Epitaph Road (2 page)

“What about
Charlie
?” Paige said, putting words to his worry.

“Charlie's safe here, sweetie.” Mom's eyes didn't leave him.

“How do you
know
?” Paige moaned.

“I don't believe we're infected,” Mom said. “And no one is likely to catch up with us. If we meet people heading back, they won't have been exposed, but we'll avoid them anyway. If necessary, we can survive for a year up here. Or longer. For as long as we have to stay.”

A year,
Charlie thought. A year was
forever.
No,
dying
was forever. Would a year even be enough?

MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2067:

VOICES ON THE RADIO REPORTED A BILLION DEAD.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2067:

TWO BILLION.

Charlie knew Dad could have arrived at the lake Monday night if he'd hurried. He
didn't
arrive. He could have appeared Tuesday. He
didn't
appear.

Wednesday morning, Charlie found the big paw prints of a bear crisscrossing the dirt near the remains of the fire, and he chose to consider the bear a good omen, a stealthy advance scout for Dad. But good omen or not, Dad
didn't
come.

As dawn broke on Thursday, Charlie propped himself up on an elbow and peered through wisps of mist across the lake, still faintly hoping to catch sight of a familiar hiker coming up the trail.

Something moved on the opposite shoreline. Charlie got up and crept to the water, keeping his eyes on the small opening in the trees two hundred yards away. Again, he saw a blur of motion, dark. But it wasn't a man. Not even a person. It was a bear. Big, blackish-brown, lumbering.

A cool wind snuck through the trees. It slipped past Charlie and across the lake, stirring up the surface fog. A few moments later, the bear rose on two legs and turned in Charlie's direction, raising its big cartoonish head.

Charlie waved. He hoped the bear would wave back. A raised paw, at least. He wanted another sign. But the bear stood immobile, using its nose to check out Charlie and maybe Mom and Paige, too.
Friend? Foe? Breakfast?

Finally, the bear dropped back to all fours. It moved nonchalantly along the shoreline, away from the trail, and disappeared.

News had continued to dribble in from the radio. As of last night, two-thirds of the world's male population was dead. Three billion souls gone. And the plague was continuing to worm into every pocket of humanity. No kind of medical intervention had any effect on the disease, which seemed to run its lethal course in less than twenty-four hours, from the first symptoms to the final tortured breath.

In many countries, disorder reigned. In others, new governments were forming as the constitutional orders of succession spiraled down to the first woman. In the United States, that was Secretary of State Candace Bloom.

President
Candace Bloom, now.

President Bloom and what was left of the executive branch were working tirelessly to keep the country from disintegrating — propping up what remained of the three branches of federal government; cooperating with foreign countries; going forward with individual states to make sure courts and law enforcement agencies still functioned; triaging and handling all crises; coordinating medical care; activating what was left of the National Guard and other military units; initiating and orchestrating the mass cremation and disposal of tens of millions of bodies; bringing together medical researchers to solve the mystery of the contagion before every male in the country and on the face of the planet was wiped out.

Charlie returned to the campsite and got his fishing rod. He waded out, over the rocks and sand, through the mud, and began casting. Mosquitoes buzzed his head, but his repellent was still working.

In the quiet, in the solitude, his imagination ran wild, to places dark and borderless. He tried not to imagine where Dad might be.

That day, he caught seven cutthroat trout, fat on bugs. That night, he circled the lake and left three on the opposite shoreline for his friend the bear.

Ten more days crept by. In the mountains, little changed. Morning wind spoke in the trees, morning clouds gathered, then dispersed in afternoon sunshine, night came, a little earlier each time, stars shone and faded, rain fell, morning arrived again. Hearts ached, day after day.

Dad didn't come. No one came.

Around the globe, cautious reports surfaced that deaths had halted. But the male of the human species had come face-to-face with extinction. The estimate of the dead: more than four billion, or 97 percent of the male population.

Most of the survivors lived in remote backcountry. Others were on the move — nomads, refugees, passengers and crews on ships at sea, space station occupants, moon colonists — while some lived in cities but were forgotten enough or resourceful enough or ruthless enough to avoid human contact.

A handful of males had been exposed but had not fallen ill. A small number turned out to be transgender — female by birth. Others either dodged the disease or were immune. If so, no one knew why.

A few survivors had happened to choose this time to backpack into the wilderness.
Lucky
, the newswomen called them. Charlie wasn't so sure. He felt grateful to be alive, but to him,
lucky
would be Dad walking into the campsite, thin and unshaven and bedraggled from two weeks of avoiding a monster, but alive.

Alive.
That would have been
lucky.

On the far side of the sturdy branch-and-bough lean-to that Charlie and Paige had painstakingly woven together after the first night of rain overwhelmed their tent, Mom and Paige still slept, if fitfully. Paige's nightmare-fueled whimpering had awakened Charlie. Sunrise wouldn't happen for a while, but there was enough light for him to locate the radio.

