wouldn’t do for Lois to not have any
Rick and I exchanged a startled look before we burst out laughing. I started to cry at the same time, and pulled Rick to his feet before slinging my arms around his shoulders and using him to steady myself. Shaun walked over and put his arms around the both of us, joining our laughter and smashing his face into my hair to hide his own tears. I knew they were there; Rick didn’t need to. Some secrets don’t need to be shared.
We stayed that way until the sound of tires alerted us to the approach of the biohazard convoy. Hastily, we pulled apart, trying to get ourselves into something that approached composure; Rick wiped his face with one hand, while Shaun dried his cheeks and I raked my fingers through my hair before shoving my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose. Looking to Shaun, I nodded and started toward the sound of the approaching vehicles, carrying my bagged test in one hand, digging my license beacon out with the other.
The convoy stopped about twenty yards away from the forerunning vehicle; my poor, abandoned motorcycle. The Memphis CDC didn’t play around. They’d sent a full unit: two troop carriers with their standard Jeep-style frames surrounded by steel-reinforced clear plastic armor, a white medical van nearly twice the size of ours, and, most ominously, two of the vast armored trucks media pundits call “fire trucks.” They were huge, painted safety orange with red biohazard signs blazoned on all sides, and their hoses didn’t squirt water; instead, they delivered a nasty high-octane variant on napalm mixed with a concentrated form of insecticide. Once a fire truck sprays something down, it’s sterile. The soil would be dead for decades, and anything that happened to be in the radius and alive when the trucks came wouldn’t be breathing afterward, but the area would be clean.
One of the men in the foremost troop carrier raised a microphone as we approached, and the loudspeaker at the front of the car blared, “Put down your testing units and step back. Clean units will be put in their place. Do not approach personnel. Failure to comply with instructions will result in termination.”
The headlights of the convoy were almost blinding, even through my sunglasses. I raised the hand with my license to shield my eyes, and squinted at the troop carrier. “Joe? Is that you?”
“Got it in one, darlin’,” the voice replied, less formally. “Just go ahead and set those units on down, if you’d be so kind?”
“I’m leaving my license beacon with the test,” I called. “It includes important medical data.” If these people made me take my glasses off, the glare from their headlights would probably blind me.
A new voice, female and substantially more clinical, came over the loudspeaker. “We know about your retinal condition, Ms. Mason. Please comply with instructions.”
“We’re complying, jeez!” shouted Shaun, dropping his bagged testing unit and putting his license beacon on top. I bent to put mine down, somewhat more gently, and Rick did the same. The three of us then started backing away.
We made it about twenty feet before Joe’s voice came over the speaker again, saying, “That’s far enough, darlin’. You three hold tight, now.” The door of the medical van opened and three technicians in biohazard containment suits emerged. I could hear the chugging of their positive pressure unit as it cycled the air, keeping outside particles from entering their sterile zone.
Moving with the sort of grace that implied hundreds, if not thousands, of hours spent in the bulky suits, the technicians walked over to collect our test kits and beacons, putting three sealed kits in their place. With this accomplished, they retreated, and Joe’s voice called, “Please approach, open the testing units, and stay where you are until you’ve checked out clean.”
“It’s like playing Simon Says,” muttered Shaun as we started forward.
“Where I grew up, Simon didn’t usually have a truck full of napalm pointed at you,” said Rick.
“Pansy,” said Shaun.
The testing units left by the CDC technicians were Apple XH-229s, only slightly less advanced than the top of the line. Shaun whistled low under his breath.
“Wow. We really are a threat.”
“Something like that,” I said. I picked up the first kit and broke the seals with my thumbnail before removing the plastic lid. It was designed to cover my whole hand, all the way to the base of my wrist. There were at least fifteen visible points of contact. Grimacing, I rolled my sleeve up and slid my hand inside.
The mist of antiseptic across my skinned palm was deceptively soothing, a feeling that lasted only a second before needles drove themselves into my already damaged flesh, starting to sift through my blood looking for active viral bodies. The lights began to cycle, moving from red to yellow to green as the more advanced medical processes kicked in.
I was so intent on the lights and what they could mean about my future that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me over the drone of the positive pressure units, or feel the hypo until it was pressed against my neck. A wash of cold flowed over me, and I fell.
The last thing I saw was a row of lights, settling on a steady green. Then my eyes closed, and I didn’t see anything at all.
…the question I have been asked most frequently since my transition from the traditional news media to the online world is “Why?” Why would I want to give up an established career to strike out into a new field, one where my experience would not only be laughed at, but would actually work against me? Why would any sane man—and most people regard me as a sane man—want to do something like that?
For the most part, I’ve replied with the pretty, expected lies: I wanted a challenge, I wanted to test myself, and I believe in telling the truth and telling the news. Only that last part is true, because I
I married young. Her name was Lisa. She was smart, she was beautiful, and, above all, she was as crazy in love with me as I was with her. We were still in college on our wedding day. I was going to be a journalist, and she was going to be a teacher—a career path that got put on hold when, three days after graduation, the pregnancy test came up positive. That was a test we passed, and gladly. It was the only test we passed.
Our son, Ethan Patrick Cousins, was born on April 5, 2028. He weighed eight pounds, six ounces. And routine testing of his bodily fluids and vital signs revealed a system crawling with the Kellis-Amberlee virus. His mother had condemned him without ever knowing it; further tests showed that the virus had set up camp in her ovaries, reproducing there without infecting her or changing her life in any way. Our son was not so lucky.
I was fortunate. I had nine good years with my son, despite the precautions and quarantines his condition entailed. He loved baseball. On his last Christmas, he wrote to Santa Claus and asked for a cure, so “Mommy and Daddy won’t be sad anymore.” He underwent spontaneous viral amplification two months and six days after his ninth birthday. Posthumous examination of his corpse displayed a final body weight of sixty-two pounds, six ounces. Lisa took her own life. And me? I found a new career.
One where I’m still allowed to tell the truth.
Nineteen
I woke in a white bed in a white room, wearing white cotton pajamas, with the cloying white smell of bleach in my nose. I sat up with a gasp, screwing my eyes shut in an automatic attempt to keep them from being burned by the overhead lights before I realized that I’d opened my eyes while I was lying on my back. I looked directly into the lights, and it hadn’t hurt at all. A lack of sensitivity to pain is one of the many warning signs of early Kellis-Amberlee amplification. Was that why the CDC decided to attack us? Was I in some sort of fucked-up research facility? Rumors always abound, after all, and some of them just might be true.
Cautious now, I reached up to touch my face. My fingers found a thin band of plastic resting above my eyes, balanced to put next to no pressure on either the bridge of my nose or the sides of my head. I knew what it was when I felt it; they’ve been using polarized UV-blocker strips for hospital treatment of retinal KA for about fifteen years now. They’re expensive as hell—just one can add five hundred dollars or more to your bill, even after
