Head between the knees again. Maybe it was true, but she was clearly in no shape to think about it. Not that she ever was. Maybe she should go back to the Matchicks’ and get her meds. She usually took them in the evening, but if she needed a little extra help, it wouldn’t kill her to do so now. Two of them, that’s what they were for – in case of emergency, break pills.
Pills got her thinking about medicine, which led her back to the outbreak of whatever it was. Item five: the symptoms described in the news reports were what she’d experienced the last week, except that she wasn’t dead now. She’d recovered.
Hypothesis: she’d gotten the bug and survived it. Extension of hypothesis: other people had too, maybe even Dad and Mom and Brad. Maybe someone else in town, who was either still recovering, too scared to come out or just far enough away to not have alerted her to their presence yet. Or someone in the next town. It was only logical to think that she wasn’t the only one who’d gotten better, or that some hadn’t gotten sick at all.
But what did logic have to do with a worldwide plague happening all in a week?
She shook her head. She didn’t know enough to be sure of much beyond this being really, really bad. She needed to think this through, get her emotions strapped down and work out what to do. And sitting on someone’s lawn looking at a couple of corpses was not the way to do it, or the place to.
Plan: go back home, take a couple of pills, break out a notepad and do some serious pondering.
Kelly stood, took a deep breath and walked back to the Matchicks’, making sure not to look at the Kompressor or the Volvo – it wouldn’t help them or her. In fact, she made sure not to look in any other vehicles as well. She was feeling shaky enough already – no point in making it worse. Anyone there was either dead and couldn’t be helped, or alive and able to help themselves.
Back in familiar territory, she went to the kitchen, filled a glass of water, took it to her room and used it to wash down a lamotrigine and an aspirin. In the office, she found a yellow legal pad and a pen, and sat at Saul Matchick’s desk to get her thoughts organized, to figure out what to do next. She wrote down all her items and hypotheses, and a list of the people and places she’d tried to call. She was surprised at how long the list was, and frightened by it too – by the law of averages, there should’ve been someone at one of them, at least. Unless …
Unless things had gone completely to pieces. Unless there were too few people left to mind any of them. Unless not just the news media, but every system was abandoned.
She flipped the first sheet over and started on a second. The internet was still up, even if nothing new was being posted. The electricity still worked. Water still came from the tap. But for how long? How many days could they keep going without constant attention or maintenance? She had no idea. She’d never lived in a place that didn’t have electricity and gas and running water and everything else that made modern society go. At thirty-two, she was barely old enough to remember not having constant Web access.
Hypothesis: over the next several months, maybe the next several days, all of them were going to disappear. Which meant everything connected to them would shut down. Darn near everything was electric nowadays, from refrigerators to street lights to gasoline pumps. She had a car, a little Hyundai Accent hatchback with 120,000 miles on it, and she’d filled up the tank just before she got the flu (if it was the flu and not the outbreak), but would she ever be able to fill it again? Or even use the radio?
Huh. Odd that it hadn’t occurred to her to check the radio or television, even after trying to call the local stations. If someone was out there and attempting to contact others, breaking into a radio station would be a logical way to do it. She ran to the den and turned on the big plasma TV Saul and his friends liked to watch the Warriors games on, hoping against hope.
Her hopes were soon dashed. The cable was still working, but every channel was either static or dead black. Not even the public access scroll was operating. Switching it off, she turned to – and on – the stereo and tried every frequency she could think of. Nothing but hash and crackle. Nothing. She turned it off in frustration. Darn, she shouldn’t have gotten excited about the possibility.
Okay. Thoughts processed. One more idea tried, unsuccessfully. What next? Well, she still hadn’t gotten to the store. And for her own sanity’s sake, she really needed to visit the store. She checked the time on her phone – 9:18. Had it really been less than two hours since she first called the store and no one picked up? Well, a lot had happened in those two hours. Correction: nothing had happened, but she’d found out a lot that had happened previously. Found out more than she was prepared to handle, to be frank about it.
Another glass of water gave her a minute to try and calm herself. She was going to SBN&N before she was interrupted by spotting the dead man in the Volvo. Having no better idea at the moment, she might as well head there again. It might help. If nothing else, she could confirm why no one answered her call. It was a start. It was all she had right now.
Back out the door. Back down
