I wait for crude and fearful suggestions, but the deep silence is somehow worse. The worry and fear when they all look to me. It drains me and leaves me scrambling for the right words.

“She didn’t look good. We’ll try to take care of her,” I say. “I don’t know what will come of us. I honestly don’t. But we’re trying to figure out when help will come, and until then we have a roof over our head, food on our plates.” I gesture at the tables.

Hunter scoffs, and something like ice and rage and failure settles in my stomach. Maybe he’s right. I said last night we’d stay here, but maybe it’s better to leave and find our fortune somewhere else. Maybe all of this is my fear speaking. Maybe I’m not just scared of the plague but of losing the little bit of world I understand.

But fuck it, is that so bad?

“We have resources, we have beds, we have an infirmary in case others are infected too. We have each other. We can take care of each other. We don’t know how to protect ourselves from the disease yet, but we can protect ourselves from hunger and cold and needless violence.” I feel as cruel as Hunter right then, and when he laughs and rolls his eyes, the cruelty slips away from me. “I won’t promise you you’re safe here. But Hunter can’t promise you that either. Because if we were exposed to the disease last night, so was he. So were all of them.”

Hunter’s eyes flash, and the fear around me is suffocating. The murmurs. The terrified expressions.

Hunter spits on the ground and pushes past me, into the kitchen. “We take what we can carry,” he calls out over his shoulders to the rest of the crew. “And then we leave. The rest of them can rot, for all I care.”

Phone call between Xavier and his brother

FRANCISCO: Xavi? You okay? I didn’t expect to hear from you until the weekend.

XAVIER: Is it true?

FRANCISCO: What?

XAVIER: The plague. Those outbreaks, right? Is it as bad as they say it is?

FRANCISCO: Ah, shit. I hoped you’d be spared from that over there, what with that whole wilderness location and such.

XAVIER: We’re in the Ozarks. We’re not on Mars.

FRANCISCO: I don’t know what they’re saying, but the answer is probably yes. It’s as bad as they say it is.

XAVIER: Oh.

FRANCISCO: Our hospital is filling up. It’s only a matter of time before we need to turn people away. It’s everywhere. It spreads so rapidly, it’s like a tidal wave, and no one is prepared.

XAVIER: What about you? Are you prepared? Will you be safe?

FRANCISCO: I don’t know.

FRANCISCO: We have good protective gear, so we’re fine for now. But I worry there won’t be enough. Not for us. Not for the nurses. And the board isn’t offering anything beyond gloves to the cleaners.