Cold Silence

by James Abel

  I’d take the chance. I offered cash and he laughed. Are you kidding? I offered the admiral’s watch, but that was not enough. Maybe nothing was. Maybe he just wanted to find out what I had. Maybe there was no escape through the train yard and the whole thing was a trick.

  I told the man that the Glock stayed with me, and he seemed to accept that.

  “I want the car,” he said.

  “The car?”

  “What the fuck you need it for? You leaving!”

  He was right.

  “Hey! It really get fifty miles a gallon?” he asked.

  “Even more on the highway.”

  “Hmph! You follow us now. Keep your little gun, but leave the phones and we’ll take the cash, too. The CD work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Looks like the cassette player is fucked up, though. I like a good sound system,” the kid said, then his window rolled up. I followed them off the main street, and into an alley, then through a lot for wrecked autos, through a fenced-in parking lot, and up to two Army Humvees parked outside a steel chain-link fence barring the expanse of rail yard. Inside, weeds poked through fresh snow. I saw cranes and power lines and idle tank cars and one lean barking brown and white mutt.

  A trap!

  The Escalade stopped. But it wasn’t a trap. The kid talked with the soldiers. The kid pressed something into the hand of a surgically masked officer, and the officer waved our two-car convoy through.

  I bumped through a gap in the fence, past soldiers who were splitting up money, and into the yard, where the train I’d been hoping to catch was rolling off. The freight yard was wide in the middle, filled with tracks and idle cars, then the tracks narrowed into two or three ways out. The departing train was two hundred yards away, going faster every minute; a parade of disappearing tank cars and V-shaped coal cars and rectangular box cars. Through an open door in a departing boxcar, lots of sorry-looking, bundled-up riders stared out. I spotted more gang members near the loading docks, using forklifts to move stolen crates. They loaded the crates onto tow trucks. The black market was thriving in this particular spot.

  My favorite quote about military matters comes from Napoleon. It’s “Sure he’s a good field marshal, but is he lucky?” For the moment my luck held. A second train had arrived from West Virginia, bringing coal for Washington’s furnaces and power plants. A new line of refugees, most wearing surgical masks, kept as far apart from each other as possible as we were directed onto freight cars while soldiers watched, a train crew watched, and gang members stood by. All of them clearly paid off.

  If ever the world ends, there will be an opportunity in it for commerce. For fire extinguisher manufacturers and gun makers and those who bought stock in insurance companies to sell short. We take pride in those who survive disaster. But cockroaches are good at survival, too.

  The train lurched into movement. I sat on the steel floor of a coal car, the open sky above. The temperature was dropping. Long after the car should have been full, more people had climbed in. We were a Washington version of the refugee-filled trains chugging north from Central America, peasants clinging to roofs, undercarriages, sloping tops of cylindrical tank cars.

  I looked around, trying to place my fellow travelers. Students trying to get home? Husbands stranded on business trips, trying to reunite with wives? Parents evacuating kids away from an epicenter of outbreak?

  Now we all lurched north, in a moving pit filled with strangers, some grateful, others irritated or frightened. Some had envisioned more comfortable quarters, and not considered that riders packed beside them might be sick.

  I’d handed over more than thirty thousand dollars, if you figure in jewelry and the Prius. Multiply that by forty, and as much as a million dollars in cash, carry goods, and property had paid for the riders in just one open, creaking car.

  A ragged cheer went up when the man hanging up over the side announced in a loud voice that we’d cleared the yard, and a second cheer rose when we passed the line of Maryland National Guard whose vehicles marked the border, and who must have also been paid off.

  Some people sat alone. Others in groups. Most kept on their surgical masks. The children’s faces seemed completely gauze covered. I smelled coffee, and alcohol from a bottle passing between three scruffy-looking men. I found a corner and settled in. I told myself the cold wasn’t so bad. I wondered how long this train would take to reach New York State, or if, as the gang kid had said, the cars would be split up in Baltimore. I wondered whether, after a hundred miles or so, we’d enter the territory of a different gang.

