by Chuck Wendig
“Did he just get up and walk out?” Benji asked, trying to—gently!—jump-start the conversation and her memory of yesterday’s events.
“He, ahh. We’d been up for a few hours. We’re both teachers and…and school is out now, out for the summer as of last week. Normally we might still be in school at this point in the year but the winter was warm and we, uh, we didn’t have any snow days. Global warming, I guess. We were already awake but mostly just…you know, puttering around. He put on his jeans but hadn’t changed the T-shirt he was wearing and we both headed downstairs. I started breakfast while he checked his phone, read the news—election stuff, we’re pretty liberal even though the area really isn’t. And…” Her eyes shone with the threat of tears. “I heard a sound, a thump. He’d dropped his phone. It fell out of his hand to the floor. And I said, sweetheart, your phone—and I remember he just, he just turned to me with this strange look on his face like he…” And now the river broke the dam as tears ran down her cheeks in twin rivulets. “Like he didn’t recognize me at all. Then he stood up and there was this lift to his chin, like he was smelling for something, the way a dog does when he’s caught a scent.”
“Did he leave the house then?” Cassie asked.
“I…no, I don’t know. My phone rang, but it was upstairs. I asked Mark if he was all right, and he was still standing there. I rolled my eyes thinking he was messing with me, because sometimes he did that. I told him to stop being weird and then I ran upstairs to get my phone. It was another teacher, Pauline Strahovsky, nothing important, she was just telling us that they moved the CFPO seminar—the Collaboration for Positive Outcomes class—from the Pensky building to the Troxell building on campus. We talked for a few minutes and when I went downstairs…”
Nancy Blamire shuddered.
“Mark was gone. And I didn’t know where. His phone was still on the floor.” She put the tea back onto the table without having taken a sip. “I ran outside looking for him but I didn’t have my shoes on, like I said, it was early…so…”
“Did you put on shoes, go look for him?”
“Not at first. I thought maybe he was taking the compost out. By the time I did, I didn’t know where to look. Our house is the corner property and he could’ve gone…anywhere, including into the wetlands behind the backyard. I waited awhile and then I took a drive down Maple and didn’t see him—so I came back, and that’s when I called the police. But they didn’t want to do anything, not yet—”
“Missing persons cases don’t trigger until they’re gone twenty-four hours.” Unless the missing person is a child, Benji thought. And Mark Blamire was not.
“Yeah.”
Cassie leaned in. “Did Mark eat any weird shit? Any funky trendy diet things, any strange foods?”
Nancy seemed to flinch at Cassie’s brusqueness. “No. Like I said, I was making breakfast but he hadn’t even eaten any yet. Eggs and sausage, by the way. The breakfast. I would’ve made toast at the end but…” She visibly swallowed, then wiped her eyes, blew her nose.
“How’s your water?”
“My water?” She looked down at her belly.
“Sorry, your drinking water.”
“Oh. It’s fine. We have it tested, if that’s what you mean. I don’t understand—”
“Comes from a well?”
“Yes.”
“It’s filtered, the water?”
“We have a UV filter, a whole-house filter, and a fridge filter.”
Filtered three times, Benji thought. Should be good enough. Just the same, he reminded himself to have their water tested. Soil, too. And the contents of their refrigerator and an air sample and…
“You’re with the CDC, so are you saying Mark was sick?”
He tried to offer a consolatory smile. “I can’t say, Mrs. Blamire, that’s why we’re here. Has your husband been bitten by a tick recently? To your knowledge, at least.”
“I…what? No. Not that I know of. We get ticks here, though. The little ones, the deer ticks, and the bigger ones, whatever they are?”
“Dog ticks, probably.”
