“He spotted the back of your head in the water and pulled you out.” He slapped the dash. “Shit, Toby, you saved a guy’s life! Un-fucking-believable.”
I looked at Toby, who kept his eyes on the road, smiling, clearly proud.
“Thanks, Toby,” I offered. It wasn’t nearly enough, but I couldn’t find the energy to elaborate.
“No problem.” He held out his fist. I bumped the top of it with mine, like we were playing one-potato, two- potato, not sure if that’s what he wanted.
“I’m Joe, by the way,” the Italian guy said.
“I have to sleep now,” I said.
A wriggling in my pants woke me. Joe was fishing around in my pocket.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t ripping you off,” Joe said when he saw I was awake. He withdrew his hand. “I was trying to see if there were phone numbers in your wallet, but your wallet’s all wet and it’s stuck to your pants. Is there someone I can call? We’re not sure what to do with you. We gotta be somewhere.”
My first thought was Annie. My second was that I should call my mom to let her know I was all right. She was probably frantic, out in Arizona with no information, calling my phone and getting no answer. Later. Right now I needed someone to come and help me. There was my friend Dave. He had a family to worry about, but if he could, he’d come.
“Call my friend, David Bash.”
I couldn’t remember the number, and my phone was in my car. Joe looked it up, dialed, and handed me the phone.
All circuits were busy.
I shut the phone, handed it back to Joe. “You can just drop me at my house.” I gave Toby directions.
Joe clicked on the radio. The roads out of Atlanta were closed. The National Guard was setting up auxiliary hospitals in armories and schools. The office of Homeland Security had released a statement saying the outbreak had tentatively been traced back to the subway, and was assumed to be a terrorist attack.
“How did you bring me back?” I asked Toby.
“I pushed on your chest. That didn’t work, so I punched your chest like they do in the movies.”
“You never took CPR?”
Toby made a face. “
We slowed to pass a police cruiser parked half in the road. The police officer was nowhere in sight.
“How long was I in the water?” I asked.
They glanced at each other. “What would you say?” Toby asked Joe.
Joe shrugged. “What? Ten, fifteen minutes?”
“Right in there, yeah,” Toby said.
I tried to wrap my mind around it. I’d been dead. Not unconscious, dead. I had that vision, of being Lyndsay watching the news. A lot of people who had near-death experiences reported vivid hallucinations, and now that my head was clearer it seemed likely that that’s what happened.
It had been
The radio was describing the symptoms of anthrax, but I already knew them from my conversation with Annie.
“Wait a minute,” I said aloud without meaning to. Both men looked at me. “Did they say it started in the subways?” I thought I’d heard that, but that couldn’t be right, because I’d heard the same thing during my hallucination that I was Lyndsay.
“That’s what they’re saying,” Joe said.
I wrapped my arms around myself and trembled harder. “Jesus,” I whimpered.
“What?” Joe asked.
“Nothing.” I was so tired.
We pulled through the gates into the remnants of Toy Shop Village, with its empty bumper-boats pool, rusting rides, rotting streamers, and Toby and Joe were sure I was delirious. Who lives in a defunct amusement center? I directed them toward the drive-in theater toward the back of the Village, assuring them I lived there.
I thanked both men from the bottom of my heart. Joe’s eyes filled with tears and he nodded; Toby waved me off, insisting it was no big deal. I got Toby’s business card, intending to come up with a truly awesome thank you gift to send once I could think straight. Quivering in front of my locked front door, it took me a moment to remember the spare key over the door frame.
As soon as I got inside I tried to call Annie on my land line, but got no answer. I stripped, pulled every blanket and towel out of the linen closet, threw them on my bed, and passed out underneath them.
CHAPTER 4
I woke trembling with cold and utterly disoriented. My fingers and toes felt like they could never possibly be warm again. I wondered if I had frostbite.
There were so many people I needed to call immediately. Mom. Annie. Grandma. Jeez, Grandma lived closer to downtown than I did. She didn’t go out much, so hopefully she was all right.
I went for my phone on the night stand, then remembered it was in my car, in the reservoir. To call anyone I would have to get up and reach the land line in the kitchen. I tried to sit up; my back and neck blazed with pain. In fact, every single part of me hurt.
Slowly, painfully, I struggled to a sitting position. The blankets slid off of my torso, exposing me to arctic air. I felt like I was in a meat locker.
“I need a hot shower,” I said, tucking my fingers under my armpits.
I slid out of bed. My hip was bruised, and my right knee and ankle hurt, but it didn’t seem that I had any serious injuries. I looked longingly at the door to the bathroom before grabbing a bathrobe and limping into the kitchen to call Annie.
There was no answer.
That didn’t necessarily mean anything, I told myself. There were a hundred reasons she might not be able to answer. For all I knew she was taking a shower.
I decided to try again in a few minutes, and in the meantime, called my mom. She sobbed with relief while I trembled and ached, and simultaneously assured her I was fine. When I told her about the accident, she flipped. She wanted to hop on the next plane from Phoenix and take care of me, but all flights into the Atlanta area were suspended.
I never quite understood how my mom turned out to be so well-adjusted. When damaged people had children, it seemed to me their children invariably ended up damaged in some way. Somehow Mom had escaped that fate, or compensated for it.
Mom told me that Grandma was fine, but afraid to leave her house in Ansley Park. Smiling, I promised to look in on her as soon as I was able. Grandma could take care of herself, as she’d demonstrated in negotiating terms for giving me the rights to
I asked what was happening with the anthrax.
When all was said and done, the CDC was estimating half a million casualties. Half a million. The city was under martial law. Ten thousand Iraq War vets had been called back into service because they were vaccinated against anthrax, but it was taking time to get them assembled.
“There’s a vaccine?” I asked.
“They don’t have much,” Mom said. “Antibiotics are supposed to work sometimes as well, but in this case they haven’t. They’re saying that means it’s ‘weaponized’ anthrax—designed to be resistant to antibiotics so it’s better at killing people.
Half a million people. I still couldn’t get that number out of my head. I needed to try Annie again, and then Dave Bash. Two other local friends came to mind.
“I’m so relieved you’re okay,” Mom said. “You almost drowning… I can’t help thinking of Kayleigh.”
It took me a moment to answer. “She was one of my last thoughts, before I—” Drowned. “It seemed so, I
