Hitchers

CHAPTER 6

Exhausted from dealing with the police and emergency management, from six hours in the crush of traffic heading out of the city, I stayed in my apartment and watched the news for the next few days. There were people sick in dozens of U.S. cities, plus London, Cape Town, Hong Kong, the list went on.

People in what looked like space suits were spraying the subways, MARTA stations, and the surfaces all around the hardest-hit stations. But the spores had been carried all over the city and beyond, on the wind, tires, the soles of shoes. They couldn’t scrub it all.

Footage of army engineers using bulldozers to plow up the big field in Chastain Park played on all the news channels. They were digging mass graves—big enough to bury half a million people.

When the guy in the hazard suit had taken Annie from my arms, while another took down her name and address, they assured me they’d take good care of her. I knew they were lying, but I also knew they weren’t going to let me put her in the back seat of my car and drive away.