With everything going on, the cabin just made sense.

It seemed practical— or tactical, given the circumstances: remote, but not isolated, perched on a wooded slope in the north Georgia mountains where the closest town had a stable population of less than a thousand. Accessible well water, a generator and stacked firewood if the power grid failed, and a small area for a vegetable garden fenced against deer.

“It’s the perfect place to wait this out,“ Clifford said.

Rebecca smiled with careful consideration. “Fresh air,” she agreed. “That’ll be good for Charlie.”

The drive to the cabin had been bucolic, like taking a weekend holiday. Traffic flow out of Atlanta was only slightly higher than normal as the southeast watched the news and held its breath. Rebecca sat in the backseat with Charlie as he kicked and fidgeted against his car seat restraints. Clifford navigated the winding roads with practiced familiarity. The woods around them were budding with spring.

“We should stop in Bonaparte,” Rebecca said. “I’ll bet Mrs. Pearl is stocked up on those peaches we love.“

“Let’s get to the cabin first, “Clifford said. “We’ll have time to go back down once we’re settled.“ 

Rebecca absently dangled oversized plastic keys on a ring in front of Charlie’s grasping fingers. She stared out the window thoughtfully.

“We’re not overreacting, are we?“

Clifford adjusted his grip on the wheel, tightening it. “We’re being cautious. We’re being prepared. We’re just going to see how this all sorts out. Best case scenario we spend a couple weeks vacationing at the cabin.“

“And worst case?“ Rebecca looked down at Charlie and dabbed drool away from his chin. 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

The drive up the hill to the cabin always felt like an ascension on a roller coaster. She half expected there to be a dramatic drop when they reached the top.

The cabin looked as tranquil and undisturbed as it did every time they came up.  He put the car in park and turned off the engine.

“Home sweet home away from home,“ he said, looking at Rebecca in the rearview mirror.

Rebecca glanced up and met his eyes.  She smiled.

The first weeks were perfect. They unpacked the supplies and stored them in tidy rows.  The grid worked and the water from the well flowed. The days were warm and sunny and the nights were cool and crisp. Rebecca meticulously measured and portioned Charlie’s formula. Clifford kept his medicine neatly arranged on the bathroom vanity.

They ventured into Bonaparte once after their first week. Most of the shops were closed but Mrs. Pearl’s fruit stand was open and Rebecca bought some fresh vegetables, two bags of peaches, and the last six jars of canned peaches. The road carried more traffic and Clifford wouldn’t let them linger when he noticed all the out-of-county license plates.

“Too many people,“ he said, rolling up the windows as they drove out of town.

Rebecca sat in the backseat with Charlie, looking out the rear window as they climbed up the mountain.

Days passed seamlessly into weeks.  Rebecca played on the porch with Charlie. Clifford relaxed in the Adirondack and watched. They ate meals together, the three of them. Not just quick passing snacks. Real meals. Rebecca and Clifford talked— for hours— the way they used to. They made love again more frequently.

The rule was they would only listen to the news for one hour a day. Whatever channel they chose, whatever hour they watched, it was largely the same stories anyway.  The St. Petersburg virus, “the Pete“ for short, was sweeping, seemingly unchecked, through the country, and the rest of the world. Scientists scrambled for a vaccine, but the virus outpaced them. Governments ordered lockdowns and quarantine, but the Pete slipped through every fissure. Hospitals, clinics, and hospices overflowed capacity.  People were dying in their homes, sequestered, coughing and choking.  Supply chains around the world collapsed

Still, the mountain remained untouched. The valley below was a blanket of treestops. No one came up to the cabin. Friends stopped calling and leaving them messages. Stillness settled.

Clifford counted his medication and calculated.  He had brought two months worth of pills with him when they left Atlanta. His psychiatrist had assured him he’d be able to get more, even if things got worse.

One morning Rebecca walked into the kitchen, Charlie on her hip. Clifford was standing by the sink, his phone tilted against the windowsill. He glanced around and quickly turned it off.

“Hey,“ Rebecca said gently. “We have a rule…“ 

“There’s news,“ Clifford said without looking at her. Rebecca’s chest tightened.

