“Now.” And she tried smiling, though she wasn’t sure she managed it.
There was nothing for a while, and she wondered if he was gone. But she couldn’t open her eyes to look for him.
“I was living in L.A.,” Cage began. “Young hotshot doctor doing image enhancements for the rich and famous. Well, mostly just rich. A few who were on their way up and later became moderately famous. And I made a lot of money. Lived in a high-security beachfront condo, drove around in an armored convertible, zoned myself out in nightlife.”
“You?” Caroline said.
“Yeah, me. Then I was kidnapped, by a group called El Espíritu de la Gente—Spirit of the People. They took me into a housing project in East L.A., one of the newer ones built just after the turn of the century, where…”
The image of Cage driving along a coastal highway in a convertible filled her vision, pulsing as it repeatedly flashed from left to right, her eyes flickering as she followed it. His hair blew behind him, longer than she’d ever seen it on him, arm resting on the door, a cigarette between the fingers of his right hand, miniature, shiny sunglasses covering his eyes. She almost laughed.
“… the clinic had no intention of paying any kind of ransom, either in cash or medicine, but these people didn’t care that much, they figured to force me to provide medical care for the people in the project…”
Was that Cage talking? Yes, but what the hell was he talking about? Kidnappers? Oh, that’s right, she’d asked him to tell her about Nikki saving his life… she had to pay closer attention.
… so they gave me this nice tattoo on my neck. They thought it was funny, and I guess it was. I didn’t think so at the time, but I can see the humor in it now. I’ve never had any desire to remove it. It’s a good reminder to me of what…”
Tito had a tattoo on his arm, a diamond necklace wrapping around his elbow. She should have looked for the tattoo in the morgue when she’d gone with her father to identify the body, then she would have known for sure… but that was crazy, that had been Tito, there was no doubt… and so cold… but she was so hot right now, and she couldn’t imagine that she would ever be as cold as Tito was that day.
“… no longer useful to them. In fact, I was becoming a problem. I knew, deep down in my gut, that they were going to kill me it was the easiest way to take care of the problem. And that’s when Nikki made her…”
Cage. She wiggled her fingers. Yes, he was still holding her hand, and it felt good, keeping her from completely coming apart and dissipating into the air, and she didn’t want him to ever let it go.
“… Nikki half dragging me down the hall…”
Nikki? Was she here? No, Nikki was dead, dead from
Core Fever, the same thing raging through her right now. “Cage? Are you here?”
He squeezed her hand. “Yes, Caroline, I’m here.”
“Cage. Tell me how Nikki saved your life. That day at Mika’s, you said you would tell me someday.”
There was a long pause, and she wondered if he was still there, but he squeezed her hand again.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll tell you.” And he began. “I was living down in L.A., hotshot young doctor, doing image enhancements, and making a lot of money…”
It was dark and she was alone. She lay on the cot with her eyes open, flashing colored lights from outside providing a strange illumination, casting a few shadows on the ceiling above her.
“Cage?”
No answer.
“Cage?” Louder this time.
Still no answer. She was alone.
Suddenly she was afraid. She was sick and she was dying and she didn’t want to be alone, she wanted Cage here with her, holding her hand or placing cold wet cloths on her forehead, talking to her, bringing her tea or water, just being here.
It was hot, and she could hardly breathe. Her arms itched and burned and her joints ached and she thought her head was going to burst, and she almost wished it would, to release all the pressure building inside. Then she realized there were other pressures, too, farther down. Her bladder. Oh, God, she didn’t think she could get up, but she didn’t want to wet the bed, not now, not when she was alone and she would have to lie in it… She remembered the bedpan Cage had brought, it was under the cot, but she didn’t want to use that, either. Besides, if she could manage that, she could manage getting herself to the bathroom, it wasn’t that far away.
What was happening to her?
