A Day in Her Lives
…Kevin Veale

The iPod tapped against Dr. Anita Dean’s hairy chest with the rhythm of her booted footsteps. It was bastard weather, there was no arguing that. Sheets of rain stripped heat from the world and turned it a dull and shapeless grey. Her oilskin wasn’t enough to prevent her feeling miserable.

By any rights, she should be inside. Inside and out of the weather. The voice in her ears was firm. Keep moving, get out of the city. Anita settled into an easy, distance devouring stride, hunching shoulders into the oilskin to present as small a target to the rain as possible. As she did, she listened to the mantra.
“You are Doctor Anita Dean,” her voice said, sounding rich and matronly. “Your priority is to make your way out of the city on foot. If possible, collect food and other supplies as you move. Track Five contains items you should seek, and how to store them. This message will recycle every three minutes, no matter what audiotrack you choose. The weather forecast for Wednesday the 30this…”
Anita strode on. She was getting warm now, despite the chill wind and rain, so clearly she needed to keep moving. Anita had a distinct awareness that exercising under an oilskin in the rain always made her balls itch. She paused for a moment, stride easing. There was something incongruous about that idea. Chewing the concept for a moment, she dismissed the problem as a lost cause.
The street was heavily parked up, and the otherwise empty centre lanes were dotted with cars, some parked, some crashed.
It was certainly an odd start to the day.

Brian’s shirt clung to him wetly as he ran down the street under a depressing grey sky. Rain rattled down in cold windblown sheets, making him squint his eyes and shiver as the two of them ran hand in hand. 

“Your name is Catherine Petersen,” he barked, tone uneven as he jogged. “You’re twenty-six, a taxi driver originally from London in Canada and you arrived here in Seattle last June.”

The two of them scuttled down the street, Brian’s face numb from the cold. He recited the details he’d learned by rote, speaking as soon as they came to mind.
“Now do me.”
The woman’s blue eyes glinted sharp steel. Brian wished he had her calm, even as she clutched his hand like her life depended on it.
“Brian Taretsky, legal position with the city council. Twenty-eight, single, soaking wet, Michigan born and bred, you should be used to this weather.”
“This from the Canadian.”
She snorted before continuing her monologue. Brian clutched at every detail she told him until Catherine’s eyes flickered to his.
“I don’t know where to go from here, Brian,” she said, eyes intent and voice controlled. Two streets of dormant concrete buildings stained dark with rain faced them, funnelling the sighing wind over their wet clothes.
“Don’t worry,” he said quickly, “We need a supermarket. There has to be one near here. Look for a mall.”
She threw up an arm, eyes contemptuous. “We want out of the city fast, not to go shopping! Quick, do me.” 
Brian clenched his jaw and sighed. Arguing was something they couldn’t afford. They were lifelines, it was that simple. To soothe her, he began again.
“Your name is Catherine Petersen…”
Drops of water bounced from the pavement like a chilly mist climbing up the heavy flapping ankles of his trousers. It must look absurd, he thought, two adults pelting through the rain clutching each other’s hands.
There was probably nobody watching anymore. Hell.
Brian held Catherine’s hand tighter. The absence of street noise was surreal, oppressive, alarms in the distance muted by the storm. Catherine started telling him who he was.
He began to smell smoke. Not a good sign.
A vast stain of soot consumed buildings in the distance, dragging the clouds to ground level in the drifting blur. The rain smelled of acrid things he couldn’t name. He should know something about it, but there was nothing except a nagging sense of dread. The most frustrating part was the impossibility of knowing whether the dread was because he’d forgotten, or because of what he’d forgotten.
They needed to get out of the city. They crested a corner at the top of a gentle hill and he was reminded why. The tangle of cars abandoned in the middle of the streets, a colourful mechanical flotsam, would be impenetrable to further vehicles. Hell. At least a dozen people wandered nearby or sheltered under the awnings of dull commercial buildings like wet sparrows. A man in a dark business suit, thin faced and bleeding from a head wound, ran towards them from one of the crashed cars. By the time he reached Brian, he’d slowed to a jog and wore a confused expression. Wincing, the man touched his scalp. As his fingers came away bloody he ran again, shouting for help. Brian’s stomach lurched. He clenched Catherine’s hand in his.
In ones and twos, the bedraggled people drifted towards them. Brian swore under his breath. He and Cath looked like they knew what they were doing, so of course they’d draw the bewildered like flies.
“We have to get out of here, Cath.”
“No shit, Brian. And the name’s Catherine.”
Flickering red neon signage caught his attention for a moment over her shoulder, so Brian pointed to it. 
“Catherine, there’s a mall a couple of blocks away. We can get food there, and we’re going to need supplies to get the hell out of here.”
Cath seemed frozen between the approaching people and the neon signs. “We need a car more than we need food…”
Bullshit, but deal with that later… “What’s a better place to find an undamaged car than in a car park?”
Biting off a reply, Cath nodded sharply. Brian squeezed her hand for a silent twocount and they darted past the gathering group of the genially confused. Their sudden movement startled the crowd, voices crying at them disjointedly.
“Don’t run, please—”
“Where are you going?”
Memories fired in a child of perhaps ten: “Thief! Stop, thieves!”
Brian ignored the plaintive, desperate voices. The two of them had been through this before, during the — how long had they been doing this? Hours? Days? Brian felt a yawning pit ahead of him and concentrated on the lights of the mall coming through the rain. Repeating the verbal lines tying him to Cath kept him focused, and assuaged the fear he’d forget them. He had a responsibility to her. Possibly the only responsibility that mattered, or would ever matter again for all he knew.
From the outside, the mall looked like anyone would expect. As the sliding doors opened to let the two of them in, muzak jingled. Brian shifted his weight uneasily, water squishing in his shoes. 
“There’s going to be a lot of people in here, Cath.”
“It’s Catherine, and I don’t give a damn, Brian. Do me.”
It was a quick method of ending an argument. Brian bit off the syllables to Cath’s lifeline while surveying the mall lobby. It looked almost normal, diffuse lighting reflecting off beige tile on the floor and glass shop fronts. A woman wearing mall colours and an Ask Me! T-shirt waited patiently beside an info booth, along with an assorted queue of other would-be shoppers. It was almost funny, but the laughter caught in Brian’s throat. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop. Cath studied the store plan while Brian spoke of her identity.
“Supermarket’s on the upper floor. You sure we shouldn’t just steal a car?”
Brian shook his head. “You saw the state of the road out there. It’s not likely to be any better through the city. We need to assume we have to make it out on foot.”
Cath looked at him. “On foot.”
“I don’t see any alternatives safe enough to plan for.”
She looked away, face thoughtful as they walked towards the escalators. “I’m a cab driver, Brian, so I’m well aware that this is going to be a bitch. Do-able though.”
Brian stepped on to the escalator and Cath told him who he was. Hell. They were almost falling into a routine. He began forming a mental list of what they would need when they were carried onto the second floor. More milling shoppers waited for them. Brian did his best to ignore them, his cold clothes making him shiver. It was hard to think amid the drifting noise. Hard not to second-guess his own thought processes.
It was hard not to constantly try to remember whatever he might have forgotten. “We’re going to need to wander around here briefly,” Brian said eventually. “Why?” Cath demanded.
“Because there are things here we’ll need, which we won’t remember till we see them.”
“We might not remember them even then, Brian. We don’t know.”
Silent for a moment, Brian considered the Ask Me! woman waiting at her own information desk. “I think that we’re less affected by this than the others.”
Cath snorted. “If we were any worse, we would never have been able to have this conversation. Do me.”
As Brian spoke, they walked through the mezzanine floor towards where the floor plan said the supermarket would be. Cath’s eyes widened suddenly and darted towards a passing store.
“Brian, we— “
“Keep listening, Cath!” Brian snapped, panic tight in his gut. “If we stop now, I’ll forget the rest of who you are!”
Cath looked like he’d slapped her, face angry and pale, but she stopped and let him finish her memories. As he finished, she pointed at a stand of books by the entrance to the store.
“Had some of them in my cab, Brian,” she scanned the covers with her eyes. “Maps. We need one, and something to write with while we’re here.”
She reached over and grabbed a street map of Seattle, then a handful of pens from a jar on the book-store desk. Brian eyed her uncertainly, almost startled when Cath smiled. She flicked through the map pages and said, “We can figure out where we want to go with this, and write down where we’ve been. That way, even if we forget, we’ll have a better idea of what to do and where to go.”
Cath looked relieved under the soft mall light. Brian smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. 
“Come on,” he said. “Do me, please, then we can get to the supermarket and figure out how to get out of here. The map was a damned good idea, Cath.”
She flashed a smile and didn’t correct him about her name.
The supermarket, when they found it, appeared to be where many of the people remaining in the mall were. Cath finished giving Brian back to himself while he grabbed a trolley, then looked at him.
“Where do you want to start?”
Brian shoved the trolley and scanned the aisle-signs, hoping not to look too competent for fear of drawing attention.
“Jerky?” he said thoughtfully. “Trail rations? Cans? Food that doesn’t need cooking, in case the power goes off… We shouldn’t bulk down with perishables…”
Catherine considered him doubtfully. “The power’s not going out unless something else goes wrong. Cans are heavy.” 
Brian had been thinking about this. He was almost irritated that Cath hadn’t, meaning he had to spell it out. The trolley coasted to a halt as Brian turned.
“What if it isn’t just Seattle?”
They stared at each other in silence for several seconds before Brian began her litany. Catherine listened, before loading jerky into the trolley.
“You’re right, we should go through the whole supermarket, Brian. Remind ourselves of things we might need,” she said with a focused intensity. Brian nodded, telling her who she was while they grabbed more food.
The two of them turned the corner, past a young girl crying for her mother. There were two young women trying to figure out who she belonged to. Further down the next aisle, a boy of eight with tousled blonde hair devoured chocolate bars off the shelf. He looked up every ten seconds or so, eyes wide and expecting intervention, unsure which approaching adult might belong to him.
Feeling ill, Brian clung to purpose by reciting Catherine’s world. They collected bottled water and dry food, Cath grabbing bundles of band-aids, disinfectant and medicine. A weeping middle-aged Asian woman in a charcoal business-suit weaved towards Brian and clutched his arm.
“I cannot get out! Where are the children?”
Brian’s mouth worked while he flailed for something to say, but the woman recoiled suddenly and cried out “Who are you?” before running away. He watched her run unsteadily down the aisle, aware of Cath’s worried gaze. Suddenly, he was also aware that he couldn’t remember what had gone wrong.
“Can you remember what caused this?” he asked, wondering what showed in his eyes. Cath inhaled slowly and pushed drying hair out of her eyes.
“Well hell, Brian.”
Brian took a deep breath. “It’s okay. We need to get out of here, find somewhere safe. Do you think we pay for any of this?”
Her laughter was harsh. “That depends if anyone makes us.”
Screams and an unintelligible roar came from the end of the aisle near where Brian thought the check-out counters were, making them both jump.
What next?
Wordlessly, they pushed the trolley closer to the sounds of mayhem. A tall man with startling blue eyes and torn jeans lashed at people with a belt. 
“None of you live here!” he roared, “Get the hell out of my home!”
For a split second his eyes met Brian’s, and then the man charged at them.
“Put down my stuff!”
Brian grabbed the trolley and ran as fast as he could, nearly tripping over its wheels. He felt heavy footsteps on the tile behind them as he ran past the checkout counters, then toward the exit. The doors slid open without being touched, the movement surprising him. It was at least three seconds after he went through the door before he realised Cath wasn’t with him.
Brian turned to see her grab a large corrugated bottle of water from a sale display. With a tearing shriek, she swung it at the head of their pursuer, all her weight behind it. The blow knocked him totally off balance. He staggered into the side of the door with a sharp crack.
The guy was bleeding from a vicious cut across his forehead when Cath stepped over him. She walked calmly up to their trolley, breathing heavily, her eyes the same hard grey as they’d been all day. He absently went through the facts Cath had taught him about herself, then she did the same for him. Behind them, the man said, “But it’s my stuff…”
He put his head down on the bloodied beige tile and wept. Brian stared at him until Cath caught his attention.
“Polaroids, Brian.”
“What?”
“We’re not getting out of the city today. That much is obvious. We need to be able to identify ourselves. I saw some in the aisle before we were attacked,” she jerked her thumb over a shoulder, “and they reminded me. I’ll go get them.”
“What do we need one for?”
“Identification, Brian. We’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and I want to make sure we know who we are when we do.”
Panic went through him, iced electricity from his scalp to the soles of his feet.
“Cath, when did I move here?”
His vehemence startled her. “What?”
“When did I move here from Canada?”
She blinked rapidly and inhaled. “But — you didn’t, Brian. I did.”
Blood sang in his ears. “How sure are you?”
“Shut up.”
“How sure—”

