- - End of All Things, The by Lissa Bryan Read Free Book Online Page B

her parents had moved after they retired. Carly sometimes wondered if Michelle and Kevin had made it, or if she had been stopped somewhere along the route, unable to travel onward and unable to come back to Juneau.
    “Some people refused to believe there was a pandemic and thought the government was trying to ‘take over’ and turn America into a dictatorship.” Justin paused for a moment. A hint of a cynical smile tugged at his lips. “You know how it was, Carly. People didn’t trust the government for small things, let alone for something that affects their personal freedom.” 
    “But they had to know how dangerous it was. They could have been bringing the Infection to their friends and family.”
    Justin shook his head. “The Infection had a long incubation period in which people were contagious but asymptomatic . . . People felt fine, so they ignored the quarantine orders, and the government was slow to enforce the quarantine. It was an election year, after all. By the time they got serious about enforcing it, it was far too late.” 
    An election year. Carly was sickened at the thought that politicians might have been willing to let people get sick and die rather than hurt their chances to keep their offices. She hoped it wasn’t true, but she didn’t ask Justin anything more about it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
    Her father had been concerned people were ignoring the quarantine orders. Carly remembered her mother teasing him for being such a Boy Scout about following the government’s directives because of his time in the military. Her father had just smiled and teased her back, but even then, Carly had known there was something he wasn’t telling them. In retrospect, she could see her father had known the situation was far worse than Carly and her mother had realized. 
    Carl had gone to the emergency town meeting to lend his voice in support of those trying to convince the mayor to isolate Juneau, but the mayor refused on the grounds that it was coldhearted. The ferry and airport had been shut down only about a week before her parents died, after it was far too late to do any good. 
    Justin startled her out of her thoughts when he put a hand on her shoulder. “I think you should keep your eyes on the sidewalk, okay?”
    She followed as he started across the bridge, keeping as far away from the vehicles as possible, trying to pretend they didn’t exist. She kept her eyes glued to the heels of Justin’s black leather boots and kept a tight grip on Sam’s leash, clamped under her hand on the handle of the cart. Sam kept casting concerned looks up at her; maybe he could read the tension in her posture. Carly patted him on the head to try to reassure him . . . and to reassure herself as well.
    She heard a bang from the other side of the bridge and jumped. It wasn’t loud, but in the eerie silence, it seemed exaggerated. She glanced around to search for the source of the sound, and she saw a small shack on the side of the bridge, built for the troops guarding the barricade. The door swung lazily in the breeze. Then she saw a pair of boots sticking out from behind the edge of the barrier and looked away. She caught sight of a car straight ahead of them, emitting a strange humming sound. The windows were blacked out with some kind of undulating material that had a dull glimmer to it. A trash bag, maybe? But as she got closer she realized it wasn’t a trash bag. It was flies. Thousands of flies covering the inside of the windows, and the sound of their wings was the humming she heard. They lined the edge of the small gap in the window, new arrivals and departures.
    Carly gagged and fell to her knees at the side of the bridge. Up came the soda she had drunk in the store, and she continued to retch until her stomach muscles ached and quivered. Her head pounded. Behind her, Sam danced and whined, unsure of how to assist her.
    Touching her shoulder, Justin put a bottle of water into her line of