Eleven Twenty-Three (21 page)

She grins. Barely.

“Still no sign of Hajime?” she asks

“There must have been unforeseen
circumstances,” I mutter, smoking nervously in the kitchen.

“He may still be okay, Sunshine. Maybe he
just got held up on his way to St. Augustine.”

“Maybe it started again…”

“Don’t say that,” Tara pleads. “It couldn’t
have. We would know. Everything would have gotten weird and we
would know if it happened again. Don’t say things like that,
Layne.”

“Why are you and your sister Chloe hell-bent
on not accepting things for how they are?” I ask.

“Why are you and my father hell-bent on
assuming everything is at its worst?”

“I’m not, Tara. In fact, I don’t think things
are at their worst at all. I think this is just the
beginning
. Didn’t you see the messages on the TV earlier?
We’re supposed to
die
here—every last one of us. I’ll be the
first to tell you that this is
not
the worst. We haven’t
even
seen
how terrible life is going to get in the End. Not
yet.”

“I—I saw one of the messages on the TV in my
room,” she admits, immediately grabbing a cigarette and lighting
it. “It said, ‘Your tales are told as ghosts.’ What does that even
mean
?”

I immediately know the answer, but it takes
me a long moment to collect my thoughts.

Not only will we die here in the sideways
flower petal of the End, but we will also be forgotten—no one will
care and there will be no justice because our souls will roam the
fields of Elysium forever, with no great hero to avenge our deaths
and put our spirits to a peaceful rest.

And they actually
want
us to know how
truly consigned to oblivion our plight is before we depart. The
realization of this truth may be worse than all the bodies, burnt
up houses, and images of my mother’s face slathered with a child’s
blood combined.

“What does that mean, Layne?” Tara
repeats.

“It means that our deaths will be nothing
more than a campfire story. It means our tale will never be
properly told. We’re a rumor. We’re a faked moon landing theory.
We’re water boarding. Nothing more.”

The long pause before Tara speaks again
assures me that I won’t like anything she has to say next.

“Have you already given up?” she asks
quietly, rubbing her hands against each other and looking down at
the floor.

“Given up how? In terms of career, family,
and a successful all-American future? I gave up on those things
before we ever left here in the first place, Tara. But am I giving
up now? No. Now I’m simply accepting the scenario. Our families are
traumatized, hundreds of people are dead, my father’s corpse is
collecting dew in an empty cemetery, I’m suffering from reverse
culture shock, and I just buried your friend Miranda in the back
yard with her goddamned
shoe
poking out of the ground.
That’s
the scenario, and this is how I behave when I accept
it all for what it is.”

“Is that—?”

“Furthermore, I’m pretty sure that if Hajime
isn’t back by now, he’s dead. My best friend is
dead
, Tara,
and if you don’t mind, I’m going to ruminate over the matter for a
bit.”

“I doubt that he’s dead,” Tara protests
feebly. “Hajime is strong.”

“He weighs a hundred and forty pounds and
paints
,” I sigh. “In what world does that equate to anything
other than his imminent death in a survival situation like
this?”

“Even if he
is
dead, Layne…You said we
have to keep going, right?”

“I did say that, yes. But what I’m going to
tell you next is the same thing my father told me when he caught me
drinking on the back porch with Hajime when we were sixteen years
old: do as I say, not as I do.”

“That’s such a bullshit cop-out.”

“Maybe it is,” I admit. “Go talk to my father
about it.”

Tara ashes her cigarette on the floor,
something she never would have done before this morning, and comes
to sit next to me at the bar, glancing repeatedly out the window.
She places her hand on mine.

“So what now? Do you just sit here and wait
for everyone to go crazy again? Do you wait for
me
to go
crazy, Layne?”

“Actually, Tara, I think I want to check
something out first before giving up.”

“You want to go and see about your
mother?”

“Later, yes. But I want to do something else
now.”

“What now?” she says.

“I want to try and leave town.”

