Free Hour 23 by Robert Barnard Page A

receipts, and chewing gum wrappers. Her stomach sank when she finally came across her license. It had been three years since Dana finished graduate school and moved to East Violet, and she never bothered to update the address on her license. She plucked the license out of her clutch and handed it to the officer anyway.
    “This here says Albany. You know you’re in East Violet, right?”
    “Of course, officer, it’s just that—”
    “This is no good, I can’t let you through with this.”
    “Can you please let me explain?” Dana asked.
    The officer gave a silent nod.
    “I live in the Raintree Village complex on Oak. Number 505. I teach English at Henderson High. Where the bus accident is? You must know about it. I raced over there this morning and there’s a roadblock at the school, too. The officer there would not let me into work, and instructed me to go home—which is this way. I just want to get home.”
    “Is that so?” the officer said, before grunting. He turned his head to the side and launched a hocked up piece of phlegm, or chewing tobacco. Dana couldn’t tell which. “How long has it been since you moved here from Albany?”
    Dana looked perplexed. “What does that have to do with anything ?” she asked. She was livid.
    “Just answer the question, ma’am.”
    “Two years. Maybe three, next summer.”
    “Mhm,” the officer said. “You know that, in the state of New York, you’ve got ten days after moving to notify the DMV of an address change?”
    Dana was losing all of her patience. “Are you really lecturing me on this right now? What on earth is going on in town? What is happening, why can’t I go home?”
    “Miss, I’m not trying to be an asshole about this,” the officer said. “I’m really not. But, I’ve got strict orders—no one in, no one out. There’s been some trouble in town, as I’m sure you’re aware of, and we’ve been instructed to put a citywide quarantine into effect.”
    “Quarantine?”
    The officer nodded. “Do you have any family you can stay with?”
    “Not nearby,” Dana said. “There’s, like, fifty of you standing around the road here. Can’t one of you escort me home? I can show you a copy of my lease or something. I can show you the key to my front door!”
    The officer shook his head. “I can’t. If you want to wait, I can have one of my men bring you down to the station in a bit. We can run your finger prints, make sure you are who you say you are—”
    “Run my fingerprints?” Dana was seething. She started to drum her fingers on her steering wheel in a frenzied beat.
    “Ma’am,” the officer said with a chuckle, “by your own admission, you don’t have valid identification.”
    “Valid identification,” Dana muttered, and she shifted her car into reverse. “Un-fucking-believable.”
    The cop put his hand on his hip. “I don’t have time for this shit, lady. Are we going to have a problem here?”
    “No problem at all,” Dana said, flooring the accelerator. “Pig.”
    “Hey,” the officer hollered, and he stomped towards her car. Dana had already spun around and pointed the vehicle once again towards Henderson High. She watched the officer wave his hands in frustration from her rearview mirror, then zoomed off.
     
    Dana made it as far as the Xtra Mart gas station before she had to pull over to regain her composure. She pulled into a parking spot in front of the shop and put her head and hands on the steering wheel. The thought of driving out to Albany crossed her mind. She could stay with her mom until all of this—whatever “this” was—blew over. That thought was quickly replaced by an image of Elliott alone in her apartment. It was easy to imagine him scared, hungry, and making a mess of her carpets. Maybe she could call her neighbor, Shelby, and ask her to check up on the pup. But that thought wasn’t comforting, either. It was more than just missing Elliott. Dana wanted to be home.
    It was then that Dana noticed