On the door into her sister’s cramped, windowless inner office was a handwritten sign. “Dr. Emma Miller, Chief Epidemiologist.”
“Impressive title,” Isabel said. She had dreamed of a totally different scene filled with hugs and kisses and breathless questions. She so wanted a feeling of connection with her sister. Their shared love of science had always served that purpose in the past. “You might be interested to know, Emma, that we found a woman and her baby who are naturally immune to Pandoravirus.”
That got Emma’s attention. “Where are they from?”
It seemed a strange first question—the first words her identical twin sister had spoken to her. Isabel tried not to betray her hurt feelings, not that her pain would ever have been noticed. “New Guinea, I think.”
Emma clearly missed the disappointment evident in the leaden tone of Isabel’s voice. “That makes sense,” Emma said. “Asia-Pacific Islanders have the most Denisovan DNA of any Homo sapiens. Denisovans were in Siberia when Pandoravirus last broke out. The immunity must be somewhere in that archaic genetic code.”
Emma sat and straightened her sheaf of paper with several taps on her neat, well organized desk, so unlike the mess she’d left behind along with everything else from her old life in Bethesda. Isabel searched for some way to keep the conversation going. “What are those?”
“These papers? It’s The List. The latest exam results.”
“Oh. The List. You people do like naming things. The list of the people who passed the tests? Who don’t, you know, get…?” She made a throat cutting motion and sound.
“We don’t slit throats. We shoot them.”
“But I thought you shot them just outside the door of the testing center?”
“Only the ones who can’t even complete the test. The others get scored overnight and picked up first thing in the morning, unless they’ve run.” She put a ratty old notebook in a briefcase.
“Hey! That looks like the notebook you got at the NIH. Your, what, fourth?”
“Fifth,” Emma corrected, barely paying attention to Isabel.
“Speaking of the NIH, good call sending that biologist to be my interviewer.” Isabel was nervous and rambling. Emma didn’t seem to notice. “So what’s up with those interviews anyway? What’s the point?” Emma hadn’t invited her to, but Isabel sat.
“We’re trying to decide whether we can trust any treaty with Vice President Anderson.”
“We call him President Anderson,” Isabel corrected. “Funny you should mention that. General Browner is trying to figure out the exact same thing about you.”
“Is that the reason you’re here?”
“Yeah.” Her answer seemed to hold Emma’s interest, so Isabel kept talking. “And I see you’ve got SE guys patrolling the Exclusion Zone. They’re armed. Isn’t that a violation of your existing agreement?”
“They have to be armed to do their job. If you came in through the Exclusion Zone, you saw what it was like.” Isabel had observed and tried to keep her distance from tens, maybe hundreds of thousands there, all starving, all desperate, all violent. “We have to protect ourselves from the raids that come down out of those hills. You can tell General Browner that the forces we’re raising are intended only to deal with that lawlessness. We’re not raising an army to fight him…even though I get reports almost every day of incursions by Browner’s troops. Four nights ago, a hydroelectric plant in Bath County blew up.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken. It must’ve been your own people. Rebels or something.”
Emma shook her head. “No. They were U.S. Army.” She divided her copies into stacks of ten with paper clips, then said, “Samantha!” Isabel turned just in time to see the girl, now thirteen, with her long blond hair still perfectly straight and in place. She carried a combat helmet, and on the arm of her camouflage blouse was a patch that read, “SE.” Emma said, “Could you take these to the stations?”
Samantha took the papers and turned to Isabel. “If you’re staying for a while, could you come by my apartment? I’ve got a question for you.”
Isabel said, “Sure. And a belated happy birthday.”
To Isabel’s amazement, the girl responded with a passable semblance of a smile. “Thank you.” She glanced at Emma and the smile faded to sudden blankness.
Emma asked Samantha, “What question?”
“I wanted to ask your sister how to put my hair up in a bun like she used to when her hair was long and pretty so it will fit under this.” She raised the heavy and, for her, huge looking Kevlar helmet.
There was obvious tension between the two, which Isabel instinctively sought to de-escalate. “And maybe you can tell me how you keep your hair so pretty and straight.”
“My secret is a detangler.” Samantha again smiled. She could almost pass.
There was no smile on Emma’s face as Samantha left.
“So, she’s an SE policewoman now?” Isabel asked.
“She’s the new head of the SE force.”
“Little Samantha? She’s in charge of the executions? Won’t that make her kind of unpopular? A lightning rod for people who’re pissed about them?” Like Sheriff Walcott?
“Yes.”
When Samantha left the building, a man nodded at Emma and followed the girl out.
That was weird. Emma straightened the paper, pencils, and yellow highlighters on her already tidy desk. She continued packing the briefcase with a pad and pens in multiple colors.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes. I’ve got a meeting at Agriculture.”
“Oh, speaking of, I ran into Angela Stoddard outside. She invited me to dinner.” Emma clearly couldn’t care less. “She said something about wanting rations raised?” Emma stared back blankly. “Do you need to write that down?”
“No. We can’t raise Uninfecteds’ rations again without Infected members starving.”
“So, you’re having problems with your harvests?”