07:59:24 PM

I leave Tara back at her place to wait for
Hajime and head toward the gas station at the southern rim of town.
It was burnt down to nothing more than a withered black shell two
years ago when a pair of men entered the store, emptied the
register and safe, tied the two customers and the attendant up in
the back, and set fire to the whole building on their way out, just
for the hell of it. Townsfolk could hear the panicked wails and
pleas of the three people inside as flames licked up the sides of
the store and smoke billowed through the shattered windows. It was
immediately assumed that the perpetrators must have been
outsiders—no one from the End would ever do a thing like this. But
whoever they were, they were never caught; the three deaths were
never avenged.

It’s been vacant and—according to several of
my former students—haunted ever since. Even now, you can still pass
it sometimes and see fresh flowers and trinkets placed outside the
foundation in honor of the three past-tense people.

Tonight, life has returned to the crossroads,
but it appears to be under orders. There are jeeps and camouflage
trucks, two rows of large field tents and dozens of armed men in
night gear and gas masks. I hear the headache-inducing
pitter-patter of helicopter blades overhead and spot a searchlight
peering down into the woods nearby. There are smoking halogen lamps
posted every twenty-five feet. The cold stifling night is lost amid
artificial daylight and the steaming breath of dozens of soldiers
and the Lilly’s End residents that have gathered up where the road
is blocked.

I park behind the other civilian cars and
begin making my way toward the crowd ahead. They argue and plead
for help to the stone-faced military men who block the road out of
town.

“My daughter is injured in the back of my
car!” one man roars. “The hospital is completely overrun. Look,
you’ve got to let us get her help.
Please
—”

“You can’t keep us prisoners, god damn it,”
another guy says, this one wearing a surgical mask. “This isn’t
some third world country here. We’re
Americans
, for Christ
sakes.”

“What’s all this?” I ask Terry, an old friend
of mine from high school who I see standing with his family in the
throng. “What’s going on?”

“These assholes aren’t letting anyone leave
town,” he says. “Something about a necessary quarantine and how
we’re all infected or something. It’s bullshit.”

“What do they have to say about this all
being planned?” I ask. “What did they say about the messages on
TV?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,
dude,” Terry says. “I’ve been here for the last two hours hoping
they’d let us out. What about a message?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

I begin pushing and shoving my way past the
townspeople. Body odor and rusty day-old blood fill my nostrils and
I begin coughing. There is anger in the voices of some of the
townspeople, panic in others, and in many, nothing is being said
anymore at all. Their quiet facial expressions let me know my
gesture to leave is useless.

A few are still speaking out, repeating the
same pleas and threats:

“My son is
dead
, you bastard! Let us
out of here!”

“Please…”

“When people find out about this, it’s going
to be a media
shit storm
. You know that, asshole?”

When I finally reach the front of the line, I
face a wall of wooden barricades and a few feet away, a tall scary
man in MOPP gear and a gas mask looking out over the crowd. The
other men are in masks as well, and brandish automatic weapons and
canisters of tear gas.

They’re not breathing our air.

“I know you’ve already heard it,” I tell the
figure on the other side of the barricade, “but I need to leave
town now.”

“Sir, this town is under mandatory quarantine
until further notice,” he answers with a slight accent from behind
his mask. “Your government is well aware of the situation the
citizens of Lilly’s End are undergoing, and doctors and supplies
are en route and will be here shortly.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I spit,
working one leg over the barricade.

“Sir, do not take another step over that
barricade,” he warns, aiming his submachine gun at me. “We are
under orders to open fire on anyone who attempts to breach the
perimeter of town.”

“You’ll
shoot
us?” I say. “Why?”

“Everyone within Lilly’s End has potentially
been exposed to a contagious virus. We are not taking any risks in
preventing the spread of sickness to the larger population. Please
step away from the barricade, sir.”

“Don’t bother,” a man next to me says.
“They’re not letting anyone through. Earlier I watched them gun
down some poor son of a bitch right over there for trying to make a
run for it.”

“It wasn’t a Japanese kid, was it?”

“I wish,” the man mutters, and I mull over
his comment for only a moment before turning my attention back to
the gas-masked warden.

