White Horse

say, but then she told me he never had that tail before and they’d been married forty years. Isn’t that strange? You know what else is strange? I saw a whole lot of stones in Little Rock but I couldn’t tell which one was meant to be the little rock.”

“Why aren’t you in the war?”

“Special dispensation on account of my condition. Do you know what that means?”

“I’ve heard it before.”

He nods, keeps his gaze fixed on the seat ahead. “Asperger’s is what the doctors say I’ve got. It doesn’t mean anything other than I’m different. Different can mean good or it can mean bad, depending on who’s doing the talking.”

His fingers start to tap. At first I think piano, but the longer I watch, I see number patterns.

“After I went to Little Rock I went to some other places and then I went home. They’ve got a big library there at the college. Before, I would have just gone to Google but I had to do it the old way, which was a lot of hard work after riding all those buses. I couldn’t use the Internet, but they still have an internal system where you can search for books and journals. You know what? There’s no disease like that. Nothing that makes you sick and then grow a tail. Some of the other dead people grew other weird stuff, too. One kid had two hearts when they cut him open; only, one was growing up in his throat and choked him to death. Some of them just died after all the vomiting, but some grew stuff people shouldn’t have. So I talked to my mom and she said maybe I’d discovered something new, something no one ever heard of, and maybe if I figured out what that was, they’d name it after me. If there’s anybody left to care.” His shoulders slump. The number patterns slow.

The inside of my head is a radio station turned to static. I believe what he’s saying: the pieces are all there.

“Why me?”

“A new disease has to come from somewhere. Have you seen Resident Evil? There was an accident in a laboratory and everyone turned to zombies. I figured maybe this was like that.”

“That was just a movie.”

“Nuh-uh. It happens. There are lots of online forums that talk about how it could happen for real. I went to a lot of labs and companies that make medicine and no one would talk to me. They just smiled and gave me pamphlets to read or threatened to throw me out. One guy threatened to have me locked up in an institution. All I wanted was to ask some questions. I think they wouldn’t talk to me because they think I’m different-bad.”

I shake my head. “They won’t talk to you because what if you’re right?”

It’s crazy. It should be crazy. But just because something is crazy doesn’t mean it isn’t true. All those dead mice. Jorge. The bones crammed inside the jar. It’s making me want to ask questions. Maybe my paranoia isn’t.

Ben’s dead. James. Raoul. Two receptionists now. The woman from the bathroom. And the man in Arkansas with the tail—oh God.

Jesse’s fingers pick up pace, then slow again. His head turns and I think he’s going to look at me, but he stares at my mouth instead. “Will you answer my questions?”

I want to. But I can’t. I explain about the contract I signed, the confidentiality agreement, so maybe he’ll understand how the business world works when there’s a whole lot of green and reputations at stake. I think it’s going to sink in when he goes back to staring at the chair.

“You’re scared. I’m scared, too. My mom says it’s okay to be scared because that’s just our brain’s way of telling us to be careful.”

On the other side of the window, the scenery changes. Two minutes until my stop.

“I wish I could,” I tell Jesse. He seems like a good kid. I like him. I’d love to help.

“Please.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want either of us to get hurt.” Or worse.

“But my dad will be proud of me if they name the disease after me. I’ll be different-good.”

The train slows. I tug my bag over one shoulder, hold the strap in place with my opposite hand, shielding myself from his questions. “I’m sorry.”

The last I see of him is his face pressed against the window as I glance back over my shoulder. He’s looking straight into my guarded soul.

I go about my business. I clean, talk to the mice, monitor them for signs of imminent death. I do not name them, although the little guy at the end with the bent whiskers is begging for an identity that doesn’t include numbers.

I watch the mice and wonder if the experiment is larger than this bank of cages.

My paranoia has its own mind.

You know you want to, Nick says in my head.

“Not now.”

He falls silent. Please don’t let today be the day I see him on the list.

I pull on slippers with my jeans, throw on a coat. Still, I shiver when the chill slams my body. The two quarters are cold lead weights in my palm. It stings to hold them. They clank into the newspaper dispenser and I use the edge of my sleeve to tug it open.

The city newspaper is gone; in its place is the United States Times. Jesse flashes into my mind, that kid who just wants to be different-good.

The stairs fly by two at a time. My apartment door crashes behind me. I grab more quarters and I’m gone again.

Two by two, I shove them into the other dispensers, the ones that should be holding newspapers from all over the country. I have to see, I have to know if there’s other news out there. But they’re all filled with one publication now: the United States Times. That journalism has been distilled to this dangerous point catapults me into action. I’m doing nothing when I should be doing something.

Back in my hidey-hole, I dissect the paper. I pick through the pages as a soothsayer might a tangle of entrails, trying to divine a course of action. It’s just a paper. It’s like all the others with its bold title announcing its presence. Nothing about it screams, I killed the competition. I took away your choices overnight. The cover is more of what we’ve been seeing: battles won. Men cheering. Leaders happy with the troops’ success. There are twelve more obituaries than in yesterday’s paper.

The hall closet looms, its clean white paint darkening as I assign it characteristics it can’t possibly possess: dark, foreboding, dangerous.

When the phone rings, I leap.

“We’re showing an alarm at your residence. Do you need assistance?”

I forgot the alarm. Damn. “No, no, I’m fine. I was carrying… groceries.”

“Code, please.”

I give them the code, and the secondary code, and my mother’s maiden name. When they’re satisfied I’m not a doppelganger, they reset the system and I lock myself in.

I stand in front of the closet, hands poised on the handles.

“I’m ready,” I tell Nick-in-my-head.

It’s still in there, that carton I stashed, wrapped in its packing-tape straitjacket. Between the fake Christmas tree I keep because I hate hauling a fresh one up the stairs, and building rules state they’re not allowed to ride the elevator anyway, and the box of Bibles I’ve collected over the years from people who thought my soul needed saving. Too superstitious to throw them away, I keep them here to ward away people who’d give me another. The flaw in my plan was James. Last Christmas he gave me a children’s Bible painted with toothy cartoon characters.

They smile cheerfully at me from between the box flaps. I glance away before my eyes start to heat up.

On the floor I sit, legs in a wide V and pull the carton to me. It doesn’t look like much. It’s quite ordinary, really. Logically, there’s nothing ominous about a package wrapped in tape. If someone saw me struggling into the post office with this thing, they’d assume it was a care package bound for a beloved friend. It’s the contents that lend it the sinister air of a secret long turned malignant.

I have a plan. It’s been in my head since Jesse approached me on the train, but the human mind excels at