12.21

by Dustin Thomason

  As Chel approached, Ha’ana glanced up from the People magazine she was reading. She stood and pulled her daughter close. The magazine was expected, but Chel was surprised by the hug—it had been years since her mother had embraced her in this way. She felt something inside her give, and suddenly a huge wave of fatigue threatened to engulf her.

  “You look like you haven’t slept,” Ha’ana said.

  “I’ve been working.”

  “Still? It’s ridiculous, Chel. What could be so important?”

  THEY FOUND A LITTLE EMPTY classroom with chairs arranged in a horseshoe, deep in the west arm of the cathedral’s cross. Watercolor paintings of Joseph and his famous coat adorned every wall. These circumstances were hardly what Chel had envisioned when she’d imagined showing her mother the codex, but now she had no choice. She talked Ha’ana through the book’s connection to the illness and the apparent importance of Kiaqix to finding the source. Chel didn’t mention the trouble she faced with ICE and the Getty—the last thing she needed right now was to give Ha’ana cause for disappointment in her.

  They scrolled rapidly through pages of the codex on her laptop screen. What it meant to Ha’ana to see something like this and, even more, to learn that the village she’d abandoned years ago was the possible source of VFI, Chel couldn’t tell. Her mother’s expression revealed nothing.

  “So, Mom,” Chel said, “I need you to try to remember everything that happened when cousin Chiam went to find the lost city.”

  Ha’ana put a hand on Chel’s arm. “I’ve been worried about you. I hope you know that. Now I know I was right to worry. This must be an incredible burden.”

  “I’m fine. Now, please, Mom. I need you to remember.”

  Ha’ana stood and wandered silently to the window. Chel prepared for her mother’s resistance, gathering all the reasons she would give for why Ha’ana had to dig back into a past that she never wanted to revisit.

  To Chel’s surprise, her mother needed no prompting.

  “Your father’s cousin was the most skilled tracker in Kiaqix,” she began. “He could follow a deer for miles through the forest. From the time we were children, he was known as the best hunter in the village. But then the army came to the Petén, and indígenas were being murdered in the streets. Hanged from the tops of churches and burned alive. After the army made it to Kiaqix and your father was arrested, Chiam stepped into his place. It was he who read your father’s letters from prison aloud in community circle.”

  Chel was pleased with the ease of her mother’s narration. She hadn’t heard Ha’ana volunteer anything about the letters her father wrote from prison for years, and she didn’t dare interrupt.

  “Chiam was more militant than your father,” she continued. “He threatened to punish any of us who worked for a ladino, swore to kill as many of them as possible. He wanted to kill them as they killed us. Even your father’s letters were too soft for Chiam. The two of them had argued, but they were still close. When Alvar was arrested, I knew Chiam would do anything he could to get him out. Prisoners could sometimes be bought for the right price, so Chiam made contact with the guards at Santa Cruz. The price for your father was one hundred thousand quetzals.”

  Chel stood up. “And that’s why Chiam tried to find the lost city? Why have you never told me that before?”

  “Chiam didn’t want anyone to know he’d do business with the ladinos, even to get his own cousin out. Plus, if he found anything, he wouldn’t be proud of robbing our ancestors to bribe the enemy. Still, he went. And after twenty days he returned and told us what he’d found. He told us there was enough gold and jade to feed Kiaqix for fifty years.”

  Chel knew the rest of the story well, but only now did she understand its profound connection to her father’s life, and death. His cousin told the villagers that the souls of the ancestors still lived deep in the jungle and that to steal from them would anger the gods. He said the lost city was a spiritual gateway to the other worlds and that it proved the glory of what the Maya once were and could be again. And that once he’d seen the ruins with his own eyes, he couldn’t move a single stone or take a single artifact from its resting place. Not for any reason.

  The problem was that no one believed him. No one could accept that he had found treasures and simply left them there. After days of ridicule, Chiam claimed he would lead a team back into the jungle to prove himself. But, before he could, the Guatemalan army hanged him with a dozen other men from across the Petén for their revolutionary activities.

