“You mind if I plug this into your cigarette lighter?”
Ben glanced at the iPod and charger in her hand and shook his head lightly. “No, go ahead. It’s under the radio.”
“Thanks.”
The battery symbol on the screen lit up. Smiling, she plugged the earbuds into her ears and skimmed through her old playlists. She picked one, pushed “play,” and leaned back in her seat. She closed her eyes.
“What are you listening to?” Ben asked just as the music got underway.
Andy opened her eyes and whirled her finger counterclockwise around the touch wheel to decrease the volume. “Sorry, what?”
“What are you listening to?”
She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped and cocked her head to the side, her eyes narrowing on him. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
Ben raised a hand defensively. “Well, I can’t promise I won’t laugh if you say something like ‘elevator music.’”
“No, definitely not,” she shook her head. “It’s Bach.”
Expecting a look of disdain, Andy was surprised by the flicker of interest that crossed Ben’s face instead.
“Which one?” he asked.
“Which symphony?”
“No, I mean which Bach? Wasn’t there more than one composer named Bach?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said with surprise. “This is Johann Sebastian Bach. He was the father. The famous one.”
“That’s right. But weren’t there others? His sons or something?” he replied, scouring the depths of his memory. “Was it fifth grade? No…sixth grade. Mrs.…Mrs.…God, what was her name?” He snapped his fingers in an effort to force it to come to him. “Mrs. Johnson! That’s it!” Ben lightly smacked the top of the steering wheel upon remembering. “Mrs. Johnson was my music teacher. God, I haven’t thought about her since…well, school. She was this sweet, older lady—at least sixty. But she loved music, especially Bach. She called him ‘Herr Johann,’ and she would go on and on about the greatness of the ‘Bach musical dynasty.’ Jim and I used to joke that she was in love with him.” He shook his head and smiled at the memory. “We were pretty stupid back then.”
“You and Jim were in the same class?”
“No, I was a year ahead, but we had all the same teachers.” Ben combed his fingers through his hair once again. “Can I listen for a sec?”
Andy shrugged at the unexpected request. “Uh, sure. Here.” She passed the earbuds to him and moved the iPod closer. As he secured the speakers in his ears, she resumed the music. She watched him closely as he listened, but his expression never changed and his eyes remained fixed on the road ahead.
“What’s the name of this one?” he asked after more than a minute had passed. “I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s one of his cello suites…Suite Number 1 in G major, the
Prelude
,” Andy read off the small screen.
Ben nodded slightly, then added after a long pause, presumably once the music ended, “It’s just one instrument.”
“It’s the cello.”
“It’s beautiful.” He passed the earbuds back to Andy. “It’s too bad it’s so short. Just when you get into it, it ends.”
“I know…it’s my favorite.” Andy was amazed by Ben’s interest. “My mom used to play it at concerts. She was a cellist with the Chicago Philharmonic. That’s where I’m from.”
He let out a whistle. “Wow. She must’ve been really good.”
“She was. Before she died, she was the principal cellist. That’s the lead cellist in the entire orchestra.” Andy glanced down at the iPod in her lap. “Anyway, a few weeks before my thirteenth birthday, she played this piece during a concert that was being recorded. As a birthday present, she and my dad bought me this iPod with the recording already loaded onto it.”
“So what I just listened to is actually your mother playing?” Ben asked with mounting astonishment.
Andy nodded and smiled proudly. “I was in the audience when she played it. She was perfect.”
“It sounded perfect. I can’t believe that’s your mother playing.”
“It is.” After a pause, “She was killed in a car accident a few months later.”
Ben took his eyes off the road and turned to her. “She didn’t die from the virus?”
“No. The accident was the autumn before. I was in the car with her.”
“I’m sorry.” He returned his eyes to the road. “Were you hurt?”
“No. Barely a scratch.”
Neither said anything for a moment. Then Ben asked, “Did you ever play?”
“What, the cello?”
“Or any instrument?”
“No. I didn’t like sitting inside and practicing. I liked playing sports instead.”
“So more of a tomboy then, huh? No surprise there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. You just look…athletic.”
Ben brushed his hand through his hair again. “So Chicago. If that’s where you’re from, why aren’t you going back there? Do you have family or friends there?”
Andy gazed down at her iPod. “No family. None still alive, I mean. And I didn’t have a lot of friends in school.”
“Not one of the popular kids?”
“Hardly.” She looked up at him. “Were you popular in school?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t really think about it.”
“That means you were.”
He smiled but said nothing and kept his eyes on the road. She looked off to her right.
After a long silence, “You guys should stick with us,” he said, then added quickly, “If you want to, I mean.”
“But you hardly know us. What if you get sick of us?”
He laughed. “I doubt it. You and your friends seem smart, and you can obviously take care of yourselves.”
“And what, everyone else you meet is stupid and lazy?”
He raised an eyebrow, indicating she wasn’t far off the mark. “Let me ask you,” he began. “Before the virus, when you were in school, did you get good grades?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“And when you were in Bermuda, did you guys feed yourselves by fishing and growing your own food?”
“Yeah, we fished almost every day, and we had our own garden.”
“Okay, and I suppose you all read a lot of books, right?”
“Uh, yeah…hundreds, probably.”
“That’s makes you the exception. Most survivors can barely read or feed themselves, so they either steal food or rely on others to feed them. They’re totally helpless. They’re like infants. But you three managed to sail hundreds of miles from Bermuda and survive. Alone.” Ben gave Andy a long look. “Yeah, you’re
definitely
the exception.”
