The Gemini Virus

by Mara, Wil

  Most of the other passengers were sporting the obligatory surgical mask and gloves. A few had taken it a step further with rubber masks and oxygen tanks. The tanks ranged from thermos-sized models to about the length of a standard fire extinguisher. Masood saw a commercial on television the night before where you could get even smaller ones—“Guaranteed twelve-hour supply!” the salesman raved, for the reasonable price of $340 plus shipping and tax. Personalized oxygen tanks, he thought, shaking his head. America’s devotion to personalization never ceased to amaze him. The tanks would soon come in designer colors so they didn’t clash with your outfit. Then you could get your initials engraved. After that there would be filling stations in case you ran low while you were still out. Then a subscription service where, for something like $39.99 a month, you could get unlimited refills. Only in America.

  He reached into the side pocket of his coat and took out some loose change, which he pretended to count before replacing it. In truth, he was checking yet again to make sure the pump-spray bottle was still there. It was about the size of a roll of nickels, the plastic a transparent blue. And it was filled with a clear liquid.

  He felt an upwelling of euphoria as the subway zoomed along. He couldn’t help but look at some of the other passengers, feeling an indescribable warmth at the knowledge of what was about to happen—and, more to the point, that he knew about it and they didn’t. This was going to be a moment for the ages, one that would be written about for years to come, first in newspapers and blog sites, then in history books all over the world. Once everything was revealed—and it would, because that, too, was part of the plan—he would be lauded as a hero. They would revere him, utter his name with the deepest respect. Fathers would name their sons after him, encourage them to emulate his bravery and courage. His image would hang in homes; maybe he would even be mentioned during prayers. He always believed in his destiny, always felt a kind of certainty that he was headed for greatness. And he would achieve that greatness today. He would become immortal. And it will be so easy. So easy …

  The subway car squealed to a halt at Union Square, and he rose to leave with the others. The platform, he was happy to see, was fairly busy. He was also relieved, although not surprised, that there were uniformed police everywhere. Their eyes were moving about restlessly, looking for anything suspicious. Let’s help them out, Masood thought to himself.

  In the thick of crowd, he pulled the spray bottle just far enough out of his pocket to expose the nozzle. Then, supporting it in his palm, he began pumping with his thumb. Little mist clouds appeared and just as quickly disappeared. He made every effort to be casual. This was crucial to the plan—as though you’re trying to hide it. As much as he would like to yank the thing out of his pocket and blast someone square in the face—or, better yet, jam it up the nostril of one of these contemptible insects and fire repeatedly—he knew that would blow everything. So he walked along and just kept pumping. At least I’ll infect a few of them along the way, he thought, regarding this as a kind of bonus.

  He was almost to the stairs and started to worry that the sequence of events might not roll out as he’d hoped. But then it happened—he heard someone shout, “Hey! That guy’s spraying something!” and in a matter of seconds, the scene descended into chaos. People began screaming, running in every direction. Some jumped like Olympians over the turnstiles; others stumbled back into the train. From the corner of his eye he saw a middle-aged man with a briefcase push aside a mother and her little boy, his tie flying ridiculously over his shoulder as he fled away.

  He saw two of the transit cops come running at him, their eyes wide with fear over the cotton masks; they no doubt hated their jobs at the moment. Masood did his best to appear frightened, backpedaling before turning to run. But he let his feet twist around each other and fell to the smoothed concrete. He tried to squeeze out a few more spritzes, but some Good Samaritan—Masood couldn’t help but admire him, all things considered—grabbed his wrist and jarred the bottle free. The cops were on him instantly, flipping him onto his stomach. One pulled his hands together and cuffed him; the other placed his booted foot on the spray bottle and ordered the Samaritan to stand back. Then he produced a plastic bag, rolled the bottle into it, and zipped it shut.

  Masood was heaved to his feet and marched away. Of the few people who were left, several had their cell phones out and were taking pictures or making little movies. Masood made sure he appeared regretful, almost ashamed. But he wanted to smile. They would drink in his honor this night, and millions more would do the same for years to come.

