Lee’s jaw worked for a second. His heart, trying to decide whether to sink or fly, settled on turning over and pounding as if he was back in basic training, running before he learned to pace himself. He realized his palms were sweating, and also realized he was going to have to talk to her again. On Sunday.
That meant four and a half days for him to practice, and to find something to talk about.
He stood stock-still for another few minutes, trying to think of what he’d come into Landy’s to get. He even considered picking up some of that hard lemonade, but the cashiers today were Cindy and Holy Hannah Hruber, and both of those chatterboxes liked to air their gums out about everyone’s purchases. Lee Quartine buying froufrou girly drinks would start the chins wagging with a vengeance.
A man needed beer, and that was that. Especially when he had no idea how in the hell he’d just gotten so lucky.
* * *
“…somethin’ in the woods,” Holy Hannah said, her drawn-on, perpetually surprised eyebrows settled comfortably in their usual high curve. “That’s what Donny said.” Her screaming-red bouffant, lacquered in place, bobbed as she nodded, her blue plastic earrings swaying. “Found a deer all mangled up.”
Round old Madge Harmon shook her head, tut-tutting. “Poachers?” she ventured, timidly, thumbing through a fan of coupons as Hannah tapped at her register.
“Not unless them poachers got a wood chipper to run it through.” Cindy Hruber’s hands, long pink nails clicking, sorted efficiently through Lee’s purchases, swiping them across the laser reader. “Hello there, little Lee.”
“Morning.” Lee selected a Payday bar from the candy rack and added it. Little Lee until the day he died, because his daddy was Lee Senior and his grandaddy was Big Q. Christ only knew what they’d call Lee’s kids, if he ever had any. “How’s Al?”
“Oh, gettin’ along.” Blonde-frosted, wide-hipped Cindy wasn’t interested in detailing her brother’s adventures in the Bledermark Home up in Lewiston, for once. Normally, anyone who happened into Landy’s on a Tuesday morning could expect a chowder-to-cashews of the eldest Hruber sibling’s current medical woes. It was a damn miracle the man hadn’t shuffled off the mortal coil yet, but if there was a simple way to do things, a Hruber would find the exact opposite, for no other reason than it was there. Just like accepted wisdom held that you couldn’t have the Plembees and the Schoenfelds at the same barbeque if you wanted to avoid fisticuffs, the Quartines were quiet but went crazy if a wrong was done them, and the Carters would tell a lie just for the hell of it, except for Big Elbert Carter, who would only grunt. “You come across anything strange out in your neck, Lee?”
“Other than the whirlybirds, no.” You’d have to be blind not to see them Apaches roaming around. Maneuvers, maybe, except why would Grandon call me? It was a puzzle, and one he didn’t like the look of. Might be time to get his ditty bag out again and make sure everything was in its proper place.
Just in case.
“Charlie said maneuvers.” Mrs Harmon craned her neck to look up at Lee, blinking owlish. She was a Tappersen before she married into the Harmons, and they were all nervous. “What do you think?”
“Been a while since they took Apaches out of mothballs, ma’am.” It was probably the most that had come out of his mouth in Landy’s ever, and Cindy blinked her heavily-gooped lashes twice, surprised.
Holy Hannah craned her neck to get a good look at him. “Wellnow,” she said. “We was just talking about the critters torn up in the woods.”
Lee grunted, an interrogative sound, which was all the priming that pump needed. Turned out Donnie Casabroac had been in the diner this morning, with pictures on his phone from his last hunting trip. Something had torn up a deer “like one of them UFOs,” he’d said, and while the general consensus was that it was foolish to believe in lights in the sky unless you were one of them druggies, the pictures were, in the considered opinion of the Rayburn’s Diner Morning Brain Trust, damn funny. Donnie was too dumb to pull a fast one, as people said with varying levels of approbation or pity, and the morning crew at the Rayburn’s counter had a great deal of collective shootin’ knowledge. All in all, it was the sort of topic that could keep everyone in town exercised for a good long while.