“Well, what sickness are you talking about?”
I ask him, unable to see the eyes behind the glass. “Where did it
come from?”

The military man does not answer. I lean as
far over the railing as I can and lose control of my temper.

“What about the messages on TV then? Is
that
part of the quarantine? And the town being cut off from
all contact with the outside world? And how no one knows what’s
happening to us outside of here? What were we supposed to think
about
that
? Huh? That it was Al-Qaeda? Give me a fucking
break, man.”

“Step away from the barricade, sir,” he says
again, and this time the accent is thicker. It sounds British.

“What are you talking about?” the man next to
me asks. “Is that all true?”

“Hell
yes
, it is. There are messages
encouraging us to just give up and die on the TVs back in town. I
saw it myself just before coming here. This isn’t some
sickness
. This isn’t a sloppy terrorist attack. This has all
been
planned
. We’ve got to get out of here, because I don’t
think any help or supplies or doctors are coming.”

“Step away from the barricade, sir. Now.”

“Our government would never do that to us,”
the man next to me says, picking dried blood off of his
Jacksonville Jaguars coat. “You’re nuts.”

“I saw it myself. Everyone back in town is
seeing it. Trust me, buddy: this isn’t the bird flu. This was
intentional.”

“Sir, step away from the barricade now or you
will be shot,” the soldier demands once more, pointing the barrel
at me.

“Don’t worry,” I say, giving him the finger
as I turn around and push back through the crowd.

“You’re crazy,” the man bellows at me.
“
Shame on you
for trying to scare all these people. You’re
crazy
!”

“Yeah, well...” I shrug, having nothing else
to give him.

As I head back toward my car, the news I
brought makes its way through the protesters, and soon there are
roars of outrage, most of them directed at me. Men curse and women
squeal. I hear the the sounds of people pushing over the
barricades. I get into my car just as the first gunshot whips
through the commotion.

On the northern border of town not far from
Tara’s, past the post office and Indian grave marker, there is
another barricade. To the northwest is a forest. Back at the top
petal of the End, the pier and dozens of small boats we might have
used to escape are just past the shadows of tents and gas masks and
men whose faces we will never see. I arrive in time to watch the
entire front row of protesters get mowed down by soldiers in a
burst of gunfire and bloody mist. The rest of the townsfolk
immediately erupt into despair and outrage. Soon another wave of
angry citizens pushes forward over the collapsed barricades, only
to meet the same fate. The helicopter searchlight fixes itself on
something moving in the woods nearby, and I hear barking dogs and
painful screams a moment later.

I don’t even bother getting out of my car. No
one is leaving this town alive.

The nearest gas station is locked and the
lights are off, but one of the pumps was left turned on and I park
my car next to it and fill the tank. Two other townspeople show up
in their vehicles to do the same thing. One of the men nods to me
from his SUV. I take the empty gas can from the trunk of my car and
fill it as well. I consider my options.

Soldiers have erected a blockade on the only
road heading westward from Lilly’s End as well, and helicopters
patrol the empty wilderness surrounding the barricades. Beyond this
fact, the situation is all
probably
: the helicopters are
probably carrying sensors that can detect body heat from the air,
and probably armed with guns that can probably remove that warmth
from any human body that attempts to escape.

There are long stretches of swamp and
mangrove forests that lead southwest, but helicopters and soldiers
are also more than likely patrolling it. To the east is a quick
escape via drowning.

I decide that I have to be certain, and make
a stop at the end of a cul-de-sac in Mangrove Path, a low-elevation
trailer park community on the southwestern edge of town. When I get
out of my car, I can hear a man and woman tossing ultimatums at one
another from the inside of a ratty old trailer nearby. The cold
stabs at me and the wind howls. It takes only a moment to spot the
sharp rays of the helicopter searchlights about a quarter-mile from
here. I count at least four of them circling overhead. At one
point, a large chopper flies just above the tree line, shining a
piercing searchlight down on the community and surveying the
progress of the destruction.