The Night Parade(41)

“No.”

“Let’s maybe not do it until we understand it better,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Her palms lifted from him. She encircled his arm in an embrace. A moment later, he felt a tremor of anxiety pulse through him. The heaviness of it all was back, just as quickly as Ellie had chased it away.

“Okay,” he said, turning to the first poem. “Let’s read.”

So they read, and David was halfway through the third poem when Ellie’s breathing softened and she began to snore quietly against him. He paused in midverse and said her name aloud. When she didn’t respond, he closed the book, turned off the lantern, and shut his eyes.

For a time, the whole world was comprised of the whooshing sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He focused on Ellie’s gentle snoring, but after a while, it seemed that her snores grew more and more distant, as if some great expanse of space had gradually begun to separate them. He dreamt. And at some point, his dreams segued into a nightmare, which concluded when men in dark suits stuffed Ellie into a nondescript white van and drove her away.





20


Ten months earlier


After a number of other students and two teachers got sick at Ellie’s elementary school, David and Kathy decided to pull their daughter out. Many other parents did the same, which made it difficult to find tutors. The few tutors Kathy was able to locate were already setting up mini-classrooms in their homes and tutoring anywhere from five to ten kids at the same time.

“That’s no different from sending her to school,” Kathy argued. “She’s still around other kids who might be carrying something.”

“Well, it’s still less kids. The chances of exposure are much, much lower.”

It was a pointless thing to say, and David recognized that the second the words were out of his mouth. To date, it was still not known how the illness was transferred from one host to another. There had been countless reports where only a single member of a family had contracted the illness; on the other hand, there were the nightly reports that told what U.S. cities had the highest rate of infection, though no one could understand what made those particular cities more susceptible. The National Guard had moved in to some of these areas to maintain control and to begin quarantine procedures. The images of quarantined suburban neighborhoods on the nightly news were disturbing—street corners and intersections no different from any other throughout the country patrolled by military vehicles; soldiers in fatigues wearing gas masks, assault rifles strapped to their chests; children with masks over their mouths playing soccer behind a fence capped in concertina wire surrounding the perimeter of the quarantined zone.

“What happens if someone wants to leave?” Kathy asked him on one of the rare nights she agreed to watch the news with him.

“I suppose they don’t let them.”

“But what if they try to leave?”

“They’ll stop them.”

“How?”

“However they can.”

“Do you think they’d really shoot someone?”

“Probably not,” he said, although he didn’t know this for sure.

“Then what’s with all the guns?”

“Intimidation factor,” he suggested.

“What about kids?” she said, and for a split second David thought she was changing the subject. Back before this whole mess had started, they had contemplated having a second child. Wanderer’s Folly had put their intentions on hold, but he wondered now if she had been thinking about it all along.

“What about them?” he said.

“If some kids tried to leave, do you think they’d shoot them?”

“Those guards?” he said, nodding at the TV. On the screen, a National Guardsman who looked no older than nineteen stood frowning at the camera. He was waving the cameraperson away and pointing toward something offscreen. David wondered if the news crew was actually attempting to get inside the quarantined perimeter. “I don’t know, hon. Like I said, I think those guns are mostly for intimidation. They’re probably not even loaded.”

“Bullshit.” Kathy got up and went into the kitchen.

Her blood test from work had come back clean, but in the time since, her attitude hadn’t improved. She’d remained agitated, nervous, quick to bite his head off. Her behavior had caused an opposite reaction in him, as he felt responsible for maintaining some stability, some normalcy, in the household and not to spiral into panic. He kept trying to rationalize the situation, to present her with facts that might ease her mind. Maryland boasted some of the lowest numbers of infected persons. Things would be okay.

He got up and went to the kitchen in time to see Kathy throw a pill into her mouth and follow it up with a glass of water.

“What’s that you’re taking?”

“What’s it matter to you?”

“Please,” he said. “Please stop.”

She set the glass down on the counter, then folded her arms over her chest. She was wearing just a tank top, and David could see the tiny braille knobs of gooseflesh pimpling up on her shoulders. He, too, felt a slight chill in the air.

He picked up the medicine bottle, read the label.

“Zoloft.”

“So?”

“These aren’t even prescribed to you. Who’s Jeanette Vasquez?”