Hitchers

“I lost it. Completely melted down. Something made me think of Lorena, and that was it.”

“Aw,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She coughed thickly.

“You sound worse.”

“I’ve never felt so terrible.”

“I’m coming over. Is there anything I can get you?” Up ahead, a police officer was diverting traffic. Barricades were set up across Piedmont Avenue.

“That’s okay. I’m way out of your way.”

“I’m coming,” I said. “It’d be nice to see a friendly face right now. What can I bring you?”

I hung a right onto Baker, then tried to go left on Courtland, but it was blocked off as well. Red lights flashed languidly on three or four parked cruisers. I craned my neck as I drove past, peering down the blocked-off street. A dozen police officers and people in blue windbreakers conferred in the middle of the street.

“Wow, something’s going on downtown. Everything’s blocked off.”

Further down I spotted another half-dozen officers. One of them was running—not trotting, running—toward the huddled group.

“There are police everywhere,” I added.

“Can you see smoke or anything?” Annie asked.

“No.”

I drove on. I despised onlookers who lined up at barricades, nosing to find out what was going on even though it had nothing to do with them, and I didn’t want to be one.

Annie was quiet—either waiting for an update or feeling too sick to talk.

Peachtree was blocked as well.

“Damn. It’s all blocked off.”

An ambulance was parked halfway on the sidewalk. Nearby, a guy was handing out medical masks from a red plastic crate. Some of the police were already wearing them, their mouths and noses hidden under a white swatch.

“You okay?” I asked Annie. She sounded wheezy.

“Yeah.”

“I was going to stop and get you soup, but I’m thinking I should come straight there.”

“Thanks, I don’t feel like soup anyway. You get full credit for the thought, though.”

A big, unmarked black truck rumbled past, swerved to a stop at the next corner. The back door flew open and seven or eight men in military uniforms jumped out carrying assault rifles.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

A news van pulled up beside the truck.

“What?” Annie asked.

“There are soldiers running around. Is this on the news?”

I clicked on the radio, turned to WSB. They were covering the flu outbreak at the moment—no mention of blocked-off streets and soldiers with guns.

The air was filled with the whine of sirens. I cracked the window: it sounded like a pack of coyotes howling.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“It’s on TV,” Annie said. I heard a news anchor’s voice in the background, waited while Annie listened. “They don’t know what’s going on. They think it’s about the flu outbreak. People are being rushed to hospitals.”

The door to an apartment building flew open. Two paramedics rushed out carrying a stretcher. Two more followed close behind with a second stretcher. I pulled over, rolled down my window.

“What’s going on?”

One guy looked up at me and shook his head. It might have meant he didn’t know, or that he wasn’t saying, if it wasn’t for the warning in his eyes. He was saying I should get out of there.

The problem was, Annie lived fifteen blocks into that sealed-off area.

I got out of my car. “Excuse me, I need to get to Auburn Avenue. Is there a way around this?” There was a young blonde woman in the stretcher, her eyes glassy and scared. Every strained breath she managed was accompanied by an awful rattling.

“You can’t go there,” said a big, muscular guy in a surgical mask carrying one end of a stretcher. “Go home now.”

“What’s going on?” I asked in a tone that made me sound like a lost child. The woman in the stretcher looked more than very sick—she looked like she was dying.

“Go home.” He gestured toward my car with his head.

They hurried the stretchers into the ambulance and turned on the red bubble. The big guy rolled his window halfway. His voice was half-drowned by the scream of the siren, his lips hidden by the mask and unreadable, but I was almost certain he shouted “anthrax.”

They raced off, giving me no time to ask if I’d heard right, if they were sure, if they were shitting me, if they were high.

Anthrax? Had he said anthrax?

I got in my car, and drove off, afraid to call Annie back. Could she have anthrax? No, she didn’t seem nearly as sick as the woman in the stretcher. Unless Annie was just earlier along. I didn’t know anything about anthrax, except that it killed people.

I passed two Latina women straining with a big man, trying to push him into the back seat of a sedan. I slowed as I passed, peered through the window at the man. His eyes were open but blank, as if he was in shock. His chest was hitching, spasming.

“Oh God,” I whispered. I wanted to get out of there, but it would be cowardly to leave Annie. I called her.

“It’s on CNN,” Annie said immediately. “They’re saying it’s the flu epidemic. They’re saying it gets much worse after the first forty-eight hours, that people are dying.”

“Oh, God.” It came out before I could stop it.

“What?”

I didn’t want to tell her. Annie was a painfully anxious person; this would terrify her, probably needlessly.

“What?” she repeated. “Tell me.”

I couldn’t lie to her. “I heard something. From someone on the street.”

“What did you hear?” Annie sounded like she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know.

“It was one person, in the street.” I didn’t add that it was a paramedic. I wanted to water it down if I was going to say it.

“Just tell me.” She sounded annoyed.

“Someone said it could be anthrax.”

Annie whimpered.

“I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sure it’s not true.”

A man in a business suit was half-lying on the bottom step of a walk-up. He raised a weak hand to a couple hurrying past. They picked up their pace.

Annie stopped crying; there was silence on the line. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m Googling anthrax,” she said.

I waited, listening to the wet hiss of her breathing. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the woman on the stretcher.

“Causes muscle aches, fever, sore throat. Often mistaken for the flu. After twenty-four to forty-eight hours, severe breathing problems, shock, meningitis.” She sobbed. “Almost always fatal.”

“There are a million things that give people flulike symptoms. We don’t know that’s what it is.”

“What are all those sirens? Are they ambulances?”

“Some are.” Up ahead the street was blocked off, forcing me to turn left, away from Annie. “I’m coming to get you.”

“You said it’s blocked off.”

“I’ll find a way in.”