Chapter 4

METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Infection Date 10, 1400 GMT (10:00 a.m. Local)

“Stay over there,” commanded Noah Miller’s little sister, Isabel.

Noah lowered arms raised for a hug. On short notice, he’d taken the morning off from his busy job at a D.C. law firm and driven to Baltimore for this clandestine rendezvous. Isabel slouched beside a newspaper on a bench ten yards away. Noah grew alert, but didn’t know why. A multistory pagoda rose incongruously in the park near where Emma worked. Children squealed on a playground. All seemed normal, so he sat on the adjacent bench.

“What brings you back East, Iz?” he asked, on guard given the odd greeting. Her twin sister, Emma, had acted the same way once after a mission to an Ebola-infected hotspot. With their parents gone, Noah felt responsible for the twins. He worried about the risks epidemiologists took but didn’t think neuroscientists like Isabel studied infectious things.

“We don’t have much time,” she said. “I’ve passed all the checks, but just in case.”

“What checks?” She looked upset. “Just in case what? Izzy, what the fuck?”

She seemed to cave in on herself. But under slumped shoulders, she stared straight at Noah. “You, the children, Natalie even, you’re all I’ve got.” She wiped away tears.

“And . . . and we’re here for you, Izzy. But,” he forced a laugh, “what’s goin’ on?”

“There’s been an outbreak. In Siberia.” Isabel spoke rapidly about some ancient microorganism, frozen in permafrost, spreading out of control. She drooped, so unlike his usually upbeat, energetic sister. “It’s gonna sweep through the human population, Noah.”

“A pandemic?” Noah used a name for a fear long ago digested.

“That word doesn’t even come close to describing what’s coming. It may be . . . the end.” His snort derived from nerves more than humor. “Emmy caught it.”

“What? Jesus Christ! Is she alright?”

“No, Noah, she’s not!” Isabel wiped away another tear. Instinctively, Noah rose, but Isabel held up her hand and shook her head. He sat again. “She’s alive. Sort of.”

He instantly bristled. “What the hell does that mean? ‘Sort of’?”

“She’s . . . changed. Different. She’s ‘turned.’”

“Turned? Into what?”

“I don’t know!” Isabel wept. “She’s weird, Noah. Scary. Like, dangerous scary.”

“Calm down. Calm down. Where is she?”

“At an NIH lab in Bethesda. I went to get her in Siberia. Noah, you’ve got to start getting ready, today, for what’s coming. They’re gonna suppress the news. That’s why I had you come all the way out to Baltimore. If they come ask about a leak, tell them we had a big fight at Thanksgiving, about me wasting my womb, and haven’t spoken since.”

“All I said was you’d make a good mother!” But that wasn’t what had upset her. What had sounded ridiculous. Emma getting sick must really have rocked Isabel even though his sisters, despite being identical twins, were so different that they had never been that close. In a calm voice, he said, “Isabel, I’m sorry, I really am. But . . .”

“No!” she said with surprising venom. “No more ‘sorry’ shit! Man the fuck up, Noah! It’s gonna infect almost everyone on Earth. If you’re gonna avoid infection and survive the chaos, you’ve gotta be strong.” Isabel, looking around, paranoid, summarized the dread disease from popped pupils to brain damage. His sisters normally outdid each other in giving long, clinical answers. As if science, sprinkled with Latin, was their secret twins’ language. But now, Isabel described in plain language the effects of the horrible scourge.

“She needs to be in a hospital,” Noah said. “A real hospital, not a lab.”

“She’s contagious. And she may be violent.”

“Violent?” Noah responded. “Emma? That’s crazy! I wanta see her.”

“You’re not even supposed to know any of this. They could throw me in jail!”

“Let me worry about the legal side of things,” Noah said.

“Stop playing fucking lawyer! This is serious! On the ride back from the airbase, I heard snippets of whispered conversation by this White House aide with her husband. It sounded like . . . like the end of the world, Noah!”

He turned away so Isabel couldn’t see his skeptical expression. But Isabel’s paranoia got the better of him. Children on the playground were being monitored by segregated groups of moms and nannies. A jogger passed. A black sedan in the parking lot stood out among the station wagons and Volvos.

