Upgrade(55)

“Southern Arizona.”

I could see in her eyes she’d never been there. I could also see that she wanted to pry a bit more into my family life. Why was I traveling without them? Again, not out of some malicious suspicion. More curiosity and loneliness.

She glanced up at one of the television screens, and I saw her eyes widen. I followed her gaze. Because the television was muted, all I could see was what appeared to be camera footage from a drone hovering several hundred feet over a highway.

Soldiers were setting up bright yellow barriers across the road.

I read the headline on the bottom of the screen:

GLASGOW, MONTANA, PLACED UNDER MILITARY-ENFORCED QUARANTINE AFTER 95 DIE OF MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS



“Have you been following this?” Miranda asked.

“No, what’s going on?”

“Apparently some sort of virus.”

I stared at the television screen, but the closed-captioning wasn’t enabled. All I could see was that hovering drone. The screen switched to a view of soldiers in hazmat suits and respirators walking down the middle of what could have been Main Street, Anywhere.

Aside from my general curiosity in a breaking news story, there was something else about the headline that bothered me.

I could feel my subconscious tunneling for the connection, but Miranda was already talking again, asking where I was off to next.

I tried to stay polite and engaged for the rest of the meal, stowing my curiosity into a distant corner of my mind to return to later.

When Miranda left to use the restroom, I paid for my meal and hers and was sliding off my stool as she walked back toward the bar.

“You’re leaving?” There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.

“Long drive tomorrow,” I said. “Which means an early start.”

And then she embraced me, the tension of untouched need and isolation like vibrations in her bones. If I’d chosen to allow it, I could’ve been leveled by my empathy for her.

“I really enjoyed meeting you, Robbie.”

I wished her safe travels.

Then I walked out into the cold, spitting rain.

Even though I was in a town, my phone had no cellular service.

It was too dark and wet to risk the climb from the beach up the bluff to my rental house, so I ran south on the road out of town.

Faster and faster.

One of the few unapologetic joys of my transformation was my improved physicality. My body hummed like a perfect machine. I wasn’t just as good as I’d been at twenty. I was exponentially better. My bum ankle that had never fully healed after a nasty sprain in my thirties didn’t bother me anymore. Neither did the arthritis in my left knee. I could have six drinks, sleep a few hours, and wake as fresh as a daisy. And I never got sick. I’d been a runner in my younger years until the aches and pains of my middle-aged body finally relegated me to the ellipticals and rowing machines of air-conditioned gyms. But now, I had no problems. I ran marathon distances just for the hell of it. I raced up mountains. Swam alpine lakes. My energy was bottomless. I felt invincible.

As I glimpsed the lights of my seaside cottage, I realized what it was about that headline that was buzzing around in my brain like a fly. On my flight home from China to America, when I left my mother’s lab for good twenty years ago, I’d read an article in an in-flight magazine featuring Glasgow, Montana, as the most remote city in America. The parameters were specific. What is the place with a population of more than a thousand, which is farthest from a metro with a population of at least seventy-five thousand? The closest metro to Glasgow was four and a half hours away.

How could the most remote city in America be ground zero for the outbreak of a new virus?

I was drenched by the time I walked in the door of the cottage.

I hung up my rain jacket and stripped out of my wet clothes. The woodstove held nothing but glowing cinders. I opened the glass door, tossed a few logs inside.

Then I turned on the television and stopped at the first news channel I came to.

It was the top of the hour, and the anchor was saying—

“…monitoring a developing situation in northeast Montana, where ninety-five people have died in the last week from an unknown illness. The CDC arrived two days ago, and the National Guard has been called in to enforce a shelter-in-place quarantine order from the governor of Montana. Martial law is in effect, all roads in and out of Glasgow have been closed, and as of three hours ago, Wi-Fi coverage within the Glasgow city limits has been blocked.”

Onscreen, the footage changed to show a team of doctors in positive pressure suits carrying someone out of a house in a body bag.

“The CDC is expected to hold a press conference any moment now, and we’ll be joining that as soon as it happens. Meanwhile, we’re joined by Dr.—”

I flipped to the next news channel.

An epidemiologist was speculating that this could be a particularly virulent strain of the flu, but it was obvious that he was vamping to fill time and had no real information.

The next news channel I turned to was just recapping what I’d already heard.

I left the TV on and went to my laptop on the kitchen table, ran a quick news search on Glasgow. I read thirty articles from legit news outlets, but there was nothing new.

Social media was a cesspool of conspiracy theories and memes, but I kept seeing one video getting shared.

I muted the television and pressed play.