  Nearby, a tall woman was on a cell phone, loudly voicing second thoughts. “What if two gangs are working together? What if when we get to Baltimore, we’ll be robbed? Or they make us get out?”

  There was nothing to do but wait. I pulled from my parka the busted tape, the words of Harlan Maas, half shredded, proof, if I could patch the thing, get the tape on the spool, and get the spool to the right place.

  But just then a man’s voice said from right above me, “How about slipping that mask down for a second and showing us your face, mister? Face and hands! Now!”

  SEVENTEEN

  The trio of vigilantes stared at my face, as if bacteria might be visible on skin, crawling and multiplying, eating me from the inside. They bent closer, human tropisms of fear and ignorance. “Show us your hands!” Satisfied, they went on toward the next refugee party, young women, a couple, and two young girls. None showed visible signs of disease.

  Which means nothing, I thought. They could still be carriers.

  My heartbeat slowed to normal rhythm. But suddenly the last of the vigilantes spun back and reconsidered me. The others turned, too. The man, walking back toward me, was thick necked, unshaven, and red faced, from bad blood pressure or too much liquor. His peacoat was too thin for this weather, but the lumpy bulked-up chest suggested that he wore layers of sweaters beneath. Paint-stained corduroy pants ended at Doc Martens, with more white paint spots on top. House painter, I figured. Handyman. I was wrong.

  “Do I know you? You work at Health and Human Services, right?” he said.

  “Wrong man.”

  “Third floor? Measles-rubella group?”

  “Everyone tells me I look like someone they know.”

  “I’m good with faces,” he insisted. I felt a throbbing in my neck. He came closer, then he brightened. I saw his day-to-day persona when he wasn’t terrified. “Tuesday night softball, right? By the tidal basin!”

  “That’s it.”

  “Which team?”

  “Senator Vialisek’s office.”

  I had no idea if Senator Vialisek had a softball team. But most Senators’ offices fielded teams. Grinning, the man lost his thuggish aspect. Give him a shave and a Starbucks go cup, he’d be at home in the office measles-rubella group. “I told you I’m good.” He seemed happy to talk about something normal. He tapped his forehead. “I never forget a face,” he said, and then transformed back into vigilante mode, rejoining his new friends.

  I was glad I’d not pulled out the Glock.

  By the time we reached Baltimore, the riders had relaxed a bit; the inspection was over. No one looked sick. Some people tried to doze, but between the cold and the rocking, sleep was impossible for all except the most exhausted. In areas where mobile devices worked, riders texted or phoned loved ones. I’m safe, Daddy. Strangers sat as far apart as possible, but we were crowded. One impulse was to learn about each other in order to feel safer, the other impulse was to stay away.

  Where are you heading, miss?

  To live with my brother. He has a farm in Connecticut.

  Do you think we’ll be robbed at Baltimore?

  My cousin rode the rail yesterday and said the system works.

  Baltimore. Clearly the yard crew had been paid off here, too. More gang members—a dozen hard-looking young men—wa
ved us out of the car like customs officials, separated riders onto other trains, one going west toward Pittsburgh and Saint Louis, the other north. Younger kids—nine- and ten-year-olds—sold ham sandwiches and sodas for ten times the usual price. The crew worked as smoothly as Lufthansa flight attendants. Flight attendants don’t carry semiautomatics, though. These guys did.

  “We’re like the old underground railroad,” one teenage boy told me, herding a half dozen of us into a rust-colored boxcar. “You’re like the runaway slaves.”

  By Delaware, I learned from a rider holding up an iPad that a United pilot had just flown his 737 into the Rockies, killing all aboard. He’d been infected. In southern New Jersey, stumpy pine barrens flashed past as we listened to a volume-up podcast talk-show argument between a CDC disease expert and one from India, over whether the “Bible Virus” had evolved naturally or come from a lab. By the dilapidated rail yards of Secaucus, New Jersey, I eyed oil storage tanks and winter brown swamps, and watched a YouTube video of U.S. Marines on an aircraft carrier off Nigeria, allegedly ordered to hit Islamic militant sites in less than forty-eight hours from then. Muslim militias in eight countries had jointly threatened retaliation against American embassies, travelers, and companies should the United States hit Islamic targets, the maker of the video—a self-styled freelance journalist—claimed. There was no way to verify the information.

