Constant Fear

CHAPTER 19

It was bedlam at Winston Regional High School. By the time Jake had changed the lock and drove into town, students from Pepperell Academy had already taken up residence in the newly renovated school and turned it into squalor. Body heat made the gymnasium humid as a jungle and there was little space to move about. The noise level rattled Jake’s ears. Students spilled out into hallways and stairwells. Those who weren’t bantering held out smartphones to document the mayhem on social media.

The high school was a good distance from the quarantine zone, so parents of students who lived close by showed up in droves with boxes of food, blankets, and other items they thought would be helpful to those students who called Pepperell Academy home. Several local restaurants pitched in to shuttle over food to the students, who had taken to calling themselves refugees. Nobody knew how long the school would be inaccessible.

Jake lost track of the time pitching in to help.

“This place is like the Superdome after Katrina,” Jake heard a teacher say. It was hardly an exaggeration. Bodies were everywhere, and trash accumulated like breeding rabbits. The local high-school kids who resided in designated safe areas had all been dismissed because the school’s facilities could not accommodate such a large influx of people.

If things weren’t repellant enough, the outside temperature had dropped precipitously in just the last hour and a cool misty rain had begun to fall. Nobody wanted to go outside, and no one wanted to be inside, either.

Jake walked the perimeter of the gymnasium and again hunted for Andy, but he was tough to spot among the masses of bodies. Jake had called Andy’s cell phone twice, but each time it went right to voice mail. Poor kid probably ran out of juice and didn’t carry a charger in his backpack. Jake hoped he had all his medications with him.

Jake made a second pass around the gym before he bumped into Lance. His brother looked like the embattled sheriff of Amity Island right after a shark attack forced him to close the beaches.

“Hey, Jake,” Lance said. “Well, this is unexpected.”

“You just never know what’s going to happen.”

Lance returned a knowing glance.

“Is the school secure?”

“We have procedures in place for everything,” Jake answered with a wry grin.

Lance knew most doors to the school were intentionally left open in the event emergency responders needed access.

“Have you seen Andy?” Jake asked.

Lance surveyed the chaos. “He’s probably here somewhere, but I haven’t seen him.”

“What time you got?” Jake asked.

Lance showed Jake his wristwatch so he could check the time for himself.

Their father was a big wristwatch aficionado and Jake noticed the brand and his eyes went wide.

“Wow, bro, Patek Philippe?”

Lance shrugged it off.

“Gift from a grateful parent. This job doesn’t pay that well, but sometimes you get nice perks.”

“If you see Andy, tell him to call me,” Jake said.

Lance excused himself to go deal with the crisis of the moment. Jake was going outside for some fresh air when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

He turned to see Laura. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, no makeup on, but damn she still looked beautiful. She had on a green sweater, with a white shirt underneath, and jeans; she looked pretty much like any of the harried moms who had come to look after the kids.

“Laura,” Jake said, sounding enthused to see her. “Enjoying everything Winston has to offer?”

Laura didn’t smile at Jake’s sarcasm.

“If by ‘everything,’ you mean chemical spills and speeding tickets, yeah, it’s been great so far.”

Jake said, “Who gave you a ticket?”

“Some woman cop,” Laura grumbled.

Jake knew right away who it was and he fought to suppress a smile.

“Have you seen Andy?” Laura asked. The alarm in her voice was audible.

“No,” Jake said, “but I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

Laura checked her phone.

“It’s past two o’clock. I was supposed to meet him downtown an hour ago.”

Jake almost laughed. He directed Laura’s attention to the chaos around them. “I think there’s plenty going on here to distract him. And, besides, I don’t think he’s supposed to be wandering around downtown right now. He’s here somewhere with his friends.”

Laura observed the pandemonium, but did not look convinced.

“Downtown isn’t quarantined,” Laura said. “I was just there. People are out-shopping, eating, all that. Even if he couldn’t meet me, at least he would have called.”

“I didn’t even know you two were meeting.” It stung a bit that Andy hadn’t shared with him, but Jake tried not to let it show.

Laura looked away and said, “We’ve been communicating on Facebook.”

“As the real you?”

Laura flashed an angry look. “Yes, as the real me,” she snapped. “You might not believe it, Jake, but I’m trying here. I’m really trying.”

“Easy. I believe you.”

Quick as Laura’s temper flared, it fell away and her face showed her anxiety. Jake marveled at how seamlessly both of them had slipped into familiar roles: the worried mom and the lackadaisical dad. It had been like this when Andy was an infant and a toddler. “You worry too much,” Jake would often say. But Laura would still check to see if Andy was breathing, years after the danger of SIDS had passed. Andy was more than capable of taking care of himself, which was why Jake limited his worrying to things like an EMP and global pandemics.

“I’m really worried something has happened to him,” Laura said.

“Laura, I think you’re overreacting here.”

“There’s been a massive chemical spill. What if he got sick from the fumes or something? Maybe he passed out.”

“The spill was pretty far from campus,” Jake said. “They evacuated the school only as a precaution.”

“What about Andy’s friends? Do you see any of them around?”

Jake gave the gym another quick scan. No, he didn’t see any of them, but there were a lot of bodies here.

“Maybe they all went out together. You know how kids can be. Maybe they snuck out to go goof around or something. It’s not hard to slip away, with all this chaos.”

This did not sit well with Laura. She pursed her lips together. Her head shook slightly. “This isn’t right. Something is wrong. I know something is wrong.”

“Why do you say that?”

“A feeling I have. If he couldn’t come to meet me, he would have called. You didn’t read his messages. This was really important to him, Jake. He wouldn’t just blow me off like that.”

For the first time, Jake felt annoyed with Laura. Who was she to act so parental? It felt like a dismissal of all Jake’s hard work. He alone had raised Andy while she went gallivanting about the country in search of-who knew what? She hadn’t earned the right to assert herself in this way.

“Laura, I’m glad you and Andy are talking. You’re taking steps, and that’s good. I want you to have a relationship with your son. It’s important for him. But this isn’t your responsibility. It’s mine. I’ve been looking out for Andy on my own for a lot of years now, and I think I have a good handle on when to worry and when not to worry. The fact that I’m not seeing any of his friends suggests to me they’re all together somewhere. And this isn’t a time to be panicked.”

Laura bit at her lower lip. The mannerism was so familiar to Jake. “I don’t know what to say. I just have a feeling.”

Jake’s eyes flared. “So you’re telling me you have mother’s intuition now? You haven’t been in our lives for the last twelve years, you show up out of the blue, and suddenly you’ve got a feeling about my son? Come on, Laura. Let’s get real here.”

“He’s our son,” Laura said defensively.

“You get my point.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it,” Laura said. “Maybe the intuition never really went away. Maybe it went dormant or something until I got close again. Now it’s here, and I can’t deny how I’m feeling. He would have called me. It was important to him. It was important.”

“Maybe,” Jake said, softening his stance, “but you might be overstating that importance. Look, Laura, you may be Andy’s mother, but you’re essentially a stranger to him. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’s pissed at you. Maybe he’s just being a normal teenage boy and not doing what you expected him to do. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s leaving you hanging the way you left him.”

Jake regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. They were hurtful and unnecessary.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Laura didn’t answer, but nodded, and Jake knew she accepted his apology. What she didn’t seem ready to accept, however, were any of the possibilities he had listed.