The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

Author:Ben Marcus
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction - Literary
ISBN: 9780307957511
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-17T10:00:00+00:00

2

22

When the departure horn tore open the New York air, and the cars started their slow crawl from town, Claire opened the passenger door and stumbled into the grass. At first I thought she forgot something in the house, so I let her stagger away.

My wife in her nightgown on a strangely warm December day, running not so well from the car.

Go ahead, I thought. If we couldn’t have Esther, we could have more of her stuff. Grab the baby teeth stashed in the foot of an old onesie, the self-portrait Esther took with her long face overlit in the lens, the blanket stitched from Esther’s stuffed animals that might make this easier. We have no more time, Sweetheart, we really don’t, but go ahead. They’re motioning us to leave now, so please hurry.

It was true. The officials of the quarantine had initiated a semaphore that left no room for doubt. People so disfigured in padding they looked like technicians from a bomb squad, waving bright yellow traffic rods, firing a jolt at those few of us who were seeking to stay put. Men and women doubling over in the road from lightning shot into their torsos. It was time to go.

But Claire didn’t go to the house. She crossed into the field, entered the high growth, and before she even reached the meadow she faltered.

I raced after her but by the time I reached her she was fallen, her eyes already cold. She couldn’t even make it to the tree line. By the time I reached Claire the men of the quarantine dropped down on me, dragging me back to the car.

I left Claire on her back in the grass, staring through me, at something no one else could see. She looked finally gone.

From the woods trotted a pack of dogs, like old men in animal suits, barking with human voices. Behind them trudged a human chain of jumpsuited rescuers, arms linked so they’d miss no one. They were flushing stragglers from the woods, kicking the bushes for shapes.

And there were some stragglers. They thought they could wait out the evacuation, then return to their homes until this blew over. But nothing was blowing over. We kept believing it couldn’t get any worse, as if our imaginations held sway in the natural world. We should have known that whatever we couldn’t imagine was exactly what was coming next.

The technicians of the quarantine carried me over their heads in grips so fierce I couldn’t move.

I caught one last sight of Claire. She seemed confused. No one told her she’d come up short in the field and collapsed. No one told her she had not escaped.

They stuffed me in my car, shut the door, then banged a hand on the roof to tell me it was okay to go now. Join the procession out of here. Get going. Without her.

But it was very much not okay. I scrambled across the seats out the other side of the car, made a break

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