ready to move West and Clover on to whatever came next in order to save them from pain.
Now he shoved needles and medicine that burned like acid into them, all because someone had given him a glimmer of hope.
“It’s making you better, buddy. I know it hurts, but you need it.”
West’s thin arms were bruised where the first two shots had gone in. Like a miniature junkie. Would the treatments be less painful in the boy’s thigh? Maybe James should try his hip?
In the end, he was afraid to deviate from what the doctor had shown him.
How could West’s little body endure this day after day? James gave his son a stuffed koala bear to squeeze, then pushed the needle into his skin and depressed the plunger.
West cried and James reminded himself that the first night his son had been too ill to notice how unpleasant the suppressant was.
• • •
By the end of the week, West’s skin was healing, his lymph nodes were smaller, and he began to have a spark of energy again.
For the next month, James and his children spent hours every day in line at the clinic for their suppressant doses. And James prepared himself for his inevitable arrest. He’d murdered Jane with his inability to withstand her pain. He deserved to be punished.
There was no one else to take care of West and Clover. He and Jane were both only children. Their parents were all gone, either dead or deserted. Probably all dead, now.
Most of every day was spent trying to figure out how to take his next breath without his wife. He didn’t go to work. He didn’t even bother to find out if he still had a job.
Day after day, no one came to arrest him. Maybe there were too many dead to focus on the actual cause of death for virus victims. Too many changes happening all at once to spend any time noticing one mercy killing.
Maybe there were so many mercy killings that arresting all the guilty survivors was impractical.
Whatever the reason, no one came, and he couldn’t find the courage to turn himself in.
His children needed him, he told himself. There was no one else.
News trickled in over the radio. Two scientists, Ned Waverly and Jon Stead, had developed the suppressant. In order to administer it to those who had survived the virus, each state gathered its residents into a central city.
In Nevada, that city was Reno, where James, West, and Clover already lived, so they weren’t uprooted the way the survivors who traveled in caravans from the southern and eastern parts of the state were.
They didn’t have to move into the home of a dead family. Sleep in their beds, eat their food at their tables. The process of bringing in the displaced was quick and efficient. There were so few left, less than twenty thousand in Nevada, and nearly half of those younger than twelve. The virus had scared both the fight and the flight out of all of those old enough to think about either one.
“We had it better than most states,” his only surviving neighbor said as she cooed over Clover. His daughter didn’t like to be held, she stiffened like a hard-limbed baby doll, but Mrs. Finch didn’t seem to care. “The mountain states all had it better.”
She was right. The drought-devastated plains states, which had already badly lost their war, had been nearly depopulated. In some states, less than one percent survived. The states where staple crops were easily grown were hit the hardest, the radio announcers said. Not just by the virus, but by the fallout of the war fought on the country’s best soil.
James heard, six weeks after Jane died, that crews were picking through Reno, removing dead bodies, sanitizing houses, making a place for the surviving Nevadans who’d stayed in the state. Five thousand fled, according to the radio. They went back to where they came from. Some were shuttled to the states that didn’t have enough people left even to populate one city.
“A recruiter came yesterday,” James said to his neighbor. “They want me to join the
Now he shoved needles and medicine that burned like acid into them, all because someone had given him a glimmer of hope.
“It’s making you better, buddy. I know it hurts, but you need it.”
West’s thin arms were bruised where the first two shots had gone in. Like a miniature junkie. Would the treatments be less painful in the boy’s thigh? Maybe James should try his hip?
In the end, he was afraid to deviate from what the doctor had shown him.
How could West’s little body endure this day after day? James gave his son a stuffed koala bear to squeeze, then pushed the needle into his skin and depressed the plunger.
West cried and James reminded himself that the first night his son had been too ill to notice how unpleasant the suppressant was.
• • •
By the end of the week, West’s skin was healing, his lymph nodes were smaller, and he began to have a spark of energy again.
For the next month, James and his children spent hours every day in line at the clinic for their suppressant doses. And James prepared himself for his inevitable arrest. He’d murdered Jane with his inability to withstand her pain. He deserved to be punished.
There was no one else to take care of West and Clover. He and Jane were both only children. Their parents were all gone, either dead or deserted. Probably all dead, now.
Most of every day was spent trying to figure out how to take his next breath without his wife. He didn’t go to work. He didn’t even bother to find out if he still had a job.
Day after day, no one came to arrest him. Maybe there were too many dead to focus on the actual cause of death for virus victims. Too many changes happening all at once to spend any time noticing one mercy killing.
Maybe there were so many mercy killings that arresting all the guilty survivors was impractical.
Whatever the reason, no one came, and he couldn’t find the courage to turn himself in.
His children needed him, he told himself. There was no one else.
News trickled in over the radio. Two scientists, Ned Waverly and Jon Stead, had developed the suppressant. In order to administer it to those who had survived the virus, each state gathered its residents into a central city.
In Nevada, that city was Reno, where James, West, and Clover already lived, so they weren’t uprooted the way the survivors who traveled in caravans from the southern and eastern parts of the state were.
They didn’t have to move into the home of a dead family. Sleep in their beds, eat their food at their tables. The process of bringing in the displaced was quick and efficient. There were so few left, less than twenty thousand in Nevada, and nearly half of those younger than twelve. The virus had scared both the fight and the flight out of all of those old enough to think about either one.
“We had it better than most states,” his only surviving neighbor said as she cooed over Clover. His daughter didn’t like to be held, she stiffened like a hard-limbed baby doll, but Mrs. Finch didn’t seem to care. “The mountain states all had it better.”
She was right. The drought-devastated plains states, which had already badly lost their war, had been nearly depopulated. In some states, less than one percent survived. The states where staple crops were easily grown were hit the hardest, the radio announcers said. Not just by the virus, but by the fallout of the war fought on the country’s best soil.
James heard, six weeks after Jane died, that crews were picking through Reno, removing dead bodies, sanitizing houses, making a place for the surviving Nevadans who’d stayed in the state. Five thousand fled, according to the radio. They went back to where they came from. Some were shuttled to the states that didn’t have enough people left even to populate one city.
“A recruiter came yesterday,” James said to his neighbor. “They want me to join the
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