by Gary Glass
“Chicago. Evanston.”
“What are you doing in Canada?”
“Going to Alaska.”
“You almost made it.”
“I know.”
“How long have you been in Canada?”
“Four days.”
“Where did you cross the border?”
“Washington.”
“Where exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“What highway?”
“I don’t remember.”
Fredrickson looked at the old man.
“She’s a little shook up, Ernie,” the old man said.
Fredrickson continued his questions. “Do you have a health certificate?”
“It’s in the truck.”
“Why were you headed to Alaska?”
“My husband is there.”
“Do you have a phone?”
“It’s—”
“In your car.”
Karen nodded. It hurt.
“I don’t suppose you know the license plate number?”
“No.”
He looked up at the old man hopefully, but the other shook his head and said, “American plates. Wisconsin.”
“Well, I’ll have to drive out there and get it.”
He turned back to Karen. “You want to use my phone?”
She shook her head — it made her dizzy.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“You want me to call someone for you?”
“No.”
Her voice got smaller with every answer.
“Why not?” he said.
“Blackout.”
“Blackout? What are you talking about?”
“Juneau.”
A lie might have been a good idea at this time, but she was too exhausted and befuddled to make the effort.
The constable sat up. “Oh.”
She felt a teardrop strike the side of her left hand, and she looked down at it. It had made a little mark in the dirt on her skin. Almost made it, she thought.
“Ma’am, there’s no way to get to Juneau. They’re not letting anybody in or out.”
She said nothing.
He asked her husband’s name, and Ally’s, and a few more questions, then put away his stylus and stood up.
“Ma’am, I’m going back out to my car to use the radio. You stay here. I’ll want to talk to your friend too.”
“OK.”
He looked at the old man as if to say, “Keep an eye on her.”
The old man nodded.
An hour later the young constable admitted them to the holding cell of the local jail. He was perfectly polite about it, even apologetic, but he locked them up all the same.
“It’s not much of a jail,” he said. “Don’t have to use it much, fortunately. We like to say we used to be a one-horse town, but then the horse died.”
Karen and Ally looked around the little square room: three log walls and one of steel, two low beds with wool blankets and plump pillows in clean slips, a heavy yarn rug over the plank floor, and a pitcher of water and two mugs on a rough little wooden table. A guestroom — with bars.
Karen put the cat box down on the floor and sat on one of the beds. “Best jail I’ve ever been thrown into.”
Ally sat down on the other bed. She had six stitches in her scalp, covered by an enormous bandage, and the eye on that side was swollen.
The constable had called ahead, and his wife had made the cell up for them before they arrived. She was standing outside the cell with him as he locked the door.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” she said.
“There’s no toilet in there,” said the constable, “so you’ll have to bang on the bars when you need to go.”
“Just let the cat run loose,” said the constable’s wife. “Is it trained?”
“She’ll go on paper, if you have any.”
“I’ll get some.”
The wife went out into the front office.
“What are you going to do with us?” Karen said to the constable.
“The Mounties will be coming to pick you up when they can get round to it. I don’t expect they’ll prosecute you. Probably just take you back to the border and turn you over to the American police.”
“For what?”
“For illegal entry.”
“I mean, what do the American police want us for?”
“Oh. Jumping quarantine, I reckon.”
“I can’t believe we came all this way for nothing.”
“I’ll go out with a tow truck in the morning to find your vehicle and get your things for you,” the constable said.
“Thanks. How long before they come to take us back to the border?”
“Hard to say. Mounties are pretty busy now, you know.”
Ally lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket over her.
“Any cases here yet?” Karen said, trying not to look at Ally.
“Here? Nah. We have more trouble with the moose than whatever fancy new disease is fashionable down south. Gonna be a bad year for the tourist business though.”
The constable’s wife came back with a roll of paper towels and squeezed it in between the bars to Karen. “I’m sorry about your husbands,” said the wife. “Good night now.”
She turned the lights off with a switch out of reach from inside the cell.
A nightlight cast a dim green glow through the cell.
After they’d gone, Karen freed the cat, which immediately got into bed with Ally.
Chapter 40
The second day in Juneau after the outbreak was as quiet as the first. National Guard troops stood station at all the city’s exit points, but no one attempted to leave. Helicopters patrolled the waterfront and telescopes watched from across the channel, but the streets remained empty. At night, black bears came out from the forest and searched the back alleys for trash.
Power was not restored. Government health officials began to worry about food spoilage, medical emergencies, and dysentery.
The USS Auster steamed into Gastineau Channel with her attendant vessels that afternoon and took up a position mid-channel, west of the city. General Graham’s operational headquarters were transferred from the airport to the ship straightaway.
Benford helicoptered from Abrams that evening to attend meetings aboard ship. Marley was not invited.
