Latency period between infection and symptom onset 2–4 days; immuno-compromised develop to termination in as few as one day total. Plainville growing more destructive to blood in final stages, breaking down platelets and albumin, flooding organs with mush. Virus in constant flux. I.S. excited to overload, profound autoimmune response. Symptomatological spiral Win 2–4 days, to termination w/in 4–6 days total. Cause of death: grand mal seizure or pulmonary edema, if no opportunistic injection — pneumonia, staph, septicemia, others. Transmission via: blood contact, respiration, urine spatter, w/trace survival in sputum, saliva — even tears. 1. How, in limited exposure, do dramatic genetic mutations still occur — all virus-beneficial? (Still no link to previous outbreaks, and no spread outside hospitaclass="underline" Luck?? Missing something??) And 2. How to account for P-ville growing more virulent AND more deadly at same time? Unprecedented.
The only bright points of the outbreak were the prognoses of two of the four patients, the ones receiving the MILKMAID sera protocol. Astonishingly, each appeared to be successfully staving off the effects of full-blown Plainville. Equally provocative was the attention paid this development in the reporting materials generated by the Special Pathogens Section: none. I established a new file on my personal tablet, “Investigation.Maryk,” and copied into it all information relevant to the mystery sera, including the budget discrepancies and Peter’s dummied reports.
At midmorning, a blistering headache overtook me. I medicated myself with caffeine and vitamins and successive half liters of water from my office kitchen suite. It was lack of sleep, certainly; I was exhausted but unable to nap or even sit still. This deficit also seemed to affect my thinking. It was as though time were unraveling. The pain soon faded and I felt much improved; in truth, I felt relieved.
An hour later I experienced a sensation like ice water being poured down the back of my neck. The chills that followed straightened me in my office chair and held me rigid through deepening waves of nausea as papers slipped from my grasp to the floor and my gloved hands began to quiver, the trembling soon spreading to my arms and legs. My neck muscles cramped until I could no longer move my head, and I began to panic. I was tipped back and could only see the ceiling lights, quaking and bluffing in my view. I tried to yell for help but the sound was trapped in my throat. Eventually the spasms subsided, releasing me, my tendons aching as though run through with needles. I used my desk to stand. Crushing head pain lingered as I reached for my tablet. At the door I righted myself I practiced speaking in the event that I encountered anyone, then exited unseen and unmet down a fire stairwell to the parking lot.
I rode out in search of the highway. Steering was difficult but manageable and I sustained a kind of equilibrium by keeping my arms low in my lap and my timorous hands light on the wheel. The joints in my elbows and knees and ankles felt like eggshells slowly breaking open. But overall the driving seemed to help. It was as though I were seated just behind myself, my arms and hands pushed through the empty shirtsleeves; of a puppet operating a car. Cruise control was set at sixty miles per hour, and I can remember a red lap-belt light winking at me from the instrument panel. I remained on the highway, not heading home, instead turning north onto Interstate 85 and finding myself soon leaving Georgia, pushing ahead through South Carolina and into North Carolina. I drove on and on, trapped in a dream. I concentrated on the road lines flowing past and found it oddly soothing to be in the middle lane of the great American highway, flowing forth as though on a raft, the cars on either side of me passing and receding, passing and receding.
At one point my tablet chirped on the seat next to me, but rather than answer it, I managed to open the screen and deactivate the Hailing function so that it would not bother me again. I needed only to drive, and not to think.
I slowed only for tolls, which detected the government vehicle and debited the appropriate fee. I feared stopping, certain that it would kill my momentum, but the drive was longer than I could bear. Somewhere in Maryland I pulled off into a service area, parked in the last space, turned off the engine and lay a while sideways across the front seats. I do not believe I slept. After a while I sat up again, feeling watched. I refueled at the service station but did not get out of the car or even roll down my window.
The pain in my head expanded with a force that was nearly crippling, until all at once it was gone, replaced only by a dull ringing tone. The veins in my extremities all throbbed; it had been some time since I had actually felt the wheel beneath my hands. Still, on I drove. I piloted the last leg of the journey slumped against the armrest, too weak to sit up on my own.
Finally I was off the highway and circling Manhattan, its towers looming in my window. I turned off and continued on the road toward Long Island, knowing then that I was heading home.
I reached the familiar town of Amagansett and drifted along the old streets out to the shore. The mailbox and the driveway. Flagstones curling to the brick steps. The door with the golden horse head knocker, and at once I was inside the great house: cavernous, dreamlike, dark. The chandelier was gone from the foyer, a chain and bare copper wire hanging insolently from the high cathedral ceiling. Pale dust outlines of removed frames marked the walls, the remaining furniture draped in thick plastic — all things I should have taken care of after my mother’s funeral. I felt my way along the walls to the kitchen, empty and quiet. In the cabinet over the sink, four or five glasses stood mouths-down, orphans of mismatched sets. I reached for a plastic tumbler of swirling colors, which to me signified summertime in the late 1980s, Hawaiian Punch and television laughter from the back porch, sand in my sandwiches and fireflies winking at night. The faucet spat pockets of air, then garbled brown water, then flowed clear. It hurt very much to swallow. There was something wrong with the mechanics of my throat.
I gripped my tablet to my chest and took the tumbler of water and started up the stairs. The task was daunting and I rested frequently, slumping with one knee against the next highest step, the handrail always seeming to twist just out of reach. I gripped the side wall and water shook out of the tumbler and over my gloved hand down to my forearm.
I mounted the top landing and sat there sweating, huffing, leaning on my elbow on the familiar beige carpet. The tumbler was empty now and I let it go. Fatigue overcame me. Something told me that if I did not move now, I might never move again.
I found the railing and hauled myself up, legs bandy and reluctant to respond. I felt sick to my stomach. Bathroom or bedroom: a choice. I lurched toward my old bedroom, striking the doorjamb with my shoulder and knee, and feeling neither. My view of the room faded, a strange pressure behind my eyes sparking silver phosphenes that showered and bloomed. I stumbled inside, fumbling the tablet onto a small writing desk and falling across the twin bed, sizzling against the cold plastic wrap beneath me. I shrugged and pulled and eventually dumped the sheeting out onto the floor, and lay on my back on the bare mattress as the room filled with viscous glitter. The room smelled exactly as I remembered. It smelled of the sea.
Later I awoke to a roaring noise in a room of bare walls, a bureau, an empty bookcase, a child’s desk: my old summer room in Amagansett. Three trophies, small golden boys standing poised to dive, remained atop the low bureau, swimming awards, the smallest for holding my breath underwater the longest.
I looked through the skylight in the ceiling above. This was a wonderfully clear dream with no queer subconscious filters, no anomalous intrusions from other places, or other times. I was a boy again, back in my room at the old summer house, and life was bright and new. Everything lay ahead of me; nothing behind. I closed my eyes and rode out the sensation of somersault after somersault, backward, feet following head, and then changed direction at will, rolling forward and deeper, forward and deeper.