“Jared, the Internet’s still up, right?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Get your laptop.”
“Why?”
“Just get it, okay?”
“Have I really got a sister?”
“No.”
Lila’s head had begun to droop, but now she brought it up. “Yes.”
“Get your laptop.”
Jared went to get it. Lila’s head was sinking again. Clint patted first one of her cheeks, then the other. “Lila. Lila!”
Her head rose again. “Right here. Don’t touch me.”
“Have you got any more of that stuff you and Linny took?”
She fumbled in her breast pocket and brought out a contact lens case. She popped up one of the plastic compartments. Inside was a little powder. She glanced at him.
“It’s strong,” she said. “I might claw your eyes out. Cocoon or no cocoon. I’m sad, but I’m also extremely pissed.”
“I’ll chance it. Go on.”
She bent, closed one nostril, and snorted the powder up the other. Then she sat back, eyes wide. “Tell me, Clint, was Shannon Parks a good lay? I thought I was, but she must have been better, if you had to go hot-dogging back to her when we were only married a year or so.”
Jared returned, his closed face saying I didn’t hear that last part, and set his laptop down in front of his father. He was careful to maintain a separation from Clint when he did it. Et tu, Brute?
Clint powered up Jared’s Mac, went on Firefox, and searched for “Sheila Norcross Coughlin basketball.” The story came up. And the picture of the girl named Sheila Norcross. It was a damned good head and shoulders shot, showing her in her basketball jersey. Her pretty face was flushed with on-court hustle. She was smiling. Clint studied the picture for almost thirty seconds. Then, without a word, he turned the laptop so Jared could look. His son did so with a tight mouth and his fists clenched. Then they slowly relaxed. He looked at Lila, more bewildered than ever. “Mom… if there’s a resemblance, I don’t see it. She doesn’t look anything like me. Or dad.”
Lila’s eyes, already wide from the fresh ingestion of magic powder, widened even more. She uttered a harsh caw of a laugh. “Jared, please, don’t. Just don’t. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jared winced as if he had been slapped, and for an awful moment Clint was on the verge of hauling off on his wife of seventeen years. What stopped him was another look at the photo of the smiling girl. Because if you wanted to find it, there was a faint resemblance, whether Jared saw it or not: the long jaw, the high forehead, and the dimples that punctuated the corners of her smile. None of these features really matched Clint’s own, but he could see how they suggested an association.
I love your dimples, Lila had sometimes told Clint when they were first married. Often in bed, after making love. Touching them with her fingers. All men should have dimples.
He could have told her what he now believed, because he thought he understood everything. But there might be another way. It was four in the morning, an hour when almost everyone in the Tri-Counties would ordinarily have been sleeping, but this was no ordinary night. If his old friend from the foster system wasn’t in a cocoon, she would be able to take a call. The only question was whether or not he could reach her. He considered his cell, then went to the phone hanging on the wall instead. He got the buzz of an active line; so far, so good.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lila asked.
He didn’t answer, simply dialed 0. After six rings he was afraid no one was going to answer, which would hardly be surprising, but then a weary female voice said, “Yeah? What?”
Clint very much doubted if that was the way Shenandoah Telecom instructed its operators to respond to customer calls, but he was simply grateful to get a human voice. “Operator, my name is Clinton Norcross, from Dooling, and I badly need some help.”
“Tell you what, I doubt that,” she responded in a drawl that could (and probably did) come straight from the toolies of Bridger County. “It’s the women need help tonight.”
“It’s a woman I need to reach. Her name is Shannon Parks. In Coughlin.” If she was listed at all. Single women often went the unlisted route. “Can you look for me?”
“You could dial 611 for that information. Or check y’damn computer.”
“Please. Help me if you can.”
There was a long silence. The connection hadn’t been broken, but suppose she’d gone to sleep on him?
At last the operator said, “I have an S. L. Parks on Maple Street in Coughlin. That the lady you’re looking for?”
It almost had to be. He grabbed the pencil hanging from the memo board so hard it snapped the string. “Thank you, operator. Thank you so much. Can you give me the number?”
The operator did, then broke the connection.
“I won’t believe her, even if you get her!” Lila cried. “She’ll lie for you!”
Clint dialed the number without replying, and didn’t even have time to hold his breath. It was picked up halfway through the first ring. “I’m still awake, Amber,” Shannon Parks said. “Thanks for call—”
“It’s not Amber, Shan,” Clint said. His legs suddenly felt weak, and he leaned against the refrigerator. “It’s Clint Norcross.”
The Internet is a bright house standing above a dark cellar with a dirt floor. Falsehoods sprout like mushrooms in that cellar. Some are tasty; many are poisonous. The falsehood that began in Cupertino—which was stated as absolute fact—was one of the latter. In a Facebook post titled AURORA TRUTH, a man who claimed to be a doctor wrote the following:
AURORA WARNING: URGENT!
By Dr. Philip P. Verdrusca
A team of biologists and epidemiologists at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center have determined that the cocoons surrounding women afflicted with the Aurora Sleeping Sickness are responsible for the spread of the disease. The respiration of those afflicted passes through the cocoon and becomes a transmission vector. This vector is highly contagious!
The only way to stop the spread of Aurora is to burn the cocoons and the sleeping women inside! Do this immediately! You will give your loved ones the rest they long for in their semiconscious state, and stop the spread of this pestilence.
Do it for the sake of the women who are still awake!
SAVE THEM!!!
There was no doctor named Philip Verdrusca on the staff of the Kaiser Permanente facility, or at any of its adjuncts. This fact was quickly posted on TV and online, along with rebuttals from dozens of reputable doctors, and the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Cupertino Hoax became the lead story on the news networks as the sun rose over the East Coast of America. But the horse was out of the barn, and Lila Norcross could have predicted what followed. In fact, she had predicted it. While people might hope for the best, Lila, closing in on twenty years in a blue uniform, knew that what they believed was the worst. In a terrified world, false news was king.
By the time dawn rose in the midwestern states, Blowtorch Brigades were roaming cities and towns all over America and the world beyond. Cocooned women were hauled to dumps and fields and stadium lawns, where they went up in gouts of fire.
The work of “Philip P. Verdrusca” had already begun as Clint explained the Norcross family’s current situation to Shannon, and then silently extended the telephone to his wife.