Authors: Wil Mara
“They’re in dreamland?” she asked.
“Out like lights.”
“Good.”
“It’s amazing—they’re only seven and five, yet they both snore like bears.”
“Uh-huh.”
He got down beside her and arranged himself in the same position. “I was prepared to read two stories each, but I didn’t even finish one.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah.” He laughed humorlessly and shook his head.
“What’s funny?”
“A ‘long day.’ It just sounds ridiculous. A long day here at our cabin, like we’re early American settlers or something.”
“Well, we did do a lot. I felt like
I
got things accomplished, anyway. I don’t know about you.”
“I did, I did.”
“I had four phone interviews, sent out two emails making job offers, and got the payroll done. And all from my remote office here in the Hundred Acre Wood. Thank god for laptops.”
“Is anyone even at the plant right now?”
“A couple of people. They don’t stay long, though. The CEO doesn’t want them there until this thing goes away. They’re only doing what they have to do, no more.”
The CEO of Andi’s company was a fifty-three-year-old native of Denmark, where the company was headquartered. In the six years she’d been there, she was frequently startled by the degree of humanity he and the other executives displayed. It was a radical shift from the soulless band of savages who ran her last company—based in Texas—and masterfully guided it into insolvency.
“And everyone’s still getting paid,” Dennis said.
“That’s right.”
“Eddie just sent an email saying we wouldn’t be given more than two weeks. After that, we had to start using our personal, sick, and vacation time.”
Eddie Wells was Dennis’s departmental supervisor. Forty-one and already divorced three times, he had four kids, crushing alimony and child-support payments, and—Dennis was fairly sure—a cocaine habit that he supported through casual dealing on the weekends. How the guy wasn’t dead yet, either by his own hand, a drug contact, or one of the countless underlings who hated his guts, was a mystery.
“He’s a piece of work,” Andi said.
“He’s a piece of something.”
She giggled—a sound Dennis hadn’t heard in what seemed like an eternity. Then she set her head on his shoulder, something else she hadn’t done in forever. He caught the floral scent of her shampoo.
She let out a long sigh. “When do you think we’ll be able to leave?” she asked. A few cicadas had begun chirring in the tall grass along the edge of the forest.
“I wouldn’t even want to guess. A few weeks, maybe?”
“God, I hope it doesn’t take that long.”
“Me neither. Then again, I’m not in any rush to leave.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t want to go back until we’re absolutely certain the virus has been run out of town.”
“I agree with that.”
“I wonder if that’s why Josiah wasn’t there. Maybe he heard about people coming up here, and he left.”
“Maybe.”
His cabin had been locked tight, and there was no note on the door or any other indication of his present whereabouts.
“Just before I shut the laptop, I did a Google search to see if there were any new cases in Carlton,” Dennis said.
“And?”
“Yeah, plenty. One even had a YouTube video someone took with their cell phone. A biohazard team was carrying the victim out in a black body bag.”
“Anyone we know?” She didn’t really want to ask but couldn’t help it.
“No. It was a retired man who lived by himself in that development over by the dam.”
The dam was on the lowland side of town, the first area of Carlton settled in the mid-1700s, and was favored by the sixty-and-older crowd. Dennis and Andi had never spent any time there.
“But the report said he killed himself. They found empty bottles of both Jim Beam and Clorox bleach by his body.”
“My God.”
“And a brush, too.”
“A brush?”
“A steel-bristled barbecue brush. Apparently he was using it to—”
“No—”
“—scratch off the blisters. I guess the itching was so bad, it drove him out of his mind.”
Andi slowly shook her head. And although she was shocked by what she’d just heard, it was shock of a much milder wattage than it should have been. So many similar stories, so much suffering. Was she becoming desensitized? Any one of these reports would’ve sent her into a mild depression a week ago. Now it felt like each one was bouncing off her like tiny hailstones.
