Suckers (30 page)

“Who did the blood screening?” Dan’s mom asked. “What if those people had HIV or hepatitis?”

“I wasn’t really in the position to be picky,” Dan said.

“What about Jane?” Sarah asked. “Those people who’ve been bitten have
attacked
people. What’s to keep Janie safe if we bring him here?”

“Those people weren’t getting blood,” Dan said.

“I don’t think Dan should donate,” Buddy said. “No offense, but if you’ve been getting blood from strangers…”

“
Drinking
it,” Ray said. “Not mainlining it in his arm.”

“I still wouldn’t want to take the chance.”

Sarah shook her head slowly. “No, me neither.”

“Plus he’s been infected by these things,” Buddy said. “Who knows what that does to you?”

Faye hugged herself.

“That still leaves four adults,” Dan said. “Four’s enough.” He hoped. If they alternated. If he gave up his share of food with iron in it.

“What do
you
think?” Sarah said to Buddy.

“My better sense says he should go to the hospital, but if it were me… I mean, you’ve seen the news. Maybe it’s not happening in New Hampshire yet, but people are dying in hospitals. Shit, they’re killing each other in hospitals.”

“And I’m still here,” Dan said. That’s what he thought every time they stared at the news:
People went to hospitals and died, but I’m still here
. “They’re out of my system. It wasn’t fun. He’s not going to have a great time over the next couple months. But we can get him through it.”

“It’s not really our call, though,” Buddy said. “It’s Faye’s house.”

“Well of course bring him here,” Faye said.

“The Red Cross is hurting for blood,” Ray said.

“I know.” Sarah didn’t take her eyes from Buddy, as if she was trying to suss out what he’d
really
do. If it were him. “We donated at the center today.”

“When there’s not enough to go around,” Ray said, “who are they going to give priority to? You think old guys are going to top the list? And how safe is he in a hospital? They’re quarantining the infected—together.”

“You just said they weren’t violent if they were getting blood!”

“And I said what happens when they don’t have enough blood to go around?” Ray said.

Buddy sat back, tapping his spoon against the table. He and Sarah had one of those wordless conversations couples had, studying each other’s eyes.

“We’re already imposing,” she started to say to him.

“You call your dad,” Faye said. She put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Tell him to come out here. We have to stick together. We’re all we’ve got.”

Buddy gave a nod finally, and Sarah picked up the phone.

Ray got up with the plates and silverware.

“Hi, Dad,” Sarah said. “First thing in the morning, head out here, okay? I’ll give you directions. We’ve got people here who can help you.”

Faye told Buddy she thought she had some camping mattresses in the attic, maybe an old Army surplus cot. It wouldn’t be Serta Sleeper comfortable, but they’d find a way to make him feel at home. “Will Sarah’s mother be coming too, do you think?” she asked.

“She passed when Sarah was a teenager,” Buddy said.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks for letting us all invade your space,” he said.

“Don’t even think of it. And
you
.” She jabbed Ray as he passed with the baked beans pot. “You didn’t say a word either!”

“Sorry, Faye.”

“‘Sorry, Faye.’” She sighed.

“Isn’t it way better knowing it happened and I came through fine than worrying the whole time what would happen to me?” Dan said.

“What if you hadn’t come through fine? You’d have been dead, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to hold your hand and be there with you.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I came through fine.”

“How long do you think this will work?” Ray asked, catching the hammer as its handle slid through his grip. He sat on the old Army cot they’d set up in the walk-up attic after they’d cleared out enough space to make a room out of one half of it. Despite the crispness of the air outside, upstairs was stuffy. It would have been nice to have the window open, but the first thing they’d done after they’d moved boxes to make a path to it was board it shut. They didn’t know Sarah’s father well, and they couldn’t take the risk that he’d open the window in the morning and forget about it as the day grew dark.

“What do you mean ‘how long’?” Dan dropped a box of books at the foot of the cot, old paperbacks of his dad’s. Horror, mostly—unfortunately, considering the situation. Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, some creased old Stephen Kings. It was something to read when the nights got tedious at least, and with the sun setting so early, they got tedious fast. He fished out a few non-horror paperbacks, dropping them on the bed for Sarah’s dad. The rest he’d bring down to the living room. “We should have enough people to get him all the way through it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

When Dan didn’t answer, Ray said, “Hiding. How long do you think we can hide out here?”

Dan still didn’t say anything. Until they couldn’t scrounge up any food? Until the National Guard came and forced them into some sort of camp? Until everyone was dead? He tossed
The Sound and the Fury
on the cot and picked up the box. “I guess we’ll hide out here as long as we need to. You got anything more pressing at the moment?”

“Fuck you,” Ray said without any rancor.

“Let’s go listen to the radio,” Dan said. That’s what they did after Jane went to bed. Sat around the living room with all the windows blocked, listening to bad news and thin hope while trying to ignore the patter of black bodies against the glass behind the boards. The TV wasn’t good anymore—none of them wanted to watch it play out. They just wanted to know how bad it was getting. If there was any hope on the horizon.

“I’m gonna have a cigarette,” Ray said.

“Okay.”

The cot creaked as Ray pushed himself up. When they got to the main floor, Ray turned the corner and kept going, heading to the garage.

“You’re home early,” Ray said as Sarah came in. It was barely ten in the morning. Ray’d been reading to Jane on the living room floor while Dan tried to concentrate on Richard Matheson’s
I Am Legend
, a story about the survivor of a pandemic that turned people into vampires. Like maybe he could get something useful out of it. All he got was that it was easier to be in fiction. At least someone knew what was going on then, even if it was only the author.

