After parking the car, we walk across the graveyard in silence. I’ve never been here, and considering my family’s roots in the area go back less than a decade, that’s no surprise. Why she must have bought a new lot here rather than take him back to our family lot, I don’t know, but then I’m starting to think that rationality isn’t my mother’s strong suit at the moment. Should I have seen this coming?
There are a handful of people from the funeral home waiting for us already, and I take over the formalities while my mother sits down in the single chair in the front row of the small seating arrangement—nobody expected me to sit, it seems. As we wait, I can’t help but think of her confession right before we left. What she said to me was that she had raised me better than to deliberately throw my life away for someone else’s hatred. That hadn’t been her reaction when I first signed up with the army, but when I’d chosen to go all in—officer training and black ops. Back in the beginning, she must have thought I was doing the smart thing in letting someone train me how to kill and giving me an opportunity to slake any thirst that might exist, lest I not end up on the FBI’s most wanted list. It was only when she realized that I wanted to be more than just a mindless weapon but instead the one who trained and pointed other weapons that she voiced her displeasure—years too late as it was. I don’t regret starting on that journey, but I sure didn’t end up where I thought I would.
One by one and in small groups, the mourners flock to the site of the service. I recognize a few—no less than three of Raleigh’s previous girlfriends, all eyeing each other with disgust but trying hard to hide it. A few friends from high school and college, which surprises me at first, but then they had two weeks of warning, and West Virginia is a lovely spot for an extended weekend getaway in fall. The odd local friend, although most of those fall into a different category—Raleigh’s former colleagues, and there are quite a lot of them in evidence. Of course nobody is wearing lab coats to a funeral, although I wonder how many had to be reminded of that beforehand. It’s how they crowd together, knowing each other, and the fact that all of them steer suspiciously away from the urn where it sits on a small portable pedestal amid a wreath of flowers. More than anyone else, they must know that the CDC would never have let us have his remains if there was even a hint of a chance they could still be contagious. Some of them, particularly the older ones, get right along with a few of my mother’s acquaintances—she has no friends as such, but cultivates a circle of fellow intellectuals who are all too self-important to miss out on the chance to parade around the lush green grass, waxing platitudes about a young life lost too soon. And last but not least, the people I still don’t know whether I want to see here or blame for what happened—a small group, in dress blues like me, from the army. I don’t know the younger two men and the single woman of the group, but if I had to guess, they are from USAMRIID, and are likely the only ones here who fully know what killed my brother. The distinguished-looking middle-aged man with the toothpaste-commercial smile next to them is likely a local army liaison, sent here because it seemed like a good press op to show they care about the families of their active service members as well. It’s the last member of the party, walking behind the others and easily overlooked, that makes me perk up. I hadn’t expected to see Decker here, in the flesh. Until this moment, all I have been concerned with was my own grief and inability to deal with it, and my mother. Suddenly, a world of paranoia explodes in my mind. Was it really an accident? And, even more so: what did I do that warranted him sending me that kind of a reminder? By the time they have made their way over to us, my body is singing with tension, and I’m barely able to go through the motions of greeting people and accepting their mostly insincere condolences.
Yet as the five of them approach, they are all demure pleasantries, and in the case of the three younger people, honest shared grief that I see. Decker keeps himself in the back, but he seems without guile once it’s his turn. My mother doesn’t seem to notice anything about him, and when all he says to me is that it’s good that I’m here for her, I start to wonder if I’m seeing conspiracies where there are none. And it would make sense for him to come here as a simple show of respect—I was his protege for a long time, and he still considers me one of his finest creations. It wouldn’t be the first time that I’m reading too much into something after days without sleep and bad nutrition.
The ceremony, short as it is, is an honest affair. My mother chose to give the eulogy herself, and since everyone in attendance has at least heard of her, if not has come to know her personally, that doesn’t raise many brows. I’m glad when nobody approaches me to share words or thoughts—the reality of what has happened is finally catching up with me, and I feel like nothing I could say would do my brother justice, or be appropriate to everyone else in attendance.
Fuck, but I miss him—enough so that my throat closes down and I have to fight for composure for a few moments. It should always have been me, never him. And there’s no guarantee that my mother won’t go through this all over again a month or year or decade from now.
It gets better once the ceremony is over, but confused people trying not to appear impolite have always had that effect on me. There’s no reception or whatnot, so those who don’t have to be anywhere mill around in small groups, quietly talking among themselves—or, if they can get a hold of her, with my mother. I stand out like the sore thumb that I am, getting my share of indignant looks from Mom’s illustrious friends, as if my uniform is proof that the only bright mind in this generation is now six feet under. I try to find Decker but he’s gone, no big surprise there. A funeral isn’t a great place to shoot the shit about high school conquests—or lack thereof—so the few words I trade with the people I’ve known in another life are awkward at best.
