The End Has Come

First the sniffles, and then a mild cough, the sort of thing that wasn’t enough for most people to justify staying home from work or keeping the kids out of school. From there, it developed into severe congestion, breathing difficulties, and finally, a cascade of third-stage symptoms that seemed to come without warning, sometimes developing over the course of an afternoon. Bronchial inflammation, rash, fever, all building to internal hemorrhaging and multiple organ failure. Most people who got sick were dead inside of a week, and most people got sick. There were no final statistics published on this epidemic, but if Amy had been asked to guess, she would have said that nine out of every ten people caught the H13N3 flu. And of those nine, at least eight died, leaving two out of every ten people still standing — and one out of every two people weak, sick, and shaky.

It was no wonder things had collapsed as fast as they did. People who were on vacation died in unfamiliar hotel rooms and hospital beds, wondering how things had gone so very wrong. Others staggered their unsteady ways to the places where they remembered being happy. Amy would always remember the last guest to walk up to the gates of Disneyland. He was a little man, old enough to have been coming to the Park since it first opened, and his nose wouldn’t stop running.

She’d been standing on the train tracks above Town Square with a telescope stolen from Walt’s apartment, watching the plaza for signs of movement, when he’d come shuffling into view. She was at the gate to meet him by the time he arrived. It had been two days since she had shown up for her shift in Guest Relations. She hadn’t left the Park since then. None of the Cast Members who had been well enough to come to work had gone any further than the plaza.

“Hello, miss,” he’d said, voice thick with phlegm. “I know it’s irregular, but I couldn’t find my Annual Pass this morning. The wife, she always has them with her. Is there any way . . . is there any way you could see fit to let me come inside?”

“Welcome home,” she’d replied, and unlocked the gate for him. He hadn’t tried to touch her as he shuffled past her into the Park, and she’d been grateful.

His body had been found on a bench in New Orleans Square about six hours later. The Cast Member who found him said that he looked peaceful. It only bothered Amy a little that she’d never learned his name.

* * *

“What do you mean, we can’t fix it?”

“I mean, we can’t fix it.” The chief engineer was a patient man — he had to be, when everyone on his work detail was untrained. He had two mechanics and one Imagineer, but Clover spent most of her time being hauled off to fix malfunctioning animatronics, and that left him with his makeshift crew of car-jockeys and well-meaning custodial staffers. “The piston’s shot. We’d need a whole new engine if we wanted to get number three up and running again, and at that point, we might as well wish for a whole new generator, because we’re not going to find it.”

“There has to be something we can do.” Amy forced her hands to stay down by her sides, fighting the urge to clasp them together and beg. “We’ve lost power to Town Square. Half of Main Street is running on emergency backup. And the Castle —”

“Mayor, I don’t know how many ways I can say this. The generator is dead. The engine is fried. We’ve been pushing them way too hard. These were meant to cover for rolling blackouts, not supply power to the whole complex.” The chief engineer shook his head. “Maybe if we shut down Tomorrowland, we can shift some of the load between the generators we still have. That could keep us up and running for another month. Two if we’re careful, and if we stop running the dark rides.”

Amy stiffened. “You’re talking about the Mansion.”

“I am. The air conditioning alone —”

“You have to understand why we can’t turn off the air conditioning inside the Mansion.” The idea was enough to make Amy’s flesh crawl. If the Mansion stopped . . .

“It’s July, Mayor. The hottest month of the year, and you’re turning one dark ride into an icebox. Now, I know you’ve got your reasons, but the fact remains, we don’t have the power.”

Amy paused. “Look — Anthony, wasn’t it? Have you been inside the Mansion recently?”

“I don’t like closed spaces.”

“I thought it might be something like that.” She looked away, toward the back lot buildings that the guests were never meant to see, all of them painted that same bland shade of go-away green. A few seconds passed before she looked back to him, eyes hardened with resolve. “I want you to go ride the Haunted Mansion. If you come out the other end and agree that we don’t need to run the air conditioning anymore, then fine, I’ll listen to you. But if you change your mind, we’re going to need to find another way. Do we have a deal?”

Anthony frowned. “You know, I never quite understood how you wound up in charge.”