This is a fictional story. All names, places, and viruses are used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, past or present, are intentional.
If you haven’t read from the beginning, please start at Chapter 1 here.
***
Due Date: 74 days away
I sprinted to the parking garage, jumped in the car, tossed my phone on the passenger seat, and backed out as fast as I could.
Weaving through cars and stop lights, I called Kenneth, his number buried in my contacts list. It rang for a while, but he didn’t answer.
Next, I found Liz. She was right there in Recents.
She picked up immediately.
“Liz, it’s crazy out here.”
“Where are you?”
Making a hard left onto a one-way street, the cord from my ear buds tangling with my forearms. I tried to sound calm.
“I talked to Jerry,” I said. I told her what he said about downtown.
“So, where are you?”
“Almost to the freeway. I’m going to get our boys.”
She coughed.
“Do you think that’s safe?”
“No.”
I stopped talking for a few seconds while I ran the last light downtown and merged onto I-64 East.
“No, I don’t think it’s safe, but I think we’re past safe at this point. Just being in the car with me who’s been in the car with you who has a fever…”
In my rear view mirror, I could see the remains of the two bridges. Mostly, they looked the same. The main portion of each still stood. They each just had a gap that made it impossible to use either one. The Second Street Bridge still looked in tact.
I turned my attention back to driving. And Liz.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“They admitted me. My fever spiked to 102.7. They gave me some Motrin.”
The road just got longer.
“How’s your breathing? What did they say about that?”
“They talked about doing a CT scan. They don’t want to do it unless they have to. The baby and all.”
I stayed on with her all the way to our exit. She sounded good. I figured she’d be exhausted, shivering, and uncomfortable. She was clearly tired—she said so—but she could carry on a conversation and didn’t have a bunch of doctors and nurses surrounding her in some intense emergency situation.
Did we overreact? Was I?
I kept telling myself we were making easy decisions now, so we didn’t have to make hard ones later. The easy decisions were just getting harder.
I called Kenneth again as I pulled off the freeway. It rang and rang. At least it wasn’t dead. But he never answered. I tried one more time. Same.
I slammed my hand onto the steering wheel. I should have taught him better than this.
Hopefully, he was just still asleep and forgot to turn up his ring volume.
Pulled into our driveway, though, I saw them in the backyard.
Shepherd had his shoes on and everything. Kenneth was swinging him. For a second, I forgot about the world, the bridges, downtown, Liz’s fever. I didn’t remember Kenneth ever taking Shepherd outside on his own.
The pause washed off me as fast as it washed over.
“What are you doing outside?” I yelled across the yard. I ran over to the swings. “You can’t be out when we’re not home like this. Come on.”
I snatched Shepherd out of the swing.
He started crying. Not out loud, but the sad kind.
“Come on. We got to go. I’m sorry.”
“Where are we going?” Kenneth asked.
“Downtown. Someone blew up the bridges. We need to stay together. Can you pack some clothes?”
He just looked at me.
“Now! We have to go.”
“What kind of clothes?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Just some stuff you can wear for a couple days. Make sure you bring something warm. And any survival gear you have. We might be camping.”
He set his eyebrows but took off for the house.
I strapped Shepherd into his car seat and left his door open, switching from the car to our SUV.
My turn to pack.
My first priority was the camping gear. It was all still laying in the yard still. I didn’t think we’d need the tent, but I broke it down and stuffed it into our camping bin anyway. Battery powered lamp. Cookware. Fire starters. Check, check, check.
I dragged the whole bin out and loaded it in the back of the SUV, along with the chairs. Then I went back for the miscellaneous gear: the drill, the small tool box, a hand saw, an extra box of nails, a bucket, that sheepskin.
From inside, I grabbed a bunch of plates and utensils, trash bags, some knives, and Liz’s exercise bands. I didn’t plan on cooking or killing anything, but I wanted to come prepared. We didn’t have many little bottles water. I packed what we had on the kitchen floor and took one of the five gallon jugs.
I opened the fridge. Not much I wanted to take in there. I left it all.
“Should I bring my water purifier?” Kenneth asked.
“Good idea. Bring your laptop too.”
“I packed it in my backpack already,” he said.
“I don’t know if you’ll get a chance to use it, but any kind of electronics are probably a good idea to take. We can always trade them if we need something else.”
That’s not what he wanted to hear.
“How long will we be gone?” he asked.
I pulled the sleeping bags out of his closet and tucked them under my arms along with the clothes I’d grabbed for myself and Liz.
“If we have to stay there? A couple nights. Maybe a week. Hopefully not that long.”
We brought everything outside and packed it in the trunk, totally full.
“Ready to do this?” I said to Shepherd.
I opened my mouth wide and shut his door.
He’d stopped looking so sad. He was just excited to be going somewhere.
We backed out as fast as we could, the second time for me that day, the gravel driveway sputtering beneath us.
