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“I’m so sorry,” Carly choked out. “God, I am so sorry.”
Neither of them replied. Carly darted out the door onto the porch. She sagged down onto the steps, clinging to the support post. There, she let out the sobs that had built to such an agonizing pressure in her chest. She wept for Andrea, for Tom and Cynthia, and for the precious bit of normalcy that was too fragile to survive after all.
There was barely room to walk between the beds. All were filled with coughing, retching, moaning people. The muttering of the mad were the only voices heard. In the beginning, the noise had filled the church and echoed from its bare walls. But at this point, it was a low murmur.
The church’s pews had all been removed. Doc Cotton had requested people bring beds from their spare bedrooms—just the frames, box springs, and mattresses. The room was lit by lanterns they’d suspended from the ceiling, a warm glow that didn’t soften the ugly reality that the whole town lay dying in the sanctuary.
Carly hadn’t slept in days. She bathed burning foreheads with cool water. She cleaned up after the sick and helped move the dead outside to the large pit Tommy Burton had dug with his backhoe. At first, the dead were washed and carefully wrapped in sheets, their families tucking small mementos, like pictures, inside with them. And then the families fell ill, and there was no one to perform those last acts of kindness and love.
“You need to take a nap, girl,” Old Miz Marson said. Carly hadn’t heard her approach.
“Perhaps later,” Carly replied, knowing it was a lie.
“You ain’t gonna do anyone no good if you fall sick yourself.”
Maybe not, but she couldn’t leave them. She couldn’t rest while the people who had taken them in— welcomed them to their community—suffered and died.
She glanced up from the person she was bathing and saw Justin with Doc Cotton, carrying out yet another victim. This one was small, a little girl. What’s her name? Tara Something, Carly thought. Her mother had brought her in, sobbing between coughs, and the two of them had breathed their last within an hour of each other. Carly was glad the mother never had to know what had happened to her little girl, a tiny mercy.
“Go on back to Preacher Wilson’s office,” Old Miz Marson urged. “I’ll send that man of yours back to you. He won’t rest, either, but he might if you do.”
Doc Cotton had told Carly no one knew how old Miz Marson really was. He said she’d been an old woman when he was a little boy and hadn’t seemed to change since. She was one of the few able-bodied people left.
There wasn’t any medicine left, but it hadn’t done much good, anyway. As their supply dwindled, Justin had tried to reserve it for the children, but none of it had worked. He hadn’t even hesitated to share it, though they’d both known it was probably futile. Carly wondered if this marked some sort of change in Justin, thinking with his heart instead of his coldly practical mind.
They had done everything they could think of, but one by one, the town’s children had slipped away, burned alive from the inside out by the terrible fever. Only one was left, a little seven-year-old girl named Madison Laker. Her parents had both died a few days earlier, along with the baby her mother had been carrying. Madison was staying next door in the preacher’s house, and while Carly thought she was too young to be left alone, there was no one left to watch her.
Doc Cotton had tried to keep a log, recording the deaths, but they came too quickly, too many at once. Some were taken outside before he was informed, and afterward, no one could remember. Doc Cotton had become sick, too, but he was trying to work as long as possible before he succumbed. It wouldn’t be long, though. His eyes were bleary from fever, and he had to blink sweat out of them. As she watched, he helped lift Clayton Bierce so he could sip some water.
Carly and Justin were still immune, or so it seemed. She closed her eyes as she thought of her baby and the agonizing choice she’d made when the latest crisis had started.
She’d stood on the street and shouted at Mindy on the porch; she wouldn’t risk going closer. “You need to get out of here. Take Dagny and go. Find a safe place and hole up there until this is all over.” There had been some cans of baby formula and bottles still in their packaging in the grocery store. Carly had put them on the sidewalk and sprayed the containers with Lysol before she stepped away. It hurt, losing those sweet, precious moments when her baby lay next to her heart and nursed, but she had no choice. It was too dangerous for them to stay. Dagny might not be immune to this version of the virus.
Please, she prayed. Please let them have found somewhere safe. There were so many dangers out there.
She heard a soft whine and looked down to see Sam beside her. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You know you’re not allowed in here.”
Sam whined again and used his nose to nudge something on the floor, something Carly could barely see in the low light. She bent down.
It was Tigger. The cat’s breath came and went with a congested wheeze, and she was as limp as a rag when Carly picked her up. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
Sam whined again and shuffled on his paws. Fix her, he seemed to be saying. His eyes pleaded with her.
Carly laid the cat on one of the empty beds. She touched the inside of Tigger’s ear and found her burning hot with the fever.
“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’ll do what I can, I promise.” Carly stroked his head gently. She dunked Tigger into the pan of cool water. The cat shivered even as heat poured off her body. Carly went to the supply box and found an eyedropper. She pried open Tigger’s mouth and used it to squirt some water down her throat. When she tasted it, she began to lick eagerly at the eyedropper and then at Carly’s fingers. Carly gave her more until the cat sagged back against the bed, sated and exhausted. Sam laid his head on the bed beside her. His ears drooped back. Carly stroked his head again and gave him a hug. There was no way she was going to tell him he couldn’t stay.
“I’ve got to go check on the others,” she told him. “But I’ll be back.”
She made her rounds through her shrinking collection of patients. Old Miz Marson was seated next to a woman’s bed, reading the Bible aloud to her. She glanced up as Carly passed and shook her head because Carly hadn’t taken her advice to rest.
The door opened, admitting a brilliant stream of light that hurt Carly’s eyes. Justin emerged from it. He was pale, and his hands trembled with exhaustion, but he kissed her warmly and then set about assisting with the sick. It was an endless cycle of illness and death, and one loss bled into another until she wasn’t sure who she was caring for at the moment. She looked down at the sweating woman on the bed and saw her mother. She was calm and lucid, which Carly hadn’t seen since the spike in her fever.
“No spiders?” Carly asked her.
“Water,” her mother whispered. Carly got a plastic cup and helped her up so she could gulp eagerly from it.
“Careful, Mom, you don’t want to make yourself sick.”
