Hour 23 (6 page)

Nolan stayed put.

Nurse Lowell looked up from Kevin’s arm. “If I let you go, will you cut the crap for the rest of the time I have you?”

“Sure,” Nolan said.

“Fine. Use the one just across the hall. I’ll be watching.”

Nolan walked out of the nurse’s office and Chloe trailed behind.

“Oh, and where do you think you’re going, Miss Whiteman?”

“I need a sip of water.”

“Do you think I was born yesterday?” Nurse Lowell said, sounding amused.

“What?” Chloe said. “I’m thirsty.”

“You can use my water cooler.”

“Fine,” Chloe said. She grabbed a small paper cup of water before she returned to her corner of the room, defeated.

Nolan walked across the hall and into the men’s room, quickly took care of business, then spun around to head back to the nurse’s station. Before he turned the corner to leave the lavatory, he stopped, realizing that he could hear voices down the hall. They were hushed and echoed off the walls, but if Nolan stayed perfectly still, he could understand them.

“We can’t use the word ‘quarantine,’” the first voice said. It sounded like Principal Chaplik.

“Then keep using ‘lockdown,’” someone replied. Nolan couldn’t be certain, but if he had to guess, it was the officer that Chloe knew. Blankenship. “I won’t tell you how to do your job, but all those kids have cell phones. Reception’s poor, sure, but any one of them can use Google and know what’s going on out there.”

Chaplik said, “They’ll riot if we call it a quarantine.”

“And they won’t if you call it a lockdown?”

The voices paused.

“How many more officers are on the way?”

Nolan heard Blankenship chuckle.

“I’m the only one.”

“Are you kidding me?” Chaplik said loudly.

“We’re spread thin right now, Mr. Chaplik.” Blankenship drew a sharp breath. “Fire crews are headed back out in a moment, and my partner is on his way to a call in town.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s not good.”

“Jesus,” Chaplik said with a stutter. “What is it? Is it terrorists?”

“If it is, no one’s taking responsibility for it.”

“Well then, what?”

“No one has a clue right now.”

“People are eating each other in the streets, and no one has a clue why?” Chaplik asked.

“We don’t’ know how it’s spreading—whether it’s through air, through water, through one-on-one contact with those infected. We just don’t know. Our best bet is having everyone stay put in small groups—we can manage this.”

“My ass we can.” Chaplik snorted. “Half of our faculty didn’t show up this morning—apparently the half that watch the morning news. Maybe with a teacher in each room we could, but right now I’ve got fifty kids in rooms designed for twenty-five. They’re getting restless.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?”

“Move them all to the cafeteria. That’s what my emergency guidebook says to do in situations like this.”

Blankenship laughed. “I can guarantee that book wasn’t written with situations like this in mind. What if one of them turns ill in that wide, open cafeteria of yours? You’ve already lost one bus driver, three students, and word came back that your gym teacher tested positive. This thing moves fast.”

“Then we’ll deal with it then. But I want to be able to see them all at once. I want them all to have their own seat, at least, for Christ’s sake.”

“You’re the principal, it’s your call. If I were you, I would keep the ones on the bus in the nurse’s station for a while longer, though.”

“Fine. I’ll go make the announcement—”

Nolan felt a hand yank at his hoodie.

“Hey, get your hands off of me,” he said. He swatted his hands around and stumbled backwards.

“I thought you may have fallen in, Mr. Fischer,” Nurse Lowell said. She didn’t look pleased. “Let’s go.”

The petite nurse grabbed Nolan by his sleeve and escorted him across the hall and back to her office. After they returned, Nolan went back to his corner with Chloe, who was in tears.

“God, Nolan, where have you been?” Chloe asked with a sob.

“I got caught up with something. What’s wrong?”

Chloe sniffled. “My dad hasn’t texted me back yet. And these news reports, and videos, oh God—it’s awful, Nolan. It’s happening all over New York.”

Chloe extended her arm and held her cell phone close to Nolan’s face. An image of the New York City skyline panned across the screen; smoke rose from several buildings. The camera changed to show a street clogged with cars and people running.

Nolan said, “Your dad is fine. We’re fine. We’re going to be fine.”

“They’re talking about evacuations. They’re already trying to evacuate parts of the city, and—I’m not leaving without my dad. My dad’s out there somewhere, dealing with all of this.” Chloe’s voice had rose so loud that a couple of girls chatting nearby turned to give her a dirty look.

