“I don’t know.”
She read the name she saw in large blue letters over the front doors of the building. “Morristown Elementary School. It’s for little kids, Dad.”
“Maybe they turned it into a hospital,” David suggested, unable to pull his eyes from the community of tents that had been erected on the front lawn of the school. The people in the biohazard suits looked about as hospitable and familiar as alien invaders.
Beyond the school, there were a few more houses on either side of the road with red X’s on their doors, as well. He was so busy scrutinizing these homes for some sign of life that he failed to see the roadblock up ahead until he was just a few yards from it.
“Shit,” he uttered, and hit the brakes. The Olds growled to a stop, skidding on the gravelly pavement in front of a series of yellow sawhorses adorned with blinking orange emergency lights. On the other side of the roadblock stood another emergency vehicle, this one parked horizontally across the street as if to prevent passage to anyone who had inadvertently—or perhaps purposefully—gone through the roadblock. There were more tents set up here, as well, only these were of the camouflaged military variety. These troubled David more than the white tents back at the school.
A man in a hazmat suit hoisting an assault rifle approached the vehicle, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. There were insignias on his sleeves and a name sewn above the breast, though David couldn’t make it out because it was partially obscured by the rifle’s strap. The suit’s plastic faceplate obscured the man’s features.
“Shit,” David muttered again. Then he glanced at Ellie. She was watching the man in the hazmat suit approach the car with something like awe in her eyes. “Stick that box under your seat,” David instructed.
She didn’t move.
“Do it now,” he barked.
Ellie bent forward and stashed the shoe box containing the bird’s nest beneath her seat. When she straightened back up, the figure in the hazmat suit was right outside David’s window, motioning for him to roll it down.
“Hi,” David said. “My son and I just got lost. I’m sorry.”
“This is a restricted area,” said the man. His voice was muffled on the other side of the clear plastic shield that covered his face. His breath caused little clouds of moisture to bloom on the plastic. “This road is closed. There were signs posted.”
“Were there? I must have missed them. I apologize. We’ll just turn around and go back—”
“You live around here?”
A second figure dressed in similar attire—and carrying his own rifle—appeared in the space between two of the camouflage tents. He approached the scene without hesitation, pausing just a few yards behind his comrade. The person was too far away for David to make out any features behind the plastic face shield.
“No, sir,” David said.
The man bent slightly so that he could peer into the car. His hazmat suit crinkled like tarpaulin. His breath continued to fog the faceplate. David couldn’t tell if he was checking the interior of the vehicle for anything in particular or if he wanted a better look at Ellie. David held his breath and found he couldn’t take his eyes from the man’s gun.
“You two need to turn around and get out of here,” the man said finally, straightening up. He pointed with one gloved hand back in the direction they had come. “Don’t stop until you’re back on the main road.”
“Yes, sir,” David said, already rolling his window back up.
The man in the hazmat suit stepped backward onto the curb. He continued pointing in the direction they had come, one hand on the grip of his rifle.
David executed a clumsy three-point turn, his heart hammering in his chest the whole time, and found himself waving stupidly at the man in the hazmat suit as he drove past him at a quick clip.
What if he had asked to see my driver’s license? he wondered, passing those darkened, eerie houses with the X’s on their doors again. What if he had recognized my name and pulled me out of the car right then and there? What if—
But he could what if himself to death. The important thing was that the man hadn’t asked to see his driver’s license. They were headed back the way they had come, no worse for wear. Couldn’t he just leave it at that?
Also, that wasn’t just a man. It was a soldier. National Guard, most likely.
This time, when they drove past the school and its assortment of antiseptic white tents, David saw what were undeniably body bags lined up in a tidy queue along the sloping lawn. A few of the people in hazmat suits paused to watch them go by. Ellie waved to them. To David’s astonishment, a few waved back.
16