“There’s always news,“ she said. “We have a rule—“

“It was in Atlanta.  Pete was in Atlanta, before we left.”

Rebecca stopped the unconscious bouncing Charlie on her hip and went very still. “When?” she said.

“They were diagnosing cases in February,” Clifford kept his eyes focused below her waist.

“Feb—no, that’s—not possible.”  She spoke as if examining each syllable before she pronounced it.

“Busiest airport in the world… I guess no one should be surprised.“ Clifford stared at Rebecca’s feet.

“But… we left before… We left in time.“

Clifford gazed out the window.  “I think so. But now they think the Pete has a long incubation cycle. With my job, your job, Charlie’s daycare…“ His voice trailed off.

“No… We left before.“

“They think people may have been infected long before anyone even knew there was a virus out. Before any symptoms started showing. Lots of people… Maybe millions.”

Rebecca shifted Charlie’s position. “This is why we don’t watch the news,” she said sharply. “This— they just talk and talk. They want to scare people.  They don’t know a damn thing.”

Clifford looked back at her, at her face.

“Yeah,“ he sighed.  “They don’t know anything, so they’re just saying anything. We left before. We’re going to be fine.“

The next day Rebecca stepped on the porch and saw Clifford sitting in the Adirondack.  He was meticulously wiping a shotgun with a towel.

“Where did that come from?” Rebecca said tensely. She shifted Charlie to her other hip.

“It was in the shed. It probably belonged to Uncle Burt.” Clifford held the shotgun out at arm’s length and admired the gleam on the barrel and walnut stock.

“Why would Burt have something like that?”

“We’re in the woods, Rebecca,” Clifford responded, as if to a child. “He probably kept it to chase off nuisance critters like coyotes and raccoons.”

“Are there bullets?“ Rebecca continued bouncing Charlie on her hip, angled away from where Clifford sat.

“Shells… shotguns use shells. And yes, there are several boxes of both birdshot and buckshot.”

“You should put it back in the shed and make sure it’s locked up.”

Clifford looked down the barrel, taking aim at some imaginary target.  “The shed? It won’t do us much good there if we need it.”

“Why would we need a gun?” Rebecca’s voice was strained now. Charlie looked at her quizzically.

Clifford sighed and laid the gun across his lap.  “There’s lots of reasons. Protection. We may need to chase off scavenging coyotes or dogs. We’re going to be up here longer than we thought, maybe through winter. We may need to hunt.   A man can’t live on Mrs. Pearl‘s peaches alone.”

“So you’re a hunter now?”

Clifford looked up sharply. “I’m whatever I need to be to protect this family.”  He saw the expression on Rebecca‘s face and his tone softened. “Look, it’s not loaded now. It’s perfectly safe. I’ll keep it in the closet in the spare room.” He stood up and looked at her seriously again. “We’re not on vacation, Rebecca. The world has changed. We need to change, too.”  He brushed past her and carried the shotgun into the cabin.

When they were into their third month, Rebecca began counting Clifford’s pills, too.

He had taken them before they’d met, since high school, and they made him substantially better. No more mood swings, no more bottomless depression, no more hospitalizations.

After six weeks, Clifford began calling. First, Dr. Chisholm. A recording said he was out of the office, but would be monitoring messages. Next, the pharmacy on Peachtree Avenue. They said they could not fill any prescriptions at the time, then his later calls went unanswered. Finally, the drugstore in Bonaparte.  The phone rang and rang.

“It’s fine,” Clifford said when he hung up and noticed her standing in the doorway. “The whole world‘s on pause right now, but it hasn’t stopped. I’ll get an answer soon.”

“And until then?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s fine,“ he repeated and went outside.

Rebecca sat in the Adirondack chair, Charlie and her lap. She watched Clifford energetically chop more firewood than they needed. He made small, unnecessary repairs around the cabin. He organized and inventoried their supplies endlessly.

Busy work, Rebecca told herself.

He had started “patrolling the perimeter“ in the evenings. At twilight he would circle the cabin for 20 or 30 minutes. She asked him what he was doing.  He told her he was making sure “everything was secure“.