“We’ll get to him. Don’t worry. We’re sure as hell not staying here. This place is a ticking time bomb.”

On the other end of the room, Nurse Lowell hung up her phone. “An announcement is going to come over the speakers soon telling us to all meet in the cafeteria—ignore it.”

“Why?” Jared hollered from his chair.

“We’ve been told to remain here,” Nurse Lowell said sternly.

“Says who?” Jared groaned. “Principal ass chaps?”

Nurse Lowell slammed her hand down on her desk. “That’s enough. I know that it’s been a hard day and there’s a lot of confusion, but that doesn’t give you all an open invitation to be disrespectful wise-asses.” Nurse Lowell covered her mouth quick, shocked by her own profanity.

Kevin Dobbs sat on one of the nurse’s beds and scanned the room. “Wait a second—where are Britney and David?”

Rachel Epps yelled “Hey” from a corner opposite of Kevin before anyone could give him an answer. “I just got off the phone with my mom. She’s trying to pick me up, and she said there’s a cop out there who isn’t letting her through?”

“So what?” Nurse Lowell said.

“So, um, shouldn’t you be able to do something about that?” Rachel asked.

Nurse Lowell said, “Do I look like a cop? Do I look like I direct traffic?”

“Hey, lady,” Jared hollered, “you gotta’ let us out if our parents are outside, trying to pick us up. It’s like, in the constitution.”

“Shut your mouth, Jared,” Nurse Lowell fumed. “You don’t dare refer to me as ‘lady’—”

“This is bullshit,” another girl exclaimed from across the room. “Total bullshit.”

The room erupted into arguing and yelling.

Nolan and Chloe sat together in their corner, staying out of the fray.

“My dad will know what to do,” Chloe said, staring down at her cell phone screen. Her hands trembled. “I’ll keep trying to get a hold of him. He’ll know what to do…he’ll know what to do.”

SIX

The only sound between Dana and the lonely road ahead of her was the dull buzz of her car’s engine. Her Prius hummed and whizzed down Pigeon Hill as it approached the outskirts of East Violet below.

Dana’s driving was cautious and careful; the accident in town she witnessed earlier left her rattled. She treated every intersection she passed as if a police car may materialize from thin air.

Each time Dana blinked, or took a moment to shut her eyes at a stop light, the ghastly image outside of Henderson High would reappear. Two small legs, almost neatly crossed, with two clean white stockings, save for a drop or two of blood. The way they led up to a skirt, to where the rest of a body should be. Dana hadn’t seen anything nearly as gory in a scary movie, let alone in real life. It left a sour knot tugging deep inside of her stomach.

Almost home,
Dana thought.

She couldn’t wait to cuddle up on her couch with Elliott. Maybe instead of hawking over her iPad and the morning news, she would nuke a cup of hot chocolate and watch
The Price is Right
. Something, anything, to take her mind off of the Coopers down the street or the stray legs on the pavement outside her school. No, it would just be her and Elliott shouting the price of canned yams at her television set.

Whump-whump, whump-whump, whump-whump
…a helicopter passing overhead snapped Dana out of her daytime television daydream. Up ahead, blocking the road into town, was a wall of police cruisers and SUV’s.

Dana braked, slowed her car down to a crawl, and approached the road block. Within moments a fat, older officer, nearly busting out of his uniform and vest, waddled towards Dana’s window. He waved his hand in a plunging motion, signaling for Dana to roll her window down.

Dana pressed a plastic switch on her door, and the car window slid down.

The officer grumbled, “Ma’am, I can’t let you through unless you live in town.”

“Oh, sure, sure.” Dana fiddled through the briefcase on her passenger seat and pulled out a clutch. “I live just over on Oak.”

“That’s great. I’m gonna’ hafta’ see some I.D. saying so.”

“Well, of course. That’s what I’m doing, I mean. I’m looking for it right now.” Dana dug clumsily through the clutch. She flicked past credit cards, receipts, and chewing gum wrappers. Her stomach sank when she finally came across her license. It had been three years since Dana finished graduate school and moved to East Violet, and she never bothered to update the address on her license. She plucked the license out of her clutch and handed it to the officer anyway.

“This here says Albany. You know you’re in East Violet, right?”

“Of course, officer, it’s just that—”

“This is no good, I can’t let you through with this.”

“Can you please let me explain?” Dana asked.

The officer gave a silent nod.

