Chapter 31

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

Infection Date 37, 0800 GMT (4:00 a.m. Local)

Isabel’s first decent night of sleep in a week was ruined at four in the morning by loud pounding on the door of Emma’s apartment. She assumed it was the FBI again, but she looked through the peephole and saw a well-coifed blond woman lit by bright camera lights. Shit! By the time she showered and dressed, dozens of vans with tall antennae filled the apartment grounds.

She could no longer call Maldonado or FBI Director Pearson. But through the bathroom window she saw a Bethesda cop wearing a surgical mask, who must have been attracted to the disturbance. She stood on the toilet, opened the small window and asked him to come up and help. She opened the front door to him. “Thanks so much for . . .”

The maelstrom outside engulfed them. “Dr. Miller! Where do you recommend our viewers go to escape the disease?” The cop hauled her through the crush. “Dr. Miller! Will the White House shut down international flights?” The cop barked at reporters, but they didn’t part. “Dr. Miller! Does SED turn men into rapists?” The cop fended off microphones like branches on a jungle trek. As they passed 208C, Josh held an imaginary phone to his ear, still not realizing she wasn’t Emma. Another of Emma’s neighbors booed. A third gave Isabel the middle finger.

At Isabel’s car, the cop shouted, “Good luck!” as she squeezed into the driver’s seat. He did his best to clear a path through the mob, and she did her best not to hit anyone, driving one mile per hour and hoping that the banging sounds she heard were reporters pounding on her hood and not her car colliding with them. Finally, she pulled clear. The world had officially gone insane.

The traffic was heavier than she had ever seen it, and it wasn’t even light out yet. Every parking lot looked full. There were lines to enter grocery and hardware stores, some even before they opened. Cars queued around the block at every gas station. Outside a big-box electronics retailer, two men fought over a box. Drivers stuck in traffic blew horns and craned necks. Some vehicles were piled high with belongings. All this happened overnight?

After an hour, she made it the short distance to the NIH hospital, which stood in starkly serene contrast. Its grounds were empty save for Marines patrolling in pairs. She parked in the nearly empty lot and, as an afterthought, confirmed her pistol was still in the bag in her trunk. In the hospital, she saw only Marines and an occasional exhausted nurse. At the last ID and pupil check, she told the guard she wanted to see Captain Ramirez.

He escorted her to a cramped office. Ramirez and two young enlisted men lounged at computer monitors jury-rigged atop tables. On most screens were empty stretches of wall pierced by a gate, or a building entrance, or a security check. But on several were hospital rooms with mostly motionless patients. On one were six views of Emma and her roommates from cameras that must have been replaced.

“First,” Isabel said, “let me say how sorry I am about the loss of your man.”

“Hendricks,” Ramirez said. “Tony Hendricks.”

“Oh!” Jesus! “I met him.” That was the young Marine she had met on her visit to Emma’s room. The incident had suddenly gone from casualty of war to personal tragedy. He was nineteen. Just a boy. “Did he,” she asked, “ever get his beers?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ramirez said. All three Marines looked stricken.

How many people had already died in blacked-out regions of Asia? How many more deaths were soon to follow? “I’m so, so sorry,” Isabel managed. Tears welled up. They didn’t seem particularly interested in her level of sorrow. Plus, she was there for a different purpose. “Captain Ramirez, I want to take my sister for a walk around the grounds. She’s far less contagious now. We can put her in PPE, and I’ll personally . . .”

“Okay,” Ramirez interrupted.

That’s it? Isabel thought. Just . . . okay?

Ramirez’s attention was focused on his gloomy young Marines. “Just watch out for paparazzi,” he added, punching one of the tense boys on the arm. He was trying to change their mood—to force them beyond their loss. This was war. There would be more. “Tony Hendricks,” he said in a reverent tone. “U-S-Fuckin’-M-C.”

As the Marines pounded Ramirez’s proffered fist, each belted out, “Marine Corps!” “Marine Corps!” in turn.

Isabel couldn’t tell how long to wait after the obscure ritual ended. “Uhm . . . you said something about paparazzi?”

“You know your sister’s a star, right?” Ramirez said. Isabel’s face must have betrayed her confusion. Ramirez backhanded an enlisted man on the shoulder. The boy somehow knew exactly what he wanted and pulled up a YouTube video on his laptop.

Stirring patriotic music and a flag waving in the wind began a Homeland Security video, which Ramirez said aired on multiple networks last night after Isabel’s CNN appearance. “Where you been at, ma’am?” Ramirez said. “Everybody saw this.” He ordered the young Marine to, “Go to the part . . . Yeah, yeah.”