  It was just the beginning.

  * * *

  Andi sat on the grassy hill behind the cabin—knees raised, elbows on their peaks, hands together—and focused solely on her own, measured breathing. The moon looked down from its high place above the rip of the tree line, bathing everything in an eerie luminescence. And the near-perfect silence, which seemed peculiar in the dead of spring, was a godsend.

  What would be an even greater godsend right now would be a cigarette, she thought decadently. She hadn’t set one between her lips since she and Dennis were engagees. Even then it hadn’t been much of a vice. Maybe one pack every two weeks. She’d never been one for addictions, wasn’t an “addictive personality,” as some liked to say. The worst was her senior year in college: about a pack and a half a week. She groped her memory for the name of the brand. Parliaments—that was it. It was a choice of convenience, as several of her friends smoked them, too. For all she knew, they had the most disagreeable flavor on the market. But she hadn’t tried any other brand and had no intention of doing so. She knew she wouldn’t be a smoker for long. She kicked the habit altogether when they decided to start a family. Cravings came once in a while, but never to the point of distraction. Most days she couldn’t even believe she’d smoked at all. It was like remembering a detail from someone else’s life.

  Sure as hell wouldn’t mind one now, though. I’d suck it down to the filter faster than a Shop-Vac.

  The silence was broken by the metallic stretch of a rusted spring on the other side of the house. The fact that the door wasn’t allowed to slap shut told Andi it was Dennis; he always guided doors to a close. Then the muted shuffle of his footsteps on the grass until he came up alongside her.

  “They’re in dreamland?” she asked.

  “Out like lights.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s amazing—they’re only seven and five, yet they both snore like bears.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He got down beside her and arranged himself in the same position. “I was prepared to read two stories each, but I didn’t even finish one.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed humorlessly and shook his head.

  “What’s funny?”

  “A ‘long day.’ It just sounds ridiculous. A long day here at our cabin, like we’re early American settlers or something.”

  “Well, we did do a lot. I felt like I got things accomplished, anyway. I don’t know about you.”

  “I did, I did.”

  “I had four phone interviews, sent out two emails making job offers, and got the payroll done. And all from my remote office here in the Hundred Acre Wood. Thank god for laptops.”

  “Is anyone even at the plant right now?”

  “A couple of people. They don’t stay long, though. The CEO doesn’t want them there until this thing goes away. They’re only doing what they have to do, no more.”

  The CEO of Andi’s company was a fifty-three-year-old native of Denmark, where the company was headquartered. In the six years she’d been there, she was frequently startled by the degree of humanity he and the other executives displayed. It was a radical shift from the soulless band of savages who ran her last company—based in Texas—and masterfully guided it into insolvency.

  “And everyone’s still getting paid,” Dennis said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Eddie just sent
an email saying we wouldn’t be given more than two weeks. After that, we had to start using our personal, sick, and vacation time.”

  Eddie Wells was Dennis’s departmental supervisor. Forty-one and already divorced three times, he had four kids, crushing alimony and child-support payments, and—Dennis was fairly sure—a cocaine habit that he supported through casual dealing on the weekends. How the guy wasn’t dead yet, either by his own hand, a drug contact, or one of the countless underlings who hated his guts, was a mystery.

  “He’s a piece of work,” Andi said.

  “He’s a piece of something.”

  She giggled—a sound Dennis hadn’t heard in what seemed like an eternity. Then she set her head on his shoulder, something else she hadn’t done in forever. He caught the floral scent of her shampoo.

  She let out a long sigh. “When do you think we’ll be able to leave?” she asked. A few cicadas had begun chirring in the tall grass along the edge of the forest.

  “I wouldn’t even want to guess. A few weeks, maybe?”

  “God, I hope it doesn’t take that long.”

  “Me neither. Then again, I’m not in any rush to leave.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t want to go back until we’re absolutely certain the virus has been run out of town.”

  “I agree with that.”

