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“No,” Mike Yoder said. “I retract my objection.”
Tom smiled. “So noted. The motion is so carried. Justin, Carly, I’ll not ask you to decide right now, since you’ll need to share this with Stan and Mindy, but we’re formally inviting you to join us.”
Carly and Justin rose to their feet. The crowd became a blur as tears welled in her eyes, but she was smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. “Thank you,” she said to Tom and then to the townspeople. Justin repeated it and gave Carly a quick kiss on the cheek as they sat back down.
“Here.” He fished in his pocket and handed her a tissue he must have brought from the house. Carly chuckled even as she dabbed at her eyes. That was Justin, always thinking ahead.
The meeting continued for about an hour afterward, discussing issues with crop planting and the schedule for the gate watchers. As Cynthia had suggested, the number of watchers would be increased, and regular foot patrols would circle the fence around the swamp. The townspeople’s level of cooperation was admirable. There were those who disagreed, but logic and reason won out in the end, and issues were resolved by a vote.
After it adjourned, Carly and Justin walked home with Cynthia and Tom, who held hands as they strolled. As soon as they entered the house, they knew something was wrong. Carly smelled burning meat. Cynthia’s forehead wrinkled in concern, and she called for Andrea, but her daughter didn’t answer.
Cynthia dashed up the stairs and a few moments later, she called down the stairs, her voice sharp with panic, “Tom! Get Doc Cotton!”
Tom didn’t wait around to ask questions. He bolted out the door. Justin charged up the staircase, following the sound of Cynthia’s voice. He would have been able to run through the town faster than Tom, but he had no idea where Doc Cotton lived, and it would have taken too much time to explain.
Carly went into the kitchen and turned off the gas-powered oven, lest the house catch fire. She met Justin at the top of the stairs, right outside of the door to Andrea’s bedroom. Carly could see the young woman was sprawled across her bed as though she had collapsed there, unable to even drag herself up to lay her head on the pillow.
“She has it,” he said. “She has the Infection.”
Carly’s hand flew to her mouth. “She can’t, Justin, it’s over.”
“Apparently not.”
Andrea tossed and muttered while her mother tried to hold a thermometer in her mouth.
“But this isn’t right.” Carly shook her head, bewildered. “Even if she did have it, she should only have mild symptoms right now.” Even as the words left her mouth, she remembered her father had seemed to skip over the lightly symptomatic stage into full-blown sickness.
“Viruses mutate. Remember, in some of the cases, stages were skipped. Not everyone followed the same pattern.”
“I just don’t understand how this could happen. Who did she catch it from?”
“I don’t know.”
There was the sound of feet pounding across the porch and then the bang of the door as it hit the wall. Doc Cotton—whom Carly had correctly identified at the meeting as the middle-aged man at the table—rushed by Justin and Carly into Andrea’s room. After only a few moments, he looked up at Tom and Cynthia, sadness making him appear older than he had before. “I’m sorry, Tom, Cynthia, but she’s Infected.”
Cynthia stared at him. Blinked. “What?” It didn’t sound like her voice.
“She has the Infection.”
Cynthia still didn’t seem to be processing the news, but Tom sat down heavily on the chair at the vanity table. His face was pale and waxy.
Doc Cotton turned to Justin. “Do you have antivirals in your supplies?”
Justin nodded. Doc Cotton rattled off a list of what he needed.
“Come with me,” Justin said to Carly. “I’ll need you to read the boxes.”
They ran at full speed across the darkened streets. In some of the homes, yellow oil lamp light flickered and human shadows passed by the windows. Besides the chirping crickets, the only sounds were of their feet pounding on the pavement, the harsh rasp of their breath. They reached the barn and threw open the door with a sudden violence that made Shadowfax lurch in her stall and scream.
“It’s just us,” Carly called to her between pants for air as she crawled up into the wagon and threw back the tarp. “Light. I can’t see anything.”
Justin grabbed a flashlight they had stored beside the door and shined it on the pile. He repeated the drug names to Carly as she pawed through the stack. “Torlisibol,” she said.
“No, Torlisival.”
“Are you sure?”
Justin rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I should know this! I should—”