During one of his patrols she counted out his remaining pills. There were more there than there should be.

 “I’m stretching them,” he told her pensively.  “Every other day… or two.”

“Is that safe? I mean… If you play with the dosage…“

Clifford gestured at empty space behind him in a wide sweeping gesture.

“Is any of this ‘safe’?  Do we have any other options? Jesus, Rebecca, what do you expect me to do, eat peaches?”

“Don’t snap at me, please. I’m worried.”  She glanced towards Charlie, sleeping peacefully on his mat.

Clifford picked up his phone. “You don’t have anything to be worried about. I’m here and I will protect us.” He stalked into the kitchen and a moment later she could hear the government emergency information station that had now replaced all other news sources.

Meals became silent affairs except for Charlie’s squeals and cooing and crying. Their love-making dwindled. Clifford came to bed later and slept in longer in the morning.

They reviewed their inventory of stocks. They were not at risk yet, but their supplies would not hold out through winter. Rebecca made gentle suggestions and wrote ration menus. Clifford nodded mutely.

The first cough came in the night.

Wet. Ragged.

Rebecca woke instantly, heart hammering. Clifford had already turned away from her, facing the wall.

“It’s nothing,” he said before she could speak. “Dry air.”

She lay awake until dawn, listening to his breathing rattle and hitch. 

Rebecca made breakfast—oatmeal and cut peaches from the last jar they had bought from Mrs. Pearl’s. She spooned a few into a bowl for herself, their syrup thick and golden.

I should wash these jars and take them down the mountain, she thought.  I’ll bet Mrs. Pearl could use them.

Clifford had been outside all morning, coughing. When he came in his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were puffy and red.

Not just from coughing, she thought.

“I’m sick, Rebecca,“ he said in a raspy voice.

“You’ve been working so hard, and the air up here is cold and dry. You’ve just gotten a cold. We’ve got cough syrup and ibuprofen.”

”I need to move into the spare room.“ He stared at the wad of paper towels in his hand that he had been coughing into. “Just to be safe.”

Rebecca stood up and moved around the table until she stood between Clifford and Charlie.

“Yes, OK. You’re right, we can’t risk all of us catching a cold… Especially Charlie.”

“Right. Just until it passes. Just until I feel better.”

“Yes, you need… Look.. I can do the patrolling. I can fix the fence around the garden. You rest and get better.”

Tears ran from Clifford’s wet, red eyes.  He wiped at them.  “You’ll want to turn the earth in the garden,” he said.

“Do what?“

“Loosen the soil. It’ll be too hard to dig in after the frost comes.“

“I will.”

“If I get worse… If this is something else..”  Clifford glanced down the hallway towards the spare room.  “I’ll take care of it.”

He looked past Rebecca to where Charlie sat in his chair, waving his spoon in the air.  He looked back at Rebecca.  His face twisted into a moment of anguished grief.

“I love you.”  His voice cracked.

“I—we… we love you, too.”  Rebecca stood where she was.

Clifford moved into the spare room right away. He sealed the door with towels along the bottom, as though something might slip under it otherwise.  Rebecca stood in the hallway holding Charlie, watching her husband close the door and turn the lock.

Through the door she heard him cough, then the creaking groan of the bed springs as he laid down.  A tinny voice started talking—an insurgent pirate broadcast Clifford had found on his phone, a blend of conspiracy theory and doomsday extremism.

Rebecca sanitized everything twice. She laundered their bed sheets in bleach.  She wiped down Charlie’s toys until the colors faded slightly.  Every cup, every plate, every spoon, she dipped in bleach water solution and let air-dry.  

“Please God, no… Please God, no… Please God, no…” The mantra ran through her brain like a distress beacon on auto repeat.

Charlie crawled around the cabin, investigating behind chairs, sitting before the barricade Rebecca had built in the hallway to keep him away from the spare room.

“Da-da, Da-da, Da-da, Da-da?” he burbled, looking around.  Rebecca picked him up and cradled him and walked outside.  She stood on the porch and breathed deeply, filling her lungs with mountain air.  She smelled the top of his head and cried.