Fred Peters and Marley’s other experimental patient had been ordered back on medication. Marley protested the order and refused to comply with it. Benford reassigned all of his patients to other doctors.
Marley passed the time playing poker and watching the news with Sikora, DiGrandi, and Wenslau, who, as non-medical personnel, had also been sidelined.
Rachel Fredrickson, the constable’s wife, sat in a rocking chair outside the little town’s only jail cell, knitting while she watched the news on a small panel she’d carried in from the office and propped against the wall.
Karen and Ally, sitting yoga-style on their cots, were also watching the news — through the bars of the cell.
Karen’s cat lay on the rug near the rocking chair, twitching her tail, idly monitoring the ball of yarn as it staggered about on the rug.
“That cat’s gonna get her tail broke,” Karen said.
Rachel smiled. “She’s all right.”
The yarn ball rolled over against the bars. The cat got up, trotted over, slipped through the bars, and started batting the ball from inside the cell.
Rachel’s phone chimed. She put down her knitting and picked it up.
Karen pointed the remote and muted the television for her.
“Hi, hon,” Rachel said. “Just watching the news… Already? … All right … All right … Yes. Bye.”
She clicked off the phone and looked at the two women.
“Time to go?” Ally said.
Rachel nodded. “They’re on their way over.”
Constable Fredrickson came in with two uniformed Mounties in tow.
“Morning, ladies. All packed?”
Rachel got up from her chair. “I’ve made you some muffins,” she said, and presented a plastic bag to the two Mounties. “For the trip.”
One of them took it with a smile, opened it and looked inside. “Thanks, ma’am.”
The constable put his palm on the readerplate and the doorlocks released. He slid the door open.
“Let’s go, ladies.”
Karen and Ally came out, each with a pillowcase stuffed with clothes and odds and ends. Ally’s luggage had been destroyed in the accident; the constable’s wife donated the pillowcases.
She came forward now and gave them each a warm embrace.
“It’s been so nice having you here,” she said.
“You’ve been a wonderful host,” Karen said.
Ally said nothing. She held Rachel at arm’s length, gazing into her eyes for a long while.
The Mounties produced handcuffs and stepped forward.
“That’s not necessary,” Rachel said evenly.
“Regulations, ma’am,” said one of the Mounties.
“Let it go, man,” the constable said.
The two Mounties looked at him, then at each other, and put the cuffs back on their belts.
The constable’s wife put her arm around Karen and walked out into the office with her.
“You’ll write to me as soon as you get back?” she said.
“Yes,” Karen said. “Let me know what you decide to name that damn fool cat.”
“I already decided. I’m going to call her Karen. Karen Kat. With a K.”
Karen and Ally sat in the back of the car, enclosed by thick wire mesh screens. The two Mounties sat up front.
Karen said, “Karen Kat. With a K.”
“I was hoping for Ally Cat. Without an E.”
“Maybe next time we lose our husbands, drive across the continent, and murder a moose, I’ll let you name the abandoned pet.”
“Thanks,” Ally said, batting her eyes. “At least the cat made out all right. Her new housekeeper is a good woman.”
“She’s another one of you.”
“Yes,” Ally said. “You just now figuring that out?”
“No. I knew it the minute I saw her, locking us up.”
“Yes. She wouldn’t have, but she’s still waiting for her husband to figure things out.”
Karen nodded forward. “Why don’t you put the zap on these two so we can get out of here?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Ally didn’t respond.
“Anyway,” Karen said, “there’s no door handles on the inside. We’d be trapped!”
“Wouldn’t that be ironic.”
One of the Mounties, the one that wasn’t driving, turned round, with muffin crumbs on his lips. “It’ll take us about three hours to get there, ladies. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“Three hours?” Karen said. “Just to get to the airport?”
“We’re not going to the airport, ma’am.”
“You’re driving us all the way back to the border?”
“It’s only about three hours.”
“Three hours?”
Then the light went on.
“You mean you’re taking us to the Alaskan border?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Mountie. “Of course.”
The driver looked back in the mirror at them.
“Did you think we were going to drive you all the way back to Illinois?”
The Mounties parked behind the border station and let the women out. They retrieved their pillowcases from the back and walked up to the gate on the American side.
National Guard troops, in full battle gear, were on station at the gate. All border crossings were now being guarded around the clock.
The Mounties presented their credentials and told the officer in charge that he was deporting two prisoners back to the States. There should be some American officials waiting to collect them.
“First I heard of it,” the guardsman said.
“There’s no one here for them?” the Mountie said.
“Nope.”
“Well, not my problem. Here they are.”
“Identification?”
Karen and Ally presented their identification cards.
The guardsman slotted them through his tablet reader and handed them back. He studied his screen for a minute then looked back at the women. “Says here you’re from Illinois.”
