Breakdown, page 1
Breakdown
Katherine Amt Hanna
An influenza plague decimates humanity…
A man loses his wife and baby daughter…
Six years after a pandemic devastates the human population, former rock star Chris Price finally makes it from New York to Britain to reunite with his brother. His passage leaves him scarred, in body and mind, by exposure to humankind at its most desperate and dangerous. But another ordeal awaits him beyond the urban ruins, in an idyllic country refuge where Chris meets a woman, Pauline, who is largely untouched by the world’s horrors. Together, Chris and Pauline undertake the most difficult facet of Chris’s journey: confronting grief, violence, and the man Chris has become. They will discover whether the human spirit is capable of surviving and loving again in this darker, harder world.
Katherine Amt Hanna
BREAKDOWN
For Mark and the boys
PROLOGUE
January 10, 2000—New York City
I’ve been waiting to die, but I’m not even sick yet. I tell myself I want to die. What’s left to live for? Sophie, my heart, my love, my life, is dead. Rosie, my sweet little baby, my joy, my second love, is gone too. What’s left? A house full of memories.
And a world gone to hell. What’s left to go on for?
I’ve gathered all the pills in the house and put them in a plastic bag, but so far I haven’t taken them. How much worse does it have to get before I can take them? They sit on the counter in the bathroom, with a bottle of water. I look at them each night before I go to bed alone. But I can’t take them.
I want to get sick. I want this to be over.
If you find this, if you know me, and you care, and I’m dead, can you send it to my brother Jon? I’ve taped an envelope with his address inside the front cover. Just tear out the pages with writing and mail them to him. If you can. If there’s still mail going overseas. If there’s still mail at all.
Jon, I hope you are okay. You and Mum and Kevin. The phones don’t work anymore and the electricity is off now. I heard on the news before it went off that Britain was hit hard. Riots in London where Kevin is. I tried to reach him, and you, but I never got through.
I was at the airport when it all started, two days after Christmas, on my way to see you and Mum. There had been some talk of the flu, but they hadn’t banned travel yet. We didn’t think it would come to much. It was just the flu. How many flu scares have there been that never came to anything?
So Sophie drove me to the airport. We took the baby along. Why not? If she’d been older, we all three would have come to visit, of course. I said good-bye to them and got on the plane. I didn’t know I’d never see my baby again.
The plane didn’t take off. The computer problems had started, but they didn’t tell us that then. I got a different flight for the next morning. If I’d known what was happening, I’d have gone home, given up the quick trip to see Mum. The plane actually took off, but then turned around and went back to LaGuardia after two hours. That’s when I knew that things had gone bad and I had to get home, but they wouldn’t let us leave the airport.
They held us there for three days. They said we’d been exposed. What a nightmare. They kept us in one of the lounges, over a hundred of us. They had police with guns outside the door. They passed out masks for us. The television had CNN on. They were talking about the computer problems and the flu thing getting worse. They didn’t know if the cyberattacks were related to each other or not. People getting sick all over the world and staying home, afraid to go out. Everything was shutting down. No one to keep things running. Not enough experts to fix the computers. Bank records wiped out. Military systems in chaos. Telephone networks wrecked. The Internet began to fail. People died by the thousands every day. I watched the world fall apart on CNN. They started calling it the New Plague. Some people said it was deliberate. If someone did this, it must have got out of control, because it seems to have hit every country.
And they said we’d been exposed. I thought I would die there in the airport lounge.
Finally they let us go.
That was New Year’s Eve. Everything had been canceled, of course. Everyone was supposed to stay home. All the buses and trains were stopped. There were no taxis on the streets. Hardly any cars. I had to walk home. No one would give me a ride. Everyone I saw was wearing a mask. There were lines outside the grocery stores. Some places had boarded-up windows. All the restaurants were closed. I couldn’t find a place to eat. I got in a line and got a sandwich at a deli, but it cost nearly all the cash I had. There were police with rifles all over the place. I didn’t get home by dark, and there was a curfew, so I had to hide out in someone’s garage or risk getting shot by police.
