Chapter 33

METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Infection Date 39, 1400 GMT (10:00 a.m. Local)

The world outside the NIH lab had gone insane, so Isabel had bunked in an empty hospital room in a sleeping bag Beth had borrowed from Ramirez. She had been up late the night before and had overslept, waking only when the door onto the brightly lit corridor opened. “There she is,” Ramirez said.

Rick Townsend entered. Isabel squinted until the door closed, then combed fingers through her unruly hair in the darkness. “Dr. Miller,” Rick said, sinking into one of the chairs being stored in the unused room. She was afraid to say anything and screw it up. The only light came from her glowing tablet, propped open on the nightstand. On it, Emma and her roommates were up early, eating breakfast and watching TV.

“You can call me Isabel,” she said, rubbing her eyes, “if I can call you Rick.” He didn’t object. “So, what’s goin’ on . . . Rick?” That felt good.

“It’s here,” he said. “Yesterday, a French telecom executive took a private jet from Hanoi home to Paris and his pilots apparently crossed paths with a commercial crew, who late last night flew Air Canada Flight 871 from Paris to Montreal. An American couple, arriving on a different flight, were exposed and transported the virus from the Montreal airport to Vermont. The husband died in their bed, but first thing this morning the wife got up and went to the grocery store like nothing was wrong and exposed people in line. So, it’s . . . happening.”

“Jesus,” Isabel said. But she thought, And you came here? “Are you visiting Captain Ramirez?” she asked, but Rick didn’t answer. “He told me to tell you to,” what was it, “‘watch your five or your six’ or something?” Rick snorted. “What does that mean?”

Rick said, “We were in this bar in San Diego, and this gorgeous girl was flirting with me, only she wasn’t a girl. ‘Watch your six’? Six o’clock? Never mind. It was a joke.”

Isabel took his word for it and laughed. “And . . . Poonhound?”

“Fuckin’ Ramirez. So, lemme explain. My family owns a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Ramirez built up this whole routine at the academy about me being some horny white-bread hick. You know, like, I practiced on animals before working my way up to a first cousin. That sorta thing. It got pretty elaborate. Like, we were on exercise summer before fourth year and bivouacked right next to a freaking sheep farm. All weekend long over the radio it was, ‘Poonhound, two o’clock, four hundred meters, get a load of that fluffy one by the barn!’”

Isabel was grinning in inky anonymity. Rick was totally and completely perfect. A dairy farm! How sweet was that?

On her iPad, the Infecteds in Emma’s room watched flickering aerial scenes of the newly arrived disaster. A man she’d never seen sat among them. They had replaced the dead Infected industrial engineer with a blank-faced Caucasian man in his late thirties.

The darkness emboldened Isabel. She wished she knew how Emma made it happen. It seemed easier, somehow, for most girls. She and Rick were alone. Her sleeping bag was warm. The end of the world was near. Should she just come out and . . . offer?

“I noticed that you completely ignored my advice,” Rick said. “You’re still here. But you know what’s coming, right?” Isabel understood intellectually, but hadn’t processed it emotionally. Some part of her had rationalized that they would stop SED from leaping the oceans, at least long enough to develop a vaccine. But they hadn’t. “It happens incredibly fast,” he said. “The sick come streaming into a hospital, every precaution taken. A coupla hours later, there’s gunfire, people running. You don’t even know who to shoot.”

Isabel felt a chill come over her, and she hugged herself.

“That little girl there,” Rick said, his finger illuminated by her tablet as he pointed, “doesn’t look violent.” Samantha sat primly watching a bonfire of bodies on the tarmac of the Montreal airport. “She’s the Chinese ambassador’s daughter, right? And that’s the embassy guard?” He pointed at Dwayne. “Ramirez said during evac the girl spent hours secretly sharpening a fork then shoved it right through the eye socket of a Navy SEAL who’d just rescued them. He clawed at her arms till he died of shock. In the scuffle, with her parents screaming and the SEAL’s buddies dragging him away, that guard dove on top of her and kept the SEALs from firing, but she managed to pull off his headgear.”

Isabel looked at Samantha in horror. “Nobody told me any of that!”

Her incipient fear and anger dissolved, however, when Rick’s hand found her shoulder. Without thinking, Isabel leaned forward and grabbed the back of his bristled head. Their mouths joined and rejoined again and again until, far too soon, Rick pulled away. With his forehead pressing warmly against hers, he said, “I don’t have much time, but . . . neither do you. I’m serious. This time, you’ve gotta get yourself outa here.”

