“Did he die?”
“She. No, not yet. But the hospital says they’ll be surprised if she lasts through the night. I thought she was an incredibly old lady, but she was only thirty-five.”
“Chandler says the frequency is one person in ten million. We’ve got a million people in DC, and this is our second case.”
“In a week.”
“Weird,” Jen said.
“Obviously,” said Les, “God’s revenge against homosexuality.”
“Let’s grab that beer.”
“God’s revenge against thirst.”
Jen’s shift was over. We walked over to have a brew and, swell boss that she is—No, she corrected me, to stop your whining—she left me turned on. Good times.
“Nice weekend?” Les asked.
“Yeah. Kind of like old times.”
“Kind of?”
“Zach doesn’t want his parents to exit.”
“I told you to watch out for men with low hairlines.”
“Remember, though, nice hands.”
Jen was expecting a comeback laden with sexual innuendo. Instead, Les was silent. And then his voice was somber as he said, “I miss my folks more than you can imagine. They were the greatest.”
“Me, though, I’m counting the days.”
“You’re a harsh woman, Cobalt Blue.”
We went back to the station, Jen and I. It’s got a different vibe at night. The offices are quiet, but the place feels rawer, more on edge. Drunks and druggies, shooters and Shadows, getting dragged in and booked. Frantic parents reporting runaway teens to the desk cops, who seem to work more slowly than in the daytime. All the lights on, but it’s so dark.
“Chandler, let’s find someone we can speak to. About that condition.”
“A geneticist.” I produced ten names and phone numbers from across the country.
“Start at the top.”
Fourth one down and we connected.
Jen introduced herself to Dr. Benjamin Kaplanski, MD, PhD, Stanford Medical School, Department of Genetics. Jen, cop, DC, felt a bit outgunned.
She explained we’d had two cases of Berardinelli-Seip lipodystrophy in the past week. Dr. Kaplanski said how unusual that was. He sounded like he had his eye on a specialized clock where every tick took him one second further away from winning the Nobel Prize.
“Most clinical geneticists go their whole career without seeing a single case of congenital generalized lipodystrophy—that’s how most of us refer to it.”
“What causes it?”
“Do you have a strong background in genetics?” It was a nasty question.
“Do you have a strong background in being nice?”
Whoa! Cobalt Blue pops out again from her shell.
Nor did I expect his response.
“Good one. It’s been a long day, wasted in meeting after meeting.” And so he gave us a five-minute class in genetics. He explained there were different types of the disorder, each caused by the mutation of a different gene, and he named each one. I remembered them; they went in and out of Jen’s brain without touching solid ground.
“Because it’s so rare,” Dr. Kaplanski said, “it isn’t routinely screened for.”
“Could this suddenly be increasing?”
“Two cases is two cases. Were these people related?”
“Not at all.”
“Two cases is unusual, but occurrence figures aren’t predictive of geographic distribution.”
“But both cases came on suddenly.”
“That is unusual, but not unheard of.”
“For someone this old?”
“How old did you say they were?”
“One was thirty-five, the other was forty-eight.”
“Now that is extremely unusual.”
“That’s a lot of unusuals stacked on top of each other. Can you treat it?”
“No, not really.”
I like when humans say that. Can’t just admit they’re stumped, so got to add “not really,” as if they’re saying, “I could if I really wanted to.”
“Because it’s so rare,” he said, “a therapeutic gene protocol like the ones we use for many disorders hasn’t been developed. It simply isn’t on anyone’s priority list.”
“What would it take to get there?”
“One more case and you give me a shout.”
We phoned Les.
“We’re baking a pie for a party tomorrow.”
I felt Jen giving off sparks of jealousy—I could almost smell the burning circuits: Les, happily settled in his uncomplicated domestic life.
“We’re back at the office.”
“Oh, god.”
“It’ll just take a second.”
“What?”
“My question.”
“It’s an apricot tart. They’re finicky.”
