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  “But that’s even more reason for me to stay and take care of you!”

  “I’m not planning on getting that far. I’ve lived on a farm nigh on thirty years. I know how to put an animal out of its misery.” She put her hand on his. “Everything passes,” she said. “That’s what age shows you, for better or worse. You know, I grew up in England, didn’t come over here ‘til I was twenty?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “When I was at school we visited a records office, where they keep the births and deaths, parish registers, that kind of thing. As a girl I found it dead boring but I remember seeing something that stuck with me. They had this book from a village long ago, ‘bout this big.” She held her hands wide apart. “Thick it was, old yellow pages that crackled when you touched them. It had the names of burials, month by month. Most months there was just a half page, sometimes a little more. Then I turned another page and the names…they just went on and on. Page after page after page…in just one month…until almost the whole village must have gone. It was the plague. The plague had come.” Nan’s hands settled, her gaze far away. “So you see, it’s not the first time this has happened. It’s just the first time it’s happened to us.”

  * * *

  They spent the next day loading the boat with supplies, Nana supervising from the porch. Getting the boat onto the trailer and into the water was the hardest part, though between them, Owen and Ester managed it. Lucky for him, the girl was stronger than she looked. But for Owen the toughest task still lay ahead, because he knew for sure that he wasn’t going to prise Nan Tapper out of that house without one heck of a fight, but was just as sure that he was no way going without her. He’d left enough people behind already. If he had to leave, they would leave together.

  But there was something else he had to do first.

  Owen sneaked out early, before Nana was awake, creeping past Ester crooning to her sister in the kitchen. With any luck he’d be back before they even realised he was gone.

  The wheels of his bike spun along the dark grey tarmac of his home town for what he knew would be the last time. He passed his old high school with its boarded up windows, the hospital car park overflowing with stretchers full of putrid bodies like a war zone, stores with broken windows…until finally he turned into the street that was as familiar as his own reflection.

  He rode past the first few houses: Mr. Emerson’s, Mrs. Clark’s, the Booths’ with their faded stars and stripes hanging forlorn out front, Kendra James’s place where he’d had his first kiss not three months ago… Back when things like that seemed important.

  At the last house but one, Owen stopped. He waited a moment, studying the outlines of what he now saw had been a perfect world. The polished, wooden door with its brass knocker, the neat square windows with the carefully chosen ornaments and photo frames on the inside ledges. The dove grey porch that he and his mother had painted together after giving up waiting for his dad to do it. Remnants of a life that was gone forever.

  Skirting the house he headed round back, heart thumping, throat thickening with every step. He let the bike fall onto the brittle grass, took one step after another until he was back there, in front of the french windows. Scene of his longing dreams and fevered nightmares.

  Sweat and sunlight, white fingertips pressed against glass.

  But the fingertips were gone, a dark rust-like stripe the only evidence that she had ever stood there.

  He peered through into the darkened room, saw the slumped body on the floor beside the couch. It was positioned exactly as it had been the last time he’d come. “Mom,” he whispered.

  Last time he’d said her name out loud he’d been yelling through the glass, rattling the door handle, scared out of his wits at what they’d seen on the news at school.

  She was inside, leaning over the couch, but spun round at the sound of his voice. “Mom! I can’t get in. The bolt’s on.”

  “Honey, I know.” She came right up to the glass door, her face a riot of emotions. He watched her tamp them down, trying to put on a brave face that, even through the confusion, he understood was for him. “You can’t come in, baby…” Her voice had cracked. “It’s Hope…”

  His eyes flicked behind her back to the couch where his sister lay stretched out—her thin, white arm dangling from the cushions. She wasn’t moving. “Mom, let me in,” he’d pleaded. “Please.”

  “Owen, no! You can’t come in. You have to go. Go to your nana’s. I’ll leave a note on the front door for Dad; he’ll come find you there. Okay?” She wiped her face with a trembling hand and when she was done she pressed it up against the glass, fingertips white with the pressure, like they would break through to reach him if they could. “I can’t let you in, baby. You know that.”

  So, helpless and sick with rage and grief, he’d left them. And now he was leaving them again, for good this time.

  “Owen!” she’d called as he’d turned to pick up his bike. “I love you!”

  “I love you,” he whispered, wiping at the hot tears scalding his face. He crouched and sobbed then, wild like an animal, chest heaving like his heart wanted to escape.

  He’d meant to come back and bury them, but he couldn’t even do that. There was no time. The past had slipped through his fingers while he wasn’t looking and all he had left was the future, whether he wanted it or not.

  * * *

  No blood on the steps this time, but as soon as he pulled up to the farmhouse he knew something was wrong. Tire tracks in the dust, and a stillness that felt unnatural. He followed the driveway round to the back and stopped. There, right by the back porch. Ugly and alien. A truck.

  For a moment he was paralysed, his brain refusing to accept the fact that strangers had come. They were finally here. Then with trembling fingers he took out his pistol and crept inside.

  The house appeared to be deserted, but as he made his way into the kitchen, he realised that it wasn’t. His brain slowed again, taking several seconds to process the puddle of red that edged its way across the floor, curling round the wheels of Nana’s chair. He let out an animal shout of shock and pain as he saw her body stretched out on the floor beside it.

