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“N ot a good day to move around.” Mike frowns at me from his spot behind the barricade.
“I’m not going far. Just to my office.” I give him what I hope is a convincing smile.
“You sure your sister is okay with this?” He absentmindedly grips the stock of his rifle, his other hand tucked in the pocket of his fatigues.
“I’m not under house arrest, Mike.”
He squints a little as a cold gust blows through the capitol grounds. “I know you aren’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to go riding around the city. It’s dangerous. Are you even armed?”
I give him my best glare, hoping I’m at least half as intimidating as Juno. “I’m not out here for a joy ride. I’m working. Get off my dick, all right?”
He sighs and taps a gloved finger against his helmet. “Keep your head down out there and get back before dark. Got it?”
“Yes.” I roll out of the checkpoint and onto the sidewalk. The oak trees overhead filter the sunlight, the branches all but bare this time of year. I pedal easily across East 15 th ; it’s still blocked with razor wire and guard posts at the cross streets around the capitol. Doesn’t make for easy navigating, but I’ve perfected my route over the past few months. After that, I cut across an alley and onto another sidewalk. I slow down before I reach MLK Boulevard. Crossing that street with anything less than hypervigilance is a good way to land in the emergency room. A sobering thought given how overwhelmed they already are.
Traffic, though intermittent at best, still flows, and plenty of people are braving the frigid weather to move around in the city. Some of them in nothing more than motorized bikes or dune buggies. Anything that still runs—as long as the driver can afford gas or rig solar panels to it. I pull up my scarf to cover my nose, the tip of which feels nearly frozen. A gust blows past, intensified between the buildings, and I have to put my foot down to keep my bike and me from falling.
“Shit!” I creep off the curb and turn to look left and right several times as I ease across the intersection. One car stops for me, but a precariously lifted truck blows past in the opposite direction. Once it’s rumbled away toward the stadium, I pedal hard, shooting to the sidewalk and sailing with the wind at my back past vacant parking lots and overgrown plots of dead turf. The theater building has been tagged so many times since it shut down that it looks like a piece of modern art.
A sprawling tent village is set up in the grassy spot in front of the old student union. I pedal faster as a few men loiter around the edges. Somewhere in the maze of canvas and salvaged plywood, a woman is wailing.
Once I reach my building, I hurry inside, bringing my bike with me. The school has gotten lax with just about everything these days. If I left it outside—even with a lock and extra chain—it would be gone by the time I finished in the lab. These days, bikes have become quite the commodity.
“Dr. Clark.” Gene, the custodian, gives me a short wave from down the hallway, a push broom in one hand.
“How’s it going?” I unwrap the scarf from my face, but I don’t take it off. The university barely does upkeep on its buildings anymore, and the heat is particularly iffy in the medical sciences annex.
“Doing all right, I suppose. How’s it going on third?” He glances at the ceiling, the cataracts around his irises turning the dark brown more of a milky shade. “Any breakthroughs?”
I shake my head. “Not yet, but stick around, you’ll be the first to know if I crack it.” I dig around in my backpack and pull out a mask, stuffing it under my scarf and crimping the nose band in place. Then I dig out a small plastic container of chili.
“Keep on doing the Lord’s work up there, learning His secrets. You’ll solve this thing, Doc.” He gives me a nod.
“Will do. Here.” I hand him the container. “Good news is it’s chili, bad news is they put beans in it to stretch it a bit.”
“I’ve got a new appreciation for people who put beans in chili. More protein can’t hurt.” He smiles and takes it. “Now don’t go sneaking me anything if it’s going to get you in trouble, you hear?”
“Don’t worry. It’s all on the up and up.” True, for the most part. What I sneak from the kitchen isn’t enough to be noticed. Not yet, anyway.
“I sure do thank you, Dr. Clark. I sure do.” He shuffles past and leans the broom on the wall. “I’ll go ahead and dig in, if you don’t mind. Lula didn’t lay any eggs for me yesterday, so I’m running on empty.”
“Sure thing. Enjoy it.” I wheel my bike past and hope to avoid coming across anyone else. If they know me, they invariably ask about my work or my sister. I don’t feel like discussing either one right now, so I keep my head down and take the elevator, crossing my fingers it doesn’t get stuck. It happened to Gene last semester, and it took half a day before the fire department showed up to get him out.
When I reach my office, I wedge my bike inside far enough to where I can close the door behind me. It doesn’t leave much room, but I shimmy between the front tire and my bookcase, edge around the corner of my desk, and sit in the office chair that’s seen far too many asses over its lifetime. It gives a harried sigh as it takes my weight, but it doesn’t collapse no matter how badly it might want to.