“I live in the Raintree Village complex on Oak. Number 505. I teach English at Henderson High. Where the bus accident is? You must know about it. I raced over there this morning and there’s a roadblock at the school, too. The officer there would not let me into work, and instructed me to go home—which is this way. I just want to get home.”

“Is that so?” the officer said, before grunting. He turned his head to the side and launched a hocked up piece of phlegm, or chewing tobacco. Dana couldn’t tell which. “How long has it been since you moved here from Albany?”

Dana looked perplexed. “What does
that
have to do with
anything
?” she asked. She was livid.

“Just answer the question, ma’am.”

“Two years. Maybe three, next summer.”

“Mhm,” the officer said. “You know that, in the state of New York, you’ve got ten days after moving to notify the DMV of an address change?”

Dana was losing all of her patience. “Are you really lecturing me on this right now? What on earth is going on in town? What is happening, why can’t I go home?”

“Miss, I’m not trying to be an asshole about this,” the officer said. “I’m really not. But, I’ve got strict orders—no one in, no one out. There’s been some trouble in town, as I’m sure you’re aware of, and we’ve been instructed to put a citywide quarantine into effect.”

“Quarantine?”

The officer nodded. “Do you have any family you can stay with?”

“Not nearby,” Dana said. “There’s, like, fifty of you standing around the road here. Can’t one of you escort me home? I can show you a copy of my lease or something. I can show you the key to my front door!”

The officer shook his head. “I can’t. If you want to wait, I can have one of my men bring you down to the station in a bit. We can run your finger prints, make sure you are who you say you are—”

“Run my fingerprints?” Dana was seething. She started to drum her fingers on her steering wheel in a frenzied beat.

“Ma’am,” the officer said with a chuckle, “by your own admission, you don’t have valid identification.”

“Valid identification,” Dana muttered, and she shifted her car into reverse. “Un-fucking-believable.”

The cop put his hand on his hip. “I don’t have time for this shit, lady. Are we going to have a problem here?”

“No problem at all,” Dana said, flooring the accelerator. “Pig.”

“Hey,” the officer hollered, and he stomped towards her car. Dana had already spun around and pointed the vehicle once again towards Henderson High. She watched the officer wave his hands in frustration from her rearview mirror, then zoomed off.

Dana made it as far as the Xtra Mart gas station before she had to pull over to regain her composure. She pulled into a parking spot in front of the shop and put her head and hands on the steering wheel. The thought of driving out to Albany crossed her mind. She could stay with her mom until all of this—whatever “this” was—blew over. That thought was quickly replaced by an image of Elliott alone in her apartment. It was easy to imagine him scared, hungry, and making a mess of her carpets. Maybe she could call her neighbor, Shelby, and ask her to check up on the pup. But that thought wasn’t comforting, either. It was more than just missing Elliott. Dana wanted to be home.

It was then that Dana noticed the chain link fence beside the Xtra Mart. It boxed out a dusty slab of pavement where the gas station’s dumpster was located. Just beyond the dumpster was a patch of tall grass on a small hill, and just past the small hill were train tracks. Train tracks that cut directly into East Violet.

Dana licked her lip and studied the terrain. It wouldn’t be easy. A thin drainage ditch ran perpendicular to the road and all the way back to where the tracks should be, so there was no cutting around the left of the fence. On the right of the gas station was a body shop, and a concrete wall blocking the way.
If only I could get through that fence,
Dana thought.

Dana got out of the car, adjusted her scarf and dress, and confidently approached the front door of the convenience store.
If I ask nicely and explain what’s going on, I’m sure someone will help.

She opened the front door of the Xtra Mart. A bell on the door dinged, and—

“Hold it right there,” a voice commanded from a register just within the doorway. “Don’t move. I’ll shoot.”

“Holy
shit,
” Dana cried. Her hands flailed upwards and she dropped her keys. Behind the register a young, pimply faced kid was holding a revolver. He kept it aimed directly at her face.

“Miss…Miss Nacaratto?” the cashier asked. “Whoa.”

Dana’s heart was beating out of her chest. The cashier lowered his weapon to his side.

“What…what? How do you know my name?”

“I’m Nicky. Nicky Moore. You remember me? I, uh, failed out of your senior composition class last year.”

“Okay,” Dana said. She swallowed hard. “Nicky.”

The cashier nodded.

“Are we okay here, Nicky?”

“Yeah, are you?”