As he switched it on, he foolishly half hoped for music, but this morning, as always, news filled the airwaves and the plague was all the news. No crime sprees, no crooked politicians, no environmental disasters, no weather, no sports. He imagined empty stadiums. No players. No fans.

Because no plague-related deaths had been reported in almost two days, scientists believed the disease had run its course. For now. Newborn boys were no longer dying. Ships were returning to port. Within hours of one another, the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand all officially noted the cessation of deaths.

Charlie's stomach rumbled. Their rations of food had dwindled. They were all sick of trout, although no one said anything. It was fifteen days, now, since the first deaths occurred. Sixteen days since they'd left home. They wouldn't have to survive here for the year or more he and his mother and sister had feared, but it seemed like they already had. He turned off the radio and rolled onto his back, waiting for Mom and Paige to wake up.

It was time to go back. And face the music. Even if there wouldn't be any.

Glum and restless, I stared out through the living room window as rain ticked sideways against the glass and flowed steadily down. In the late-afternoon murk, the glossy streaks of wet looked like narrow metal bars. This wasn't a prison, but the nonstop Sunday downpour made it feel like one. Outside, the sprawling carpet of grass drank in the cloudburst. I could practically see the individual blades growing, which meant more work for me. But not today, a bad day for mowing lawns. Or hopping on my bike and heading off to somewhere — anywhere — more exciting.

Maybe the rainfall was trying to tell me something. Because what I should have been doing was getting ready for my trials. Confined by the weather to this big old house, with most of its other residents in their rooms or otherwise quietly keeping to themselves, I had only one excuse for not studying: Mom had asked me to meet her here. She was going to make time in her busy schedule for a “visit” with me. How could I have refused?

Anyway, I had a reason — besides just getting a chance to talk to her for a change — to meet with her. I had my own topic to chat about. It was a topic I believed she'd been avoiding.

I heard the office door open, and a moment later she appeared. The two other women in the room glanced up and went back to their reading. She smiled and plopped down on the couch next to me and for a moment joined me in gazing silently out the window. Her mascara looked clumpier than usual, maybe to mask the fatigue in her eyes. It wasn't working.

“How are you, Kellen?” she said finally. She rested her hand on mine. It felt comfortingly familiar but irritating at the same time.

“Terrific,” I said. “Smooth summer so far. We won our game yesterday. I got two doubles.”

“That's wonderful.”

“Too bad you weren't there.”

“I wanted to be.”

“Three,” I said, silhouetting three fingers against the gray daylight.

“What?”

“Three. Games. You've been to three. I've played eleven.”

“Work keeps getting in the way. We've had…complications. But they're temporary. Things will be back to normal soon.”

Normal.
“Normal” meant she would've gotten to four or five games. Her job with PAC — the Population Apportionment Council — was her top priority. I was number two. “It's okay.” I'd raised a subject. Not my main subject, but a start. I'd made a point, maybe.

“It's not okay. I simply don't have a choice.”

I shrugged. She
had
a choice. She had smarts, degrees, experience, other employers sniffing around. She would've had no problem finding a different job. But I was done with this topic. I freed my hand from hers and pretended to straighten a sock.

“How are your studies going?” she asked, getting to what I figured all along was her motive for our “visit.”

“Have you talked to Dad yet?” I said. “About me going to see him?”

“I've been so busy. And you need time to prepare for your trials.”

“My studies are fine. You said you'd get him a message. Or talk to him about it the next time he called.”

“What about your history class?” Mom said, not wavering from the topic of my education. “What do you think of Ms. Anderson as an instructor? Is she getting you the essential material? I've heard she can be…unconventional.”

Anderson? She was
unconventional
, maybe, but in a good way. “She's doing great. I'm doing great. Why?”

“I want you to think about something,” she said, lowering her voice.

“I'm already thinking about something.”

“This is more important than your travel plans, Kellen. What I want you to think about is your trials. Your
life
, in other words.”

“Travel plans? You think I'm just interested in
travel
? What I'm interested in is seeing
Dad.
I want to spend time with him. I want to see how he lives. I want to see how
guys
live.”

“And what I want is for you to consider something really vital,” she said, plowing ahead. “I want you to consider seeking help if you get close to your exam date and don't feel completely confident you can pass with flying colors.”

“Help studying, you mean?”

“Dr. Mack knows the chair of the regional trials board.”

Dr. Mack. Rebecca Mack. Mom's big boss. The head of PAC. She wouldn't just
know
the chair of the PAC trials board, she probably had the final say on the woman's appointment to the position. The chair, whoever she might be, was no doubt firmly under Rebecca Mack's thumb. She would fold if Dr. Mack pressured her, even just a little.