Chapter 34

METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Infection Date 39, 1500 GMT (11:00 a.m. Local)

On the way to Emma’s hospital room, Isabel and Noah each donned only a single pair of Latex gloves, but even that was probably unnecessary. “By the way,” Isabel said with her mask dangling beneath her chin, “good job, you legal genius you.” She rose onto tiptoes and kissed her brother’s cheek, then rubbed her nose. “Scratchy! Preparing for life as an outdoorsman, Grizzly?” Her good humor faded when they reached the corridor to Emma’s room. The robing room door was wide open.

Noah didn’t know enough to be nervous. “What’s gonna happen with the others?”

Isabel, on guard, said, “I dunno. Mask on.”

Noah fumbled with his mask’s straps as they peered into the enrobing room. Emma’s hospital room doors were also open. There was no nurse in the glass-enclosed decontamination workstation. No Marine guard with pistol drawn. The streamers above the open doorway hung limply. The buzzer was quiet and red warning light dark.

In Emma’s room, the beds were stripped of linens. Isabel stuck her head inside.

Nielson, her back to the door, held Emma’s shoulders. Emma had changed into the clothes Isabel had brought. They both wore only gloves and masks. Nielsen reached up to tuck a loose strand of Emma’s messy hair behind her mask’s strap.

“I hope you understand it was all necessary,” Nielsen was saying. “Scientifically, medically, given what we’re facing. You understand, don’t you?” Emma saw Isabel and Noah and pulled free. “Oh!” Nielsen said. “She’s ready.”

It felt strange, and dangerous, to enter that room so casually. Nielson handed Emma a small, white plastic bag, closed with a drawstring, containing, she said, a comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss. Emma held the bag, her eyes fixed on the open door. A wary Isabel subtly maneuvered Noah so they didn’t stand between their sister and freedom.

On the desk lay Emma’s four notebooks and a fifth, off to the side, open to the last page containing notes. Emma had studied scans of the first four notebooks, but hadn’t seen the fifth. “What about those?” Isabel asked.

“Sorry,” Nielsen said. “Property of the US government. I would let you have them. But General Browner made a special point of telling Ramirez that he wanted them sent over to the Pentagon. After, that is, they spend the day in some hydrogen peroxide vapor.”

“You have copies,” Isabel argued. “Why keep the originals?” But as soon as Isabel asked, she knew the answer. They weren’t keeping the notebooks so that Browner could have them. They were keeping them so that Emma could not. “Noah, this isn’t fair.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emma said.

“But Emma,” Isabel said, “you put so much effort into . . .”

“I remember everything,” her sister interrupted.

“All those calculations, observations, rules?”

“I remember everything,” Emma repeated, looking at, yearning for, the hallway.

Nielsen shrugged, put her arm through Emma’s and walked her toward the door.

Emma halted. “Where’s the bird’s nest?” she asked, looking up at the empty sill.

“They’re boarding up the windows today,” Nielsen replied. “They must have hosed it off.” Emma caught Isabel’s eye before Nielsen hauled her away saying, “I kept getting voicemails forwarded to me from some friend of yours. Amanda Davis? About lunch?”

What had Emma’s look meant? Quiet condemnation of Uninfecteds’ disrespect for other species? An unspoken commentary on the inhumanity of the supposedly humane? Or was it absolutely nothing at all?

“Are we going?” Noah asked. She could hear Nielsen chattering away in the robing room.

The light from the high window lit the cover of the notebook at the top of the stack of four. Indentations in its leather seemed to form a pattern. Isabel raised it to the light, tilting it so that the rays struck it just so. The indentations formed the letter ‘S,’ followed by three other letters. She instantly recognized the word. It was the same on the covers of the next notebook, and the next. All four! On the fifth, just begun, there was barely two-thirds of an ‘S’ carved into the cover by Emma’s fingernails.

“Oh-my-God.” Isabel doubled over and stooped all the way down to a squat.

“Hey!” Noah said. “What’s wrong. You okay?”

“The notebooks.” Isabel felt dizzy. “The covers!”

Noah tilted a cover to the light. “Yeah. Looks like she dug her fingernails into the leather or something. I see it. S-E-L-F. Self. Yeah?”

Isabel grew pissed at how dense he was, and stood. “That’s her Self, Noah! Don’t you get it? Jesus! I kept describing to her how she had lost this thing called a self that came up with ideas. So when she got a new idea, she wrote it down in those notebooks. What the voice in her head kept telling her. Ideas!” Noah kept waiting for Isabel to get to the important point. “Oh, forget it!”

