pulled the six boxes of eye shields he’d taken from the lab and put them in his bag. There were a thousand things he had to attend to, but the boardwalk freaks were his friends and neighbors. It was hard not to feel powerless right now, and this was one thing he could actually do, no matter how absurd it was.
First he checked the public restrooms, where he found a couple huddled inside. After handing them eye shields, Stanton continued on, and in a nook between tattoo shops he found a guy he knew vaguely, who called himself the “World’s Funniest Wino.” His usual song went “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, let’s get drunk.” Tonight, he just laughed boorishly as Stanton laid a shield in front of him.
Behind the Jewish senior center, he found four teenagers hiding in a VW bus, smoking weed. “You want?” one of them asked, holding the joint toward him.
“Put these eye shields on, guys,” Stanton said, waving it off.
Outside Venice’s only plastic-surgery storefront, he stopped to look at the graffiti stenciled across the face of BOTOX ON THE BEACH. Stanton had seen the symbol before around Venice but had never understood what it had to do with 2012:
He continued south, baffled by the strange image. He recalled from somewhere that a snake eating its own tail was a Greek symbol, not, as far as he knew, a Maya one. But people were sure to make all kinds of strange connections now.
The metal gates of Groundwork Coffee were down, and a small sign in the window read: closed until we fucking say so. The sign reminded Stanton of one person he’d missed. Minutes later Stanton was a few blocks north, climbing the stairs of Monster’s Venice Beach Freak Show, just off the boardwalk. He knocked on the yellow question mark painted on the center of the door. The Freak Show was the closest thing his friend had to a home. “Monster? You in there?”
The entrance cracked open and a porcelain-skinned woman of indeterminate age in striped stockings and a short skirt stood in the entry. The “Electric Lady” had frizzed black hair, supposedly a result of having been struck by lightning as a child. Stanton once saw her light a gas-covered stick with her tongue while sitting in an electric chair. She was also Monster’s girlfriend.
“We’re not supposed to let anyone in here,” she said.
Stanton held the boxes up. “These are for you guys.”
The Freak Show had one main room and a small stage, where performers swallowed swords and stapled dollar bills to their skin. The Electric Lady waved Stanton toward the back and then returned to feeding the largest menagerie of bicephalic animals on the planet. There were “Siamese” turtles, a double-headed albino snake, a two-headed iguana, and a mini-Doberman with five legs. In preserve jars were corpses of a two-headed chicken, a raccoon, and a squirrel.
Stanton found his tattooed friend in the Freak Show’s small accounting office. Clothes were strewn across a small cot in the corner. Monster sat at the desk in front of the old laptop he seemed never to be without.
“Your name’s everywhere, Gabe,” Monster said. “Figured you’d be in Atlanta.”
“I’m stuck here like everyone else.”
“Why are you in Venice? Shouldn’t you be at a lab somewhere?”
“Don’t worry about that.” Stanton held up an eye shield. “Do me a favor and wear one of these. Take some more and pass them out to anyone who doesn’t have one.”
“Thanks,” Monster said. He pulled the straps behind the rings that lined his upper ear and secured the shield. “You believe this shit from city hall?”
“What shit?”
“You haven’t seen it? Broke a few minutes ago. Your name’s mentioned a couple of times even.” He turned the laptop so Stanton could see the screen. “A copy of every internal email from the mayor’s office sent in the eight hours before and after the quarantine decision was made popped up on the Internet. One of the secret-leaking websites. Two million hits already.”
Stanton’s stomach sank as he scanned the news. There were CDC emails to the mayor’s office that described how quickly VFI cases could escalate, offhand questions from within city hall about how many would be dead within the week, and comments about how, given the indestructibility of the prion, public spaces couldn’t be decontaminated and parts of L.A. might never be inhabitable again.
“These are wild guesses at worst-case scenarios,” Stanton said. “Not facts.”
“This is
Another article on Monster’s computer suggested Volcy could have crossed the border knowing that he was sick, intentionally spreading VFI here for some political purpose. “That’s ridiculous,” said Stanton.
“Won’t stop people from believing it. There are a lotta crazies who don’t bother with the facts. Not only the 2012ers either. Lots of people are panicked, so be careful out there. Your name’s on these pages, dude.”
Stanton wasn’t worried about himself, but he was afraid of how the public would react when they saw unfi ltered fear from people who were supposed to be in charge. The calm on the streets was fragile, and things could go downhill fast.
“Keep that eye shield on,” Stanton told his friend. “And if you need anything else, you know I’m just down the Walk.”
STANTON OPENED THE DOOR to his condo to find the entire space upended. The living room sofa and the dining room table were turned on their sides and stuffed into the kitchen. Two rugs, rolled into tubes, stood chest- high on their ends in the corners, and every inch of counter space was stacked with his coffee-table books, lamps, and other bric-a-brac. They needed every available surface.
“
He found Alan Davies sitting at a lab bench in the living room. The furniture had been replaced by storage containers, microscopes, and centrifuges. The place reeked of antiseptic solution. They had directly disobeyed orders by setting up this home lab and were only able to sneak out limited equipment. They had to wash and reuse test tubes, beakers, and other glass constantly. On top of the TV console, drying racks held glass equipment waiting for their next round.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?” Davies asked, glancing up from his microscope. Stanton marveled that his partner was still perfectly dressed in a pink tie, white shirt, and blue slacks.
The TV was tuned to CNN: “Travel restrictions for American citizens in eighty-five countries… Bioterrorism explored… mayor’s office emails leaked… YouTube videos show looting at stores in Koreatown and buildings on fire…”
“Jesus,” Stanton said. “There’s looting?”
“Rioting in a moment of tension,” Davies said. “It’s practically a way of life in L.A.”
Stanton headed into his garage. Behind boxes of research journals, Notre Dame memorabilia, and outdated biking equipment was a small safe. Inside he found his self-assembled earthquake/tsunami kit: water-purification tablets, a whistle and signal mirror, a thousand dollars in cash, and a Smith & Wesson 9mm.
Davies stood at the door, peering in. “I always knew you were a Republican.”
Stanton ignored him and checked to make sure the gun was loaded. Then he put it back in the safe. “Where are we with the mice?”
“Antibodies should be ready tomorrow if we’re lucky,” Davies said.
Despite his orders, Stanton couldn’t accept doing nothing to search for a treatment, so they’d set up the secret lab here, away from prying eyes. In the dining room, a dozen cages sat on the wood floor, each containing a knockout mouse.
Only these mice weren’t paired with snakes—they were being exposed to VFI. Stanton’s hope was that they would soon produce antibodies that could fight the disease. It was the same process they’d had some success with in the lab, and ordinarily it would take weeks. But Davies had come up with an inventive way of creating an ultrahigh concentration of purified VFI prion that they could use to spur a reaction more quickly. Several mice had already begun producing.
A loud knock on the front door pulled Stanton up from the cages.
Michaela Thane looked exhausted. Her hair was tousled and her face gaunt. With Presbyterian quarantined and virtually all patients transferred out, doctors were no longer taking shifts. So Stanton had arranged for her to