  “Nana!”

  “ ‘wen?” It came out like a sigh and he dropped to her side. The head wound was deep and her face was pale as death, but by some force of will, she was awake. On the floor beside her lay his grandpa’s shotgun.

  “No, no, no, no…”

  “Men here. Ester…” she croaked, her breath bubbling between the words. She grasped his arm, already trying to pull herself back into her chair. “The woods…” She bumped him with her weakened fist. “Go!”

  Owen ran outside. Which way had they gone? All of a sudden he heard a noise—a baby crying. He pelted toward the sound, head filled with the sounds of his breathing, feet crunching over dried branches as he sprinted into the trees.

  He came across the baby first, set down in a blanket among the mossy stones. Then he heard a shout and saw Ester a short distance away, locked in a desperate struggle with a man in blue overalls.

  “Hey!” shouted Owen. “You!” He held the pistol out in front, trying to keep his hand from trembling. It was the man who’d tried to steal his bike. I know you.

  The man froze but didn’t release his hold on the girl. “Guess I was right,” he said, a sickly smile crawling over his face. “Owen Tapper. Told ‘em we’d find you here.”

  “Leave her alone,” said Owen, trying to sound brave.

  The man looked unimpressed, though his eyes flickered to the gun in Owen’s hand. “Relax, kid. There’s no need to be shooting anyone. That thing with the bike, it was nothin’ personal. It didn’t mean nothing. We don’t want trouble with you…but you don’t know her, she’s nothing to you. Just leave her and we’ll let you go—okay?” He held up one hand, placatory, but his eyes told a different story. Owen hesitated and for a split second he wondered what his father would have done in his place. But his father wasn’t here. It was just Ow
en and a gun…and a man trying to take what didn’t belong to him.

  He pulled the trigger.

  They were running, him clinging onto Ester’s hand as she dragged him through the trees, while on her back, the baby squalled. Behind them the man’s shrieks were fading, but other shouts rang out in the distance. “Hurry!” said Ester, hauling him along until finally they staggered into the driveway. “There are more of them,” she said, nodding to the woods as she adjusted the sling to make Jojo more comfortable. “Where’s your nana?”

  Owen looked around, dazed. “She’s…right there,” he said, confused.

  Nan Tapper was sitting on the front porch in her chair, just like always. The only difference was the drying patch of red on one side of her face. On her lap lay the old tartan blanket that Grandpa said came from way back. “What are you doing?” he said, snapping out of his stupor and running to the front steps.

  “They’re coming!” said Ester, as the sound of another vehicle reached them from the farm gate.

  Owen turned, frantic. “Nana, we have to go!”

  “Yes, you do,” she said, her voice sure and steady. “But I’m staying right here.” She twitched back the blanket to reveal the tip of the shotgun barrel. “Got to give a proper welcome to our guests first, see?”

  “Nana…”

  “Owen, don’t be arguing with me. You may be the last of this family but I’m the eldest and what I say goes—and I say you go. Right now.”

  The engine noise grew louder. Ester grabbed his arm. “Owen…”

  He looked up the drive and then back to Nana, the battered remains of his heart tearing itself in half. “Owen Tapper,” Nan snapped. “Get going or I’ll shoot you my damn self!”

  He pelted up the steps and threw his arms around her, breathing in her scent: lavender and cookie dough—the scents of his childhood—but even that was tainted now, infected with the rusty tang of blood. “I’ll come back,” he said.

  Nan didn’t reply. She just pushed him away. “Enough now.”

  Owen and Ester cleared the side of the building just as the first car screeched to a stop in front of the house. They ran full tilt to the boat and threw themselves on board, Owen fumbling with the mooring rope before starting up the engine. The revving burst through the air, like a gunshot. Then, like echoes, real shots rang out from the farmhouse. One, two, then a crackling exchange that didn’t stop until they were almost to the middle of the river.

  “Get down!” called Ester as first one man, then another, arrived at the river bank. More shots sounded as the men fired at the boat, but the bullets fell short, peppering the water instead. When they saw that the boat was out of range the men gave up.

  Owen and Ester stared at one another, shell shocked into silence. Against all odds, they’d got away.

  After a while Owen cut the engine and let the current carry them downstream. For a long time he was numb, unable to talk. He was aware of Ester moving around, straightening out the supplies, taking care of Jojo, but he felt detached, like he’d left the core of who he was back there, at the farmhouse.

  “What do we do?” asked Ester eventually. “Carry on downstream or head to the shore?”

  She stood in the prow, waiting for an answer. A fourteen-year-old girl with a baby to care for. Owen realised that Ester and her sister hadn’t asked for this any more than any of them had, and all he’d done was push them away, keep them out. Not anymore. This was his world now and they were in it.

  He’d spent so long doubting and wondering what was right and what was wrong. But he knew exactly what Nan Tapper would have said.

  “We go on.”

  Learn more about Laura Albins

  A rock struck the window, startling Cassandra Morin. She slid across the back seat, further away from the angry mob huddling around the car, but it was useless. More protesters were crowded around the passenger’s side as well. Looking into the crowd, she could see people with red streaks marring their faces, a telltale sign that they were infected.