The young Marine dragged the slider about a third of the way into the video. Flying by were Drs. Aggarwal and Stavros, a microscopic image of a Pandoravirus capsid, a cartoon figure exhaling particles that filled a room, a close-up of dilated pupils, brain autopsy cross-sections. “There!” Ramirez said, slapping the unfazed boy on the back of his shaved head.

The host, in the uniform of this war—a lab coat, N95 mask and Latex gloves—said, “Dr. Emma Miller contracted SED while investigating the initial outbreak in Siberia. Dr. Miller, how do you feel?” He tilted the stick mike, which had its own blue impermeable barrier fashioned over a foam bulb as if to protect viewers from infection via the mic’s wires. Emma sat in an office wearing her hospital gown.

“What the fuck?” Isabel exclaimed. The Marines grinned at her apparently inexpert use of profanity.

“I’m fine,” Emma replied, peering blankly into the camera.

The host said, “Notice that her eyes have regained their natural color, which typically happens after about two weeks and makes identifying SED carriers much more difficult. The safest method then is to look for behavioral cues.” Isabel clamped her hand to her mouth as the camera zoomed in on Emma’s face. “A flat emotional affect. Bland personality. Absence of reaction when emotions would be expected.” The inscrutable Emma, sweet or sinister, who could tell, filled the screen. “No demonstrative gestures. No animation in facial expression or vocal inflection.”

“This isn’t right!” Isabel protested. It reminded her of old, uplit film of mental patients taken by the Nazis in the late thirties to justify beginning the Holocaust with them.

“Dr. Miller?” Emma turned to the off-screen questioner, but the camera remained on her. “When you were in Siberia, did you see anyone killed?”

“Yes.” The picture zoomed in on her uncreased, un-made-up, uncaring face, devoid of the vibrance of the living. “When our helicopter landed, we were attacked. Most of the attackers were shot, but one was stabbed by a Russian soldier who caught SED. That night, I shot that soldier when he crawled into my tent.” She used the same tone in which she would have read a grocery list: otherworldly, robotic, inhuman. “And Russian soldiers shot the infected oil workers.” She pointed, her finger the barrel of a Russian pistol, at the center of her forehead. “And in the streets of a small Siberian town, and in boats crossing a river, and on the tarmac of the airport, they shot 100 to 150 people, maybe more. And at the airport in Khabarovsk, an infected man attacked my sister and was shot by Marines.”

“Yeah, baby!” shouted one of the enlisted men, and got high fives in celebration. Isabel noted that Emma still had trouble with the word “see.” She hadn’t witnessed the shooting in Khabarovsk, but still thought it responsive.

The camera pulled back. As if Emma weren’t even there, the host said, “Note that Dr. Miller’s expressiveness isn’t simply blunted or impoverished. It’s entirely absent. And it’s not only that she doesn’t express emotions. Her ability to feel emotion has been robbed from her. She is no longer capable of enjoyment, happiness, fun, interest, or even simple satisfaction. And she feels no empathy, no compassion, for anyone else. Without empathy, Infecteds are very, very dangerous.”

“May be dangerous!” Isabel said, her outrage growing.

The scene switched to video of a riot, which the young Marine froze on a screen overlaid with a warning about graphic images to follow.

“Those motherfuckers!” Isabel shouted to the further amusement of the Marines. “They don’t have any right to put her in a video!”

“She signed a consent,” Captain Ramirez said. “We monitored the whole thing.”

“Who said she could sign a legally binding document in her condition?” Ramirez shrugged. Isabel now really wanted to speak to Emma alone. “I’m taking her for a walk. If you make me, I’ll get my brother to go back to court. . . .”

“I said it’s alright, ma’am,” Ramirez replied. “Go get yourself kitted out and we’ll meet you in the robing area.” Isabel nodded, belatedly remembering she had already won. “Oh,” Ramirez added, “and Poonhound says to tell you hello.”

“Captain Townsend?” she replied. “Did he say anything else?” she asked. Ramirez shook his head as if it had been a difficult and confusing question. “Just, ‘hello’?” Ramirez nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

Isabel went to the enrobing room dangerously distracted. What did “hello” mean? Was it a good thing, or a bad thing? Was it, Hello, don’t forget me, or more, Hello, who is she again? She donned full personal protective gear, twice having to make herself concentrate on what she was doing, and waited in the corridor until three Marines with rifles, also in protective garb, joined her. On closer inspection, she saw it was Ramirez and the same two boys from the security station. This must be therapy after helplessly watching their comrade’s slow-motion death in his sick room.

