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turn my head, trying to avoid the faces that have gone blank around me. Moms face turns white before she leans over and vomits on the floor, retching up the magic beans I found. My stomach rolls in confusion.
    “I never thought it would happen so quickly.” She shakes her head and her hair comes loose from the bun it’s tied in. She sputters nonsense as her wild eyes survey the scene. “We thought it would take longer, but this was best. If it took longer they would have forced us drink it.”
    “Where is the key to the medicine safe? I need it.” I grab Mom’s face with both my hands, needing her to focus. We need medicine, now.
    “No, Lucy. It’s too late,” she bellows. “It’s all over.” Tears streak her face.
    “Was it the tea, Mom, because it’s expired?”
    “No,” she whispers not looking at me, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her shirt. My mother has transformed into a person I can’t recognize. I’m confused by her ranting, not wanting to understand, or maybe I do understand, perfectly. I just want, so badly, for it not to be true.
    “But Diane? She didn’t go outside tonight to meet the cowboy. She couldn’t have gotten the virus from the air,” I say.
    “There is no damned virus Lucy. The cowboys, the horses, they’re alive! Nothing out there will hurt us … we’re the fools. They did this to themselves,” she screeches at me, while pointing at the bodies around us. She shakes and begins pulling pieces of her own hair, growing wilder each moment Diane’s corpse lays in her lap.
    “No. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Just give me the key and I’ll get the antibiotics, or something. It’s not too late.”
    I stand, rushing to Dad, as he sits in his chair, frozen in time and space.
    “Dad, where’s the key?” I shout at him, pressing my hands to his cheeks. “Just tell me where it is!” My voice catches. His chest lays flat, his breath gone and mine goes for a moment too, overwhelmed at the sight of my father dead before me.
    I close my eyes tight, wanting to avoid the images I fear I’ll never be able to erase. The room starts spinning as though I’m floating in the air. My eyelids cover me with light, as tiny stars make their way into my mind, pushing out the darkness.
    “This is not happening. This is not happening. This is not happening.” I chant these words out loud attempting to block out Moms cries. Her voice doesn’t fade; it grows louder, deeper, stronger. The burden of her screams pierce my skull.
    I open my eyes to see her shaking hands grab hold of mine. She’s become so small, gripping me with terror, and I don’t understand the shift. She’s always been the support for me.
    “We’re alive. Aren’t we, Lucy?” she asks; pleading with me to tell her a truth she can live with.
    I know what to say because my chest moves up and down and hers matches mine and everyone around us is perfectly silent and perfectly still.
    “Yes. We are alive.”

 
     
     
     
     
    chapter six
     
    M om looks around the room. “This was meant to be us, Lucy. This exodus was meant for us all. I can’t believe they went through with it.” Her mouth quivers as she says the words.
    They meant for this to happen.
    They meant for this to happen to me, too.
    When Mom asked me to follow her lead tonight, it wasn’t an attempt to force me to forfeit my choice … it was to save me. Mom stands and walks to each body, holding faces in her hands; closing eyelids with her fingers as her own teardrops fall onto the cheeks of our dead. She goes around the room, staring at the bodies of the only people I know. I shake my head, it isn’t know . They are the only people I knew .
    I’m not able to equate this scene with what I’ve always been taught. Virus. Disease. Pandemic. Those are the death makers I’ve been taught to fear. This is nothing like the horror stories they painted for me over the years. This is worse. I stand still as my mother