“The scariest part is that it could’ve just as easily been us,” Dennis said. “
We
could’ve been the ones with the infection so deep, it would’ve made sense to use a wire brush.”
“Yeah.”
“What must that be like, to be pushed to the point where you think that way?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“Me neither. That’s why I say, no rush to leave here.”
“No, no rush.”
“I mean, I know the kids don’t like being pulled out of their routine.”
“No, they don’t. All that school they’re missing.”
“Yeah. Well, at least they’re doing some homework.”
Which was true—the teachers had been trying their best to compensate for the educational blackout by posting lessons and homework online. Andi, who had seriously considered a career in teaching, enjoyed indulging this unfulfilled ambition. Classes were from eleven until two each day, with a half-hour break for lunch. Dennis, who handled the tech stuff on the computer, came up with the idea of taking pictures of their homework assignments with the digital camera and emailing them.
“But it’s not the same,” Andi said.
“I know.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “This is craziness.”
“It sure as hell is.”
“We’re in the middle of the woods, for Pete’s sake.”
“But we’re safe.”
“Yeah.”
Neither one said a word for the next ten minutes. At one point, Dennis thought Andi had fallen asleep. Then she started softly humming the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There,” a song her parents had taught her as a child.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Dennis said.
“What?”
“The night of our first official date. Remember? After dinner we went to Indian Hill Park?”
Andi lifted her head—to Dennis’s disappointment—and appraised her surroundings more carefully. “Yeah, a little bit. You mean the moonglow and the woody smell in the air?”
“Absolutely. Sitting on the swings?”
“Yeah.”
He grinned. “You were hot that night, baby. Smokin’.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself, except for that ridiculous cologne.”
He laughed. “The stuff I bought from JCPenney? It smelled great in the store.”
“Not so much on you, though.”
“No, not so much.”
“Not exactly a good mix with your body chemistry.”
Dennis turned and studied her for a long moment, taking in the delicate outline of her face and the pleasant curvature below it. He had told her a thousand times how beautiful she was. He knew she didn’t believe him, but it had always been an honest assessment.
When Andi sensed what he was doing, she didn’t return the look but merely raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”
“How about you? Do
you
think you’d mix well with my body chemistry?”
Now she did turn. “I think maybe we should find out.”
“I think so, too.”
The moon continued its slow glide across the pale night sky, a witness to the many agreeable things they did next.
NINE
The top to the convertible was up now; Beck had done it the day before. Top up, windows shut, vents closed. The car was sealed like a Tupperware container. This was every epidemiologist’s nightmare—to be afraid of oxygen. If you were afraid of the water, you didn’t have to swim. If you were afraid of wild animals, you didn’t go into the woods. But how did you get away from air?
He drove slowly through Allendale on the way to another interview. An upscale, respectable town. There was a bistro, a bagel shop, a florist, a day spa.… The sign for the
Town Journal
bore the motto
YOUR HOMETOWN NEWSPAPER
. The Dairy Queen was a hangout for local teens, no doubt. And the Dog Boutique offered a special price on nail clipping,
NO APPOINTMENT NEEDED.
But there was no life here. He came to a stop with the motor still chugging. He didn’t bother to check the rearview mirror; no one was back there. The potted trees on the sidewalks were nodding in the wind, which was potentially deadly under the circumstances. A Burger King bag rolled and tumbled across the road and out of sight. One of the windows at Kammen’s Jewelers had been smashed in, the alarm still going. A few doors down, a child’s bicycle lay on its side. The pavement had been decorated—most likely by the bicycle’s owner—in pastel colors. Beck couldn’t make out what the pictures were, but the plastic tub of chubby chalk was still there.