  “We will not be deterred by threats,” a White House spokesman said on another rider’s screen.

  No, you’ll just hide under the earth and send troops to die, to make yourselves feel like you’re doing something.

  I tried to phone the admiral, Burke, even Chris, and tell them about the cassette tape. Their comm-system was down or blocking outside calls. The wagons were circling. The bulk of the country was shut out.

  I fought off doubts about whether my journey could achieve anything. I was probably on a wild-goose chase. At a switching yard over the New York State line, forty more refugees climbed in. I kept expecting troops or police to stop us, but for the moment, the gangs controlled this old smuggling route. They’d probably been paying off yard crews for years.

  North of New York City we began losing more people at stops—a bridge, a crossroads, a rural intersection—than we took on. The tracks rolled alongside the Hudson River, with pancake ice drifting, bare trees on the right, high palisades, gouged-out cliffs created during the last ice age, on the left, a mile across the river. Those glaciers had towered up a mile high. The animals who saw them were long extinct. Had they died of disease?

  The Tapanzee Bridge was empty. The guards on Sing Sing prison’s towers peered out. We rolled through centuries-old industrial towns and past Revolutionary War battlefields, and the narrows where the British Army once strung a chain across the Hudson, to split the thirteen colonies in two. Divide and conquer.

  Some of these towns had successfully climbed out of the recession and looked prosperous, albeit too quiet. Others were decaying, with trackside signs promising hope. COMING SOON, GLOBAL GENOMICS LABS AND RESEARCH PARK, thanks to Governor Wilcox’s science and economics initiative.

  What is Global Genomics? I wondered.

  A tinny iPad voice said, “Paramount Pictures, site of the most recent Los Angeles outbreak, was burned to the ground today by order of health officials. The historic studio is now a pile of embers.”

  New riders shared stories as the weather cleared, but the mercury dropped. Our unheated railcar rolled into snow country, past fallow cornfields, red-sided barns, and ice-covered winter pastures and rock walls and stumpy third-growth forest.

  WELCOME TO COLUMBIA COUNTY.

  I was close to my goal, the rail yard at Chatham, New York. On a normal day, I could drive from Chatham to New Lebanon in less than twenty minutes. Now, once I got there, if I got there, I had no idea what I’d do.

  I’ll figure it out as I go along.

  Gazing out now, another world. I knew there were pockets unaffected by the disease, and we might have reached one. Cars moved smoothly along well-plowed rural roads flanked by two-foot-high snow piles. A truck salted the highway. We picked up a few passengers and rolled through the town of Hudson, where pedestrians strolled on sidewalks, shops were open, traffic lights worked, no troops or roadblocks to be seen. That’s how it is during emergencies. On one block, disaster. On the next, chocolate ice cream for sale.

  The normalcy out there provided a false security sense, and for a few minutes, relief permeated the car. It was as if we were refugees reaching Switzerland. There were only seventeen of us left, some new. Most others had dropped off. With crowding eased, so did the mood. Conversation took on a more normal tone.

  “I’m Anthony Coates . . . I’m a software engineer.”

  “Frederick Kohn, Aidan and Bill . . . We have a drugstore.”

  “We’re the Kruthammer family, from Canada . . .”

  A bearded young man named Dave announced, “I’m trying to get to New Lebanon and this train gets close!”

  My head turned toward the speaker, a librarian from Putnam County, he said . . . ruddy boyish face, chestnut eyebrows beneath the Poetry Slam stocking cap, in his mid-twenties. A cheery presence in faded blue jeans, and an old moss-colored parka, who had climbed in during the switchover at Hudson. Everyone liked him. From a rucksack he’d removed granola bars, almonds, and dried fruit, to share. He’d done tricks to amuse the kids, pretending to take off his thumb. He’d told us that two men in his town had been among the first to fall ill, after they drove down to Washington to attend a Redskins game.

