Salvation City - By Sigrid Nunez Page 0,10

every time.

Ms. Mark had a deep, throaty voice and a distinct bulge in her neck, which had inspired the rumor that she had been born (a hundred years ago) male. She had gone into full-frontal freak when she discovered (and she must have been the last person on earth) what it meant when kids—boys—called a girl a PB.

Beautiful, wicked-hot girls were apocalyptic. At the other end were the ones known as partial births.

“I know most of you probably don’t even know what those words mean.”

Was she kidding?

They were supposed to go to the library instead of just searching the Internet, but Cole knew this was plain dumb.

“W.H.O. Officials Call Pandemic ‘Inevitable.’”

“Study Shows U.S. Ill-Equipped for Major Pandemic.”

“Dysfunctional Health Care System Would Doom Millions, Doctors Say.”

“A Catastrophe Worse Than Hurricane Katrina, Some Experts Fear.”

Cole clicked and clicked. There were thousands of articles, more than anyone could ever read. Cole was surprised so many of them were from long ago, way back before 2000. Had his parents read any of them? He supposed they must have, but he couldn’t remember them ever talking about a pandemic. It was not on the list of things they were always worried about, like identity theft or climate change or how they were going to pay for his education.

The diseases his parents worried about were cancer (his mother’s big fear; both her parents had died of it) and Alzheimer’s (his father’s father had it).

“New Flu Strain Similar to Deadly 1918 Flu, Study Says.”

“Mom! Dad!”

They stood on either side of his chair and stared at his laptop screen.

“Oh dear,” said his father, though his tone was more like “ho-hum.” “Not this again. I know it sounds bad, Cole, but I wouldn’t get too excited. We go through one of these scares every couple of years. But remember, we’re not living in 1918. We’ve got resources people didn’t have back then.”

“Yeah, and we’ve also got a lot more crowding, Dad. And people traveling a lot more and coming in contact with each other all over the world. It says here an epidemic today would probably be a lot worse than it was back then.”

Cole sensed, rather than saw, his parents exchange a look above his head.

“So maybe you’ll be the one who grows up to be the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who develops the vaccine that saves us all,” his mother said.

He hated when his mother said things like that. He hated science.

He felt a surge of anger, mostly at himself. He should never have called them.

“Anyway,” his mother said, mussing his hair with one hand while covering a yawn with the other, “I’d rather die of the flu than some other ways I can think of.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cole said, ducking away from her hand.

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess just that I’d rather be killed by Nature than by some suicide bomber.”

His father groaned, and his mother swatted his arm and said, “You know what I mean! And at least there’d be time to say good-bye.”

“Okay, that’s enough morbidity for me,” said his father. “I’m going to bed. And that’s what I think you should do, too, kiddo. And remember what we said about spending so much time online.”

His parents were on a new kick: reforming their electronic habits. Rule number one: no more idle Web browsing. They were weaning themselves off YouTube and watching less TV, avoiding completely the 24/7 news channels. They had given up social networking, were down to dealing with e-mail just three times a day, and though a mobile phone was hard not to think of as a necessity, they were experimenting with leaving theirs off for longer and longer periods of time. They had also started carrying earplugs with them, popping them in for protection against public noise or ubiquitous indoor music. Sometimes they even wore earplugs at home so they could focus better on work or reading. And they had another new rule: no more multitasking. None of this was easy—there was a lot of backsliding—but they were convinced that their former ways had been damaging their intellects and powers of concentration. Many experts thought they were right. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if Cole’s generation could learn from their generation’s mistakes? At the very least, they wanted him to limit his time online to two or three hours a day.

But Cole stayed up late that night, skimming more articles (including one called “Mother Nature Is the Worst Terrorist”), then lying in bed, listening to some music he’d