“ Shut up, Brian.” Cath’s snarl was feral beneath those intense grey eyes. Tight silence hung between them. After an immeasurable time span, she said evenly, “I’m going to get some cameras. Wait here.”

Watching Cath step over their fallen attacker, Brian felt numb. He didn’t know anything. His entire world was built on sand, but in a way Cath was right: They could function while nobody drew attention to that fact. He watched Cath as she jogged back into the supermarket and was able to keep line-of-sight until she went around the corner. After only a moment, she came back with Polaroids in her hands. 

“Which way to the car park?” she asked tonelessly when she reached the trolley. Their assailant hadn’t moved, a thin trickle of blood pooling under the side of his face. A quick examination of the mall guide they’d used to find the supermarket gave them directions.

They travelled silently, speaking only to refresh each other’s identity. The water in Brian’s shoes felt almost warm now, but still squelched whenever he shifted his weight. The rest of his clothes were dry against his skin, but he was chilled beneath them. Nearing the doors, Brian saw that the rain had stopped for the moment across a plane of cars beneath the concrete roof of the car park, matching the colour of the sky.

Feeling distant, Brian watched Cath head out through the doors and then study something over them. So much had happened that he had no coherent chain of events to explain. How had he met Cath? Did they even know each other? What had brought them together like this?

Distant, thoughtful and numb.
Cath crowed suddenly, finger embedded in the index of her map. “Found it!” she cried. “I know where we are!”
Brian caught hold of her hands and the map, stilling them long enough to follow 

her finger. Seattle. Renton. Cascade Shopping Centre. The words felt familiar, but he couldn’t make them fit anything he knew. Brian sized up cars, pushing the trolley out into the silent aisles which smelled of car fumes and rain. Something they could break into and have some hope of starting… 
Except he didn’t know how. 

He turned to ask Cath and found her standing with her knuckles clenched white around the map, her face pale and unheeding of her own tears.
“I don’t know where we’ve been,” she hissed.
Brian let the trolley coast to a halt, instantly irrelevant. 
“Cath, it’ll be all right, we—”
Arms taut around the map, she pulled away and drew a sobbing breath. Unable to even argue, Cath shook her head sharply and refused to look Brian in the face. He coaxed the map from her, ignoring the growing panic in his own gut.
They didn’t have time for this.
Flicking to the right page, Brian said, “Look, it’s okay. We’re here, right? You found it. So where we’ve been doesn’t matter. We know where we are. We have supplies.” He studied the map. “Providing we move east, we’re going out of the city as fast as we can, so we’re not losing anything by not knowing where we’ve been.”
She looked at him, face swollen from the tears, trying to steady her breathing. He took the pencil, highlighted their shopping centre and drew an arrow south-east, labelling it Fastest route out of city. Help this way.
“See? Even if we forget everything else, we can still read the road signs for where we are when we forget, and there are instructions here. It’ll be okay.”
She hugged him then, a warm presence against his chest in a tackle that may have surprised her as much as it did him. Brian awkwardly hugged her back, thinking of the sheer hate that had filled her eyes when he’d blurred their lives, allowing their mask of mutual competence to slip.
When she pulled away, Cath was all business, once more telling him the details of who he was. Brian absorbed all of it, but then a cold thought crawled to attention.
Both of them were basing their identities on Chinese-whispers. Would it be sensible to emphasise key parts of what they remembered, focusing on how they were going to find help? Brian’s jaw clenched. There had to be help. If the nebulous doom they were running from wasn’t limited to Seattle, they were just playing for time.
He waited for Cath to finish before reciting her facts. Rain started again, a gentle rising hiss kicking up the scent of moisture from the pavement outside the mall.
“We need to get out of here on foot,” Brian stated.
“But there are cars all around us!”
“Do you remember how to start one? When we’d never find one of ours, even if we had one here?”
There was silence for a moment. Cath scribbled Go on foot underneath the instructions he’d written earlier on the map, and they went looking for an exit. While they moved, Cath flicked through the map-book then grinned brightly, surprising Brian with how much her face changed for that instant.
“Once we get out of here, Brian, we’re finding a hotel.”
Hotel. The word had associations which came from nowhere in particular and made Brian pause. He had to have that wrong. He looked across questioningly and saw the smile slide from Cath’s face.
“Brian, we can’t. I didn’t mean — It’s late in the day, and we need somewhere to rest…”
Huh. The assumption in Cath’s eyes made him feel like a soggy, overgrown schoolboy. Brian resented that, resented the idea that she would presume to know his mind, and worse, that she’d conclude sex would be the first thing on his mind. Christ. He could feel her misreading his silence and expression.
“Be ruthless, Brian. If we did anything worthwhile, could you stand to know that you’d forget? We can’t afford that,” she said softly, before reciting his memories back to him.
Brian spotted a ramp, curling down towards some unseen lower level, and wordlessly turned towards it. He considered again the stunning anger Cath had shown him earlier. He glanced at her now, awkward in the silence and her reading of the reasons for it.
They were lifelines, but that didn’t alter the fact they were nothing to each other aside from safety. He could say something, but what would be the point? They still needed each other. Their identities could be defined solely by mutual loathing, and they’d still need each other. He watched Cath read street signs over the edge of the car park, frowning into the rain. Something in his silence felt like surrender, irritating Brian further.
Ruthless. Yeah, that was him all over.

Hands in her pockets, Doctor Anita Dean looked out across the blocks of commercial buildings and apartment blocks that faded into local suburbia. The weather was clearing, but according to what notes she’d recorded on the iPod, this was not going to last. Even without rain, blades of wind sliced down the streets, harsh and cold even through the layers of oilskin and heavy sweater beneath it.