  “Chiam gave many details,” Ha’ana continued. “He said there were twin temples that faced each other, and a great patio with huge columns, where our ancestors would have met to discuss politics. Can you believe it? He thought his stories would remind us we were just as smart as the ladinos. But he was not cunning enough, and everyone knew he wasn’t telling the truth. He was a good, kind man, but his story was a lie.”

  “He said there was a patio?” Chel said. “With huge columns?”

  “Something like that.”

  “How tall? Thirty feet?”

  “He could have said a thousand feet. No one was listening.”

  But Paktul had described a colonnade in Kanuataba’s main plaza that circled a small interior court, with pillars that were six or seven men high. And while twin temples existed at dozens of Maya cities, columns built that high existed at only one or two places in Mexico. In Guatemala they were half as tall or less.

  “He might have found it,” Chel said. She started to explain the connection she’d made, but her mother wasn’t interested in hearing it. “The lost city is a myth,” Ha’ana said. “Like all lost cities.”

  “We’ve found lost cities before, Mom. They’re out there.”

  Ha’ana took a breath. “I know you want to believe this now, Chel.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Every villager in Kiaqix wants to believe in the lost city,” Ha’ana said. “They deceive themselves because it gives them hope. But that does not make the oral history any more than what it is: the silly stories of people who cannot know better. I didn’t bring you here and raise you to be one of them.”

  Chel had been surprised by her mother’s willingness to talk about Chiam. But now she knew: No matter what effect these last days had on her, Ha’ana was still the same woman who’d abandoned her family’s home, who’d abandoned everything her husband believed in. The same woman who’d spent thirty-three years trying to forget what happened, denying the importance of their culture and tradition.

  “Maybe you don’t believe in the lost city because of what it would mean for you, Mom.”

  “What are you saying?”

  It wasn’t worth it. “Forget it. I have to go. I have work to do.”

  What time was it?

  Chel glanced at her phone. There she found an email from Stanton waiting:

  know you’ll send more news when you have it, but wanted to make sure you’re okay.—G.

  She reread the message. For some reason Chel liked knowing he was keeping tabs on her.

  Ha’ana was saying something. “You’re really going to search for these ruins now? In the middle of this?”

  Chel stood. “Mom, we’re going to search for them because of all this.”

  “Search how?”

  “With satellites that scan the area for ruins,” Chel said, formulating a plan. “Or on the ground if we can’t find them from the air.”

  “Please tell me you won’t go into the jungle yourself, Chel.”

  “If the doctors need me to, I will.”

  “It’s not safe. You know it’s not safe.”

  “Father wasn’t afraid to do what he had to.”

  “Your father was a tapir,” Ha’ana said. “And the tapir fights, but he doesn’t run into the jaguar’s den to be slaughtered.”

  “And you were a fox,” Chel said. “The gray fox that is unafraid of humans, even those who hunt it. But you lost your wayob’s spirit when you abandoned Ki
aqix.”

  Ha’ana turned away. It was a great insult to suggest a Maya wasn’t worthy of her wayob, and Chel instantly regretted her words. Despite her mother’s long, fractured relationship with her origins, her wayob was still a part of her.

  “You help many people here,” Ha’ana said after a long pause. “Yet I hear that every time you come, you come only at the end of services. Deep down you don’t believe in the gods either. So maybe we are more similar than you think.”

  12.19.19.17.15

  DECEMBER 16, 2012

  TWENTY-TWO

  MICHAELA THANE WAS THIRTEEN WHEN THE RODNEY KING verdict set off looting and burning of thousands of buildings from Koreatown to East L.A. Her mother was still alive then, and she had kept Michaela and her brother in the house for nearly four days, where they watched on their nineteen-inch television as rioters set the city ablaze. It was the last time Thane remembered Los Angeles looking as it did now.

