The Night Parade(91)

“I want to see it.”

“No. Do as I say.”

She exhaled audibly, then turned and sulked down the hallway toward her bedroom.

“This is so messed up, David,” Kathy said. She was gnawing on her thumbnail. “The whole world is falling apart.”

“We’re still here,” he assured her.

She looked at him. There was something beyond fear in her eyes: There was a hopelessness so deep it looked bottomless. “For how long?” she said. “For how long, David?”

He couldn’t answer her. In his mind’s eye, he was back on the beltway, staring out the Bronco’s window at the little boy with blood spilling from his nose while black smoke fell like a shroud over the horizon. A boy with eyes like the gray backing of a mirror.

By the close of the day, there was a total of five children and four teachers dead at the day-care center. Eleven people died at the hospital, with many more treated for injuries. The suspects, both retired toll collectors named Hamish Kasdan and William Maize, were also killed in the blasts. They’d outfitted the trunks of their cars with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, similar to the cocktail Timothy McVeigh had used in the Oklahoma City bombing. A search of Kasdan and Maize’s Baltimore City apartment revealed suicide notes detailing their roles as “renegade saviors for the earth,” here to help usher in the last days of mankind. They said they were part of the Worlders’ movement, a group of radicals who praised Wanderer’s Folly for bringing an end to mankind’s parasitic reign over the planet. They hadn’t been targeting the sick, but the doctors and nurses who were attempting to help them.

Kathy wept in her sleep that night.

David hardly slept at all.

*

When dawn finally cast its lurid hues through their bedroom window, David got up, went to the bathroom, then crept into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. There was a newspaper on the kitchen counter, the front page comprised of a map of the United States with various “hot spots” where the infection was the greatest. Other cities had been completely evacuated. The report said these evacuees had been transported to one of the CDC’s quarantine stations, with D.C., Philadelphia, and Newark being the closest to David’s area. The report also listed the most recent estimated death toll, both domestic and global—numbers that increased daily and required decimal points. He balled up the paper and shoved in down into the kitchen trash.

In the living room, he slid a Paul Desmond CD into the stereo and turned the volume down low as to not disturb Kathy and Ellie. Back in the kitchen, he poured himself a steaming mug of Sumatran coffee, then pried open the window above the sink so he could smoke a cigarette without having to go outside on the porch. He had hoped the music might fool him into thinking things hadn’t changed all that much and that they could still enjoy the simple day-to-day pleasures, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t trick himself into pretending that everything was normal. The music grated on him and he shut it off.

Someone knocked on the front door.

David chucked the half-smoked cigarette down the garbage disposal, then carried his coffee mug to the door. There were curtains covering the vertical strip of glass beside the door, which he pulled aside. Three figures stood on the porch. A sleek black sedan was parked out in the street by the mailbox. He thought they might be cops or federal agents.

He unlocked the door and opened it. The man in the center, flanked by two men in dark suits, wore a tweed sports coat with suede patches on the elbows and a garish pink bow tie over a blue-and-white checked shirt. He was dark-skinned, slender, nervous-looking. The man’s face was narrow and pinched, though somehow not unfriendly.

“Mr. David Arlen?” the man said, extending a laminated badge with his photo on it for David’s inspection. He spoke with a heavy Indian accent. “My name is Dr. Sanjay Kapoor. I am the head epidemiologist and director of the recently established Washington branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Infectious Diseases.”

“The CDC?”

“You are the husband of Kathleen Arlen, is that correct? She is still located at this residence?”

“I think you’d better tell me what this is—”

“Hon?” Kathy said, coming down the hall in a pink terrycloth bathrobe. “What’s going on?”

“Mrs. Arlen?” Dr. Kapoor said, peering past David.

“Yes.” She came up beside David, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

“These guys are with the CDC, hon,” David said.

Dr. Kapoor repeated his introduction again, then said, “I came here to speak candidly with you, Mrs. Arlen.” His dark eyes shifted toward David. “You and your husband, of course.”

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“You subjected to a blood test at the Spring Hill Medical Center this past quarter,” Dr. Kapoor said.

“Yes,” she said. “But I was told I was okay. The blood test came back negative.”

“Is she sick?” David said. He pulled Kathy away from the door and took a step in front of her. She hugged his arm.

“No, Mr. Arlen.” Astoundingly, Dr. Kapoor’s pinched face broke into a smile. A silver incisor glittered like tinsel. “Quite the opposite, in fact. May we come in?”





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