Plague

gathered around her.
    The chills came in waves. She would be too hot and would kick off her blankets. Then the fever would start to spike again and she would feel cold, cold all the way down to her bones.
    Jennifer H was dead. Jennifer L didn’t answer when Jennifer B moaned to her to join her.
    “Jen . . . I’m going to . . . hospital.”
    No answer.
    “Are you alive?”
    Jennifer L coughed, she wasn’t dead, and she coughed normally, not the crazy spasms that had killed Jennifer H. But she didn’t answer.
    So Jennifer Boyles set off, on her own. She slid on her butt down the stairs, blankets gathered around her. Shivering, teeth chattering.
    She managed to stand long enough to reach the front door and open it. But she sat down again very unexpectedly on the porch. Hard on her butt. She sat there shaking until the chills passed.
    She tripped walking down the porch stairs. The fall bruised her left knee badly. This destroyed the last of her will to stand up. But not the last of her will to live.
    Jennifer began to crawl. Hands and knees. Down the sidewalk. Impeded by her blankets. Delayed by coughing fits. Pausing whenever the chills rattled her so hard she could only moan and hack and roll onto her side.
    “Keep going,” she muttered. “Gotta keep going.”
    It took her two hours to crawl as far as Brace Road.
    She lay there, facedown. Coughing wracked her chest. But it was not yet the superhuman coughs that had killed Jennifer H.
    Not yet.

Chapter Five
62 HOURS, 18 MINUTES

    “LESLIE-ANN, TRY TO do a little better on cleaning my night pot, okay?” Albert told the cleaning girl. “I know it’s not a fun job, but I like it clean.”
    Leslie-Ann nodded and kept her eyes down. She was a little afraid of him, Albert knew. But at least she didn’t seem to hate him.
    “There’s not much water,” Leslie-Ann mumbled.
    “Use sand,” Albert said patiently—he’d already told her this. “Use sand to scrub it clean.”
    She nodded and fled the room.
    Not everyone liked Albert. Not everyone was happy that he had become the most important person around. Lots of people were jealous that Albert had a girl to clean his house and the porcelain basin where he did his business at night when he didn’t want to go outside to the only actual outhouse in Per-dido Beach. And that he could afford to send his clothes to be washed in the fresh water of the ironically named Lake Evian.
    And there were definitely people who didn’t like working for Albert, having to do what he said or go hungry.
    Albert traveled with a bodyguard now. The bodyguard’s name was Jamal. Jamal carried an automatic rifle over his shoulder. He had a massive hunting knife in his belt. And a club that was an oak chair leg with spikes driven through it to make a sort of mace.
    Unlike everyone else Albert carried no weapon himself. Jamal was weapon enough.
    “Let’s go, Jamal.”
    Albert led the way toward the beach. Jamal as usual kept a few paces back, head swiveling left and right, glowering, ready for trouble.
    Albert bypassed the plaza—there were always kids there and they always wanted something from Albert: a job, a different job, credit, something.
    It didn’t work. Two littles, Harley and Janice, moved right in front of him as he walked briskly.
    “Mr. Albert? Mr. Albert?” Harley said.
    “Just Albert’s fine,” Albert said tersely.
    “Me and Janice are thirsty.”
    “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any water on me.” He managed a tight smile and moved on. But now Janice was crying and Harley was pleading.
    “We used to live with Mary and she gave us water. But now we have to live with Summer and BeeBee and they said we have to have money.”
    “Then I guess you’d better earn some money,” Albert said. He tried to soften it, tried not to sound harsh, but he had a lot on his mind and it came out sounding mean. Now Harley started to cry, too.
    “If you’re thirsty, stop crying,” Albert snapped. “What do you think tears are made of?”
    Reaching the beach Albert scanned the work site. It looked like a salvage yard. A five-hundred-gallon oval propane tank lay abandoned on the sand. A scorched hole in one side.
    A second, slightly smaller tank should have been resting on steel legs right at the water’s edge. Instead it was tipped over. A copper pipe stuck out of the top. This pipe was crimped tightly over a slightly smaller pipe that bent back toward the ground. A third, still narrower pipe was duct-taped heavily in