Hosts

"Yeah, we are. Our futures end in a few days. If it was death, I could accept that—at least for myself. But this is a living death… and…"

Her voice trails off, and her gaze slips off Jack and settles somewhere in space.

Jack has never seen her like this. What's happened to her indomitable spirit? It's as if the virus has already changed her, reached inside somehow and snuffed out an essential spark.

He holds her in his arms again and kisses her forehead. "Don't write us off. I'm going over to Abe's and see what he knows." He releases her and backs toward the door. "I should be back in an hour or so. I'll call if I'm going to be any later. Okay?"

Gia nods absently. "I'll be here. Where else can I go?"

Jack turns at the door and sees her standing in the middle of his front room, looking like a lost soul. And that's so un-Gia he has second thoughts about leaving. But he's got to see Abe. If there's any cause for hope, Abe will know.

Free of the cart this trip, Jack makes good time through the empty streets toward Amsterdam Avenue, not sure if he is fleeing the dark reality of his apartment or ru

Worried now—for years Abe has been a heart attack waiting to happen—Jack pulls out the defunct Visa card he keeps in his wallet for moments like this. Looks up and down the street, sees no one near enough to matter, and uses it to slip the door's latch. Abe's never devoted much effort to protecting his street-level stock, but it would take a Sherman tank to get into his basement.

"Abe?" he calls as he steps inside, relocking the door behind him. "Abe, it's Jack. You here?"

Silence… and then high-pitched cheeping as something pale blue flutters overhead. Parabellum, Abe's parakeet. Abe always cages the bird when he leaves, so he must be here.

Jack's apprehension intensifies as he heads for the rear, toward the counter where he and Abe have spent so many hours talking, solving the problems of the world time and again. And then as he rounds a corner piled high with hockey sticks and the counter hoves into view, he stumbles to a halt at the sight of all the red—the counter puddled with it, the wall behind splattered.

"No," Jack whispers.

Gut in a knot, he forces himself forward. Not Abe. Can't be Abe.

But who else's blood can this be?

He creeps toward the counter, edges around the side, looks behind—

It's Abe, on his back, white shirt glistening crimson, head cocked at a crazy angle, throat a ragged hole, torn away by a blast from the sawed-off shotgun lying by his knees.

Jack spins away, doubles over, sick. He doesn't vomit but wishes he could. Rage steadies him. Who did this? Whoever tried to make this look like a suicide didn't know Abe, because Abe would never…

After a while Jack straightens, staggers to the back of the store, finds an old tarp, and drapes it over Abe's body.

The blood… still so wet… couldn't have happened more than twenty, thirty minutes ago.

If only I'd left a few minutes earlier I might have been here in time to…

And then he sees something on the far corner of the counter. The square of a virus test kit. He steps closer. A used kit… and the blue halo says it's positive.

Jack sags against the counter. "Aw, Abe."

And he understands: Abe saw no hope for himself. That means Jack will have none to offer Gia and Vicky.

He sits a long while, feeling lost and paralyzed as he stares at the test card. Finally he pushes himself into motion. Can't leave Abe here like this. What's he do? Call the cops? Will they even come? And if they do, there'll be an investigation and someone will find the armory in the basement. And all the while Abe's body will molder in a drawer in the morgue's cooler.

No. Can't have that. Jack knows what he has to do: come back tonight with the car and take Abe's body to Central Park. No cops, no inquests, just a quiet private burial for his oldest and dearest friend.

But what about Abe's family? The only family Jack knows of is a daughter in Queens. Sarah. Jack's never met her; he hid Gia and Vicky at her place during the rakoshi mess last summer, but she was out of town then.

Jack reaches for the blood-spattered Rolodex and flips through it. Abe used a computer down in the basement but stuck to old-fashioned methods up here on the main floor. An ache grows in his throat at the sight of Abe's crabbed handwriting and for a moment the letters blur. He blinks and tugs on the "S" tab, and there it is: simply "Sarah" and a number.

He calls the number and when a woman answers he asks for Sarah.

"This is she."

"I… I'm a friend of your father's. I'm afraid—"

"Yes, we know," she says. "He's dead."

Jack's alarms go off at the we. "How can you—?"

"We were hoping to get him to the point where we could stop him from such tragic foolishness, but those damn tests are so—"

Jack slams down the receiver. He can imagine how it went down. Sarah stops by with a peace offering. They've never gotten along, but these are extraordinary times and maybe they should bury the hatchet. She's brought something sweet, something her father can't resist, something heavily spiked with the virus.

And later, when Abe's blood turns positive, he knows he's a goner and knows who made him that way and it's all too much for him. Never would have believed it of Abe, but no telling what a person will do when the whole future goes dead black without a single glint of hope—

Jack's breath freezes in his chest as he remembers Gia's ten-mile stare when he left her and now he's heading for the door with his heart tearing loose. The phone rings and he knows he should ignore it but doubles back on the slim chance it might be Gia. She knows he's here, maybe she's trying to reach him.

"Jack," Gia says in response to his barked hello. "Thank God I caught you."

"What's wrong?" The preternatural calm of her tone sends screams of warning through him. "How's Vicky?"

"Sleeping."

"Sleeping?" Vicky is not a napper. "Is she sick?"

"Not anymore. She's at peace."

"Christ, Gia, what are you saying? Don't tell me you—"

"I didn't have enough sleeping pills for both of us, so I gave them all to her. Soon she'll be safe."

"No!"

"And I've got one of your guns for me, but I didn't want to use it until I called you to say good-bye—"

The phone slips from Jack's fingers and he's dashing for the door, bursting onto the sidewalk, and sprinting east when he glances up and skids to a halt at the sight of a giant face staring down at him. It's the Russian lady but she's grown to Godzilla proportions.

"NOW DO YOU SEE?" she cries, her booming voice echoing off the buildings. "NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND? THIS WILL BE IF YOU DO NOT STOP VIRUS NOW!"

What does it mean? That this is all a dream? No. Much as Jack wishes it were true, he knows it's not. This is too real.

Averting his face from her giant, blazing eyes, he starts ru