And then when I got home, Rosie was gone. My poor little baby. They had already taken her away. I never got to hold her one last time. I never got to say good-bye.
Sophie was dying. I got to see her before she died, but she didn’t wake up. I sat with her, then got in bed with her and held her while she died. My sweet, darling Sophie. There was nothing I could do. I hope she knew I was there with her at the end.
Sophie’s friend Elaine had come when Sophie got sick. She tied a black shirt to the front gate when Sophie died, and a truck stopped. Men in biohazard suits took away my Sophie. No funerals. Too many people sick and dying. I think Elaine was sick when she left. I guess she’s dead by now.
How could this happen? How could everything go bad so fast? God, I miss them. I find myself planning how to keep warm and eat and wait it out, but then I wonder if I even want to. And then at night, when I’m alone in bed, I know I don’t want to. What’s to go on with now that my Sophie and Rosie are gone?
In the mornings I eat something and plan out how to get through the day. I think about Archie’s cabin on the mountain. It must be safer there. I could take all the food and go there. But I don’t want to leave the house and all the things that still have Sophie’s smell. I sleep with one of her sweaters. I sit in the nursery and hold one of Rosie’s little blankets and rock it like it’s her. I can’t leave them.
I guess there’s no chance I’ll ever get back to Bath, now. I wonder how it is over there. I wonder if Mum is okay, and Kevin, and you, Jon. God, I hope you are okay.
Last night I dreamed about Brian. Not a good dream; we were screaming at each other, like the last time I saw him. I think about all of the people I left behind in Britain. I guess it will be a long time before I ever find out what’s happened to them. Maybe it’s better if I don’t know. Then I can pretend that everyone there is okay.
Game Over (excerpt)
(C. Price, 1995)
For all we were connected
Now we’re set against a wall.
We’re divided and dissected
Watch the tilted tower fall.
With the linkage crossed and broken,
On the outs with no regard,
Shallow words grudgingly spoken.
Heads and hearts and faces hard.
This game is over.
CHAPTER 1
August 2006—Bath, England
It was easy to forget, Brian reflected as the bus bumped along bad roads, the hardships and struggles that had brought him to this point. He wondered when he had become happy again. Like a child’s growing up—something that seems impossible to a parent holding a newborn baby—happiness had grown in him, day after day, in unnoticed increments. He glanced down at his son, Ian, dozing against his arm. Fear for his boys’ futures no longer burned in Brian’s heart with hot intensity. It had faded to a glowing ember that flared only if he poked at it.
Beyond the dirty window, the morning sun lit a landscape hardly changed by the desperate winter of six years ago. The changes were more visible in the cities, where panic and rioting had left their mark. Brian had managed, with the help of his brother Simon, to keep his own family safe—his two boys and his wife, Fiona. Not many of the people he knew could say that.
He sighed and shook Ian gently as the buildings of Bath came into view.
The bus pulled into the station just before eight o’clock. Ian shuffled impatiently in the aisle in front of Brian as the other passengers disembarked. They’d had to sit at the back of the crowded bus, and to an eleven-year-old the wait seemed long. Brian cradled a carton of eggs in one hand and rested the other on his son’s shoulder. Ian turned to look at him briefly with his big, dark eyes. A strand of pale hair fell across his forehead, and the boy shook his head a bit to shift it. Brian was struck by the maturity of the look. Since he had started coming into Bath with Brian on market day, Ian had grown more serious, and Brian wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He missed the silly laugh that used to bubble out of his son so easily.
At last they were down the bus’s steps. Ian pushed through the crowd to claim their rucksacks as the driver pulled them from the luggage compartment. He brought both packs to where Brian stood.
“Ta.” Brian hefted his pack onto his back while Ian held the eggs. They set off with the others from the bus toward the open market.