Nielsen’s laughter came from the corridor. Emma had only just begun taking notes in the fifth notebook. Isabel had seen no scans of it. She looked up at the cameras. Everything seemed shut down. She quickly tore out the pages with writing on them from Emma’s fifth notebook, folded them and stuffed them into the back pocket of her jeans. Noah silently objected with an arched brow and stare.

At the exit at the end of the corridor, Ramirez and Beth stood, arms touching. Beth startled Emma by hugging her as she passed. Emma’s gaze remained fixed on the sunlit outdoors.

Isabel had to say quick goodbyes and good lucks to Ramirez and Beth in order to keep up with Emma. Beth hugged her. Ramirez saluted her with his index finger. “Take care of Poonhound,” he said. “He’s the real deal.” Isabel grinned and headed out.

Nielsen pointed in the direction of the parking lot. Emma took off at a fast walk. Nielsen, Noah, and Isabel hurried to follow. At the fortified main gate, Emma unceremoniously climbed into the back of Isabel’s new NIH car with seats and paneling covered in crinkly plastic, her toiletry sack on the seat beside her. Isabel transferred her overnight and gun bags from her old NIH car to the trunk of her new car, then held her hand out to shake Nielsen’s.

Nielsen hugged her. “Goodbye, Dr. Miller,” she said, squeezing her. “I wish you, your sister, and your family the best of luck. Maybe we’ll meet again on the other side.”

Isabel got into the front passenger seat without a word. As Noah drove them off, he let his sarcasm fly. “Boy, you were so right about her! What a total bitch!” Isabel felt guilty for the chilly farewell. Nielsen was doing enormously important work during impossibly trying times. Isabel waved at her last sight of the woman, who waved back.

Outside the gate, two lines of trenches were dotted with helmeted heads. Interspersed were tanks, dug in up to their turrets. What the hell is coming?

“We’ll have to take the long way around D.C.,” Noah said. Isabel kept turning to look at Emma, who stared, motionless, out the window. Noah ascended onto the Beltway.

“Does it feel good to be outa there?” Isabel asked Emma, who said nothing. “Noah got your favorite food group,” Isabel continued nervously. “Mac and cheese, right?” She kept filling the silence. “Look at that,” she said as cars slowed to ogle a strip center’s parking lot filled with tank-like vehicles arrayed in a circle like a wagon train in the old West. Try as she might, Isabel couldn’t engage Emma. Noah glanced repeatedly through the rearview mirror at their mute sister.

They crossed the Potomac to the Virginia side. As they descended the bridge, Emma suddenly said, “Could you stop?”

“You feeling sick?” Noah asked, slowing.

“Stop the car,” Emma repeated. “I’m feeling agitated. I’m feeling agitated!”

Noah pulled over onto the shoulder of the busy, four-lane highway. At the last instant, Isabel, looking back at Emma, called out, “Don’t stop! Noah . . . !”

But it was too late. The seat belt clacked and Emma’s door flew open.

“What the fuck?” Noah cursed.

Emma ran down the embankment. Both siblings climbed out and called her name. Isabel’s last sight of Emma was of her tearing off her mask and disappearing into the thick woods carrying only the plastic bag with her hospital-provided toiletries. Noah craned his neck over the roof. “Did she have to go to the bathroom?”

“No, Noah!” God, he was dense! “She’s gone! She just . . . She used us.”

“I can’t believe this,” Noah said. “What do we do? Should we call somebody?”

As cars whizzed by, Isabel said, “No. They’ll hunt her down. Should I go after her?”

“No,” Noah decided. “We go on. Without her. If this is what she wants, at least we did this much for her. Let’s get down to the Old Place before someone spots Emma and they start closing roads.”

“Or she kills somebody,” Isabel said.

“Iz! Jesus.” They got back into the car and merged into traffic.

“I’m serious, Noah. They’ll rape, kill, cook, and eat you. What do you think has been happening in Asia, for God’s sake! You cannot trust an Infected. You’re more at risk from Emma than from any random ex-con you meet in an alley. Do not trust them.”

“Then what the fuck were we just doing with her in this car? Heading to meet up with my family?”

“I don’t know!” Isabel replied. “She’s still our sister. I guess. And it’s not like I thought this all the way through! It’s very confusing! But . . . you may not have seen the last of her.”

“What?” Noah asked. “What does that mean?”

“I mean I kinda may have told her, you know, where we’d be.”

“You what?”

“Well, it was our plan!”

