A Better World (15 page)

“You know,” Quinn said, “some days I hate everybody.” He shook his head. “Things are getting bad, aren’t they? I mean, we’ve always been on the front line, and it always looks like it’s about to go to hell. That’s the game. But this is different.” He looked up, met Cooper’s eyes. “We really may be on the brink. The end of everything.”

The end of everything
. It was such a melodramatic statement, so huge and vaguely silly. The end of everything? Of course not. The cataclysmic never really happened. It just lurked out there.
Hurricanes didn’t really destroy cities. Plagues didn’t really ravage populations. People didn’t really commit genocide.

Except . . . they did.

“Have you talked to the president?”

Cooper shook his head. “No one wants to hear it. They’re all too sure that everything will be okay.”

“You could be wrong about Smith.”

“Nothing would make me happier. But I don’t think I am. Do you?”

“No.”

“So what are we going to do about it?”

Quinn sucked air through his teeth. “With the situation right now, there’s no way the DAR will take any action against Smith. In the public’s eyes, he’s become a white hat. The victim of a repressive government. We couldn’t arrest him if he was shooting strangers with one hand while jerking off into the American flag with the other.”

“That’s vivid.”

“Thank you. What about President Clay?”

“Nope, no chance,” Cooper said. “John Smith is untouchable.”

“Completely off-limits.”

“One hundred percent.” Cooper picked up his napkin, tore a neat strip off of it, and another, and another. He looked up at his friend. “Want to go get him anyway?”

Quinn smiled. “Oh, hell yes.”

CHAPTER 14

Breath blowing white, Ethan sorted cans.

Their kitchen had a pantry, a fact that still blew him away. A room specifically to store food? What a novelty! What a luxury! In Manhattan, the pantry would have been rented out as an efficiency apartment. He was pretty sure he’d lived in one.

The power had been out for twenty hours now, and the house was cold. He wore two sweatshirts and fingerless gloves. It was funny how few cans of food had actual food value: tomato paste and pineapple slices and water chestnuts and chicken broth. All things a cook might need, and none of them a meal. He reorganized, putting the most useful on one shelf. Black beans, cannellini beans, lima beans. Soup, especially the heartier varieties. A couple of cans of coconut milk; not exactly haute cuisine, but each one packed almost a thousand calories, and the high fat content would help keep them warm. Below that went the pears and fruit cocktail and green beans. Fewer vitamins than fresh produce, but better than nothing. Pasta and rice. Finally, baking supplies, flour, sugar, cornmeal. Without power they couldn’t bake, but they could mix a cold gruel from them if things got tight.

“She’s down,” Amy said from behind him. “I’m going to start with the water.”

Ethan stood, stomped his feet to get some circulation moving. “Okay. Fill everything we’ve got. Glasses, vases, buckets, empty cans—”

“The bathtub. I got it.”

“Thanks.”

Ethan spotted a pack of birthday candles and added them to the pile on the counter. A box of tapers, three half-burned pillars from the bedroom, and eleven, no, twelve birthday candles. Three flashlights and a handful of batteries. Best not to waste them; they’d have to start keeping sunlit hours. No reading before bed.

They’d built a small fire in the fireplace, and he knelt to warm his hands, flexing stiff fingers. Debated tossing on another couple of logs and decided against it. They didn’t have much firewood.

There’s always the furniture.

Next up, the fridge. They were both foodies and usually had it well-stocked. But it had been six days since the stores were cleaned out, and they’d run through most of their fresh food already. The crisper had a couple of apples, a grapefruit, and half a bag of arugula, the bottom leaves already slimy. Normally he’d have tossed it all out; now he just picked through it, keeping all but the worst pieces. There was some leftover pad thai, two inches of orange juice, and a whole lot of condiments.

The freezer had already lost most of its chill, the ice sloshing in the trays, packages of hamburger and chicken softening around the edges. A couple of no-longer-frozen pizzas. Ethan sighed, started pulling it all out.

Filling glasses at the sink, Amy said, “We could put the food outside.”

“How cold you figure it is?”

“Maybe forty-five?”

Hmm. That was probably about the temperature of a working refrigerator. Putting the meat outside would buy them a couple of days at best. “It’d last longer if we could cook it.”

“I told you we should have gone for a gas stove.” She smiled, then said, “Hey, wait. The grill.”

Ethan laughed, then swept her into a hug. “Good thinking.”

He was a purist when it came to grilling, charcoal or nothing. It was an easy argument to make when life was normal, but
now he really wished he’d gone for propane. He dug around in the garage, found half a bag of Kingsford. He poured it all in the chimney, packed the bottom with newspaper, and set it aflame. A chilly wind blew from the west, sending white smoke in his face, but the charcoal caught.

Back in the kitchen, he cut open the packages of meat. Two pounds of flank steak, four chicken breasts, a pound of hamburger. He formed the ground beef into patties, then started to cut the steak into quarter-inch strips.

“Stir-fry?”

“Jerky,” he said. “I’ll boil water for the pasta, then cook the chicken and burgers, and finally do the pizzas. That’ll about finish the charcoal, but if we hang these strips on the rack, they’ll still dry out in a couple of hours. And jerky lasts for weeks.”

“Nice.” Amy straightened, put her hands on her lower back, and leaned, the vertebrae popping. “Man, what I’d give for a hot shower.”

“Don’t even,” he said. Out the window, the afternoon was fading. Clouds hung low and oppressive, and wind tossed the trees.

Inventoried, the food seemed like plenty to keep them going. But he knew that if they ate normally, it would be gone in no time. He thought of the grocery runs they used to make, the cart filled to the brim, a dozen bags to unpack, and yet they’d visited the store almost weekly.

