“You’re pregnant again, morning sickness?”
“No, damn it,” Kaye said, poking his arm. “You’re not listening.”
“I’m not hearing anything I can understand. Tell me, straight… did it feel like an episode, a breakdown? We’ve been under a lot of stress.” He stood up by the side of the bed, leaving the short robe behind. Kaye watched him, his forearms and chest and the tops of his shoulders covered with coarse hair, and her gaze dropped to his genitals hanging at postcoital parade rest, waving with the nervous swing of his arms.
She laughed.
This stopped Mitch cold. He stood like a statue, staring down on her. He had not heard Kaye laugh like that, at him, at the ridiculousness of life, in well over a year, maybe two; he couldn’t remember the last time.
“You sound happy,” he said.
“I’m not happy,” Kaye insisted indignantly. “Life’s a bowl of shit, but our daughter…” Her face crumpled. Through her fingers, she sobbed, “She’s going to live, Mitch. That’s a blessing, isn’t it? Is that what I’m feeling—thankfulness, relief?”
“Thankful to what?” Mitch said. “The god who gives little children nasty diseases?”
Kaye spread out her arms, gesturing with her fingers at the bedroom, the lace coverlet, wood-paneled walls, pressed flowers under glass in ornate gold frames, the decorative water pitcher on the little white wicker table by the nightstand. Mitch watched her puffy eyes and red face with real concern. “We are luckier than others,” she said. “We are so lucky our daughter is alive.”
“God didn’t do that,” Mitch said, his voice turning sour. “We did that. God would have killed her. God is killing thousands like Stella right now.”
“Then what am I feeling?” Kaye asked. She held out her hands and Mitch gripped them. A blackbird sang. Mitch’s eyes went to the window.
“You’re bouncing back,” he said, his anger smoothing. “We can’t feel like shit all the time or we’d just give up and die.” He pulled her up on her knees on the bed, and expertly hugged her until her back popped.
“Ow,” she said.
“That did not hurt,” Mitch said. “You feel better now.”
“I do,” Kaye affirmed, arms around his neck.
Stella pushed through the door. “I’ve got this thing on my wrist,” she said, tugging at the medical tape. “My skin hurts.” She stared at them, naked, together. There was no use keeping secrets from her; she could smell everything in the room. Stella had seemed to instinctively understand the whys and wherefores of sex even as a toddler. Nevertheless, Mitch released Kaye, swung his body away, and reached for the robe.
Kaye pulled the coverlet into a wrap and went to her daughter. Stella leaned into her arms and Kaye and Mitch carried her back to her bed.
51
OHIO
“Our last link to the outside world,” Augustine said, holding up a satellite phone. “Secret Service, bless them. But I had to think of it. They’re hiding out in their cars, and they did not volunteer.” He climbed the flight of steps to Trask’s office. Dried vomit—not his own—ran in streaks down his leg.
Dicken sidled up the steps behind Augustine. “The school has a secure server. I have Jurie’s password for the lab computers, but not the password to go outside the school.”
“I know. What are we looking at, anyway?”
“Coxsackie, a new strain,” Dicken said. “The children have hand, foot, and mouth disease.”
Augustine pushed the door to the office open. “Like the cattle?”
Dicken shook his head. “You’re tired. Listen to me. Not foot and mouth, it’s HFMD. Hand, foot, and mouth. Common childhood viral infection.”
“Recombined?” Augustine sat behind the desk and propped the phone on the desk. He punched a number, got a rasping and wheedling noise, then swore and punched another.
“Yes,” Dicken said.
“With old endogenous viruses?”
“Yes.”
“Shit. How is that possible?”
“It’s a mechanism I haven’t seen before.”
“Then why bother to call?” Augustine stopped in mid-dial, disgusted. His fingernails were black with dirt and secretions. “It’s all over.”
“No, it isn’t. The recombined genes can’t possibly be from the children,” Dicken said. “They don’t have them. They were excised and discarded when their chromosomes reformed during supermitosis.”
Augustine raised his chin. “We helped the virus recombine?”
Dicken nodded. “It may have traveled in us and mutated silently for years. Now it’s making its move—against the children.”
“Proof?”
“Proof enough,” Dicken said. “Most of what we need, anyway. We can send in my results. The CDC just needs to do their own analysis, compare my findings with their own. I’m sure they’ll match. Then, we tell Ohio to back off and get Emergency Action to calm down. This is not a killer plague—not for us.”
“Will anyone listen?” Augustine asked.
“They have to. It’s the truth.”
Augustine did not seem convinced that would be enough to turn the tide. “Who’s the best contact at CDC?”
Dicken thought quickly. “Jane Salter. She’s in charge of statistical analysis at National Center for Infectious Diseases. She never did put in with the Emergency Action people, but they respect her judgment. She’s trusted and objective.” He took the handset from Augustine and dialed Salter’s direct number in Atlanta.
They were in luck, finally. The call went through, and Salter answered in person.
“Jane, it’s Christopher.”
“The famous Christopher Dicken? Long time, Christopher. Forgive me, I’m a little loopy. I’ve been up for days, crunching numbers.”
“I’m in Ohio, at the Goldberger School. I have something important.”
“About a certain recombined Coxsackie virus?”
“That’s the one. Population dynamics, virus flow, analysis,” Dicken said.
“You don’t say.”
“You’ll want my results.”
He heard a click.
“I’m recording, Christopher,” Salter said. “Make it quick. There’s a key meeting in five minutes. Go or no go, if you know what I mean.”
Augustine looked up at a distant roaring noise. He walked to the window and looked across the traffic circle, beyond the main gate. “What the hell is that?” He swung up a pair of binoculars from the windowsill and peered through them. “Helicopters.”
DeWitt stamped up the stairs, screaming, “Helicopters are coming!”
“Troops moving in?” Dicken asked.
“They wouldn’t dare. We’re in quarantine.” Augustine tried to hold the image steady. “They’re civilian. Who in hell would fly them down here?”
“Someone bringing in supplies,” Dicken suggested.
“Is that possible?”
“Someone rich who has a kid here,” Dicken said.
“There’s two of them,” Augustine said. “Not nearly enough.” Then, his voice breaking, “Goddamn. I don’t believe it. They’re shooting. The troops are shooting at them!”
“What’s happening?” Salter asked on the phone.
“Just listen to me,” Dicken said. He could hear the crackle of assault weapons on the school perimeter. “And for God’s sake, work fast.”
He began reading her his results.
52
PENNSYLVANIA
The air was cooling and clouds were sliding in above the trees. Mitch sat on the dock. Kaye was in the house, sleeping beside Stella in the big bed, which Stella preferred now that she was feeling a little better.