Gathering myself, I stood up. Through the bare trees, I saw Lauren holding Ellarose, and Chuck was limping towards us. Then I saw Luke, running around in his jerky hop-step motion. He"d been asking for Tony all morning, and I didn"t know what to say.
I pulled a grubby hand across the stubble on the top of my head and looked up toward the sky, feeling the sun"s warmth on my face. My mind was still numb, not sure what to feel except still scared.
But we were alive.
Night was falling, and a crescent moon was rising. I was sitting on the front porch, back in the swing chair, standing guard with the shotgun. A fire was roaring in the wood-burning stove in the living room.
At least we were warm.
Chuck had been wearing a bulletproof vest that Sergeant Williams gave him when he"d dropped off the hazmat suits. He wasn"t sure why he"d put it on, just being careful, he said, but maybe it was why he"d been so bold, facing down those people, whoever they were, on the back deck of that house. Even wearing the vest, he"d been badly injured, with stray shotgun pellets in his arm and shoulder.
My own leg injury hadn"t been too bad, just a deep gash where a nail had stuck into me. Susie had bandaged it, and I hardly limped.
What the h.e.l.l are we going to do now?
We had no car, nearly no food-half of our supplies had been in the truck. Where this place had seemed magical just days ago, now it felt evil, threatening. I"d thought that maybe the madness had just been in New York, that the world was still sane on the outside, but it seemed it was the same out here.
Maybe the whole world is falling apart? How would we know? Sighing, I looked up into the night sky at the stars. Where are the G.o.ds now?
And then one of the stars moved. And blinked. Following the tiny light, I watched it begin to descend while my brain tried to comprehend what it was seeing.
It"s an airplane! It had to be.
Spellbound, I watched as it gently settled into a glowing patch on the horizon, and then the second thunderclap exploded in my mind. Jumping off the swing, I ran to the front door, threw it open, and ran upstairs.
"Are they back?" yelled Chuck as I hammered up the stairs.
"No, no," I whispered back urgently. Lauren and the kids were sleeping. "Everything is fine."
I opened the door to their bedroom to find Chuck lying on the bed, covered in b.l.o.o.d.y cloths. Susie was leaning over him, tweezers in one hand and a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the other.
"What is it?"
"What can you see, right on the horizon from here?"
Chuck looked at Susie and then back at me.
"At night you can just see Washington-it"s about sixty miles away. At least, you could see the lights of the city when they were on. Why?"
"Because I can see Washington."
Day 33 January 24.
"WHAT HAPPENS IF you don"t come back?"
Lauren was pleading with me.
"I will come back, that"s the whole point. I"ll only be gone for one day, and I won"t speak to anyone."
Sitting on a fallen tree stump, she gripped Luke tightly in her arms.
"I"ll make straight for the Capitol building," I added, "and if anyone stops me, I"ll just show them this, right?"
I held up her driver"s license. She was a Seymour, the niece of Congressman Seymour, and her identification should be enough to bring the cavalry back no matter how bad the situation was. Her family must be almost beside themselves.
Still she said nothing.
"We can"t just stay here and do nothing," I argued. "Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds will be back after they get a chance to lick their wounds, and then what?"
"I don"t know. We hide?"
"We can"t hide here forever, Lauren."
Using some tarps, we"d constructed a makeshift camp further up in the woods, far away from the cabin. We had a view down the road and onto the driveway. It was only a temporary solution, running away. We needed to take action, so I"d decided to walk into Washington.
It was desperate, but then so were the alternates.
To begin with, Chuck had argued with me, telling me it was too risky. He thought we should wait, but I was more scared of waiting. We"d go through what little food we had in a few days, and then what? He wasn"t going to be on his feet any time soon, so I would be fishing and trapping for us? And maybe he wouldn"t get on his feet at all. He needed some serious medical attention, and so did Ellarose-she was wasting away before our eyes.
Time had become our enemy, and I was tired of waiting, of not knowing what was going on.
"One day, that"s all. I will walk there in one day, and I won"t take any chances, won"t speak to anyone."
Lauren gripped Luke tighter in her arms. "You make sure you come back to us. You just make sure."
Day 34 January 25.
I LEFT BEFORE dawn.
In my whole life, I couldn"t remember ever walking more than a few miles at a time, maybe an afternoon hike here and there, but I was sure I could walk sixty miles-four miles an hour, fifteen hours, sixty miles.
I could walk sixty miles in one day.
One day.
In one day, I could finally find out what was happening to the world, why this had happened to us. Last we heard, the president had left Washington, but the lights in Washington were on, and Lauren"s uncle was a congressman. All I had to do was get to the Capitol building, explain who I was, who my wife"s family was. Just one day and I would bring back help.
There was still a sliver of moon out when I left the cabin. I"d scrambled down the dirt road in the semidarkness with my headlamp off. I pa.s.sed the Baylors" house, my heart in my throat, but there were no lights on there, no movement. By the time I reached the main road, coming down off the mountain, twilight had begun to spread.
I set a brisk pace, limping slightly from my leg wound.
At ground level, the snow was completely gone. Hills and fields and forests spread out before me. Gradually, the monotone of twilight gave way to a burst of color as the sun broke the horizon ahead of me. Drops of dew clung to blades of gra.s.s bordering the road, and I felt energized, invigorated.
After all we"d been through, I just had to endure one more day.
There was no way for me to get lost. Down out of the mountains and then due east, straight along I-66 until I hit the middle of Washington, until I saw the Washington Monument. Then right along the Mall and up to the Capitol building.
