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The only sound was the occasional dip of my oar into the frigid black water.

It was a perfect river for floating—it went nowhere slowly. Wide and not so much as a burble of whitewater.

It took its sweet time, not following the road into town, but twisting and turning on a meandering, serpentine course through patches of farmland.

I could see the distant lights of farmhouses glowing like green suns and the expansive, collective glow of the lights of Glasgow.

I was hours on the water.

Each time the raft swung around a bend in the river, the lights of town glowed a little brighter, a little closer.

I kept a vigilant lookout, carefully watching every foot of shoreline. While I was doubtful there’d be a security checkpoint at the river, you never knew. My guess was that, while the National Guard and the CDC didn’t want people coming into town, their main focus would be on keeping the townsfolk from leaving.

At 10:45 P.M., my Garmin chimed.

I’d spent much of last night studying the Google Earth satellite images of Glasgow and the surrounding terrain, and before setting out on the water, I’d dropped a GPS pin at what I had chosen for my take-out point.

I paddled to shore, hopped out of the raft, dragged it onto dry ground.

The edge of town was just under a thousand meters east of my position, on the far side of an open field.

I took out the binoculars and glassed the city.

From my vantage in the shadows, I could see a military checkpoint at Highway 246, approximately a hundred yards west of town. There were Jersey barriers and barbed wire strung across the road, and a half-dozen soldiers in biosecurity suits were milling around a couple of Humvees.

In one of the vehicle’s turrets, I saw a soldier in NightShades making slow, steady scans of the adjacent fields, including the one I would need to cross to reach the city. If I took a longer route across the field and kept low to the ground, I felt reasonably sure I could stay hidden behind the slope.

I stowed the raft in the trees, shouldered my pack, and began the long, slow crawl toward Glasgow.



* * *



—

It was midnight when I reached the edge of town.

I sloughed off the pack and pulled out my hazmat suit, less worried about contracting something and more interested in the cover it would hopefully afford me. How many red flags would a guy in a hazmat suit raise walking through an outbreak area?

I donned my magnetic body armor and spent several awkward minutes forcing my way into a Tyvek suit in the dark. Then I pulled on my respirator, tucked my H&K into a makeshift holster I’d rigged on the hip of the suit, and shouldered my pack.

I moved carefully through a stand of trees that separated the field I’d crawled through from Glasgow proper. The nearest building was a body shop at the edge of town surrounded by shells of vehicles rusting in the weeds.

I knelt down and took a moment to observe.

Modest houses glowed in the distance.

According to Montana National Guard protocol, curfew enforcement patrol would put one soldier on each city block from dusk to dawn. There would also be the occasional Humvee or Bradley fighting vehicle on driving patrols.

A national guardsman in a tactical face mask walked into view, heading away from me down the middle of an otherwise empty street, machine gun at the ready. After fourteen seconds, another soldier moved down the closest cross street on a perpendicular trajectory, and five seconds after that—and two blocks up—a third soldier appeared, walked briefly in my direction, then turned right.

I clocked their respective velocities, which varied by degrees of .2, .1, and .35 mph, then ran a quick mental equation, vectoring myself into their midst and solving for my window of invisibility.

When the time was right, I left the shelter of the trees, moving at a brisk clip down a sidewalk and not loving the restricted view of my face shield and the general dampening of sensory input by my hazmat suit.

I heard:

A dog barking.

A man sobbing as he begged for someone named Jane to please wake up.

A voice magnified through a megaphone five or six blocks away, shouting instructions to a crowd.

What sounded like gunshots on the far side of town.

And from more than one house that maniacal laughter I’d heard in that viral video.

Cloth—dishrags, towels, torn T-shirts—hung from nearly every door I passed. There were three colors: green, red, and black.

According to KLTZ, the AM radio station serving Glasgow, the CDC and National Guard had ordered every household to keep a visual marker hanging from their front door that identified the condition of the people inside.

Green = no illness.

Red = someone inside showing symptoms.

Black = someone dead inside.

As I walked up Ninth Street S., it was a devastating thing to see—every ninth or tenth house had a piece of black cloth hanging from its doorknob.

When I glimpsed new soldiers on patrol, I added the additional variable into my equation.

The first few houses I approached were no-go—either dogs barking or lights on inside or locked. I didn’t need to be triggering an alarm. I needed a dark house, with no dog, and an unlocked door.

To the north, I glimpsed the epicenter of activity.

White tents gleaming under spotlights.

Lines of people waiting for treatment.

Drones hovering above it all.

I stopped for a moment, trying to take it all in.