Duncan, with both a medical degree and a PhD in microbiology, was quite likely the most brilliant man she had ever known. She was puzzled that this brilliant man could believe in things without evidence and apply the scientific method all day at work, then abandon it when it came to his own fundamental beliefs.
Her father had been the same. He’d been a devout Catholic his entire life and read History of the Saints and the New Testament to her as bedtime stories when she was three years old. She particularly enjoyed History of the Saints, the stories of men and women of conviction who were ready to die in the most gruesome ways for their faith. She could think of few things-in fact nothing-that inspired as much passion as faith. The whole thing was an enigma to her. Religious thinking seemed to be declining in the Western world, with only five percent of Europeans attending church and the number of regular attendees declining in the United States. Societies had been religious for so long-for the entire existence of mankind, in fact-that she couldn’t decide how the complete abandonment of religion would impact society. She could think of only two possibilities: enlightenment or anarchy.
“It’s right up here, Dr. Bower,” the driver said.
The jeep came to a stop, and she stepped out as the rough halt roused Duncan. A metal trailer, much like the one Dr. Olsen had occupied with his equipment and surgical room, was set up for them. As they stepped inside, the driver got out boxes of pre-wrapped syringes filled with the vaccine. He placed them down near some chairs and glanced at both of them. “Good luck.”
When they were alone, Duncan sat down. He seemed tired and uncertain of what they should be doing.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” he said.
“I know.”
“So if it doesn’t, we’re injecting these people with replicating poxvirus.”
“I know,” she said softly.
He exhaled. “What a mess. I can’t believe it’s come to this. We have to potentially kill several hundred people to see if we can save several billion.” He leaned back in the chair. “I read an account once from a historian that was alive during the Plague of Justinian in Constantinople. He said the levies holding back flooding waters broke because the people that maintained them had grown sick. And when they broke, the city was flooded. Sitting by his window, he watched the bodies float down his street. He said the city was choked with corpses to the point that people felt like they couldn’t breathe…”
“And it faded away, Duncan. At some point, this will fade away, too.”
“In the meantime, before the plague faded away, it changed the course of history and killed five thousand people a day. And this pathogen is more contagious. I’m no big-government nut, by any means, but I’m not sure I’m against all this.” He waved his hand around the trailer. “We’re not talking a few thousand or even a hundred thousand deaths, Sam. We’re talking about the end of civilization.”
“And so because of that risk, we throw out our values, our beliefs? We toss them to try and have a little more safety? It’s not worth it. I’d rather die out than live in Stalinist Russia. That type of life isn’t life at all.”
He rubbed his temples. “Maybe any life is better than no life.”
Before she could respond, a middle-aged blond woman in a purple shirt appeared at the door.
“I was brought here for the vaccine,” she said. “I was told to get it here.”
Sam glanced at Duncan, then told the woman, “Come in and roll up your sleeve, please.”
27
Ian waited around the corner after ramming the Audi into the car full of boys. No police or ambulances arrived since no one’s cell phone worked. He took out his own, connected to a private server, and connected directly with the hospital. After giving them the address, he walked away with a limp because his knee had butted into the dash.
The building he had come for wasn’t more than a mile away. He watched the cars pass him as he limped down the sidewalk, until he came across a pharmacy. Inside, the pharmacist and a tech were behind the counter, trying to get their Internet connections to work.
Ian went to an empty aisle and pulled down his pin-striped trousers. His injured knee wasn’t bleeding at all, which signified an internal injury. It felt a bit as if he’d torn his ACL or MCL. But he didn’t have time for that. He grabbed two ACE bandages and wrapped them tightly around the knee.
He left the store and headed farther down the street, to the building he was searching for. He didn’t have to double-check the list. He had memorized every name and address.
The building was almost a skyscraper, with maybe fifteen or sixteen stories. On the tenth floor was a man named Gabriel Vega, a Mexican national who worked for the United Nations and was only in Los Angeles for a brief meeting with officials from the consulate.
Ian hobbled inside. Flowers decorated the dark-wood-paneled lobby, and the elevators were chrome. An older security guard sitting next to them looked up.
“Can I help y-”
Two slugs entered his left eye, the second following the first almost perfectly, breaking through the back of his skull with a dull thump as he toppled over his chair. The elevator dinged, and Ian stepped on and glanced up at the mirrored ceiling as it began to rise.
How many elevators like this have I been in? he wondered. How many people above him were living their lives in total obliviousness while death quietly drifted up to them? That their decisions had led to a visit from him was an odd thought to consider. From the moment they were born, they were making choices, and their choices brought him to them. The truly interesting question was whether someone was riding an elevator up for him.
The doors opened on the tenth floor, where he got out. Elegant lights were spaced in the hallway, and the carpet was a pure white, without a trace of dirt. And a unique thing for this city, it had no smell-no exhaust, no perfume, no warm garbage, or sweat. The place was odorless and lifeless.
He found the apartment he wanted and knocked. Footsteps came from inside, then the door opened. An elderly Hispanic man, perhaps as old as eighty or eighty-five, answered the door.
“I’m looking for Gabriel,” Ian said.
“Who are you?” the man replied in heavily accented English.
“A friend. My name’s Ian.”
He was silent a moment. “You’re a friend of my grandson’s?”
“Yes.”
“Gabriel, venir aqui.”
“Que?” A young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven came to the door.
Ian eyed him up and down. “Are you Gabriel?”
“Yeah.”
“You work at the consulate? On cross-border epidemiological issues?”
He gave his grandfather a quizzical glance and said, “Yes.”
Ian lifted the pistol and fired into the boy’s chest. It threw him back against the wall, leaving a smear of blood all the way down as he slid to the floor. The grandfather’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t have time for much more of a reaction. Ian slammed his elbow into the old man’s throat, crushing the windpipe, and then swept his feet out from under him. The old man fell so hard, Ian heard his delicate bones crack as they broke. He stepped over him, leaving the grandfather gasping for breath on his back like an injured turtle, and shut the door behind him.
Ian fired one more round into the boy’s heart to be sure he was dead and went farther in to the apartment. One bedroom was a master decorated with furniture that was at least thirty years too old. The other was decorated with baseball caps and sports memorabilia. Ian walked into this one and glanced around.