“I’m joining my brother in the Shenandoah Valley. In Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley,” she repeated. “Rick, I’m, I’m scared.” He said he knew. “No, really, really scared!” Her voice shook. They rose into an embrace. His big arms wrapped around her. She began to cry. He squeezed her to his body. Amazingly, like magic, it helped. It may have been the one thing in the world right then that would. His arms, around her. His chest, pressed against hers.

They kissed once, then again, and again. She desperately wanted him, here, now. To wrap her arms, her legs around him. To cement the bond that they were only now forming. To create the irresistible force that would send him searching the four corners of the Earth until he finally found her, no matter where she was. She could tell that he wanted her, too, but he pulled away. “Noooo!” she begged.

“I’ve got to go.” Rick was free of her grasp. “And so should you.”

“You have to go right now?” she asked. “Where?” But she knew the answer.

“Vermont,” he confirmed.

“Will you find me?” In the darkness, she jammed her eyes shut in fervent prayer.

“Where, exactly, in the Shenandoah Valley?” She gushed directions through drying tears and gave him kisses like treats to reinforce his memory. Once, they both grinned, their teeth collided, and they laughed. They kissed, and kissed, and kissed again until Rick tore himself from her arms and stood in the open doorway. Fully backlit, he was tall, strong, square-jawed, broad-shouldered, U-S-fuckin’-M-C. Please, please, please, please, please, please come and find me! As if he’d heard her silent plea, Rick nodded before he left.

* * * *

Emma sat on a bench on the NIH hospital grounds beside her overwrought sister. They spent the first ten minutes with Isabel asking, in essence, how to get a man to have sex with her, then reacting bizarrely—grabbing her head, plugging her ears, pedaling her feet, chanting, “No-no-no-no!”—in response to Emma’s rather obvious and explicit suggestions. Now, Isabel was sobbing about something inside her PPE. The guards stood twenty meters away. From there, any rounds that missed Emma would harmlessly strike the new concrete wall.

“It was all just a stupid fucking experiment!” she cried, now on to the next subject. “They hired me because I’m your twin! They asked my opinion for show! They probably burst out laughing as soon as I left the room after going on and on about consciousness or whatever! Emmy, I’m so humiliated! I’m sorry. I know you’ve got your own troubles and this is hard for your to understand. But I miss talking to you. And I feel like . . . like digging a hole and crawling in.”

Emma was at a total loss. Why was Isabel saying these things? Of course she should have made the first move with that Marine. Of course Rosenbaum was doing a twins study. “What time,” Emma finally asked, “is the habeas corpus hearing?”

The rustling noise made by Isabel’s gear drew Emma’s notice. “Jesus,” her sister said. “Emma, when someone’s pouring their heart out to you . . .” But Emma was left wondering what she meant when she didn’t finish the sentence. Isabel sighed. “Never mind. Hearing’s at eleven thirty.” She sounded tired.

Emma asked, “Does Noah think the judge will let Emma . . . let me out?”

Another sigh. “He said it could go either way now that SED’s here. The judge may think why hold you? Or he might freak out and say no to everything.”

“It’s going to spread quickly now,” Emma said.

“They shut down all the roads and highways in northern Vermont.”

“That won’t help much.”

There was silence until Isabel said, “Can I ask you something? Those pieces of paper that you had Samantha copy . . . what were they?”

“I was teaching them about deception,” Emma said, studying Isabel’s reaction.

“Deception?” Isabel repeated. “Lying?” Emma couldn’t tell if Isabel believed her. “Meaning the drawings were nonsense? Well, if your plan was to drive the military nuts, it’s working, but . . . is that the truth?”

Emma scrutinized her sister. Did Isabel believe her? How could she tell?

Isabel broke the stare first, squinting as the sun peeked through the trees. She grabbed her hood with her gloved hands and mumbled something. Emma asked her to repeat what she had said. “Emma, why are you so put together, even now, and I’m a total mess?”

“Because when mom and dad died, you moved in with Noah rather than make a life for yourself.” Emma tried to recall more of her now decade-old analysis. For some reason she couldn’t today understand, Emma had worried for years about Isabel. “Because you never gained your independence. Never grew up or stood on your own two feet.” Emma remembered the phrase but couldn’t recall exactly what it meant. It was, however, key to understanding Isabel.

