Chapter 5: The Ridge

The power on my mother's street went out at 6:10 on Sunday evening.

I was at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, and I watched Ray.

He was standing at the window with the folded page in one hand and his phone in the other, and the phone said 6:10.

The refrigerator shuddered and went quiet.

Down the block, every porch light went dark at once.

"Water main on Thursday," Ray said, to nobody. "Far Hills was shut by noon. I drove past it. I thought, huh."

"Ray," my mother said.

"And now this. Six-ten. Right on the nose."

He turned around.

His face was gray under the stubble.

"Tell me about October," he said.

My stepsister sat on the stairs with her knees up, watching us with huge eyes.

"Can she hear this?" I asked.

"She's fifteen. She can hear the news."

So I told them, as much as I could.

I said that on the fourteenth, people would get sick at St. Anne's and then not stay dead, and that it would spread faster than anyone could be told.

I said the cities would be gone in a week.

I did not say I had watched them die.

I did not say how I knew.

When I finished, nobody spoke.

My mother put her hand over her mouth.

Ray took off his cap and held it against his chest.

"Tell me where to go," he said.

I could have cried.

"Your brother's land," I said. "The Ridge. The cabin and the barn."

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