“The ladies,” said a voice from behind Michaela. It was the White House protestor, who had come over to watch. “The ladies. Jesus please us.”
“That outbreak began with a woman named Mrs. Troffea, who danced madly in the streets of Strasbourg for six days and nights,” DiPoto said, warming to his subject. “Before collapsing, she was joined by many others. This dance mania spread across all of Europe. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women danced in cities and towns. Many died of heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion.” He essayed a small, smug smile. “It was simple hysteria, and eventually died out.”
“Are you saying that Aurora is similar? I suspect many of our viewers will find that hard to accept.” Michaela was pleased to see that George couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his face or his voice. George was mostly blather, but he did have a small, beating newsie’s heart somewhere under his Oxford shirt. “Sir, we’ve got news footage of thousands of women and girls with this fibrous material—these cocoons—covering their faces and bodies. This is affecting millions of females.”
“I am not making light of the situation, by any means,” DiPoto said. “Absolutely not. But physical symptoms or actual physical changes as a result of mass hysteria are not uncommon. In Flanders, for instance, dozens of women exhibited stigmata—bleeding hands and feet—during the late eighteenth century. Sexual politics and political correctness aside, I feel we must—”
That was when Stephanie Koch, the producer of Afternoon Events, charged onto the set. She was a leathery chain-smoker in her fifties who had seen it all, and put most of it on television. Michaela would have said Steph was armored against any and all crazy guest opinions. But it seemed her armor had a chink, and Dr. DiPoto with his round spectacles and prissy little mouth had found it.
“What the fuck are you talking about, you penis-equipped gerbil?” she shouted. “I have two granddaughters with that shit growing all over them, they’re in comas, and you think that’s female hysteria?”
George Alderson groped out a restraining hand. Stephanie batted it away. She was crying angry tears as she loomed over Dr. Erasmus DiPoto, who was cringing back in his chair and staring up at this lunatic Amazon who had appeared from nowhere.
“Women all over the world are struggling not to go to sleep because they’re afraid they’ll never wake up, and you think that’s female hysteria?”
Michaela, the tech guy, and the woman from the protest were staring at the monitor, fascinated.
“Go to commercial!” George called, looking over Stephanie Koch’s shoulder. “We just need to take a break, folks! Sometimes things get a little tense. That’s live television, though, and—”
Stephanie whirled, looking at the off-camera control booth. “Don’t you dare go to commercial! Not until I’m done with this chauvinist piece of shit!” She was still wearing her headset. Now she tore it off and began to clobber DiPoto with it. When he raised his hands to protect the top of his skull, she slashed at his face. His nose began to bleed.
“This is female hysteria!” Stephanie shouted, whapping him with her headset. Now the little doctor’s mouth was bleeding, as well. “This is what female hysteria really looks like, you… you… you RUTABAGA!”
“Rutabaga?” the protestor woman said. She began to laugh. “Did she just call him a rutabaga?”
A couple of stagehands rushed out to restrain Stephanie Koch. While they struggled and DiPoto bled and George Alderson gaped, the studio disappeared and was replaced by an ad for Symbicort.
“Baby-now,” the protestor woman said. “That was great.” Her gaze shifted. “Say, can I have some of that?” She was eyeballing the small pile of blow sitting on top of the tech guy’s laminated day-part schedule.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s open bar today.”
Michaela watched the protestor take some on her fingernail and ingest it.
“Whee!” She smiled at Michaela. “I am officially ready to rock.”
“Go on back and sit down,” Michaela said. “I’ll call you.” But she wouldn’t. Combat-hardened Stephanie Koch utterly losing her shit had brought a realization to Mickey Coates. She wasn’t just looking through a lens at this story; it was her story. And when she finally went to sleep, she didn’t want it to be among strangers.
“Hold the fort, Al,” she said.
“You bet,” the tech guy said. “Hey, that was priceless, wasn’t it? Live TV at its best.”
“Priceless,” she agreed, and went out to the sidewalk. She powered up her cell. If the traffic wasn’t too bad, she could be in Dooling before midnight.
“Mom? It’s me. I can’t do this anymore. I’m coming home.”
At 3:10 PM, ten minutes past the end of Don Peters’s 6:30 AM to 3:00 PM shift, he sat in the Booth, watching the Unit 10 monitor, watching the madwoman nod off. She slumped on the bunk with her eyes closed. Lampley had been called off for some reason, and then Murphy, and so now Don had the Booth, and that was fine with him—he’d rather sit. Actually, what he’d rather do was go home, like usual, but in the interests of not riling Coatsie up, he’d decided to stick it out for the time being.
The crazy cunt was a hot little number, Don wouldn’t hesitate to grant her that. Even in scrubs her legs went for miles.
He pressed the button on the mic that piped directly to the cell and was about to tell her to wake up. Only what was the point? They were all going to fall asleep and grow that shit on their faces and bods, apparently. Christ, what a world it would be if that happened. On the plus side, it would be safer on the roads. That was a good one. He’d have to remember that for later, try it on the boys at the Squeaky Wheel.
Peters let go of the button. Ms. Unit 10 swung her legs up onto the bunk and stretched out. Don, curious, waited to see how it would happen, the webbing weirdness he’d read about on his phone.
Once there had been hundreds of rats in the prison and dozens of colonies; now just forty remained. As Evie lay with her eyes closed, she spoke with the alpha—an old female, a long-clawed fighter with thoughts like rusty grinding wheels. Evie imagined the alpha’s face as a lattice of scar tissues, very lean and beautiful.
“Why so few of you, my friend?”
“Poison,” this warrior queen told her. “They lay poison. It smells like milk, but it kills us.” The rat was in a crease between the cinderblocks that divided Unit 10 from Unit 9. “The poison is supposed to make us seek water, but often we become confused and die without reaching any. It’s a miserable death. These walls are filled with our bodies.”
“No more of you need to suffer that way,” said Evie. “I can promise that. But I may need you to do certain things for me, and some of them may be dangerous. Is that acceptable to you?”
As Evie expected, danger meant nothing to the queen rat. To gain her position the queen had fought her king. She had torn off his forelegs, and instead of finishing him she had sat on her haunches and watched him bleed out. The queen expected, eventually, to die in a similar manner.
“It is acceptable,” said the mother rat. “Fear is death.”
Evie didn’t agree—in her view, death was death, and it was well worth fearing—but she gave it a pass. Though rats were limited, they were sincere. You could work with a rat. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said the queen rat. “There is only one question I need to ask you, Mother. Do you keep your word?”
“Always,” said Evie.