She closed her eyes for a few moments, breathing slowly and deeply, gearing herself up for it. Then she opened her eyes, pushed back the sheet, and turned onto her side. She reached over the side of the cot, stretching until she touched the floor, then half rolled, half fell out of the cot and onto the floor, hitting her side and going over until she was on her back and staring up at the ceiling again, her nightshirt twisted underneath her. A giggle squeaked out of her as she imagined herself rolling her way into the bathroom, over and over. But she breathed in deeply again, then rolled halfway over once more and pushed herself up to her hands and knees.
It seemed to take her a long time to get to the bathroom, and yet, strangely, as she began to crawl across the old pink tiles of the bathroom floor, she was surprised that she was already there. She lifted the toilet seat lid, then pulled herself up onto the seat, leaning back against the tank with great relief. After resting for a few moments, she pulled up her nightshirt, and peed.
As she sat there peeing, amazed at how full her bladder had been, she struggled to keep her head upright, but finally she just leaned forward, elbows on thighs, and held her head with her hands. The room was spinning around her, but closing her eyes only made it worse, so she kept them half open and tried focusing on a piece of cracked tile between her feet.
When she was done, she wiped herself, reached back with her right hand, and flushed the toilet. Then she discovered she couldn’t move. She wanted to stand up and walk back to the cot, or at least get back on her hands and knees and crawl, but she could not move.
She thought it should be possible, but somehow she just couldn’t. She had no energy, and no will to call up any energy.
I’m dying, she thought. She couldn’t move, and she was going to die here, and Cage was going to come in and find her sitting on the toilet, dead.
I’m dying, she said to herself again, and this time it drove deep into her, and she knew, for the first time she really knew it was true.
She lifted her head from her hands and looked around the bathroom, through the door and into the apartment, half expecting something to look different. Nothing did. She knew she was dying, and nothing was different, and somehow it was all okay.
She could move again. She slid off the toilet and onto the floor, then stretched out on the cool, pink tiles, facing the door so she could see the rest of the apartment. The tiles felt soothing on her skin.
It was all right. She only wished she could think more clearly about it all, keep focused on what was happening to her, focused on this new knowledge, this final realization. But it was there, she knew it was there, and finally everything was all right, even dying.
CHAPTER 36
Cracks had begun to appear everywhere: in the Tenderloin quarantine; in the CDC’s insistence that Core Fever was confined to the Tenderloin; and in Christina’s few remaining immune system defenses. She was going downhill fairly quickly. She was dying. Caroline, too, was dying, if she wasn’t already dead. Carlucci hadn’t been able to get through to Cage for almost two days, now, and had no idea what was happening with his older daughter.
Carlucci had tried taking time off work, but it was far worse for him with nothing to do. Andrea’s disposition was different, and she took leave from the law firm, spending most of her time at the hospital with Christina. But Carlucci couldn’t do it, and so he went back to work during the days, returning to the hospital in the evenings.
It wasn’t much better at work, and he felt numb and helpless, wandering zombielike around the department. The Katsuda cas
e was still completely stalled, and he couldn’t bring any interest to any of the others. He heard nothing from Istvan Darnyi. He canceled the autopsy request for Tito Moraleja—they knew now what he had died from, and it didn’t matter anymore and released the body for cremation. Everything was dead-ended, including Carlucci.
Word running through the department was that the quarantine was about ready to give. Desperate for something to do, Carlucci went out to the rooftop observation post set up closest to the Tenderloin. The young cop who had been working at the Tenderloin entrance a few weeks earlier was stationed at the edge of the roof, sitting on a stool and looking through binoculars mounted on a tripod, and Carlucci joined him.
“Hello, Lieutenant. Good to see you again.”
They shook hands. “I didn’t catch your name that day,” Carlucci said.
“Prosser, sir, Adam Prosser.”
“Anything happening yet?” he asked.
Prosser shrugged. “Lots of activity on both sides of the quarantine perimeter, but no real moves yet. It’s only a matter of time, though. You should see the soldiers. Nervous as hell. They know. The whole thing is stupid.”