The first stall they stopped at was busy, and they had to wait while two women haggled over dried beans, flour, and cornmeal. When it was their turn, the owner greeted them by name and began to lift the eggs carefully out of the carton. Assured that none were cracked, he handed over the usual paper sack of sugar. Brian gave it and the egg carton to Ian, who put them both in his rucksack.
They spent a good part of the morning in the busy market, trading for the things on Fiona’s list or paying cash if they had to. Brian let Ian barter for some lined writing paper, standing behind him with an eye on the stall’s proprietor.
The list finished, they took an alley through to the next street and got in the queue at the grocery store. It was half an hour before they made it inside. Ian disliked the place and always scowled as Brian shopped, but to spend the ration coupons, they had to visit the grocery. Brian handed over the coupons and counted out the money exactly.
“I’d heard there might be coffee?” he asked the clerk.
“Nar, not ’ere.” She said it as if she’d heard it many times. “Bristol, maybe, but I doubt it.”
Brian thanked her, then packed the groceries into the rucksacks, leaving out the small bag containing the lunch his wife had sent along for them.
“Shall we eat in the Parade Gardens?”
They walked up Pierrepont Street, past boarded-up hotels and coffee shops. The window boxes that used to overflow colorful flowers late into the fall now held scraggly weeds. Paint flakes and crumbling mortar littered the sidewalk; larger junk and rusting cars sat in the street. They settled themselves on the stone steps leading down to the overgrown gardens. Before the Bad Winter, meticulously manicured flower beds had bordered the open green, and on fine days striped lawn chairs invited you to be lazy for a while. Now tall grass hid the stones marking three long trenches and dozens of smaller graves.
Fiona had packed sandwiches, apples, and a biscuit each. They drank water from a plastic bottle they had brought along and relieved themselves against the stone wall at the bottom of the stairs. Then they climbed back up to street level and set off for the Distribution Center, where the old covered market used to be.
Brian had noticed how much of Ian’s socks showed between his trouser cuffs and shoe tops. Ian admitted that, yes, his shoes had got too tight again, so they started with the racks of used shoes. Ian found a pair of sturdy leather work boots with the soles hardly worn and near-perfect wellies. Brian nodded his approval.
They visited the clothing racks next, checking for jeans and cords in good condition, finding two pairs of each. Brian added three flannel shirts. He chewed his lip as he counted out the coupons, but smiled when he saw Ian watching him.
“You’re growing too fast, old boy,” he said. “We’ll have to wait ’til next month to get you a jacket. C’mon, let’s go do the books.”
The used-book shop was located in a small side street near the abbey, still run by an old man with a fuzz of white hair whom Brian had always known only as Flynn. He had somehow managed to carry on through the worst of times, hardly leaving his flat above the store, or spending his days in the narrow aisles between shelves, sorting and cataloguing, or wrapped in a blanket in an armchair by the door, reading to escape the harshness of the changed world. The place was more of a library now, with no tourists to spend their holiday money on quaint old volumes. Brian visited nearly every week. He had brought two books back to trade in. Ian picked out an adventure about a young American cowboy and Brian got a mystery novel. He gave Flynn a tin of meat, a squash from the garden, and a selection of leftover ration coupons.
“Oh, I say, Brian,” Flynn said as they were about to leave. “Your old mate Chris was looking for you earlier this week.”
Brian stopped dead in the doorway. The name jolted him. He stared at Flynn, who sat reading the fine print on the tin’s label, apparently unaware that he had said anything unusual.
Brian gulped, thinking Flynn had to be mistaken. “Um, are you sure?”
Flynn looked up. “What? Of course I’m sure. Hardly knew him at first, it’s been so long. But yeah, he asked after you, said he’d been round to your house, but you’d gone and did I know where to. I told him you live out in Hurleigh now.”
“Chris Price, was it? You’re sure, Flynn?”