“Wha . . . ?” Isabel said in a thin whisper. “You didn’t tell me this before? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Emma replied. “Do they help?”

“Yes. No. But . . . Wait. They?” she asked. “What do you mean—they?”

“The words. When I said them, you stopped crying. Ready to talk about the plan?”

“You were just saying words? Words you remember from before that might calm me down? Do you even understand what I’m going through? How I’m hurting because . . . because I feel like such a loser? I thought I was, you know, coming into my own and, and doing really important work, but then I find out . . .” Find out what? Emma waited. “And there’s this whole other thing, with Rick, who I really, really, really like.” She grunted and pounded her thighs. “Ahhhh! Why now?”

“If it wasn’t now,” Emma said, “you wouldn’t even have met Rick. You wouldn’t have been looking for someone like him, and you wouldn’t have felt insecure enough to have sex with a stranger.”

Isabel stared at her in silence. “Wow, Emmy. That. . . . You actually made sense.”

“Good. Did you bring clothes?” Isabel had no idea what she meant. “Do you have clothes for me to change into today if I’m released?”

“Oh. Yeah. They’re in the trunk. But I thought we were, you know, starting to talk. Like we used to.” She began to cry again.

Emma lightly tapped her back until she quit. “Will Noah take his car, or will you drive me?”

“What?” Isabel’s voice was far too loud.

The Marines edged closer, possibly to eavesdrop. Emma turned to Captain Ramirez and said, “I’m getting agitated!” He used hand signals to pull his men back.

Isabel whispered, “You’re agitated?”

“No. So, if Noah drives to the NIH hospital for the hearing, he will have his car. But your slow, probably defective car will also be here. My question is, in which car will you take me home and will you and Noah ride together or separately?” Surely that was clear enough.

“It won’t happen like that. They’ll probably have to seal up your apartment, cover whichever car we use in plastic, that kind of thing.”

Emma said, “Get the NIH to prepare the apartment and the car today.”

Isabel laughed. “Emma, things take time. They don’t just,” she tried to snap her fingers, but her gloved hands made no sound, “happen.”

“Make them happen,” Emma replied.

Isabel shook her head. “So I just walk into Nielsen’s office and say, ‘Do it, bitch’?”

“Yes. Minus the insult. You attend NSC meetings. You had dinner with the President. You went on national TV. She isn’t powerful anymore. You are.”

* * * *

Isabel felt exhausted. Weeks of worry, days with little sleep, hours spent angry, terrified, depressed, and defeated, and then minutes teased by the ecstasy she surely would’ve felt being with Rick, but now probably never would. It would be so much easier to be Emma. Care about nothing. Fear nothing. Endure no humiliating failures. Just live. Isabel tried to hug her sister goodbye, but Emma simply returned to her hospital room.

Isabel found Nielsen and Beth in Emma’s observation room. Nielsen said, “Planning trips to the mall, are we? You know you’ll never be able to take her out. One look at her in PPE and people will run screaming.”

“I want the NIH to prepare my car to transport Emma out of here, and Emma’s apartment to isolate her, and I want that all done today, before the judge releases her.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha-ha-ha.” Nielsen’s amusement wasn’t shared by Beth, who was tensed up at witnessing the confrontation.

Isabel extracted her cell phone and dialed. “White House operator,” came from its speaker. “How may I help you today, Dr. Miller?”

“Could you please get me Dr. Rakesh Aggarwal.”

Nielsen interrupted. “Okay. Jeez. I’ll get it done.” Isabel politely thanked the operator and hung up. “What’s the point, really,” Nielsen said, “now that our new friend here brought it to America?” She looked through the observation window at the new man, who sat beside Samantha watching helicopter video of panic-stricken Vermonters fighting each other over the few remaining spots on a flatbed rail car. “He was the Air Canada co-pilot on what ended up being the last flight out of Paris. He woke up covered in vomit, his pilot dead, so he took over from the autopilot and landed just before they ran out of fuel. He parked, stepped over the bodies in the galley, and headed up the Jetway. The gate agent got sick. A reporter there to interview Paris arrivals got sick. Two dozen people in the terminal got sick.”

“Why is he here?” Isabel asked.

“He’s American, so they shipped him down here. But he’s our last. We’re not taking any more patients. I’m being sent to the Pfizer Lab in Pearl River, New York, to oversee their work on a vaccine. They say it’s showing promise, so there’s some hope.”