“Do not remove the ear-pieces,” came her voice. “This is another reason to ignore distractions. You cannot help them. The only thing you can do to contribute is to get out of the city and to seek whatever authority you can find. Your name is Doctor Anita Dean…”

The message had been stressed to her repeatedly, and the reminder gave her new purpose. Anita picked up speed, her stride lengthening. She was idly curious as to what had happened, but mostly she felt glad to be out of it. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. She needed to get out of town, another fact that had been stressed to her. This street had to travel out of the city sooner or later, it was just a matter of when.

Listening to the comforting mantra, Doctor Dean was aware she could hear distant speech through the curtain of her own voice. She was uneasy about this. All the information she possessed argued that other people were seriously bad news. The air was tinged by the scent of distant smoke, and black plumes curled cancerously from several points in the suburbs ahead.

Movement flashed from the periphery of Anita’s vision. She turned towards it in time to see a man in a suit running at her, yelling something muffled by the veil of her own voice. She casually brushed aside a wild punch with one arm, flowing with the movement to drive her other fist into her attacker’s side with her weight behind it. The man dropped to the ground gasping while Anita’s mind reeled. 

How the hell had that happened?
Staring morbidly at the guy clutching his gut and trying to breathe, Anita replayed events in her head. Everything had happened instinctively, but where had those instincts come from? She was a doctor. She didn’t know how to fight!
But she didn’t remember medical school, either. She knew this instantly, a cold fact squatting in her mind like a toad.
Shaken, she turned her hands over and looked at them like they belonged to someone else. They were strong. Weathered and tough. Not doctor’s hands.
What kind of doctor was she?
Why didn’t she know?
No. She took a deep breath and centred herself. People were a distraction. She had to get out of the city and find the authorities. The man at her feet claimed she was a kidnapper through her curtain of noise, radiating hate from his snarling face. A distraction, nothing more. Anita concentrated on her own voice, feeding her certainty and direction.
She was Doctor Anita Dean, and she had to get out of the city. She turned in the direction she’d originally been moving and strode down the street, hands in her pockets against the bitter cold. 
The gait was an easy one to fall into. She was used to it, long stride eating up the distance while relaxing into the endless calm of her recorded voice. Night was falling now, making the wind feel colder as the light drained from the day. Soda lights turned on at the roadsides, soft glowing cores that took some time before flaring to full brightness. It was hard to hear anything else through the recorded voice, so she focused on the regular impact of her boots on the pavement and the dragging bite of the wind.
The road she walked along became a cul-de-sac over a gentle rise, deep in suburbia now and away from the commercial buildings and apartment blocks she had travelled through before. The chill air smelled of wood smoke, and occasionally of other burned things that were harsher and harder to identify.
“Do not worry about becoming lost,” her voice said calmly in her ears. “If you travel generally up-hill and away from a cluster of large buildings beside a body of water, you are moving away from the city. Keep going, and you will eventually reach help. Your name is Doctor Anita Dean…”
Anita turned a corner away from the visible buildings of the city under a sign reading ‘Fife Street’. She found a small crowd of people, running children and some fires flaring merrily from drums on the roadside. Some were walking down the block and knocking on doors, others carried what appeared to be food and supplies to a pair of houses, outside which the crowd was gathered. Uncertain, Anita kept walking towards them but tried not to get noticed. They didn’t look threatening, but she didn’t understand much of what was happening. It would be easier if they ignored her.
It didn’t work.
A smiling woman darted towards Anita. She and — now that Anita looked — the rest of the people outside were dressed warmly against the cold. A pile of umbrellas were propped near the door of one of the houses. 
“Hi,” she said brightly. Anita slowed, but wasn’t sure what to say.
“Do you want to come in with us? We’re collecting food and people in the houses here.”
Shaking her head, Anita said, “No thanks, I have somewhere I have to be.”
A man’s voice? But — No! Concentrate on something else. Don’t get distracted.
“What are you doing that for?” Anita said, trying to distract herself as she walked past.
“Seemed the easiest thing to do. Nobody is sure what belongs to who, so we’re gathering everything together and sharing till this all gets sorted out.”
That sounded reasonable and unthreatening, but the voice in her ears chose that moment to remind her to focus on getting out of the city.
“Good luck and thanks, but I have to keep moving.”
The woman smiled. “Well, good luck. Be careful. It’s going to be cold tonight.”
Everything felt very dreamlike as Anita strode past the small cheery crowd around the fires. It looked like they were only around the fires because the two houses were nearly full, and some other people were working on opening a third house nearby. She kept walking until the crowd passed out of sight around another suburban corner. Anita turned left, since that was more obviously moving away from the city, and a comment from the iPod caught her attention.
“If at any time you desire to sleep, or if night falls, go to Track 31.”
That was good timing. She clicked across to the relevant track and heard, “You are Doctor Anita Dean…” 
The familiar caress of sound anchored her again, the words flowing past before saying, “You wish to rest, or night is falling. You need to find a suitable car, and to smash the small window at the sides near the rear with a heavy object like a rock. Then reach in and unlock the door.” 
The voice described the process while Anita listened intently.
“Cars are more appropriate than houses, since houses will attract confused people, and few will remember that the car you’re in is theirs. You will also need paper and a working pen. If you cannot find these in the car or on your person, continue until you can find these items. Your name is Doctor Anita Dean…”
Searching her pockets, she found a cloth bag that was labelled — when she unrolled it — ‘Dean — iPod accessories’, and a pen. What she needed now was paper.
She kept walking away from the city. Through the reassuring murmur of the iPod she could hear that the wind was rising. The clear air also carried what sounded like distant sirens or possibly burglar alarms. It was hard to tell which, and her recorded voice was adamant that she should never take out the ear-pieces. Shoulders hunching against the growing chill, Anita fell back into the pulsing rhythm of her feet on the road. The iPod reminded her at intervals that she sought a car and paper. It wasn’t long before she found one, large, square and a deep blue shade. It was far enough off the road that there were half-steps provided under the doors.
A half-brick made short work of the small triangular window in the back, once Anita had seen scraps of yellow paper across the back seat. She opened the doors and climbed inside, flicking the tracks on the iPod to where it told her the instructions continued.
Climbing into the front seat of the car without the obtrusive wheel, Anita ensured that the doors were all locked. She was far from the broken window, which she packed with plastic bags from under the back seat. The iPod told her to label her name clearly on the paper she found in the back, along with directions. The instructions told her how to plug the iPod into what it called a ‘cigarette lighter’, and how to find it. She then placed the machine so it would be the first thing she saw upon waking. 
Anita felt warmly satisfied when she was done. She’d put a lot of planning into this, and it was all working out. Anita folded her arms with her hands in her armpits, nestled within her oilskin with the collar turned up. Her knitted woollen hat worked almost as a pillow, but kept shifting on her scalp. It wasn’t comfortable, but she was tired and it would do.
The whining of the wind, gusting strong enough to rock the car gently, was the sound to which she fell asleep.

Brian shivered behind the trolley as he rolled it downhill and back towards the city. The cold was under his skin now, numbing his muscles and turning his fingers to senseless leather. Cath looked up at street signs nearby, drawing a dotted line on their map labelled ‘back-tracking.’ All the hotels listed in their road-map were a good distance back towards the city from the shopping mall. Although neither of them was certain, they reasoned it was unlikely they’d been travelling towards the smoke and uncertainty of the city earlier in the day. Nothing looked very familiar. He wondered how Cath felt. 

He spoke the details of her life back to Cath listlessly. The wind dragged at his clothes like an intangible stream of anaesthetic while he spoke. The rain had stopped and the sky was actually clearing, but an increasingly clear night meant that it was going to be damned cold outside with the wind. Brian repeated himself during Cath’s litany to correct a statement made incoherent with shivering. Christ. If they’d been to a shopping mall as the map claimed, why the hell hadn’t they found warm clothes?

