Chip squinted at the white lines dividing lanes. Every glare of oncoming traffic threatened to overwhelm his sight. He felt fine, but the drugs must have dilated his eyes. He thought about asking Ellie if he could pull over and switch seats, but he had the instant vision of her temper flaring, of her yelling in his face, the lines at the corners of her mouth going as deep as cuts. Physically, he shrunk in his seat. Just like he'd done all those years ago.
He gazed across the car at her. "I got a problem with my eyes."
She adjusted the phone against her ear. "What's that?"
"They're boycotting bright light. Every time we pass a car the other way, I say a prayer to the saint of not dying in a fiery crash."
"I'm on the phone."
"I hope it's to the guy who does your will, that's all I'm saying."
She muttered something unkind. "Do you need me to drive?"
He shrugged. "I think it would be a lot safer."
Ellie swore again, clapping her cell closed and banging it against the glove box. "I'm not getting anyone. Sure. Pull over and we'll switch."
Chip nodded and exited at the next turnoff. He parked on the side of the street and they got out and changed seats.
"Remember your way around?" he said.
She yanked her door closed. "I come here several times a year."
"You do? I never seen you."
She gave him a look. "Would you have wanted to?"
Chip smiled crookedly. "Point."
Ellie flipped around and headed back to the highway. She set her cell in her lap, glancing down at its dark face every few seconds. She was willing it to ring, Chip knew. She had the focus of a border collie. Okay in situations like this, he'd admit, but not so okay when you lived with a person who honed in on every stray sock and dirty dish. It was a wonder they'd lasted as long as they did.
"Want to tell me what this is about?" he said.
She shifted her grip on the wheel. "A plague."
"Like the plague?"
"No," she said. "Worse."
He listened to the whoosh of their wheels. "Worse than the plague? What's worse than the plague?"
"That's just it. We don't know."
"Ebola?"
"It's not ebola."
"Smallpox?"
She grimaced, shaking her head. "This isn't twenty questions. We don't know, Chip."
He tucked his chin. "Then how do you know it's gonna be so bad?"
She rolled her lips, exposing her front teeth. He knew that look, too. It was the look she got when she was trying to outline a smart concept in dumb terms.
"The numbers," she said. "The infection rate is unheard of. It's like we've got no immunity at all. I haven't seen the RNA, but I'm guessing it's something completely new."
He pushed himself into the passenger door. "That would explain the mask and the gloves."
"For whatever good they'll do." She gestured at the glove box. "I've got more in there if you want some."
"Can't hurt." Feeling moderately foolish, he strapped a mask over his mouth and tugged a pair of tight, clingy gloves over his hands, flexing his fingers to smooth out the latex. "Are you guys working on a cure?"
Ellie checked over her shoulder, passed a dawdling Prius. "I'm sure. And I'm sure they've started about five years too late to make a difference."
The towers fronting the river grew taller. Chip pressed his face to the window and gazed at their glossy faces, imagining each lit window as a person, a family.
"What does it mean?" he said. "What do you think is going to happen?"
She exposed her upper teeth again. "I think some pockets of the world may come out intact. Places like Tibet. The Amazon. Siberia."
"I don't hear an 'America' in that list."
She snorted. "A month from now, there won't be an America left to worry about."
"So we're about to shake hands with the apocalypse. And you're the only one who knows about it."
"I'm the only one who's reading without bias."
He turned away from the highrises. "Bias?"
"Numbers can't speak for themselves. They can't tell you what they mean." Ellie switched lanes again, glaring death at an SUV as it wobbled across the white lines. "So you decide what they mean. There are people in government who've seen the same numbers I have. I'm sure some have reached the same conclusions. And then backed right off."
"Why would they back off? Isn't now the time to act?"
"In their own way, they're being very rational. If I'm right, the only solution—a worldwide, months-long quarantine—would mean a total collapse of its own. If being right means you're screwed, why not bet on being wrong?"
