Salvation City Read online

  “But there appears to be no act too shameful that some will not stoop to it. Certain people, some working as individuals and others as part of organized gangs, are making a business of preying on the sick and dying. They are breaking into homes and stripping weak and defenseless victims of their possessions. Reports of people robbing the dead are also increasingly common. It seems that for these scoundrels the only thing capable of trumping fear of infection is greed.”

  Weeks later, when she reappeared, convalescent, the president would confess that she had no memory of having made this speech, or even of some of the things to which it referred. Much else that had taken place during the period right before her illness had also been wiped from her mind.

  Among the faces appearing on the news, Cole recognized a woman with a dark hair bun like a small head peeking out from behind her: the same woman in the video about influenza that he’d watched in school assembly last fall.

  “Unfortunately,” she said, “the new A-strain influenza virus has turned out to be resistant to the antiviral drugs we have available. Also, as we had feared, we are seeing a rise in cases of flu victims developing bacterial co-infections that are resistant to antibiotics. A new vaccine is still perhaps a month or so away. Then we’ll be faced with the tremendous challenge of manufacturing the large quantity of doses needed and organizing for mass vaccinations.”

  “How can she be so calm?” Cole’s mother wanted to know. It was a calm that riled rather than soothed her.

  Most of the other people they saw on the news could barely control their emotions.

  “They say stay home, wait until a doctor comes. But then no doctor ever shows up. Meanwhile, my wife is getting sicker and sicker.”

  “First they warn everyone to wear a mask. Then we find out unless it’s a special kind of mask it’s not going to protect you at all.”

  “It’s not just a question of beds. There’s not enough linen, not enough gloves, gowns, hypodermic needles, disinfectant, meds, you name it. Not enough ambulances, not enough ventilators or other equipment. Hospitals are even running out of food.”

  “It’s not like every other bad thing stopped happening to make room for the flu. People are still getting cancer and having heart attacks and strokes and road accidents. The idea that we could handle any kind of surge on top of that—whoever’s fantasy that was, it was never going to happen.”

  “The retired workers they were depending on to take over for the workers out sick? Very few of those people ever showed. The volunteer doctors and nurses and the other helping hands—they aren’t showing up, either. It’s not like 9/11. There aren’t any heroes rushing toward the danger. The danger is everywhere, and everyone’s running scared.”

  “Let’s face it, this is America. Anything that’s bad for business, people don’t want to hear. When it comes to money or doing the right thing, most people are going to choose money. Close up shop for months till they can make a new vaccine? How many businesses would still be alive after that?”

  “This disaster proves what some of us have being saying about America all along: everything is broken.”

  “The bottom line is, sports events provide a boost to the local economy. No one wanted to take the heat for calling them off.”

  “How can anyone behold what is happening and not see it as a sign? Brothers and sisters, we have entered the final days.”

  “Cancel a fund-raiser expected to bring in millions? I don’t think so.”

  “When people think of the flu, they think of seasonal flu. They don’t understand that a panflu is a whole other disease. They see people’s skin turn dark blue and they think it can’t be the flu, it must be bubonic plague or something. They see people crying tears of blood, and they think it must be the end of the world.”

  “God’s kingdom is come. Whoever takes Jesus into his heart at this time will not be left behind.”

  “Thus far the so-called Guinea Worm has been the most lethal, taking down computer systems around the globe.”

  “Well, if it ain’t the end of the world, I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

  “How the hell do you tell people they can’t go to church on the eve of the rapture?”

  NOT BEING ABLE TO GO ONLINE whenever he wanted—it was as if his right hand were gone.

  Not being able to leave the house was weird, too. First his mother makes him go to school every day, right to the bitter end; now he can’t go past the front porch.

  Cole was not yet used to the new house: its smell, its noises, the brown (instead of apple-green) walls of his room. Also, to make the move easier his parents had sold most of their furniture on eBay and taken a house that was already furnished. Cole didn’t really care about furniture one way or the other, but there seemed to be too much of it, so that somehow the six-room house felt more cramped than their old five-room apartment.

  He stepped out a couple of times a day, sometimes sneaking a smoke. Found treasure: someone had left a half-full pack of Marlboros on a table at Burger King. Cole could not believe his luck. Of course, his mother would freak if she caught him. But then she was in full-frontal freak these days anyway.

  Though he couldn’t stand more than three or four puffs at a time, he was satisfied that he was on his way to being a real smoker. (Two things he’d decided were definitely in his future: cigarettes and a motorcycle.)

  Even in normal times their dead-end street was quiet. The Vinings hadn’t been living there long enough to know their neighbors, and Cole didn’t expect they’d ever know any of them all that well. His parents had strong ideas about not getting too close to neighbors. It was one more reason his mother disliked small towns. In places like Little Leap the neighbors tended to be overfriendly, she said. (And this would be one more source of bafflement for Tracy. “Loving your neighbor’s just another way of loving God. And there can’t never be too much of that!”)

