The Strain

“Just pull your fingers out of your sister’s concha and come get me— comprende?”

He came out of the tunnel into Manhattan and drove across town before turning south. He maneuvered onto Church Street, south of Canal, and started checking street signs. The address was a loft building fronted with scaffolding, its windows plastered with building permits, but without any construction trucks around. The street was quiet, residential. The garage worked as advertised, the access code raising a steel door under which the van just fit, rolling down a ramp beneath the building.

Gus parked and sat still a moment, listening. The garage was dingy and underlit, looking to him like a good trap, the kicked-up dust swirling in the fading light through the open doorway. His impulse was to beat a hasty retreat, but he needed to be sure he was out clean. He waited as the garage door rolled shut.

Gus folded the pages and envelope from the glove compartment and stuffed them inside his pockets, draining the last of the first beer and crushing the can to an aluminum pick, then stepping out of the van. After a moment’s deliberation, he went back in with his hand rag and wiped down the steering wheel, the radio knobs, the glove compartment, the door handles inside and out, and anything else he thought he might have touched.

He looked around the garage, the only light now coming in between the blades of an exhaust fan, dust drifting like a mist in its faint rays. Gus wiped off the ignition key, then went around to the side and back doors of the van. He tried the handles, just to see. They were locked.

He thought about it a moment, and then curiosity got the better of him. He tried the key.

The locks were different from the ignition. Part of him was relieved.

Terrorists, he thought. Could be I’m a fucking terrorist now. Driving a van full of explosives.

What he could do was drive the van back out of here. Park it outside the nearest police precinct, leave a note on the windshield. Have them see if it’s anything or nothing.

But these fuckers had his address. His madre’s address. Who were they?

He got angry, a heat flare of shame shooting up his back. He pounded the meat of his fist once against the side of the white van, demonstrating his dissatisfaction with the arrangement. A satisfying sound resounded within, breaking the silence. He gave up then, tossing the key onto the front seat and slamming the driver’s door with his elbow—another satisfying bang.

But then—instead of getting quiet quickly again—he heard something. Or thought he did: something inside. With the last of the light eking in through the fan grate, Gus got right up to the locked back doors to listen, his ear almost touching the van.

Something. Almost… like a stomach rumbling. That same kind of empty, roiling hunger. A stirring.

Ah, what the fuck, he decided, stepping back. The deed is done. So long as the bomb goes off below 110th Street, what do I care?

A dull but distinct bang from inside the van rocked Gus back a step. The paper bag containing the second cerveza slipped from underneath his arm, and the can burst and sprayed beer over the gritty floor.

The spraying faded to a dull foaming, and Gus bent to gather up the mess, then stopped, crouching, his hand on the soaked bag.

The van listed ever so slightly. Its undercarriage springs pinged once.

Something had moved or shifted inside.

Gus straightened, leaving the burst beer on the ground and moving backward, shoes scraping the grit. A few steps away, he reset himself, willing himself to relax. His trick was to think that someone was watching him lose his cool. He turned and walked calmly to the closed garage door.

The spring creaked again, putting a hitch in his step, but not halting him.

He reached the black panel with a red plunger switch next to the door. He hit it with the heel of his hand, and nothing happened.

He hit it two more times, first slow and easy, then hard and fast, the spring action on the plunger sticking as though from disuse.

The van creaked again, and Gus did not allow himself to look back.

The garage door was made of faceless steel, no grip handles. Nothing to pull. He kicked it once and the thing barely rattled.

Another bang from inside the van, almost answering his own, followed by a severe creak, and Gus rushed back to the plunger. He hit it again, rapid-fire, and then a pulley whirred and the motor clicked and the chain started running.

The door began lifting off the ground.

Gus was outside before it was halfway up, scuttling up onto the sidewalk like a crab and then quickly catching his breath. He turned and waited, watching the door open, hold there, and then go back down again. He made certain it closed tightly and that nothing emerged.

Then he looked around, shaking off his nerves, checking his hat—and walked to the corner, guilty fast, wanting to put another block between him and the van. He crossed to Vesey Street and found himself standing before the Jersey barriers and construction fences surrounding the city block that had been the World Trade Center. It was all dug out now, the great basin a gaping hole in the crooked streets of Lower Manhattan, with cranes and construction trucks building up the site again.

Gus shook off his chill. He unfolded his phone at his ear.

“Felix, where are you, amigo?”

“On Ninth, heading downtown. Whassup?”

“Nothing. Just get here pronto. I’ve done something I need to forget about.”

Isolation Ward, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center

EPH ARRIVED AT the Jamaica Hospitel Medical Center, fuming. “What do you mean they’re gone?”

“Dr. Goodweather,” said the administrator, “there was nothing we could do to compel them to remain here.”

“I told you to post a guard to keep that Bolivar character’s slimy lawyer out.”

“We did post a guard. An actual police officer. He looked at the legal order and told us there was nothing he could do. And—it wasn’t the rock star’s lawyer. It was Mrs. Luss the lawyer. Her firm. They went right over my head, right to the hospital board.”

“Then why wasn’t I told this?”

“We tried to get in touch with you. We called your contact.”

Eph whipped around. Jim Kent was standing with Nora. He looked stricken. He pulled out his phone and thumbed back through his calls. “I don’t see…” He looked up apologetically. “Maybe it was those sunspots from the eclipse, or something. I never got the calls.”

“I got your voice mail,” said the administrator.

He checked again. “Wait… there were some calls I might have missed.” He looked up at Eph. “With so much going on, Eph—I’m afraid I dropped the ball.”

This news hollowed out Eph’s rage. It was not at all like Jim to make any mistake whatsoever, especially at such a critical time. Eph stared at his trusted associate, his anger fizzling out into deep disappointment. “My four best shots at solving this thing just walked out that door.”

“Not four,” said the administrator, behind him. “Only three.”

Eph turned back to her. “What do you mean?”

Inside the isolation ward, Captain Doyle Redfern sat on his bed, inside the plastic curtains. He looked haggard; his pale arms were resting on a pillow in his lap. The nurse said that he had declined all food, claiming stiffness in his throat and persistent nausea, and had rejected even tiny sips of water. The IV in his arm was keeping him hydrated.

Eph and Nora stood with him, masked and gloved, eschewing full barrier protection.