Shot on sight! Did I risk my life just to walk next door? Is that why the streets are empty? Maybe everyone is hiding, afraid to step outside. Hope flares inside me, only to wink out like a burned-up match.

Because that doesn’t explain the birds. Or the flies.

“Do not bury or burn the deceased. I repeat, do not bury or burn them as this may have a contaminating effect. Recommendations for handling the deceased are posted at emergency-dot-cdc-dot-gov.”

Why would anyone bury or burn the dead themselves? That’s what morgues are for. And how could burying bodies contaminate anything? That makes no sense. A cemetery, after all, is a very large collection of the dead.

But all of a sudden it does make sense. If there are so many bodies that they’re creating some kind of toxic waste. If there are hundreds of thousands. Or more.

“This message is being sent on March tenth at three p.m. This message will repeat. You’re listening to AM 1610, the people’s choice for Sandusky free radio, with a breaking news update from the capital. The president has declared a national state of emergency and the governor has invoked martial law per the Ohio Constitution. The CDC reports that the virus is airborne, with a mortality rate of 100 percent . . .”

My heart sinks. I’m listening to a recorded message on a loop, not a flesh-and-blood human. I reach out and brush the face of the radio with my fingertip, as if doing so will connect me with the man who spoke these words four days ago. Is he still alive? Is this the last thing he did?

A mortality rate of 100 percent.

And yet, I lived. My smidge of hope is a fragile thing, a tiny wavering flame in a vast landscape of reeking darkness. I will shelter it, treasure it, coax it, because the alternative is despair, and I don’t do despair.

“C’mon, Emmaline.” I turn the keys to the off position and grab the doorframe to pull myself from the driver’s seat.

Together we return to the living room and my spiral notebook. Morning sunshine streams through the curtains now. I open them so I can observe the street as I work. If anyone is alive out there, I want to know it at once.

I settle back down on the couch, Emmaline beside me. Beneath How many got sick? and Quarantine? I write, 100% mortality rate and National state of emergency. I underline National.