Cath waited for him to finish his recital before pointing to a corner on the other side of their road.
“Closest motel should be down that street, Brian, it won’t be long.” Her expression was focused as she read the map under streetlights, but she sounded reassuring. Brian blinked. Did he look that miserable? He kept pushing their trolley and fought to focus as Cath ran through the facts of his identity. Whatever had happened to him over the course of today, Brian was exhausted.
He avoided thinking about it in too much detail; the terrifying absence of any recollection was too much to deal with. What he did know was the bone-deep ache in his muscles and his feet, the tightness in his neck and shoulders, and how hard it was to think. The sense of relief when they reached the white neon sign of the motel, mixing and pooling with the orange soda-light from the street lamps, was palpable. He could finally rest.
Cath nodded to him and strode ahead to check out the call-in desk. Brian followed, pushing the trolley. The motel was a small spread of ruddy buildings on the zone where commercial buildings blended with suburbia. The call-in desk seemed separate from the actual rooms, two storeys of lodges splayed across the section behind a car park. They needed the key to at least one ground-floor room. The threat from intruders would be reduced if they were on the second floor, but they’d need to carry their trolley up a flight of stairs. Brian really couldn’t face that idea right now. Cath returned from the central building looking speculative.
“There’s nobody in there, so we can pretty much have what we want.”
Brian peered at the numbers on the side of the rooms. “Looks like if there’s anything under ten, it’ll be on the ground floor past the car park.”
Cath ducked back in through the door and Brian could see her moving around through the window. She waved a thumbs-up and returned.
“Number eight,” she said with satisfaction. “And I’ve found a pad of paper. Let’s get the trolley over there and start warming up.”
Telling Cath who she was in a shivering mumble, Brian leaned on the trolley as he plodded across the car park. There had to be a heater or something in the room. Something. A hot shower. A change of clothes. Anything. It seemed an eternity before Cath unlocked the door. The two of them hauled the awkward trolley over the threshold before shutting the door against the cold, Cath reminding him of himself all the while.
It seemed so much warmer simply to be out of the wind.
Cath turned on the heater along one wall while Brian manhandled the trolley to somewhere it might block off less of the room. The room was carpeted in blue, with white, flower-embossed wallpaper and lit with warm beige, much nicer than the harsh street lighting.
The two of them were talking much less now. Was he imagining it? Did he even remember a difference? They’d become an efficient unit at the expense of something fundamental, and Brian didn’t know what it was. He felt tired. Soul tired.
Wordlessly, he dragged out a sheaf of the motel notepaper which Cath had found. Brian pulled it apart so that they each had a half thickness of the original pad, and uncapped a pen from his pocket. It was monogrammed: B M T. Brian Taretsky, as Cath had told him. What was the ‘M’ for? Did it even matter? He wondered where and when he’d bought the pen, or if it had been a gift. From who? It was all so much damned effort. Handing the pen to Cath, Brian said, “I’ll do you, and you can write it down. Clearly, so you can read it tomorrow morning.”
He waited for Cath to get comfortable, the pad across her knees, then said, “Your name is Catherine Petersen,” beginning the litany once again. “You’re twenty-six… From London in Canada… Taxi driver…”
The phrases had almost ceased to have any meaning to his conscious mind, melting into a ritualised pattern of sounds. If he forgot everything, would it feel like that on a wider scale? Fading into an endless world of patterns without meaning?
They completed one side of the verbal exchange that had held them together, Brian speaking patiently while Cath wrote everything down. Part-way through the speech, Brian realised that once the two of them completed this last exchange, they were free of each other. Or at least free of some of their obligation. They’d been given back to themselves. There was something dreamlike, almost reverent about the silence in the hotel room after he’d spoken. He prepared to accept Cath’s benediction.
“Brian Taretsky,” Cath mused, “Twenty-eight years old and from Michigan. City council lawyer…”
She read through her mental catalogue of his defining features and Brian wrote it all down on his half of the pad. His handwriting seemed spidery and unfamiliar on the page, increasing the feeling of disorientation and distance within his own skin. Eventually he was done, covering two-and-a-half sides of paper with everything anyone knew about who he was. It seemed small and vulnerable set out like that on the page.
There were two beds within the room. They had wordlessly chosen one each, and set up their pages on the individual bedside tables under hastily found paperweights. Brian wrote a large label for his centred around the phrase ‘YOUR NAME IS’ which he drew in last, as an afterthought. The last thing they needed was confusion.
Cath unwrapped the disposable Polaroid camera she’d taken from the supermarket and followed the instructions on the back. She awkwardly handed the camera to him and sat on the edge of her bed, hands in her lap. Brian figured out the controls and snapped off several pictures for Cath to scrutinize. While they waited for the pictures to develop, Cath turned the camera on him.
How is it supposed to feel to be posing in order to be identifiable to yourself?
How do you think you should look? 
Brian decided that he was never going to look natural or relaxed. They took the time to pick a picture which looked the least terrible and labelled them clearly to attach to their sheets of information.
Brian yawned and considered his bedside table.
“There’s something missing,” he said eventually.
He dragged a chair out from the edge of the room and put his papers on it with the photo on the top, so as to catch his attention. Gnawing a thumbnail, he asked, “Are there mirrors in the bathroom?”
“No idea. Should I check?”
“Couldn’t hurt. If we set these up so that we see ourselves in the mirror, that’ll help connect us to the photos and what’s written on the paper.”
Blanching at some unvoiced thought, Cath went into the bathroom and returned with a large shaving mirror for her side. She vanished into the bathroom again and eventually announced, “I can’t get the other one off the wall.”
Brian pulled himself to his feet and grabbed a can from the supermarket trolley, along with a thick sheaf of unused pages from the pad.
“It’s okay. I’ll deal with it,” he said, voice hollow in his ears. Cath obligingly backed away from the wall mirror, so he threw the can at it. The sound of smashing glass was shocking in the enclosed space. It felt real somehow, cutting through the dream he was drifting in. Cath’s face was all eyes and mouth when she spun on him.
“Brian, what the fu—”

“—This is easier,” he shrugged, cutting her off. He used the folded paper to pick up one of the larger mirror shards, and put it on the chair beside his photograph. Silent while he cleaned up the glass in the bathroom, Cath watched him from the bed.

“We should be able to make good time tomorrow,” she said awkwardly, looking at her feet. “We have the map, and we know where — Oh! I’ll find the hotel and highlight everything before we go to bed.”

Brian used a wet towel to sweep up any remaining shards from the mirror. Behind them, the room was warming up pleasantly, the heater ticking gently as the radiator expanded. Satisfied the bathroom was safe, Brian put the dented can back with the rest of their food supplies. Cath leaned over, movements tentative, proffering the map book. She’d highlighted the motel at the end of the dotted line they’d travelled from the mall, and drawn a new arrow from the motel out away from the city for tomorrow. There were even labels to explain everything.
“Do you think that’s enough?” 

Nodding, Brian managed a smile. “I think that’s fine. Why don’t we do each other again, then shower to warm up before we go to sleep.”
Relaxing somehow, Cath listened while he told her who she was. Once that was done, Brian leaned against the doorframe while Cath reciprocated, running the water in the shower so it would be hot by the time she was done.
They located towels and robes for each of their showers, then Brian climbed under the hot spray and lost himself in bliss. He could almost feel the heat pouring into gaps in his bones, washing away any awareness of time and any sense of the world aside from being warm and edgeless.
He came close to falling from the shower when he opened the door, dull and stupid with the heat. The towel was perfect, soft and warm, though he didn’t remember turning on the towel-rack. It didn’t matter. Brian dried himself off in a disconnected dream-like space before wrapping a towel around his waist and pulling on a thick robe. He found Cath sitting on the edge of her bed, reading and rereading her notes. It looked like she’d been reading his notes as well. For the first time he remembered, she seemed to actually be scared.
“I don’t know how I know you, Brian. How we met. Do you know? You could be anybody.” Her laugh was brittle.
Christ. Brian’s head felt full of lead shot, an unthinking mass bearing him down. This had happened before, hadn’t it? He didn’t know, but he felt irritated Cath was dragging this over the coals again and that wouldn’t make sense unless… No. He didn’t know anything.
“It’s disorienting, I know,” he said, chattering emptily while his brain hung dead and unheeding behind his eyes, “But it doesn’t really matter. We’re here, and we need each other.”
Cath seemed to see the sense in that and nodded, sniffing. She reread her notes again till Brian interrupted. “Have a shower. It’ll warm you up before bed and you’ll feel better in the morning.”
Did that even make sense?
Did he even care anymore?
Brian walked past her to his bed. He waited for her to move into the bathroom before climbing under the covers in his boxers. The mattress pulled any remaining energy from his body within moments and sleep claimed him.
The next thing Brian knew was darkness broken by dim stains where light crept past the heavy curtains. He heard Cath breathing in her bed across the room, and then the slither of moving cloth.
Her breath was hot in his ear.
“Do me, Brian,” she breathed. He could tell she was smiling and didn’t know how. Pulling away, Brian turned on the light while fighting for consciousness. Cath cocked her head at him but wasn’t smiling anymore. Her eyes were still intent.
He ached and all he wanted was sleep.
I don’t know you, Brian thought fiercely, You sure as hell don’t know me, and I’m not even sure I like you.
“No, Cath,” he said as evenly as he could manage. “If we have sex now, before we’re done we’ll think we’re with strangers.” The idea had associations which would normally chill him to the core, but in this case he felt irritable distaste more than fear.
“I don’t want that, Cath. I’d rather we stayed…friends.”
Her eyes were hard in the soft light. “Are we friends, Brian?”
“Well, yes…”
“Then call me fucking Catherine.”
There was silence while they considered each other in the darkness. Catherine hesitantly slipped closer again, biting her lip.
“Look, let’s just…hold each other, right?” she said haltingly. “I don’t want to be alone in the dark.”
She slid in beside Brian and he put an arm around her shoulders, feeling her shake as she wept silently into his chest.

Gnawing chill woke the man in the car, seeping into his feet and his hands till unconsciousness was impossible. It was an uncomfortable way to wake up. His hands were in his armpits but that hadn’t been enough to keep the cold from them, and the way he’d twisted into a ball within the enclosed space sent tight spasms through his back. He needed to move around, to stretch, but that wasn’t going to get him warm. Peering through the fogged glass of the windscreen and windows showed him nothing but darkness punctuated by the glowing blobs of street lamps. It was night. Early or late, he couldn’t say.

How long had he been here?
Why was he sleeping in a car?
He didn’t feel hung over…
It was then that he saw the sign.
You are Doctor Anita Dean, and the iPod is yours. Put on the ear-pieces and press 
Play on waking. 

Huh. That was interesting. Picking up the silvery rectangle beneath the arrow on the sign, ‘Anita’ turned it over and found that it was attached to cords trailing to two small plastic lumps and to the console at the front of the car. The note mentioned ‘ear pieces’, and the plastic things were labelled ‘L’ and ‘R’…

Sorting them out took a little time, particularly with numbed fingers. ‘Anita’ pressed the Play button and heard a woman’s voice. Then someone knocked on the window, a heavy silhouette through the condensation. They said something unintelligible, garbled by the sound from the ear pieces. ‘Anita’ jerked them free.
“What?” 

