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you go? You and Deshawn.”  Deshawn was his best friend and usual co-conspirator.
    His eyes lit up. “That’s the part I wanted to tell you! We went over to St. Alban’s on Massachusetts and watched everyone leave. There were about a hundred black limousines lined up at the school, waiting to pick up all those rich kids. They had their suitcases and stuff and just took off. Deshawn and I think it’s because of the flu. It must be really bad, Bea.”
    St. Albans was a private school heavily patronized by the Washington elite. Politicians and high-ranking government officials sent their kids there, some as day students, others boarded on campus. It wasn’t a holiday or term break right now. She wondered why so many children had been pulled from school. If the boys were right then it meant the government elite had known something yesterday that they hadn’t shared with the rest of the city or country, for that matter.
    “It must be,” she conceded. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you skipped school and no, by the way, no one has called me about it. I guess I need to call Deshawn’s mom. She might not want you guys to hang out anymore if you’re going to do stuff like this.”
    That got his attention and he looked a little ashamed of himself. She really had no idea how to deal with this. Until recently they had always been a team, aware that their survival in the world depended on the two of them alone. They had absolutely no one to fall back on. But he was pulling away from her now. While that might be normal, it didn’t make it any easier. Maybe who she really needed to talk to was Deshawn’s dad. She had noticed that Deshawn was carefully respectful of his father who seemed like a no-nonsense kind of guy. Maybe he would be willing to spend some time with Brian. But how could she ask something like that?
    She mentally shelved the problem and picked up the pot of macaroni and cheese. Nudging Brian over, she joined him on the futon, eating the cold noodles and watching TV, catching up on all the news she had ignored in the last few days. She watched the edited versions of the attacks in Haiti and heard about the quarantine there. Brian offered to show her the raw versions available on the internet but the television version was bad enough.
    On C-Span they watched the repeat of the announcement about the hospital strategic bombing and wondered why the President or even his press spokesperson hadn’t broken the news. Maybe it was like the man boarding the Metro said and they really had all left town before the announcement was made.
    Delayed reaction set in and she started to shake, remembering the meaty feel of stabbing Ben in the eye, the blood on the train windows, the woman’s body jerking and sizzling when she stepped on the live rail. She ran to the bathroom and the noodles came up as she retched. She rinsed her mouth and brushed her teeth, then showered, scrubbing her hands over and over like Lady Macbeth, expecting to see blood. She told Brian she must have eaten something bad at lunch.
    They watched television until late in the night, the wind and snow howling around the pool house, a small haven of warmth and light in the vast, icy metropolis.

Chapter Three
     
    “H e’s back,” Brian called out from his bedroom.
    “Who’s back?” Bea looked up from making breakfast in the miniscule, sunny kitchen.
    “No, wait, I think it’s a different guy. Okay. Yeah, definitely another guy but he’s rattling the gates. This one isn’t wearing a shirt, Bea. He looks bad.”
    Bea poured the last two golden pools of pancake batter onto the griddle and watched them puff up before flipping them then adding them to the stack on the platter. She turned off the stove eye and went to look out the window.
    A man stood outside on the sidewalk but he was bumping into the gates more than he was shaking them. He wore only pajama pants or hospital scrub pants. It was hard to tell. He seemed dazed. The sun shone