“Les!”
The sound was muffled, presumably by his thumb. And then he came back on.
“You know, when you sign out, that means you’re allowed to go home. In fact, you’re allowed to do whatever you want.”
“And I wanted to come back to the office.”
“Fine. What’s up?”
“Your case today, the woman who was aging so quickly. What was her family situation?”
“This can’t wait?”
She didn’t bother to answer.
“Like I said, early thirties,” Les explained.
“Working?”
“A waiter in a chichi restaurant.”
“Race?”
“Name seems Middle Eastern or South Asian. Mariam Zhariri.”
“Family?”
“Appears to be living with two partners, a man and a woman. Is that it?”
“Wait. Her health. What’s her state of health?”
“Uh, she’s dying?”
“No, I mean before that.”
“How the hell would I know? They said she was fine. Which is more than I can say for me if I don’t get back to Christopher and our pie.”
* * *
This definitely was not the Washington Charity Hospital Complex. Nor, at the other extreme, one of the rich people’s hospitals that doubled as luxury spas. But nevertheless, bright and clean and bustling with visitors carrying pink and purple flowers, efficient-looking nurses carrying tablets, doctors carrying world-weary expertise, and first-year residents carrying nerves and attitude. Welcome to the spanking new George Washington University–GlaxoSmithKlineWong Medical Center.
We hit the elevators, punched five, and landed in intensive care. Jen waved her ID and asked if Mariam Zhariri had made any progress. The nurse shook her head. Jen asked if she could see her. Jen thought maybe we could sneak a peek at her chart. The nurse shook her head. Jen mumbled a fake-o “Thanks,” and we drooped away to the waiting room.
I’d pulled up Mariam’s data and got pics of her two partners. Trans man, Daniel, and biologically assigned woman, Cari. I spotted the two of them, holding hands and looking distraught out of their minds. We approached them; Daniel stood up. He was five foot seven and pregnant. What the hippies long ago called a mind-fuck, but there you have it. Things change.
Jen, for all her mother’s punishing religious injunctions, was pretty cool. She charts high on the Toronto Empathy Scale. She introduced herself and put a sympathetic hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and I could feel pain ripple through Jen’s body.
We sat down. Daniel did the talking. Same as we already heard, but worse. Mariam was continuing to deteriorate. Liver and heart. Nothing they could do unless they could stabilize her first, and so far, so bad.
“How quickly did this come on?”
“Six days ago,” Daniel said. “She said she was feeling out of sorts. She couldn’t describe it. Within a day—I mean it, one day— all this stuff started happening.”
“Was she in good shape before?”
“She’s always tired from work. Cari and I keep bugging her to exercise but … Other than that, she was in pretty good shape.”
Cari scowled at him. “What does it matter now if we tell her?” She turned to us. “Mariam got her test result a month ago. She has a ninety percent chance of getting ROSE.”
“Why’d she get tested so young?” Like most people, Jen first got tested in her late thirties. Others wait until their late forties, hoping to delay their death sentence. Many wait until their parents neared sixty-five and the exit cutoff.
“She had a premonition,” Cari replied.
“Do you believe in premonitions?”
“Of course not. But she was right, wasn’t she?”
“How did she react?”
Cari shot Jen an are-you-kidding-me look.
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“What’s it to you?” Cari said. Daniel put his hand on Cari’s leg in an obvious attempt to cool her down, but Cari persisted. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
We repeated what Dr. Kaplanski told us. We said this was the second case in a week. We were curious, that was all. Anything that might help us put together the pieces would be great.
Cari looked at Daniel, a big question mark in her eyes.
Jen would have missed it, but damn if I didn’t spot it. His head moved sideways a zillionth of an inch, but it was enough.
Cari returned her gaze to us.
“No,” she said, “Nothing I can think of.”
