-year-old of Arab descent. No parents to help. Only a brother who is saying, “You better get lost, our father is inside.” And the response of the man (to whom, a week ago, you told the name of the boy now lying unconscious in the car) is: “No he’s not. He’s at the hospital.” (Then, looking at you): “Your mother is in my prayers, Dorian.” (Knowing things he can’t possibly know, as if he is something he can’t possibly be — until he reminds you that your father posted on the community page at 8:02, explaining about the ambulance and that he was leaving to check on her and the boys were staying.)

Cliff: “Who is he?”

“Omar Mahfouz,” Jon-David says. “But his name doesn’t matter. Does your mother’s name matter to them?”

“You said you have drugs.”

“Did I?”

“Antibiotics.”

“Not with me. I’ll tell you what. Help me get this fucker in …”

“In?”

“You help me move him into the house and Justin will go for the meds. Be back in ten, fifteen minutes.”

“No way.”

“Big brother,” Jon-David says. “Think ahead. What do you think’s going to happen next? A nice orderly federal response to this shit-storm? Three successful biological attacks, maybe more coming, every day another wave of infection. Even if there are enough drugs in the stockpile, who says you’ll ever see them. The drugs are the next target. How do they get them? Think. Some fuck like this kid walks into a clinic and blows himself into a thousand stinking pieces of raw meat. Think. Think like someone whose country is under attack. Think like someone fighting a goddamn war.”

Say: “Can I have the gun now.”

“Hm?”

“The gun.”

“This isn’t a gun, Dorian. This is a toy.”

“I know.”

He will go to the trunk of the car and open it and unzip a duffel. Then return to you holding a handgun.

“Do you know how to load?”

“No.”

“Here,” he says. (Handing you the weapon. In his other hand a rectangular rod. The ammunition.) “Push that in. Yep, right there. Now rack the slide. On top. Pull it back. Harder. There. Good. Now a round is chambered.”

“Is the safety on?”

“Yes”—and as he shows you, you are thinking: Now. Release the safety and shoot him. Not chest or stomach. Low. In the leg. Then what. What about the other one … Holding the weapon two-handed but your hands still trembling as they trembled all through the lesson. Think. Think. He knows. Knows what you’re thinking. Yet he will go down on one knee and fold his hands around yours, and you allowing him to hold your hands, holding the gun together until the shaking stops.