  “I wonder if that’s why Josiah wasn’t there. Maybe he heard about people coming up here, and he left.”

  “Maybe.”

  His cabin had been locked tight, and there was no note on the door or any other indication of his present whereabouts.

  “Just before I shut the laptop, I did a Google search to see if there were any new cases in Carlton,” Dennis said.

  “And?”

  “Yeah, plenty. One even had a YouTube video someone took with their cell phone. A biohazard team was carrying the victim out in a black body bag.”

  “Anyone we know?” She didn’t really want to ask but couldn’t help it.

  “No. It was a retired man who lived by himself in that development over by the dam.”

  The dam was on the lowland side of town, the first area of Carlton settled in the mid-1700s, and was favored by the sixty-and-older crowd. Dennis and Andi had never spent any time there.

  “But the report said he killed himself. They found empty bottles of both Jim Beam and Clorox bleach by his body.”

  “My God.”

  “And a brush, too.”

  “A brush?”

  “A steel-bristled barbecue brush. Apparently he was using it to—”

  “No—”

  “—scratch off the blisters. I guess the itching was so bad, it drove him out of his mind.”

  Andi slowly shook her head. And although she was shocked by what she’d just heard, it was shock of a much milder wattage than it should have been. So many similar stories, so much suffering. Was she becoming desensitized? Any one of these reports would’ve sent her into a mild depression a week ago. Now it felt like each one was bouncing off her like tiny hailstones.

  “The scariest part is that it could’ve just as easily been us,” Dennis said. “We could’ve been the ones with the infection so deep, it would’ve made sense to use a wire brush.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What must that be like, to be pushed to the point where you think that way?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  “Me neither. That’s why I say, no rush to leave here.”

  “No, no rush.”

  “I mean, I know the kids don’t like being pulled out of their routine.”

  “No, they don’t. All that school they’re missing.”

  “Yeah. Well, at least they’re doing some homework.”

  Which was true—the teachers had been trying their best to compensate for the educational blackout by posting lessons and homework online. Andi, who had seriously considered a career in teaching, enjoyed indulging this unfulfilled ambition. Classes were from eleven until two each day, with a half-hour break for lunch. Dennis, who handled the tech stuff on the computer, came up with the idea of taking pictures of their homework assignments with the digital camera and emailing them.

  “But it’s not the same,” Andi said.

  “I know.”

  She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “This is craziness.”

  “It sure as hell is.”

  “We’re in the middle of the woods, for Pete’s sake.”

  “But we’re safe.”

  “Yeah.”

  Neither one said a word for the next ten minutes. At one point, Dennis thought Andi had fallen asleep. Then she started softly humming the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There,” a song her parents had taught her as a child.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” Dennis said.

  “What?”

  “The night of our first official date. Remember? After dinner we went to Indian Hill Park?”

  Andi lifted her head—to Dennis’s disappointment—and appraised her surroundings more carefully. “Yeah, a little bit. You mean the moonglow and the woody smell in the air?”

  “Absolutely. Sitting on the swings?”

  “Yeah.”

  He grinned. “You were hot that night, baby. Smokin’.”

  “You weren’t so bad yourself, except for that ridiculous cologne.”

  He laughed. “The stuff I bought from JCPenney? It smelled great in the store.”

  “Not so much on you, though.”

  “No, not so much.”

  “Not exactly a good mix with your body chemistry.”

  Dennis turned and studied her for a long moment, taking in the delicate outline of her face and the pleasant curvature below it. He had told her a thousand times how beautiful she was. He knew she didn’t believe him, but it had always been an honest assessment.

  When Andi sensed what he was doing, she didn’t return the look but merely raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “How about you? Do you think you’d mix well with my body chemistry?”

  Now she did turn. “I think maybe we should find out.”

  “I think so, too.”

  The moon continued its slow glide across the pale night sky, a witness to the many agreeable things they did next.

