I went over in the corner and grabbed a beer. There were three or four cases of Bud stacked against the wall. It was warm, because there was no electricity. I don't mind warm beer like some people do, though. It just foams a little more. Beer is beer. I went back out on the landing and sat down and pulled the ring tab and drank up.
So here we were, with the whole human race wiped out, not by atomic weapons or bio-warfare or pollution or anything grand like that. Just the flu. I'd like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze Square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU.
I tossed the beer can over the side. It landed with a hollow clank on the cement walk that went around the building. The lean-to was a dark triangle on the sand. I wondered if Needles was awake. I wondered if I would be.
'Bernie?'
She was standing in the doorway wearing one of my shirts. I hate that. She sweats like a pig.
'You don't like me much any more, do you, Bernie?'
I didn't say anything. There were times when I could still feel sorry for everything. She didn't deserve me any more than I deserved her.
'Can I sit down with you?'
'I doubt if it would be wide enough for both of us.'
She made a choked hiccuping noise and started to go back inside.
'Needles has got A6,' I said.
She stopped and looked at me. Her face was very still. 'Don't joke, Bernie.'
I lit a cigarette.
'He can't! He had -, 'Yes, he had A2. Hong Kong flu. Just like you and me and Corey and Kelly and Joan.'
'But that would mean he isn't -'
'Immune.'
'Yes. Then we could get it.'
'Maybe he lied when he said he had A2. So we'd take him along with us that time,' I said.
Relief spilled across her face. 'Sure, that's it. I would have lied if it had been me. Nobody likes to be alone, do they?' She hesitated. 'Coming back to bed?'
'Not just now.'
She went inside. I didn't have to tell her that M was no guarantee against A6. She knew that. She had just blocked it out. I sat and watched the surf. It was really up. Years ago, Anson had been the only halfway decent surfing spot in the state. The Point was a dark, jutting hump against the sky. I thought I could see the upright that was the observation post, but it probably was just imagination. Sometimes Kelly took Joan up to the point. I didn't think they were up there tonight.
I put my face in my hands and clutched it, feeling the skin, its grain and texture. It was all narrowing so swiftly, and it was all so mean - there was no dignity in it.
The surf coming in, coming in, coming in. Limitless. Clean and deep. We had come here in the summer, Maureen and I, the summer after high school, the summer before college and reality and A6 coming out of South-east Asia and covering the world like a pall, July, we had eaten pizza and listened to her radio, I had put oil on her back, she had put oil on mine, the air had been hot, the sand bright, the sun like a burning glass.
I AM THE DOORWAY
Richard and I sat on my porch, looking out over the dunes to the Gulf. The smoke from his cigar drifted mellowly in the air, keeping the mosquitoes at a safe distance. The water was a cool aqua, the sky a deeper, truer blue. It was a pleasant combination.
'You are the doorway,' Richard repeated thoughtfully. 'You are sure you killed the boy - you didn't just dream it?'
'I didn't dream it. And I didn't kill him, either - I told you that. They did. I am the doorway.'
Richard sighed. 'You buried him?'
'Yes.'
'You remember where?'
'Yes.' I reached into my breast pocket and got a cigarette. My hands were awkward with their covering of bandages. They itched abominably. 'If you want to see it, you'll have to get the dune buggy. You can't roll this -' I indicated my wheelchair - 'through the sand.' Richard's dune buggy was a 1959 VW with pillow-sized tyres. He collected driftwood in it. Ever since he retired from the real estate business in Maryland he had been living on Key Caroline and building driftwood sculptures which he sold to the winter tourists at shameless prices.
He puffed his cigar and looked out at the Gulf. 'Not yet. Will you tell me once more?'
I sighed and tried to light my cigarette. He took the matches away from me and did it himself. I puffed twice, dragging deep. The itch in my fingers was maddening.
'All right,' I said. 'Last night at seven I was out here, looking at the Gulf and smoking, just like now, and J..鈥?
'Go further back,' he invited.
'Further?'
'Tell me about the flight.'
I shook my head. 'Richard, we've been through it and through it. There's nothing -'
The seamed and fissured face was as enigmatic as one of his own driftwood sculptures. 'You may remember,' he said. 'Now you may remember.'
'Do you think so?'
'Possibly. And when you're through, we can look for the grave.'
'The grave,' I said. It had a hollow, horrible ring, darker than anything, darker even than all that terrible ocean Cory and I had sailed through five years ago. Dark, dark, dark.