“You need to survive, Noah. Don’t get infected. Don’t get killed. Get yourself ready, big brother. You’ve got four other people to keep alive.”

“That’s . . . !” He recoiled, incensed that such an obligation would be forced on him, and scoffed. “That’s a tad dramatic, don’t ya think, Isabel?”

“Some survivors are homicidal maniacs. Marines shot one who attacked me in Russia. That’s what’s coming! This?” The carousel spun. A guy threw a Frisbee to his dog. “This is over. In a month or two, maybe less, nothing will ever be the same.”

This was preposterous. “And it’s five,” Noah said, “counting Emmy.” Isabel hesitated. “Natalie, Chloe, Jacob, you, and Emma. Five.” Still nothing. “Right?”

She finally said, “Yes! Of course. Five. It’s just . . . She’s changed, Noah. And even she sees what’s coming and said to get ready. This may be . . . the apocalypse.”

Noah felt obliged to protect his sisters. But she was asking him to transform himself in that one instant, based on a crazy story, from housebroken husband into club-wielding caveman. “So, Emma said I should go out and buy . . . what? Tents, candles, ponchos?”

“Guns, Noah. And lots and lots of ammunition. I had a long flight back to think about it. You don’t want to have food, supplies, and medicine, but no guns to protect them.”

Noah snorted. “Well hell, Isabel. If you’ve got guns, you can just take all the rest.”

Iz screwed up her face. “Jesus, Noah. That’s pretty Lord of the Flies.”

She was right. Enough of this. “Okay.” Noah stood. “I have to get back to work.”

“Fuck your job, Noah!” Isabel rose too. “And your mortgage, your 401K, your college funds. Do you not get it? None of that matters anymore!”

“This disease is in Siberia, right?” It was Noah’s turn for outrage. “And you want me to quit my job and start buying end-of-the-world shit?”

Isabel charged Noah so aggressively he thought she might slap him. But she pulled up short and tossed the newspaper she had brought to the sidewalk, then retreated from it.

He hesitated before reaching for the paper. “Wouldn’t I catch it if I . . . ?”

“Just pick it up!” Isabel snapped. The Washington Post was folded open, the headline reading: Unrest Spreads in Russian Far East. “Ever heard of unrest spreading, mister poli-sci major?”

Noah frowned. Neither of his scientist sisters had ever shown any respect for his prelaw college major. “Unrest can spread. Campus-to-campus. Anti-government . . .”

“You know what else spreads, Noah?” Isabel interrupted. “Read that article. They’ve lost all contact with the town where it broke out. No phone, TV, radio, Internet. And that woman who works at the White House told me that Russian troops went through the Khabarovsk airport where I picked Emma up and killed everyone. Everyone. Passengers and airport workers. But guess what? Some private stole tablets, phones, and shit off the dead and gave them to his girlfriend in return for a screw. She then crossed the Amur River into northern China, sold everything, and had sex with customers all night at the club where she strips . . . while wearing sunglasses!” Noah didn’t get it. “Her pupils were popped! It’s in China, Noah! China! I’m counting on you to keep us alive. Fair warning. Unfair warning, ‘cause nobody else knows!” Isabel looked stricken.

“Izzy, you’ve got me. And Natalie.” Isabel rolled her eyes. “And the kids.”

“Are you sure Natalie will be okay with me coming along for Armageddon?”

Natalie blamed Isabel for ruining their early married life. Two- and foursomes had become three- and fivesomes. Vacations to romantic beaches became aloe rubs on Izzy’s frequent sunburns. But Noah had grown closer to Izzy during those three summers and the holidays since. And Natalie had finally simply accepted that, unless Isabel found a husband, she was their third child. “Iz, you’re serious? This is really, really happening?”

“Jesus, yes, Noah!”

“The world is coming to an end?”

“Noah!” She was crying. “Please, please, please believe me!” She told him about meeting with the National Security Council in some underground White House bunker.

“The Situation Room?” he asked. She shrugged. “Okay, okay. I’ll get ready. I’ll . . . buy everything. But if this thing gets here,” to cut off her objection, he quickly amended, “when it gets here, we meet up and we go. You go. With us. That’s my offer. We’re a family and we stick together.”