  The day after they’d moved in, Cole had taken a walk by himself to the end of the street, and as he was coming back a long-haired boy on a bike had suddenly appeared, whizzing past him from behind. “Outta my way, fag-boy!” But Cole had never seen that boy again.

  Though pedestrians were a rare sight, Cole saw two animals from time to time: a calico cat that appeared to live under the porch of the house directly opposite, and a slightly lame chocolate Lab that wore tags but was allowed to roam free. Whenever he saw either of them, Cole couldn’t help wondering. Cats and dogs were smart, and they were sensitive, too. Did they have any idea that their human friends were in such deep shit? Cole knew animals could get the flu, too. In fact, there were people out there who blamed birds for what was happening and were shooting or trapping and killing them. There were crazies who believed any animal might carry the infection and were destroying every one they could get their hands on, even their own pets—the same kind of thing that had happened during the 1918 flu.

  Cole’s father had told him how, when the United States was at war with Germany, there were people who’d walk up to dachshunds in the street and kick them. (“I bet they wouldn’t dare do that to a German shepherd,” Cole said.)

  But imagine all the human beings on earth getting wiped out. A lot of animals would have to be happy about that, wouldn’t they? All those animals on the verge of extinction—they’d be saved then, wouldn’t they?

  There were those who’d come right out and said it. The pandemic might be the worst thing ever to happen to mankind, but it might turn out to be the best thing to happen to Planet Earth.

  This is not the end of the world. It’s Nature’s way of saving it.

  Self-hating scum! Whoever thinks that deserves to die!

  His mother wasn’t the only one in full-frontal freak.

  To Cole, it was pretty exciting, albeit in a sick-making way, like watching an ultra-realistic slasher flick, or going on a roller coaster when he was still young and dumb enough to think it was a death-defying thing to do.

  Men in riot gear with snarling dogs storming pe
ople storming pharmacies. It was like an extreme version of the madness of grown-ups in general.

  It always gave him some satisfaction, seeing grown-ups lose control. He didn’t know why. It had to do with hating them, of course, but that begged the question: When had that started anyway? Cole couldn’t say. And though it could seem that the way he felt about his parents these days was the way he’d felt about them his whole life, he knew this wasn’t so.

  “This is new,” his mother told her friends. “He used to be Cole the Cuddly. Now he’s practically autistic.”

  It was true he didn’t want his parents touching him. Not that he could remember the last time his father had tried. What he did remember, though, was climbing onto his father’s lap and his father snapping his legs straight so that Cole slid to the floor. This had happened about four years ago. At first Cole had thought it was a game. He’d started giggling but stopped when he saw his father’s face. “You’re too old for that.” Voice like ice.

  Cole often recalled this humiliation and how he had cast about in his mind for some way to pay his father back. But now that his father was so sick, thinking about this made him want to smash something.

  Hard to believe only four mornings ago he’d watched his father, dressed in his usual tan and orange running clothes, sprint toward the house just as Cole and his mother were getting into the car to drive to school. Now, inside the house (or even out on the porch), you could not escape the sound of his hacking. It tore your own throat to hear it. When his mother was there, Cole saw how every cough made her flinch, like a whip being cracked in her face.

  His mother was the only one who went out anymore. When she went out she always wore the same bandanna tied over her nose and mouth. It was the only one she had and it was getting filthy, she complained. The first time Cole saw her leaving the house with the bandanna on he warned her not to walk into a bank, and they’d both laughed. Now what he noticed (but did not say) was how covering the lower part of her face made her eyes look even bigger with fright than usual.

  He’d seen his mother frightened before, he’d seen her worried and upset more times than he could count, but he’d never seen her quite like this. There was another element in the mix, and it took Cole a while before he could name it: he’d never seen her trying to be brave.

  “I still say we’re going to be all right.” She kept repeating this, each time with a sharp little thrust of her chin. “Dad’s strong. Dad’s going to make it. We’re all going to make it. By the way, don’t you have any homework?”

  Completely forgetting there was no more school! They’d laughed together about that, too. And then she had started to cry.

  Being brave didn’t mean she could stop herself from breaking down at least once a day.

  Each time she returned from having been out, she’d collapse on a chair as if she had run on her own steam to and from her destination and needed to catch her breath. Then she’d report on how much emptier the streets were, how many more places had closed, how much less there was to be found on the shelves of the stores that were still open.

  After the mailman hadn’t shown up two days in a row, she went to the post office and found it closed. “Imagine, not even a sign on the door. You’d think they’d at least let people know what the hell’s going on.”

  When she finally got through to the health department hotline, all they could tell her was to keep the patient in bed and give him lots of fluids. “It took all my strength not to start screaming.”

