The Strain. Book I of The Strain Trilogy

demand and financial claim her lawyer requested. All he wanted was time alone with his only son.

Who right now was lobbing grenades at him.

Eph said, “How can I shoot back when you’ve blown off my arms?”

“I don’t know. Maybe try kicking?”

“Now I know why your mother doesn’t let you own a game system.”

“Because it makes me hyper and antisocial and…OH, FRAGGED YOU!”

Eph’s life-capacity bar diminished to zero.

That was when his mobile phone started vibrating, skittering up against the take-out cartons like a hungry silver beetle. Probably Kelly, reminding him to make sure Zack used his asthma inhaler. Or just checking up on him, making sure he hadn’t whisked Zack away to Morocco or something.

Eph caught it, checked the screen. A 718 number, local. Caller ID read JFK QUARANTINE.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintained a quarantine station inside the international terminal at JFK. Not a detainment or even a treatment facility, just a few small offices and an examining room: a way station, a firebreak to identify and perhaps stall an outbreak from threatening the general population of the United States. Most of their work involved isolating and evaluating passengers taken ill in flight, occasionally turning up a diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

The office was closed evenings, and Eph was not to be on call tonight, or anywhere on the depth chart through Monday morning. He had cleared his work schedule weeks ago, in advance of his weekend with Zack.

He clicked off the vibrate button and set the mobile back down next to the carton of scallion pancakes. Somebody else’s problem. “It’s the kid who sold me this thing,” he told Zack. “Calling to heckle me.”

Zack was eating another steamed dumpling. “I cannot believe you got Yankees — Red Sox tickets for tomorrow.”

“I know. Good seats too. Third-base side. Tapped into your college fund to get them, but hey, don’t worry — with your skills, you’ll go far on just a high school degree.”

“Dad.”

“Anyway, you know how it pains me to put even one green dollar in Steinbrenner’s pocket. This is essentially treason.”

Zack said, “Boo, Red Sox. Go, Yanks.”

“First you kill me, then you taunt me?”

“I figured, as a Red Sox fan, you’d be used to it.”

“That’s it—!” Eph wrapped up his son, working his hands in along his ticklish rib cage, the boy bucking as he convulsed with laughter. Zack was getting stronger, his squirming possessed of real force: this boy who he used to fly around the room on one shoulder. Zachary had his mother’s hair, both in its sandy color (her original color, the way it was when he first met her in college) and fine texture. And yet, to Eph’s amazement and joy, he recognized his own eleven-year-old hands dangling uncannily from the boy’s wrists. The very same broad-knuckled hands that used to want to do nothing more than rub up baseball cowhide, hands that hated piano lessons, that could not wait to get a grip on this world of adults. Uncanny, seeing those young hands again. It was true: our children do come to replace us. Zachary was like a perfect human package, his DNA written with everything Eph and Kelly once were to each other — their hopes, dreams, potential. This was probably why each of them worked so hard, in his and her own contradictory ways, to bring out his very best. So much so that the thought of Zack being brought up under the influence of Kelly’s live-in boyfriend, Matt — a “nice” guy, a “good” guy, but so middle of the road as to be practically invisible — kept Eph up at night. He wanted challenge for his son, he wanted inspiration, greatness! The battle for the custody of Zack’s person was settled, but not the battle for the custody of Zack’s spirit — for his very soul.

Eph’s mobile started vibrating again, crabbing across the tabletop like the chattering gag teeth his uncles used to give him for Christmas. The awakened device interrupted their roughhousing, Eph releasing Zack, fighting the impulse to check the display. Something was happening. The calls wouldn’t have come through to him otherwise. An outbreak. An infected traveler.

Eph made himself not pick up the phone. Someone else had to handle it. This was his weekend with Zack. Who was looking at him now.

“Don’t worry,” said Eph, putting the mobile back down on the table, the call going to his voice mail. “Everything’s taken care of. No work this weekend.”

Zack nodded, perking up, finding his controller. “Want some more?”

“I don’t know. When do we get to the part where the little Mario guy starts rolling barrels down at the monkey?”

“Dad.”

“I’m just more comfortable with little Italian stereotypes running around gobbling up mushrooms for points.”

“Right. And how many miles of snow was it you had to trudge through to get to school each day?”

“That’s it—!”

Eph fell on him again, the boy ready for him this time, clamping his elbows tight, foiling his rib attack. So Eph changed strategy, going instead for the ultrasensitive Achilles tendon, wrestling with Zack’s heels while trying hard not to get kicked in the face. The boy was begging for mercy when Eph realized his mobile was vibrating yet again.

Eph jumped up this time, angry, knowing now that his job, his vocation, was going to pull him away from his son tonight. He glanced at the caller ID, and this time the number bore an Atlanta prefix. Very bad news. Eph closed his eyes and pressed the humming phone to his forehead, clearing his mind. “Sorry, Z,” he told Zack. “Just let me see what’s up.”

He took the phone into the adjoining kitchen, where he answered it.

“Ephraim? It’s Everett Barnes.”

Dr. Everett Barnes. The director of the CDC.

Eph’s back was to Zack. He knew Zack was watching and couldn’t bear to look at him. “Yes, Everett, what is it?”

“I just got the call from Washington. Your team is en route to the airport now?”

“Ah, sir, actually—”

“You saw it on TV?”

“TV?”

He went back to the sofa, showing Zack his open hand, a plea for patience. Eph found the remote and searched it for the correct button or combination of buttons, tried a few, and the screen went blank. Zack took the remote from his hand and sullenly switched to cable.

The news channel showed an airplane parked on the tarmac. Support vehicles formed a wide, perhaps fearful, perimeter. JFK International Airport. “I think I see it, Everett.”

“Jim Kent just reached me, he’s pulling the equipment your Canary team needs. You are the front line on this, Ephraim. They’re not to make another move until you get there.”

“They who, sir?”

“The Port Authority of New York, the Transportation Security Administration. The National Transportation Safety Board and Homeland Security are winging there now.”

The Canary project was a rapid-response team of field epidemiologists organized to detect and identify incipient biological threats. Its purview included both naturally occurring threats, such as viral and rickettsial diseases found in nature, and man-made outbreaks — although most of their funding came thanks to Canary’s obvious bioterrorism applications. New York City was the nerve center, with smaller, university-hospital-based satellite Canaries up and running in Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago.

The program drew its name from the old coal miner’s trick of bringing a caged canary underground as a crude yet efficient biological early warning system. The bright yellow bird’s highly sensitive metabolism detected methane and carbon monoxide gas traces before they reached toxic or even explosive levels, causing the normally chirpy creature to fall silent and sway on its perch.

In this modern age, every human being had the potential to be that sentinel canary. Eph’s team’s job was to isolate them once they stopped singing, treat the infected, and contain the spread.

Eph said, “What is it, Everett? Did somebody die on the plane?”