The silhouette outside the car peered in the window and said, “’Allo. We were just wondering if you want some food.”
Food? When had he eaten last? 
“Yeah,” he said vaguely. “Thanks.”
Steam billowed between them as ‘Anita’ climbed from the car. The new arrival jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards a sign reading Fife Street.
“We’re in a bunch of houses around the corner. There’s food. We’re, uh, collecting more.”
“More?”
“Food. And people.”
Anita eyed him. “Yeah? Why?”
“Nobody knows what’s what or what belongs to who, so we’re sharing everything. But help is coming.”
He was a solid man, the skin of his face shiny and tight where it showed. He talked like he never needed to think about the words, and his certainty was infectious. Laughter drifted from the houses as the two of them neared, a clump of five or six homes with white painted walls and steel roofs of different colours. Anita’s guide knocked on the door of one of the central houses, a single-floor building of brick and white-painted woodwork under a red roof. They were greeted by smiling strangers.
“And who are you?” one man asked knowingly. The people inside, six that he could see, waited on his reply.
“I…don’t know,” the man who had been Anita said after a time. Their smiles broadened.
“Then you’re definitely one of us. Come in.”
A hot mug of something was pressed into his hands as he was ushered onto a brown sagging couch beside a glowing heater. The five men and two women seemed content to let him be, returning to companionable chatter. A return to anchorless civilisation was disorienting and yet safe. He drifted with the ebb and flow of voices, warming himself and drinking until one of the women said apologetically, “Do you mind if we call you Caleb?”
“Huh?”
“We’re working down the list,” she said, holding out a small book entitled The Smallest Big Book of Baby Names. The first name not marked in the male section was Caleb. 
He nodded, blinking, unsure what was expected of him. She smiled at him and wrote out a sticky tag with the name on it. The woman had a warm smile, an extra chin and he knew somehow that she had children.
“I’m Carla,” she said. “Are you tired, or do you want to see some of the other houses?” She checked a sheet of paper and seemed struck by a new idea. “We could introduce you to Abby. She’s the one who had the idea about the names.”
“Should I learn the names of everyone here?”
The noise died down at his words before the rest of the group resumed chattering. Caleb wasn’t sure, but it sounded like the same conversation he’d initially walked into. Carla leaned over and whispered, “Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t remember.”
There came another knock on the door, revealing a dark young woman swaddled in cold-weather clothes, her exposed skin chapped from the wind.
“Abby would like us to do a head count for all the names,” she said, eyes focused on some middle-distance as she concentrated.
The people in the room looked to one another and nodded as they stood. It made sense. Caleb had the impression that much of what these people were told made sense to them, whereas he seemed to be more curious. What did that mean?
He cleared his throat. “A head count?”
The new woman didn’t look at him, her face a mask of concentration. “Abby says we should write down all the name tags we have and then all the houses should give the lists to Abby.”
There were smiles at the novelty of it. But this had to have happened before for the process to make sense… Then again, did it matter? He joined the household in locating nametags and writing them down. They explored the house together for the first time again, noting the tags of sleepers as they found them. Some of them woke, heralding tears, fear and confusion. Caleb saw them hugged and held, comforted until the confusion made sense, the universality of the experience used to feed a feeling of community instead of fear.
None of it felt familiar. Caleb was involved in a process that he was not emotionally part of, but he helped along with the rest. Once every room in the cosy house had been searched, he volunteered to go along with the messenger, Brenna, when she returned the list to Abby. It seemed the thing to do.
The wind outside was particularly bitter after the warmth of the house. A shift in the stain of light at the horizon suggested dawn was coming.
The house to which Caleb followed Brenna was quieter from the outside than the one he had just been in. A distracted woman under a heavy layer of red terrycloth robe opened the door and ushered them inside. Caleb trailed Brenna into a kitchen decorated in white tile, the pair of them following Abby. She looked at him sharply when he stood in the kitchen doorway before grabbing his nametag.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said as she sat at a table covered in papers. Then her eyes were sharp and on his again.
“There used to be an Alexander and an Andrew. They’re here,” she prodded the papers on the table, “But nowhere else. Like they died.”
Brenna clearly didn’t know how to react either when Caleb glanced at her. Abby stabbed at the papers again.
“They were here. I know it, but they are gone from all memory.”
“Why are you here?” Caleb asked, the question bubbling out before he was consciously aware of it. He’d known moments ago, he was sure.
Abby flitted back to her piles of paper. “Help is coming. We’ll be safe if we wait here for them.”
Something fit within that concept, some intrinsic sense of truth. Waiting patiently while Abby fiddled with lists on the table, Caleb turned things over in his mind. He was disconnected to anything that was happening here, but it felt right. He believed that this community was something worth helping, even if he wasn’t part of it.
Abby cursed viciously, making Brenna jump and attracting Caleb’s attention. “There was an Anne and a Bridget once, too.”
“I could go looking for them,” Caleb offered, startled by the sound of his own voice. Abby was surprised for a moment before her gaze turned measuring.
“How will you find them?”
Oh. Right. Caleb dropped his gaze, then frowned.
“I have a name tag. Will they?”
Abby smiled broadly, a new respect in her eyes. “Good man. Good thinking.”
She wrote something out on one of her papers, climbed to her feet and pressed it into his hands. Caleb read it. 22 Fife St. He looked to Abby.
“That’s where we are. Have as much food as you need and rest if you wish. We appreciate this.”
Caleb turned the proposal over before saying, “Have any bacon?”
The meal that followed was hurried but plentiful. Strangers trickled in, woken by the smells of cooking, all blank and in need of reassurance or explanations. In the end, Caleb was quite ready to leave. The sensation that he’d met these people or seen them go through this before was maddening.
Abby provided him a battered local roadmap as he made for the door. She padded after him with a piece of paper reading 22 Fife St, which turned out to match another he found in his pocket.
“Thank you, Caleb,” she said with informal warmth. “And remember, help is coming.”
Caleb smiled thinly as she shut the door. He put his hands back in the pockets of his oilskin after pulling the grey woollen hat down over his ears, striding out into the cold clear light of dawn.

Dark and close, the room was comfortably warm. He shifted under the covers, aware of something weighing on his chest. A protesting mew came from under his chin, cutting through the drifting webs of sleep. Groping for a light switch yielded a painful actinic flash, revealing a startled and tousled woman eyeing him in surprise. 
Time froze. 