I had my cell phone with me, and the GPS worked, but without a data feed I didn"t have the maps to go along with it, only the ones for New York that Chuck had loaded manually. I didn"t need it, but I brought it with me, just in case-maybe the cell networks were working.
I walked, and I walked, and I walked.
The sun rose in the sky, washing me with its heat. By midmorning I began to see the first car traffic along the road. I was following a side road that paralleled I-66, trying to stay out of view.
Keep your head down, don"t attract attention, just keep walking.
Every now and then a car would hum in the distance, slowly grow in size, and then flash past me on the main road. A part of me wanted to wave, to stop them to talk, but a bigger part of me was afraid. Luke and Lauren were counting on me.
I couldn"t take any chances.
Walking, walking, walking. How many miles have I walked already?
I would fix on a hill, somewhere toward the horizon, and then watch it. For what seemed forever, it would stay the same size, but then it would slowly grow, and then I"d be walking past it, picking a new hill to watch. In one pocket I had Irena"s mezuzah, and from time to time I would hold it, imagining some secret power contained within that was protecting us.
Pain was aching in my feet, and the injury burned in my leg.
By lunchtime, the sun was beating down on me and I was soaked in sweat. I had a small backpack on, mostly filled with bottles of water. The backpack made me so hot that I would take it off from time to time to cool off the river of sweat flowing down my back.
After five weeks of freezing cold, I hadn"t imagined it could get so hot, so quickly.
I"ll walk in my boxers. Why not?
I stopped to remove my jeans.
Awkwardly, I stripped them off and inspected the b.l.o.o.d.y bandage wrapped around my right calf. I tenderly poked at the edges of the wound. It was sore. Putting my sneakers back on, I stared at my pale, skinny legs and soiled, mismatched socks. My legs had purple and black welts on them, but I couldn"t remember knocking into anything that would have bruised them.
Without the belt in my jeans, my boxer shorts fell down. I"d lost so much weight that I"d cut yet another notch in my belt to keep my pants up-five notches total. I must have lost six inches around my waist. I had to roll my boxers up twice to keep them from falling, but the cool air on my legs made it all worthwhile.
I had a little food, some peanuts, but I had money too, and credit cards. If the lights were on, then the city was alive, and I could buy something. In the growing heat, I began to fantasize about what I would buy first, perhaps a juicy hamburger, or maybe I"d stop for a steak? Then I thought of the meat boiling in the pot yesterday, of the blood, and my stomach turned.
Who did this to us? Turned us into animals?
It couldn"t just be an accident, not the way it had unfolded-the attack on logistics, the wiping out of the internet, the bird flu warnings, and then what? Targets invading US airs.p.a.ce and power grid shutdowns. It couldn"t be criminals-what would they gain? Terrorists? This was too coordinated, too well planned.
By the afternoon the pain in my legs was intense, and I funneled my pain into anger.
It has to be China.
The fighting in the South China Sea, all the news reports of them infiltrating our computer networks, stealing from us. As Washington loomed closer with every painful footstep, the question became more urgent, and the answer more clear.
I couldn"t wait for the sun to go down, for the air to cool.
The landscape changed from foothills to gently rolling hills, and the forests and fields to farmland and the outskirts of small towns. In the late afternoon I pa.s.sed the first other person walking along the road, and I kept my head down. I stopped and put my jeans back on. By the time the sun set, there were several other people walking on the road with me, in front and behind.
Everyone kept their distance.
There was no power anywhere. Most of the houses I could see stayed dark, but some windows glimmered with faint lights I figured were candles. On the horizon, down I-66, the sky glowed, and it was closer, much closer.
But still far away.
Should I keep struggling on?
The pain had become nearly unbearable. My legs, my feet, my back-everything hurt. I gritted my teeth.
Can I walk through the night?
I looked toward the horizon. It was too far. I needed to get some rest.
I"ll get there tomorrow.
The crescent moon was back in the sky, casting dim shadows in the night.
Up ahead, a dark ma.s.s blotted out the trees lining the road. Limping slowly, I came up to it, walking off the shoulder of the road to have a look. It was an old barn or shed, its weather-beaten planks curled with time. There was no door. I pulled my headlamp out of my backpack and turned it on, looking inside.
"h.e.l.lo!" I called out.
The interior was littered with things haphazardly discarded-boards of wood, old shoes, a rusting tricycle. An old Chevy truck sat hunched in one corner, no wheels and on blocks, covered in garbage.
"h.e.l.lo!"
My call echoed without answer.
I was exhausted.
Beyond exhausted.
Carefully, I picked my way toward the back of the shed. In the light of my headlamp, I pa.s.sed something that looked like an old sheet-maybe a curtain?-and I picked it up. It was stiff with dirt, but I shook it out and cleaned it off as best I could.
I shivered, the damp sweat still sticking to my back, chilling me in the cool night air.
Reaching the Chevy, I climbed up to it and opened its door. A long bench seat greeted me inside, and I smiled, jumping in behind the wheel. Putting my backpack down as a pillow, I closed the door to the Chevy and lay down on the bench, pulling the curtain I"d cleaned off around me.
Something in my pocket dug into me, and I realized it was the Borodins" mezuzah. Reaching down and pulling it out, I propped myself up on one elbow and wedged it into a rusted hole in the side of the Chevy"s door.
I smiled. That counts as an entrance, doesn"t it?