“So she’s just gonna, what? Skulk around the fence until she gets hungry, then slit our throats in our sleep? Great! Thanks for that, Isabel!” She couldn’t come up with a good enough defense. Noah finally said, “Don’t tell Natalie, whatever you do.”

But Isabel couldn’t stop thinking about it. “Emma probably already planned to go there. That’s my guess as to what her drawings were.” Isabel told him about the mysterious tracings. “I think Emma lied, and if you tear, fold and overlay the sheets a certain way that only Emma and her roommates know, they were, like, directions to the Old Place.”

“Wait. Wait a minute! You think they all have maps! To my family’s hideout! That whole freaking horror show you just had me get released! Isabel!”

“I could be wrong, okay? I don’t know! And the military confiscated all of the drawings after the shooting. Plus she made those maps or whatever before I ever told her the plan! She probably came up with the idea to go there on her own!”

Noah’s expression was a fixed grimace. He slammed his palms on the steering wheel every so often, but his subvocal cursing finally died down.

“What I don’t understand,” Noah began again, “is if she wants to go to the Old Place, and we were gonna drive her to the Old Place, why’d she jump out of the freaking car?”

“She doesn’t trust us, Noah. She thinks we’re dangerous.”

That quieted him for a few minutes. Then he said, “She could be a fucking seasoned serial killer by the time she murders her way down to the Shenandoah. She’d make short work of us, I suppose. I did everything I could, Izzy! Thought of almost everything! But miss even one, little, stinking, miserable detail, and my entire family could die!”

“Jesus, Noah, okay! I get it now. You’re freaked because everybody is depending on you. I understand.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “All those fears. Poor Noah. Did you get ‘em out of your system? Are you good now?” He nodded. “Then shut the fuck up and don’t ever complain again until this whole apocalypse is over!” He looked taken aback. “John Wayne didn’t bitch, okay? ‘Oh this isn’t fair! Look how many Indians there are!’ Get your shit together, Noah! It is what it is. Toughen the fuck up and grow a pair!”

Isabel’s little pep talk did double duty: stiffening Noah’s spine, maybe, and getting Isabel off the hook for the Emma thing. After driving for a while in silence, a calmer Noah asked, “Did you ever get a look at what she was writing in those notebooks?”

“Yeah! It’s, like, a treasure trove. Didn’t I tell you? I guess it was secret. It’s like a fascinating road map. Her self gets ideas—ping, ping, ping—and she writes them down in those notebooks that she called her Self. You can follow her daily cycle in her notes. ‘Birds build nests near materials.’ Then in comes breakfast and it’s, ‘Preexisting infrastructure for bacon and eggs’ or whatever. Then, it’s like, ‘Manned space program unnecessary.’ And she gets smarter over time. She synthesizes discrete observations into generalizations. ‘Need Uninfecteds for intellectual spark. Uninfecteds loathe violence. Order reduces violence. Rules impose order.’”

“Can I have a copy?” Noah asked. Isabel shrugged and texted the scans to Noah’s phone.

They took a roundabout route to avoid D.C.’s cordon sanitaire. There was military everywhere. “I hope the NSA didn’t just see me do that,” Isabel said.

Noah looked over. “Do what? Send me Emma’s notes?”

“Yeah. They’re classified Top Secret or something.”

“What? Why’d you send them to me? To my Gmail account? Isabel!”

“You asked me to!” They then alternated between Noah’s aggravated silence, and Isabel’s spates of concerned speculation about Emma, in the woods, on the run. She was worried about her sister. But left unspoken was her worry about the people who would run into her sister.

Noah finally spoke calmly of his plans in a way that might reassure Emma, but not Isabel. Eying her with sidelong glances, Noah delivered comforting descriptions of Isabel’s eternal place in his family, trying to find the right words to manage her feelings in a manner slightly less adept than brain-damaged Emma’s. “We’ll make space for you in the SUV and only take one vehicle. We set up your room to share bunk beds with Chloe.”

“Bunk beds?” Isabel muttered. Noah fell into uncertain silence.

On the Beltway, panicked civilians headed away from the city in bumper-to-bumper traffic, while military convoys cruised at highway speeds in the opposite direction. Noah surprised Isabel when, out of nowhere, he said, “You know mom and dad were always so proud of you and Emma.”

“You were the one they admired,” she said. “Going to law school, making money.”

“Bullshit!”

“Emma and I just did well on tests,” Isabel said.

