It would have to stay there, for now. He closed the door behind him and faced Rudy and Julia. Nodding, he led them deeper into the mall. There was no sign anyone had heard the gunshot or wanted to investigate it if they did. When he was sure they were in the clear, Chapel turned to Rudy and offered his hand.
“I’d rather have a kiss from her,” the vet said.
Julia had been lost in her own thoughts. She came to long enough to look him in the face. “How about a hundred dollars?” she asked.
“That works, too,” Rudy told her.
She handed over the money and then turned away, clearly not wanting to look at either of them for a while.
“Maybe we can do better than that,” Chapel said. “Rudy — I misjudged you, and I’m sorry. I thought you were just a drunk.”
“Probably because I told you I was, when we first met,” Rudy said. He had a sunny smile on his face. The hundred-dollar bill was already tucked away in one of his pockets. “I got no illusions. I’m an alcoholic, through and through.”
“You ever thought about changing that?” Chapel asked.
“Sometimes,” Rudy admitted. “The tough part’s getting started, though.”
Chapel nodded. He didn’t have time to help Rudy get to an AA meeting or a rehab facility. But he knew somebody who might. “I’ve got a friend. You’d like him — he’s a jarhead like you. Dumb as a box of rocks, but he’s got the heart of a bear.” He reached into his pocket and took out a scrap of paper and a pen. He wrote down Top’s name and phone number and handed it to the ex-marine. “Tell him a one-armed grunt gave you his name.”
Rudy stared at the slip of paper.
“No obligations,” Chapel said. “Just — if you want to talk to someone. Someone who gets it. Top’s your man.”
Rudy nodded and took the number. “Thank you kindly. But who’s this one-armed fellow I’m supposed to know?”
Chapel smiled. “Just say what I told you, and he’ll know who it is. Now, listen. I hate to be rude. Again. But—”
“But it’s best for all of us if I just walk away now and pretend I never saw you. That’s one thing us marines can actually figure out. When to keep our damned mouths shut,” Rudy agreed. He gave Chapel a mock salute, turned on his heel, and walked away.
Chapel sighed in relief. That could have gone much worse. He reached for Julia’s arm, but she pulled away from him. He could only imagine what she was going through. She’d probably never fired a pistol before. She’d certainly never tried to kill anybody before.
“Just talk to me,” he said. “Just tell me—”
“No,” she said, turning to face him. She drew herself up to her full height. Visibly composed herself. “You tell me. Tell me about this virus.”
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+28:44
Back at the motel he told her everything.
He had struggled with it in the cab ride back. He was duty bound not to reveal any of the limited information he had about the chimeras.
But she had a right to know.
He took the hands-free unit from his ear and buried it inside his jacket, along with his phone. Then he turned on the cold water tap in the bathroom. He didn’t want Angel to hear him talking about this. Not if he was going to be blunt about it. “The chimeras I’m chasing are escapees from a facility in the Catskills,” he told Julia, when he was sure he’d taken enough precautions. “They were held there a long time. Maybe all their lives. They were locked up not just because they’re so obviously dangerous, but because they are carriers for some kind of virus.”
“Like Typhoid Mary,” Julia suggested.
“Who?” Chapel asked.
Julia shook her head in disbelief. “You’ve never heard of her? She was a woman who lived in New York a hundred years ago. She was a carrier for typhoid fever — she never actually got the disease herself, but she worked as a cook for a number of families and everywhere she worked she ended up giving the disease to whoever ate her food. She refused to believe that she had the disease, since she didn’t show any symptoms.”
“What happened to her?” Chapel asked.
“Eventually she had to be quarantined. She spent the rest of her life — thirty years — on an island in the East River, all alone.”
Thirty years, Chapel thought. If Julia was locked up somewhere like that, she might live another fifty years. How long would the chimeras have lived if nobody let them out of their cage?
“This virus the chimeras are carrying—” Julia began.
“It’s why I’m so desperate to catch them. It’s why this is so important that some people are willing to kill over it.”
“Yes. I grasped that part already,” Julia said. She sat up very straight on the end of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. “Is it airborne?”
“No. It can only be passed on through exchange of body fluids.”
“That’s not as comforting as it sounds,” she said, and the look on her face must have been the one while explaining to her clients how distemper or kennel cough worked. “Diseases vary in how difficult they are to pass on — HIV, for instance, is actually very difficult to transmit, that’s why it mostly spreads through sex and blood transfusions. Other bloodborne illnesses are much more robust. For some of them a chimera could sneeze on someone, or spit on them, and transmit it. What disease are we talking about? Some kind of flu? A retrovirus? Ebola?”
“I don’t know. It’s classified.”
Julia frowned. “Classified. They didn’t even tell you that much?”
“Just that it’s hard to detect, and that there is no cure or vaccine.”
“Fuck,” Julia said.
“But you don’t have it,” Chapel told her.
“I don’t? How do you know that? You haven’t taken any blood or tissue samples that I’m aware of. Maybe while I was sleeping, but I imagine I would have noticed that.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you without your knowledge.”
She sighed. “Then how can you possibly know I’m not infected, Chapel?”
“I just do. Your contact with the chimera was minimal. He didn’t bite or scratch you when you were in that cab, and—”
“He manhandled me. Something could have happened. Why did you keep this from me? I thought Laughing Boy was just a homicidal lunatic. There seemed to be a lot of that going around! I had no idea this was a public health issue. Chapel — what if I kissed Rudy, like he wanted? I could have given it to him. Shit — I did kiss you, and more.”
“I had contact with the chimera as well. And I know I don’t have it,” Chapel told her.
“Good God, Chapel! Either of us could have given it to the other. Oh, God — why didn’t I wait at least until we had some condoms? I was so caught up in the moment. I didn’t even think about STDs, much less this! Chapel, what if I had it, and you didn’t, but I gave it to you this morning? Huh? What if it was the other way around? What if you gave it to me when you made love to me?”
Chapel’s mouth fell open. That was — that was a horrible thought. That was beyond thinking about. “But we don’t have it,” he insisted.
“How can you know that for sure?”
“Because I would feel it. I would know somehow!”
She stared at him. “You do know I have some medical training, right? I mean, I’ve patched you up a couple of times now. They call me Doctor Taggart. I went to school for this. I know exactly how easy these things spread. I’m going to go out on a limb here. The chimeras didn’t just pick this up naturally, did they?”
“No. The virus is human engineered,” Chapel confirmed.
“You mean weaponized,” she said.
The word hung in the air like the first drops of rain before a hurricane hits.