Cattle mutilations, Lee remembered. That was what Donnie was talking about. Huh. There was weird and goddamn weird in the world, and you saw a lot of it when your job was to shoot and be shot at. It wasn’t a big step from slicing up cows to slicing up deer, and Donnie might be stupid but he knew the difference between a big cat or wolf kill and something else. You didn’t have to be a scholar to figure that out.
“The Lord will tell in time,” Holy Hannah finished, portentously. “You want these beers in a paper sack, Lee?”
“Yes ma’am.” The heat on his face had gone down. Maybe he didn’t look like a mouth-breathing fool, maybe they hadn’t noticed him talking to the library girl. Maybe he should go over to the diner and listen to some of the fellas chewing the fat over it.
And maybe monkeys might fly out your ass, Lee. He needed to get his beer home. Roll the window down so the chill breeze could scour his cheeks, which were heating up again. They couldn’t damn well decide if his thermostat was broken or not.
“Charlie told me there were riots in San Francisco too.” Mrs Harmon’s very round face was puckered with worry. “The news is full of them.”
Charlie Harmon was a Box News-watching good ol’ boy who swore the gummint was out to steal everyone’s money and turn them into queers. Lee touched his hatbrim to Holy Hannah, took his two crinkly paper bags, and tried not to scan the parking lot to see if the library girl was still there.
It didn’t matter, anyway, because she wasn’t. There was, however, a black Crown Vic with shaded windows, parked at the far end of the lot, and that made Lee Quartine’s nape tingle.
He decided to drive the long way home.
Look Her Best, Thank Jesus
“I don’t understand,” Shirley Bassari repeated, pinching the bridge of her nose. The brightly lit pharmacy shelves around her, ranked with bottles and boxes, were as familiar as her own underwear drawer, and about as interesting at the moment. “They want us to what?” She didn’t mean to say it loud enough to drown out the canned country music piped into every corner of the Hatchie Ground Wal-Mart. But for God’s sake, this was ridiculous.
Lewis Engstrom, the head of the pharmacy department, ran one liver-spotted hand over his balding head. His anemic combover stayed where it was, plastered down by a generous palmful of Krew Comb. Or maybe even Crisco. His lab coat was a little dingy around the hem, too. Divorce had not been kind to him, but probably a damn sight kinder than his ex wanted it to be. “Box up all the flu vaccine we just got and send’er back.”
“But…” Her headache was about to get a lot worse, Shirley sensed. Her own white coat was bleached and ironed, because she took her medical duties seriously. “Well, okay. What’s left of it.”
“How much we got?”
A real pharmacist would know, she thought. “Got shipment last Monday.” Shirley was just a tech, but they were congenitally understaffed; she was pretty certain she could have done Lewis’s job almost as good as he did. He fondly referred to the techs as “my girls,” but any idiot could figure out it wasn’t really a compliment. Especially not when you were, like Shirley, nearly forty blessed years old and built, in her late mama’s pungent phrase, like the brick shithouse’s girlfriend. “No shipment yesterday, though. We only got about a couple dozen doses left. Everyone’s been coming in for them.” And no wonder, with all the television and radio telling people to get their flu shots. Midge, the little Korean girl, was the one who handled that, and last week had kept her busy. “Midge was getting tired of sticking them, bless her heart.”
“Company should pay for employees to get ’em.” Lewis said, for the fifth time since the higher-ups had told them to push the flu vaccine.
“Might stop half of us being out sick.” There was
a tickle in Shirley’s own throat, though that could be all the bullshit a girl had to swallow to hold down a job and feed her kids. Her hands moved deftly, capping a bottle of generic sertraline pills. The brassy tint to her blonde curls hardened every time she went to Prunella’s Beauty Corner, but she was determined to keep the dye job. Even though she was washed up and too fat, she could still look her best, thank Jesus.
“Now who’s sick?” Lewis folded his arms, just standing there watching her work. He could have taken a hand, but didn’t. Just stood there leaning against the counter, an aggressive little beer belly straining at his lab coat. His name tag was askew, too. He wasn’t even checking the mirrors to see if anyone was waiting in line.
Shirley’s headache mounted yet another notch, shaping up to be a real corker. Her nose was itching, a sure sign she was coming down with something. “Brenda called in sick this morning, remember? It’s Midge’s day off.”
