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“I t’s not supposed to be this cold in Texas.” I slump in front of the fireplace outside my sister’s office.
“Global warming.” Candice rolls her eyes. “They say the earth is getting hot. Idiots. It might even snow tomorrow night! How’s that for hot?”
“Candice …” I let my lecture fade. There’s no point. Not with Candice. She’s been my sister’s secretary for almost fifteen years. Sweet as can be, but somehow tougher than leather and just as stubborn. Science is not—and never has been—her thing.
She looks at me over her glasses, her iron gray hair not moving a centimeter from its severe updo. “Something to say, professor ?”
I hold my hands to the flames, relishing the easy warmth. “Nope.” Candice started calling me professor when I graduated from high school at thirteen. Now she likes to take credit for my career path.
“Good.” She pulls a blue tin from one of her drawers and sets it on the edge of her desk. “Since you’ve decided not to lecture me with your big fancy words, you can have one of the cookies the president sent.”
“The president sent cookies? Why?” I’m suspicious but also starved. I open the tin and pillage three chocolate sprinkle cookies while eyeing a fourth. I groan when I take a bite. “This is like, real cocoa, isn’t it?”
She nods. “Only the best from Washington.” Her disdain isn’t hidden as she pops the top back on and stashes the tin. “That old coot thinks he can sweet talk your sister out of taking his job.”
I stop mid-chew. “She’s really going to run? I thought that was just in the ‘maybe’ phase.”
She gives me a sharp look. “It’s in the serious phase if the cookies with real cocoa tell you anything.”
I sit back down, the antique chair protesting with a few squeaks. With just a little sugar and chocolate, my world has begun to spin too quickly on its axis. If Juno runs for president, what does that mean for my work here? She’s the only reason I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. Austin isn’t exactly handling the plague well. All the tech jobs that moved here have dried up, and basic services are becoming more and more spotty. The Texas energy grid was already a dumpster fire, but now we can sometimes suffer through days on end without power. But Washington—maybe that means more than a tiny office with intermittent electricity? Maybe I could actually have what I need to work on a vaccine?
“I hate when I see the gears turning in there.” Candice spins her finger in a circular motion. Somehow, despite the shortages and closed shops, her nails are still manicured a shiny power red.
“You should encourage the gears to turn.” I catch a few sweet, sprinkly crumbs before they can fall out of my hand, then pop them into my mouth.
She sighs. “When you get to thinking is when you get dangerous. Or worse, stupid.”
I gawk at her as I swallow more delicious cookie. “Stupid?”
“You’re a smart egghead, sure. But you’re dumb in so many other ways. I was just telling Juno that you need to get some new clothes. You live in the same t-shirt and jeans. I bet they smell.”
I cock my head at her. “I don’t smell! And it’s not like I can just pop over to the mall and go on a shopping spree, is it?”
She sits back, a slight smile on her lips. “Lord Almighty, I did love shopping. I used to go when Earl was sleeping in, then I’d come home with all sorts of stuff we didn’t need. Hiding it all in my trunk until I was sure he was still asleep or out and about, maybe in the garden.” She smiles more, but there’s a shine in her eyes. “I miss those days and that old man.”
Earl was one of the first in Austin to succumb to the plague. He was a long-haul truck driver, doing runs from Florida to California. Contact-tracing never conclusively showed where he came into contact with Sierravirus, but most signs point to a quick stop outside Los Angeles. He went into a rest station, bought a package of powdered donuts and an energy drink, then started his leg back home. By the time he hit Austin, he already had the shakes. The first sign of infection, though we didn’t know it at the time.
“I miss him, too.” I give her as much of a smile as I can muster. “He was the nice one out of the two of you.”
She nods in agreement then clears her throat as random gunshots punctuate the night. “Anyway, I wouldn’t get too far ahead of myself about all this Washington business. There’s no way to know for sure if we’re even going to have an election.”
I let her change the subject. “President Gray wants to hold onto power that badly?” I don’t pretend to be well-versed in politics. Juno knows enough for the both of us.
“Oh, I think he’ll let the election happen, I’m just not sure if we’ll still be a United States by that point. Florida is always talking about secession, and plenty of other states may go with it if it happens.” (I suspect Candice would like Texas to be one of them.) “We’re falling apart, darlin’. It’s barely safe for us here at the capitol anymore, even with the protection detail and the National Guard. Nope—” A sigh whooshes from her, dramatic yet warranted. “I think if Juno doesn’t choose to run, she’ll hang up her spurs once this term is over. At least, that’s what she should do.” She flinches as more gunshots pop off nearby. “We need to head for the hills.”
Her sentiment echoes Sledge’s. I’m not a fan, but I can see their point. Or, at least I can hear it with increasing frequency from various caliber weapons outside.
