as hard to get used to as the maintenance meds, assuming she had long enough to worry about it. The bartender reached across the bar and traded Ellie the tall glass of beer for a debit card. She swiped the card and handed it back to Ellie, along with a bowl of saltines.
Ellie took a bite of a cracker. “What, no American cheese slices to go on them?”
The bartender shook her head in disgust. “Can’t get peanuts or even potato chips. Larry wanted me to start charging for the bowls so we wouldn’t go through them so fast. Can you imagine trying that in this monkey house?”
“Why can’t you get peanuts?” The crowd watching the game had begun to chant, so Ellie had to shout to be heard.
“That truck wreck.” The bartender was now at a full shout. “On the barrier. Won’t get anything until next week!” Someone must have made a basket because the bedlam at the other end of the bar got even louder. The bartender, knowing where her money came from, headed back into the fray as Ellie waved her off. First Bing’s soup, now the bar’s snacks. Word around the zone was that only one tractor-trailer rig had overturned on the secure highway through the barrier zone, but it seemed it had been carrying an awful lot of supplies.
The beer bounced around in Ellie’s stomach, and she was grateful for the crackers. She rubbed her hands over her face, and it felt like her eyeballs were too big for their sockets. Was this how it would be, she wondered? Would she just begin to feel progressively worse every day, every minute? Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she didn’t want to answer it. She hadn’t paid attention when the pharmacist had told her how often she would need to take her QOL meds. If this was another dosage reminder, she wanted to ignore it, but curiosity got the better of her. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. It was from Guy.
“PS1 til 10. Alone.”
Ellie tipped back the glass and drank the beer down in a few deep swallows. PS1 was power station one, less than six blocks from the bar. If memory served, it had a decent-sized living area for the guards and workers, including a shower that almost always worked, to say nothing of a decent-sized cot. She belched and grabbed a few saltines for the road. Meds aside, she still had some say over the quality of her life.
Before she made it to the door, the crowd at the bar erupted again, this time in angry shouts and some creative obscenities. Ellie glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see some referee getting the business from fans, but instead the screen was full of a trailer for a new action film coming out. She had seen flashes of ads online, but this was the first actual trailer, and judging by the sea of middle fingers jabbed at the screen, her opinion of the film was the popular one. The movie was called Leak, and from what she could gather, it was about a band of terrorists who escaped Flowertown to infect Chicago or New York or some other place more important than Iowa for whatever reasons the jackasses in Hollywood thought people would buy. It was an outrageous concept and hugely insulting to all the people who had had their lives restricted for so many years through no fault of their own. Containment and contamination weren’t just buzzwords in Flowertown. Everyone had lost someone after the spill, and nobody endured the maintenance medications lightly. When Ellie thought of the implications of suggesting that anyone in Flowertown would willingly subject the rest of the country to what they had been put through—
The crowd cheered again. The screen was black, as if bending to their collective will. People high-fived each other, glad to see the odious trailer gone, replaced by a black screen, then a blue screen, then a scroll of technical jargon before freezing on the network logo. Someone had cut the trailer short. In the middle of the college basketball playoffs. Ellie knew how much it cost to run a TV ad during the playoffs. That
Ellie took a bite of a cracker. “What, no American cheese slices to go on them?”
The bartender shook her head in disgust. “Can’t get peanuts or even potato chips. Larry wanted me to start charging for the bowls so we wouldn’t go through them so fast. Can you imagine trying that in this monkey house?”
“Why can’t you get peanuts?” The crowd watching the game had begun to chant, so Ellie had to shout to be heard.
“That truck wreck.” The bartender was now at a full shout. “On the barrier. Won’t get anything until next week!” Someone must have made a basket because the bedlam at the other end of the bar got even louder. The bartender, knowing where her money came from, headed back into the fray as Ellie waved her off. First Bing’s soup, now the bar’s snacks. Word around the zone was that only one tractor-trailer rig had overturned on the secure highway through the barrier zone, but it seemed it had been carrying an awful lot of supplies.
The beer bounced around in Ellie’s stomach, and she was grateful for the crackers. She rubbed her hands over her face, and it felt like her eyeballs were too big for their sockets. Was this how it would be, she wondered? Would she just begin to feel progressively worse every day, every minute? Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she didn’t want to answer it. She hadn’t paid attention when the pharmacist had told her how often she would need to take her QOL meds. If this was another dosage reminder, she wanted to ignore it, but curiosity got the better of her. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. It was from Guy.
“PS1 til 10. Alone.”
Ellie tipped back the glass and drank the beer down in a few deep swallows. PS1 was power station one, less than six blocks from the bar. If memory served, it had a decent-sized living area for the guards and workers, including a shower that almost always worked, to say nothing of a decent-sized cot. She belched and grabbed a few saltines for the road. Meds aside, she still had some say over the quality of her life.
Before she made it to the door, the crowd at the bar erupted again, this time in angry shouts and some creative obscenities. Ellie glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see some referee getting the business from fans, but instead the screen was full of a trailer for a new action film coming out. She had seen flashes of ads online, but this was the first actual trailer, and judging by the sea of middle fingers jabbed at the screen, her opinion of the film was the popular one. The movie was called Leak, and from what she could gather, it was about a band of terrorists who escaped Flowertown to infect Chicago or New York or some other place more important than Iowa for whatever reasons the jackasses in Hollywood thought people would buy. It was an outrageous concept and hugely insulting to all the people who had had their lives restricted for so many years through no fault of their own. Containment and contamination weren’t just buzzwords in Flowertown. Everyone had lost someone after the spill, and nobody endured the maintenance medications lightly. When Ellie thought of the implications of suggesting that anyone in Flowertown would willingly subject the rest of the country to what they had been put through—
The crowd cheered again. The screen was black, as if bending to their collective will. People high-fived each other, glad to see the odious trailer gone, replaced by a black screen, then a blue screen, then a scroll of technical jargon before freezing on the network logo. Someone had cut the trailer short. In the middle of the college basketball playoffs. Ellie knew how much it cost to run a TV ad during the playoffs. That
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