Eyes locked. The woman blinked several times as her face drew into an awkward smile. One of her hands was bunched in a short tuft of dishevelled hair.
“Uh, hi,” she said.
What the hell do you say? She was at least stripped to the waist and he had no idea who she was. Nudity and lack of recognition didn’t sit together well. For that matter, how did he get here?
“Okay,” he said slowly, “I don’t know of any other way to put this, but do you know why we’re here?”
The smile vanished from her suddenly arctic eyes. Hurriedly he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean anything — who am I?”
He noticed the growing alarm in her expression. “Do you know how you got here?” he asked haltingly.
Silence. He slowed his breathing and felt his pulse follow after a moment. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s see what we can find…”
She darted away with sheets wrapped around her and never once took her eyes from him. Great. Coils of resentment tightened in his gut, driving heat to his face. 
Yeah. I’ve done something to bring you here. Right. Thanks.
While staring at the carpet with his jaw clenched, he spotted the photos.
“I think I’ve found something…”
Peripherally aware of her moving behind him, all his attention was reserved for the piles of paper by the photos. Movement flashed at him from a piece of broken mirror as he reached out. It held a stranger, bleary, blue-chinned and in need of more sleep and some peace. A pit yawned under him then, treacherous and vast.
Who the hell am I?
He froze, shaking, and she reached past him for the handwritten pages.
“People are losing their memories,” she read, her voice disdainful though she couldn’t conceal the tremor lying beneath it. “You need to move together and take turns reminding each other who you are every few minutes. It’s all written down for safety now, but tell each other anyway to be safe. You can trust each other.” Her eyes were venomous then. “Try to get out of the city. There’s a map with where you’ve been and where you should go. The food in the trolley is yours.” 
She lanced him with a killing gaze. “You expect me to fall for a fucking prank this thin? What, they call you the Cuddling Rapist? Who the hell do you take me for?”
Painfully tired, he didn’t need to deal with this. Silent, he cradled his pile of papers and read through them. The handwriting was unfamiliar and spidery, making him feel alien and out of place. Was this even him?
“As far as I know,” he said heavily, “The door isn’t locked. Take whatever you want and I’ll go back to bed. Tell the cops where I am if you want. I’m past caring.”
She watched without comment as he climbed under the covers again, eyes like blades of ice.
“And what happens if the note isn’t wrong?” she said in a tight hiss.
“Christ, lady. I think when it happens, we’ll know. I plan to be asleep at the time. Leave or don’t. Your call.”
He’d barely been able to read the name on his little dossier, a sigil closer to a signature than anything else, one that named him a Ben. Ben must have been in a hurry, but he certainly didn’t need to deal with this. Whoever he was.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, the woman tightened up and stared at him. Sheets pinned with elbows against her sides, she looked ready to abandon them and attack him with those white knuckles if he coughed wrong.
“This says my name’s Catherine,” she said in a flat statement.
Lovely. Feel the trust.
“Ben,” he mumbled. “’Night.”
He pulled the covers over his head to block the light and had a flash of Catherine looking more lost than he knew how to describe. Sounds of her moving aimlessly about filtered through his fading consciousness and Ben began drifting away.
A vicious electronic howling filled the air, scything him from sleep. Ben jerked his head from the covers. Catherine hunched in shock, staring in the direction of the noise.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
Inhaling slowly, Ben sat up. “Well, we have some instructions from ourselves. Not a bad place to start.” Catherine nodded, so he climbed from the bed, collected her dossier and began to read.
“Your name is Catherine Petersen…”
The incessant wailing droned on as he spoke. Catherine’s eyes widened as she figured out the impact of what he was doing for her. Modesty and paranoia forgotten, she dressed as he remembered for her. Once clothed, she reciprocated while Ben peered through the curtains towards the noise. He could see other lights from — was this a motel? Huh. There were people drifting towards a building which seemed to be the source of the noise. Smoke, cut to ribbons by the wind, made a vague haze in the dawn light. Ben waited for her to finish his litany, concentrating on all the details she had to give him. He thought he’d remember it.
“We need to leave.”
“What? Why?”
Ben dropped the curtains back. “Because this noise isn’t going to stop and I’m getting a headache. There’s no point staying, and according to us we have places to be.”
“You make it sound funny,” Catherine snapped.
Ben pulled on his clothes, dried on the towel rack and said, “It isn’t?”
Catherine gave him a hard look and silence lay between them for a moment before she said, “Come on, help me lift the trolley outside.”
It looked like a cloudy start to the day and a cutting wind blew, though the day was bright between the clouds. The two of them dragged the trolley out of the door between them. Catherine studied the map. Eventually she said, “We need to go eastwards. Ish.”
“Which way is that?”
She lined up along the street, then pointed past the source of the noise.
Ben sighed, raised his eyebrows and pushed the trolley through the car park. Partway there, he began repeating Catherine’s facts from the list without thinking, pushing the trolley with his other hand.
The shrieking building was glass-fronted and multi-storey. A sign claimed it to be a dental clinic, the building gently leaking smoke. Frightened faces peered between curtains in nearby houses. People, dressed for sleep, cowered at the noise. Other more raucous individuals capered around the street and in the building itself. Ben could see their movement through the windows, along with thicker curls of smoke.
“Looks like bad news, Cath.”
Her expression tightened suddenly and she snapped, “Call me Catherine, Brian.” Ben looked at her, shaken. “Brian?”
She shrugged uncomfortably.
Before Ben could ask anything else, gleeful shocked screams poured from the building. Water streamed from the ceilings wherever Ben could see in the windows. He saw a woman wearing a robe and little else grab a standing lamp and dance with it under the spray. A subdued snap and she was flung to the floor like a doll. Flickering light played across the blinds of the lobby as the raucous dancers fled, screaming in earnest as denser smoke filled the air.
Ben grabbed Catherine and pulled her close to the trolley as the crowd tore past and ran down the street. The air was increasingly hard to breathe. Cath’s voice shook gently as she recited Ben’s facts while the two of them pushed the trolley past and away from the noise.

The key fit. Her relief was a tangible thing. She’d tried so many cars, but she finally remembered which one was hers. She was having such a spacey morning. She remembered it now, though, walking around it in the chill wind. A large square blue car with a broken window at the back where she’d plugged it with plastic. Yes, she remembered it now.

She climbed in, needing the step to get into the car and out of the wind. Huh. There were things all over the front of the car — hey. There was a note.
The message was concrete and left no room for argument. She was Doctor Anita Dean, and the iPod belonged to her. There was a moment of sorting out the cables attached to the player and the ear-pieces before she followed the instructions to push the button with a right-pointing arrow. A voice — her voice! — poured past her. Anita felt instantly grounded, more coherent than she had in, well, it must have been days.
“You are Doctor Anita Dean. Your priority is to make it out of the city on foot…”
Anita concentrated on the voice. It must have been important for her to have recorded this, but she’d just found her car. She must have made the recording assuming the car was unavailable somehow. Adrift in a sea of reassuring instructions and information, Anita’s arms and legs flowed through the motions, starting the car and putting it into gear. Someone must have borrowed it recently, since the seat was way too far back. She rolled the seat forward and adjusted it, and found that the mirrors all fit her eye line perfectly. That didn’t make any sense! Shaking her head, she pulled a seatbelt over her jacket and set off. The streets were clear of pedestrians or traffic. In fact, she could see very few people at all as she drove. Odd. It wasn’t that early in the morning, was it?
After only five or so minutes of being carried along by the recorded voice and the memories of her hands, Anita had to slow the car to a gentle halt. Cars filled the road like abandoned toys. Anita dug into her glove box, dimly remembering a need to show registration when stopped like this. At least she hadn’t been drinking.
Odd. The registration was for a Ruth Meade. Maybe she collected it from someone after an accident or something. Did you do that? 
No one came to check on her car. Anita drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and kept waiting.
“You are Doctor Anita Dean. Your priority is to make it out of the city on foot…”
On foot? Anita blinked. Well, maybe there were problems with the road all over. The recording had mentioned the importance of the bag that went with it, so Anita carefully bundled up all of the cables and attachments, putting them in the bag with the rest of her gear. She climbed out of the car.
There were people moving around now. Drifts and clots of them wandering about, seeking direction. What on earth had happened here?
Two people, an elderly woman with cuts on her hands and a young man in a muddy casual shirt approached. It looked like they were going to try and talk to her.
The voice in her ear firmly told Anita something about ignoring people. 
She couldn’t do that! She was a doctor. She had responsibility.
Anita hooked one of the ear-buds out so that she could still focus on her recorded messages. She surveyed the two bedraggled arrivals and the other lost people for a moment, inhaling slowly.
“My name is Doctor Anita Dean,” she announced in a clear voice which carried in the chill air. “Our priority is to make it out of the city on foot…”

The map was their guide, following the trolley along cracked suburban pavements and cold roads. Ben and Catherine took turns pushing the trolley and marking their progress turn by indelible turn. The instructions aimed them at what the map said was a highway southeast, and the suburbs crawled past.
Catherine turned her head back towards the way they’d come, back at the city. 

“We’re making progress,” she said after a time, “There’s a haze of smoke over the city, so we’re getting further away.”
Ben snorted. “Or more of the city has caught fire by now.”
Catherine’s expression didn’t change. “Either way, we’re making progress.” She turned to him with a half-glance and said, “Do me, Ben.”
Had he always found her so sharp and cold? 
He folded her notes so he could hold them in one hand and push the trolley at the same time.
“Your name is Catherine Petersen—”
“Huh,” Catherine said thoughtfully, “Why are we doing this?”
“This is important!” he hissed.
“You’re reading off the sheet, Ben. Give it here and save us time. Why didn’t we think of this before?”
Ben breathed slowly and considered the idea as sheepishness warred with a bottomless tide of panic within him. Catherine reached over and snatched her papers, lip curled and ugly with…contempt? A flick of her wrist sent his dossier into the trolley. Ben grabbed the sheets before the wind could finish snatching them away. As cold and distant as all he had forgotten, Catherine said, “This will be easier.”
The wind dragged at the papers, caught with his fingertips. Ben’s pulse drummed in his ears as his face twisted with emotions he’d lost the names for.
Her voice was like the wind, soft and cold.
“We need each other, Ben. We still need each other. But I don’t know you.”
Swallowing hard past the clenched jaw, Ben read from his notes. He held them the same way he’d squeeze her throat at that moment, pushing the trolley against his chest.
The silence was only broken by the scuff of soles on pavement and the rattling scrape of trolley wheels. Ben eventually said, “What’s the map say?” his voice a bark in his ears.
“We should nearly be there,” she said distantly. “Then we can follow it easily.”
The wind rose, smelling of rain and chilling the air. The two of them squeaked onward as suburbs faded before them, replaced by an opening space which filled with concrete and the abandoned husks of cars glinting in the fading light. A dark shoe beneath a hedge caught Ben’s eye. It was connected to a high-school boy curled up warmly against a man with scarred knuckles and tattoos who twitched in dog dreams.
Don’t wake up, Ben thought, You won’t be more comfortable than you are now.
He could see more people than he had in a while. They peered nervously through windows, from behind trees. There was noise… He could hear voices in the distance.
“People,” Ben said, swallowing. “I’m not sure about the people.”
Without turning, Catherine said flatly, “This is the way out, Ben. Other people are using it too.”
Ben felt mounting, sourceless tension as they crawled down the on-ramp, further into the open. Something hung in the air beneath the lowering clouds, waiting for its moment while the pressure of the wind rose.
“Ben!” Catherine hissed. It took a moment to recall that she meant him. He could see them too. People roamed all over the highway, amid the frozen river of assorted vehicular flotsam. 
But that wasn’t the most pressing concern.
Ben wasn’t his name.
It began to rain. Water, driven by the rising wind, cut visibility to nothing. The wind, in turn, was drowned out by an uneven discord of howls and cries as a sorrowful motley of humanity were again assaulted by new experience.
It was a stampede.
Ben had enough time to see Catherine turn towards him, panic in those grey eyes. She tried to say something, but then the wave of bodies was on them. The trolley went over in a shattering jangle of cans, forcing him to dive out of the way or be pinned against it by the terrified runners. He clung to his pages against the crush of people, fighting his way into the clear towards where Catherine had been. Buffeted by shoulders and blinded by rain, Ben peered into the storm. She’d only been a few meters away. Now — nothing.
Panic tore at him. She was gone. The pages. Had he lost any of them? Would he notice?
The paper bowed as it unfolded, absorbing the rain. Ben read as if trying to engrave the words on his brain before they could be lost. The ink — why ink? There had been a reason — began to run, turning his identity to spreading stains on a substrate of mush.
Illegible. Irretrievable. Finished.
Someone knocked against his shoulder but this didn’t penetrate the fugue. Ben stood still, cradling the ruined pages.
He waited to be lost in the maelstrom.
No!
He had to find her!
The sodden paper shell of a life was useless now, so he threw it away. The panicked movement in the narrow aisles between cars and along the edges of the highway faded. People cowered in or under vehicles from the rain, while some bolder souls stumbled through the storm staring at the sky.
He had to find her.
The fact he couldn’t remember her name was a sliver of ice in his mind. How long ago had he read from his pages before they were lost? Would he remember?
He howled defiance into the storm.
His name was Brian — Ben? — Petersen!
He was a lawyer for a taxi company!
Originally from London! In Canada!
He was gone.
He had to find her.
Moving past a dull green SUV, he skidded on someone’s spilled cans and ran into a woman with cold grey eyes. They stared at each other for moment before running into the storm.

