The Nirvana Plague

by Gary Glass

He walked with small steps to the narrow bar that separated the “kitchen area” of the room from the “living area” of the room, and sat down on one of the two stools on the living area side.

  Karen peered into the cabinet over the counter. “Not much to choose from. I hadn’t really laid up provisions for a siege. Silly me.”

  She plucked down a can of tomato soup and zipped the top off.

  The cat jumped up on the counter and knocked its head against Roger’s shoulder, purring like a pump.

  “Don’t let her on the counter, will you?”

  Roger looked down at the cat, and the cat looked up at him, eye to eye. He puckered his lips in a goofy way, and the cat immediately dropped off the counter to the floor.

  Karen witnessed the exchange over her shoulder. “What’s wrong with that cat?”

  She fetched two bowls from the dishwasher, poured half the can into each, and plopped them into the microwave.

  Roger was staring off into space like a blind man, and answered without looking round:

  “She thinks this is a cat. Mm.”

  “She thinks you’re a cat?”

  Roger said nothing. He never answered the same question twice.

  “What were you doing with those pigeons Tuesday?”

  “Doing,” he said. “Doing.” Like he was trying to remember what the word meant.

  “Did they think you were a pigeon?”

  But Roger was distracted now. Thirty seconds of semi-lucid chit-chat and now they were probably done for the day. She took the bowls of soup from the microwave and plunked them down on the counter. She took two spoons from the dishwasher, clapped one down next to Roger’s bowl, and stabbed the other one into her soup. On her side of the counter, she remained standing, slurping soup into her mouth.

  Roger was staring down at his bowl.

  “What is it?”

  “Tomato soup. What do you think it is?”

  He angled his head this way and that.

  “Red,” he said, like he was taking notes. “Elliptical.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  He bent his face down toward it.

  Opposite him, she bent down too, watching.

  His tongue came out and touched the rim of the white bowl.

  “Hard,” he observed. “White.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He laid his head over on the counter.

  “Spherical section,” he said. “Mm. What is it?”

  “It’s your bowl. What do you think it is? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Bowl,” he said, the way a blind man mapping a new room might say “chair.”

  He got off his stool and brought his eyes down to the edge of the counter, getting an ant’s eye view of the bowl thing. He bumped the counter with his cast, and the smooth red surface wriggled into concentric waves.

  On an impulse, Karen mirrored his behavior, and brought her eyes down to counter level behind her own bowl.

  He rose up again, still fixed on the bowl, like a camera on a crane, or a heron targeting a bluegill.

  She continued to mimic him.

  He bent forward slowly until his face went into the bowl and he touched the soup with his nose and tongue.

  “Tomato soup,” he said, straightening up again. “Hot.”

  Red soup ran down his chin.

  She came up from her bowl licking the soup around her mouth, and grinned.

  “I bet it’s even better with a spoon.”

  He looked up at her like he didn’t recognize her. His eyes wandered over her face and hair and neck.

  “Wife,” Karen said. “Soft. Round.”

  His expression didn’t change.

  “You, Tarzan,” she said. “Me, Jane.”

  Nothing.

  He doesn’t even know he doesn’t get it.

  She picked up his spoon and held it in front of him till his eyes focused on it, then she dropped it into his bowl. The soup splashed. Little red dots speckled the white rim of the bowl and the white countertop around it.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “It’s still tomato soup. With a spoon in it.”

  He lowered his face down again, but passed the bowl and fixed on one of the tiny red dots on the counter.

  “Red.”

  She got down as close to the same spot as she could. Their four eyes crossed over the dot.

  “Red,” she repeated. “On white.”

  His eye was in her eye now.

  “Blue,” he said. “Eye.”

  She felt happy.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Confusion appeared in his face.

  “Do you understand me?” she said quickly.

  “No.”

  “But you understood me when I said ‘Do you understand me.’ You understood that question.”

  “Under,” he said, “stand.”

  Marley felt the hair go up on the back of his neck.

  The soldiers standing in the shadows didn’t move.

  Stunned, Marley and the others said nothing for a long time.

  Benford flicked on her flashlight, screwed the beam wide, and turned it on the soldiers.

  They did not react. Their eyes were open, but they weren’t looking at anything. They didn’t even blink.

  Marley took a step toward them.

  “Hello,” he said.

  No response. Not the least movement or sound.

  He took another step. The others hung back.

  “Hello!” he said a little louder.

  Nothing.

  He took a few more steps. Benford’s flashlight cast his shadow large over them.

  “Hello, there.”

  Still no response.

  He advanced slowly toward the center of their line. Three women and seven men. They carried no gear. Most were stripped to T-shirts and camouflage trousers. Most were barefoot. Their faces were open and expressionless. They were facing him, but they weren’t seeing him. Through marble eyes they looked right through him, staring the thousand-mile stare of mariners and madmen — and battle-shocked warriors.

  Marley thought of Easter Island statues with their shocking eyes leering inland, standing guard within the doors to the sea.

