“Silvia, it’s not just you and Nicolás who are in danger. All your employees—”
“I won’t permit it!” Nico startled as his mother sprang to her feet, her open palm smacking the tabletop with a rattle of cutlery and china. “How much will these people deny us before they are happy? These upstanding people who have such a problem with the morality of my business are the same people who would have sent my parents back to Guatemala to be forced into the labor camps when Soledad y de Santos took power. I will not have this!”
McClosky bowed his head, looking weary and heartsick.
“I promise you, this has nothing to do with the Righteous Action League,” he said at last, releasing a long sigh. “I can’t say more, Silvia. I’m sorry.”
Nico looked from one to the other, the air heavy with the strain of their shared history, from their long-term friendship to their recent falling-out. The general’s eyes pleaded with Silvia, but after a long pause, she shook her head and laid her napkin on the table.
“I’m sorry, Logan. I have hundreds of employees relying on me for their livelihoods. I won’t put them out of work on someone’s say-so. Not even yours.” Another lengthy silence stretched out, and finally, Silvia dropped her gaze to the table. “I think perhaps it’s best if you have the car return me to the city. If there is a danger, I must secure my business against it. Nicolás, are you coming?”
Nico swallowed and laid his own napkin aside, rising to take his mother’s hands in both of his. He pressed a soft kiss to the knuckles of each. “I’m here under contract, Mamá. I’ll keep to it and see you in a week.”
Nico watched the general escort Silvia to the door, wishing he understood the stricken look in the general’s eyes. But no matter what hypothetical disasters his mind offered him, he couldn’t determine the reason for it.
Nico woke to a cold and empty bed, his muscles aching pleasantly. McClosky had been unusually vigorous once Nico had convinced him that he had no problems fulfilling their standing contract. The general hadn’t been cruel or brutal, not like Littlewood, but there had been an undertone of urgency to his lovemaking each night that left Nico exhausted and collapsing in a dreamless slumber in the general’s bed.
And he’d only gotten more intense once a travel advisory extended their holiday weekend well into the first week of December. The storm looked as if it would go on for at least another couple of days.
During the day, McClosky was courteously withdrawn, keeping Nico company for meals but excusing himself to his study to work for hours at a time, leaving Nico to entertain himself. And now he’d left him to wake up alone too. It wasn’t the first time this week, either.
His concern for McClosky mounting, Nico threw back the covers, pulled on his silk shorts, and then reached for his robe. He wrapped it around himself before padding barefoot through the dark cabin to the general’s study.
McClosky, absorbed in whatever he was doing, didn’t seem to hear his approach as Nico entered behind him. It was the first time Nico had dared breach the sanctuary of the study, knowing the general often dealt with classified materials. He peered over McClosky’s shoulder at a graph of some kind on the display. Nico wasn’t close enough to read the labeling on the axes, but he could see it was charting the geometric growth of something that started small and quickly became huge.
“Can I ask what you’re working on, sir? I thought you were supposed to be on holiday.”
The general turned off the display and spun his chair around so quickly that Nico jumped. “You can’t be in here, Nicolás. Go, now.”
“General. Logan.” Taking a deep breath, Nico knelt in front of McClosky, resting his hands on the general’s knees. “You’re my client, yes, but you’ve also been my friend. If I can help . . .”
McClosky’s eyes searched his face for a long, troubled moment, and then he closed them with a sigh. “You and your mother are the oldest friends I’ve ever had. The only relationships I’ve been able to maintain these last thirty years. Did you know that?”
“I’ve always known you didn’t have any family, sir. I wasn’t sure about anything else.”
“I should have fought harder to convince Silvia to stay, for your sake, if not my own. I’m sorry.” When he opened them, his eyes were full of guilt and concern, but they held steady to Nico’s. “I want you to promise you’ll remain here with me. I have supplies, enough to last a year or more. They’re in a hidden cellar beneath the cabin, and I have fuel cells for the generators, and we’re away from the population centers. You’ll be safe here.”