Dana bent down and picked up her keys. “Aside from having a gun pointed in my face, and being told I can’t go home, yes. I’m fine.” She could feel the blood returning to her hands and feet. The lightheaded feeling that had crept up on her was starting to subside.

“I’m sorry I scared you, Miss Nacaratto. Can’t be too careful, you know?”

Dana just blinked.

“There’s been a bunch’a trouble at our other store, the one in Riverside. My manager’s there now. Looting and fights and stuff. You’re the first customer I’ve had in quite a while, and with all this stuff on the news, I just thought….”

“Yeah, sure,” Dana said. “The road is blocked off by the school, and down the road at the start of Maple. So, I wouldn’t expect too many customers, Nicky.” Dana sighed. “Can you help me with something?”

“Of course, it’s the least I can do,” Nicky said with a smirk.

“Can you open up the fence to your dumpster?”

“Uh, I guess. Why?”

“It’s a long story. The cops up ahead won’t let me back into town, and I really need to get home. I’m going to follow the tracks back to my place.”

“Huh. Yeah, all right. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It might not be,” Dana admitted. “But there’s one roadblock keeping me from my job, and one keeping me from going home, leaving me stuck in the middle of this Godforsaken road. And I mean absolutely no offense by this, but I really don’t wish to spend the rest of my day stuck in the East Violet Xtra Mart.”

Nicky smiled and hopped out from behind the register. “Do what you gotta’ do, right?” He clumsily tucked his gun into his front jean pocket. The door of the shop chimed as the two walked outside and towards the fence.

“You’re gonna’ go off roading in that?” Nicky asked, raising his eyebrows at the Prius parked in front of the store.

“It’s my only option, so. Yeah.”

Nicky pulled a key ring from a front shirt pocket. “It really wouldn’t be a bother if you stayed here, for now. Just so you know.” Nicky flicked a plastic name tag on his shirt. “I’m the assistant manager, I can make these decisions. I know you wanna’ get on your way but we’ve got food, water, a bathroom—”

“That’s tempting, Nicky—and I thank you—but I really want to get back home.”

Nicky jammed a key into the padlock on the fence, then rolled a wide section of fence outward. It opened up the space where a garbage truck would normally back in to collect the dumpster.

“Well, good luck I guess,” Nicky said. “You know, I couldn’t say it back then because it would be all—weird, and stuff—but you were the prettiest teacher I had at that shitty school.”

“Gee,” Dana said, half-smiling. “Thanks.”

“Hey, be careful out there,” Nicky said, and he winked at his former teacher. Dana shuddered and marched back to her car.

She clicked a button on her key ring, unlocking her doors, then plopped into the driver’s seat and started the car. The vehicle purred to life and Dana drove forward slowly. She gave Nicky an uncomfortable wave as she slipped by him, narrowly squeezing between the fence and the dumpster.

Dana was thankful that her car was small enough to maneuver into the lot behind the Xtra Mart. An inch or two wider and she might have scraped the right side of her car or slid into the drainage ditch on her left. Once in the lot, there was a wide open clearing between her and the grassy hillside ahead. She clutched the steering wheel firmly and accelerated. The tall blades of wild grass bowed before her as she plowed through.

It’s working,
she thought.
I can’t believe it’s working.

The car wobbled in all directions as it conquered the uneven ground beneath it. Just before she reached the small slope that led up to the train tracks, the front of the car dropped with a startling
gshh.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Dana muttered, stomping the accelerator. The front tires whirred and spun, flinging giant, gloopy splotches of mud and water up on either side of her. She had hit a puddle of mud that was lurking in the tall grass, and she was stuck.

Dana punched the center of her steering wheel out of aggravation, and the car let out a quick
honk.

Honk-honk,
a louder, deeper honk boomed from behind her.

Dana looked up and saw a colossal pickup truck approaching in her rearview mirror. Behind the wheel was Nicky Moore.

Nicky parked close behind Dana before jumping out of the truck’s cabin. He approached her window and leaned forward.

Dana rolled her window down. Chunks of greasy, caked on mud slid off as the glass glided into the door.

“Well. You got about as far as I thought you would.” Nicky grinned a big, toothy grin. “I’ll give you a push. Keep your tires pointed straight, okay?”

Dana didn’t have time to object before Nicky was back in his truck. She worried about the back of her car getting damaged.

The pickup chugged forward slowly, until its chrome bumper was pressed firmly against the back of Dana’s Prius. With an awful grinding sound, both vehicles pushed forward, until Dana was atop the slight slope and on the train tracks.