Flipping on my contraband space heater beneath my desk, I pull off my mask and press my scarf against my face, blowing out my warm breath to feel the momentary heat. I sit that way for a while, at least until my breath doesn’t fog the air any longer. Then I turn on my kettle for a cup of instant coffee (for the longest I refused to stoop to instant coffee levels, but the shortages changed my mind—any port in a storm).
A knock at my door puts me on edge, and I open my top drawer, my fingers searching for the pepper spray as I call, “Who is it?”
“Sledge.”
I close my drawer with more than a little relief. Since the university has been abandoned in parts, we’ve had a problem with vagrants showing up to pillage what’s left. Sometimes that includes harming the people they find inside. Gene is a decent deterrent for my building, but there’s no telling how long that’ll last. I’m assuming he hasn’t seen a paycheck for the last four months just like the rest of us. “Come in.” I pull my mask back on. It’s on autopilot now. Anytime you’re in proximity to another human being outside your usual bubble, you defend yourself even if it’s in the smallest way possible.
Sledge swings the door open and stops it just before it hits my bike. “You know, Georgia, no one’s going to take it from the third-floor hallway.” He steps awkwardly over the back wheel and into the tiny space reserved for guests. I used to have students sitting across from me with tales of dead grandparents in bids for forgiveness for late papers or bad grades. It was a fun game of me hearing them out and then expressing my condolences for the second or third time they lost “Grandma Myra” that semester. But that changed when the illnesses and deaths became all too real. And then the students stopped showing up altogether.
“Gene would love to clean this place up for you. You know that, right?” Sledge grabs a handful of books from the chair and stacks them onto a pile of journals on the floor before sitting down. His sandy blond hair falls across his forehead and into his brown eyes. Shirt rumpled, and jeans too big, his five-o-clock shadow is more of a midnight mass. I remember a time when he would’ve never missed a haircut or worn anything short of professorial chic. Now though, he’s different. We’re all different.
“He just wants to snoop and make sure I’m doing the Lord’s work, as he puts it.” I open my laptop and plug it in.
“He’s told me the same. He’s hopeful.” He shrugs, and I know he’s smirking under his mask. I miss his expressions. “I think he’s the only hopeful person left, to be honest.”
“I’m hopeful.” I open the data file from the most recent protein trials.
“You? Hopeful?” He shakes his head, then swipes his hair back in a way that I’m sure used to drive the undergraduates wild. “Determined, I’d say. Yes. But hopeful? You’re not what I’d call an optimist.”
“Maybe you don’t know me very well.” I parse through the data, looking for something new, something to indicate the plague isn’t bulletproof. In three years of work, I’ve found nothing. And not just me, every researcher on the planet. This virus isn’t something that has a single answer. It’s not polio. It’s not even the flu with myriad strains that are impossible to pinpoint with accuracy for future vaccines. Its newness, its uniqueness —that’s what makes it so deadly.
“Anything?” Sledge seems to read my mind as I go through lines and lines of measurements and readings.
“No.” I sit back and sigh. “The envelope proteins won’t budge. Not even with my modified nattokinase.”
“How many modified versions have you tried?” He asks it almost gently.
“That doesn’t matter . ” One thousand five hundred and eleven . “The key is the protein barrier on Sierravirus Alpha. If I can break through that outer wall, the actual?—”
The power drops, my heater sputtering into silence as the lights go out.
He sighs. “If the generator finally gives out, maybe it’s a sign we should call it.”
“Call it?” I flip through a few more pages of numbers and charts.
“Leave.” He leans forward, elbows on his thighs. “Claire and I are thinking of getting out of the city.”
“What?” I stare at him in the gloom.
“Her parents have a house on a lake out in the boonies. We’re thinking of holing up there. Things are only getting worse.” He glances at my bike. “It’s not safe here. Every day we risk it to get to the university is another roll of the dice. It’s too dangerous, and we aren’t getting anywhere. The CDC or pharma is where the breakthrough will come from, not?—”
“You don’t know that. Besides, I can’t leave, not when I have triage shifts at the emergency department. People are desperate for help. We can’t turn our backs on them.”
He points at the darkened overhead light. “We don’t have what we need here. I’m not even in biomed, and I can’t keep my lab running in these conditions. There’s no way you can keep going.”
“I’m not giving up.” I meet his gaze. In it, I see worry and care. Two things I used to pine for when we were both new professors. I was the youngest doctor ever admitted to teaching at the University of Texas. Young enough to be starstruck by the handsome, brilliant Dr. Sledge Whitlow.
“Listen, I talked to Claire, and she’s okay with you coming with us,” he says sheepishly. “We can take enough supplies to live out there for years, maybe even forever. They own acres and acres. Worse comes to worst, we can farm and hunt. You could learn how to be patient and fish.” He’s smirking again. I’m glad I can’t see it. “Playing at being a farmer on a homestead does nothing to solve this crisis. I’m not abandoning my research. Besides, Juno would shit a brick if I left.”