I drop my hands from the fire’s warmth as I consider her predictions. They mostly make sense. The population of the world has taken an enormous hit, and the US wasn’t spared. The plague infects all ages, all sections of society, but it’s particularly fatal for younger, healthier people. The global economy has crashed. Money barely makes sense anymore with all the contortions the Fed has done to try and control inflation and collapse. Worse than that, people have turned on each other. Not at first. It took time. But once we realized that things weren’t going to get better, that’s when some suburbs started building walls around themselves and assigning armed guards to keep people out. Some communities went silent, cutting off their contact with the outside world and going “off the grid.”
“What’s this meeting?” I gesture toward Juno’s closed door.
“I don’t know. They’ve been in there since this afternoon.” Candice stares out the window to the east. “They’re burning again tonight.” A swath of smoke darkens the sky. The morgues and funeral homes ran out of space months ago. Now, the dead are cremated in the open air on days when the wind blows away from the city.
Burying my head in my research is the only thing that keeps me sane, keeps me from thinking of the ever-growing pile of bodies. People’s loved ones, lit up like dry timber on the edge of town, because we’ve run out of options. “If she really is going to run, she has to win. We have to get to Washington. I heard they converted an old hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue into a research center solely dedicated to the plague. If I could get in there …” The thought is electric.
I take another big bite of cookie, ruminating on what it would mean for all of us if Juno could win the White House.
Candice glances at me, her eyebrows rising slightly. “Well, professor, I suppose?—”
Juno’s office door opens.
I spin in my seat a bit to get a better look as a man strides out, his face covered by a black mask that matches his suit. His eyes, a deep blue, sweep the room and settle on me.
My hackles rise. The room seems to crackle silently, invisible tension rising like a rogue wave. Who the hell is he?
He doesn’t stop as my sister walks out behind him, Vince, her head of security, on her heels. Fatima follows, her fingers flying across the surface of her tablet.
“Tomorrow morning. No later.” The stranger says, presumably to my sister, though his gaze remains on me. It’s direct. Unnerving. But I can’t seem to look away.
“This visit has been … enlightening, to say the least. M-much to think about,” Juno stammers.
My heart clenches, everything in me going tight and nervous. Juno never stammers. They call her the Iron Maiden of Texas for a reason. Vince moves to her side, his suit jacket open and his right hand resting on the pistol at his hip.
I swallow hard, uncertain about what to do or why the stranger is looking at me or what’s made Vince so nervous that he’s about to pull his gun. The man turns to my sister, his dark hair shiny like a crow’s wing in the light.
Candice motions to me and swipes at her mouth. I reach up and find a huge crumb at the corner of my lips. Shit . I wipe it away and drop my hand quickly.
“A pleasure, Governor.” The man gives a short bow—the movement as precise as it is out of place—his eyes finding mine once again. My stomach goes fluttery, my cheeks growing warm. It must be the cookies.
The man turns and leaves the office, finally breaking the eye contact that’s held me captive.
The moment he’s out of sight, the room takes a collective breath, then everyone starts talking at once.
“Who the hell was that?” I start.
“Ban him from the capitol,” Vince almost barks. “I don’t want him anywhere near you ever again. This isn’t?—”
“Who was that?” I ask again, louder this time to try and be heard over Vince.
Juno sidesteps Vince. “Just governor’s business. Nothing for you to worry about. I?—”
“I’m serious, Juno!” Vince moves in front of her again, staring her down—not that anyone ever has the upper hand against my sister. “He’s a threat. If even an iota of what he said was true?—”
“I think you know it’s true, and I’ve had enough of your histrionics about it. We’ll discuss this another time,” Juno says quietly, her gaze never wavering from his.
Vince stops cold at that.
I glance at Candice. She’s watching the showdown with a worried look. Fatima is still doing a whirlwind of one-handed typing.
“We can’t let him get close to you again.” Vince lightens his tone as best he can. He’s not a particularly soft man, especially not where his job’s concerned. “We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“I told you to let this lie for now, Vince.” Juno glares up at him, her mouth tight.
“Georgia was out after dark,” Candice pipes up.
My mouth drops open as she points at me. Betrayed . Vince and Juno turn, finding a common enemy in their midst, stopping their disagreement.
“What were you thinking?” Juno and Vince yell at me in unison.
I give Candice what I hope is a withering look. “I was only half an hour late. Don’t let her change the subject. Who was that guy and what?—”
“Georgia!” Juno cuts me off. “When I said you could go to the university instead of working on your research here, you promised me you’d return before dark. Remember?”
She’s using the mom voice. God, I feel like a kid again with her standing over me, judgment written all over her face. Fifteen years my senior, she used to tell me our parents found me under a rock—and she wasn’t too far off.