  Though from time to time she did scream—about the lack of information and how inept the people in charge were—she was mostly mad at herself. For not having been prepared. For not having understood the amount of danger they were in. There was a certain forgiveness-begging air she took on when she knew she’d hurt or let someone down, an air that made her look like a punished child. No matter how angry Cole might be, whenever he saw his mother like this he’d go straight from feeling angry to feeling sorry for her, a feeling he found particularly unpleasant—far more unpleasant than anger. It could happen with his father, too, in which case the unpleasantness was even worse. Except that it was a very rare thing for Cole to feel sorry for his father.

  Her last trip to the supermarket she was gone less time than usual and returned in tears.

  “Now they’re not even letting people inside. I had to shout through the door and tell this guy what I wanted. Then he went and collected it all in a bag and put the bag on the ground outside the door. He yelled at me not to approach the bag until he’d closed the door again. And there was this locked box to slip the money in, and if you didn’t have the exact amount, tough shit, they weren’t making change. And this guy was so nasty, too, shouting Keep back! Keep back! like I was some kind of rabid dog. Plus he had a shotgun.”

  Among the few things she’d brought home this time was a loaf of raisin bread, which she confessed she had found in the parking lot. “Someone must have dropped it,” she said. “It seemed crazy not to take it, since we don’t know when all this is going to end. My god, what a time to be stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere! As soon as Dad’s feeling better, we are so out of here.”

  There were some people in town who appeared to be organized, who had managed to collect food and other necessities and had put out the word that they’d help anyone who needed them. Some of them had even started going door to door. But they were Jesus freaks, his mother said, and she didn’t want to get involved with them.

  “I mean, these people are actually happy about this catastrophe. They think any day now they’re going to be sucked up to heaven.”

  Cole knew what his mother was talking about, but he didn’t understand. If God wanted to end the world, why wouldn’t he just do it? What was the point in giving a whole lot of people the flu first?

  “Don’t ask me, sweetie. These people believe all kinds of things. All I know is, they think Jews like me are going to hell just for not being Christian. Let’s not talk about them anymore, it’s too depressing. Why don’t you toast some of that raisin bread? I’m going up to see Dad.”

  Months later, wearing clothes that fit him but that weren’t his, and with his hair cut different from the way he usually wore it, Cole would find himself sitting across from a woman he didn’t know, answering questions.

  So he’d never been to church before? Or any other kind of religious service? Was he sure? Religion had never been a part of family life?

  They were in some kind of living room, though not in a house. Cole didn’t know if the building they were in was a church. It didn’t look like a church, but there was a painting of Jesus on one of the walls, and a banner in the foyer read Heaven. Don’t Miss It for the World.

  Though the room was quiet and they were not sitting far apart, the woman had to ask him twice to repeat what he’d said. Her own voice was soft but clear. A flame-haired woman with a face like a platter and a shape that brought back Tickle, his old stuffed bear. Before she started questioning him she took his picture. When she asked him to smile, he tried, but the thought of Tickle made the corners of his mouth twitch, and for all he tried he could not prevent them from turning down instead of up. It’s all right, the woman said gently, and she snapped the picture anyway. She was young and kind.

  Was he sure only his mother was Jewish? Then what was his father’s religion?

  Atheist.

  Well, atheism wasn’t a religion. It was the opposite of religion, the belief that there was no God.

  He knew that.

  So his dad was an atheist, but his mom was a Jew?

  They were both atheists.

  And would it be correct to say that’s what he was raised to believe, too? That there was no God and that all religion was wrong?

  He’d been raised to believe religion was for retards. He’d been raised to believe people who were religious did more harm than good. He’d been raised to believe that God was a myth, that religion screwed up everything, that a person didn’t have to be religious in order to
be a good person, that religious education of children was a kind of child abuse, and that if God did exist he’d have to be an atheist, too.

  None of which he said.

  And was it accurate to say that everyone else he and his family spent time with—friends, relatives—they were all unbelievers, too?

  Now that he thought about it, yes.

  Did he understand that whatever family he’d be placed with would not be atheists but most likely people for whom church was a very big part of their lives? Who worshipped God and believed that Jesus was the son of God, and who had taken Jesus as their personal savior? How would he feel about that?

  He didn’t care. All he cared about was getting away from the orphanage.

  EVERY MINUTE THAT SHE WASN’T with his father Cole’s mother wanted to be with him.

  “We don’t have to talk,” she said. “I just want to be in the same room.”

  With the TV off, if he didn’t mind. Then how would they know what was going on? The radio, she said. At least until the power went out again. It had already done so a few times, always during the day, thankfully, since they had no candles. They did have a flashlight—but where were the extra batteries?

  A battery-operated radio was on the Emergency Home Preparedness must-have list, so of course they didn’t have one of those, either. Nor could all the money in the world buy them one now.