“If I can get free of my job,” she replied meekly. “It’s kind of . . . important.”

“Isabel, you drop everything and come to us. Promise? You’ve got to promise, or deal’s off. Say it.”

“All right! I promise. I’ll come running back. Of course.” It sounded less a pledge than acknowledgment of some personal failing. But Noah let it pass. “I love you, Noah,” she said before departing for the parking lot, looking all around, crying.

Noah ignored the whispering, glaring moms, presumably convinced he’d just dumped his girlfriend, and read the article. The fighting wasn’t political, ideological, religious or ethnic. There was “rumored hysteria by troops terrified of some unknown disease.” Civilians were seeking refuge at overcrowded army bases. At army bases?

He headed back into D.C. while scanning satellite radio. CNN covered a missing airliner off India. Fox News reported strife after a police shooting in Chicago. On BBC World, however, a journalist briefly in contact with a blogger in Khabarovsk reported a twenty-four-hour curfew, army units shooting violators, and bodies being burned in pyres.

Noah still couldn’t believe it. But what if it were true? A disease that turns people violent. How could he protect his family from some real-life horror movie?

“The blogger reported,” said the British-accented news reader, “that Russian troops had lost all control and had fired indiscriminately into crowds of people for no apparent reason. Casualties are reported to number in the hundreds, if not much higher. All contact with Khabarovsk has since been severed by Russian authorities.”

Noah saw in the rearview mirror a sedan with heavily tinted windows. But when he adjusted the mirror to read its license plate, it turned onto a side street. False alarm.

“What are you doing home?” Natalie asked as Noah entered the kitchen. She wore a short tennis dress. Her lean arms and tanned legs were on full display. “You didn’t get fired, did you?” She was sort of kidding, sort of making sure.

“I went to meet Izzy, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. So, when is she moving back in with us?” Noah was still plotting his answer when Natalie said, “Did you ask if she has a boyfriend yet? Because, ya know, if she never hooks up with a guy, or a girl, we’re all she has.” Noah opened his mouth to tell her about the impending global apocalypse but hesitated. “And she made you drive all the way to freaking Baltimore, on a workday?”

“Listen, . . .” Noah began.

“Okay, but only for a sec. I can’t just jump into a match without stretching. Jonas said my hamstrings are tight as piano wire.” Noah needed to go slow with Natalie. He didn’t even know if he believed Isabel. “I see the face you’re making, Noah. But he’s the best trainer in D.C. They call him the Butt Whisperer.” She slapped her trim backside. “And he agreed to come all the way out here when we left Georgetown.”

If this really were happening, how could he protect Natalie and their beautiful teenage daughter? Chloe had followed in her mother’s footsteps and under her tutelage in making her high school’s all-important JV cheerleading squad. Natalie, still every bit the college cheerleader Noah had met while in law school, was slim, beautiful, and comfortable being the center of men’s attention. But what if everything fell apart and those same leering men were unconstrained by civility? What if Noah had to keep his family safe by force? Their gangly middle schooler son Jacob could do little to help.

“Well?” Natalie prodded. “Tick-tock, Noah.”

“It’s . . . There’s this disease. In Siberia.” He hurried too much. “Apparently, well, it’s coming here, and it’s bad. Everybody might get sick. Things could get, like, bad.”

Natalie rearranged knives in their butcher-block holder. Noah showed her the article in the Washington Post. “Trouble, Noah, in Russia? Stop the presses!”

Curfews, shooting, burning bodies instead of burying them. Soon, every point Noah made entrenched Natalie further. “Emma caught it,” he said. “She’s in Bethesda.”

Natalie replied, “You warned her. At the Annual Thanksgiving Blow-Up?” But she must have seen that she was upsetting him and asked, “Is she gonna be alright?”

“She lived, but it causes some kind of . . . brain damage.”

Natalie screwed her face up in a silent, “Ew,” but said, “That’s terrible. I’m sure she’ll be okay.” She rubbed his arm. “But you did warn her. And this is in Siberia?”

“I wanta get us prepared,” Noah said defiantly. It was a gamble that her brief burst of sympathy for Emma and haste to get to the courts gave him a momentary advantage.