She left meals on a tray outside Clifford’s door. Sometimes the tray came back empty. Sometimes they remained untouched.  She sanitized and rinsed everything.

She listened to the government sanctioned information outlet more than one hour a day.  She found her own outlaw channels, those that told what the government wouldn’t.  In the evenings, with Charlie securely asleep in their—her—bed, she would stand outside the spare bedroom door.

“Some people are saying the worst is over,” she spoke to the door.  “Not everyone dies.  Some people recover… I heard… Cliff… there’s some who never get sick… like they’re immune.  No one knows why yet, but they’re being studied… to make a vaccine or something.”  She rubbed the door with her hand and let her fingers trace along the knob.

“They’re not being studied,” Clifford coughed out from the other side.  “They’re being sequestered.  They’re being prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“For what comes next.  For inheritance.”

The words felt like abandonment.

She pressed her forehead to the door. “The air outside is so cool and clean now.  We could sit on opposite ends of the porch,” she said. “Charlie misses you.  I miss you.”

Silence.

Then a sustained, racking cough.

“When I’m better.”

She thought of her husband, her lover, Charlie’s father, pent up in the room.  His stabilizing pills long exhausted.  He had once described his depression to her as a tide that could drown him.

From her room, cuddling Charlie, she listened to Clifford cough all night.

Rebecca set a breakfast tray outside Clifford’s door, one arm held Charlie to her chest.

“Cliff… Honey?” she called softly.  “Come say ‘hi’ to Charlie.  He misses his Da-da.”

Charlie’s blue eyes looked at Rebecca’s mouth.  “Da-da, Da-da,” he gurgled.

No answer.  The creak of the bed springs.

She knocked.

“Clifford, come to the door.”

The coughing came harshly, a choking rhythm that petered off into a gasping whisper.

Her hand flattened against the door.  God, can he even draw a breath? she wondered.

“We need to figure this out,” she said. “You don’t have to—”

A metallic click cut through her sentence.

Small. Mechanical. Clean.  Like a very loud pen click.

Rebecca turned and laid her ear to the door.

“Clifford James Harr—”

The boom detonated before she could finish his name.

It was so loud in the narrow hallway that the walls shook. A scream tore from her lips.  She lurched back from the door, clutching Charlie, her hand flying instinctively to cover the crown of his head.

Charlie jolted and screamed as if from an electric shock.

She set him down on the hallway floor, his cries ricocheted off the ceiling.

She grabbed the doorknob and twisted.

Locked.

“Clifford!  Clifford!  Clifford!  Clifford!” She could hear her own voice screaming shrilly like a claxon.  

She wrenched at the knob.  She slammed her slender frame against the door.  She pounded on it until it shuddered in its frame.

“Clifford, open! Open!” Her shrieks pierced the quiet cabin air.  “Open this goddamn door!”

The ringing echo of the gunshot tempered into the pounding of her own pulse.

Charlie’s wailing sharpened behind her.

Rebecca turned and scooped him, arms wrapped around him like a shield.

“Okay-okay-okay-okay-okay-okay—” she soothed with rapid fire whispers against his hot cheeks.  She was spinning back and forth in semi-circles, gently dancing from one foot to another.

Her foot struck something.

A small piece of folded paper.  She had almost kicked back under the door.  The white corner poked out like a shark’s tooth.

She stared at it for a moment.

She knelt, fingers trembling, and snatched it up.

She unfolded it with one hand.  A blank page torn from his inventory notebook.

His handwriting.  Cramped and urgent.  Lines trailing downward as if falling off the page.

Please forgive me.  This is the only way.  I have to protect you both. I love you both.

Rebecca’s breath stalled.

Her eyes moved back to the door.

Through the towels under the door the smell of smoke and sulfur leaked out.

Charlie’s cries cracked into hoarse sobs.  His small hands tugged at her hair.

“It’s okay,” she whispered automatically.

Her knees wobbled as she walked out of the hallway… out of the cabin… onto the porch.

“It’s okay… It’s okay… It’s okay…” she repeated until an exhausted Charlie fell asleep in her arms.

———————————————–3000 words———————————————–

The spare room door remained closed.

