Page 37 of The End of the World As We Know It
“What about my arthritis medicine?” Mildred asked. “I have enough for three months. What then?”
Dick frowned. “Not saying it’s going to be easy. We just have to look out for each other as best we can.”
There was another lull in the conversation. Finally, Charles asked, “Are we decided, then? No one comes on the island?”
For the next several minutes, Seacliff’s residents discussed the issue among themselves. Ultimately, no one spoke out against the proposal, so it was accepted by acclamation.
The honeymooners emerged from their huddled conversation. “We’ve decided to stay,” James said.
“For now,” Sarah added, squeezing her husband’s hand for emphasis.
“For now,” James added.
Dick retrieved a clipboard and a sheet of paper from a cabinet. He made several strokes with a pen to divide the page into a grid, which he annotated with days of the week and hour ranges. “Here’s a sign-up sheet for jetty watch. Eight-hour shifts. If you’re comfortable with a gun, pick a slot. We shouldn’t need to work more than two or three times a week each.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Harry said. “I finally get to retire and now I’m back on the bleedin’ clock agin.” Despite his grumbling, he took the clipboard from Dick and filled in three late-night shifts. “Not like I sleep much these days, anyhoo.”
Before long, the grid was full. Even the newlyweds signed up, opting to work together. Only Mildred abstained.
“Would anyone object if I bring over one of my TVs?” Bob asked. “I have a feeling we’re going to be spending a lot of time in here.”
“Good idea,” Dick said. “And I’ll let everyone know what I hear through my back channels. I still have access to my electronic mail account at the university,” he said. “For now.”
The meeting broke up and people slowly migrated homeward. It was still early in the day. The sun wouldn’t go down for several hours, the summer solstice having only just passed. It was too soon for dinner. Islanders tended to eat late. There were, of course, choresto be attended to—laundry, cleaning, baking. Lawns needed to be mowed and the gardens needed to be watered and inspected for bugs, a task made all the more urgent by their current circumstances, but no one had any enthusiasm for these duties. There was a lot of silent contemplation in the homes on Seacliff Island that afternoon.
The Mitchells, however, had much to discuss. James had attempted to contact the mainland to get a message to their families in Kentucky, but no one answered the phone, and a scan of the entire band on Charles’s shortwave radio produced little more than static and a couple of recorded messages that contained no useful information. They revisited their decision to stay and, while it didn’t devolve into a full-fledged argument, emotions ran high, and tears were shed.
The only house that remained unoccupied that afternoon belonged to Dick Collins, who had taken the first shift at the jetty. After gathering a few provisions, he walked down the narrow gravel road to the wharf, a rifle slung over his shoulder and a pistol tucked into his waistband.
There was a small shed at the near end of the pier, where the harbormaster once sat, back in the days when there was on-demand ferry service to the mainland. Back then, over a hundred people lived on Seacliff. Now most of the houses were unoccupied and many were in an advanced state of disrepair. In a way, they were lucky—no ferry meant people didn’t often travel off-island, so the virus hadn’t spread here. Dick was determined to keep it that way.
He dropped his supplies off in the shack and stood at the edge of the wharf. The previous wooden structure had been swept away by a late-summer storm ten years ago, taking several boats with it. The replacement was built on a foundation of stones chiseled from the cliffs that gave the island its name. At considerable expense, Dick recalled, but the loss of all those boats had been a costly lesson.
He stared into the open waters. With a telescope or a pair of binoculars—the latter of which he had left in the shack—he would have been able to see faint shapes representing the nearest islands. Inone direction was the coast of Maine. In the other, the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia. He tried to imagine the scenes playing out on the mainland based on what he’d heard. Chaos and calamity the likes of which no one had ever seen on this continent, barely six miles away. Someone claimed a radio talk show host from the Midwest had been killed by the army during a call-in program, and a former university colleague said there’d been executions broadcast live on WCSH a few nights ago. He wasn’t sure he believed that—the man was getting on in years and tended to confabulate—but what if it was true? And what about the numerous reports of bodies being buried in mass graves or dumped into the ocean?
