Dune was tired of the misleading stories on the radio in Mama Vivian’s room. She listened with hungry ears, never feeling fed. She knew that if she could make it to the porch, Gerald would pass by and give her some insight on the world around them, the sounds she was hearing. She stood on the corner of the porch, pulling on a spliff and wondering why everything looked so bright.

Dog came slinking around the house and leaned against the bottom of the porch, as close to her as he’d ever gotten. She felt like he was her wild friend, protecting her from passersby.

Before twenty minutes had passed, Gerald lumbered by. Dune noticed that he stayed at the gate, when he normally came in the yard and talked with one leg propped against the bottom stair, or while plucking a weed or two out of the grass.

“How goes it Dune?”

For the second time in her life, she said aloud, “My mom died.” Her eyes felt sharp and sore for an instant, the tension between crying and containing nearly unbearable.

“I heard. Was sorry to hear it. Kama was… very special.” Gerald kept his distance. She couldn’t ask any questions, having said those words. Hearing her mother’s name before the word “was” gave Dune pause.

Together they held the silence, Gerald looking down the street with no rush in his bones. Eventually he nodded a goodbye and moved along. Dune went inside and found some ham for Dog, feeding him over the railing.

That night the doorbell rang. When Dune opened the door Gerald was halfway across the street, waving over his shoulder, “From Nina!” His wife. Before Dune sat a massive lasagna in an aluminum foil pan and a six pack of beer.

She found her way to the porch the next day, and the one after that. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to know. After the third crossing of paths, Gerald offered his take on what was happening.

He stayed at the fence and Dune realized that it was proximity to her he was avoiding. He would never say this, but she respected it. She was one of the factors in the room when this syndrome began. She had touched and felt the first known body to succumb to H-8. She decided it was generous that he stopped by at all, a little longer each time, with more information than the constant media would tell her.