“Was this Lyme? I heard it was bad but not like this—”
“Again, I don’t know. What I’m trying to do is establish a baseline of information, something that lets us find an avenue of investigation and exhaust it.” The task ahead loomed suddenly overwhelming, like they were given a knife and fork and told to go eat that elephant over there. He steadied himself. One bite at a time, he thought. “Mrs. Blamire, on the off-chance that Mark’s peculiar behavior and unfortunate demise were in some way related to an illness, that leaves open the possibility that it was an infectious disease. And that means—”
“It means you could be sick, too,” Cassie said.
Nancy tightened up. She looked as if she’d just been kicked off her chair. “Sick? I’m pregnant. I have a baby inside me, a little girl, I…”
“We can call an ambulance for you,” Benji said. “They will, with your permission, take you to a hospital to run some tests. Nothing invasive, you’re in no danger. Hopefully you will be back in your bed by tonight, but in the meantime, we need you in relative isolation just in case. Would you like to go pack a bag? We have time. Alternatively, if you would rather call a relative to do that—?”
“I…I can pack a bag. Now?”
He nodded. “If you don’t mind.”
Nancy had lost her struggle for normalcy. She stood, no smile, not much of anything, and moved past him to head upstairs.
Benji breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t going to fight them. He wondered if others would be so conciliatory. This would soon have to happen elsewhere—until they could rule out this being infectious, it meant that those who had been in contact with the sleepwalkers would need to submit to temporary isolation and testing. He feared suddenly that the quarantine plan of Harriet French and Doug Pett would yet need to be implemented—but to do that, they’d need federal intervention, and oh, that’s right, he didn’t even work there anymore. None of this was his business, or his job, and Vargas had made that eminently clear.
But ego suddenly arose in him—the same ego that had drawn up big and blustery that day at Longacre. They needed him. Or was it that he needed this? Just the same, the threat of whatever this was loomed large, and he desperately wanted to rise to meet it. They didn’t have identifications for most of the walkers, yet. Didn’t know where they came from, or who they talked to. It was easy for a disease, once out into the world, to spread like fire through fields of dead grass. A little voice inside Benji told him: If you don’t chase this fire with the extinguisher, if you don’t find out how it started, it’ll be too late.
Cassie’s phone rang as Benji heard drawers opening and closing upstairs. She tilted the phone toward him—the caller ID read, MARTIN VARGAS. She answered it, popped it on speakerphone with a playful shrug.
Cassie, damnit, no—
“It’s Cass,” she announced. “What’s up?”
“Cassie,” Martin said. “We’ve got problems.”
“Yeah, no shit, we’ve got problems here, too. We still can’t rule out infectious, so we’re going to need boots on the ground—local law if it’s all we can get—to start getting people in for testing.”
Silence drew out from the phone like black thread. “Did you say ‘we’? Who’s ‘we’? Cassie, tell me you don’t have Benji there—”
“No,” she said, fake-laughing. “I do not have Benji here, calm down. I meant the royal we, like, yeah, we all have problems, blah-blah-blah.”
The man on the other end exhaled a sigh of relief. “Good. Because…we don’t need him. You know that, right? We can handle this.”
“Obviously, yes.” As Benji winced, Cassie held up her hand like it was a sock puppet without the sock, and she made it yap, yap, yap. “You said you have problems there?”
“Lik
e you wouldn’t believe. First, Robbie’s team can’t get a blood sample from the walkers.”
Benji silently mouthed: Why not?
She asked: “Why not?”
“The needles won’t go in.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Martin reiterated: “The needles would not pierce the skin.”
A moment of dizziness overtook Benji. This lined up with what the paramedics had said—their report said they had tried to dose one of the sleepwalkers, the girl, with a sedative. He had assumed their failure was down to a lack of skill—but then when the trooper fired the Taser at Mark Blamire, that didn’t work, either. He could not chalk this up to ineptitude. Robbie’s people were aces, not first-year residents or backwoods paramedics.
This didn’t make any sense.
“That’s fucked up,” Cassie said. “Scleroderma?”
“Doesn’t look like it but…I don’t know. I recommended they try through the mouth—”
“Soft tissue might allow for easier needle punctures,” Cassie said. “Good idea, plus they can get a DNA scrape that way.”
