By the time most people began to appreciate the enormity of the threat, it was too late.
The CDC's initial approach to containment was an influenza model, which proved ineffective. First off, folks with influenza know they're sick and so do the people around them; secondly, flu victims feel lousy and just want to get better. For Hive folk the infection's a party and the more the merrier.
And they were everywhere, contaminating water supplies, infiltrating food processing plants and dairy farms. People became afraid to eat anything they hadn't heated to a boil or prepared themselves.
As he pushes along the sidewalks, Jack wonders as he often does about his sister. Kate exited his life as quickly as she'd entered it. He searched for her but she stayed on the move, spreading the virus with the rest of the Hive vanguard, and he never caught up with her. But just last week he tried calling her office in Trenton and learned she was back in practice. She'd refused to take his call and he'd hung up sick at heart. He thinks of Kate as a pediatrician, with trusting parents, fearing their children might become infected, bringing them to her to be vaccinated against the virus. And Kate making sure if they aren't infected when they enter her office they damn sure are when they leave. All it takes is plain saline in the vaccine syringes and a little of the virus on the tongue depressors…
The thought of Kate betraying those children, breaking her oath to do no harm, negating the decent caring person she once was fills Jack with impotent rage. He wants to hurt, maim, kill, make someone pay, but how do you even a score with a virus?
He wonders if he should take a ride down to Trenton and… do something. But what? Put down the fouled thing that used to be his sister? The old Kate, the real Kate would want him to do that. Beg him to.
But can he? Take a bead on his own sister—even if she's not really his sister anymore—and pull the trigger? Can't imagine that.
Jack picks up his pace as he nears his block. Two old cars are parked nose to nose, blocking the near end of the street; he knows two more junkers are similarly situated at the far end—knows because the whole setup was his idea. Sometime last month he went door to brown-stone door talking—usually at a safe distance through windows or from the sidewalk—to neighbors he'd never bothered to meet despite years on the block, planting the idea of the block sealing itself off. Someone with better people skills picked up the ball and organized the residents, breaking the watch into shifts. Now no outsider enters the block unless accompanied by a resident.
Jack nods to a guy he knows only as George, standing behind one of the cars with a sawed off twelve gauge resting against a thigh. As George waves him through, an NYPD blue-and-white goes by, two cops in the front. Passenger cop's gaze lingers on Jack and George, then slides by. Can't miss the Glock or the sawed-off, but he doesn't react. The tattered remnants of officialdom are no longer worried about armed citizenry—the unseen danger of the virus is a far greater threat to the city. And besides, not enough police to go around as it is. They were the Hive's first target: call the cops out to a domestic dispute, infect them, then form a fifth column within the ranks to infect the rest. Uninfected cops stayed home until the blood tests were developed.
The vaccine and the blood tests—cheap little home kits, like pregnancy tests—are the final fingers in the dam against rising tide of the Hive. If they should fail…
Jack drag-bounces the cart to his third-floor apartment—his fortress islet within the atoll of his closed-off block—and knocks on the door; he has a key but Gia's so edgy these days he figures it'll go easier on her nerves if he doesn't just barge in.
"Oh, Jack!" he hears her say through the door, and he knows she's got her eye to the peep lens, but he detects a strange note in her voice. Something's up.
And when she opens the door and he sees her red eyes and tear-streaked face, he knows it.
"What's wrong?"
She pulls him inside, leaving the cart in the hall, and closes the door.
"The test!" she sobs. "Vicky and I—we're positive!"
Jack's heart drops. Gia's been obsessed with the virus, and rightly so, to the point where she's been testing the three of them every day. Jack's been buying kits by the gross, figuring if it gives her peace of mind, then fine, do it twice a day if you want.
But in the back of his mind he's always dreaded the possibility of this moment: the false positive.
"No." His tongue is an arid plain. "No, that can't be. There's got to be a mistake!"
She's shaking her head, fresh tears spilling onto her cheeks. "I just repeated it. Same result."
"Then it's a bad batch."
"Same batch as yesterday."
Jack can't accept this. He moved them here so he could protect them, keep them safe. They've been under his wing, rarely leaving the apartment.
The sick feeling in his stomach worsens as an appalling thought hits him like a runaway train: Is it my fault? Did I bring it home?
"Do it again," he says. "All three of us this time."
Gia nods and wipes her eyes. "Okay." She turns and calls, "Vicky!"
"What?" says a little girl's voice from one of the back rooms.
"Come in here for a minute, okay?"
"But I'm watching a movie!"
"You've seen that movie a hundred times already. Come here just for a second, okay?"
"The Parent Trap again?" Jack says, trying to look cheerful as Vicky mopes in.
"And I was just at the good part where they find out they're sisters!"
"That the nice thing about videos—you can stop them any time and pick up later right where you left off."
Gia has seated herself at Jack's rolltop. "Let me have your finger, Vickie."
A groan, an eye roll. "Not again!"
"Come on. One more time. Jack's doing it this time too."
"Oh, okay."
She walks over to Gia and presents her finger, flinches as her mother stabs the tip with a microlancet, and allows a drop of blood to be milked onto the circle of absorptive paper in the center of the test kit card.
"There," Gia says with a smile Jack knows is forced. "Was that so bad?"
"No. Can I see my movie now?"
"Sure."
As Vicky hurries off, sucking her tiny wound, Gia's trembling fingers squeeze a drop of reagent from its bottle onto the bloodied circle. She glances at her watch, puts the card aside, and looks up at Jack.
"Your turn."
Jack allows his finger to be subjected to the same ritual. Barely feels the prick. Soon his blood sample is doused in reagent and waiting for ten minutes to pass.
And Gia's makes three.
The wait feels interminable, with Gia pacing back and forth, rubbing her hands as if scrubbing them, a beautiful young blond Lady Macbeth working at a stubborn stain. Jack opens his mouth twice to say something, anything to soothe her raw nerves, but can't think of a damn thing that isn't lame or inane.
Finally she looks at her watch and says, "Time." But she doesn't move. "Jack… will you? I can't… I just…"
"Sure, Gi."
Jack steps to the desk, flips the three cards over and, carefully maintaining their sequence, lifts the rear panels. One by one, the flip side of the absorbent paper is revealed, and around the blood spots on the first and third cards… a blue halo. Around the second, only a ring of moisture.