A prickle crawled across Chip's scalp. He wanted to chalk her predictions up to arrogance. Not that she was cocky—in fact, she could be almost disgustingly insecure—but she had a pride in her intellect, a surety that she was the smartest person in the room, that sometimes blinded her to the gaps in her thinking. God, fighting with her had been like trying to pull up a stump with his bare hands.
But he didn't think he was in the midst of wrestling a stump. Normally when she was so sure she was right, she was righteous, almost maliciously happy that the other party was so ignorant. This was the first time he could remember seeing her scared of her own convictions.
"I guess that answers all the questions but the big one," he said.
In the darkness of the car, she smiled thinly. "Why am I here?"
"I was thinking more why the fuck you're here."
"I would think the answer is self-evident."
"It's been—I don't even know how long it's been." He racked his memory. "Have we even spoken in the last three years? You left when, seven years ago? The world's all set to blow, and the first thing you do is fly to New York to grab me?"
Ellie went silent. Air rushed past the car. The lights of Brooklyn glimmered on the river.
"Well?" she said. "So what?"
He laughed. "So who says I even want to see you?"
"Do you want me to leave? I can drop you off and drive away."
It was Chip's turn to go quiet. Seeing her, arguing with her, it was bizarre, almost perverse. It had been six years, seven, some damn thing. Dee had grown so big. She'd gone through three different schools since Ellie had refused to be part of her life. Chip had more than a couple girlfriends over the same span, including one who'd lasted more than a year, a woman where he thought, hey, maybe this is my new thing. He and Ellie had now been apart for longer than they'd been together. More often than not, when he thought about her these days it was with a small blink of surprise, as if he were handling someone else's memories, the loves and worries of another life. When he did feel more, it was generally a deep and abiding anger shot through with embarrassment and regret.
But not always.
"We need to get Dee," he said. "Everything else we worry about later."
Ellie nodded, visibly relieved. Midtown's spires were replaced by downtown walkups.
"Tell me when you need directions," he said.
"I won't," she said.
"Why does that not surprise me."
She parked down the block and got a black satchel from the trunk. Cold air slipped beneath the flaps of his hospital gown. He thought about sending her up for his clothes and only then walking down the sidewalk to his apartment, but he knew she'd sneer. Well, whatever. The kind of people who'd be out at this time of night in this part of town often dressed far worse than his current state. He trotted along the sidewalk beside her, stolen shoes flapping from his heels.
He stopped at the door and reached for a pocket that wasn't there. "Shit. My keys."
"No worries." She pushed him out of the way and set to the locks with a bundle of spindly steel tools. She had the lock open before he knew the right way to reprimand her for this brazen criminality. He clomped up the stairs and she repeated the process on his own door.
"Glad I sprung for all these locks," he said.
She didn't look at him. "
I'm sure it helps keep Dee safe."
Even so, he locked the doors behind him. As he dressed, he heard her fooling with her cell phone. Obsessed with the gadgets, that woman. He walked out, buttoning his top button.
"Okay," she said without looking up from her phone. "Let's go."
"What are you talking about?"
"We can't stay. We're going to a hotel."
"We can't just leave," he said. "What if Dee comes back?"
"Then she'll be intercepted by the federal agents who will be here within three hours."
"You don't know that. You don't get to come in here and tell me to leave my daughter behind."
"I do know that," she said, sharp as chipped porcelain. "I don't know where she's being held. My contact isn't answering and I don't have access to my usuals. We need to get somewhere safe so I can track down Dee."
His heart pounded. His patience curdled; he was having a hard time placing one thought after another. "So what if she does come back and gets picked up? How do we find her then?"
Ellie sighed through her teeth, reached into her bag, and retrieved a small black button. She held it up, pinched between two fingers. "I'll leave this inside the door. She comes home, we'll know about it."
"How long's the battery?"
"Long enough. Go pack. Enough for a few days."