Dawn greeted Sergeant Faden through the hastily erected wire of the quarantine camp. The blowers in his clean-suit sealed him off behind a hiss of air, muting everything outside. It was hard to be detached given the circumstances, seeing the afflicted wandering out to meet them or being carried in, but the wall of sound made it all dreamlike.

Someone walked towards him, another clean-suited figure with officer’s pips painted on the shoulders. Faden stood to attention.
“Captain McFarlane.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” she said simply. “Report.”
McFarlane wore her clean-suit like a second skin, easy under the weight of the backpack of batteries, air and fans. She had the bearing of someone who dealt with fatal details as a matter of course.
“Quarantine facilities are up, Captain, and we’ve kept the perimeter secure, more for our safety than theirs.” He paused to consider the pall of smoke over Seattle. “Lot of confused people out there, Captain.”
“There are. And I understand you have your men out herding people towards us with food and firm instructions.”
Faden responded with a neutrally affirmative “Sir.”
McFarlane’s lips curved slightly. “Good thinking, Faden.”
More silence.
“Captain?” Faden asked eventually.
“Yes?”
“What’s next?”
She sighed. “’Next’ is the long road, Sergeant. We get people here without them hurting themselves and get to work. Some of them are going to need us to come to them rather than leaving on their own.”
“We’re going to need more tents for quarantine.”
“All of the bases will. And more staff from USAMRIID and the CDC, which we’re working on.”
Faden chewed on his ideas, thinking aloud. “No real looting as such… What do we do about the fires? We have a cause yet?”
The Captain winced. “Cause? The biggest one is what happens when the flight crew of a 747 taking-off at Sea-Tac suddenly have no idea what they’re doing and start fighting the plane. The rest is minor, the kind of thing that could have been prevented by cutting power to the district if we’d been able.” Shifting her weight, she said, “Don’t worry Sergeant, the long road is what we’re on, but it’ll work. The labs here are only going to get bigger, and the more people we can relocate to the bases, the more information we’re going to be able to get.”
It was true they’d sort it out in the end, the personnel from USAMRIID and the CDC and all their gear, but that didn’t hide that they had no idea what had caused this, less idea how to proceed. They lacked even an idea for what level of quarantine was needed. The long road planned for the worst case, even if it was the slowest.
Hell. What did he know?
Faden watched the sunrise for another few moments, the roar of the blowers in his ears.

The map in her hands was the only instruction she had left. There was an arrow. A highway. She thought she was on it. The only question she was actually curious about anymore amid the legions seeking answers was how she’d know when she’d gone far enough.

Her throat was tight and threatened tears, a vast unnamed pool of emotion she had no clues to comprehend. Why did she feel this way? What had she lost?
She nearly wandered right past the man in the yellow plastic suit. He was calling to her when she noticed him, had been for a little while. Who was he? What did he want?
He wouldn’t answer her questions. Kept telling her that she was safe and that it would be okay. Pressed a bundle into her hands that smelled delicious. Told her to keep walking.
Her feet hurt. She was tired.
There was another man in an odd suit. Both their voices were strange, now that she thought about it. Distant, like through a tube. This one had bottles. Said it was water. Said to keep walking.
She still didn’t know what was missing, what absent part of the world made it all wrong somehow.
There were more men in suits telling her where to go now. None of them knew when she’d be able to stop following the map.
She ate the food. Drank the water. Felt so tired.
Eventually, there were two yellow-suited men with bags. They asked her to put the map in their little bag and to empty her pockets. She told them she didn’t understand, so they showed her. She’d been carrying things the whole time. They put them in a bag. One opened something from her pockets and said, “See? Sometimes they don’t look,” and wrote out two sets of words. One went on the bag. The other went on her wrist and locked with a click. Catherine Petersen, it said.
Yellow men herded her along. There was a room, made of fabric and full of beds and sleeping people. Other yellow men watched.
She didn’t care anymore. Tired, sore, and she’d lost something important.
She curled up and slept.

The day became stranger for Faden as the sun climbed across the sky. He wasn’t sure he could call them refugees… The patients shambled out into the catchment areas and into the base itself almost faster than they could be processed. And they weren’t even the whole problem. McFarlane prodded a map spread on a field-table. He, other personnel from the army, and strangers from the CDC stood around it with them.

“We’re having trouble where the population density increases. Most people don’t pose a threat, but some remember enough to know this must have been done to them. Those individuals are very suspicious of organised behaviour and can be dangerous, particularly to our suits. Worse, they frequently infect other people with their ideas. It looks like the afflicted will accept concepts, providing they’re put across with sufficient certainty or conviction.” She paused. “Not much we can do which won’t reinforce the idea we’re a threat, so we wait for them to come out to us and, as you’ll have noticed, they are. Resources are being pressured all around the city perimeter, but more supplies are inbound. What we need are more tents, the rest we can deal with.” McFarlane turned to a blue-suited CDC Lieutenant. 
“Lieutenant Bird?” 

Bird nodded to the assembled crew. “We’ve been finding people coming out of the city with name-tags already, sticky labels attached to their clothes. They all seem connected to a ‘Fife Street’ by papers they carry, so we’re organising a team to go in and investigate that area. If you find anyone with a label, send them over to us. Also, there is a definite range of severity in the symptoms displayed by the afflicted population. Some people remember nothing, others remember enough to be more confused. Be careful. Any questions?”

There were none, so McFarlane said “Dismissed,” quietly and turned back to the map with Bird. Everyone else went their own ways in a disciplined scattering of toytruck yellow suits. Faden was immediately hailed by one of his unit as soon as he turned on his suit radio.
“Henderson here, Sarge. Got trouble.”
“Details, Henderson,” he barked, heading towards where PFC Henderson had been working. 

“Bunch of people who don’t want to be separated, Sarge. Just inside the main patient-processing area.”
That didn’t make any damned sense. Why wouldn’t they want to be separated? Faden strode towards a single yellow figure isolated in a tangled clot of at least thirty people.
“Henderson?”
A flushed face turned towards him in the marooned suit.
“They were walking out together, Sarge, but they don’t know why. Now they won’t be separated.”
Faden considered the crowd, some of whom were eyeing him nervously. They were conspicuously missing the concert-admission style plastic bracelets which their names should be on.
“Private, where are their bracelets?”
Henderson flushed further. “Haven’t finished processing them yet, Sergeant.”
“Get their wallets and I’ll see what I can organise.”
“Uhm…” Henderson looked at the full rubbish sack he held in one hand. Faden’s jaw tightened.
“Private, have you removed their ID without tagging them?”
“I was getting them to empty their pockets and things when they panicked about being separated!”
Faden stepped closer to Henderson so that their plastic faceplates touched.
“Let me explain some grim, meat-hook realities to you, Henderson. We can’t separate these people until we try to process them, if we can, and there’s no goddamned room for them to be kept separate in. Christ — no, I don’t care what you were thinking. Private, you have volunteered to mind these people when we find them somewhere to be. Understand?”
Henderson looked appropriately miserable, but as Faden turned away there was a further clamour from the crowd.
“We need it back!” one man in a Hooters T-shirt called stridently.
“What?” Henderson snapped. “What the hell do you need?”
All eyes dropped to his sack as their faces became more panicked, tightening and baring teeth. 

“We’re having trouble where the population density increases. Most people don’t pose a threat, but some remember enough to know this must have been done to them. Those individuals are very suspicious of organised behaviour and can be dangerous, particularly to our suits. Worse, they frequently infect other people with their ideas. It looks like the afflicted will accept concepts, providing they’re put across with sufficient certainty or conviction.” She paused. “Not much we can do which won’t reinforce the idea we’re a threat, so we wait for them to come out to us and, as you’ll have noticed, they are. Resources are being pressured all around the city perimeter, but more supplies are inbound. What we need are more tents, the rest we can deal with.” McFarlane turned to a blue-suited CDC Lieutenant. 
“Lieutenant Bird?” 