“Safe from what? Is this about the RAL, still?” Nico saw the burgeoning graph from the display in his mind, its data exploding like a horizontal mushroom cloud. That didn’t look like anything to do with the RAL.
McClosky shook his head. “If I tell you more, I’ll be guilty of high treason.”
Nico blew out an impatient breath. “Well, I’m not likely to report you. Is my mother in danger?”
“It may be too late for her now.” The general looked away. “The national news sources have been conveying carefully doctored reports for months, but it’s getting too big. A media blackout just went into effect. All communications satellite uplinks have been subject to censorship for weeks and are now completely shut down to unapproved traffic. The lid’s about to come off.”
“What are you talking about?” Nico gestured to the blank display. “What is it?”
“A juggernaut.” McClosky’s expression was bleak, and he turned on the display again. “Absolutely unstoppable. I want you to imagine how many people a single man—say, an orderly in a hospital—makes physical contact with over the course of three to six weeks. Perhaps a thousand? And how many people do those thousand each have contact with? Hundreds of thousands—possibly even millions—of people were infected before the first case even began to manifest symptoms, before any health authority was ever aware of what they were dealing with. It’s all over the world by now. It is one hundred percent contagious and, as far as we can tell, one hundred percent lethal.”
Nico’s head spun, his stomach twisting. He thought he might actually vomit, but there was something more important to focus on, so he pushed the nausea aside and stood. “I have to call my mother. I have to get her away—”
“Did you hear what I said, Nicolás? It may be too late for her. How many Costas employees do you think could have it by now?”
“I have to try to—”
“You can’t get to her.” McClosky caught Nico’s wrist in a merciless grip. “The president and VP are dead; there’s no telling how many in Congress and the cabinet have been infected. While you’ve been here, martial law has gone into effect. The official excuse is the megastorm that’s hitting half the country. The highways have all been blockaded. The hospitals where cases have been reported have been cordoned off. Anyone trying to leave them is shot on sight. Armed patrols in hermetic suits are forcing people into quarantine in their houses, dropping off rations, killing anyone who resists. The only other information being broadcast anywhere is on approved channels.” McClosky glanced away again, his eyes both merciless and remorseful when he looked back. “I’m sorry, Nicolás. I tried to protect you. Both of you.”
“Why did you let her leave?” Quivering with rage, Nico shoved the general, pushing his rolling desk chair away. McClosky simply sat there, accepting it. “Why didn’t you tell us before she left? She would have stayed if—”
“I couldn’t, Nicolás. Not before the media blackout. Not before the martial law declaration. I shouldn’t even be telling you now. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck your sorry!” He shoved McClosky’s chair again, tipping it dangerously before the general caught the edge of his desk to stop it. “Fuck your bullshit excuse! We trusted you!”
The general rubbed his forehead, as though overcome by a severe headache, and turned on several more HUDs. On one muted projection, a uniformed woman with a stiff smile was mouthing words, which the captions revealed were instructi
ons for everyone to remain in their homes and wait for supply drops. On other displays there were rapidly scrolling reports of death and infection rates, as well as armed altercations between quarantine enforcement patrols and civilians.
Most horrifying, though, were the pictures of people staring sightlessly from agonized faces covered in suppurating lesions that mottled their skin like rotten fruit.
Nico watched it all with numbed disbelief, grabbing a wastepaper basket to spew into when the twisting of his stomach became too much to bear. When the heaves finally stopped, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and grabbed McClosky’s console. He entered his mother’s code only to encounter a message that no signal was available.
“Call my mother for me. Get her now!”
The general stared at him a moment, then sighed and typed in codes and authorizations.
Silvia’s face was drawn and worried when it appeared on the display. It was obvious she hadn’t been sleeping. “Nicolás! Are you all right? I haven’t been able to call out from the house for days!”