Next morning, 09:32:48. It was blisteringly hot, already popping old thermometers that only went to 100. We were leisurely pumping up 16th on a police bicycle, heading to Enrique Estevan’s house, when I spotted Child’s Play at the bottom of Meridian Hill Park. A second later, the information was thrumming in Jen’s brain. How humans ever did this alone is beyond me. She scuttled the bike on the sidewalk; screamed, “Lock” at the bike; clambered over the stone wall; and off we shot.
Child’s Play noticed Jen and took off like a weasel. Many of the shrubs had lost their leaves in the drought, and so we were able to keep our eyes on him. He dashed across the gray spillway for the shut-off waterfall, through the trees, and up the path toward the hardpan that had once been a lawn. As we ran out from under the trees and back into the sun, we slammed into a wall of scorching air, but Jen accelerated rather than slowing down. We were closing the gap, but he still had eighty-seven yards on us.
“Damn,” Jen said. He was leading us straight into the Shadow camp that had taken over the whole top third of the park. There were Shadow camps that had a good rep. Neat, clean, orderly, people doing what they could to support each other. And then there were some like this one.
I think we might have caught him, but Jen’s reflexes unfortunately kicked in, and as Child’s Play entered the nasty crowd, she yanked out her ID and held it in front of us, then started yelling, “Stop, police!” and “Child’s Play!” We watched in disgust as a path opened for him through the swarm of men and women, children and stray dogs, and just as quickly sealed up behind him.
We tried to push our way through. Men and women wearing only underwear or cutoffs, children in rags, men in greasy winter coats, women in layers of shabby dresses, naked women, naked men, naked children; matted hair, greasy hair, scalps that looked like hair had been ripped off in handfuls; scratches and rashes and sores oozing pus on faces, hands, and chests. The hot stench was overwhelming—pus, piss, feces, and sweat stewing in the sun.
We screamed, “Police! Back off.” At first, people moved away, but too slowly. And then we ran smack into a group of children. We tried to dodge around them, but Jen bowled one over. The girl couldn’t have been more than ten, but her face was blistered with dirty sores. Jen looked down at her, and I felt her surging mix of sadness, disgust, and horror. Jen glanced over the heads of the kids to see if we could even spot Child’s Play anymore, and when she couldn’t, crouched down to make sure the girl was okay.
Children, ten years old, twelve, fourteen, scrawny and dirty, swarmed over us in a wave of stink and disease.
22
“Zach, there’s something terrible going on.”
“Well, there’s always something terrible going on, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, but this is a whole other order-of-magnitude terrible. Science-fiction, apocalyptic terrible.”
They had biked down to the Wharf to have a beer and to cool down in the evening air coming off the Potomac. But just as Jen was about to tell him about people turning old and dying, she flashed on the Shadow camp. It had seemed to take forever to extricate herself from the pile of filthy children and diseased adolescents. The smells had been hot, close, and raw. Skin dry and cracked, slimy and oozing. Jen had wiggled, pushed, and cursed, desperately trying to escape but equally desperate not to hurt anyone or to be seen as hurting anyone. Someone bit her. Someone licked her. Someone peed on her. Finally—after thirty seconds or thirty hours—a man yelled, and the kids clambered off and scurried behind a wall of adults.
Jen had wrenched herself onto her feet, her eyes flashing like a madwoman, and found herself surrounded by Shadows. None showed any expression or made any move. Until, after more excruciatingly long seconds, the crowd parted, showing an exit path back in the direction she had come. She had bicycled home and taken the longest shower of her life.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing … I had to go into a disgusting Shadow camp today. One of the really bad ones. It’s unimaginable, people living that way.”
Zach nodded. “You degrade people enough and some of them take on the degradation themselves.”
She needed to change the subject. “But that’s not what I was starting to tell you about. It’s this weird thing. People turning old—I mean, really old—overnight.” She described what Miguel Estevan looked like, lying on the couch. “I’ve never seen such an old man. But he wasn’t. He became ancient in just a few days, and soon after we got him to the hospital, he died. Of old age. Now we have a second case.” And she talked about Mariam Zhariri.