Carlucci agreed. He couldn’t understand why the CDC and the military were trying to maintain the quarantine anymore. Rumors had been ramping around for weeks now of Core Fever cases outside the Tenderloin, but in the past couple of days the mainstream broadcast media were finally starting to report the same thing.
“You want to take a look, sir?” Prosser got up from the stool and backed away from the mounted binoculars.
Carlucci sat on the stool and looked through the binoculars. They were clear and powerful lenses, directed at a section of the quarantine perimeter surrounding one of the DMZ bubbles, soldiers and barricades stretched across a street just a block from the Tenderloin. But pressing up against the barriers from the inside was a mob of hundreds, swelling and shifting around. Lots of fists were raised, but he could also see knives and shock sticks and clubs and guns and stun-pumpers.
Prosser was right about the soldiers. They were nervous, and rightfully so. The mob threatened to burst through the barriers and overwhelm them, and the only thing that might stop them was mass slaughter by the army. Carlucci suspected that prospect terrified most of the soldiers.
He adjusted the binoculars, then moved them from side to side, checking out the surrounding area. Something caught his eye, and he stopped. Gone. He moved them, and found it again. Emerging from an alley half a block from the quarantine perimeter was a group of figures wearing hooded robes. They swayed in unison as they slid along, maybe twelve or fourteen of them in pairs. For a moment Carlucci thought he heard them chanting or humming, until he realized he was actually too far away from them, and whatever he heard had to be coming from something else, machinery nearby, something like that. But who were these people? They were slightly blurry, so he tried adjusting the focus, but he couldn’t sharpen the image. A pale blue glow seemed to surround them, like an electric mist. He followed them as they swayed across the street and then entered another alley, disappearing slowly by twos until they all were gone.
He cut the binoculars over to the next street, hoping to see them emerge, but though he waited for several minutes, they didn’t appear. He looked back at the previous street, then along other streets in the area, but didn’t see any sign of them.
And then, about a block from the barriers where the mob threatened, Carlucci saw Istvan Darnyi. He was standing in the doorway of a Middle Eastern deli, talking to a heavyset man with dark hair and wearing a white apron. Carlucci swung the binoculars back to the barriers, where the tension continued to build, then back again to Darnyi, who was still talking to the man.
“Shit.”
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
Carlucci just shook his head. He straightened, stood, and stepped away from the binoculars, searching the streets on his own. There, Darnyi, about two blocks away. He turned and headed for the stairs.
By the time he reached the deli, Darnyi was gone, and the doors were locked up. Carlucci put his face to the glass door, but there was no one inside, and all the lights were off except a cool white glow in the counter display cases, illuminating sliced meats and cheeses.
“You looking for someone, Lieutenant?”
Carlucci stepped back from the deli, looked around the street. There was no one around, though he was sure he recognized Istvan’s voice.
“I’m right here,” Istvan said, stepping out of a deep alcove no more than thirty feet away.
“Yes, goddamn it, I’m looking for you.” He walked toward Darnyi, shaking his head. “Why?”
“I saw you from an observation post. All hell’s about to break loose at the quarantine perimeter,” he pointed down the street—”and we’re no more than a block away. I don’t want you killed before you find that woman.”
Darnyi smiled. “Then we better get out of here.”
But they’d hardly turned away when an explosion rocked the air, rattling windows, and gunfire erupted. Shouts ripped through the afternoon, and the noise of more explosions. But it wasn’t coming from behind them, it was coming from the right, maybe another block or two away.
“That way,” Darnyi said, pointing to the left.
They crossed the street, and then the gunfire and screams exploded down at the barriers, as if in response to the other shots and screams. Just before they went around the corner, Carlucci glanced down the street and saw the barriers begin to collapse, and the soldiers beginning to panic.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Istvan said. They broke into a run.
They’d run along one short block, and had started down a second when a convoy of military vehicles came around the corner and filled the street in front of them. Some went past them as they pressed against the buildings, but others stopped and blocked off the street and sidewalks.