Nearly fifty years ago, Dick had been on one of the LSTs that delivered thousands of men—boys actually—onto Omaha Beach. He never thought he’d see anything like that again in his lifetime. Not just the devastation that day but the things he’d experienced on the continent afterward. Frightened people were capable of terrible things. If the reports and rumors were true, his fellow Americans had already started to turn their weapons on each other. Would he be able to point his rifle at a total stranger? He had before. But, he wondered, what about the others, especially the honeymooners? He hoped they wouldn’t be put to the test.
He did the math. A scientist had disseminated a supposedly confidential government document that said fewer than one in a thousand had natural immunity to the disease—maybe only one in ten thousand. Worst-case scenario, that meant 25,000 survivors in the whole country. Best case, as many as 250,000, the population of a small city. The chance anyone on Seacliff was immune was virtually zero. And who knew if the virus would die out with everyone else or if it would lie in wait to infect anyone who showed up months, maybe even years, later? It felt like the end of the world had all but arrived. Not yet, but soon enough.
After meals were prepared and eaten in near silence, the residents of Seacliff headed back to the meeting hall. No one wanted to be alone. They brought desserts and drinks—mostly alcoholic. Bob Williams had already lugged his TV set into the hall and was wiring it up to the antenna on the roof that could pick up several stations from the mainland. He had a satellite dish in his backyard that could bring in over a hundred channels—the envy of his neighbors, he believed—but there was no way to run the cable from the dish down to the hall.
As a rule, islanders had little interest in national or global affairs, but now everyone was glued to the television news, which seemed to be the only thing broadcasting. There were no sports scores, only a very rudimentary weather forecast, and no clips from reporters on location. The normally jocular anchors looked exhausted and grim. And sick. Every one of them was coughing and sneezing. One man kept glancing to his left, as if something off camera troubled him.
Bob believed they were trying to put a positive spin on the situation—maybe they were being forced to—but he knew better. Dick liked to refer to the dial-up account that gave him access to an electronic messaging system on the university computer network, but Bob had his own network of people he kept in touch with across the country via ham radio, and he had been hearing things, too. Until communications went totally dark, like someone had flipped an off switch, that is. That told him everything he needed to know.
Eventually, Mary Pinette asked if they could listen to music instead. At forty-eight, she was the youngest Seacliff resident. She had brought a large combo radio/CD player with her. She tuned it to a Portland station and found the top twenty countdown. The newest entry was a soulful tune called “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” that had entered the chart at number eighteen, but Mary preferred the new songs by Sinéad O’Connor and Heart. She didn’t think of herself as a feminist, but she favored female singers to male.
There was no DJ patter between songs, leading Dick to believe this was a preprogrammed broadcast. The countdown was in the middle of“U Can’t Touch This” when the radio emitted an earsplitting shriek. After that, it produced nothing but static, no matter which way Mary turned the dial.
Bob, who thought the static was an improvement over MC Hammer, clicked the TV back on and found the same situation there. One station showed a handwritten placard readingSorry, we are having a problem. The only station with actual programming was playing a rerun ofThe Andy Griffith Show. Mary wondered if little Ronnie Howard was still alive. Last fall, she’d taken the boat to the mainland to see his latest movie,Parenthood, with a gaggle of her university friends. They’d asked her why she wanted to live in such a remote place and whether it was just a phase she was going through. She’d inherited the house on Seacliff—and a sizable legacy—from her mother and found she didn’t mind living away from the hustle and bustle. Look at how things had turned out. No tube neck for her.
The gathering broke up around midnight. Harry headed down to the pier to relieve Dick on watch duty, carrying a large cup of strong coffee in his hand and a flask in his rear pocket. Everyone else returned home and went to bed. Thus ended the first day of lockdown on Seacliff Island.
Early-morning sun streaming through the bedroom window awakened Nancy Landry on Saturday. Her partner, Dottie, was already awake, sitting up with a pillow behind her back, staring into the distance.
“What’s up, hon?” Nancy asked.
“I had the strangest dream. It was so vivid.”
