Jack closes his eyes and feels the room rock around him.
Can't be. This isn't happening. Got to be a mistake. We've all been vaccinated, we all eat the same, drink the same, and I'm the one who's in and out, I'm the one with all the exposure. It should be me, not them.
He opens his eyes and looks again, begging for a different outcome. But nothing has changed: two positives flanking a negative.
Gia is staring at him. "Well?"
Jack swallows. "Positive." His voice is a hoarse rasp. He quickly gathers up the cards. "All three."
"Oh, Jack," Gia sobs, floating toward him. "Not you too!"
She flings herself against him and they stand there clinging to each other, Gia weeping, Jack's throat too tight to speak.
He crumples the test cards in his fist. Can't let Gia know. If she learns he's negative she'll blame Vicky's infection on the only other person the child could have caught it from: her. She'll never accept that she could have caught it from Vicky. Gia will assume all the guilt, and it will crush her.
And Jack's negative will open a gulf between them—she'll recede from him, fearing that a kiss, a caress, even a word spoken too close will infect him, and Jack couldn't bear that, not now, not when she needs him most.
"Christ, I'm so sorry, Gia," he manages. "I must have brought it home."
"But how can that be? We took every precaution. And the vaccine…"
"Doesn't work. That's been the word on the street lately. Now we know it's true."
She buries her face against his chest and sobs again. "Vicky… I can't bear the thought…"
"I know," he says, pulling her closer against him and feeling a sob building his own throat at the thought of Gia and Vicky becoming meat puppets controlled by the Hive. "I know."
What now? he asks himself, trying to corral his panicked, skittering thoughts. What can I do?
He hasn't heard of anyone beating this infection. But that doesn't mean no one ever will. There's always a chance for a breakthrough, for a wild card.
Look at me—I should be infected but I'm not. Maybe that means something. But how to find out?
Abe. Abe knows everything.
He releases Gia and looks her in the eye. "It's not over."
"What do you mean?"
"When I was talking to Abe yesterday he mentioned something about a new breakthrough."
"The days of breakthroughs are gone," she says dully.
"Gia, if there's anything in the pipeline, anything at all, Abe will have a line on it. I'll call him right now."
He grabs the cell phone and punches in Abe's number, something in the past he never would have considered doing, but a lot has changed in five months. He waits through a dozen rings—Abe doesn't believe in answering machines—then tries again. Still no answer. Abe's always in this time of day. Maybe he's in one of his black, ignore-the-phone moods. He's been having more of those lately.
"Looks like I'm going to have to go see him," Jack says. He doesn't want to leave Gia but time is critical. The fact that they've just turned positive means she and Vicky are in the early stages. If something can be done, the sooner the better. "I won't be gone long. You'll be okay?"
Gia nods wordlessly.
"Gia," he says, taking her by the shoulders, "we're going to beat this." And he knows he sounds like a hack actor in a bad soap opera but he can't stand seeing her like this. He's got to give her some hope. "Have I ever let you down?"
"Jack…" she says, and she sounds so tired. "This is different. This isn't something your methods can fix. The best scientific minds in the world have tackled this and they've all come up empty. Every time they think they have a solution, like the vaccine, the virus mutates. So what can you do?"
And when she puts it like that, what can he say? No reason to think he can offer Gia and Vicky a chance when the big brains can't. But still he's undeterred.
"Maybe I suffer from terminal hubris. And maybe I can't stand by and just let this happen. I've got to do something."
He doesn't say that guilt has pretty much taken him over. He brought Gia and Vicky here to protect them, but the bug got to them anyway. So even if it's not his fault, he feels responsible.
"Then do it," Gia says, without a hint of enthusiasm, "but don't expect me to hope, Jack, because as much as I want to, I can't. I'm looking at the end of everything I am and you are and whatever we might have been, and the strangulation of everything Vicky could be."
"We're not through yet."
"Yeah, we are. Our futures end in a few days. If it was death, I could accept that—at least for myself. But this is a living death… and…"
Her voice trails off, and her gaze slips off Jack and settles somewhere in space.
Jack has never seen her like this. What's happened to her indomitable spirit? It's as if the virus has already changed her, reached inside somehow and snuffed out an essential spark.
He holds her in his arms again and kisses her forehead. "Don't write us off. I'm going over to Abe's and see what he knows." He releases her and backs toward the door. "I should be back in an hour or so. I'll call if I'm going to be any later. Okay?"
Gia nods absently. "I'll be here. Where else can I go?"
Jack turns at the door and sees her standing in the middle of his front room, looking like a lost soul. And that's so un-Gia he has second thoughts about leaving. But he's got to see Abe. If there's any cause for hope, Abe will know.
Free of the cart this trip, Jack makes good time through the empty streets toward Amsterdam Avenue, not sure if he is fleeing the dark reality of his apartment or running toward a ray of hope. Soon he is standing before the Isher Sports Shop. The lights are on inside but the front door is locked. That's not right. He bangs on the glass but Abe doesn't appear.
Worried now—for years Abe has been a heart attack waiting to happen—Jack pulls out the defunct Visa card he keeps in his wallet for moments like this. Looks up and down the street, sees no one near enough to matter, and uses it to slip the door's latch. Abe's never devoted much effort to protecting his street-level stock, but it would take a Sherman tank to get into his basement.
"Abe?" he calls as he steps inside, relocking the door behind him. "Abe, it's Jack. You here?"
Silence… and then high-pitched cheeping as something pale blue flutters overhead. Parabellum, Abe's parakeet. Abe always cages the bird when he leaves, so he must be here.
Jack's apprehension intensifies as he heads for the rear, toward the counter where he and Abe have spent so many hours talking, solving the problems of the world time and again. And then as he rounds a corner piled high with hockey sticks and the counter hoves into view, he stumbles to a halt at the sight of all the red—the counter puddled with it, the wall behind splattered.
"No," Jack whispers.
Gut in a knot, he forces himself forward. Not Abe. Can't be Abe.
But who else's blood can this be?
He creeps toward the counter, edges around the side, looks behind—
It's Abe, on his back, white shirt glistening crimson, head cocked at a crazy angle, throat a ragged hole, torn away by a blast from the sawed-off shotgun lying by his knees.
Jack spins away, doubles over, sick. He doesn't vomit but wishes he could. Rage steadies him. Who did this? Whoever tried to make this look like a suicide didn't know Abe, because Abe would never…
After a while Jack straightens, staggers to the back of the store, finds an old tarp, and drapes it over Abe's body.
The blood… still so wet… couldn't have happened more than twenty, thirty minutes ago.
If only I'd left a few minutes earlier I might have been here in time to…
And then he sees something on the far corner of the counter. The square of a virus test kit. He steps closer. A used kit… and the blue halo says it's positive.
Jack sags against the counter. "Aw, Abe."