Mostly because no one else seems to want to talk to me and I want to give my mother time with her not-friends, I feel myself gravitate toward the group of scientists that has inadvertently formed. Their bosses—the owners of the biotech company—have left to do whatever one does when one runs a scam biotech company, leaving the rest of them to pretend like they are not just avoiding going back to work. I wonder how many of them know what they are really working on. They can’t all be mindless lemmings.
As I get close, another wave of polite condolences greets me, and they pretty much echo each other in their insistence of what a tragedy Raleigh’s death has been, and how much everyone is feeling with us, yadda yadda yadda. All except one woman, who keeps herself a little apart from the others, looking more uncomfortable than most of them. There’s nothing remarkable about her—except that her riot-red hair doesn’t fit in at a funeral, but nobody could have expected her to dye it a different color for one day only. It’s better than the pink-purple mix one of the other nerds is sporting, if anyone asked me, which they certainly don’t. It takes me less than five minutes to pinpoint the reason for her odd behavior. It’s not what I first thought—if only passingly, as the evidence was against that from the start: she doesn’t know anything that the others don’t. But she’s the new kid on the block and has only just started working with them last week.
Right after my brother died.
What a coincidence.
I know that it’s not. Suspicious, that is. I’m not aware of the minutiae of hiring in biotech, but I presume it’s a laborious endeavor nobody enjoys that stretches endlessly over several rounds and interviews in person and across shared panel video conferences. She must have applied for the job months ago, and may very well have signed her contract weeks before my brother bit it. She must have known him—or of him—at least passingly since she is here, but Raleigh had a small armada of geeks working for him, and there are also the staff and people from other research groups who have access to the highest-security lab that used to be his real workplace—and ended up as his grave.
I must have been staring for too long because she tries to actively avoid me for a bit, but that only makes her end up right in front of me when she makes
a wrong turn as she’s trying to weave between her colleagues. Her eyes widen for a second but there’s no negative emotion in them; maybe a thread of unease that contradicts the lightest of blushes on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, you must hear this all the time, but you look so very much like him,” she babbles, then minds her manners, extending her hand to me. “I’m Brianna Lewis. I was meant to be your brother’s research assistant. He probably never mentioned me, so you have no idea who I am, which is no surprise at all.”
I shake her hand through the second half of that onslaught, hard-pressed not to smile. That first blurted sentence made me consider whether she’d been another of his haphazard array of conquests, but she’s not his type. Don’t get me wrong, she’s far from hideous, but unlike me, Raleigh had a type—tall, dark, and more often than not what might best be described as a classic beauty. Dr. Lewis—she must have a PhD if she was slated to work with my brother that closely—seems to make up for what she’s physically lacking with spunk, and if I’m not mistaken quite the bright mind once she stops with that anxious babbling, but she is neither tall nor elegant. She looks exactly like the girl you didn’t ask to prom because she wasn't the most popular or beautiful girl in school but would have been the best choice as she would have been fun to be with, and very likely eager to put out since she had no reputation as a shrew to uphold or as a slut to fight against. Must be the grief that messes with my head, because like my perception of my brother’s tastes, she doesn’t push my buttons, either.
And still—
“Did you know my brother well?” I ask, unable to keep the words from coming forth. Maybe that babbling is contagious?
“Not really,” she professes. At least she’s honest—and just as I expected, it only takes that small prompt for her to go off on a tangent again. “He was passingly involved in my thesis. I read some of his papers and cited them, but some things didn’t quite gel with my own theories and findings, so I approached him at a conference to discuss these issues with him. Must have left an impression since he hired me a few months later.”
She certainly doesn’t lack arrogance or confidence, that much is for sure. I can feel suspicion creep back into my mind—so maybe she didn’t have anything to do with his death, but if he actively recruited her, he must have had his reasons. Maybe said reason was simply that she’s a smart cookie, had already been working in the same field, and nothing beats discovering your future protege is smarter than you to make you want to hire them—if your ego can stand it. Before Raleigh learned about what exactly I’d signed up for, I would have answered that with a resounded “no,” but to save me, he might have put up with that spunky know-it-all.
“Did I say something wrong?” she asks, not entirely oblivious of how she must appear. “I’m sorry if I did. I’m not good at this.”
“Doing small talk at funerals? So that wasn’t the highlight in your CV?”
She takes my joke with a slightly too-loud laugh, hinting at real nervousness. Maybe it’s the uniform. While it seems to be a magnet for some women, I’m not getting that vibe from her. She’s practically squinting at me now, but I can tell that she’s not good at reading people—or at least not someone like me who can bullshit with the best.
