Chapter 10

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA

Infection Date 15, 1700 GMT (1:00 p.m. Local)

Isabel thanked the undergrad who led her to Brandon Plante’s lecture hall. Before departing, the freckled girl, who wore a nose stud, eyed the Secret Service agents accompanying Isabel. “Maybe you two should wait around the corner?” Isabel suggested.

She peered through the small door window into the amphitheater. Brandon prowled the white board. Young women filled the front rows. Short shorts, long legs, lustrous hair, no make-up, pens dangling from parted lips, flip-flops bobbing. “Jesus,” Isabel muttered.

The door opened and almost hit Isabel in the face. That’s what the little window’s for! Isabel thought angrily. “’Scuse me, ma’am,” said a texting boy.

“Ma’am!” Isabel thought.

Brandon halted his lecture on seeing her. “Prakash, uhm. . . . Walk them through the regression analysis.” The door closed far too slowly. “This will be on the final.”

Isabel rested her back against the wall, girding herself with a grimace.

She flinched when the door opened. “Iz?” Brandon said. She raised her hand to shake, but Brandon hugged her. His back had hardened. He’d been working out.

“Hi,” she said as they awkwardly broke their clench. “It’s been a while.”

“Ten years, four months,” he said, “since you ditched neurobiology at Chicago three hours up the road for neuroscience at Cal, flushing my dreams down the toilet. But who’s counting?”

“I was twenty-two!” Isabel replied. She really didn’t want to have this discussion, now of all times.

“And not one word from you since, Iz. Why? Why?”

Pretty girls emerged for a mass bathroom break, flashed Brandon smiles that displayed chewing gum, and looked quizzically at Isabel, the crypt keeper. Brandon was in his prime for a professor, a full professor. He was also undeniably handsome. So good-looking that despite his 20/20 vision he wore eyeglasses with clear lenses to appear professorial. Maybe he’s changed, she thought as all women would at that moment. But it was Rick, not Brandon, who she really wanted. Like the surveys proved, in peacetime women prefer beta males who’ll stick around and provide. But in wartime, they want alphas—cops, firemen, Marines—who may not stick around, but will fight for you.

“I’ve come here,” Isabel said, “well, to hire you, I guess.”

Brandon looked irritated. “I’ve got a job, Isabel. And I stick to my plans.”

Nope. Still not interested. Brandon had been her first lover. He had been kind and caring when Noah called the night of their parent’s fatal crash, and had allowed her to sleep over in his dorm room. She had felt so crushed, so lonely, so . . . abandoned. Emma had totally understood why she’d slept with Brandon that night. But what had remained a guilty secret between the sisters—which Isabel had not told anyone except her campus therapist—was that Brandon was her first and only lover. Isabel felt deeply embarrassed by the decade-long dry spell, if that was what you called it. There was clearly something wrong with her. Not with her desire but with her. “Brandon,” she said as tears welled up, “our world may be, I dunno, coming to an end?”

“What? Izzy, are you okay?”

“No.” Her lower lip quivered. “Have you seen the news out of China?” She fished her cell phone from her pocket and played the Harbin video. Brandon’s face went from curious, to concerned, to horrified, all in twenty-four seconds.

“Jesus,” he said. “How’d you get this?”

She opened her purse and unfolded the nondisclosure agreement. “I can’t say more till you sign this. It’s, like, the law. I’m hiring you to come work . . . for the president.”

Brandon said, “Of the United States?” She nodded. “What?”

Isabel was frustrated. “Just sign the damn thing and I’ll tell you everything, okay?”

“Iz, I’m teaching a full load. And I’m waiting on galley proofs of . . .”

“Fuck all that, Brandon. None of it matters. Tell you what. Sign it, saying you’ll keep everything secret so-help-you-God, and if you still want out, say so.”

He pondered, then signed against the wall, as she had. “You’ve got two minutes.”

She described the pandemic in a faltering voice, then looked up, lips trembling.

He put his arms around her. She laid her head on his chest, closing her eyes, relishing the comfort of being close to someone, even Brandon. “The people in that video,” he asked, “were sick?”

She nodded. “The half who got infected but survive . . . they turn.”

He went rigid. “Oookay.” He pushed her away. “Is this some hoax?” He looked around for a camera. “Pandoravirus horribilis? Really? Did that girl put you up to this? Or her family? Humiliate me on YouTube or something? You know it’s a lie, right? She deserved that ‘A.’ The review board cleared me!”

He was exactly who the fuck she’d feared. “They’re teenagers, Brandon! Jesus Christ. And no, this isn’t about your presumably numerous indiscretions. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She turned to walk off.

He grabbed her arm. “This is real? You’re serious? About this disease?”

She pulled free and, rubbing her arm, said, “Yes! Jesus. Some of us grew up!”

He shook his head. “I’d heard rumors. An East Asian studies professor, whose relatives told him about some plague, left school after asking me about the science of crowd violence, despite what you think of it.”

“I never . . .” she began. “What are you even talking about?”

“When I proposed my area of study, you came up with pages of alternatives.”

“I just thought,” she struggled, “it was more sociology than neuroscience. I wanted to make sure you’d considered your options. And I got it down to one page.”

“Iz, I’m a social psychologist. I’m sorry if that was beneath you. But there’s plenty of hard science in my discipline. And you know, you blow in here, ten years after I went down to our packed car and found you and all your shit gone for fucking ever.”

“I left a note.”

“Under the windshield wiper. Like a parking ticket. It said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘Goodbye.’ I framed it. Then ten years without one text, one email, one call from you. No Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, sorry your dog died.”

“Mr. Cuddles died?”

“Four years ago. Of old age! And now you parachute into my life and give me some bullshit about the world coming to an end . . . Are you sure that’s what this is about?”

Her blood pressure shot up. “You think I’m some pitiful former conquest crawling back to you?” She was outraged. But even better, she was confident in her self-righteousness. “You want proof that I’m not some complete loser who came all the way here just to make an embarrassing YouTube video of you?” She grabbed his arm and dragged him around the corner, where the Secret Service agents waited.

“Show him your badges!” she snapped. The two men exchanged looks masked by a stoicism they must all have been taught, then displayed gold Secret Service badges. Brandon removed his fake glasses to scrutinize them. Isabel sighed and rolled her eyes.

Brandon mumbled, with wavering conviction, “People can buy these on Amazon.”

She peeled back one agent’s jacket. There was nothing but handcuffs and a black box on his belt with a wire running into his pants. Isabel opened the other side of his jacket. Jesus! She’d assumed he had a pistol, but the thing under his arm looked like a machine gun. “You too,” she said to the other agent, who revealed a similarly fierce weapon.

They stopped by the administrative offices. When Brandon informed the dean he’d be taking a leave of absence, the woman shouted how she’d gone out on a limb for him “after last spring.” Isabel grinned, greatly enjoying the moment. Even one of the agents smirked. They dropped by Brandon’s apartment, which gave Izzy a chance to critique his all-leather-and-chrome matching furniture and faux plants from the my-first-apartment collection. And there it was, sitting on a hallway bookshelf—her Dear John letter. She winced. After a decade of perspective, she realized, it was pretty harsh in its brevity.

At the airport, Brandon seemed impressed when they boarded the Air Force business jet for the two-hour flight back to D.C. during which she filled him in on SED.

That went better than I’d expected, Isabel congratulated herself.