“Ma, you said mosquitoes are dangerous!”
The cop in front of Tom glanced down and left and saw it. Another insect crawled from the hole. Tom had, at most, seconds before the looks of amusement or incomprehension turned to something far more dangerous. For the moment the accident was forgotten. The group focused on Tom’s door.
The boy pulled at his mother’s hand, tried to get her to leave. “You said they’re bad! They make people sick!”
Whap!
Tom felt the torn metal slice into his palm as he smashed the mound of crawling insects. One or two escaped, took to the air, wobbling off, absorbed into dusk. The folk music from the landing seemed to grow louder. The faces of the onlookers had gone slack. They’d been assured by authorities that there were no more mosquitoes here. Memphis was considered, so far, a disease-free zone.
He let his anger show, raised his voice above the murmur around him as he demanded of the cop, “Don’t you people spray in this town?”
The policemen had clearly been given instructions on how to soothe away fears of visitors to their city. The cop went automatic, spewed forth platitudes. “Sir, the health department has been spraying for days.”
“With what? Water?” Tom demanded, moving his rump over the gash in the door. He realized with relief that the onlookers had assumed the most logical explanation, at least for a moment. That the vectors had been attracted to something on the door. Sap. Something. It had not occurred to them that inside the door were containers swarming with vectors. It was too much of a leap to think that Tom was driving around, releasing them.
Some bystanders were moving back, away from the accident. They’d seen infection zone news and been warned to avoid mosquitoes on news programs, at schools, at work, in newspapers. Panic was close to the surface, even here.
Tom snapped at the cop, louder, “This place is dangerous! How do I know those mosquitoes aren’t infected?!”
He imagined hundreds of insects inside the door, crawling in the dark. He grabbed back his license and registration from the policeman, snatched the scrap of paper that the other driver offered, containing a home and insurance company number. The second cop was talking with urgency into his neck mike. Tom saw the man’s lips form the word mosquitoes. The closer cop now turned to soothing onlookers. Clearly, both men had it impressed upon them to reassure visitors that their local waterfront was safe.
Several people from the crowd were now in their cars, pulling off. Someone was taking photos of Tom’s car with a cell phone. He wanted to grab it away.
“I told you we shouldn’t have come,” he heard a woman snap at her husband. The man took her arm. They walked off.
Everyone was looking around, nervous, for more mosquitoes, peering at their bare arms, toward the trees and river. Danger could come from any direction. It was so small it might be invisible. Then, as if Allah himself helped Tom, the air — at dusk — began swarming with gnats.
“Something bit me,” the little boy cried.
“Those aren’t mosquitoes. Those are gnats,” the larger cop explained.
“It’s in my shirt!” a man called, slapping at it.
“They’re just gnats!”
It was no use. People were rushing off, to their cars, away from the riverfront. Tom saw the alarm spreading. Former gapers stopped strollers or bikers and pointed back toward the accident. Mosquitoes there!
Tom heard a crunching sound of metal hitting metal. He saw with satisfaction that a hundred feet away, two cars had backed into each other. The cops hurried toward the fender bender. No one watched Tom anymore. He climbed into the Subaru and started up and his lips formed a prayer: Thank you, Allah.
Tom joined the stream of cars exiting the lot. He headed toward his backup release point, hoping that only one container had opened inside the door. He imagined that insects were flying out of the hole in the door. But as he calmed and got farther from the river he realized that the hole had merely presented him with a different opportunity. Any insects escaping would still be hungry, would feed, would be attracted by perfume or human sweat. Driving, he was releasing the things to attack anyone nearby. Pedestrians. Dog walkers. Diners at outdoor restaurants.
Tom’s Subaru was like those vans back in Brazil from which biotech companies released genetically modified mosquitoes — sterile ones — to breed with local insects and kill the populations off. Those vans cruised around, windows open, as thousands of sterile male mosquitoes flew out. In Brazil the strategy halted disease. Here the opposite would occur.
Tom pulled into a closed Shell station, up to the air pump, as if to fill his tires. No one was watching. He pulled out the interior door panel and saw with relief that only one of the containers inside had opened, and only a little. Hundreds of mosquitoes crawled and flew in the space inside the door. He waved them from the car. They left in a small cloud that would not be visible from more than ten feet away. The cloud diminished as the vectors took off, many headed across the two-lane road, toward an open-air Mexican restaurant. Since the evening was hot, at least two hundred diners sat outside, enjoying margaritas, chimichangas, salsa dip, and happy talk.
Within a couple of days, some of you will be sick.
The release had not been planned, but it had worked.
Clouds were rapidly obscuring the moon. Heavy clouds.
The visit had been a success.
Back on I-78, Tom accelerated to check whether the car functioned normally after the accident as the first drops fell. There was no shimmy. No pull to left or right. Any damage had been cosmetic. And the last remaining sealed container still hung inside the door, ready for use.
Five hours to the final release point, 383 miles away, tomorrow night.
That final release point would be especially sweet. Even Dr. Cardozo did not know the real reason Tom had chosen it.
Tom headed east and then south, crossing into rural Mississippi.
He turned on all-news radio, which reported heavy rain ahead, and even a possibility of tornadoes. The sky was suddenly roiling with rapidly moving clouds. The road lacked streetlights. His headlights probed dark. A first fat raindrop struck the glass, and a sudden gust buffeted the car. The rain, when it hit, came on in a wave. Suddenly it was hard to see.
“We now go to New York live, where the NYPD Counterterrorism Unit is about to make an announcement. New York’s Police Commissioner has just introduced Colonel Joe Rush, of the National Bioterror Task Force.”
Rush again, Tom thought with fury.
Ahead, the wind was tossing branches off roadside trees. A sheet of paper went flying past. A bird was trying to fly straight, but went sideways. A man walking on the roadside fell down, raincoat flapping. Tom had never seen weather this bad come up so fast.
“Thank you, Commissioner,” Rush was saying. “In conjunction with the New York Police Antiterrorism Unit and the Brazilian Federal Police, we are asking for help in locating a person of interest in our investigation. We are seeking a man named Thomas Fargo.”
Tom Fargo almost drove into a ditch but straightened on the four-lane road. It was hard to see in the downpour. He came up fast on a big lumber truck with a DONALD TRUMP sticker on back. He slammed on the brakes and slid but kept control. Heart hammering, he crawled through violent hail, trying to comprehend what he was hearing. He understood why the New York police might want to talk to him about the murders of his neighbors. He could not fathom how Rush had gotten his name or connected him to anything else.