“I’m fine, Mamá. I’m here with the general still. Are you all right?”
“Yes, but they won’t let me leave the yard. Men in suits threatened me with a gun when I tried to open the gate to go to work the day before yesterday. An applicant I was interviewing is stuck here with me, though, so at least I’m not lacking for company.”
“That’s good, Mamá. You need to stay there. Do you have food?”
“Yes, for now.” Her eyes darted back and forth between him and the general. “Logan, do you know what this is about?”
“Just cooperate, Silvia. I’ll make certain there are adequate rations delivered to you. Stay away from people for now. No one is safe to be around. Don’t try to leave.”
“What’s happening here?” she asked.
“I’m sorry. We have to go. I’m not supposed to be making calls on this frequency except to work.”
“No, please! Nicolás! You’ll stay safe? I love you, mijo.”
“I’ll stay here where it’s safe until I can come for you, Mamá, I swear. I love you too. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can.”
When his mother’s face was gone, all that was left on the projection displays were those horrific reports, all of which made it clear that the general’s summation of the situation was an optimistic one. Nico took over the console again. Babyl-On and every other network he normally relied on to get word-of-mouth information were all offline. Each search he did came up with no results.
“You won’t find anything,” McClosky said heavily, after Nico slammed his hands against the console in frustration. “A few talented hackers will eventually find a way to access the old landlines and radio-wave transmitters, but that tech has been decaying and unmaintained for half a century or more. Even if they manage to get stories out there, very few people will be able to see them.”
Nico grimaced. He’d always dismissed the posts fretting about the funneling of all data through the communication satellites as tinfoil-hat paranoia. People had been arguing for decades that relying solely on a satellite network controlled by the government would leave the public vulnerable to exactly this sort of blackout.
How long had the government been planning for such a contingency?
Nico sat on the floor, staring out the window as the winter sky transitioned steadily from black to gray. Coffee, and then breakfast, appeared beside him. Both went ignored.
It was past noon when he finally looked at McClosky again.
“You called it a ‘juggernaut,’” he said, frowning as a vague connection began to form. “You’ve used that word before. It had something to do with the reason you sent me to Littlewood.”
The general stared at him without affect; only his bleak, haunted eyes indicated anything might be amiss.
“Was this . . . Was this deliberate? Is it some sort of bio weapon? Germ warfare?”
McClosky continued to stare, but Nico thought he saw a wince.
“Did you do this?” he demanded, trembling. “Did I help you do this?”
The silence seemed eternal before McClosky murmured, “I’m sorry, Nicolás.”
“Go to hell,” he sneered before grabbing the wastebasket to vomit again.
MID-JANUARY
“We have to find a way to get out of here,” Zach muttered, pacing the floor of the snowbound Vermont rental. “We need to get to Mom and the girls.”
“Mom and the girls are fine,” Jacob said, and for once his tone was placating instead of antagonistic. “You heard what the guys delivering the rations said. Anyone breaking quarantine will be killed. Mom’s holed up somewhere, just like we are. She’s fine.”
Zach whirled on him. “And how do you know that? We haven’t been able to get a call or message through since we got here. Last thing we knew, they were supposed to be on their way to meet us. What if they got stranded somewhere?”
“Then they’re getting ration deliveries, same as we are.” Jacob shrugged, which made Zach want to punch him.
“How can you not be worried? Didn’t you see that feed I managed to hack into?” The feed in question had been an underground signal, bringing reports of a staggering death toll and even more horrifying video footage of riots being suppressed, panicked people being gunned down for trying to escape quarantined hospitals. One especially hideous segment had focused on the tenement blocks, where the ration deliveries were reported to be inadequate, largely because the managers and private guards were hoarding the supplies.
Jacob frowned, though he still didn’t look particularly concerned. “Father said it was just someone’s idea of a sick joke.”
Zach shook his head and resumed his pacing. “He’s wrong.”
