Chapter 1
Shelby
"Citywide shelter in place order."
Click.
"Statewide shelter in place order."
Click.
"Nationwide quarantine is now in effect. As of eight p.m. tonight, all flights are grounded. International travel is suspended. All businesses, excluding essential services, are to close their physical locations."
Click.
I turn the radio off, tired of hearing the same speech in different accents. Frankly, I'm pretty put out over the whole situation.
Not the quarantine. No. I couldn't give a rat's ass about that. I'm single, work from home, and have few to no friends outside my social media. Tomorrow looks no different than yesterday did for me. No, what I'm ticked off about is we finally have a genuine, end of the world pandemic, and we haven't had a single resurrected corpse.
I mean, isn't this what ten years of The Walking Dead have prepared us for? The zombie apocalypse? Yet, here we are. Apocalypse—without the zombies. It's kind of a letdown, to be honest.
I pull into my gravel driveway, the familiar jostle of my car a balm to my ruffled feathers. My trunk is overflowing, and the eighteen pack of eggs sitting in the passenger seat reminds me I'll need to move some shit around in my kitchen as I put the groceries away.
You'll never use a Costco membership, they said. Why bother, when it's only you? they said. Well, joke’s on them now, isn't it? Who won't have to leave the house again for at least three weeks?
That's right! This chick won't.
I slow as I approach my house, which sits back from the street, hidden by trees and a steep hill.
There's a man on my porch. With a suitcase. Wearing a pilot's uniform.
I sit in wonder, my car still idling, as the man rises to his feet and stretches before giving me a small smile, waving his hand in a slow sort of half flail.
I recognize him. I think.
Derrick.
What the hell is he doing here?
Before I have a chance to get out of my car, my phone rings my brother's tone. He doesn't even wait for my hello before he's barking in my ear.
"Shell, I need a favor."
Surprise, surprise.
There's no chance he was calling to, say, check on me. Since we're in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and all. No. Jack would only call if he needed something.
"Let me guess: it involves a certain childhood bestie."
"How'd you know?" he asks, genuine bewilderment in his voice. Not the brightest crayon in the box, my brother. Actually, that's not true. He is the brightest crayon in the box. Neon yellow. A color that doesn't play well with others. It's not his fault; I can't hold it against him.
"Because Derrick is currently sitting on my front porch."
"Oh," he says, and the silence grows between us before he finally speaks again. "He called me a few hours ago, but I got distracted. I didn't realize he'd be at your place so soon. Sorry, Sis."
Naturally.
He's not a bad guy, my brother. He's on the spectrum, and while I've always felt he got all the good stuff from it, his personality is rough around the edges. Jack, brilliant as he is, can only concentrate on one thing at a time. He's a number cruncher. Anything that breaks that focus gets pushed to the side until he has the bandwidth to concentrate on it. Apparently, warning me that his best friend would be showing up on my doorstep was apparently not as critical as whatever problem he was solving.
"Feel like filling me in on why he is at my place?"
Derrick is staring at me from the porch, hands in his pockets. I point at my phone and give a “what are you going to do?” motion with my hands. He grins and offers a half shrug, telling me he already knows what the problem is.
He's as familiar with Jack’s eccentricities as the rest of us are.
Derrick looks good. Real good. I haven't seen him in years. Not since he left the Air Force. His hair has grown out some—not long by any means, but not the military's short, angular cut. He has the beginnings of a thick black beard, and God damn does it look good on him. His skin, already darkened from his European ancestry, has a golden hue, like he spends his free time lounging in the sun.
Then, of course, there's the airline pilot dress shirt stretched tight across his chest. What is it about a man in uniform that makes a girl’s heart flutter?
I give a half-wave in return and put up one finger. I don't make a move to get out of the car yet.
"Have you been following the news?" Jack asks, and I can't help but smile.
"Yes, Jack, I'm aware of the global epidemic."
He's almost five years older than me, and he forgets, like he forgets so many other things, that I've been an adult for a long time now.
"Derrick was in the air when they grounded the planes. They allowed his flight to reach its destination, but now he's stuck. Then he remembered you live in Atlanta. We wondered if he could crash with you until he can make other arrangements."
Make other arrangements.
That's going to be almost impossible. Everything is either closing or closed. Most hotels are under quarantine, with no guests in or out until testing has been completed. Even if you live in-state. Wherever you are now, you're pretty much stuck there.
Son of a bitch.
Derrick is stuck with me.
"Why does he have to stay with me? He's a pilot for heaven's sake. Surely, he can afford to rent an Airbnb or something."
There's little to no hope of that. I know it. But it doesn't mean I'm going to sit here and not put up a fight.
"Sure, he could," my brother replies, "if he could." And somehow that makes perfect sense to me. "But why should he have to? He's like family to me. To us. Besides, dad told me you had a to-do list a mile long for that delipidated horror you live in. He was planning on driving up this summer to help you with it. Now, Derrick can cross some of the items off the list."
Shit. It's not like I can tell them no. I close my eyes, keeping my deep sigh internal.
"Of course, Jack. I'll take care of him."
We hang up quickly after that. Once Derrick's problem is taken care of, at least in Jack’s opinion, my brother feels very little need to talk to me.
I sit in the car a minute longer, trying to gather my wits about me. Derrick is on my front porch.
I used to have a crush on him. A write his initials in a heart, practice signing his last name, follow him around like a puppy dog kind of crush. He's a few years younger than Jack and made a habit of checking in on me every few days after Jack left for college. At least until he left too. I know now he was only doing it for my brother, but it made me feel special at the time.
But that was ages ago. I hardly think of him now. I'm almost thirty. I own my own home. I'm beyond the point in life where objects of childhood infatuation make me go weak in the knees.
I lock them when I climb out of my car just to make sure.
Derrick’s smile grows by the mile as I climb the front porch with my bag of eggs, pausing to stand in front of him. Half my mouth twists up in a long time no see way, but when I reach for the door, his face falls.
He looks at me, expression twisted into something I can't read. The tension in the air rises, and I desperately want to step out of his line of sight. I put the key into the lock and freeze when I hear him behind me.