“Yes,” Karen said.
“What are you doing up here?”
“Sightseeing.”
“Says here there’s a federal warrant out for both of you.”
“There’s a lot of that going around these days.”
He looked at Ally. “Says here you don’t have health clearance.”
He looked back at the Mounties. “We can’t take this one. Our orders are nobody passes without a certified health clearance.”
“I should think the federal warrant supersedes your standing orders,” the Mountie said.
The guardsman tipped his helmet back slightly. “I should think I can interpret my own orders. Sir.”
“Look, it makes no difference to me what your orders are. They’re US citizens, they’re persona non grata in Canada, and they’re not coming back. Those are my orders.”
“Maybe you should just shoot us,” Karen said.
The men looked at her. She and Ally were the only human beings in the vicinity not packing weapons.
“Maybe we should,” the guardsman said.
“Don’t put yourself out.”
The guardsman looked back at the Mountie. “I can see why you’d want to get rid of her.”
Karen and Ally spent the rest of the afternoon in handcuffs in the back of one of two Humvees sitting behind the guard station on the American side of the border.
Toward nightfall the next watch arrived in a different pair of Humvees and relieved the day squad. The guardsmen climbed in around the women, the vehicle lurched into gear, and the pair of them roared off down the road chasing each other back to Skagway.
The two Humvees full of guardsmen ran the sun down out of the mountains and slammed to a halt beside the local command headquarters. The two female prisoners were admitted to the chain link precincts of a temporary holding pen, and the border guards rolled off to town to drink and philander.
Karen and Ally passed a cold night on the ground under a Mylar canopy.
Chapter 41
On the third day after the outbreak a fire broke out in the city.
Marley was sitting on one of the rubberized steel benches inside the perimeter fence around Abrams.
It was a cool, bright morning. The water in the channel seemed to toy with the sun’s light. Helicopters hovered like vigilant hummingbirds over it.
He had his tablet on his lap, replaying the street scene of the great outbreak as he listened over and over again to different parts of the Purple Pony recordings. He’d been listening to it obsessively for two days. There was nothing else to do. He was on ice.
A door banged open behind him and Benford emerged at a trot, followed by several other officers. They jogged to the fence, pointing and talking. That was when Marley saw it: a thin column of black smoke rising out of the city.
“House fire,” Benford said. “Didn’t you see it?”
“Did you?”
At this distance, it was a tiny thing, a flimsy sliver of smoke.
“Choppers reported it,” she said.
“Are we responding?”
“Yes. We’re sending you back in.”
“To fight a fire?”
“No! They’re responding to the fire themselves! That’s why you’re going back in. Looks like they’re finally coming out. I need you to see what’s going on.”
In Skagway the morning broke cold and clammy. A heavy paste of sea-fog squeezed up through the fjord and out over the empty streets of the town.
It was well
past sunrise and still foggy before their case came at last to the attention of the commandant. They were shown into an inflatable hut peopled with hungover Guardsmen and Guardswomen tottering on flimsy folding furniture and very bitter coffee.
The young commandant behind a battered worktable looked like any of the Monday-morning heroes Ally saw in her shop every week, caffeinating themselves back to sobriety before marching off to battle with the likes of Professor Hanover.
“What’s your names?” he said, hardly looking up.
They gave them.
Massaging his temples, he bent his eyes down to his tablet. Tapped it a few times. Located their records. Mumbled.
“Federal warrant. Canada. You—” He stopped for a breather, rubbed his eyes, clamped them back onto the tablet. “So. Jumping quarantine. That it?”
They didn’t answer. The question seemed meant for the tablet.
He raised his eyes to his prisoners. Looked them each up and down.
“That’s it then?” he said, unimpressed. “That’s all you’re wanted for? Jumping Q?”
Karen frowned. “Also,” she said, “a very bad attitude.”
The little commandant grimaced and closed his eyes. Rubbed his forehead wearily. His fingers left red marks on his skin. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Excuse me?”
Rubbing miserably. “Get. The fuck. Out.” He reached for his coffee. “Jumping Q,” he mumbled, barely audible under the weight of the world. “For fuck sake. We’d have half the state in lock up.” He took a sip of the coffee and hissed air through his teeth. “We’re gonna need a place for the rest of us to go before it’s over.”
They wired Marley up in the backseat of a Humvee en route to the bridge. Police Sergeant Adams was already online.
The barricade had been improved since the last time he was here. Now there was a regular guard house, some portable toilets, and the lane through the barriers had been equipped with a black-and-yellow steel gate arm. And there were a lot more troops on hand — and a lot more Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the water both sides of the bridge.
Marley nodded toward the biggest ship, not far off, on the north side.
“Is that the Auster?”
“Yes,” Benford said.
“Big.”