“Well, maybe I should call her in.” He looked happy at the thought. Men, worse than hound dogs. Midge was trim and cute, if you liked Asian girls. Some men thought they were docile, but Shirley thought privately that tiny firecrackers could take a finger off as well as big ones.
She made a noncommittal noise and ignored a flicker of motion in the mirror. She was busy, dammit, and if Lewis wasn’t gonna help with the six scripts she had lined up, he could damn well deal with whatever shuffling dumbass came up to the counter.
“Go ahead and box them up when you’re done with that,” he said, finally. Whoever was at the counter cleared their throat—sounded like they had a wet one. Now that she thought about it, the entire store was full of croup and sniffles, customers as well as employees. At least she wasn’t working in grocery. At least here, she had the counter to keep customers from getting all cozy and breathing on her.
“All right.” Shirley hunched her softening shoulders and moved to the next prescription. Typical. Lewis wouldn’t take care of it himself. He took his sweet time bellying up to the customer, and began listening to some incoherent babble about cough syrup.
Shirley coughed, twice, turning her head so she didn’t get any on the supplies in front of her. Her neck was uncomfortably damp.
It was gonna be a long shift.
She's Got People
“Ginny?” The connection crackled, then firmed up. “Hello?”
Of course it wasn’t her mother, it was Bobbie Evrard, calling on Gin’s day off. Which could bode no good. “I’m running errands,” Gin part-lied, rustling the grocery sacks as she bent over her Toyota’s open trunk. A chilly breeze flooded her garage through the open door, and a dog was barking lazily out by the road. “What can I do for you, Bobbie?” Don’t ask me to come in today. Don’t you dare.
“I’m so glad I got hold of you! Listen, there’s a community meeting at the Crossing branch tomorrow, and Annie can’t make it. Do you think you could work that evening? It’s time and a half.”
Huh. Ginny straightened, staring sightlessly at the back of her garage with its neat pasteboard cabinets. Half of them were empty. “What happened to Annie? Is she okay?”
“Her mom’s in the hospital.” The boss sighed, a deep and familiar sound. “Kidney trouble. It’s looking bad, and I want to give Annie all the rest I can. Half the county’s out sick with one thing or another.”
Well, even though Bobbie loved to swan around and micromanage, she also took care of her people. Ginny heaved an internal sigh as well, made sure she was smiling before she spoke again. “I can do it, absolutely. I’m going to have to leave my regular branch early though. Say, at 3pm? That will give me enough time to get there and set up.”
“Say no more, I’m changing the schedule now.” Relief tuned Bobbie’s voice a half-octave higher. “You’re an absolute lifesaver.”
Yeah, right. Ginny reached for another bag, rustled it aggressively. “Tell Annie I hope her mom gets better.”
“Sure thing. Thanks, Ginny. You’re amazing.”
Well, that was nice to hear. Ginny hung up and straightened, turning to gaze at the cul de sac. The kids were at school, her neighbors were at work, and it was quiet except for the hum of traffic in the distance, the soughing of a breeze that was a little too chilly to be comfortable, and a helicopter somewhere. The dog had stopped.
She checked her phone again. Nothing. Just the call from her mother yesterday morning, the one with no voicemail attached. Ginny had left a voicemail last night, and another this morning. Was Mom mad over something? No, if she was, Dad would have picked up; if Flo had gone into labor, Dad would be the one on the line, too, because Mom would be fussing over her favorite daughter. Besides, Ginny hadn’t given her mother anything to be even slightly annoyed at.
Not like that ever mattered. Ginny tucked her phone back into her pocket, settled her purse on her shoulder, and got to work. She carried her groceries in, and used the putting-away time to dial her parents again. This time, the voicemail didn’t pick up. It just rang, and rang.
Ginny frowned, standing in front of her open refrigerator, and tried again, goosebumps spilling down her back.
And again, it just rang.
Weird.
It wasn’t just weird. It was downright worrisome. She probably wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, either. At least, not well.
She closed the fridge, and decided she’d look up train tickets online after dinner. Just in case.