But this wasn’t the touchy-feely kinder-and-gentler type of therapy. “Shut the fuck up! Pay attention. On your toes!” Ramirez snapped. The boys were excited to get out of their office. Too much time at screens, too little toting guns. That’s about to change.

She asked Ramirez, “Why are you being so accommodating?”

“I’m accommodating by nature, ma’am,” he replied. He then added, “Orders.”

Browner had been true to his word.

The robing room door opened. Emma leaned out looking left and right as if someone might be waiting there to seize her. She had not showered on exiting her hospital room; she wore only a mask and gloves sealed to the long sleeves of her gown with tape. Her isolation protocols were being relaxed. “Alright,” Isabel said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Isabel linked her arm through Emma’s and led her toward the exit, having to drag her wary sister to achieve a normal walking pace. The Marines trailed. The corridor had been cleared. The exit remained propped open with a chair to ventilate the building.

The sun was low beneath a layer of wispy clouds. It was cool, but Isabel felt clammy in her impermeable one-piece coverall and hood. Isabel asked if Emma was cold, but she shook her head. “Not exactly fresh air for me,” Isabel said as she led Emma down the steps. “But it’s better than that hospital room, right?”

The only people in sight were Marines. Emma felt rigid. Her head jerked this way and that. Her eyes were wide. She repeatedly peered over her shoulder at their armed escorts and seemed resistant to every change in direction or speed. Up ahead, two Marines on patrol, not in PPE, steered wide of the garbed procession, stepping off the concrete walk and leaving boot prints in dew-covered grass. Emma eyed them and clutched Isabel’s arm so hard she feared it might puncture the fabric. “Are you okay?” Isabel asked, trying not to make any sudden moves.

“Where is everyone? This is a hospital, and a regular workday.”

“Lots of people are, ya know, bailing. Fleeing for the hills seems to be a surprisingly, literally accurate expression these days.”

Emma acted as if she sensed danger all around. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Emmy, you don’t think I’m taking you to . . . Sweetie, no one is going to hurt you. We’re just going for a walk.” Isabel realized that strolling for enjoyment made no sense to Emma. It had to be for some sensible purpose like her execution. “Look, you pick where we go, okay?” Isabel disentangled their arms.

Emma stepped uncertainly off the paved walk, looked at the Marines and held her hand out back to Isabel, who hesitated for reasons that eluded her. But her conscious self overrode her subconscious reluctance, and Emma snaked her arm back through Isabel’s.

They headed for the wall arm-in-arm, like sisters. But Isabel felt like a prospective hostage. She twice tried to loosen Emma’s grip unsuccessfully. At the wall, Emma measured its height and followed its length, inspecting seams, base, and barbed-wire top.

Every time Isabel shied away, Emma pulled her back and checked the Marines. Soon, Isabel was perspiring from nerves. Emma, cool and collected, was attentive to every detail. A closed but unguarded gate. A hole Marines were digging that turned out not to be her grave. The pattern and spacing of patrols. Emma stared through a manned gate at the long tank barrel that pointed down an empty road toward a pair of police cars diverting traffic away from the NIH lab.

“So,” Isabel said in a breezy voice intended to calm not her sister, but herself, “I guess I’m the normal one now.” Isabel’s snort was only a passing attempt at laughter.

But her remark distracted Emma from mapping her escape route or whatever she was doing. “Do you mean you’ve become popular?” she asked.

“No,” Isabel replied, her feelings a bit bruised, and her speech a bit hyper. “Just, you know, by comparison . . . Never mind. Was I really that unpopular? Don’t answer that! Oh, but some guy in the parking garage at your apartment—tall, scraggly beard, hunky muscles—did ask me for a quickie when I was on my way to work this week.”

“Woody?”

“No,” Isabel replied. “No, uhm . . . 208C.”

Emma nodded. “Josh. He’s dumb, but good in bed. Was it satisfying?”

“I—oh—I didn’t have sex with him!”

“Why?” Emma asked. “Were you on your period?”

“No, I . . . We’d just met. We hadn’t actually even met. He thought I was you. But that is pretty dumb. How fast does he think hair grows? So, you’ve . . . slept with him?”

Emma studied a recently erected metal pole festooned with cameras and lights pointing in multiple directions. “No. Just sex.”