  “The Bible Virus is a sign,” he told us.

  “Of what?”

  “Mankind must change our ways.”

  “Great. More New Age crap,” the Canadian father growled. “Just what we need.”

  Dave didn’t mind doubters. He shrugged, a dreamer or a perpetual optimist. I asked him why he was heading for New Lebanon.

  “There’s a group there that has a cure.”

  “Bullshit,” the man heading for Canada snorted. “There’s more phony cures out there than patients.”

  “This is different,” Dave insisted, shaking his head. “I heard it from an old girlfriend. I’ve known her since I was eight. She was studying at SUNY and got disillusioned and quit and joined up with these great people who live on a farm.”

  The Canadian rolled his eyes. “A commune?”

  “Why do you have to label it? These are educated people who decided there’s more to life than their labs. And the man who heads the farm is really a scientist! He’s studied leprosy for years, I heard. His name is Harlan Maas.”

  I sat riveted.

  A woman from Montclair, New Jersey, asked, “How much money is this charlatan asking, for the, uh, cure?”

  “Nothing! They will give it away! Friends first, and loved ones. They’re announcing the cure on the Net! But it’s not just medical, see? It’s spiritual, too. God wants people to turn away from false science, my friend said. She said come and listen, and if I don’t like it, go home.”

  The man from Canada snorted. “You believe this?”

  “I believe my friend. She was valedictorian of our high school. She said science is God’s way of teaching. And science without God is empty. She said leprosy is a punishment, like in the Old Testament. The meeting will be at a truck stop off the interstate. Why don’t you come?”

  It seemed colder, deep down, but I was sweating at the same time. I felt a lone bead run down the side of my face. The Canadian stood up, agitated. “For God’s sake, listen to yourself! A truck stop? A fucking truck stop in Upstate New York? The world is saved by ten people? With what? Little Debbie Snack Cakes from the store?”

  “You don’t have to be nasty about it,” Dave said.

  “You seem like a nice guy, Dave. You must be educated if you work in a library. Are you really that gullible? You ask me, the President should bl
anket the Mideast with atomics and wipe out anyone who might remotely have anything to do with this disease. Blow those godless raghead bastards up until the guilty ones confess and hand over the formula, or whatever they have.”

  “Now who’s gullible,” Dave said. “You believe the President! And by the way, the meeting will be at a truck stop so people can get there! Word will spread. Reporters are invited. The goal is a new era of peace and love.”

  The blood roared in my head as I asked, “Who will head up the new era?”

  “My friend said that a man on that farm is amazing! He has this aura of goodness and wisdom! He’s a prophet, she said.”

  I took a deep breath. “The Sixth Prophet?”

  Dave smiled. “You know about him! You’re invited, too?”

  I nodded, smiled, jaw hurting, tried to look as eager as Dave. “Worst case, it can’t hurt to see if the cure works. Right, Dave? If the preaching is ridiculous, who cares, just leave!”

  “That’s how I feel!” Dave stood up. I had a feeling he’d been chasing answers his whole life. He emitted the rapt passion of the regularly converted. How many other causes had he espoused before trying this? At that moment the light hit his face in a different way. Beneath the affable surface I saw something lost, that had lived in him a long time. He was no less genuine, but now I saw him as a potential foot soldier in an army of fanatics. Were other Daves making their way to the truck stop, too?

  Of course they will, thousands will, if the cure works.

  I wondered, Is this what it has been about?

  Big things start small. The doubter from Canada had probably never sat in a classroom at Quantico and heard lectures about cults. Aum Shinryko, which had released poisonous sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system, to start a world war, they believed. Jeffrey Lundgren, whose followers cut up a family in Ohio. Jim Jones, whose 918 followers killed themselves.

  Dave was arguing, shiny eyed, “Look at the Wright brothers. They invented flight in a garage! Nobody figured that two mechanics could do it! Well, why can’t average people invent a cure, too? Everyone thinks average people can’t do anything.”