Benji leaned forward and tapped MUTE on the phone. Hastily, he said: “Have him check for alternatives to drawing blood. A device like the Pronto is a clip, goes over the finger, uses wavelengths of light to scan the blood through the fingernail—detects anomalies like anemia. I forget the name, but there’s also a start-up out of Ventura that made a device that used a laser to pierce the skin at a microscopic level—”
“Hello?” Martin asked. “Cassie, did I lose you?”
She unmuted the call. “Nope. We’re fine.” Shit. “I’m fine.” Cassie rattled off to Martin what Benji had just told her about the alternative ways to draw blood.
“Good idea,” Martin said.
“I know,” she said, grinning, her eyes sparkling.
“Maybe you can help me solve this next problem.”
“I’m all ears.”
“The hospital lost the bodies.”
The two of them stared at each other. “What…bodies?” she asked.
Martin said: “Mark Blamire’s body—or what was left of it—and the cop. Chris Kyle. Both gone. I was going to go down there to schedule an autopsy but…they don’t have the bodies. They don’t have records of the bodies. I swear to Christ, it’s like dealing with a third-world country here.”
“Martin, the Schuylkill County health system is well regarded—”
“Whatever. Point is, if you’re headed down there with Mrs. Blamire, please go and check the morgue. See if you can discover whose head is up whose ass and have them find our two missing bodies. Check the morgue. Check security footage. Remind them that this is a screwup of monumental proportions—and do not, do not tell Nancy Blamire that her husband’s body is missing.” Pause. “I’m not on speakerphone, am I?”
“Nope,” Cassie lied, quickly taking him off speakerphone.
Outside, Benji saw a flash of white movement on the road—
The ambulance.
Finally. Something going right, at least. As Cassie finished up her call, Nancy Blamire came down with a bag in her hand, her face plagued still by that faraway stare—the disconnection that suggested she believed this was all happening to someone else. Together they ushered her to the door and stepped outside. As he was contemplating the question of where exactly the remains of the two dead people could have gone…and, equally as bizarre, why the sleepwalkers were somehow immune to needles as if experiencing a psychosomatic case of high-intensity trypanophobia—
Another vehicle pulled up behind the ambulance.
This one, a van. A news van. WFMZ out of Allentown. Shit. He was not prepared to deal with the media. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He knew they’d be incoming eventually, but here? Now? How? A reporter was already out of the van—a woman, auburn hair, too much makeup, suit the color of a fresh peach. The camera guy—schlubby, jowly—adjusted the camera on his shoulder and they came hurrying up the driveway, leaving the two paramedics in the dust.
“This isn’t good,” Benji said.
“Well, fuck,” Cassie muttered.
“Hello,” the reporter was saying as she hurried up to them. “I’m Elena McClintock, WFMZ News. We’re here seeking information about the mysterious death of a local math teacher, Mark Blamire—”
Cassie waved her hands. “No. Nope. No comment, I’m sorry.”
Benji wasn’t ready for this. This was spiraling. He was spiraling. Everything felt like sand slipping through his fingers. Chin to his chest, he ducked his head and held up his hand as they moved toward the ambulance.
The reporter kept on them:
“We have reports of an altercation between Mark Blamire and a state trooper, Officer Christopher Kyle—”
“No, that’s not true.”
That, said by Nancy Blamire.
Like a shark smelling the delicious tang of fresh chum, the camera operator immediately turned to Nancy as the reporter thrust the microphone toward her. Benji tried to interject himself, but it didn’t matter.
“Mark didn’t hurt that officer,” Nancy said.
“Nancy, don’t talk to these—” Benji started.
The reporter talked over him, asking for clarification.