  He stopped two paces in front of a young woman in the center of the group. She was shorter than he was. Her name was printed on her T-shirt.

  “Hello,” he said. “My name is Dr. Marley. Your name is Davis?”

  She was as responsive as a portrait.

  He heard his teammates behind him shuffling nearer.

  He stepped closer to his subject and lightly took hold of her wrist. He lifted it, feeling her pulse. Her skin was soft, puffy, and cool. He rotated her hand experimentally. Her wrist was neither stiff nor limp. Taking his tablet stylus from his shirt pocket, he turned her palm up and dragged the sharp end of the stylus firmly across it. The fingers curled slightly, but he felt no effort from her to pull her hand away. He released her arm and watched as it slowly returned to her side, like it was sinking through water.

  “Catatonic,” Benford said, behind him.

  “Yes.”

  With a quick movement, he snapped his fingers loudly in Davis’s face.

  No reaction.

  “Assess the others,” he said quietly over his shoulder. “Responsiveness, rigidity, waxiness.”

  The taskforce reassembled in the corner of the main hall opposite their patients.

  Assisted by a couple of men from the camp’s forces, the aides were running in wire and set up heaters and lamps inside the main hall of the temple. They also brought in cots and sleeping bags. The team was going to spend the night right there in the temple.

  Marley sat down on a cot and slid his aching feet out of his boots.

  Benford called Estrada on comm and spoke to him briefly. Turning back to the team she said: “He says they were not catatonic last time he saw them, which was around midday. They were minimally responsive, but not catatonic.”

  “I’ve nev
er seen anything like it,” Delacourt said, stretching out on her cot.

  “Ten at once,” Peters said.

  “Now you believe this thing is real?” Benford said.

  “Well, it’s something.”

  They all looked toward the statues again, still standing amongst the columns opposite.

  “How long can they stand like that?” Delacourt said.

  Marley looked up from unrolling his sleeping bag. “Catatonics can hold a position for hours, even days, that you or I would find excruciating after just a few minutes. But these won’t.”

  “How do you know?” Delacourt said, yawning.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Christ, I’m exhausted,” Peters said.

  “Let’s try to get some sleep,” Benford said. “We’ve been on the move more than twenty-four hours.”

  Chapter 15

  NEWSREADER: Under orders from FEMA today, Alaskan government officials in Juneau ordered the Aleutian village of Analusk permanently abandoned. Rising sea levels and increasingly violent winter storms have made it impossible to protect the island from being inundated. National Guard units were called in to evacuate the residents of the island to the Alaska mainland. This is the fourth and largest Aleutian village to have been permanently abandoned in the past year. According to the United Nations Environmental Council, the total number of low-lying towns to have been abandoned worldwide remains unknown but is thought to be, quote, in the hundreds. Some American officials question that estimate.

  US ENVOY TO UNEC, GREG HOLMES: A lot of these little encampments would have been abandoned anyway. They’re seasonal or periodic. You can’t count every little fishing camp along the Peruvian coast as a “settlement.”

  NEWSREADER: When asked in the meeting of the Environmental Council in Geneva today what the United States was doing to help pay for these evacuations and relocations, Mr. Holmes responded that,

  HOLMES: The United States remains committed to the provisions of Agenda 25, just as do, I’m sure, all the signatories of that historic document. However, the US cannot be expected to foot the bill for every environmental clean-up operation or relocation or whatever throughout the world…

  Karen sat listening to the drone of news, watching Roger in the chair beside her, still doodling on his pad of paper. He’d been at it all day. She couldn’t comprehend how she and the strange familiar man sitting here beside her could be part of the same world of deceit and destruction there in the news.

  On the table between them, the phone rang. It was the downstairs door.

  “Hello?”

  A male voice responded: “Oh, hello! Is this, uh — this must be Roger’s wife? Karen, right?”

  She didn’t recognize the caller. Jesus, now what? “Who are you?”

  “Oh, hey, I work at the hospital. My name is Miles. I, uh, I just wondered how Roger was doing.”

  Karen walked over to the window and looked down. No new cars in the street. “What hospital?”

  “Joplin, ma’am. Where Roger goes. I’m an orderly.”

  At this point anything even mildly out of the ordinary hit Karen as an intolerable outrage.

  “What is it you want?” she said impatiently, adding, half to herself, “What time is it?”

  She looked back at the clock on the Newsline screen. 2:52 p.m.

  “I just wanted to check how Roger was doing, ma’am. It’s about three o’clock, I guess. I’m sorry to bother you. I know he was quarantined. All the five patients are. I know Roger a long time now, though I don’t see him much.”

  Karen was looking at Roger, who was now looking at her.

  “Miles,” Roger said. “Miles doesn’t understand either. But he’s a good man.”

  Karen knew that Roger couldn’t possibly hear the voice on the line. How did he know? Had he somehow called Miles without her knowing it and invited him over?

  Roger’s eyes warmed sympathetically. “Don’t worry,” he said, like a request.

  “Ma’am?” Miles said in her ear. “Do you mind if I come up? It’s kinda cold out here.”