Natalie looked at her watch, then put a hand on each of his shoulders. “Okay. I hereby authorize you, Noah Miller, to be just as prepared,” she pecked him on the lips, “as your wittle heart,” another kiss, “desires.” A real kiss. “You good?” Noah nodded. “But don’t pile shit up in the guest room. And get back to work before they do fire you.”

Noah did return to work. He was mindful of several cars on the road behind him, but each in turn veered off. Now he was being paranoid. At the office, he summoned his first-year associate. “I want you to draft a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and file it first thing tomorrow morning in the Federal District Court for the District of Maryland.”

The perpetually bored, unshaven Gen X-er flipped open his iPad. “Petitioner?”

“Dr. Emma Miller.” In a photo on Noah’s credenza from Thanksgiving, Emma and Isabel, mirror images except for haircuts and clothes, posed side-by-side. They still rebelled against years of being dressed like the identical porcelain “China dolls”—antique and ungodly expensive—that they’d each been given at age six but never allowed to touch. Isabel at least had worn a dress. Emma, to contrast, wore jeans and a tank top. Natalie looked perfect, as always, and was pissed, as always, this time because Izzy’s “frumpy” dress and Emmy’s “ratty” jeans had ruined the professionally taken portrait.

Noah’s Northeastern parents had accused him of rebelling in marrying Midwestern Natalie, who was an A-student at a good college. “Not an Ivy,” they’d said, dripping condescension and simultaneously slamming the school Natalie and Noah both attended! “I imagine she’s on financial aid. Noah, you don’t know where she’s from,” they said like he’d taken in a stray without her shots. As regards her gorgeous looks, apparently plain with a hint of pretty and in pearls was refined, but Natalie betrayed a certain pedestrian taste and reflected poorly on Noah’s family and upbringing.

“Matter number?” the associate asked. “For billing?”

“Oh, there’s something in the system from some estate planning.” Instead of quitting her dangerous job after their fight, Emma had gotten Noah to draft her will. He suspected she was simply rubbing his nose in the argument that he’d lost. But who’s laughing now? Noah fought to avoid cringing at such an inappropriate thought.

“Who’s the respondent?” the associate asked.

“The United States of America.”

The recent law school grad glanced up, then asked, “Place of confinement?”

Noah Googled the NIH lab in Bethesda and found articles about quarantined Ebola patients. “Say: Special Clinical Studies Unit of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, or other facility.”

“Is she in pretrial detention, serving a sentence, in immigration detention or ‘Other’?” his associate read on his iPad.

“Other. Unlawful detention on public health concerns.” For Grounds and Supporting Facts, Noah dictated. “On or about, two days ago, Petitioner may have contracted a disease while on assignment for the National Institutes of Health and is being deprived of her liberty illegally due to respondent failing to serve quarantine orders.”

The associate finished typing and said, “Requested Relief?”

“Petitioner requests,” Noah said, “the Court set a hearing for Respondent to show cause for Petitioner’s detention, or grant Petitioner’s request for immediate release.”

Noah did another Google search and read out the address of the Office of General Counsel, Public Health Division, NIH Branch, for service of process.

“Done,” the associate said, “and printing.” That was too easy. Practicing law had been harder in Noah’s day.

When the first-year returned, Noah signed the petition. “Get it filed and served.”

He then turned to the growing pile of work in his inboxes, physical and electronic, but caught himself staring at piles of paper, unread emails, and the bustling street below, but not seeing them. If it’s true, they can’t stay in D.C. They needed to get away. The Old Place!

He and Natalie were renovating his family’s abandoned ancestral home high atop a hill in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He Googled: What do you need to ride out the apocalypse? He tweaked the search a couple of times, then began taking notes.

An hour later, his hand rested on his desk phone’s receiver as it lay in its cradle. Am I really doing this? He took a deep breath and phoned his contractor. “I have some changes.” He read his list. “And I want to expedite everything.” The contractor made pained noises. “How much to get all that done in three weeks?” The man laughed. “How much?” Half a million dollars, due on completion, over and above the as-yet-unknown cost plus ten percent base price, figure $3.5 million total, if the job is done in four weeks with no more major changes. “Deal,” Noah said, apparently surprising the man, and definitely surprising Noah, who felt sick with unresolved doubt. He emailed the renovation specs back and forth with the contractor, who formally agreed to the changes in his final reply.

