From Gerald she learned that ambulances were no longer delivering unclaimed sick people to emergency rooms, there were too many now. Gerald’s son Jaret worked as an EMT, a lanky boy with a pretty face and a persistent nervous stutter. Gerald passed on that Jaret’s unit’s orders were to take the sick people who were found alone to the empty Technology Academy building off Second, sitting them one by one at the desks, creating comatose classrooms where nothing was learned in the murmuring quiet. There were volunteer efforts to bring broth and water to the school, as some people would still swallow. Volunteers with ill-fitting surgical masks managed adult diapers on these lost Detroiters. Very few people came to look for their lost loved ones amongst these quiet, grieving rooms.

It was from Gerald that Dune heard that several city council members had gotten sick. And that a perimeter had been created around the city, with the intention of keeping sick people from leaving, from spreading the virus. Gerald had driven up Jefferson to see for himself and came to the perimeter just before Grosse Point. When he said this, he looked as angry as she’d ever seen him. It didn’t come out in his voice, he was a factual man, he was even keel. But his eyes hardened, he shook his head. And he looked at Dune and said, “I’m thinking anyone who isn’t sick needs to be on their way soon.”

The last time Dune caught Gerald, he and Nina were loading up their minivan. He said they had gotten a permit to leave town, only available to those who had had no instance of the syndrome in their homes. Dune wondered who was tracking that data and how. Every bureaucracy in the city was similarly chaotic on a good day. Gerald said they were heading for their farm up north where they often spent summer weekends, just until this thing blew over. Nina, a retired teacher, smiled over her shoulder at Dune, but didn’t pause what she was doing—she was running the process of departure.

Even Gerald, this slow and steady man who always had time for a conversation, barely paused. He called out to Dune across the street as he lifted up into their van the things Nina rolled out to him. He said that Jaret’s team was now estimating that ten percent of the city had been impacted by the Syndrome.

Dune didn’t offer to help. She would not transgress their unnamed boundary and she would not make them speak it, to say aloud that she might be dead already, and they were not.