Chapter 12

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Infection Date 17, 1600 GMT (12:00 p.m. Local)

Noah was sitting at his desk in his downtown office buying survival supplies on Amazon when an email arrived from the contractor renovating the Old Place. Noah heaved a huge sigh of relief. Based on the report and the pictures, work was going well.

Then his broker at Merrill Lynch called. “Bro! What are you doin’?” The guy had noticed that Noah liquidated everything. “Broheim, wuz up?” He treated Noah like a fraternity brother because he’d gone to the same college as Noah but a decade later.

“Not a particularly good time,” Noah said.

The guy was undeterred. “Brilliant trade! Dow’s down seventeen percent. Everything’s off except Big Pharma. You sold before anybody, so . . . what do you know?”

“I just wanted to de-risk,” Noah lied, using a word he’d once heard on the radio.

His broker dropped the frat-rat routine and lowered his voice. “What’s really going on?” It was more than fishing for a stock tip. There was fear in his voice. Noah had only met him a couple of times for lunch. What did he owe him? “That disease in China, it’s real bad. Sell now, before everything tanks, and buy survival gear before it gets scarce.”

There was a long pause before the broker laughed. “Sell? At these prices? But hey, if you don’t wanta share, that’s dope. We’re still simpatico, right? Call when you want back in the pahr-tay!” Well, Noah thought, shrugging, natural selection at work.

Noah ate the lunch brought in by his secretary and called an auto dealer. The man searched online and found two black, fully loaded, four-wheel-drive Cadillac Escalades with extended wheel base. Noah bought them on the spot, no haggling, for $190,312.

He had millions yet to spend in his mad dash into insolvency, but was running out of things to buy. Even purchasing in sets of five, a million dollars buys a lot of shit, and he still had $3,761,771 to go. More if he maxed out the plastic. But the law of diminishing marginal returns had set in. Twice he’d loaded five Gerber Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kits into his Amazon shopping cart, and twice he’d deleted the order. Once, he had thought of Emma and felt guilty at the word “Zombie.” Once he had concluded it a waste to buy $300 bundles of machetes, knives, and tomahawks for use against the imaginary undead.

The third time he loaded them into his cart, he bought them, putting him $1,500 closer to his goal. But how could he responsibly spend his last millions before the zeroes and ones in some computer that represented his remaining wealth disappeared forever?

Noah Googled, “how to buy gold.” It came in bars of one gram, ounce or kilo, up to four hundred ounces. The larger the bar, the lower the premium. But if Noah needed gold as currency, huge bars didn’t work. He settled on 1,000 one-ounce and 50 ten-ounce Credit Suisse bars, delivered to his house via FedEx in nondescript packaging, for $1,906,893. “Jesus!” He grabbed his head with both hands. He couldn’t believe what he was doing. He’d begin withdrawing in cash the $1,854,878 that was left in case that retained any value.

A short rap on Noah’s door preceded its opening. The firm’s managing partner entered. On habit, Noah swiveled his monitor from view. “Got a sec?” the senior man asked before sitting. “I got a call from Joe Milburn,” the firm’s largest client, “who said his secretary has been trying to reach you for days. May I?” he said before taking a few French fries. “They want to schedule depositions. To be frank, Joe said he doesn’t feel you’ve got the same sense of urgency he does. They’re losing money every day, and . . .”

“I’m gonna have to resign,” Noah interrupted. The managing partner’s face expressed incomprehension. Noah, whom they had made partner after only five years—who was the third-highest paid litigator in the whole firm—was . . . what? “I’m afraid I’m not able to give much notice, but I’ll hand everything off in the next couple of days.”

“Couple of days!” the senior partner almost shouted. “How the fuck dare you! Where are you going? Is it more money? Is that who you are? I understand now. Don’t even think about poaching clients! You may be a hotshot trial lawyer, but you didn’t originate any of that business. That was someone else’s hard work.”

“I’m retiring,” Noah said. “I won’t steal any clients. I’m not being hired away by a competitor. And I’m not going in-house at any of the firm’s clients.”

“What, did somebody die and leave you money? How can you just stop working?”

Noah again decided to be honest. “It’s the disease, in China.” He told him more than he should. “None of this—depositions, hearing docket, filing deadlines—matters.”

“What does matter?”

“Find a place to isolate yourself,” Noah said. “Stay as far away from people as you can. Buy supplies, survival gear, guns, that sort of thing.”

The managing partner was nodding now. “So, that’s what you’re in here doing?”

“And liquidating my financial assets.”

His boss looked quizzically at Noah. “No need to transition. Be gone in an hour.” At the door, he turned back. “Don’t say anything to anyone, and go see a doctor, Noah.”

“Asshole,” Noah said when he was gone. He told his assistant and his associate why he was leaving, and they helped him box and haul out his stuff. His assistant said she was taking her vacation time. The associate asked Noah for his list of survival gear.

Noah now headed for the hardest part of all.

* * * *

“You did what?” Natalie shouted.

Noah took a Zen-like breath, then told her about selling everything and spending the proceeds on survival gear. Natalie sank, not to the nearby chair, but straight to the floor. Noah knelt beside her, but she twisted free. “You didn’t tell me before you did this?” He lamely brought up her kind-of formal grant of authority. “Oh, bullshit!”

“You’ve seen the news, Nat.”

“How can I not see it? It’s on around the clock! I don’t wanta watch riots in some polluted dump in China, Noah! I’m sorry about your sister, but you’ve gone nuts!”

The kids peeked over the upstairs railing. Noah waved them away, but Natalie said, “No! Come down!” Chloe and Jacob descended tentatively. “Kids, your father thinks there’s going to be an apocalypse. I think he’s gone insane, hopefully only temporarily.”

“Natalie . . .” Noah said.

But she was undeterred. “This is your official notice,” Natalie said, rising. “I want no part in your little sci-fi fantasy. No news. No texts to turn on the news. Nothing.” Jacob and Chloe just watched, wisely not picking a side. On her way to the kitchen, Natalie whispered to Noah, “And you’d better be right about this fucking apocalypse.”