“These people are from the CDC,” Nancy stammered, and that was that. Benji knew they’d find that connection eventually—and it wasn’t like they were hiding their presence, nor would they want to. Just the same, that changed the story for them. This had just become something bigger, stranger, scarier. And the news loved bigger, stranger, scarier. Ebola in this country was never really a serious threat—but the news media treated it like half a billion Americans were going to shit themselves to death (all while ignoring the very real peril for Africans in Liberia or Sierra Leone).
“Please,” Benji begged Nancy, and that word and the look on his face must’ve gotten through to her. Perhaps she saw the panic flashing in his eyes or heard it in his voice—she went with him, then, his arm gently around the small of her back as he ushered her toward the ambulance.
The reporter followed, questions chasing at his back. “Why is the CDC involved? Is this some kind of epidemic?” And then, the kicker, the corker, the game ball: “Is this an Ebola outbreak?”
Benji turned, waving his hands. “It’s not—not!—Ebola.”
He helped Cassie and the paramedics get Nancy into the back of the ambulance, and then, with the reporter still hounding them, they hurried to Cassie’s rental and hopped in.
Shit shit shit.
Shit.
Mystery of Saiga Die-Off Answered?
Scientists have determined that the sudden death of over 200,000 saiga antelope in Central Asia was caused by fatal blood poisoning—hemorrhagic septicemia—resulting from the Pasteurella multocida bacteria that live inside the animals’ large noses. The bacteria, present even at birth, coexist harmlessly inside the saiga, but only recently have helped to cause MMEs (mass mortality events) among the saiga over the last decade. Researchers now speculate that climate change is the cause, given the sharp rise in both temperature and humidity in the saiga’s natural range.
JUNE 4
Pine Grove, Pennsylvania
SHANA PACED.
A couple of deerflies buzzed around her head, looking for a landing spot of fresh skin to grab a drink. They were persistent but eventually found their way to the man walking next to her: a state trooper named Travis. She wasn’t sure if Travis was his first name or last name. Officer Travis was how he introduced himself and she didn’t care to ask for more details.
Officer Travis was her enemy.
Like, not her nemesis. Or if he was, he was only her nemesis-of-the-moment. Because he was stopping her from getting close to her sister. And right now, her sister was in danger.
Shana was sure of it.
Anytime they got near Nessie, Shana clenched her teeth.
Like, say, right now.
One of the CDC people—they were practically faceless, what with the way the light reflected off their windowed masks—came up to her sister, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her arm.
Shana yelled: “Don’t you hurt her!”
She started forward—right now, she was kept about a hundred feet from the back of the flock—but Travis put a hand out to block her.
“Nuh-uh,” he said. “Stand back.” She started to protest, but Travis scowled at her from underneath his horseshoe mustache. “Let them do their jobs, willya?” He took off his broad-brimmed state trooper hat and swung it uselessly at the pair of flies dueling above his head. “Goddamn flies.”
“They bite.”
“I know, they bit me a few times already. Little assholes.”
You’re a little asshole, she thought. It wasn’t a good comeback, so she kept it to the confines of her own brain.
“Just let me go up to see my sister.”
“They told me to keep you and the others back, so that’s what I’m doing.”
The others. It wasn’t just her, now. The walkers weren’t alone—they did not arise from nothing. Some had family members, though none were keeping pace the way she was. Mostly they drove up or drove ahead and checked in. There was a young black kid wearing Beats by Dre headphones, and his mother hung back—when he first got here, she was screaming and crying for him to listen to her, to stop walking away. She was half mad, half sad, all crazy. They got her calm. Shana was pretty sure the dude’s mom was now up in the lead cruiser. Others, too, stayed nearby: the wife of the guy in the bathrobe, the son and husband of the woman in the business suit, the wife of the old lady sleepwalker who showed up in her skivvies—they all, far as Shana knew, were gathering about five miles down the road at Abram’s Dutch Diner. They had a trooper with them, and someone from the CDC—a tall Asian lady in a Beastie Boys T-shirt, of all things—was there with them asking questions and whatever. They tried to get Shana to come with them, but she said no, hell no, she’d stay right here.