Beth, in scrubs, but wearing a prim sweater meant for someone thirty years her senior and wearing more make-up than normal, timidly tapped the paper logbook in her lap.

Nielsen said, “Oh, yeah. We just finished our last experiment. See that laptop?” It sat on a table in the hospital room. “The Pentagon had us give Zero One Four in there that laptop with a flight simulator on it. He flew a Boeing 777 from JFK to Rome, flawlessly. Requested altitude changes from the simulated air traffic control. Routed them around a storm in the Atlantic but still made an on-time arrival by re-plotting his course and burning more fuel. The program rated him ninety-nine out of one hundred: Master Flight Instructor. We checked his employment history. He seems to be an even better pilot now than before infection.”

“Another skills improvement after brain damage,” Isabel commented.

“And marvelous bladder control. Nine hours straight with no potty break. Barely scratched his nose. Then he set the brakes at the gate in Rome, used the bathroom, and ate his by then cold breakfast. He never mentioned the simulation. Never touched the laptop again. Zero curiosity about the test. About anything. How weird is that?”

Beth seemed to want to be heard. When Nielsen and Isabel turned to her, Beth raised her logbook and said, “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant . . . the other thing.”

“Oh!” Nielsen replied. “Right.” She turned to Isabel. “Last night, just before Zero One Four did the flight simulator, he did your sister. They had sex.”

“Whaaat?”

Nielsen chuckled. “Yeah. How long did it take?” she asked Beth.

“For him?” she replied. “Or for her, and which one?”

“Oh-for-God’s-sake!” Isabel said. She doubled over and dropped her head into her lap so her hair fell forward to hide her. Nielsen clearly thought it was hilarious. From her hirsute fortress, Isabel said, “In there? In a room full of people? A twelve-year-old?”

“Everyone was asleep!” Beth said before consulting her log. “We introduced him at 2214. They turned the TV off and all went to bed at 2232. I . . . I lowered the lights. One Four didn’t go over to Emma’s bed until 2258. Samantha and Dorothy were out cold. Dwayne was snoring. One Four asked if she would have sex. Emma said yes. She had her first orgasm at . . .”

“Okay,” Isabel replied, sitting up. “I get it.”

Nielsen shrugged. “What more could a guy want? Sex and then a video game.” Isabel had to cover her blushing face again. “I guess we could’ve ordered him a pizza. But hey,” Nielsen patted Isabel’s back, “sex is an urge, right? With no inhibition, what’d you expect? And they’ve all been in there, using the same bathroom, no door, showering, with zero privacy but also zero issues. Emma’s no reflection on you. She’s not even a reflection on herself. But don’t worry. We tested him for STDs on intake. He’s clean. And, how should I put this, the way it ended there’s zero chance she got pregnant.”

“Aaaah!” Isabel exclaimed before hurrying out of the observation room. Emma had omitted that little tidbit despite Isabel’s intensely personal description of her own failed sexual conquest. Even with brain damage, Emma had no problem getting laid. Twenty-eight and counting, to Isabel’s one. It’s me. I’m pathetic!

She went through the motions of getting breakfast in the cafeteria—dry cereal and black coffee was all they had—and sat at her table in the corner of the large, empty room eating corn flakes like popcorn. She called Noah and told him about the NIH preparing the apartment and car. But he missed the point—her triumph of assertiveness. “Forget that. We’re not going to Emma’s apartment. We’re going to McLean, then we’ll caravan down to the Old Place, okay? We’ll put Emmy up in the hunting cabin. It’s almost a mile from the main house.”

“I’ve got a job to do, Noah,” Isabel said, then wondered if that was still true. The NIH lab was barely functioning. The White House no longer called. And Browner . . . !

“What job? Working for liar-in-chief Stoddard? And you had me quit my job!”

“But my job matters. And I can’t keep running back to you! I need my own life.”

“What? Iz, we’re not talking about where to spend summer breaks and holidays. We’re talking about surviving the end of the world as a family! Together! I made all the preparations you told me to. You promised. We go straight to McLean, then down to the Shenandoah. No arguments. No delays. No bullshit. We’re a family. We stick together.”

Isabel hung up and felt, more than saw, Brandon behind her. “Has Browner called?”

“Fuck him!” she replied. “Evil bastard.” She told him about the pain experiments.

