She led Arlys out again, walked to the corner, looked long north and long south before jogging across the street.

“They get drunk or high,” she continued, “set fires, shoot off guns. They ride around looking for somebody who doesn’t hide quick enough, or run fast enough. They hurt them. Or kill them.

“But they’re starting to hunt.”

“Hunt people?”

“Starting to go through buildings where people live. Or lived. It’s the dead that keep them out of some places. But it won’t keep them out much longer. They do the same thing, bust things up, take what they want, and look for people to hurt. Raiders.”

She stopped by an empty car.

“This wasn’t here yesterday. See, they tried to get through, but the street’s mostly blocked. They didn’t take their things. See, they tried to take too much, and couldn’t take it with them if they had to run. The market’s just down here.”

“Is this a safe zone?”

“It’s safe enough if you’re not stupid.” She smiled when she said it.

She stopped at a boarded storefront. Arlys frowned at the symbols painted over the boards. “What does all this mean?”

“Oh … You could say it’s for good luck. Somebody’s inside now. It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It’s not one of the Raiders or the bad ones.”

“How do you know?”

But Fred had already eased two boards apart. “Blessings,” she said. “It’s like a password,” she told Arlys, and stepped inside.

The boards closed behind Arlys, pitching them into full dark. Not even a crack of light showed. Then one flashed on.

“Who’s with you, Fred?”

“Hi, T.J. This is Arlys. We work together. It’s okay. She’s one of the good ones.”

“Are you bringing her into one of the zones?”

“Not now anyway. She’s looking for an interview, and I figured since we were out, I’d get a couple cans of soup for back at the station. How’s Noah?”

When his answer was silence, Fred took a step forward. “T.J., you know I wouldn’t bring anyone who means harm.”

“You can cause it without meaning to.”

“Would you mind getting that light out of my eyes?” Arlys spoke coolly. “Then I can answer for myself.”

It lowered slowly.

“I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to broadcast. There are only a handful of us still working, still able and willing to. Communication matters, information matters, even when it’s thin. I don’t know how many people can still access a broadcast, but for everyone who can, they can relay that information to someone else. My guess, and we can hope it’s pessimistic, is we’ve got a few days, maybe a week before we go dark. I want to do my job until that happens. Then I’m going to find some other way to do my job.”

“What’s this interview bull?”

“I want to go on with a story, a personal one. I want people to hear—not from me, but from someone who’s getting through this. I want to go on with that story. Because it matters. It’s about all that matters now.”

“You want to tell a story?”

“I want you to tell yours,” Arlys corrected. “I want you to speak to and for all the others out there, hanging on. What you think, what you feel, what you’ve done. Maybe one person hears it, and it helps them hang on.”

“Talk to her, T.J. It’s the right thing to do.”

“No names,” Arlys added. “I’ll call you something else. No location. I won’t say where we spoke. I have a recorder with me. Anything you say is off the record, I turn it off.”

“You’re going to go on with this tonight?”

“I’m going to ask to go on with it when I get back, ask for it to run every hour until the evening report. Tomorrow, if I can, I’m going to try to talk to someone else, get their story, and do the same thing. This isn’t going to be the end because we’re not going to let it be the end. The Raiders aren’t going to pick us clean. We’re going to get through. I want you to tell me how you did, how you are.”

“You want to hear my story? I’ll tell you my story.”

“Can I get my recorder? And my flashlight?”

“Go ahead.”

She reached in her briefcase, found the flashlight by feel, took her recorder out of her pocket before turning the light on, aiming it in the direction of T.J.’s voice.

A big guy, she thought, a broad-shouldered black man with fierce black eyes. The stubble thickening on his head told her he’d likely shaved it routinely until recently.

“You’ll call me Ben.”

“All right, Ben. I’m turning on the recorder. This is Arlys Reid. I’m speaking to Ben. I’ve asked him to tell me, tell all of us, his story. The pandemic has changed everything for everyone. How do you cope?”

“You get up in the morning, and do what you have to do. You get up, thinking for just a split second, everything’s the way it was. Then you know it’s not. It’s never going to be, but you get up and keep going. Three weeks and two days ago, I lost my husband. The best man I ever knew. A police officer, decorated. When things started to go bad, he went out every day, trying to help people. To serve and protect. It cost him his life.”

“He was killed in the line of duty?”

“Yeah, he was. But not by a bullet or a knife. That would’ve been easier for him. He got infected, he got sick. By that time, the hospitals were so overloaded … He wouldn’t go. No point in it, he told me. He wanted to die at home, in our home. His worry was he’d infected me, but I didn’t get sick.”

He paused a minute, seemed to gather himself.

“I did everything I could for him, for two terrible days. Two days, that’s all it took when we realized we couldn’t keep pretending it was just exhaustion from working doubles, but the Doom. I’m not going to talk about those two days. I’ll just say he died like he wanted. At home. And I took him … where I took him to rest.”

“I’m so sorry, Ben.”

“Everybody thinks their loss is the worst that can happen to them. And this, this fucking scourge, it’s taken from everybody. We all had the worst that can happen.”

“But you got through it. You’re still getting through it.”

“I wanted to die, too. I wanted to get sick and die, but I didn’t. I thought I could take his gun, take his service weapon, and that’d be a way to die. I thought about that while people were rioting in the streets, when people started acting like animals. And I thought of what he’d say to me, I thought how disappointed in me he’d be for not cherishing life, and doing something to help. And still, I wavered.”

He fell silent for nearly thirty seconds, but Arlys said nothing, gave him the time, the space.

“Where I live,” he continued, “the building, people were dying or running or going out to join the animals in the streets. I thought: There’s nothing left but the dark now. But I could hear my husband’s voice in my head saying: Don’t you do it. Don’t you give up.”

“And you didn’t.”

“Nearly did. I went out one day, started to. Maybe I’d get some food, maybe I’d just keep walking. I didn’t know. And there was a boy sitting on the stairs. He lived in the building. I didn’t know his name—I’m not going to say his name.”

“We’ll call him John.”

“All right. John was sitting there crying. Both his parents and his brother, all dead. He couldn’t stay in his apartment. You can imagine why.”

“Yes.”

“He thought I meant to harm him at first. He didn’t run. He was going to stand and fight, that scared, grieving little boy. He’d fight, and what was I doing but wallowing? So I sat down on the steps, and we talked awhile. I took his mama first, and we were going to take her to where I’d laid my husband. When we went out with her, somebody came up. I’m not going to say a name,” he added, but Arlys saw his gaze cut to Fred. “She asked if she could help us. She knew others who could help. So we got that help and we laid John’s family to rest.