Bird nodded to the assembled crew. “We’ve been finding people coming out of the city with name-tags already, sticky labels attached to their clothes. They all seem connected to a ‘Fife Street’ by papers they carry, so we’re organising a team to go in and investigate that area. If you find anyone with a label, send them over to us. Also, there is a definite range of severity in the symptoms displayed by the afflicted population. Some people remember nothing, others remember enough to be more confused. Be careful. Any questions?”

There were none, so McFarlane said “Dismissed,” quietly and turned back to the map with Bird. Everyone else went their own ways in a disciplined scattering of toytruck yellow suits. Faden was immediately hailed by one of his unit as soon as he turned on his suit radio.
“Henderson here, Sarge. Got trouble.”
“Details, Henderson,” he barked, heading towards where PFC Henderson had been working. 

“Bunch of people who don’t want to be separated, Sarge. Just inside the main patient-processing area.”
That didn’t make any damned sense. Why wouldn’t they want to be separated? Faden strode towards a single yellow figure isolated in a tangled clot of at least thirty people.
“Henderson?”
A flushed face turned towards him in the marooned suit.
“They were walking out together, Sarge, but they don’t know why. Now they won’t be separated.”
Faden considered the crowd, some of whom were eyeing him nervously. They were conspicuously missing the concert-admission style plastic bracelets which their names should be on.
“Private, where are their bracelets?”
Henderson flushed further. “Haven’t finished processing them yet, Sergeant.”
“Get their wallets and I’ll see what I can organise.”
“Uhm…” Henderson looked at the full rubbish sack he held in one hand. Faden’s jaw tightened.
“Private, have you removed their ID without tagging them?”
“I was getting them to empty their pockets and things when they panicked about being separated!”
Faden stepped closer to Henderson so that their plastic faceplates touched.
“Let me explain some grim, meat-hook realities to you, Henderson. We can’t separate these people until we try to process them, if we can, and there’s no goddamned room for them to be kept separate in. Christ — no, I don’t care what you were thinking. Private, you have volunteered to mind these people when we find them somewhere to be. Understand?”
Henderson looked appropriately miserable, but as Faden turned away there was a further clamour from the crowd.
“We need it back!” one man in a Hooters T-shirt called stridently.
“What?” Henderson snapped. “What the hell do you need?”
All eyes dropped to his sack as their faces became more panicked, tightening and baring teeth. 
They didn’t know.
“We need to get out of the city together on foot!” a woman in a faded denim jacket hissed savagely. Faden’s eyes narrowed as he noticed name-tags here and there in the crowd.
“Give it back, Private,” Faden said tiredly. “It doesn’t matter at the moment. You find these people bunks together, stay with them and don’t let them leave till we get them processed or move them in with the other people we can’t ID. I don’t care if it takes weeks, you are officially den-mother. And make sure I know where you’ve parked them. We need to ask these people some questions. Clear?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Henderson mumbled as Faden walked away.
“Sarge?” Henderson called from behind him. Faden turned, aware his expression was stony as Henderson asked, “What should I do with their stuff, sir?”
Faden sighed. “Put them in adjoining bunks where you can find the room, and give the sack to one of them. Hell, ask them to pick someone to hang on to the bag for them.”
Henderson gestured with the bag at the crowd of ragged people, making Faden realise how feral their body-language was. Some of them had been edging behind Henderson while the two of them had been speaking. They probably would have mugged him for the bag, or worse, if he hadn’t handed it over to the guy in the Hooters shirt who’d spoken up…
Shit. They did not need this today.

The room smelled funny, and the walls and ceiling snapped and billowed in the wind. It was the voices that made it impossible to sleep. She wasn’t sure where she was. Why she was there. Looking around, she didn’t know any of these people. Nothing was familiar.

She set sore feet on the floor of the fabric room and felt something shift under one sole. It was a bag with some objects in it, nothing familiar, but it was next to her bed. Was it hers? 

She paused. Nobody else was paying any attention to it. A man in a shirt that read Hooters was in the bed next to hers, but he was totally still.
Emptying the contents onto the bed revealed a bewildering array of wires and other things. Nothing familiar. There was a silver rectangle which looked like the most solid piece of equipment there. It was attached to wires and two small plastic lumps. Hmm. For some reason, she associated them with sound. They were labelled L and R. In the spirit of investigation, she placed one in her left ear and played with the silver box. Nothing happened for a time, and then there was a sudden voice in her ear. Sound and identity flowed into her. She listened for all she was worth.
She was Doctor Anita Dean. All of this did belong to her.
She had to get out of the city on foot. Outside the city would be the authorities. Hmm.
Anita climbed to her feet and walked out towards the door to the room. A man in a yellow suit blocked the way and watched her as she moved. He looked at her wrist, then let her past. Interesting. Outside the room, there were no buildings to be seen, just rows of more fabric rooms.
She wasn’t in a city.
Why was he interested in her hand? Oh. There was something wrapped around it. She read what it said, but that didn’t make any sense. Something had gone wrong somewhere, because she didn’t know any Catherine Petersen woman. Or did she?
What did she know?
She needed to find authorities. Wandering experimentally back into the room found the man in the yellow suit glaring at her. It looked like she might have found some, whatever else was going on.
Anita sat down and listened to herself explain what to do next.
“Sarge?” Henderson’s querulous voice drifted over Faden’s suit radio. “What now?” he barked.
“There’s something you should see.”
Faden swore to himself, shifting to a private frequency so he could deal with Henderson quietly. And at length. Faden stopped when Captain McFarlane said, “Trouble?” and raised her eyebrows. He sighed.
“Apparently, Captain. I’m just not sure what kind.” He switched to include Henderson. “What, precisely, is the situation Private?”
“Woman asked me to give you something, Sergeant.”
“She did what?” McFarlane interrupted, her voice sharp. Faden was incredulous.
“Just that, sir. Gave me a bag to pass on to someone in authority, she said.”
Faden and McFarlane exchanged a nonplussed glance. “She was very insistent, sir.” Henderson finished lamely.
McFarlane’s eyes were intense and focused. “Where is she, Sergeant?”
Faden nodded for her to follow him, internally wondering just what the hell was going on. Henderson met them outside one of the billeting tents with a rolled bag in his hands, handing it over to the Captain before hovering at attention. She pulled the bag open and prodded at the contents.
“What are we looking at, Henderson?” Faden growled.
Pointing at the iPod, the Private tentatively said, “She said you needed to hear track eighty, Sergeant.”
Faden looked from the iPod to Henderson. “Find someone with some speakers that will work with this thing, and do it quickly. Failing that, find someone who can pump it over the suit radios.”
Henderson nodded, relieved to have a task he was more familiar with. “Should I take it with me sir, so we can try to fit something into it?”
McFarlane was still lost in contemplation as the two men talked, eyeing the contents of the bag and prodding them with a suited finger. She pulled out a small item between thumb and forefinger. 
“That’s fucking eerie, sir,” Henderson breathed.
“Thank you, Private,” McFarlane said with a thin smile, “Succinctly put.”
Faden felt lost.
McFarlane’s eyes glinted with something like amusement when she caught his expression.”This, Sergeant, is one of those very attachments designed to broadcast the player over radio frequencies.”
Her eyes never left the player, a curl at the corner of her lips. For Faden, the tension that came from incomprehension faded, replaced by the sensation of coming close to something vast and unseen in deep water.
The Captain wordlessly attached the little metal accessory and tuned it towards their suit frequency. She had problems using the wheel control through the suit gloves. Suddenly a voice that sounded as though it belonged to an authoritative woman in a hurry poured over the radio.
“My name is Doctor Anita Dean. The recordings on this iPod were prepared on the assumption that the outbreak is both localised and eventually contained. My colleagues and I believe the agent is viral.”
Faden found himself yelling into the radio for a CDC team till McFarlane punched him in the shoulder and shushed him.
“At the time of this recording, we have samples of infected blood but have not isolated the agent itself. The samples are in a secure lab in our facilities, and the location is on this recorder along with relevant pass-codes. In case power was lost to the facility, we have uploaded all our data to a non-local server. The login is ‘beeble’, the password, ‘brox’. These uploaded files will be updated past the release of this recorder. There are copies of our findings so far saved in a folder on this iPod, entitled…”

Something caught her attention as the wind brushed it. There was a plastic bracelet with a name on it attached to her left wrist. Catherine Petersen. It didn’t ring any bells. The apparent Catherine wandered back towards one of the cloth rooms. There was nothing to do and no one to answer her questions, let alone help her form ones from the vast sea of confused wrongness which hung over the world. She felt she’d done something important, though the details were losing themselves.
Nothing to do but rest and wait for answers. 

There were shouting men in yellow suits running around outside in a state of great agitation. She ignored them and searched for an unoccupied bed.
A man walked the other way down an aisle of sleepers, wearing a bemused expression. They realised at the same time that they were pondering their own bracelets. He bent forward and looked at hers.
“You must be Catherine Petersen.”
“And you’re… Brian Taretsky.”
He looked at her, shifted his weight and inhaled a part breath. She could tell questions were coming. She shook her head.
“Sorry, no idea.”
She sloped away towards an empty bed and heard his tread move away.
“Good luck,” she said vaguely over one shoulder. “Nice meeting you.”