Right! Mental note on euphemisms. They walked on. “You know, I watched the recordings of you from Siberia,” Isabel said. “They broke my heart. You were so scared, and got so sick.” Emma was unmoved by the recollection. “And Dr. Lange’s questions . . . I remember that lunch at the club after tennis. So, everybody at school thought I would die a virgin?”

Emma said, “Because you’re so uptight.”

Isabel’s feelings were hurt further. She wasn’t uptight. She was discriminating. “And mom and dad made you invite me?”

“Yes, because you didn’t have any friends.”

“I had friends!” Emma just looked at her. Why had she even brought it up? They circumnavigated the main hospital building, with Emma scrutinizing ground floor windows, brush that might obscure a run for it, and a service entrance with trash bins large enough to hide inside.

Emma made Isabel nervous. She had never felt that way around her before. “Can I ask,” Isabel said mainly to break the tension, “what your Rules are in your notebook?”

Emma repeatedly tested a storm drain grate by stepping on it. “It’s part of a plan,” she explained. “Infected people won’t show initiative or be motivated by long-term goals. It may be that missing voice not telling them what to do. When they get hungry, they’ll look for food. When they get horny, they’ll look for sex. But when their urges are sated, they won’t do anything. They need plans and rules, or they’ll kill for food and rape for sex.”

“Jesus. Really?” Isabel finally wriggled free of Emma’s grasp.

“Yes,” Emma replied, turning toward Ramirez as if to confirm she would now obviously be shot.

“And so that’s why you put order number one on your list of requirements? I mean, water was number two. Food number three.”

“Air would be my number one,” Emma replied, “if it became unavailable. Order is next most important. Without it, like without air, people die quickly.”

When they came to the parking lot, Emma paused to look at each of the dozen or so cars they passed. Isabel finally concluded she was checking to see if they were locked.

“This is my really fly ride,” Isabel said on reaching her gray, no-frills, midsized American-made sedan. “Zero-to-sixty in, like, twenty minutes.”

“There’s something wrong with the engine,” Emma commented. Why bother? “Do you keep your keys in your pocket?” Emma asked.

Isabel froze. This time, she was the one who glanced back at the Marines several cars away. Her keys were in her right front pocket. She made no move to reach for or look down at them for fear Emma might tear through Isabel’s coverall to get at them. It did Isabel’s nerves no good to see Emma survey Isabel’s headgear.

With her heart pounding, Isabel headed away from the parking lot. Emma followed her human shield. Isabel wanted to share with Emma all the frightening details in Browner’s models urging impulsive eradication. Who better to double-check the math? But a voice cautioned against it. It’ll agitate her, came a rationalization. It’s a secret, came a thought closer to the truth. It’ll put ideas in her head, came the real answer. “Emma, everybody noticed that you capitalized the words ‘nuclear weapons.’”

Emma turned to watch a bird fly by, then said, “Nuclear weapons could win a war. But they and their delivery systems are too complex for Infecteds to maintain for long.”

“So you highlighted nuclear weapons because you fear their use against you?”

Emma said, “Yes.”

“And you’re planning for some organized society after SED gets here?”

“Organization is the best way to maintain order, which is the top priority. Nature yields disorder. It has to be imposed by society. That requires planning.”

“And infected people will just . . . do what you tell them?”

“The high-functioning will if they’re fed, housed, and given safety and sex.”

Isabel said, “So that’s it? Take care of the basics and they’re loyal patriots?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. But what if, say, they’re so damaged they can’t follow rules?”

“Society is a collection of individuals,” Emma said, looking at Isabel as if for signs of concurrence or disagreement. “Each, over a lifetime, contributes to and draws from society’s resources.” Again she waited. She was seeking feedback. Testing her ideas like she tested storm grates. “The net of contributions made less resources consumed is either positive or negative. Society needs members who are net positives.”

“Yeah, okay. You want that, sure. Hardworking, self-denying Puritans, not freeloading hedonists and gluttons. The question is how do you get there?”

Emma seemed to think the answer was simple. “You eliminate the drags on society.”

Isabel turned to her. “Eliminate how?”

“Border controls and immigration standards.” Isabel heaved a sigh of relief. “And weeding out the unfit.”

“What? How are you gonna do that?”

“Execution, or euthanasia, which are basically the same thing.”

Isabel’s mind reeled. “Emma, Jesus! That’s . . . eugenics!”

“But not racial eugenics, which got a bad name. It should be meritocratic.”

“I don’t think you’ve thought this through. You’re talking millions of people, in this country alone, who won’t be able to function in the orderly society you’re describing.”