Numbly, he rose, pulled his suitcase from the closet, and pulled together clean underwear, socks, his bathroom junk, his modified home first aid kit. Back in the living room, Ellie stood by the door twiddling with her cell.
"Well?" he said.
She glanced up from her phone, blinking, and nodded, as if the real world had just snapped back into place. She walked into the hall, hand drifting toward her waist. Chip considered locking the door—one of the locks could be set from the inside—but left it unlatched. All his stuff, his things, they didn't matter. Not if it meant Dee coming home and finding herself unable to get inside.
Ellie took the car to Penn Station, parked, and walked several blocks up 8th Ave to a hotel, where she booked a single room under a false name. On the whole, Chip had spent very little time in NYC hotels, but it looked exactly as he always imaged them: distinguished in an elderly way, but also dilapidated, with carpet worn shiny down the middle and patchy stains on the ceiling. The room was twelve floors up and looked down on 39th, which wasn't too busy at this time of night. Ellie got out her laptop and parked at the broad, scratch-scrabbled desk.
"What now?" Chip said.
"This," she said, typing.
"You're going to Google my daughter back to safety?"
"Except for the part where I use Google."
"What am I supposed to do?"
Ellie craned her head around, eyes narrowed. "Try getting some sleep. You look like an extra from Dawn of the Dead. If Dee saw you right now, she'd run all the way to Pennsylvania."
Chip went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, which made him feel slightly more human, then remembered the virus and took a proper shower instead, soaping himself down twice. After, he dressed and lay down above the comforter, meaning to put together a plan of his own—to start calling all the hospitals, to call her phone until someone relented and answered it, to staple up posters in the parks, anything—but fell asleep within two minutes.
The door closing woke him at half past five. He sat up hard, puzzled by the strange slant of streetlights through an unfamiliar window, by the silhouette of what could only be Ellie creeping across the room, and then it all came rushing back.
"Sorry," she said. "I don't know why they can't invent a hotel door that's not as loud as a grenade."
His head hurt. "Have you found Dee?"
Ellie's gaze drifted toward the window. Her eyes were sleepy, as bright as cracked glass. "I've been locked out of my networks. The people I know either skipped town or have decided, quite wisely, to quit helping me."
He rubbed his face. His whole body felt angry to be awake. "Guess I'll start calling hospitals."
"Won't work."
"You've got a better idea?"
"Better? Dunno. But results-based? Definitely." She scrunched up her face. "We need to go back to the source. Go into the subway, pretend to be sick, and see where they want to take us."
7
He frowned at her from the bed. "And then what? Break out the grappling hooks and bust out the window?"
Ellie moved to switch on the light, then thought better of it. "That's the fastest way I know to find her."
"How about we wait for them to take somebody else who's sick?"
"That could work." She felt herself flushing. The fix was so simple, so much better, she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it herself.
She must be too tired. While Chip slept, she'd gone out to a coffee shop down past Penn Station to try all her logins without tying them to the hotel's IP address. All her efforts had failed. She'd been blocked from the DAA networks. Either they knew about Mason or they thought she was up to something very sinister. Like alerting the news.
Data-blind, she had resolved to quit wasting time and give her subconscious the chance to kick back a solution to the Dee Problem while she employed her conscious mind in the less-than-enthralling business of renting a car that didn't have a government GPS hidden inside it. She hated these little errands. Grocery shopping. Reupping her birth control. Within the DAA, her trip details had generally been seen to by a young man named Klein who bristled at being called a secretary or even a personal assistant but essentially functioned as one—Ellie's own time being too valuable to waste on travel arrangements. So she was somewhat shocked to discover that even in New York, car rental agencies closed their doors around the same time of night that she had, in her youth here with Chip, often realized she was too drunk to go get dinner and should probably order in Chinese instead.
