The End Has Come

Not that there was anything to watch. Outside the van, the moonless night was just a flat plane of black, as if someone had spray-painted over their windows. He forced himself to stay awake, punching himself hard in the thigh at one point just to clear his head.

At some point, he realized he was being watched.

He turned around and saw Bob’s eyes, just two smudges of pale gray in the unrelieved blackness.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

The boy blinked at him.

“I’m sorry you got scared back there when those bikers came at us,” he told the kid. He didn’t know what else to say. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“My mom said you would keep me safe.”

It was the first thing Bob had said to Whitman, other than to give his name.

“She said to obey you.”

“Who, me specifically?” Whitman asked.

“She said they would send a man. Then she just cried.”

Jesus, Whitman thought. He imagined the scene. The mother, probably on the far side of a pane of glass, looking at her child — her potentially infected child. How could she give him up?

But of course they wouldn’t have given her a choice. They would’ve taken the boy away the second they realized he was a positive. And who knew? Maybe she had looked at the tattoo on little Bob’s hand and maybe — maybe she hadn’t put up much of a fight.

Everyone knew the risk. Everyone knew the rules.

Whitman tried to keep Bob talking. It would help pass the time, help keep him awake. He asked the boy how he’d become positive, but Bob didn’t seem to understand. So instead he tried to talk about the future.

“You know where I’m taking you?”

The boy just blinked.

“It’s a camp. Not exactly like a summer camp, though. There’s no archery or making lanyards or anything, but —”

“I don’t know what a summer camp is,” Bob said.

Oh. Of course he didn’t. Bob was maybe ten years old. The Crisis began ten years ago. There hadn’t been summer camps in a long time.

“A camp. I’ll be safe there,” Bob said, because his mom had told him so, no doubt.

“That’s right. You’ll be safe from zombies and  . . . and bikers. They’ll feed you and make sure you don’t get sick.”

Which was about all Whitman could promise.

“You like baseball?” he asked, to change the subject.

Bob blinked. Maybe they didn’t have baseball in Atlanta anymore, either.

After a couple hours, Whitman woke Grace up so she could take a watch. When he opened his eyes again, it was dawn and pink light smeared across the roof of the van.

“Anything to report?” he asked Grace.

“I thought maybe I heard engines, once,” she told him. “Except I’m not sure. Maybe it was just animals or something, growling in the trees.”

Whitman put the van in gear and moved out.

* * *

“It’s the business of this committee to hear a lot of reports,” one of the senators said. Whitman didn’t even look to see which one. He was watching his lawyer, the one they’d assigned to his case. He realized he’d never even caught the man’s name.

The lawyer’s eyes were glazed over, and his mouth was open in a rictus of horror. Whitman could only wonder what he saw, what moment of the Crisis he was reliving.

“What we hear disturbs us,” another senator said. “Director Philips presented the most optimistic data we’ve heard in a while. He didn’t mention the outbreaks of cholera and hantavirus in the cities of the Southwest. He didn’t say anything about the nutritional deficiencies we see — pellagra, beriberi, even childhood blindness.”

“You can hardly blame us for that,” Philips said.

The senator wasn’t done, however. “We were very alarmed to hear about conditions inside the so-called hospital camps. The camps are beyond overcrowded. Positives are herded inside and all but forgotten. They are given some food and clothing, yes —”