She turned away and looked out the window to her right. “My dad used to say that ignorance was dangerous.”
“He was right. But all that means is that you’ve got the upper hand.”
“‘Knowledge is Power,’ Sir Francis Bacon.”
“Okay, now you’re just showing off.”
Andy laughed. “Sorry, but I have to give credit to Charlie for that one. He likes famous quotes.”
“He seems like a smart kid.”
“Charlie’s a genius. His I.Q. is off the charts. We’ve tested it.”
“Well that’s good because we need all the brains we can get.”
“Then I guess we’ll
have
to stick around then,” she teased after feigning a sigh. “Unless a better offer comes along.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath.” Ben smiled broadly at her.
And at that moment, a sudden and strange warmth erupted somewhere in the lower part of her abdomen. It was like nothing Andy had ever felt before, and she recognized that it had everything to do with the person sitting beside her.
***
Eastern New Mexico was dry and hot. Andy felt like she was standing in an oven, her skin cooking under the intense sun. She wore a baseball cap and a thin white linen shirt over her T-shirt to keep from getting sunburned, though neither could ward off the heat. Even the warmest days in Bermuda had never been this hot. And then there was quiet, like a void. Gone were the sounds of the ocean and the tangible feeling of moisture on her skin.
Sitting in the back of the truck with Ben and Charlie, she turned to Ben when they slowed enough for him to hear.
“I know this part of the country is a desert, but did you guys ever think how hot the summers would be when you picked this place?”
Charlie agreed. “After all those dreary winters in England, I’m all for warm weather, but this is
hot
.”
“But it’s quiet,” was all Ben said.
The last stretch of their journey ended a hundred miles west of the Texas–New Mexico border in the town of Santa Rosa. It was a small town and from all initial appearances, entirely deserted.
When she was ten, Andy’s father bought her a book of photographs of the Grand Canyon. Young Andy had scoured through its pages until the binding nearly broke, and the images of brilliant reddish-orange hues that continually changed with the shifting sun were engraved in her mind. But this eastern portion of New Mexico, with its bland, brownish plains covered with tufts of burro grass, was anything but brilliant despite being in the same part of the country. This plus the heat inspired little confidence in their decision to come to New Mexico. But for the sake of much-needed rest, they stayed in the town of Santa Rosa for more than a week.
They found two modest homes across the street from each other in a quiet neighborhood; enough room for everyone to have their own bedroom. Days were spent either in the shade or at the nearby lakes in the area. Santa Rosa, as they soon discovered, was surrounded by many lakes, an unusual geographic advantage for a town situated in such an arid climate. But other than sunbathing and swimming in the lakes, there wasn’t much else to do or see in the town, and food was nowhere to be found.
Walking home together following their third day at the lakes, Andy and Morgan ran into the first strangers in town. While rounding a corner from one street to the next, Andy was stunned to see three people coming towards them. The eldest, a girl well into her teens with long dark hair, stepped protectively in front of the other two, a young boy and girl. “Who are you?” she asked with equal surprise.
Andy and Morgan instinctively held their hands up to show they were no threat.
“We’re…we’re staying down the street. We’re not here to bother anyone. I promise,” Andy replied.
The girl pointed to Andy’s hip. “Then why do you have a gun?”
“It’s just for protection,” she insisted.
The girl’s eyes darted back and forth between them. “How long are you planning to stay?”
“We don’t know yet. What’s your name?”
The girl hesitated, her wariness palpable. “Maria. This is my brother and sister, Julio and Carmen.”
Andy smiled to ease the tension. “Andy.”
“And I’m Morgan.”
“And it’s just the two of you here?” Maria asked.
“No, there’s my brother, Charlie, and two others we met back in Virginia,” Morgan answered. “You want to meet them?”
Maria’s eyes grew wide. “Virginia? What are you doing here?”
“Long story,” Andy muttered before quickly adding, “How long have you been here?”
“Almost five years. Three months after ‘El Brote’ we came here from Juarez.”
“‘El Brote’?” Andy attempted to repeat.
“The outbreak,” Maria translated. “The virus.”
As she and her siblings followed Andy and Morgan to their temporary home, Maria candidly revealed that her father had been a wealthy man with close ties to the Juarez drug cartel when members of a rival cartel murdered him only three months before ‘El Brote.’ His children quickly became targets themselves.
“What happened after the virus?” Morgan asked Maria as they turned onto their block.
“The children of the rival cartel came after us to keep control over the remaining drugs. They tried to shoot me but the bullet hit the side of Carmen’s arm instead. We got away and came here.”
Andy looked back at Carmen walking behind her and noted the scar on the outside of the girl’s right shoulder. She looked like a miniature version of her older sister.
“How old are they?”
“Carmen is ten and Julio is thirteen.”
Andy looked over at Julio. Like Charlie, he bore a strong resemblance to his sisters. “And how old are you?”
“Eighteen,” Maria answered. “You?”
“Nineteen.”
“You must be one of the oldest then.”
“Probably.” Andy stole a lengthy glance at Maria. With her dark hair, bright hazel eyes, and slender figure, she decided that Maria was very pretty, and once inside with the others, she keenly observed how Ben in particular reacted to meeting Maria. But his response seemed ordinary, she judged.
“Do you have any food?” Maria asked once all introductions were made.
“Just what we brought with us in our truck,” Jim replied.
“You should come by my house. I’ll cook everyone dinner,” she offered.