“I’m not dotty yet, Brian. He looked different, you know, but it were him, I tell you. He stayed a good few hours, asking about folks what used to live here. He’d brought some lovely muffins and jam, and we had a bit o’ tea. I told him you were out Hurleigh way.”
Good memories battled with bad ones in Brian’s head. The long childhood friendship had ended with hard feelings and harder words. He remembered the last horrible thing he’d uttered with such contempt, nearly ten years ago, and felt his face grow warm with shame.
Ian was watching him, clutching his bundle of clothing.
“Uh, thanks, Flynn,” Brian said and went out. He headed down York Street. It couldn’t be Chris. It was impossible. Chris had been in New York. By all accounts, New York had been hit hard.
“Dad?”
Brian stopped and turned around. “Sorry.”
“Did he mean Uncle Jon’s brother? Chris, from the band?”
Ian didn’t know how the partnership had ended. All he knew was that his dad and Chris Price had been famous rock stars before he was born. He had seen and heard the CDs kept stored in a cabinet in the sitting room.
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
Brian shook his head. “I think Flynn must be mistaken. How could he have got here?” Even if he survived. “He lived in New York, remember? There aren’t many ships, and hardly any planes.”
“But Flynn said it was him, for sure. Maybe he got on a ship.”
“I doubt it.” Brian stood looking into the distance, his eyebrows drawn together. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“We’ll go to the Government Center. He’ll have to register there if he wants to get his coupons.”
They queued for half an hour at the information desk, then watched as a pale girl searched through a box of cards. Not too many years ago, she would have punched the information into a computer and had their answer in seconds. But despite all the public assurances six years ago that the cyberattacks were causing only temporary shutdowns, nearly all the computers were junk now.
The girl finally told them she did not have a card for a Chris Price. She suggested they try the Health Center, two floors up.
“Sometimes the cards don’t get filed right. But he’ll have to have a blood test to relocate here, and they’ll have the record of that.”
The queue for the Health Center was even longer. The man on the end said he didn’t know if he would get in before the place closed at six.
“Well, that’s out then,” Brian said to Ian. “It’s nearly time for the bus.”
They walked back toward the bus station.
“Uncle Jon never talks about him,” Ian said.
Brian sighed. “No. I don’t talk much about Uncle Colin, either, do I?” In the beginning it had hurt too much to even think about his dead brother, Colin, and how Colin’s stubbornness had doomed him and his family. Now, Brian thought maybe he should make the effort at some point, so his sons would know about their uncle, aunt, and cousins.
“Did I know him?”
Brian thought Ian meant Colin, then realized he meant Chris.
“No, you were just a baby when he moved away. When we get home, I’ll show you some pictures, okay?”
“I’ve seen the pictures,” Ian reminded him. “And Uncle Jon has some in his room, too. Y’know, if he wants to get to Hurleigh, he’ll have to take our bus.”
“You’re right,” Brian said, his mouth gone dry, as they turned the corner into the station. Brian scanned the place.
Most everyone in the bus station lingered near the stalls. Three people had already queued for their bus. Brian caught sight of a man sitting on a low brick wall in the afternoon sun. He held a bulky brown jacket in his lap and kept his head down. At this distance, there wasn’t much to distinguish him from any other stranger in the street. But Brian stood rooted, staring with his mouth open. He put a hand out in front of Ian.
“Stay here,” he said. He walked forward, breathing as if he’d run the last two blocks. “Chris?”
The man on the wall looked up, saw him instantly. Brian stopped, choked on guilt. Not dead…
Chris eased himself off the bricks and came forward a few steps. He wore his brown hair long, pulled back into a ponytail. A few pieces had come loose and hung down around his face. He hadn’t shaved, and his clothes looked like they needed a wash. His eyes had a haunted, uncertain look to them. Brian knew that look; he’d seen it in his wife’s eyes occasionally as she had gazed at their children during the Bad Winter, when so many were dying.