  On the car radio, she listened to pundits argue about whether it was the email leak from the mayor’s office that had started the unrest. One commentator claimed it was the nearly ten thousand estimated sick—agitated and desperate—leading the destruction. Detractors of Stanton’s quarantine declared this the inevitable result of trying to contain ten million people. But Thane had spent long enough living and working in this part of L.A. to know people here didn’t need a reason to be angry—they needed a reason not to be.

  Just before the turn in to Presbyterian, she looked in her rearview mirror to see Davies peel off; he’d trailed her here to ensure her safety. And safe it seemed to be. Floodlights illuminated the night sky, helicopters circled and jeeps swept the perimeter; National Guardsmen with guns patrolled the buildings as if it were a base in Kabul.

  Since returning from Afghanistan, Thane had spent nearly every weekday, every third night, and many weekends at Presby. She’d been here on virtually every holiday too, taking the least desirable call nights. Her colleagues thought she did it because she was selfless, but really Thane had nowhere else to go. A hospital operates 365 days a year, twenty-four hours a day, just like a military base. And eating the staff turkey on Thanksgiving and drinking plastic cups of sparkling cider when the clock struck midnight on New Year’s was better than being alone.

  Working at Presbyterian had never been easy, and sometimes they had to improvise more than medics in the mountains. The hospital was understaffed and overwhelmed. Yet Thane and her colleagues had provided decent care to tens of thousands of patients nonetheless. They helped other services, did favors for critical patients, listened to one another complain, and drank heavily together to try to forget it all. Over the last three years, the Presby staff had been Thane’s big, messy, occasionally happy substitute for a platoon.

  Now so many of them were dying inside these walls, and Presbyterian itself would soon be a memory too. Even if they could stop or slow the disease, they’d never be able to ensure that all the prion was gone from the floors, the walls, the sinks, the bedrails, and the light switches. The building would be demolished and removed by hazmat, piece by piece.

  IT WAS AFTER ONE A.M., but CDC staff still roamed the halls—tending to patients, trying to calm the victims, barking orders at one another. Thane had difficulty seeing their faces through the helmet of the biohazard suit she’d put on, but that also meant it was difficult for them to see hers. As long as no one recognized her, she could walk the wards unnoticed. The suit was sweltering hot and uncomfortable to move in, but she pressed on past rows of listless patients staring at the walls or restlessly pacing their rooms.

  Her first stop was on the fourth floor. Meredith Fentress was a heavy-set woman who just a week ago had manned the lobby. Thane had spent many nights chatting with her about the Dodgers and their never-ending string of disappointments.

  Now Fentress was whimpering and tossing, covered in sweat.

  “You’ll feel better soon,” Thane whispered as she pushed the antibodies from a syringe into the IV, and the yellow-tinged solution dripped into the patient’s vein. Thane watched—just as she and Stanton had discussed—to make sure there was no negative reaction that called for an immediate response.

  Nothing. When Thane was sure, she made her way from room to room. Occasionally she had to wait for a CDC doctor to finish with the patient and leave, but for the most part, she thought, it was almost like she was invisible.

  Amy Singer was a tiny bottle-blond third-year medical student with whom Thane had done a night rotation in the ICU. As she administered the antibodies, Thane remembered a night that they’d both fallen into an uncontrollable fit of laughter after an old man on the floor confused the two of them.

  Suddenly a nurse wearing a biohazard suit walked in. She looked at Thane skeptically. “Can I help you?”

  Thane pulled out the CDC ID Stanton had had made for her. “Just taking some secondary samples,” she said. “Monitoring how quickly protein loads are growing.”

  The nurse seemed satisfied and continued on her rounds. Thane breathed a huge sigh of relief. So far all had gone well. She prayed that the antibodies were doing their work.

  Ten patients later, Thane found Bryan Appleton lying quietly in his bed. His eyes were closed, but of course she knew he lingered in a dangerous netherworld. She also took note of the three deep red scratches on the side of his face—when she was done, she’d attach restraints for his own safety. Appleton was one of the kitchen staff, who had practically force-fed Thane meals on her call nights. He’d always seemed to understand that residents survived on the free eats—oatmeal cookies, melon, juice, and coffee—that magically appeared in the call rooms.