“Well,” said Zach, “I’ll make one prediction. If a new disease is spreading, there’s gonna be a whole bunch of new apocalyptic cults springing up. They’ll find some quote in the Bible that absolutely predicted this was going to happen.”
Over the past week, Jen had pretty much put the stolen Bible and the receipt out of her thoughts. But with the mention of the Bible, she now told Zach about Odette’s copy with the co-op receipt inside. How she thought it might be significant, but the Bible quotes didn’t lead to anything.
“What quotes?” he said.
She gave him chapter and verse. “But the first one doesn’t even exist. None lead anywhere.”
He took her hand. “Ye of little faith. I say we smoke a joint and read that most sexy of all Bible passages, the Song of Solomon, and see where that leads us.”
23
Wednesday, July 25—08:15:32
“Fuck,” Jen said.
Captain Brooks had sent for us.
Jen plodded up the stairs, one at a time. If she hadn’t had any self-respect, she probably would have planted first one then the other foot on each stair, like a three-year old. Only Jen’s brain was working fast, racing through the possibilities of what she’d done wrong this time. Me, I dug deep to calm her down.
Brooks didn’t ask Jen to sit. So this wasn’t going to be a heartwarming, father–daughter sort of moment.
“Detective Lu.” He rubbed his keloid scar with the knuckle of his thumb.
Bad start.
“We are being sued. You. Me. And the DC police. For excessive force. Deprivation of rights.” He waved at words on his overdesk display and read off a list, each item feeling like a blow to the top of Jen’s head, as if we were a stake being hammered into the ground.
“Sir, this is for …?”
He stared at her in mock disbelief. “Have you beat up anyone else lately? James O’Neil. His father is suing. Damn it, you’re already under probation. You gotta be extra careful.”
“Three more days, sir.”
; A rather pathetic five-minute discussion ensued. Jen attempted to defend herself.
“This gets me in shit.” Brooks took another turn at his scar. “Looks like I can’t control my own officers.”
“But it happens all the time, sir. Criminal charges, suits.”
“Not by a Timeless.” He let that sink in. “Richard O’Neil is out to screw you.”
Jen’s face got so hot I thought I’d need to pull out a fire extinguisher. Escape from all her troubles. And the raw sexual beauty of this 112-year-old billionaire.
* * *
Right after the meeting, I thanked her.
“For what, asshole?”
“You didn’t put the blame on me.”
“I damn well should have. Asshole.”
But she hadn’t, had she?
Shortly after Brooks pounded us into the ground, she took a call about a family in full self-destruct mode, and that nailed us down for hours. Or I should say it kept her nailed down. She called up her own car, did her own comms, ignored my suggestions, searched records old style, and whenever she found a free moment, called me an asshole. I tried to tell myself I didn’t have feelings, but I swear it hurt. Jen didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.
* * *
Thursday, July 26—09:04:18
Overnight, Jen had either settled down or decided to get on with things, and was treating me like everything was cool between us.
Back on Tuesday, once we’d escaped from the Shadow camp, we’d bicycled to her place, where she took such a long shower that reservoirs as far away as Wyoming dried up. She threw away the half-used cake of soap like it was a rat carrying the bubonic plague. She doused isopropyl alcohol on the spot where some kid had bitten her, even though the skin wasn’t broken. She then poured so much bleach into the washing machine that her blue jeans came out blotched with reverse Rorschach spots and her underwear was so white you could only look at it through welder’s glasses.
I had to ask her to explain why she felt, as she put it several times, so “oddly guilty” for doing all this. To me, it just made sense, but then again, all humans seem a bit filthy. She didn’t answer, but flashes of gray skin, green snot, open sores, and ragged scabs ambushed her for the rest of the day.
The Last Exit Page 13