  NINE

  The top to the convertible was up now; Beck had done it the day before. Top up, windows shut, vents closed. The car was sealed like a Tupperware container. This was every epidemiologist’s nightmare—to be afraid of oxygen. If you were afraid of the water, you didn’t have to swim. If you were afraid of wild animals, you didn’t go into the woods. But how did you get away from air?

  He drove slowly through Allendale on the way to another interview. An upscale, respectable town. There was a bistro, a bagel shop, a florist, a day spa.… The sign for the Town Journal bore the motto YOUR HOMETOWN NEWSPAPER. The Dairy Queen was a hangout for local teens, no doubt. And the Dog Boutique offered a special price on nail clipping, NO APPOINTMENT NEEDED.

  But there was no life here. He came to a stop with the motor still chugging. He didn’t bother to check the rearview mirror; no one was back there. The potted trees on the sidewalks were nodding in the wind, which was potentially deadly under the circumstances. A Burger King bag rolled and tumbled across the road and out of sight. One of the windows at Kammen’s Jewelers had been smashed in, the alarm still going. A few doors down, a child’s bicycle lay on its side. The pavement had been decorated—most likely by the bicycle’s owner—in pastel colors. Beck couldn’t make out what the pictures were, but the plastic tub of chubby chalk was still there.

  He’d seen enough after a few minutes and started moving again. He passed out of Allendale’s business district and into the residential area. A spray-painted sign on the side of the road read, THIS IS OUR PUNISHMENT FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ. A little ways down, a Dodge pickup had been driven into someone’s front porch. Both doors were left open as the interior light slowly drained the battery. Just beyond that
was Lyons Funeral Home. The lawn still looked as though it’d been cut with a pair of cuticle scissors, and there were several cars parked in the small back lot, so business appeared to be good. It reminded Beck of the conversation he’d had with Gillette the day before about how the corpses were piling up in local morgues, and what was being done with them. The state had ordered a minimum one-day postmortem hold before any family representatives could come and claim them. This was due to the rough determination that the virus lost its virulency in a body that had been dead for twenty-four hours. The rate of cremations versus burials had skyrocketed, had in fact become exclusive in almost all cases. In the rare event of a memorial service where the deceased was present, the bodies were rarely displayed. Beck had no trouble understanding this, as he doubted there were many people who wanted to see their beloved Aunt Martha for the last time after she’d had a fifteen-round bout with this particular contagion.

  His mind turned back to the radio, which had been on for a while. He wasn’t even sure which station, but it almost didn’t matter—they were all broadcasting updates around the clock now. It reminded him of 9/11, when nearly every cable television channel in the area temporarily turned into a news network.

  There was an up-to-the-minute estimate of 1,500 dead and at least another 3,000 infected. The illness had spread to nine states now, and President Obama finally ordered travel restrictions throughout the Northeast. Panic was widespread, bordering on hysteria. The media was doing a splendid job of scaring the daylights out of everyone, and Beck wondered what they’d say if they knew the full truth. The death toll was more in the area of 2,100, with at least 4,400 more acting as carriers—at least temporarily.

  The virus also continued to be a problem for law enforcement. Police originally utilized the rubber-gloves-and-surgical-masks that had become standard gear for most everyone else, but the death toll among their ranks continued to rise. Every organization from the Fraternal Order of Police to the International Union of Police Associations cried foul, and many local unions ordered that their members answer no more outbreak-related calls unless given more appropriate protection. That led to the issuance of thousands of “escape hoods”—baggy head covering that makes the wearer look like a character in a sci-fi movie—with integrated air purifiers, either passive or active depending on each town’s financial agility. These did reduce the number of fatalities, but not appreciably. A call to an infected site was still considered a date with death, and many towns simply stopped sending their officers into certain areas. Predictably, widespread looting became commonplace in these sectors, the thieves making the irrational decision to risk their lives by entering the homes of deceased residents in order to get their hands on one more diamond ring, flat-screen television, or whatever. Authorities reported the virus in twelve states for sure, and that number would likely double in the next few weeks, travel restrictions notwithstanding, if a vaccine wasn’t discovered soon.