“I ought to put in a standing order that you aren’t to leave the Governor’s Mansion.” Vince glowers, his eyes narrowed on me in his usual hawkish way. But that’s normal for him. We’ve never understood each other’s language, but we both orbit Juno, each of us warmed by the same sun of my sister.
“I won’t do it again, okay?” I lean back in the chair though it does nothing to hide me from their disapproval.
Juno, her face drawn, crosses her arms over her middle. “It’s more dangerous than you can imagine, Georgia. Okay? The plague is the least of the troubles outside the barricades. The military doesn’t have enough personnel to handle the militants, weekend warriors, wannabe cops—all those guys who peaked in high school and own more guns than sense. They’re all a real threat. Inside the barricades, this idea of security is all make-believe, but it’s the safest thing we’ve got. We have to keep some semblance of normalcy, of order. If we aren’t careful, we’ll end up like New Orleans.” She always knows how to punctuate a point. New Orleans burned to the ground six months ago, thousands upon thousands killed as the fire spread and the already-collapsed local government was in too much disarray to help.
“I know,” I say more forcefully.
“If you knew, you wouldn’t stay out past dark,” Vince intones.
“All right! You two can stop now. I’m a grown-ass woman, and I won’t do it again.” I try to keep the irritation from my tone as I stand. “Now that we’re done discussing Candice’s distraction.” I shoot her another glare. “Maybe we can talk about the presidency ?”
“Over supper. Come on.” Juno leads us out.
“I’ll close up here, meet you at the table,” Candice calls. She lives in the Governor’s Mansion now. With Earl gone and her son in California holed up in some sort of commune outside Stanford, it’s safer for her to stay here. I’m glad I’ll be able to stare daggers at her over dinner.
I look down the hall toward the front door, hoping to get another glimpse of the man who was in Juno’s office. There’s no one except the usual guard.
I pick up the pace and walk beside Juno. “Are you really going to run? I mean, the election’s in less than a year. Isn’t it too late?”
“Not too late,” Fatima chirps, her heels clicking behind us. “All the paperwork was handled a while ago.”
“Of course it was,” I mutter.
We enter the dining room as the last of the service staff disappears through the kitchen door. The meager remaining crew has set out a small buffet on the sideboard. They no longer stay for service. It’s safer that way. The fewer people you come into contact with, the better.
Juno opens the lid to what looks like hamburger steak in congealed gravy. Texas may run out of a lot of things, but cows isn’t one of them. “Yes. I’m running. It’s done.”
I almost drop my plate. “Jesus. Just like that? What about primaries or whatever? How do you?—”
“The two-party system is busted, so I don’t have to primary. It’s a tight timeframe, but the states will put me on the ballot. Like Fatima said, we already submitted the appropriate paperwork months ago. I only need a winning platform.” That’s Juno, decisive to a fault and already in action.
It still stings, though, not to be consulted about something this huge. “Do you think maybe we should talk about it first?” I serve myself then open the bread chafing dish with my breath held. It’s empty. As usual.
“The buttered rolls are a thing of the past,” Juno says almost sympathetically. “Time to let go.”
“Never.” I clang the lid back into place.
We sit down at the table with our plates as Vince grumbles about the ‘sad state of these potatoes’ behind us. The servings are small, and plenty of things aren’t available anymore, but I know we’re lucky to have what we do, lack of rolls notwithstanding.
Juno unbuttons her gray suit jacket and shrugs out of it. “We can talk about it, but I’ve already made the best decision for all of us.” Her words are measured with an iron ruler.
“It’s the right move.” Vince thumps into a chair a spot down from me. “Texas is holding it together better than a lot of states, thanks directly to your sister’s leadership. She can leverage that to Washington.”
“But why go?” I cut a piece of my hamburger steak. “Why not hold the fort here? I thought that was your plan. At least, until you sprung on me today that you’re running for president.”
“This may be the last national election for a long, long time.” Juno sips her water, her light brown eyes on me. She doesn’t say “the last election ever ” but she might as well have. “We’ve lost so many lives—I don’t know the most recent estimate?—”
“One hundred and ten million in the US alone was the CDC’s last number a few months ago.” I swallow hard at the sheer magnitude. Entire communities wiped out. The plague doesn’t discriminate. It’s destroyed human life on a scale that has plenty of scientists believing we’re in the midst of a mass extinction. A tiny voice inside me says maybe we are. Maybe this is the planet course correcting itself. Maybe humans have abused it too much for too long, and this virus is its response. I’m not the first person to think it, and I’m certainly not the most eloquent at expressing it, but this level of death feels almost like judgment.
“Growing by the minute.” Fatima picks at a stack of what looks like boiled beets and carrots.