“I gave my notice,” Sarah said.

“How much notice?”

“About thirty minutes.” She dropped her bag on the end of the couch. “No sign of my dad yet?”

“How long’s the drive from Seabrook?” Ray asked.

“Two hours, a little less.”

“He would have had to pack too,” Dan said. “There might be traffic.” People out trying to get food. National Guard and police out, trying to keep things from getting out of hand.

“Relax. Have a glass of wine,” Ray said.

“Do we have any?”

“Nope.”

“Good. I shouldn’t be drinking it anyway.” She sat beside her bag to take off her shoes.

“So why’d you quit?” Dan asked.

“This man,” she said. She set her shoes aside and sat up, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “I was stopped at a light, and he came out of nowhere and started pounding on my windshield. I had the doors locked, and it was bright as day, and he scared the—” She glanced at Jane. “He scared me. The rest of the way to work, I was shaking. All I could think about was Jane out here alone—I mean, with you guys, but not with me. And the baby.” She put her hand to her belly. “I thought, is it really worth it? Showing up for work every day? There’s talk they’re going to move the infected in, use the surgical center as a quarantine. No more surgeries, just—I should be there, but I can’t do it. Not with…” She hugged Jane’s dark head to her stomach.

“Yeah,” Ray said.

“I’m an awful person. But the minute I decided
the hell with this
, I felt so much better.”

“You’re not an awful person,” Ray said.

Her phone went off. She fished it from her purse.

Ray looked at Dan. They had one of those silent couple’s conversations themselves, one where Ray asked, again,
How long can we do this?
and Dan still didn’t have an answer.

“Oh good!” Sarah said. “Good, now get off the phone before you get in a wreck.” When she hung up, she said, “He’s stuck in traffic on I-93.”

“That sounds about right,” Dan said. “Even without an alien parasite invasion.”

“Some things never change,” Ray said. “Hey, I’m glad you’re going to be home. We’ve probably done enough damage to your kid.”

Dan was glad she was home because it meant maybe one or both of them could get the fuck out of the house more often—without a four year old in tow. Even romps in the woods were off limits now, after gunshots had echoed through the dead trees. Hunters, they’d guessed, feeding their families—but a brown-haired little girl running through the trees could be easily mistaken for game by someone already on edge. Even a little girl in a fluffy blue coat.

Richard Miller was fine with the attic bedroom, and a little ashamed he’d gotten himself attacked by one of those flying whatsits. His arrival didn’t quite free Dan and Ray up—someone strong enough to wrestle him to the ground if something went wrong had to be around. It was still a help, though. A new person for Jane to pester with questions, an extra set of hands when things needed to be done.

They’d started blood donations the night he arrived. He’d curled his lip at the first taste they offered, and the touch of the warm blood on his tongue made him retch, but they put the rest in the fridge—he’d feel differently soon enough. Or, Sarah said, he wouldn’t—maybe he wasn’t infected after all. Dan and Ray stayed silent. Tense.

Curfew closed retail stores and any other nonemergency business an hour before sunset. Medical workers, cops, emergency crews, and the National Guard were the only ones out at night, and they stayed inside—hospitals, nursing homes, armored vehicles.

† † †

Three nights after arriving, Rich had a headache. Dan touched his arm, asked if he heard buzzing. And Rich, staring at Dan’s fingers on him, nodded. Dan looked up, but Ray was already in the kitchen, bottles rattling in the fridge door.

The blood did its thing. Sarah looked away, her face tight. Her throat moved as she swallowed the reality of the situation.

They kept extra in the fridge at all times. They might have a thin night of canned soup beefed up with bullion cubes and water, pieces of old bread to dip in it, but they never had a thin night when it came to blood for Rich.

Sarah started baking, flour being easier to get their hands on than convenience foods. Faye made stock from whatever they had—bones or the odds and ends of vegetables. Soup became a staple. Anything that could be stored in the cool garage for later—dried beans, rice, potatoes, whatever the guys could get their hands on—was dumped into garbage bags and stuffed into tubs that Dan had first emptied of old blankets, unalbumed photos, knick-knacks he remembered knocking over when he was a kid.

It was night—Jane in bed, Sarah in the kitchen getting bread dough set to rise overnight so they’d have fresh first thing in the morning. She had flour up to her elbows, asking Dan if he could get her a little water, when the yell cut through the boarded-up windows.

Her hands stopped moving. “Was that an animal?”

Dan turned his eyes toward the front of the house.

It came again, closer. His breath stalled. His scalp prickled.

“That’s not an animal,” Sarah said. “
Buddy!
”

Feet pounded up the stairs already.

He burst into the kitchen. “Did you hear that?”

“Mommy, what’s going on?”

Dan was already moving toward the front of the house. Ray came down the hallway from his room. Buddy came with them.

This time, it was clear: “
Help me!
” A woman’s voice. Buddy pushed past them, into the living room. He yanked one of the loose boards down. One of the parasites slammed into the window, as big as a pigeon. Buddy jerked back.

“
Help!
”

They crowded the window, peering into the darkness encroaching at the edges of the outside security light.

“There.” Ray pointed toward the tree line at the edge of the yard.

A woman ran over that bit of lawn, her head cranked back to watch the trees behind her. No coat, just what looked like slippers on her feet. Her ponytail jumped as she ran, and Dan’s thoughts went first to Patricia at Dunkin’ Donuts before he realized it was Bethany from up the street.