He shakes his head, a familiar wrinkle forming between his brows. “Juno would want you safe .” His tone carries a vehemence that almost startles me.
“I can still work here.” I roll my eyes. “And unless you have an electron microscope on the farm, I don’t think it’s going to be a good fit for me.”
“Look, if you stay, it’s only a matter of time before you’re infected or attacked. It’s a miracle no one’s come for you yet just based on your last name. If those people out on the street knew about Juno, you’d have been taken or killed by now. You know that, Georgia. You have to. You’re the smartest person in every room you’ve ever been in since you were a kid. This is a chance for you to live. You’re only what, twenty-five now, twenty-six?”
He knows exactly how old I am. I’m certain of it. Just as I’m certain that I’ve felt his gaze on me in one way or another for the past few years. The same way I used to look for him when I would enter a room at university functions. “You could have a whole life,” he continues. “Don’t throw it away. You can’t solve this thing. Not on your own. I mean—” He shakes his head. “Has the CDC even once responded to the data you keep sending them?”
I cross my arms. “They’re busy. They can’t respond to every scientist who sends in data. Doesn’t mean they don’t analyze it or use it. I get new data from them each week. You should, too. You may not be in epidemiology, but you could do something to help. You’re a scientist. We have to keep working.”
“That’s just a dream. You know I’m right. Come with us.”
“It’s not a dream, Sledge.” What I would’ve given to hear him ask me to go somewhere, anywhere with him four years ago. Back when I was smitten. When I thought it was love. Ugh , I could punch myself.
“Well, not a dream, I guess,” he amends. “But it’s not real, all the same. You’re just one person in a crumbling university.”
I stare him down. “It’s plenty real. It’s knowing that in here—” I tap my temple. “In this tangled mess, there’s a chance that the right neurons will fire in the correct order and create something that can save lives. This is why I went to med school, why I studied and worked and churned and did nothing else. Before the plague, before we had any idea such a thing was truly possible, I knew I could help the world in some inexplicable way. I knew there had to be a reason why I was given this gift.” A curse , my mind whispers. “I can solve this. I have the ingredients, but I haven’t figured out the recipe, and if I run away from this, I’ll never find that recipe. I’ll have burned years of my life, my youth, for nothing.”
“It’s not your cross to bear!” He clutches his hands together, his knuckles going white before he loosens his grip and lets out a wry chuckle. “I would honestly say you were delusional if I didn’t know what you’re capable of, the way your mind works. But you’re punishing yourself. That’s what this feels like.” He gestures around at my cramped, dark office. “Because you think you were given a gift?”
“It’s not punishment. It’s purpose.” I force myself to breathe, to back down, to stop rising to his bait. “I don’t know why we’re having this conversation,” I say as calmly as I can. “I’m not your responsibility. My work is none of your concern. Thank you for the offer, and please give Claire my thanks as well, but I’m not interested.”
He drops his gaze, his body sagging slightly as if he finally let a weight settle on top of him without resistance. He’s silent for a few beats, his gaze on the floor. “Do you remember that night?” he asks softly.
I pretend not to hear him. I can’t hear him. That past doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only the future. Only the plague. “If I can work on finding a vaccine, then that’s what I’m going to do. If you want to hide out in the woods at Camp Karen, then do so. Just give me the keys to your lab in case I can salvage anything for mine.”
He meets my gaze again. I look away. I don’t want to see his sadness. I don’t have room for it. He sighs and stands, the crease between his brows even deeper than before. “I have regrets. Plenty of them. But that night …” He shakes his shaggy head.
“Don’t.”
“You were too young. You thought I was something I’m not. If I’d made a move—” His eyes meet mine, and in them there is a burning, vivid surge of emotion. “If I’d done it, you would’ve hated me eventually.”
The apology in his words almost stings. “You don’t know?—”
“I do.” He smiles sadly, the movement hidden from me but somehow felt. “I’m the one who’s running away to Camp Karen, after all. That’s who I am, Georgia.” He slides his lab key onto the only clean edge of desk. “I’m not brave. I’m not determined. I would’ve disappointed you the same way I’m disappointing you now.” Maneuvering to my door, he steps out, finality in every movement. “It just would’ve happened sooner.”
Words crawl up my throat and lodge against each other. There’re things I want to say, but nothing comes out. Nothing forms. There’s … nothing.
“Goodbye, Georgia.” He looks up as the generator kicks on, the building groaning and coughing itself awake. “Be careful with that space heater. It’s a fire hazard.” He closes the door.