Quarantined by Joe McKinney Read Free Book Online

trees along its banks.
    Inside, the house was dark and quiet. Connie’s toys were all over the living room floor, and Billy had left a sweaty shirt and dirty socks on the arm of the couch again.
    “Billy? Connie?” I called out, picking up the shirt and socks and throwing them in the hamper.
    “Billy?”
    I went to the back door and looked out towards Billy’s work shed, trying hard not to notice the coffins, most of which were only half-finished and unpainted. Billy had been a contractor before H2N2 hit San Antonio, but like everybody else, he’d been forced to adjust to the new circumstances. He started bringing in a pretty good chunk of change making coffins for those who could afford to bury their dead in private graveyards. It disturbed me when he first started doing it, and it still did as I looked out over the backyard, calling out their names.
    The battery-powered light in Billy’s shed was on. The batteries were a costly item down at the distribution center, but necessary to run his woodworking tools.
    I opened the screen door and stepped out to the porch. I could hear Connie laughing and it hitched me up inside. It had become a rare sound by the end of that summer.
    “Connie?” I yelled out. “Billy?”
    The laughing stopped. A moment went by.
    “Mommy!” Connie yelled from inside the wood shed, and then she was sprinting out of it, bounding over the coffins, her delighted shrieks of “Mommy! Mommy!” the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard.
    She was running for me. Her soft brown hair billowed out behind her. It was getting long now that we’d finally relented and let her grow it out like her best friend Emily. Her complexion was light, her facial features delicate, a girly girl. I loved her eyes, wide open and intelligent. Seeing her run and laugh filled me with a profound sadness that things couldn’t be this way all the time.
    Only then did I realize that she wasn’t wearing her surgical mask. My face went hard. I could feel it set. A switch turned on in my head and the next minute I was yelling, screaming at her to put her mask back on. “God damn it! Put it back on now!” I couldn’t stop myself from yelling. It wasn’t anger. It was a black cloud of frustration and fear and sadness building behind my eyes.
    She stopped in the yard. She looked up at me from the foot of the steps that led up to the porch.
    She didn’t answer me.
    Her face melted into sadness and her eyes clouded over with disappointment. Not anger, or defiance, or even dismissive nonchalance, but simple, gut-wrenching disappointment that tore my heart in two.
    I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, my heart was beating fast, and I felt sick.
    “Connie, please. Put on your mask.”
    She sighed, hung her head. She mounted the stairs and walked past me without a word.
    “Connie?” I said, my voice shaking. I watched her as she opened the screen door and went inside.
    She let the door slam behind her.
    “Honey?” I said, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, hear me.
    When I turned back to the yard Billy was standing there. Billy, at 6 ft 3 in, was a big man. His shoulders were wide, though his powerful arms hung limply at his sides. His brown hair was short, but full and shiny, the same as Connie’s. His face was round and sad.
    He wasn’t wearing his mask either.
    “What was that all about?” he asked.
    “She’s not wearing her mask, Billy. And neither are you.”
    “Yeah,” he said defensively. “So, what’s the big deal? We’re not in public. It’s just us.”
    My mouth fell open into an O. “How can you ask me that? How can you stand there and tell me it’s no big deal when you know what I look at all damn day? How can you be that thick-headed, Billy?”
    He started to argue, but evidently thought better of it. Instead he said nothing at all.
    “Please, Billy. I count on you. I wish things weren’t the way they are, but I need you to promise me you’ll make her wear her mask when I’m not around. I