Pestilence

24

Howie drove so slowly, he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone jogged past him. The streets were empty. The trucks and Humvees were using just the highways. But the choppers were always overhead, like vultures scavenging for a meal. Whenever lights flickered in the sky, he would pull to the curb and duck across the seats until the lights moved on.

Howie grew discouraged, knowing that Malibu was forty-two miles away and that the only way to get there was the Pacific Coast Highway. How was he going to dodge choppers on the PCH?

As he drove, he observed the empty houses, and a creeping feeling of melancholy and dread overtook him. It had taken so little to tear apart his entire world. The government had just decided to act, and he would never be the same. The most frightening part was imagining how far the government was going with this. Was the entire state shut down? Had they closed the whole country?

A chopper angled overhead, and he pulled into a driveway, parked, and turned off the car. The chopper banked left, sending the light down around him and flooding the car before disappearing over the tops of the trees. He didn’t move for a long time. As he sat back up, he realized getting to Malibu like this was impossible. At this rate, he would need at least a day, and he certainly didn’t want to be driving during daylight.

As he was debating what to do, something caught his attention-the outline of headlights. He ducked again, and a rattling engine rolled past him a bit, then stopped. He looked up over the door. A military jeep was parked in front of a house a few doors down. The brake lights were on, illuminating the darkness around the jeep with a bright red. They shut off, and a single uniformed man stepped out.

He glanced around slowly, all through the neighborhood. Then he turned to the house and went inside through the front door.

A few minutes later, he came out carrying a suitcase. He stuffed it in the back of the jeep and then went inside and came out maybe five minutes later with armfuls of electronics and silver.

When the man went back inside, Howie sat up. He saw himself in the rearview mirror and took a deep breath. He thought of Jessica and about the day she was born. The sound she made, her first sound, had never left him. He heard it in his dreams, and sometimes when he was newly divorced and living in an empty house, he swore he heard it in the house.

Nighttime was harder, and he remembered when she would run to him when he got home and say, “I missed you, Daddy.” He couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him Daddy.

He closed his eyes, then opened the door.

The night air was warm and still. For the first time he could remember, Los Angeles was quiet. The only noise was the sound of chopper blades, but they were far off.

Howie walked quickly to the front door and heard someone throwing drawers on the floor. He peeked inside and didn’t see anything, so he took a few steps in. Another drawer crashed somewhere, and he followed the sound to where the man was standing in the kitchen, sifting through a cabinet that held various mementos and crystal.

Howie swallowed hard. The man’s back was to him, and he was oblivious of everything around him. He assumed he was alone and didn’t think twice about it. Howie glanced about… and spotted a rolling pin hanging on a hook. A golden thread strung through one end looped around the hook. He grabbed it and pulled it off.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward.

Only five feet or so separated him and the soldier. He was close enough to see the small hairs on the man’s neck. He took another step, his foot coming down softly on the linoleum as he gently shifted his weight and brought his other leg in front of him. Sweat was dripping down his forehead into his eyes, but he didn’t wipe it away.

The man was glaring at a silver bowl. He was about to toss it when he felt something and glanced back.

Their eyes met, but neither of them moved. They were like two men who shared a secret, and neither wanted to be the first to acknowledge that it existed.

The man’s eyes went down to the rolling pin, and Howie’s did, too. A grown man holding a rolling pin appeared so ridiculous, so cartoonish that he thought the soldier might burst out laughing. But he didn’t. He stared at the rolling pin and then up to Howie.

The men stood there for what seemed like a long time, but was surely no more than a few seconds. The soldier reached for the pistol in a holster at his hip.

“No!” Howie shouted.

But it was too late. The pistol was coming out. Howie swung with all his strength and knocked the other man on the side of the head. He thought it would be like in the movies-a hard thump, like a baseball bat knocking against wood. Instead, the man’s head was soft. And the blow was more like a fist hitting a melon, and he thought he could feel the side of the man’s skull crack.

The soldier was down, twitching, and then he went limp. Howie dropped the rolling pin and kicked away the pistol that was in his hand. He bent down over the man and checked for a pulse. He still had one. Howie tried to wake him up but couldn’t. The keys to the jeep were in his pocket, and Howie took them and held them tightly in his palm. He stood up, completely clueless as to what to do, when he heard another sound coming from outside-a jeep pulling to a stop.

He grabbed the pistol and ran around the house like a burglar trapped by a family coming home. He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time as he heard the voices of men entering the house. A brief silence was followed by shouting and the sound of boots stomping across linoleum.

Howie ran into a bedroom and to the window that looked down on a pool surrounded by a tall wooden fence. He ran back through the hallway and found another bedroom. This one looked out over the front lawn. He ran back to the window over the pool. As he opened it, he heard the men calling for additional troops and requesting a medic.

He crawled out on the sill and peered down. The drop was at least ten feet. He hung by his fingers to give him as much length as possible and then dropped. He hit the pool deck hard, sending a shock through his ankles. They stung, but he got up and ran toward the jeep as quickly as he could. The men were all inside the house, tearing it apart, looking for him. He jumped into the driver’s seat and had to try three keys before he found the one that started the jeep.

Leaving as quietly as possible, he saw that one of the choppers had broken away from the rest and was headed his way.