* * *
She tried calling four more times. Dinner was a salad with roasted chickpeas; she picked at it while she stared at her phone or tried to focus on her laptop, where Netflix was serving up a romantic comedy about a time-traveling New York prince, or something. Halfway through, her doorbell rang, and she heaved a sigh worthy of Bobbie. Probably a missionary or something, but she hauled herself wearily up. It was already dark, and she flicked the porch light on. “Who is it?”
Some of the people here just opened up without even asking. Most of the doors didn’t even have peepholes, for crying out loud. Small-town crime rates, but still. Better safe than sorry.
“It’s Harry, from next door.” Harry McCoy was a cheerful, round, pot-bellied good ol’ boy, a machinist. He wore a worried frown, and Ginny’s heart sank. Was it the plumbing, or had one of their kids gotten sick? Amy was a nurse, but—
“Hey. We wasn’t sure you was home.” He almost chewed on his mustache, sucking his upper lip quickly into his mouth. “So quiet, you know.”
Is that a bad thing? She suppressed a burp from the tahini dressing—chickpeas and tahini were natural co-conspirators. “I try to be. What’s up?”
“You got people in New York, right? We was watching, and Amy said, my God, but Miz Mills has fambly in New York—”
Her stomach dropped and her heart began to pound. “What?”
“You watching the news?” His small dark eyes were honest and bright with concern, catching the gold of the porch light.
“I don’t have a TV,” she managed. Her lips felt funny—a little numb, as if she’d bolted a couple shots of vodka. “I mean, just my laptop, I watch Netflix. I—”
“You want to see this, I think.” His nose was full, and he sniffed deeply, a wet sound.
“Oh. Okay.” Her voice didn’t want to work quite right. “Let me get my phone.” She didn’t even grab a jacket. Her heart had lodged just behind the top of her sternum, and was pounding away. He waited, stolid and patient, on the front step, and preceded her like a battleship towing a tug.
The McCoy’s, the layout a mirror image of her own half of the duplex, couldn’t be more different that her nest. The heat was blasting, for one thing. Crowded with heavy, scuffed furniture and full of the thick smell of meat roasting, it was also loud. The television—a fifty-inch flatscreen for showing every pore on a televangelist’s nose—was attached to the wall, with a cable box crouching on a battered, scratched DVD hutch below. The screen was full of an announcer’s face—an older man, his jowls heavy with responsibility and the enunciation of a true anchorman. The makeu
p along his nose was running under the heat from the lights, and the inset over his shoulder was full of weird flashes.
“Oh, good. Honey, don’t you have people in New York? I was just saying—” Amy, the rosacea in her cheeks blooming in the tropical heat, almost tripped over a pile of laundry their eldest, Harry Jr, had been corralled into attempting to fold. “I sent him over, I was just saying, I know she’s got people in New York!”
Ginny stared at the television. A map unfolded on the other side of the anchor, now. It was the state of New York, not the city, and there were red blossoms all over it. No, pulsing red circles, growing and shrinking.
“Settle down!” Amy yelled into the kitchen, where their younger by, Bart, was screaming that he didn’t want to do the dishes. “Harry, for God’s sake, either whup that boy or stuff a sock in his mouth, it’s his goddamn turn! Honey, come over, sit down, I know you ain’t got no television over there.”
“I watch Netflix,” Ginny mumbled. There was something scrolling at the bottom of the screen—numbers, and names. Names she knew.
Albany. Syracuse. Hartford. Saratoga Springs. Utica. Stamford.
“The military has us locked out,” a reporter said in another inset, pressing one hand against her ear while something burned behind her. It looked like a department store, going up in flames. “Nothing is certain yet, all we know is that the chaos has spread to Scranton. There’s activity on the streets and—”
The camera jolted wildly, and something…happened. Confusion, a dark shape leaping on the blonde reporter’s back. A scream and a jolt of static, and the announcer had gone pale under his makeup. “We, ah…we seem to have lost contact with our correspondent near Scranton. I repeat, the city of New York, which has been quarantined since Sunday afternoon, has apparently suffered some kind of terrorist attack, and the surrounding areas are suffering some kind of…we just don’t know. Details are sketchy. The Department of Homeland Security has released a statement—”