  She was still looking at Roger, who had returned to his sketch. She buzzed the door open. She heard the old stairs creaking as Miles climbed up. She went out to greet him.

  “Evening, ma’am,” he said, sticking out a big flat hand. “We never met really, but I see you round the hospital whenever Roger is on the ward. My name is Miles Reeves.”

  She shook his hand mechanically. It engulfed hers.

  “You can’t come in, Miles.”

  He smiled. “I figured that. But I also figured you’d be here, so I reckoned I’d take the train up anyway. I just got off work at the hospital.”

  “Did he know you were coming?”

  “Roger? Nah. He don’t know. Why?”

  “He didn’t call you?”

  “Call me? No, ma’am! He’s not allowed to make calls, is he?”

  “How’d he know you were downstairs then? Did you yell up from the street?”

  Miles looked at her funny. “Yell up from the street?” He pulled a red knit cap off his head. “Ma’am, he don’t know I’m here.”

  There was something about Miles that she couldn’t help but like. He’s a good man.

  “You came all the way up here from Joplin?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  Miles grinned. “That’d be fine! Damn cold outside.”

  “All I have is wine.”

  “Wine is fine.” He said it like it was a little song.

  Karen went back inside and returned with two clean glasses and a bottle of red she’d uncorked earlier. They sat down on the top step and she poured.

  They drank and talked about Roger. Miles wanted to know how he was doing. Karen tried to answer, but soon gave up.

  “I don’t really know how he is,” she said. “I mean, compared to what? To how he was before? Or to normal people? What’s normal? After fifteen years of living with Roger, I know I don’t know what normal is anymore. I wonder if anybody really does. Look how we live. What’s normal about this? The world’s falling apart around us. Is this how people are supposed to live?”

  Miles put on his big threatless smile. “Don’t you think he’s better? Don’t you think how he is now is better than how he was before?”

  “You mean, under house arrest?” she snapped back.

  Miles shrugged helplessness. “But he is different now. You know.”

  “I know. I think his voices have stopped.”

  “You sure he won’t stay home by himself?”

  “He never has,” she said. “Course, it never mattered before.”

  “Maybe Roger should come back to the ward.”

  Karen shook her head stubbornly. “No. He’s better here. Would you want to live at that place?”

  “I do.”

  “I mean really.” She was still shaking her head. “He’d be in isolation.”

  “Yeah. The other four are. Dr. Alexander is trying to get the government doctor let us put them all together. Being alone will just make them more cra— agitated.”

  “If he was there, I couldn’t protect him. God knows what those bastards might try to do next. — You married, Miles?”

  “No, ma’am. I was. Divorced.”

  “Lot of that going round.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please call me Karen.”

  On the floor beside them, Karen’s phone chimed. She picked it up and answered. “Hello.”

  “It’s Ally. I’m downstairs.”

  “Come on up!”

  Karen buzzed her in. They continued talking on the phone as she came up.

  “You want a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  Karen got up and went back inside the apartment for another glass, still talking on the phone. Miles stood up too.

  “Miles Reeves is here,” she said. “Do you know Miles? From the hospital?”

  “We’ve
met.”

  “I’m sorry I was such a bitch yesterday.”

  “That’s all right. We were both a little keyed up. — Hello, Miles. Haven’t seen you in a long time. How have you been?”

  “I’ll be out in a second,” Karen said, and clicked off.

  When she returned to the corridor, Miles was sitting on the top step again, Ally a couple of steps lower down, her knees drawn up under a long dark skirt. Karen sat down next to Miles and handed Ally her glass of wine.

  “What are you doing here this time of day?” Karen said.

  “It’s slow this time of day. Bonnie can hold down the fort till the dinner rush starts. Anyway, I can’t concentrate.”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Miles, did you know about Dr. Marley going overseas?”

  He looked up surprised. “Overseas? I thought he was in Washington.”

  “He was.”

  “He called me yesterday,” Ally said, “and told me he was going overseas with his group.”

  “Going overseas where?”

  “He didn’t know. Some kind of war zone.”

  He looked at her, incredulous. “To a war zone?”

  “Yes. But he didn’t say which one.”

  He dropped his head, shaking it slowly. “God damn,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re chasing this disease,” Ally said.

  “If it is a disease,” Karen said.

  “They want to see it first hand.”

  “This IDD thing?” Miles said. “It’s happening other places?”

  “It must be,” Ally said.

  “God damn! It must be happening to normal people too. It must be happening to guys on the line!”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “That would explain some things,” Karen said. “If normal people are developing the disease, then maybe there are many more cases than we think. That would explain the CDC getting involved all of a sudden, the police, the quarantine.”

  “Not to mention all this cloak and dagger business with Carl.”

  “What if it’s breaking out on the front lines?” Miles said. “Think about that. Jesus, that’d put a kink in the game plan, wouldn’t it!”

  “What do you mean?” Karen said.

  “Look at how they act when it happens. If soldiers started acting like that—”