“President Gray is a lame duck president,” Juno says as she cuts her steak into neat squares and begins systematically devouring it. “He’s reacted too slowly to stop the spread of the virus. His restrictions on Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston are extremely disliked from every quarter. And then there’s New York.” She doesn’t have to say more than that. Everyone knows what happened in New York. The outbreak spread there in much the same way as everywhere else. But when it first hit, a massive Nor’easter hit, too. Work and school were canceled, and people were stuck inside with their families while the storm buried the city in snow and ice.
This was back when there were still dozens of news sources with talking heads, opinions dressed as fact, conspiracy theories, and general distrust of science and academics from several areas of society. One newscast would warn of the spread of the virus and show images of victims covered with pustules, another would debate whether these images were actually Chinese propaganda, while yet another would say the entire thing was a hoax created by the Deep State. While all those people talked and sowed distrust or complacency, the virus silently spread. That’s what viruses do—they replicate themselves, invading cell after cell and using up their energy stores with never-ending hunger.
When the storm let up, the Big Apple had become a tomb for entire families. The hospitals were overwhelmed in the first day of the blizzard. By the second, President Gray ordered the entire island quarantined. The death toll only increased when healthy residents were forced to shelter in place surrounded by the infected and the dead. Piles of bodies lined the streets.
A photograph of rats feasting on a corpse won the Pulitzer Prize.
“Just because people don’t like him doesn’t mean you can unseat him easily. What’s that thing about changing a horse mid-rodeo-or-something-or-other?”
“Midstream,” Vince interjects.
“Yeah, that.” I say around the piece of hamburger steak that’s survived at least 30 chews and is still holding together.
“I could do the job. I could help people.” Juno finishes her neatly-cut food. “Hell, I’ve managed to hold Texas together and kept us in the Union despite the threats from the idiots in the Statehouse. If I can do that?—”
“You can do anything.” Candice walks in, her steps slower these days. “I’ve told you that from the get.” She points at me. “I’ve told you that, too, professor.”
Juno swipes a stray black curl, this one laced through with gray, from her forehead. “I’m going to run, and I’m going to win.”
“Here here.” Vince bangs the butt of his knife on the table.
“Huzzah,” Fatima adds.
“Did your visitor help you make up your mind?” I ask.
Juno’s gaze flickers over to Vince. “Somewhat,” she says airily as she stands.
My suspicions kick up a notch. My sister is tough, but she doesn’t have much of a poker face with me. She nearly winced when I mentioned him. “Who was he?”
“Someone who can help us get to Washington, and then—perhaps—help us do a hell of a lot more.”
“Have I mentioned that I’m hating the secrecy?” I wrinkle my nose and keep on chewing.
“I can’t explain it. Not yet. You’re going to have to trust me. But consider the man you saw earlier to be a representative of a foreign government. One with the possibility of helping the US and eventually the world.”
“Okay, that’s big. Huge. Momentous. But also fucking vague. I need more.” Does he have information on a possible treatment or vaccine? “He’s a scientist? A doctor? Where’d he study?” I’m about to get cross with her for having a plague specialist in her office without inviting me to sit in when Vince lets out a grunt. “He’s a threat,” he impales a potato with his fork. “That’s what he is. A kook, too, most likely.”
I croak out an exasperated groan. “Will one of you quit talking around the point and explain who the hell this guy is?”
“The appointment book said Valen Dragonis,” Candice volunteers. She dips her chin at me as if in apology for earlier.
“His name is what ?” I snort a laugh, then stop when my sister gives both Candice and me an unusually hard look. I shrug. “Come on, what sort of name is that?”
“An old one.” Juno strides toward the hallway, leaving far sooner than usual, Fatima already at her heels. “I have mayor calls tonight, and I need to go over the food bank allocations for next month.”
“Don’t forget Dr. Dexter at the pharmaceutical bank. They’re having a real problem getting enough insulin,” adds Fatima.
“Right,” Juno says curtly and squares her shoulders. “That, too. I’ll see everyone in the morning.”
Shit . She’s on edge. Badly. The mood in the room goes from mildly combative to uncharacteristically cold as Juno and Fatima disappear. I slump in my seat and finally swallow the lump of steak. It goes down about as smoothly as Juno’s obfuscation. With her, it’s like she says tons of words, but once she’s gone, any real information is also gone with her. Maybe that’s what being a politician is all about.
“She doesn’t tell me much either.” Candice pours herself a tall glass of red. “So don’t feel too bad about it.”
Gunshots puncture the disquiet, and the lights flicker but stay on. The stranger’s visit has put a pall over us. Those dark blue eyes and the way he seemed to look through me—did he see through Juno too? Is that why she’s shaken? In a world that’s in the throes of an apocalypse, somehow his arrival feels like a damnation all on its own.
“Vince, do I need to worry?” I ask quietly.
Scooping up his plate, he stands to leave, but he gives me one of his hawkish glares first, his eyes almost squinted. “With this guy, we all need to worry.”