  Thane watched to make sure the liquid flowed easily through the IV. Then she tried to turn him so she could fasten his arms to the rails.

  Appleton’s eyes opened.

  He grabbed the sleeve of her biohazard suit. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “What are you doing to me?”

  As gently as she could, Thane maneuvered her arm out of his grip. “It’s Michaela, Bryan. I’m giving you medicine.”

  Appleton shot up in bed. “I don’t want any fucking medicine!”

  His eyes looked wild. The beeps from the monitor beside his bed came faster. His heart was racing at a hundred eighty beats per minute.

  “You have to lie down, Bryan,” Thane said. He was a big man, but she’d dealt with worse. She leaned her weight over the bed, positioning herself. Was he having an allergic reaction to the antibodies? Was it VFI-induced anger and stress causing the tachycardia? Either way, she had to calm him down. “Please, lie down for a minute and try to relax.”

  Appleton threw all his weight and catapulted her over the side table. “Don’t you fucking touch me!” he screamed as she fell to the ground.

  Thane could feel the nasty bruise blooming on her head, but she also knew she had only seconds to get up. Shakily, she got to her feet and glimpsed Appleton’s blood pressure: 50/30.

  He was having an anaphylactic reaction, and he needed an epinephrine injection. But he was already pulling out his tubes. It would be impossible to get close enough. “Please, Bryan,” she begged. “You’re having a reaction to the drug. You gotta let me give you something for it.”

  “You’re poisoning me!” he screamed, throwing his legs over the side of the bed and starting after her. “I’ll kill you, bitch!”

  Thane darted around the bed and headed for the door. Bryan’s screams echoed down the hallway, and soon other patients heard him and joined in. Yelling that they were poisoned too. Demanding to be released from the quarantine.

  Thane fled to the stairs. Her biohazard suit was suffocating as she descended to the third floor, where she nearly barreled into a man in a hospital gown standing at the top. It was Mariano, the security guard who’d stood outside Volcy’s room for days. Thane was hit with a wave of sadness. The man had spent years trying to protect himself from disease with masks. But he hadn’t protected his eyes.

  “Keep away from my wife,”
he shouted. He was sick and obviously hallucinating.

  “It’s okay, Mariano,” she said. “It’s Michaela Thane.”

  Mariano bared his teeth, grabbed the nylon fabric of her biohazard suit, and threw her down the stairs.

  Thane’s neck broke the moment she hit the landing.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I have taken ownership of One Butterfly and Flamed Plume, Auxila’s daughters. Haniba did her duty, as is ordained by the gods. The girls visit her grave—marked with a cross signifying the four cardinal directions—every other sun. Her suicide was met with acclaim from the royal council, who believe Auxila was chosen for sacrifice by the gods.

  Never knowing me to be carnal, the members of the council were shocked to hear I had taken his daughters as my concubines. Darkened Sun believed me only when I told him I planned to lie with the younger of the two first and that my abstinence was actually a preference for unspoiled youth. I have commanded Flamed Plume to spread word to the other girls of Kanuataba of how her younger sister submits most humbly to my insatiable appetites.

  I also told the girls in truth that I would never make them lie with me. At first they seemed terrified I would force myself upon them. One Butterfly, only nine years, was particularly scared at first, but when I bled her gums upon the loss of a tooth, she was grateful and regarded me with softer eyes before confessing her sorrows to her worry dolls. The elder girl was slower to accommodate. Only after weeks did Flamed Plume come to trust me; for the past four nights we have spent every evening reading the great books of Kanuataba together.

  I take no pride in owning these girls, but Haniba had spoken true. I could not let Auxila’s daughters be defiled. Their father was a holy man, whose family took me in as an orphan when my father left for the land of our ancestors. And then Auxila set me on the path to nobility, a debt that I can never repay. Still, I do not know what to say to the children when tears pour out of their eyes after visiting their mother’s grave. I have never understood the ways of women.