The Book of M. Peng Shepherd

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      Naz dumped everything in her pantry, everything in the top drawer of her dresser, her toiletries, and her bow and quiver into a duffel bag.

      “Do you see anyone? Are you there yet?” her mother asked.

      “Please stop talking,” Naz begged. She’d put the Bluetooth earpiece in her ear and clipped the phone to her belt holster so her mother could stay with her as she sprinted down every side street she could find to reach the studio. The intersection ahead exploded in a hail of bullets. Naz threw herself to the ground, flat against the sidewalk behind a battered parked car. Ahead, a person fell, and someone whooped, as if it was a game. More bodies came sprinting down the street, just on the other side of the car. They moved too fast for her to see if they had shadows or not.

      “Then you talk,” she said. “Please!”

      “A roadblock or a riot, I think,” Naz tried. “Maman, I have to—they’ll hear me.”

      Naz went around. It was the same on the next street. Someone had either shot out the streetlamps or the power grid was starting to fail. All she could see in the glow of the red traffic lights were things running, whipping past each other. Two crashed—a shattering of glass or something. Men screamed.

      “Police!” the police shouted. Sirens burst to life, and a white car materialized out of the night. The mob attacked the car. Then another mob attacked the mob attacking the car, swinging metal baseball bats.

      “Fuck,” Naz gasped.

      “Mahnaz? Are you there?” her mother cried.

      “Maman, shut up!”

      “Okay,” she said more quietly. “I have a map, the tourist map you sent me when you first went. The only neighborhood I haven’t seen on the internet news yet is Dudley Square. This is on the way to the studio? Can you go through there?”

      Naz cinched her bag tighter across her chest. “Okay,” she said. “But no more talking.”

      DUDLEY SQUARE WAS QUIETER, BUT IN A TERRIFYING WAY. THE lights were all out, even in the houses. Naz could see people in their windows by the light reflecting off their eyes from emergency candles. Her legs were so weak the muscles burned cold as she tried to move them, but she kept running. She was too afraid to walk. Please don’t shoot me, she thought. Please see there’s still a little dark thing on the sidewalk following me.

      When she reached the parking lot of the warehouse, there was a single car there, parked in the exact center of the lot. Naz crouched in the hedges at the edge of the property, staring. Was someone inside? Or were they in the building? Would they kill her? Did they have a shadow? The last question sounded so fantastical, so unnatural and horrifying, that she almost giggled hysterically. Her mother waited, breathless. It took Naz fifteen minutes to work up the courage to approach the car, bow drawn. She couldn’t tell until she was right up against the driver’s window that it was completely burned out, to cinders, with only a skeleton at the wheel.

      She used her copy of her perhaps-boyfriend’s key and climbed the stairs to the third floor in pitch-blackness.

      “Are you there yet?”

      “Yes,” Naz panted as she reached the landing. She pushed the door open. Across the gray industrial carpet, she could make out the dim outline of his band’s door, their handwritten name still taped to it. She’d made it. She’d survived the trip.

      She ducked back into the stairwell and vomited everywhere.

      HER MOTHER STAYED ON THE PHONE WITH NAZ UNTIL SHE fell asleep sometime just before dawn. Her mother knew the boy wasn’t there, but Naz didn’t mention him, and she didn’t ask more. Naz was just happy there was someone with her. Well, sort of with her.

      When she woke up, the phone was dead. She uncurled from the floor behind the huge speakers and tried to sit up. Everything ached. It felt like she’d pulled every muscle in her body the night before trying to run there. Maybe she had.

      She crawled over to the wall and plugged her charger into the outlet. When the phone came back to life a few minutes later, there were forty-two messages.

      Are you all right?

      Can you see the news from where you are?

      Text me back if you’re okay.

      They’re saying on the news that the quarantine is going to continue.

      Just let me know you’re still okay.

      Call me!!!

      “I’m okay,” Naz said, but gently, when she picked up.

      Her mother stayed on the line with Naz again for the rest of the day. And the day after that. She never heard from her perhaps-boyfriend. Maybe he’d called his mother, too. Maybe he lost his shadow as soon as it hit Boston. It didn’t really matter. She never called him either, in the end.

      The day after that, her sister, Rojan, was on the line as well, both she and her mother crouched over her mother’s mobile phone placed faceup on the kitchen table, shouting slowly and loudly so Naz could understand them. Naz broke down sobbing when she first heard Rojan’s voice. She’d left Tehran University as soon as she could put all her research on hold, and took the first bus to their mother’s home.

      “What about your studies?” Naz had asked her.

      “Fuck my studies,” Rojan said, to which her mother clucked her tongue, but for once didn’t admonish her daughter for cursing. “Just deal with the fact that you need us, for once.”

      Naz slowly explored the rest of the warehouse to make sure no one else was inside. Her mother ordered her to raid the staff refrigerator on every floor and eat everything in there first, and save her packed nonperishables. For breakfast, Naz had birthday cake, egg salad, and pickles. Rojan told her to turn on the laptop she found on top of the drum case, but its battery was dead and the charger was nowhere to be found, so her mother and sister relayed updates to her from the news on their television set instead. Cases had now been spotted in Wyoming, New Hampshire, California, and the D.C. area. Planes had been grounded, interstates closed. Some cities were practically under martial law. Sometimes the three of them didn’t say anything at all. They just stayed on the line together. Every four hours, Naz went back to the wall outlet and lay on the floor while her phone was plugged in, to charge it back up before the call cut out.

      “Where exactly is this studio?” Rojan kept asking her. “How do you spell Dorchester Street?” She became obsessive about it, about being able to pinpoint Naz’s exact location. “What does the building look like? How many stories? What shape? What color is the outside?” She asked so many questions that their mother finally shouted at her to get her maps and pens out of the way or she was going to throw them all in the trash, and started knocking what sounded like stacks of paper off the table as they argued.

      “I know what you’re doing. Don’t try to come here,” Naz whispered into the phone to Rojan late that night, after their mother had fallen asleep.

      “I won’t,” Rojan replied.

      “I mean it. Don’t try to find me. It won’t help anything.”

      “I won’t,” Rojan repeated, but Naz knew she was lying.

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