Page 36 of The End of the World As We Know It

“A lockdown?” Charles Bouchard asked. “For how long?”

Dick shrugged. “Until it’s safe. We have fuel for our generators and the wind turbine is cranking out more electricity than we need.”

“What about my sister?” Evelyn Martin asked. “She’s over in Ellsworth, and when I talked to her last night she seemed fine. A few sniffles, that’s all. Can she come here? We have room.”

Dick shook his head. “We are disease-free today. Even if Jocelyn—that’s her name, right? Even if Jocelyn is healthy, she could be a carrier. Or whoever she hires to bring her over.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, but that’s my proposal. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but it’s do or die, literally.” He stepped aside and took a seat at the end of the semicircle. The floor was now open for discussion.

For a while, no one said anything. Finally, the young man from Kentucky stood. Dick wondered what the folks back home thought of him. He looked like a rock musician—long, stringy hair, shaggy beard, and tattoos covering his legs and arms. “What about us?” he asked. “We both have jobs, and our families are expecting us back home next week.”

Bob Williams walked slowly to the speaker chair. He was in hislate fifties, but moved like a much older man. “I can’t speak for everyone, but I like to think we’d all welcome you to stay on the island. We look after our own, even if you’re from away. It would be up to Helen, of course. And Charles. We aren’t a Christian community, for the most part, but I think we’re a charitable one.”

“Stay?” the young man, James, said. He had a confused look on his face. His new bride took his hand, but remained seated. “On the island with all of you?”

“You are free to leave, of course. Someone would probably let you have a boat. We have no shortage of those.” There were nods from several people in the room. “But if what Dick is saying is true—and I have no reason to doubt him—it seems likely Seacliff Island is the safest place for you. If you got to the mainland and didn’t like what you saw…”

“You couldn’t come back,” Wally Martin said.

It was a breach of protocol, but Bob was happy someone else had delivered the verdict instead of him. “So, think long and hard before you decide. You may not have a job or a family to go back to anyway, to be honest. I know that’s hard to hear, but that’s how it sounds to me.”

“Might as well stay until the end of your honeymoon, at least,” Helen Bouchard said. “See if the situation changes.”

Bob returned to his seat. The formality of the speaker chair now seemed needlessly foolish. This wasn’t a town hall where they had to decide what to do about the increased cost of having provisions delivered from the mainland or an argument over installing the wind turbine. They were discussing their future—their very survival—and it seemed pointless to keep shuffling back and forth to the chair.

“I have a question,” Dottie Phillips said after raising her hand. She taught school on the mainland before meeting Nancy and moving to Seacliff seven years ago. “How do wekeeppeople from coming here? If it’s so terrible over there, they’re going to be looking for somewhere safe. We’re not the easiest place to get to, but we’re not completely off the grid, either.”

Dick stood. “There’s only one way onto the island—the jetty. The cliffs are too steep for anyone who hasn’t climbed Mount Everest, assuming their boat didn’t get swept onto the rocks first. I propose we keep someone stationed at the dock—armed, of course—to fend off anyone approaching. We can take shifts. I suspect, though, that before too many days pass, we won’t have to worry about intruders.” He paused as if considering what to say next. “I think this is it, everybody. The big one. We’ll be lucky if a few percent of the population is still alive by the end of the week. It’s spreading that fast.”

“On the East Coast?” Alice Williams asked.

Dick scrunched his lips.

“You mean… everywhere?”

“That’s right.”

“The whole country?”

“Yes. The whole country.”

“What about…?” Alice paused as if unsure how to formulate the question. “What about everywhere else? The rest of the world?”

“The president said the virus has been reported in both Russia and China. I’m not surprised.” He pointed at the hall’s tall windows and the sky beyond. “Back in 1918, people hardly traveled, so the spread was slow. We have tens of thousands of flights, both national and international, every day. They’ve probably closed the airways by now, but I doubt it was in time. All it would take is a few infected people getting on overseas flights. Now, I’m not saying the disease started here and we’re spreading it across the globe. At this point, it doesn’t much matter where it came from. It’s here and it’s deadly.” Dick inhaled and exhaled before continuing. “Even if the president says otherwise.”

More grumbles. The president was the man who, only two years ago, had loudly proclaimed,Read my lips—no new taxes!Look how that had turned out. It was ironic when Dick thought about it. Less than a month ago, the president and his Russian counterpart had signed a treaty to ban chemical weapons. Fat lot of good that did.

“Where’s Governor McKernan?” Bob asked. “Why aren’t we hearing from him?”

Dick straightened up. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s sick, too. Anyhow, like I said, my feeling is that we won’t have to keep watch for long. We don’t have anything the folks over there need. Our only asset is isolation, but that won’t matter for long. Any survivors on the mainland will soon have all the living space and supplies they need.”

The residents of Seacliff Island sat with that notion for a while. Then Wally stood. “I agree with everything Dick said, although we need to keep tabs on the news. Things could change in a heartbeat. The president said the CDC’s vaccine might be available next week. He said the disease will eventually run its course.” He cleared his throat. “My question is—how long do you think we can survive without supplies from the mainland?”

“Worried the beer’s gonna run out?” Harry Gagnon asked, which generated a few half-hearted chuckles from the residents.

“Or toilet paper?” Charles added, which inspired more laughter.

“Both,” Wally said with a good-natured smile.

“A valid concern,” Dick said. “We’ll run out of certain perishables before long, no doubt. If we’re stuck here through the winter, we might have to start rationing some other things next spring, until the crops come in. We’re lucky the supply boat came when it did. We all have well-stocked pantries and freezers.” That got another laugh. It wasn’t a condition of residency to have a survivalist mindset, but pretty much everyone on Seacliff had those tendencies. During the blustery winter months, they could be—and often had been—cut off from the mainland for weeks at a time. “As long as we don’t get hit by a drought or any other biblical plague, we should be able to get by.” He chuckled. “We could even cook up some sour mash for booze if push comes to shove.”