“I know! You don’t think I heard about every test score you two ever got? Co-freaking-Valedictorians!” He sounded annoyed. “I did well enough, but whatever it was, both of you always aced it! SAT. ACT. APs. I dunno, Pap smear!”

“Pap smear? Jeez, Noah. That’s pretty misogynistic of you.”

“Oh go fuck yourself.”

“You see? You have tendencies.” He looked over. They both broke out laughing. “Seriously, Noah,” she said. “Your family? Amazing job there. Mom and dad really would be proud of them. And I’d give my right arm to have a family like yours right now.”

“I’m not sure you would. Not right now.”

When they got to McLean, they opened the windows to flush out the car before removing their masks and gloves so they wouldn’t freak out Natalie. In front of Noah’s suburban manse stood his new, giant SUV with a huge, tarp-covered heap on top. It wouldn’t fit in the garage so Jake stood guard in the shadows by the house holding a rifle.

In reply to Isabel’s look, Noah said, “He knows what he’s doing. We took a course.”

Chloe and Natalie came out to meet them. Noah ordered Chloe and Jake to clear a spot in the back of the SUV. “Right now! We’re in a hurry.”

“Izzy, I made you a PB and J sandwich for the road!” Natalie called out.

“Un-fucking-believable,” came Isabel’s nearly silent response.

Noah led Natalie toward the front door, out of Izzy’s earshot. “I think she’s getting sensitive about us treating her like our third child.”

“She is our third child, Noah.”

“But let’s not rub it in. She wants to have her own life. Her own family.”

Inside, Natalie said, “Then maybe she should stop clinging to us. I love her, Noah. But you know you’re not helping her by always making a place for her with our family.”

“Is this really the best time for this conversation? Do you want me to march out there and say, ‘Sorry, Isabel. You’ll be better off going it alone. But thanks for the heads-up about the apocalypse and all! Here’s a sandwich’?”

“That’s so unfair!” Natalie replied. Before Noah could apologize, she said, “Have I ever been anything but welcoming to your sister? And this is what I get? You quit your job, sell our things, spend our money, and then accuse me of kicking your sister to the curb? I’ve treated her like a daughter! How can you think so little of me? You have no respect for me! I’m just your arm candy! Your cheerleader you show off at parties!”

“Nat,” he said calmly, “you haven’t been a cheerleader in a looong time.”

“Oh!” she shouted, slamming the master bedroom door in Noah’s face.

Noah was beginning to think this might not all be about Isabel. He looked out the upstairs hall window. Instead of unloading the SUV like they were supposed to, the kids stood around doing absolutely nothing! Why can’t they ever just do what they’re told? But before he could fix that mess, he had to deal with the Natalie thing. Christ!

* * * *

Isabel ended her phone call and joined Chloe and Jake at the open rear tailgate of their SUV. “Did you hear all that?” Isabel asked. The two kids looked at each other before nodding. Neither knew what to say. Chloe checked her phone. Jake, holding his rifle, kicked at the gravel.

Chloe glanced at Isabel several times as if she wanted to talk, but just sat on the tailgate swinging her leg. A pistol holster protruded from under her short jeans jacket.

“I’ve got a gun too,” Isabel said.

“Oh, yeah?” Chloe seemed almost interested. Isabel retrieved her bags from the car and her pistol from the gun bag.

Chloe slid off the SUV, took Isabel’s pistol, held it over the tailgate, ejected the magazine, and pulled the slide back. A bullet bounced to a stop on the SUV’s carpet.

“You keep a round chambered?” Chloe asked.

“I guess,” Isabel said. “Am I not supposed to?”

Chloe thumbed a lever. The slide clacked forward. She pointed the pistol at the ground and pulled the trigger repeatedly. The hammer clicked each time. “It’s double-action,” Chloe said. “Amazing it didn’t go off in your bag.”

“Oh, Jeeze. I didn’t realize.”

Chloe pressed the bullet back into the magazine and the magazine into the pistol.

Isabel returned it to the bag, and they backslid into awkward silence. Chloe swung her foot. Jake kicked at pebbles. Isabel finally said, “I love you two.” As soon the words left her mouth, she began to cry. Chloe slid off the rocking car to hug her. Jake even found a way to put his arm around Isabel’s shoulders.

“We love you too, Aunt Izzy!” Chloe said, in tears, tucking her sweet-smelling head under Isabel’s chin even though they were now the same height. “I’m afraid!” Chloe whispered. “Like, really, really afraid!” It was now Isabel who wrapped Chloe in her arms.