“No. We’re banking foodstuffs to trade them for resources we’re short on.” She wasn’t exactly keen on keeping secrets. It was clear she was telling the truth because it was immediately apparent that Emma had lost weight. Sam too. “It would help if our only refinery wasn’t periodically destroyed,” Emma continued, “so we could use tractors to work the fields and trucks to deliver the food before it rots.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Was there some accident? Someone push the wrong button? I’m sure there are plenty of flammable things at a refinery.”
“Seizing that refinery was our closest approach to the coast, and it was shelled by five inch guns from the sea.”
All Isabel could do was shrug. “So, are you saying you don’t think we’re abiding by our existing nonaggression treaty? How do you think we feel when you attack an uninfected neighborhood or town? Or you execute people with machine guns?”
“If you’re talking about Uninfecteds, we don’t punish that many.”
“Except in the towns you overrun.”
A flash of lightning lit the twilight, followed by a surprisingly loud peal of thunder. Emma didn’t even blink.
“Your car is outside,” said a woman Isabel didn’t recognize at first. “Dorothy?”
“Yes,” the former housewife replied. “Hi.”
Emma said to Dorothy, “Don’t forget the buckets.” Dorothy nodded. Isabel watched her put a hodgepodge of plastic and metal buckets around the lobby—on a desk, in the marble entry, in an office doorway.
Isabel said, “That must mean the Marine embassy guard, Dwayne, is—what?—Chairman of your Joint Chiefs?”
“He’s head of our security forces, and he works part-time in Dorothy’s nursery.”
“Taking care of babies?” Isabel asked, fighting a laugh. Emma didn’t see any humor in the job description. Or in anything else. Isabel lean
ed forward. “We want to trust you, Emma. We don’t want a war. There’s been way too much killing and dying already. And obviously we have our hands full out West. Everything you’ve done here with your meditation courses and big Board with its Rules and stuff—there’s none of that out there. It’s,” Isabel chuckled, “the Wild West, and it’s fuckin’ awful.”
Emma nodded. “So we’ve heard. But it’s gotten better, I suppose, since your nuclear strikes?” How did she know about that? Isabel wondered. Maybe the anecdotal sightings of missionaries, one analyst had called Emma’s teams, weren’t just paranoia. Maybe Emma was training Infecteds to be backslapping, boisterous spies who crack jokes, or sultry courtesans skilled at the easy art of seducing men. “But it’s the east where the population is,” Emma said, “and where you’re vastly outnumbered.”
This wasn’t the turn in the discussion for which Isabel had hoped. She had a decision looming—codes to be entered into her sat phone, wherever that was. “We thought we’d see about deescalating tensions. Maybe draft new contracts—treaties—between us. Formal ones. Maybe, for instance, as a show of goodwill you’d consider letting your Uninfecteds come over to us.”
“No. We’re not interested in that.”
“Sending your Uninfecteds over to us,” Isabel tried again, “might alleviate your problems with feeding everyone. Especially since Uninfecteds seem to want to eat more.”
“Uninfecteds provide us with certain things. They come up with creative solutions to problems. Their young are continuing to study, which will facilitate maintenance of our infrastructure and technology. They have skills and expertise we need.”
“And they’re hostages. If there’s a war, you’ll kill or infect them all.”
“You’re already attacking us and we haven’t killed them,” Emma rebutted.
Isabel feared that she had been misinformed about the cessation of military incursions into Emma’s Community. Then again, they wouldn’t have told her anything they didn’t want Emma to know before sending Isabel behind enemy lines. “But we haven’t used all of our weapons,” Isabel said. That struck home. Emma’s hands subtly disappeared from the desk, to her lap, and from there snuck under her thighs. “So you know what would happen if we found you raising an army?” Emma tilted her head to the side and pressed her biceps to her bony ribcage. “And we don’t want that to happen, do we?”
Emma shook her head.
“Because eventually, you know, we’re gonna get control of that mess out West.”
Emma said, “You don’t have enough people.”
“Our maternity wards and nurseries are full,” Isabel lied. “Natalie and Noah are expecting a baby.” Kaboom!
“Our wards are full too,” Emma said. She had zero interest in her future niece or nephew. “And I’m pregnant.”
Isabel’s jaw dropped. “You’re pregnant?” Emma nodded. In spite of all that had happened, Isabel couldn’t help but again feel inadequate in comparison to her sister, who had successfully avoided expiration of her biological clock while simultaneously rising to the office of dictator.
“Is the father that pilot from the NIH lab?”
“No. Bill Stoddard.”
“The President? The ex-President? You two had sex?”
“No. His son Bill.”
“You had sex with Bill Junior? But he’s…he’s a boy.”
“Not anymore.”
Isabel took a deep breath and held it, at a total loss. She let it out as a long sigh. “I guess not. What-the-fuck-ever. Are you two…gonna raise your child together?”
“He doesn’t know about it. And they take babies away as soon as they’re born.”
“Where will they take him or her?”
“I’m not sure. You can ask Dorothy or Dwayne.”
“So you don’t have a clue where they’ll take your child?” Isabel asked for reasons she couldn’t explain even to herself. “She’ll just be out there somewhere?”