“Care to say that to me personally, Zacharias?” The reverend sneered from the doorway, a glass of Scotch in his hand. “Go ahead, son. Enlighten us with your misguided conspiracy theories.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Father.” Zach turned away and rubbed his temple. How long had the reverend been drinking? Thankfully, it was a rare occurrence, but when it happened the results were volatile. He’d been livid over the disruption of his campaign, since they’d been stranded here just before Christmas. Over a month of forced seclusion with Jacob and their father had definitely given Zach a new appreciation for the concept of Hell.
He should never have agreed to come. Inviting him had been his mother’s attempt at brokering peace between Zach and his father. She didn’t often stand up to the reverend, but when she did, he wisely backed down. This year, she had drawn the line at not spending the holidays as a family.
Zach wasn’t sure what made him go along with it. Perhaps it was a desire not to see his mother or sisters hurt by his falling-out with his father, but mostly he thought it was guilt. Guilt for what he’d almost done, for what he’d been tempted to do, for who he was increasingly coming to think he might be. He wanted to turn back time to before that moment with Bryan, when everything he thought he understood about himself and his beliefs had been called into question.
Or maybe he just hoped to remind himself just how wrongheaded the reverend was and reaffirm that those perfect, precious few moments with Bryan truly hadn’t been a sin.
Why, when he knew his father to be wrong in so many other ways, did he keep feeling as though he’d done something deviant and illicit?
He taught me about God, he realized. I have never questioned His existence a day in my life. Maybe that was why he couldn’t let go of his father’s teachings. Because as long as he knew God to be true, he knew his father couldn’t be entirely wrong?
Zach cast a furtive glance over his shoulder at his father, who had sat down beside Jacob and was once again perusing the now-defunct schedule of his January appearances. If the reverend kept that up, he’d work himself into a fury again.
“Look.” Zach jumped at the sound of Jacob’s voice next to his ear, so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t even heard him get off the sofa. “Even if the quarantine
weren’t an issue, have you looked outside? It’s been five, six weeks of one winter storm after another, and they’re not clearing the roads. We couldn’t get to Mom and the girls even if we were allowed to. So just lay off Dad, would you?”
Zach closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool wall. “For half an instant, you sounded like you were trying to be the voice of reason, Jacob,” he said tiredly. “Our father doesn’t need me bolstering him. He’s got you for that. So I’ll just leave you to it.”
And no one stopped him leaving. When he was alone in his room, Zach tried to tap into the feed he’d managed to catch before. Each time a new vid played, the reporters seemed a little more desperate, both at the dire news they were conveying and at the authorities’ increasingly dangerous attempts to track them down and silence them.
Perhaps the reverend was right. Perhaps it was all a hoax. Maybe this epidemic—whatever it was—wasn’t the mass annihilation it appeared to be. But if not, why the quarantine? Why the media blackout? Why the military patrols?
Regardless, his mother and sisters—and yes, Bryan too—were out there somewhere, possibly sick or dead. Giving up on locating the rogue feed, Zach tried, without much real hope, to get a call through to Bryan’s code. They’d stayed in touch through the autumn, but he hadn’t been able to reach Bryan since the shutdown had begun. All the channels were still locked out.
Zach sighed, ready to give up for the night. He dimmed the lights, and then he crawled into his bed and curled into a ball, wondering what the world would look like when they were finally able to leave.
Nico spent the deep winter months haunting McClosky’s study, listening in on the feeds the general received from various bases across the country and in other parts of the world. Those reports were torture, penance, killing another piece of him as the death toll mounted. Thousands became millions, which when added onto the global tally became billions.
And he’d helped it happen. He made himself eavesdrop on the reports as a form of self-flagellation for his prior obliviousness. He’d thought he was so clever, so informed, with his voyeuristic fixation on the news feeds. What a fucking ignorant, self-congratulatory dolt he’d been, not to question what his actions were putting into motion.
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