“My estimate is 35 million,” Emma replied.

“Christ! So, you’d, somehow, kill 35 million people?”

“Do you have a better alternative?” Emma’s question wasn’t rhetorical. “If you expel them, they’ll come back. They can’t work, won’t follow rules and will consume food, housing, clothing, medicine, mates. They’ll murder, rape, and steal with no prospect of rehabilitation. A bullet only costs around a dollar.”

Isabel felt disoriented. Not only would Emma presumably kill Isabel if the situation demanded, but she’d also decided that a Final Solution for the unfit was rational. Would Uninfecteds be far behind? She began to wonder whether the president’s opposition to genocide was enlightened, or foolish and naive. She now knew Emma’s answer to that question. And Browner’s, and apparently the vice president’s, too.

So long as Emma was opening up, Isabel decided, on a hunch, to ask, “Emmy, sweetie, what happens when the military takes you out of your room?”

Emma glanced over her shoulder. Ramirez, et al., were out of earshot. “They asked me questions about SED for a video. Dwayne watched it and said Uninfecteds think Infecteds are monsters. And, as a general rule, you kill monsters.”

“They’re just scared of you,” Isabel said. “You frighten them.”

It felt like a real conversation until Isabel realized Emma was pacing off steps between two junctions in the sidewalk. “They should be afraid,” Emma said upon completion. “I saw you on TV.” Isabel should have asked about the first comment, but focused on the second. She wanted to ask, How’d I sound? How’d I look? But in addition to being bloodthirsty murderers, Infecteds were brutally honest critics. Better not to expose her brittle self-confidence. “They also shocked my arms with electrodes until my skin sizzled.”

“What?” Isabel shouted, stopping in front of her sister.

“They wanted to see if I felt pain,” Emma explained, as if defending them.

“Those sons-of-bitches! That caused those marks on your arm?” Emma nodded. Isabel’s outrage grew. “They put you in long sleeves to cover them up!”

“No,” Emma said. “I asked for long sleeves.”

A voice in Isabel’s head said, You could’ve known what they were doing to her if you wanted! You could have asked or demanded to know! You just didn’t wanta piss off people like Browner, who made you feel important! “Show me,” Isabel said.

Emma unpeeled the tape that sealed her sleeve to her glove. “Hold on!” Ramirez called out. “Stop-stop-stop!” The Marines raised their rifles to their shoulders and aimed straight at them. Isabel stood between them and her sister, who finished unrolling the tape.

Emma raised her sleeve. Five inch-wide marks, fading and turning from red to brown, one scabbed over, ran across her right arm from the inside of her wrist up to the crook of her elbow. Tears of anger filled Isabel’s eyes. First and foremost, she cursed her own fucking miserable, worthless self. She stepped aside and held Emma’s arm up to Ramirez like a winning prizefighter. He ordered his Marines, who cast troubled looks toward their officer at the sight of Emma’s wounds, to lower their already drifting aims. “Just following orders, ma’am,” Ramirez said.

“Surely you heard that didn’t work at Nuremburg!”

Ramirez stepped forward. “Look, personally, I’m sorry. Okay? It wasn’t me and I don’t agree with it. But . . . Christ, I also had to shoot an Infected last night. And as you know, I lost a man and had to call his parents yesterday and lie about how he died. Now where’s the fucking fairness in any of that?”

“Who’d you shoot?” Isabel asked.

“I missed this crazy-ass lady doctor with a Taser, but hit her four times with my Beretta.” He stared down, rifle held one-handed by its pistol grip and pointing at the ground, seemingly torn up by the experience.

“It wasn’t him,” Emma confirmed, re-taping her sleeve. “A heavyset general had them keep applying more and more power until the electrodes got too hot, then he stopped and said he was sorry. He was crying.”

“Was his name ‘Browner’?” Isabel asked. Emma nodded. Isabel jammed her eyes shut. Oh-my-God. Oh-my-God! That bastard! That fucking bastard!

Marines used almost an entire roll of tape to reseal Emma’s sleeve. Ramirez said, “Let’s head back inside.” He stayed closer to them this time.

“Hey Emma,” said Isabel, trying a normal, conversational tone. “Do you remember that time when we hiked up to that old stone house on a hill? How Noah threw rocks and broke a window, and dad got mad and said we shouldn’t treat the place that way?”

“Yes,” Emma replied, “it was down in the . . .”

Isabel grabbed Emma’s arm, causing her to jump and cutting off her reply.

After a moment, Emma looked at Isabel and nodded. “I understand.”