  She wanted to scream at them, to warn everyone that gathering in a tightly packed crowd would only speed up the rate of infection, but she knew no one would listen. They were scared. Their loved ones were dead or dying and they wanted answers. The Centers for Disease Control office in New York seemed like the right place to find them.

  Cassie adjusted the respirator covering her nose and mouth and tapped on the driver’s shoulder.

  “How long have they been out here?” she asked, though the mask muffled her voice.

  The driver glanced over his shoulder as the car slowly pushed its way through the crowd and approached the makeshift chain-link gates blocking the way into the CDC offices. He mumbled something, but it was unintelligible through his mask.

  “Say that again,” she said. He seemed to repeat himself, but she still couldn’t understand him. Frustrated, she pulled down her mask, letting it dangle from her neck by its rubber straps.

  “I asked how long they’ve been out here.”

  The driver turned toward her, startled. His eyebrows arched in surprise and he started to reply, but she held up her hand.

  “Take off the stupid mask, John,” Cassie said. “We’ve both already tested immune. All the masks are doing are scaring the people.”

  Begrudgingly, John pulled down his mask. “They started gathering ever since the first reported outbreaks. They think we have some miracle cure hidden inside.”

  “That’s ludicrous,” she said, tucking some flyaway hairs back into the severe bun at the back of her head. “Why the hell would we have a cure and not share it with the world? What possible gain is there for us? I think people have a very different view of what the CDC actually does.”

  John gestured toward the angry protesters, waving signs that read “The Government’s Killing Us” and “Our Pain, Their Gain.”

  “Try telling that to them,” John said.

  The car rolled forward once again, blocked on either side by National Guard soldiers in full protective equipment. She frowned as she saw their loaded weapons. No one, it seemed, knew how to avoid panicking the population. They rolled through the gates, which swung closed behind them.

  The CDC building was a wall of glass windows facing the busy street. A few cars were parked near the front of the building but the lot was mostly deserted. John parked and climbed out, opening the door for Cassie as he walked around toward the trunk.

  Cassie climbed out, smoothing her pants suit as she stood. Before John could unload her suitcase from the trunk, the front doors opened. An older black man emerged, blinking against the harsh summer glare. His hair was white at the temples and there were deep wrinkles around his eyes, but he smiled broadly as Cassie waved.

  “Chuck,” she said, stepping forward and hugging the older man.

  Charles Westmore hugged her tightly back. They quickly separated, though, and she tried her best to replace her serious demeanor.

  “Welcome to New York,” he said. “I hope your flight wasn’t too bad.”

  “It was a private chartered plane,” she explained as he led her into the building. “Those are pretty much the only planes still in the air. All things considered, it wasn’t half bad. How are things here?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Probably just as bad as they are in Atlanta. The hospitals are overflowing and medical supplies are running dangerously short. We’re trying to disseminate information about how to stay healthy—pretty much the same advice we give for the seasonal flu: wash your hands, don’t have too much direct contact, wear a mask if you’re feeling sick. There aren’t that many papers or television stations still operating, so getting the word out has been tough.”

  They walked past an empty reception desk and stepped onto an elevator. Chuck selected one of the top floors and the doors slid closed.

  “I was glad to hear you were immune in your email,” Chuck said as soft music filled the elevator.

  “You, too,” Cassie replied.

  “I was kind of surprised
to hear from you, to be honest. I didn’t figure even the Atlanta office would have an investigator left to send up our way.”

  Cassie glanced over at her counterpart and arched a brow. “You’re ground zero for this disease. Of course they would send someone.”

  The elevator door opened onto a floor with a wide bank of cubicles. They were immaculately kept: pictures still sat on desks, potted plants looked a little dry but otherwise healthy, and some jackets even still hung on the backs of chairs. The cubicles, however, were practically abandoned.

  A blond haired woman approached, holding out a folder for Chuck. “Thanks, Joanne,” he said as he took the binder from her. “Joanne, this is Cassandra Morin, an investigator out of Atlanta. Cassie, this is my administrative assistant.”

  Cassie barely acknowledged the other woman. Her eyes were drifting over the sea of empty chairs. “Where is everyone?”

  Chuck gestured toward Joanne, who quickly walked away. “They’re not here. I sent them home.”

  “You did what?” she asked incredulously. “We’re in the middle of the biggest epidemic the world has ever seen. This is a hundred times worse than the 1918 Spanish Flu, and you sent everyone home?”

  Chuck started walking away and Cassie was forced to hurry to keep up. “These people had families, Cassie. They had parents, spouses, even kids dying of this disease. They needed to be with their families.”

  “They needed to be in the office, trying to find a way to stop it! That’s what we do; we’re the CDC!”

  He stopped and turned toward her, his jovial expression replaced with a stern glower. “There is no way to stop it. It’s way beyond us now. Yeah, we’re the CDC. We train for disease outbreaks, but not like this. We talk about superbugs in brain trusts but it’s all theoretical exercises. No one’s really prepared when something like this happens.”