He’d seen enough after a few minutes and started moving again. He passed out of Allendale’s business district and into the residential area. A spray-painted sign on the side of the road read,
THIS IS OUR PUNISHMENT FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ
. A little ways down, a Dodge pickup had been driven into someone’s front porch. Both doors were left open as the interior light slowly drained the battery. Just beyond that was Lyons Funeral Home. The lawn still looked as though it’d been cut with a pair of cuticle scissors, and there were several cars parked in the small back lot, so business appeared to be good. It reminded Beck of the conversation he’d had with Gillette the day before about how the corpses were piling up in local morgues, and what was being done with them. The state had ordered a minimum one-day postmortem hold before any family representatives could come and claim them. This was due to the rough determination that the virus lost its virulency in a body that had been dead for twenty-four hours. The rate of cremations versus burials had skyrocketed, had in fact become exclusive in almost all cases. In the rare event of a memorial service where the deceased was present, the bodies were rarely displayed. Beck had no trouble understanding this, as he doubted there were many people who wanted to see their beloved Aunt Martha for the last time after she’d had a fifteen-round bout with this particular contagion.
His mind turned back to the radio, which had been on for a while. He wasn’t even sure which station, but it almost didn’t matter—they were all broadcasting updates around the clock now. It reminded him of 9/11, when nearly every cable television channel in the area temporarily turned into a news network.
There was an up-to-the-minute estimate of 1,500 dead and at least another 3,000 infected. The illness had spread to nine states now, and President Obama finally ordered travel restrictions throughout the Northeast. Panic was widespread, bordering on hysteria. The media was doing a splendid job of scaring the daylights out of everyone, and Beck wondered what they’d say if they knew the full truth. The death toll was more in the area of 2,100, with at least 4,400 more acting as carriers—at least temporarily.
The virus also continued to be a problem for law enforcement. Police originally utilized the rubber-gloves-and-surgical-masks that had become standard gear for most everyone else, but the death toll among their ranks continued to rise. Every organization from the Fraternal Order of Police to the International Union of Police Associations cried foul, and many local unions ordered that their members answer no more outbreak-related calls unless given more appropriate protection. That led to the issuance of thousands of “escape hoods”—baggy head covering that makes the wearer look like a character in a sci-fi movie—with integrated air purifiers, either passive or active depending on each town’s financial agility. These did reduce the number of fatalities, but not appreciably. A call to an infected site was still considered a date with death, and many towns simply stopped sending their officers into certain areas. Predictably, widespread looting became commonplace in these sectors, the thieves making the irrational decision to risk their lives by entering the homes of deceased residents in order to get their hands on one more diamond ring, flat-screen television, or whatever. Authorities reported the virus in twelve states for sure, and that number would likely double in the next few weeks, travel restrictions notwithstanding, if a vaccine wasn’t discovered soon.
Sheila Abbott was in the hot seat. She was being assaulted by reporters day and night, and everyone from the president to countless spotlight-starved senators and congressmen were publicly demanding answers. She still managed to call both Beck and Gillette for updates every few hours, and she sounded reasonably sane on the surface. But Beck had known her too long, knew the strain was getting to her. He didn’t talk about the media aspect of it, focused only on the matter at hand. Once, while discussing the frustratingly slow progress of the vaccine development, Abbott snapped and called Cara Porter, “that worthless assistant of yours.” Beck, sitting stunned in his hotel room, offered no response, and the silence on the phone seemed to stretch on forever. Then Abbott apologized profusely.
Thinking of Porter at that moment, he put in his earpiece and gave her a call.
“What do you want?”
“Just to bother you,” Beck said with a grin.
“Naturally. How are things going out there?”
“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired in my life. I’ve now conducted over a hundred and twenty interviews, resulting in more data than I think I’ve ever collected. Even with the other people in the field that Sheila hired to help collect samples and information for me, I’m still overwhelmed. Yet I don’t feel any closer to finding answers.”
“The frustration’s running fairly high here at the lab, too.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re trying different things, but we’re not getting anywhere. The virus’s resistance to the antivirals we’ve fired at it so far is discouraging.”
“Did you hear the name?”
“Name?”
“The name the press came up with?”
“No.”
“They’re calling it the ‘Gemini virus.’”
“That sounds appropriately dramatic.”