She wound up riding the A all the way to JFK, a trip that took a good 100 minutes. Plenty of time to work the Dee Problem over again from another angle. This angle being that they'd detained Chip in a rundown Harlem hospital. Not exactly an Atlanta clean room. If Dee weren't sick when they picked her up, but she were being held in a place like that, as time went on, the inevitability of her infection approached 100%. Presumably they were employing some precautions and protocols, extending that timeline, fuzzing its edges, but she would pin the number between 0-5 days. After that, she assumed she would have to detach Chip from the city by force.
She rented the car under her false FBI identity and drove back to the hotel. Halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge, with Manhattan's lights shining on the black river, she had her idea about letting themselves be captured. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the time just then had been 3:49 AM.
"They might be looking out for me," she said, almost to herself. She glanced at the flimsy hotel clock-radio. It wasn't quite 4:30. "Do you have scissors? A hand mirror? Hair dye?"
Chip wrinkled his forehead. "Scissors, yeah. But they're good for bandages, not hair."
"I'm going to the Duane Reade. I need to switch my look."
"What about the subway?"
"We need to wait for the morning crowds," she said. "Be right back."
"Hey." He gestured to her earbud. "You heard anything from the apartment? Anyone come in?"
"No," she said. She didn't expect to. The button she'd placed was a bug, but she didn't have the receiver. Just an old earbud, worn for Chip's sake.
She left the room and headed to the lobby. Dawn wouldn't break for another couple hours. A young man slouched down the street, eyeing her drunkenly. He doubled over with a cough. She swerved across the street. At a Walgreens, she got scissors, foil, a naturalish red dye, and $200 from the ATM. Back in the hotel, Chip glanced away from the window he'd been watching the street from, eyes puffy. She hacked her hair from shoulder-length to just below her jawline, layered in the dye, sat in a chair to wait for it to set, and promptly fell asleep.
The smell of coffee woke her. Sunlight diffused through the win
dow. She jolted up, checking the clock; only a few minutes too long. Chip grinned and handed her a cup.
"Milk, no sugar," he said.
She nodded groggily and headed to the bathroom to wash out the dye. It was a sloppy job, and their surgical masks were going to draw looks, but it was better than nothing. Chip sat by the window, ceaselessly sipping from his white hotel mug. Aided by the twin virtues of coffee and sleep, he looked back to his normal, stolid self. Over their years together, his placid unflappability had ground her nerves down to nubs—more than once, she'd wanted to slap him, to scream at him to just get mad already—but today, it would be an asset.
After short internal deliberations, she brought her FBI badge and her pistol.
"Bring your kit," she told Chip.
At last, he set down his coffee. "I planned to."
It was a little after eight o'clock and she had to circle Astor Place twice before finding a spot to park in the lot on the south end of the plaza. She sat there for several minutes, watching the pedestrians and the traffic, scanning the curbs for white vans or the black Suburbans with heavy tinting the other divisions loved so much.
"You seeing this?" Chip said from the passenger seat.
"What?"
He pointed his thick finger at the sidewalk, where a woman in a long black coat coiled down to the ground, springlike, shoulders bouncing as she coughed into both hands. The woman blinked back spasm-induced tears, then froze, gaze locked on her cupped palms. She screamed.
Pedestrians swerved around her, walking fast. Ellie touched the rental car's unfamiliar locks. The car was thick with that plasticky, ersatz new-car smell. She hated it.
"You see any vans?" she said.
Chip shook his head. "I mean, there's that bakery one over there. Plumber across the street. None like the one that got me."
"Time to head downstairs."
She clambered out of the car into the bracing morning and the city smells of exhaust and stagnant water. Down the steps to the 4-5-6, the platform smelled even mustier. It was warm, at least. Almost unnaturally so, like the breath of a sleeping animal. The Astor Place stop was as busy as ever, commuters striding past the bas relief beaver set into the wall, the creature that had made Astor's fortune. Passengers coughed into their hands or tucked their chins. More than a few. Ellie watched in silence. The flu had burst overnight. It was too late to stop it.
Outcome Page 5