We’ll have to start rationing. Stretch it out, drink a lot of water. Ladies and gentlemen, the American way has been temporarily suspended
.

Which was fine. One of the benefits of living in the richest country in the world, there was a wide margin between normalcy and starvation. But still, what happened when they ran out? Could things go on that long?

And what about the people who don’t have even this much?
Somehow he didn’t think they would quietly starve.

“I don’t believe them,” Amy said.

“Huh? Who?”

“The soldiers. You said they were locking down the city so the terrorists couldn’t get out. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No.”

“There’s something they’re not telling us.”

Before he could reply, there was a knock at the door. The sound made them both jump. He’d never realized how noisy American silence was until all the gadgets died.

“Stay here,” he said, then walked to the front door. Ethan put a hand on the knob, then caught himself.
It’s a new world.
He glanced through the peephole.

Jack Ford stood on the porch, along with two guys from the neighborhood watch meeting. The engineer, Kurt, and Lou, the guy who had asked what his problem was.

He opened the door. “Hey.”

“Hi, Ethan.” Jack smiled, held out his hand, and they shook. “How are you?”

“Oh, we’re taking stock.”

He meant it with multiple layers, but Jack heard it literally. “Smart. Important to know how your provisions hold up. Hey, did I see you packing the truck last night?”

“Yes.” An image popped in his head, Jack walking window to window, a shotgun in one hand as he peered through the blinds. Keeping an eye out for bad characters. “We were headed to Chicago to stay with Amy’s mom. National Guard turned us back.”

“I’ve heard. I’ve got a generator, been running it in intervals to charge our electronics and watch the news. They’re saying that the city is locked down while the government hunts the Children of Darwin.”

Ethan nodded. Waited. The three men looked at each other.

Jack started to speak, but Lou beat him to it. “You know that Ranjeet pretty well?”

“Sure, we’ve had dinner a couple of times. Nice guy.”

“We were thinking we might go talk to him.”

“About what?”

“Government says that they’re looking for abnorm terrorists. Thought we might help out.”

“Come on. Ranjeet is a graphic designer.”

“No, hey, you misunderstand,” Jack said. “We know he’s not a terrorist. But he is an abnorm.”

“So he probably knows terrorists?”

“Maybe he knows someone who’s been acting weird.”

“Abnorms hang out together,” Kurt said. “I’m an engineer, believe me, I know lots of them.”

Jack ignored him, said, “The government has a tip line for people to call in with anything suspicious. And since there’s really nothing else to do right now, we figured, what’s the harm?”

Sure. What’s the harm in a whole city of hungry, scared people deciding to go terrorist hunting?
“I don’t think so.”

“Forget it,” Lou said. “I told you he wouldn’t be up for it.” The man cleared his throat, turned, and spat into the bushes. “Let’s go.”

Jack didn’t move, just stood there with his hands at his sides. Ethan had the sense the man was trying to make a point, to let him know something. Jack was the de facto leader of the neighborhood now, the guy everyone turned to. Was he asking Ethan to join? Threatening him, vaguely? Or just suggesting that if people like Ethan weren’t in, it made people like Lou all the stronger?

“Why don’t you go with them, hon?”

Amy was out of sight of the men on the porch, and her concerned expression belied the lightness in her voice as she spoke loud enough for them to hear. “Go ahead, I can handle the grill. Just give me a hug first.” She raised her arms.

Ethan glanced at Jack, then at her, then stepped into her embrace. In his ear she whispered, “Ranjeet has two little girls.”

Of course. He whispered, “I love you.”

“Ditto. Be careful.”

He nodded, stepped back. “Let’s go.”

The Singhs’ house was painted a cheerful yellow and fronted by flowerbeds lying fallow in the November cold. The walk there had taken only a minute, but it had seemed longer, dynamics bouncing invisibly between the group. Lou had led the way, a sense of purpose to his stride that made it almost a stomp. Jack and Ethan walked just behind, and at one point his neighbor had looked over at him, another inscrutable glance like he wanted to say something, though he didn’t. Kurt had trailed like an eager puppy.

They paused on the sidewalk in front of the house. Lou shifted from foot to foot. Ethan pictured the scene from Ranjeet’s perspective: four men clustered ominously outside, exchanging glances. Imagined how he would have felt, the subconscious middle-school certainty every person had that any group was looking at them, that every laugh was directed at their weakness.
This is a bad idea
.

Forcing a light tone, he said, “What are we waiting for, guys?” He started up the walk. He pressed the bell—nothing, right—then knocked. After a moment footsteps approached, and then the deadbolt snapped.

Ranjeet saw him first and smiled, the expression calcifying when he saw the other men. “Hey,” he said. “The neighborhood watch. You catch any bad guys?”

Lou bristled, but Ethan said, “Nope, all clear. How are you doing?”

“Wishing we’d left for Florida.”

“I hear you. We tried for Chicago, got turned back.”

“Strange days.” Ranjeet’s eyes skipped past him to the others, then returned. “So what’s up?”

“We come in?” Lou asked.

Ranjeet hesitated, his hand still on the doorknob. “Yeah, sure.” He stood aside and gestured them in.

A short entrance gave way to the living room, a stylishly decorated space painted a precise shade of white. Two modernist couches were arranged on a yellow shag rug, and a book lay open atop a delicate glass table. There were toys scattered across the floor like they’d rained from the sky, stuffed animals and stacking cups and a xylophone. The sight of them gave him a flash of their future, Violet someday tottering around the house leaving a trail of toys in her wake, and the thought made him glow. “Where are the girls?”