In the quiet of his office, Noah panicked. What had he just done? He searched the Internet. There were tweets in Russian from Khabarovsk. He used Google Translate and got Pidgin English. “They surround Old Marketplace and shoot everyone. Saw that with my eyes. It realistically happened!!!” Another read, “Was on train from Primorskoye region. We stop and reverse all the way toward Vladivostok.” A news item caught his eye. The Russians had shut down border crossings from China. From China. He texted Izzy. “Are you absolutely sure?” He didn’t expect a response, but got one almost instantly. “Worse than I thought,” she texted back. “Get going now, now, now!!!”

If it had been only Iz’s panic, Noah might have awaited further confirmation. He didn’t totally trust her judgment. Unlike Emma, she hadn’t fully matured. She was stuck between youth and an uncertain future adulthood. But Emma wasn’t prone to histrionics. She was a full professor of epidemiology at Johns freaking Hopkins! He’d always respected the way she took charge of her life after their parents had died. If she said panic, then you panicked. Here goes, he thought after a single but distinct tremor of fear passed.

Between his checking and brokerage accounts, Noah had $93,425 in cash. But he and his sisters had each inherited millions from their parents. The market was up 300 points. He first sold the stocks and mutual funds that invested in equity, which were the most volatile. It was amazingly fast, only a dozen or so clicks of his mouse. Fifteen minutes later, net of commissions, he had $4,396,192 in cash. He would owe $549,524 in taxes on the capital gains, if he ever had to pay them. He kept a running count on his iPad.

Each act of financial suicide made him more nervous, but also more committed.

Next came the bonds, notes, and CDs, which took five minutes and half a dozen clicks until he’d amassed another $1,758,477, with $105,509 in theoretical tax liability. The IRAs and 401Ks were sold similarly easily for net proceeds of $504,405. The tax bite was huge, however, at $277,423, in part because of the early withdrawal penalty. Finally, the kids’ college funds, in tax-advantaged 529 plans, netted $294,698, with a tax plus penalty of $162,084. In an hour, it was done. When all the trades settled, he would have $7,047,208 in cash, and a tax bill of $1,094,539 . . . unless there was no IRS to collect it.

What have I done? came a nagging inner voice that he just couldn’t shake.

Noah’s McLean house was worth around four million and had no mortgage. Selling it would take too much time. Luckily, however, he had put in place a two-million-dollar home equity line of credit in case he wanted to jump into the market with both feet. It took only a phone call to his banker to draw the entire line. The cash would be in his account by the end of the day.

So call it $8,000,000 in cash, free and clear, net of taxes. He wired the first installment, $1,000,000, to his contractor. Seven million left. Figure another $2,500,000 to finish paying for renovations to the Old Place and he had $4,500,000 to spend. If he didn’t reserve funds to pay taxes to a government that might not exist, which thought raised Noah’s stress level a notch, add another million to that.

He felt each silent minute tick past. Traffic moved normally along the street below. Life went on as it always had. He tried to imagine hordes of the insensate like some scene from The Walking Dead. The more he tried to visualize it, the more he grew sure he had just royally screwed up. What were you thinking?

He jumped when his phone rang. It was the contractor. “Got yer wire. Thanks much. I’m puttin’ rush orders on mater’ls, so we’re on it. And say, I just got a call from somebody else up yer way. A big muckety-muck gov’ment guy with a farm down near Charlottesville. Wants some of the same things as you. Fences, shutters, fire suppression, antennas, panic room. Didn’t think Charlottesville was such a dangerous place. I told him he was a day late and a dollar short, but when I asked what was happenin’, he hung up. So let me ask you, what’s goin’ on up there in D.C.?”

Noah stumbled through a litany of lies. Russia is enigmatic. Global warming looks warmer. Terrorism is scaring people. Just better to be prudent.

“Oookay. It’s yer money, boss,” the contractor replied, satisfied that he knew now who the fool was. He promised daily status emails and pictures before hanging up.

Noah wasn’t fully convinced, but he was now fully committed. All in. Time to start buying things for the cave.