“Dorothy will begin sending the older children back to their parents, if they’re alive, and make them care for and feed them. We’re going to add that to the Rules once the plans are finalized. Parents take care of their children over a certain age; children take care of their parents over a certain age. Samantha came up with the idea that we give parents progress reports on their children four times a year. Age. Weight. Height. Appearance on a one to ten scale. Temperament and intelligence test results. That way parents can prepare for them when they age out of the system, which we think will be somewhere between six and ten years old, and the census can forecast the number of future participants in the labor force. All of which is a long way of saying that I will know those reported things about my child, and I will know something happened to it if I stop receiving reports.”
Isabel bit her lip and nodded. “How sweet. Real…efficient.” Emma nodded.
Rain began to pelt the tall lobby windows. What a miserable night to be in the field. Maybe she would take the First Lady up on her offer to spend the night despite the warnings from the CIA officer to “get while the getting is good.”
Emma rose with her briefcase and rounded the desk for the door.
That must signal the end of their reunion. Isabel followed her sister out of the office. “Emma, just what is the deal with that interview you put me through? All those questions about The Outbreak, The Killing.”
Emma, ever patient, stopped to answer. “Those are standardized names for eras. We’re trying to decide whether we can trust you and let you continue in the Houston-Denver corridor. You have an army, an air force, a navy, a Marine Corps. You have weapons. We need to determine whether you will abide by a nonaggression treaty. We don’t understand you very well. You don’t behave in the ways we expect. We decided the best guide to what you’ll do in the future is what you’ve done in the past, so we’re studying your behavior following The Outbreak.”
“You just admitted, Emma, that we have a powerful military. But you sound like you’re deciding whether to let us live. Isn’t it the other way around?”
“No. By Infection Date 130 we’ll have two million members, net of test failures. By Infection Date 190 it will be between six and ten million. By Infection Date 280 it could be as high as sixty million—all productively employed in restoring economic vitality.”
“And you’ll raise an army?”
“If necessary.”
Isabel had to make best use of the dwindling time her twin sister was giving her as she trailed Emma into the lobby. “To be clear, Emma, about the military situation…I am talking to the right person, correct?” Emma nodded. “Then you should know that there are people trying to convince President Anderson that we should wipe you out—every town, every port and factory and grain silo. It would take about fifteen minutes. You understand that, don’t you? All those nuclear weapons are in our hands. Do I need to be any clearer?”
Emma shook her head.
“Okay then. Why would we let you grow stronger than us? Why would we not use those weapons to incinerate you and everything you’ve worked so hard to build?”
“Because you don’t have the willpower to use them against our uninfected population. We’re mixed with them. We live in adjacent neighborhoods. We work elbow to elbow with each other. Unlike out West, where your targets were carefully chosen, we noted, to minimize Uninfecteds’ deaths, if you nuke our Community you’ll kill one Uninfected for every Infected you kill.”
“They may have to be sacrificed,” Isabel said, although what she felt was revulsion.
Emma’s head tilted as she studied Isabel’s expression. “No…you won’t do it. Just like you couldn’t kill your interviewer. You rationalized and found a reason not to.”
Isabel followed Emma toward the glass front doors. “Is that what you’ve concluded from your interviews? Your history of the new world?”
“Yes,” Emma replied witho
ut looking back.
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Sheets of water began to lash the front steps and, sure enough, trickle into the buckets that Dorothy moved a few inches one way or another to adjust for the downpour.
Just before they reached the foyer, Emma ducked into a small office and lugged Isabel’s camo backpack out, dropping it with a thud at Isabel’s feet—carbine, pistol, and sat phone included. “You might want to report your findings back to General Browner before dinner at the Stoddards’. I don’t want him thinking we killed you.” She opened one of the double glass doors, admitting a gust of wind.
“So this is goodbye, then?” Isabel couldn’t help but say. Emma nodded. “You’re not even gonna ask about the rest of Noah’s family? If Chloe and Jake made it or not?”
“No.” She headed out, but stopped. “Oh, but I almost forgot. You may want to know that we’re in contact with people about joining The Community as far away as Quebec and Oregon. I got a message from the acting mayor of Janesville, Wisconsin, who said they have your boyfriend, Captain Townsend, and they’re sending him down here at my request.”
Isabel gasped for air after ceasing her breathing on hearing Wisconsin. “Oh my God! He’s…alive?” Emma nodded. Isabel grabbed her mouth and began to sob.
Her sister stared back at her and tilted her head, studying her. She then nodded, to no one unless, perhaps, it was to that voice in her head. Emma was agreeing with some prior conclusion or some current inner reasoning. “You’re welcome to stay here, Isabel, and meet him when he arrives in a couple of weeks. Or not. Your choice. Dr. Nielsen should also be getting here soon. The Pearl River plant finally fell, and we’re bringing her staff down here to set up a production line for the vaccine. Please say hello to General Browner from me, and whatever other polite things you can think of, and tell him we are willing to conduct negotiations leading to a formal nonaggression treaty and a trade accord, but they have to put an end to their attacks first.”
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 33
