“I know,” Izabel said. “They’ll get him.”

“A few hours ago they report that we’re living in a renaissance, and now this.”

As impressive as it was—the tearing down and rebuilding of an entire town—it still took too long. Malik died before they were relocated into the domes. Izabel slept for days and Kaito called it grief.

When she went back to her work of shepherding people into the hospital, people were coming in carrying their dead. Izabel held more than one person’s dead child while Kaito hosed the pollen off of both of them near the morgue’s drain. Izabel was grateful the suit’s facemask kept her from looking down.

Izabel had thought no one would kill another person again. Not after what they’d all been through. Kaito paced the room.

The next news update had the names of each of the family members, and photos of them alive and smiling. Karen and Peter Coughlan and their two children, ages two and three, Tammy and Tavi. Izabel felt sick.

Izabel shook Cami. “You have to wake up, mi amor.” She shook her hard.

Kaito wrapped his arms around Izabel’s arms, and her chest, pulling her away, pulling her into his chest. “You can’t shake her awake,” he whispered into her ear.

The Turning was ten years ago. 2032. That’s how people talked about it. Though it took more than that year for the world to experience the full effect of it, and less than a month for any city or town to all but die off. But it was easier to call it, vaguely, the Turning. To not recall which month took which town. To let it slip out of time. To let it become the generic past tragedy of the world.

The nation hadn’t even set a day of remembrance. No day off from work, no vigils, no annual way to keep saying goodbye. And Izabel appreciated that.

Izabel’s mother died enough months before the Turning that Izabel held on to the date of it—October 21, 2031. Her mother in the at-risk population. Her mother, early-susceptible. Her mother, sometimes called one of the Canaries.

Izabel tried to calm down in the reclining chair, but she kept her eyes on Cami. It’s been too long. That was all she could think.

“Distract yourself, Izzie,” Kaito said. “We have to wait.”

She knew he was right. She opened her favorite app again. She tapped on 2017. She would have been five years old. Even if her mother had shown some sign of sickness, she would’ve been too young to realize what that meant, would mean, for the both of them. She tapped on Today’s News.

This came up:

The DEP Issues a Code Orange Air Quality Action Day Forecast for the Philadelphia Area