Two days later, playing on the rug, Charlie coughed.

A small, almost curious sound.

Rebecca froze.  She had been listening to her phone and looking over a map.

Please God, no…

She checked his temperature. 

Normal. 

She held him close and felt his breath warm against her collarbone. He coughed again, wetly.

Babies cough for many reasons.

Through the night the phlegmy rattle deepened. Charlie spent the night in her arms, crying and wiggling and shuddering with coughs.

Near dawn the fits subsided.  She laid her hand against his tiny chest.  It rose and fell while he mercifully slept.

In the morning Rebecca sat in the Aideronack on the porch, Charlie bundled against her chest, the blanket tucked beneath his chin. He wasn’t taking his bottle.  His blue eyes squinted up at her as he coughed again in spasms.  His ruddy cheeks were wet where his tears merged with hers falling onto his face.

The sky stretched wide and indifferent above the mountains. Somewhere below, a dog barked and then fell silent.

When his breathing changed—when it thinned into something fragile and fluttering—she held him tighter, as if her grasp alone could anchor him to her.

“It’s just the dry air,” she whispered.

Charlie’s body shivered and strained for each inhalation. His little arms flexed and quivered and relaxed.

Rebecca rocked rhythmically, a domestic metronome. She counted the seconds between his labored breaths. She pressed her cheek to his head and inhaled the scent of formula and soap.

The valley glowed a pale pearlescent in the morning light.

Charlie’s body stiffened, then softened, then slackened in her arms.

Rebecca did not look down. With her fingertips she delicately drew the folds of the blanket over his face.

She stared across the valley.  No whine and rumble of automobiles.  No planes in the sky.  Carrion floated on the morning thermals.

The world was as empty and alone as she was.

Rebecca cried.  She sobbed.  She sang little nursery songs.  She held him as close to her breast as she possibly could.  She clenched her fists and shook with rage.  She moaned with the guttural keening of a soul that has broken.

Afterward, she brought him, carefully bundled in his polka dot blanket, into the garden.   She laid him on a bundle of dead grasses and pine needles where she had turned the soil. She picked up the shovel that still leaned against the fence.  The dirt yielded easily.  She stacked layers of firewood over the mound to prevent it from being disturbed by scavengers.

Her breaths came in sobbing huffs. 

She did not look toward the spare bedroom window.

She washed her hands in the bathroom sink, water running over her fingers long after they were clean.  She looked at herself in the mirror.  Unwashed and unkempt hair, rumpled cloths, thin skin drawn tightly over a face with deepset, reddened eyes.

The cabin felt enormous without them.

She shuffled through its rooms slowly, touching the bleached surfaces that might still hold their residue. The phone lay on the table, blathering intermittent updates, but she barely listened. The Pete plowing through communities like a scythe through tall grass.  Cities and towns emptied.  People seeking to escape into the wilderness… into the mountains… where the disease could not follow them.

That.  That made her laugh.  A strangled, broken sound wrenched from her throat.

Rebecca opened the pantry.

Six clean mason jars sat on the shelf.

The car keys hung on a hook near the door.

Rebecca did not reach for them.

It was a beautiful day.

And there was no reason to hurry.

Instead, she gathered the jars and placed them in an empty cardboard box.  She moved with deliberate, almost ceremonial motions.

She picked up the box and stood in the main room, looking down the hallway to the closed spare bedroom.

Let him rest, she thought.

She walked out of the cabin and closed the door behind her, making sure it clicked shut.  She looked across the yard to the garden.

I’ll bring back some of Mrs. Pearl’s peaches, the ones we love so much, she thought.

The jars clinked in the box as she started down the road towards Bonaparte.  Autumn was in the air and the leaves were in a full riot of fall colors.  The view was breathtaking in its serenity—rolling hills fading into blue distance, sunlight dappling through the treetop canopy.

Halfway down the mountain, her throat tightened.

She paused.

A cough rose unbidden, wet and ragged.

Rebecca bent slightly at the waist as it shook through her. She gripped the box tightly.  When it passed, she straightened and looked out over the valley. 

Cold, dry air.

She resumed walking.