A tear ran down Jake’s cheek. Isabel reached up and grabbed the back of his head. “Sweetheart,” she said. “Come here.” He held his rifle aside so she could pull Jake’s head down onto her shoulder. “We’re gonna see each other again. I swear!”

From the house came Noah’s shout. “I told you to clear a goddamn space for Aunt Isabel!” He and Natalie carried out the last of their stuff—Noah’s dopp kit, Natalie’s plyometric resistance bands. “You two never listen!” he shouted before noticing the tears. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Noah.” Distant engine noise rose. “You’ve done an amazing job!” The chop grew louder. “I love you! You’re the best big brother I could imagine having! I . . . Thank you!” She could no longer get the words out.

Noah clearly had no idea what was happening until the roar of the helicopter grew loud. He searched the heavens, but the roar seemed to come from everywhere. “Isabel?”

She grabbed his arms. “Noah, you’re gonna make it!” A stupendous downdraft preceded the huge aircraft, which blotted out the sun as it passed low and slow overhead.

“You’re not coming, are you?” he shouted. She shook her head as everyone turned away from the dust. Noah began to cry.

She held his face and kissed his scratchy cheek. The giant helicopter landed in the expansive center of the circular drive, pressing the now overgrown grass flat in the gale. Isabel pulled Noah’s forehead down to hers. “I’ve got a job to do, Noah! I’m going to Vermont to brief the military! I’ll join you at the Old Place! I will! You keep everyone safe! But for right now . . . I have to go!”

She hugged Natalie, who shoved the sandwich into her hand, squeezed the kids tight, and got her two bags. The helicopter wasn’t like any she’d ever seen. Bulging tanks above the wheels must be filled with fuel. A long tube stuck out of its nose. Six-barreled guns with giant ammunition boxes filled its doors, each manned by a helmeted, visored crewman.

“Isabel!” Noah shouted. “Goddammit you promised!”

For reasons initially lost on Isabel, she was grinning. As if a weight had been lifted. A test passed. “Be happy for me, Noah!” She took two steps, then wheeled back around. “I have a life now! My own life!” She ran to the helicopter and tossed inside her overnight bag from Santa Barbara and her range bag from the FBI. A tall soldier in full combat gear and sunglasses pulled her aboard. The patch sewn over his heart read: Townsend.

“Rick!” He grabbed her tightly.

“We were leaving when your call came in!” he shouted over the roaring engines. “I guess you’re not very good at taking advice!” Isabel shook her head apologetically.

Rick’s arm held her as the helicopter lurched skyward. On a big, swooping turn, she exchanged last waves with her family before the gunners slid their doors shut. In the sudden, relative quiet, Rick led her to two empty jump seats along the bulkhead amid over a dozen somber, heavily armed troops.

Everyone in the noisy aircraft was silent, which was fine with Isabel. She was content. She never wanted this moment to end. She almost, in fact, drifted off, warm at Rick’s side, as the engine thrummed through the bulkhead into her back. But the minutes wore on. The smile had drained from Rick’s face. She asked, “Wanta share a sandwich?” Rick’s eyes lit up when he saw it was peanut butter and jelly. They passed it back and forth until it was gone, and she savored the warm, plasticky water from Rick’s canteen.

“When we land,” Rick said, looking at the pistol from Isabel’s pistol bag as he transferred all her stuff into his bulky camouflaged backpack, “we’ll get you proper kit. Helmet, body armor, a real weapon.”

“Is it gonna be bad?” she asked. “I mean, I know it’s bad, but . . .”

He looked ill with worry, and couldn’t seem to find the words to answer. He fished a tiny white cloth from a pouch and obsessively ran its edge through the grooves, nooks, and crannies of his seemingly immaculate black rifle, which bristled with attachments.

She leaned her head onto his shoulder, then remembered. “Sorry.” But none of the crewmen or soldiers paid them any attention. All looked to have concerns of their own. As she shifted in her seat, the paper in her back pocket crackled and she extracted it.

“What’s that?” Rick asked, glancing down at the folded pages she had torn from Emma’s fifth notebook. Isabel unfolded and pressed the wrinkled paper flat on her lap.

“Notes my sister took,” Isabel replied. They read together. More random thoughts about “The Social Contract,” and transition plans like “Temporarily enforce prior laws,” both in red.

On the last page, however, Emma had switched to black ink, her security color, under the cryptic heading, Phases. What followed had just two lines. Number one, “Outbreak,” was checked: Complete.

And the last thing Emma had written in her notebook, the phase into which they all now headed, was number two, which Emma had named “Contagion.”