Clearing her throat, she looks ready to bail but then squares her shoulders as she speaks up. “This is likely really not appropriate, but has your brother had a history of mental illness?”
That’s not something I’m expecting, making me want to tell her some things she really isn’t prepared for—but since she seems to have an angle, I oblige her in favor of not scaring the living shit out of her. “Not that I know of. My mother is a clinical psychologist. I’m sure that if he had any issues, he would have brought them up with her, at the very least to get a good referral.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” she muses before drawing up short. “Not about your mother, of course. But it makes sense why she’s been so calm and composed. She must have experience in grief counseling.” She really doesn’t; I think my mother’s first—and last—reaction to a patient losing it over a lost loved one in front of her would be to slap some sense into them. People go to her because her purely analytical approach appeals to the scant few who don’t seek comfort but rather confrontation in a therapist. But I don’t correct Dr. Lewis’s assessment as there’s no reason to. And no opportunity, really, as she has been babbling on throughout my silent musing. “It really doesn’t make any sense, you know?” she’s asking me, obviously a rhetorical question. “Suicide is the only reason that would have made sense why Raleigh Miller died in the lab.”
The vehemence of her conviction surprises me as much as the subject matter in general. “What makes you say that?” This is not a rhetorical question. “Working with highly contagious viruses that are known to be among the most lethal on earth? Doesn’t sound like the most safe work environment imaginable. Many scientists must have died in a similar fashion before.”
She’s confused for a moment, but I can tell when she mentally dismisses me. Damn, but that woman needs to learn to school her expression, or else she’ll never win a poker game or get a promotion outside of the world of academia. “You’d think that, huh? It’s what the media loves to propagate, particularly in bad movies. And don’t get me started on those sexy hazmat suits. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Yes, we work with the worst that nature can throw in our faces, but there’s a reason why you need two or three degrees and years of training to get anywhere near a BSL-4 lab—so you don’t accidentally kill yourself. Those labs are designed to keep all contaminants in, and the only way something could escape is if it got inside the body of a scientist. That’s why they are also designed to make that virtually impossible. Unless, of course, you jab yourself with a needle, but you’d really have to do it deliberately because everything we use for experiments is likely too thin or dainty to make it through the suit, the gloves, the additional layer of gloves, and then we still keep a battery of meds on site that might give you a very good chance to push through the infection, anyway. Plus, being in prime health and of an age where we’re least likely to die of any infection helps, too. It just doesn’t happen. Besides, the story goes that he was found dead, without a suit, in the lab? That’s ridiculous. When you work in there, you never do it alone, and even if worse comes to worst, you don’t take your suit off. You sound the alarm, you quarantine yourself until everyone else has left and they’ve gotten a containment cell outside ready for you, then you go through decontamination and right on to be treated. You don’t sit around, in just your underwear and scrubs, and wait to die. Besides, even the most infectious agent we have in our vault takes days, if not weeks to kill an adult male. It just makes no sense, unless you’re writing a really bad thriller novel.”
I listen in silence—what else can I do? But my mind is far from quiet. It soaks up every word, and the picture that is forming in my mind is far from clear. I’m still trying to make sense of that when I say, more as an aside, “You do realize that you’re talking about my brother.” A mindless remark, and of course she takes it wrong, going pale rather than jumping to the conclusion that I just came to—that she is right, and my brother must have known all this, if she as a scientist years his junior does as well.
“I’m sorry if that came out wrong.” She quickly excuses herself. “It’s fear talking mostly, you know? They drill the dangers into us, but it doesn’t feel real until something happens. Now it’s all too real. Must be human nature to look for outside flaws when really it must have been a very human flaw that caused this. Again, so sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She’s quick to leave, only pausing at the side of one of the other scientists to whisper something to her, and then she’s gone. I’m tempted to chase her down—if only to get in her face and say that even if she tried, she doesn’t have the guts nor knowledge to properly offend me—but I don’t. I can tell that my mother is getting exasperated with the proceedings, well-meant comfort not actu
ally something that can comfort her. So I do my best to bring this all to a quick end and lead her back to the Corvette.
“When does your flight leave?” she asks as I get the door for her again. My mother raised her sons well—even though they both turned out to be bona fide assholes. But assholes with manners, if they choose to remember them. Or at least, this one does, today. I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that he’s gone.
“Five in the morning.”
“So you’re staying the night?” It’s real surprise, which is likely the cause of why I can’t place it.
“I can get a hotel after dropping you off,” I offer.
“Nonsense,” she’s quick to correct me. “Of course you’re staying with me. I simply didn’t expect them to grant me almost an entire day with my son.”
They didn’t, but I called in a favor or two to get a better connection back. That means I will have to leave my dress blues with her, but I doubt she’ll mind.
Beyond Green Fields (Book 1): Beginnings [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology] Page 11