“Is someone gonna try to put ’em out?” I said.
“The fire department doesn’t seem too keen on the idea. Especially since the feds don’t have any protective suits to spare.”
“Speaking of which… ” I gestured toward the suit and mask I was wearing. “Do we really need these?”
“It’s a great way to stay anonymous. And, as of today, we’re officially in a quarantine zone. Everyone wears a suit unless they’re in a designated scrubbed area.”
“What’s a scrubbed area?”
“You’ll see the signs.”
I could feel the river of sweat starting its slalom run down my neck and wondered when it was going to start itching. “You’re telling me the air is full of this pathogen?”
“It’s the smoke I’d worry about.”
“Why?”
“If the buildings they’re burning contain infected bodies, the smoke could theoretically be contaminated.”
“What are the odds?”
“It doesn’t matter. Protocol says you wear one.”
“Fuck protocol.” I pulled the mask off and put it in my lap.
Molly shook her head. “That’s not very smart.”
“Give me a better reason and I’ll put it back on.”
She wasn’t interested in playing. So I sat and listened to the creak of the tracks underneath us.
“What’s that for?” I pointed at an opaque sheet of thick plastic. It was strung across the front of the car, cutting us off from the rest of the train.
“If I tell you, will you put your mask back on?”
“I’m not worried.”
“We’re in a rolling hearse.”
“Infected?”
She nodded. “Fortunately for you, this car has been sealed. Besides, if they’re not breathing, chances are they’re not contagious.”
“I told you I wasn’t worried.”
The train slacked off its already snail-like pace and then stopped altogether, wheels squeezing out a sigh as they ground to a halt. A wisp of smoke crept across the tracks. Then another. Pretty soon we were plunged into a world of gray and white-thick whorls laced with sticky bits of debris from the fires.
“They were going to use vans for the dead.” Molly’s voice competed for attention with a sudden high wind. “But there’s been too many bodies. Too quickly. This way the media can’t get a good count.”
“How many so far?”
Molly touched the shiny surface of her iPad. A map flared to life in liquid reds and greens. Alongside it were names and columns of numbers.
“The pathogen killed at least seventy-three people while you were sleeping. A hundred fifty-four total, so far. Best we can tell, the rate of infection within the restricted zones is increasing hourly.”
“Is it spreading?”
“The greatest danger has been inside the buildings.”
“What about the hospitals?”
“Not enough resources, training, or real-time information.” Molly shrugged. “Pretty much a meltdown.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“It’s about what we expected. The president is supposed to speak this morning.”
“What’s he going to say?”
“My guess? As little as possible.”
“You got that right. He should come down here and sit with the mayor in front of his phony fireplace. Be a hell of a show.” I nodded to the front of the car. “Can I take a look?”
“Just don’t try to open anything.”
I got up and took a peek around the plastic curtain. Through the connecting door I could see a dozen bodies in bags, stacked on the floor and across flat boards laid over the seats. Watching over the silent commuters were a couple of morgue assistants, suited up in case Molly’s theory proved to be awry and the dead turned out to be contagious. I snapped a couple of photos with my cell. Then I went back and sat down.
“Where do they take them?” I said.
“Cremation. If we bury them, we risk contaminating the soil with disease.”
“So you burn them?”
“A controlled burn, yes. The smoke is scrubbed before being released into the environment.”
I twitched my fingers and picked up her iPad. “This thing get the Internet?”
“We have a dedicated line.” Molly tapped the tablet and a Google window appeared.
“Ever heard of Thucydides?” I said and typed in a search term.
“Greek writer?”
“Historian. Wrote about the Plague of Athens.” I pulled up a screen of text and highlighted a passage:
… people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath.
These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough…
Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank little or much.
“Could be a lot of things,” Molly said. “Typhus. Bubonic plague. Maybe some sort of viral hemorrhagic fever.”
“Some scholars think it was the world’s first recorded use of a bioweapon. Released by Sparta inside the city of Athens. Either way, it killed almost forty thousand people. Athenians burned the bodies of their neighbors in the streets. Here you go.”
I showed her a second screen of text:
All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger’s pyre and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another that was burning, and so went off.
“Let me guess,” Molly said. “Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it.”
“You assume we still have a choice.”
Molly shut down the iPad and slipped it back into her pack. I thought about the plague. It sounded like fiction when Thucydides wrote of it. Now it was a trip on the Blue Line. And very much real.
“Where are we headed?” I said.
“The train runs from Cook County Hospital west to a warehouse in Oak Park.”
“Where they process the dead?”
“Something like that. It’s outside the fence line, so you should be able to slip away.”
I grunted. The train creaked forward a few feet and stopped again.
“I need to tell you something else,” Molly said.
“I’m guessing it’s not gonna be good.”
“The scream you heard yesterday at our lab. That was Ellen.”
I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t surprised. “What happened?”
“Her sister, Anna, was booked on an early morning flight out of O’Hare. She was supposed to take a private