He wasn’t as distressed as he should’ve been. “But she couldn’t feel the pain, right?” he replied. She also confronted Brandon about the twins study. “I had no idea,” he said. “I swear. Plus maybe it started off that way, but that’s not the way it ended up. You were a huge part of the science. You’re highly respected.” She snorted, but appreciated the remark. Brandon said, “General Browner is sending me up to Vermont, and he wants you to go too. To give orientation briefings to the troops.”

“I told you! Fuck Browner!” But she couldn’t help being pleased. She was still wanted and still had a job, or at least a job offer. Her reaction distressed her even more.

“This is his aide’s direct line,” Brandon said as he picked up her phone and input numbers. “It’s listed under Ensign Somebody. Call her. He said they’d come pick you up wherever you are. Just call.” Brandon clearly wanted her to say that she would.

“Good luck, Brandon.” She kissed his cheek. Anything more wouldn’t have been honest. Still, his pained reaction stabbed her in the heart. It was the reaction she had avoided ten years earlier when she left the note on his windshield.

* * * *

Noah had prepared for the legal fight of his life, brainstorming every imaginable government argument and Emma’s successive fallback positions. She could wear an ankle bracelet or have an RFID chip, like a child or pet locator, inserted under her skin.

The same US District Court judge and three taciturn Justice Department lawyers as before crowded the same observation room in the radically changed NIH hospital. Doctors and nurses in scrubs had noticeably been replaced by soldiers in body armor.

Before following the others in, Isabel told Noah about Emma’s request that he get her roommates released, and about her “tryst” with one of them. “With all her roommates there?” Noah asked, appalled. Isabel shrugged. Inside the observation room, the court reporter now had numerous Infecteds to ogle.

“Your Honor,” Noah said, “it has come to my attention that the government has conducted experiments on Petitioner that can only be described as cruel and unusual.” He had Emma sworn in, as useless as an oath ending in “so help me God” would be for an Infected, and testify about the pain test. The judge had Emma roll up her sleeve, and both he and the court reporter winced. It helped, Noah thought, that Emma’s eyes now appeared human. If only some expression would cross her blank face.

“It has also come to my attention,” Noah said, “that the government is considering a policy of impulsive eradication: extra-judicial execution of all sufferers of the Pandoravirus epidemic. Needless to say, their abuse of Petitioner while in medical detention and any such policy of extermination would both be in direct violation of your order in Petitioner’s prior habeas proceeding. I would, therefore, request that this Court order the immediate release of Petitioner, whose apartment is being prepared for . . .”

“Is there any truth to this?” the judge angrily asked the government lawyers.

“Your Honor,” said the assistant US attorney, “the United States does not oppose Petitioner’s request for release from detention.”

The judge glared at him for a moment, then rocked back in his chair. “So you’re dropping this to keep it quiet? These policies of torture and mass murder?”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” replied the government lawyer, “but I’m not privy to matters of national security. The United States will, however, stipulate that Petitioner is no more infectious now than the carriers of numerous other diseases, and therefore there is no need for her continued detention at the NIH.”

The unhappy judge shook his head. “I see right through this. Fair warning—if a justiciable issue ever reaches this Court regarding the torture or extrajudicial killing of the sick, there’s going to be hell to pay. For the record! But, there being no dispute, this is your lucky day, counselor.” He raised his gavel.

“Your Honor!” Noah said quickly, rising. “Would you consider ordering the release of all the infected people in Petitioner’s room? While I’m not technically their counsel, it would follow that their release would also be in order.”

The judge got on the hospital room’s microphone and had the four other Infecteds line up. “Please state your names, and how long ago you were infected.” One by one they spoke. “Dorothy Adams. Seventeen days ago.” “Samantha Brown. Seventeen days ago.” “Dwayne Bullock. Sixteen days ago.” “David Conners. Two days ago.”

Everyone’s pupils but Conners’s looked normal. Noah wasn’t sure, he realized with mounting concern, that if he met them on the street he could tell that they had turned.

The judge asked Dr. Nielsen how long it took for their contagiousness to fall to relatively safe levels. “In every case we’ve studied,” she replied, “the airborne viral shedding fell to low, steady-state levels before the end of two weeks.”

“The United States will so stipulate,” the Justice Department lawyer said.

The judge ordered everyone released except the airline pilot, who was to be held for twelve more days and paid a per diem of “not less than thirty dollars until release.” Noah understood what he was doing. The money meant nothing in one detainee’s case. But multiplied by millions, the precedent was a powerful economic disincentive to mass detention of the sick.

“No objections, Your Honor,” said the man from the Justice Department.

Down came the judge’s gavel.