One Butterfl y, who stood beside her, weeping.
The bloody priests brought Auxila’s corpse back into the recesses of the temple, an unusual handling of a body. It is honorable to throw it down the steps of the great pyramid, but they would not even do Auxila this small justice. They took the body from sight, and I knew they would not emerge again until the blackest of night, as the evening star reached the perfect angle with the temple.
Atop the steps of the royal palace, the perch from which I took in this madness, I felt a hand grasp the back of my knee. I turned and found the dwarf Jacomo, who had crept up beside me, chewing on the same mangled bark piece and smiling.
He spoke:
—Exalted is the name of Jaguar Imix, holy ruler of Kanuataba, whose wisdom guides us through this life. Do you exalt him, Paktul?—
I wanted so much to strike the dwarf right there, but I am not a man of violence. I merely echoed his praise:
—Exalted is the name of Jaguar Imix, holy ruler of Kanuataba, whose wisdom guides us through this life.—
Not until I returned to this cave to begin painting the pages of this secret book did I let go of the scream inside me. It was a scream for none but the gods to hear.
What am I to understand of a god who’d come with no blessings, who would ordain a temple we cannot build and command the death of a man most loyal to the king! Who is this mighty and mysterious new god called Akabalam?
12.19.19.17.13
DECEMBER 14, 2012
FIFTEEN
THE 10 FREEWAY WAS SHUT DOWN NEAR CLOVERFIELD SO THAT the National Guard could transport shipments of supplies and food to the west side. Stanton took the side streets, passing abandoned strip malls, elementary schools, and auto-body shops. Traffic moved slowly despite the few cars on the road, with National Guard checkpoints almost every mile. The governor of California had accepted Cavanagh and Stanton’s controversial plan and signed an emergency-powers act, enacting the first citywide quarantine in U.S. history.
The boundaries had been secured by the National Guard: from the San Fernando Valley in the north, east into the San Gabriel, south into Orange County, and west to the ocean. No planes were allowed out of the airports, and the coast guard had deployed nearly two hundred boats to secure the port and coastline. So far most Angelenos had reacted to the quarantine with a calm and cooperation that surprised even the most optimistic in Sacramento and Washington.
Beyond the quarantine, the CDC was testing people who’d visited L.A. or residents who’d traveled out in the last week. They checked manifestos for every plane that left any L.A. airport recently, hunted down Amtrak travelers through credit-card receipts, and tracked many of those who went by road by toll-booth passes and license-plate snapshots. Thus far they’d found eight cases in New York, four in Chicago, and three in Detroit, in addition to the nearly eleven hundred people now sick with VFI inside the Southland.
Stanton saw devastating patterns as the number of infected grew. All he and the other doctors could do was try to keep patients comfortable. For most victims, partial insomnia and sweating began after a brief latent period, then seizures and fevers and total insomnia followed. Those who’d been awake for three days or more were hardest to watch. They began to have delusions and panic attacks, then the hallucinations and violent outbursts Volcy and Gutierrez had shown. Death was likely within a week. Nearly twenty of the infected had already succumbed.
The sight of camouflage Humvees, and men and women in tan uniforms carrying machine guns on Lincoln Boulevard, was deeply unsettling. Stanton waited to show his ID in a line of cars on his way back to Venice. He glanced down at his phone, to the newest list of names of infected patients. The victims spanned every ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and nearly every age. Glasses had protected some, but plenty who wore them had been infected. The only groups immune to VFI seemed to be blind people, whose optic nerves were severed from their brains, and newborns. The optic nerves were undeveloped in babies, and until the sheath surrounding them matured, the disease couldn’t make its way into the brain. That protection wouldn’t last beyond six months, so it gave him little solace.
Stanton inched his Audi forward in the security line while scanning the patient list. On it were doctors and nurses he’d met at Presbyterian as well as two CDC officers he knew and liked.
Finally he saw Maria Gutierrez and her son, Ernesto.
He was supposed to be able to deal with mortality. And he had seen some bad cases in his time. But nothing had prepared Stanton for this. He needed grounding, and any other time he would’ve called Nina. She’d gone back out onto the water again after leaving his condo. He’d called to tell her VFI was airborne. Technically, Stanton should’ve ordered her to come ashore and get tested. But she had no symptoms of any kind, so he wanted her to stay far, far away. Buses and public bathrooms and almost every hospital in the city showed evidence of prion now, and even hazmat cleaning agents couldn’t decontaminate them.
His cellphone rang. “This is Stanton.”
“It’s Chel Manu.”
“Dr. Manu. Have you made any progress?”
She described the father–son-glyph revelation and the first section of the codex they’d translated. Though he didn’t follow her entirely, Stanton was impressed by her obvious ingenuity, by her command of the complex language, and by the vast amount of history she had at her disposal. He also heard the passion in her voice. He might not be able to trust this woman, but her energy lifted his spirits.
“There’s no definite geography in the first section,” Chel went on. “But it’s such a closely written narrative. We’re very hopeful the scribe will tell us more about his location in the later pages.”
“How long until you have the rest?” Stanton asked.
“We’re working on it. It could be a few days.”
“How long did it take you to do this first section?”
“About twenty hours.”
Stanton glanced at the clock. Like him, she’d been going nonstop. “Any trouble sleeping?” he asked her.
“I drifted off for a few minutes,” she said. “I’ve just been working.”
“Do you have family in the city? Are they okay?”
“Only my mother, and she’s fine. What about your family?”
“Don’t have much of one,” he said. “But my dog and ex-wife are okay.” Stanton noticed that the word
Chel sighed, then said, “
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“It’s a prayer
After a pause, Stanton said, “If you have any symptoms, call me first.”
WAVES CRASHING WERE rarely audible on the Walk, but tonight they were the only sounds Stanton could hear. Gone were the noisy kids usually in front of the marijuana stores, and the whooping from late-night parties in the sand. He parked beneath the massive mural of Abbot Kinney and found the boardwalk empty. The cops had sent everyone home or to one of the local homeless centers.
But when it came to hiding out, the citizens of Ocean Front were some of the craftiest in the city. Stanton