Carlucci and Darnyi backed off, then headed around to the left, away from the Tenderloin. But they could see more military barriers being set up two blocks away.
“This is insane,” Darnyi said. “They’re going to try to hold the quarantine, contain the breakout with a new perimeter.” They stopped, taking stock. “What’s the matter with these people?”
Behind them, they could see a frenzied mob spilling out of the barriers amid gunfire and crumpling bodies, soldiers going down, a troop carrier already on fire.
“Inside,” Carlucci said.
Darnyi nodded. They searched both sides of the street. The block was mostly abandoned and condemned buildings, which was just as well. A door was open across the street, and they ran for it. There was barely enough room to push through, and they managed to get it shut behind them. Searching in the dim light through dust and dirt and rubble, they found some two-by-fours and wedged the door shut.
They were in an entryway with no exits except for a stairwell leading up through darkness. They climbed up a flight, but the door on that level was locked, and they couldn’t budge it. So they went up one more. The door here was unlocked, and they went through, emerging into a room filled with broken furniture and empty crates and piles of loose paper everywhere.
They approached the windows, safe for the moment two floors above the street, and watched the chaos below. People swarmed the street and sidewalks, mostly men, but some young women too, a few of them armed. Gunfire was blasting away all around them, punctuated by deep, loud explosions and scattered screams.
“The quarantine’s a goner,” Istvan said. “This will go on for two days at least. Then it will run itself out of steam, finally.” He shook his head. “This is a bad one.”
Carlucci nodded, thinking about Caroline. Would he be able to get into the Tenderloin now and get her out, or would he have to wait until all this settled down? He shook his head to himself. Get her out for what? So she could die in a hospital instead of where she was?
His phone rang. He unclipped and answered it.
“Frank.” It was Andrea.
“W
hat is it?”
“You’d better get to the hospital as soon as you can.” There was a slight pause. “I don’t think Tina’s going to last much longer.”
He looked out the window. The street was still full of people, waves surging from side to side. There was a burst of gunfire, and someone screamed.
“Frank, is that gunfire?” Andrea asked.
“Yeah. I’m in the middle of a goddamn riot. The quarantine’s coming apart. Shit. All right, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
He hung up. “I’ve got to go,” he told Istvan.
“It’s not so good out there right now.”
“I don’t have any choice.”
Istvan nodded, but didn’t ask anything.
“Call me as soon as you find her.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve got to go,” Carlucci said again. He breathed in deeply, and prepared himself to plunge into the chaos below.
ISABEL
The Core was dead.
Silence everywhere, and strange smells. Sometimes the air burned her nose, or something wet burned her feet or hands when she touched them. No people alive or dead. All the bodies had been cleared away. And through it all, the smell of old fires and something terrible, sickening, she could not get it out of her nose; and black soot everywhere, on walls and ceilings and floors.
There were new passages now, and some old ways were gone. Walls had disappeared, collapsed timbers and stone had formed new ones; new openings to the outside had become plentiful, letting in the light of the sun or the moon.
Isabel explored the new Core, the buildings above the street where she had rarely dared to go before. No people, no bodies anywhere, in any of the rooms, and no animals except for dead rats already stinking or being eaten by other rats.
She had spent two weeks living in the dead-end passage just outside the Core and in the storage room on the other side of the door. There had been some food in the room, and she occasionally had emerged from it into the city to scrounge for more food and water, but there were so many people, so much light and noise and color and madness everywhere that she had stayed below as much as possible. She would have spent all her time in the dead end passage, but during the first few days after she escaped the Core, terrible burning smells drifted through the air vent, and she’d been forced to move into the storage room to avoid them. But she had broken the lights in the room, making it dark and easier for her to hide if someone came. Only once did someone come into the room, but when they could not make the lights work they left, and didn’t come back until yesterday. Then finally someone had returned, fixed the lights, and people began to work in the room again. Isabel decided it was time to return.
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