Nate flew me back to Porto Velho in his PC-6, and from there I took a commercial jet back to DC by way of Miami. No one went with me. No one tied my hands or forced me at gunpoint, but I went anyway. I tried to miss my flight, or to get on a different one, or even to attack a security guard and get myself arrested, but it was no use. I could hardly bear to think about such attempts, never mind to actually accomplish them.
I was headed to deceive and betray my friends, and I knew it was wrong. Worse, it felt like the idea to do so came out of my own head. I had to keep reminding myself over and over again that it wasn’t me, that this wasn’t what I wanted, but it didn’t matter. When we landed in Miami, I tried to walk the opposite direction from my connecting flight, but all I managed to do was trip over my own feet and go sprawling. When I got up again, I walked twice as fast in the direction the fungus wanted me to go.
My mind surged with energy and alertness. There was no question of sleep. To distract myself on the flight, I bought a New York Times crossword puzzle omnibus from a book vendor, and by the time we landed at BWI I had all two hundred puzzles finished. I had never felt so capable, so in tune with the powers of my own intelligence.
The plane and the airport and the city—all the technology around me—no longer seemed like the edifices of human achievement but like cathedrals built on sand, impressive but ultimately doomed. Someday, I thought, even transcontinental flight would be accomplished without fossil fuels. I imagined giant winged composite creatures, a symbiotic mix of animal and plant and fungus, powered by photosynthesis, impelled by animal musculature, and controlled by a network of fungal hyphae. The humans of the future—or the post-humans who would be our descendants—would travel the globe on such phantasms.
I called Melody and told her I was coming back to work. I had called earlier and let her know I had found my dad. He hadn’t been kidnapped by McCarrick’s lab after all, he had just been lost and wandering and unable to remember how to get home. I did a pretty convincing job, I thought, of playing the worried and frantic son who had finally located his father. I returned to Fort Meade and greeted my team, hoping nobody would suspect the true reason for my absence.
“How’s your father?” Shaunessy asked.
“Sick,” I said. “I found him at the Arundel Mills Mall—that’s like seven miles from home. I’m lucky I didn’t find him in a ditch or hit by a car. The Alzheimer’s is finally tearing him apart. He doesn’t recognize anyone. I don’t think he even remembers he was lost, now that he’s back.” The lies flowed easily from my mouth, almost without thinking about them. In fact, I found myself picking up on cues from my teammates, subtle indicators of tone of voice and body language I never would have noticed before, which made it easy to manipulate them.
“I thought the fungus had reversed his Alzheimer’s,” Melody said.
I shrugged. “It’s a degenerative illness. My guess is the fungus forged new pathways for him to reach parts of his brain he’d lost connection to, which temporarily gave him back some memories and mental function. Ultimately, though, his neurons and synapses are being destroyed. They don’t come back again.”
Shaunessy squeezed my arm. “I’m really sorry,” she said.
I gave her a grateful smile. “Yeah, well. It’s been a long time in coming.”
I tried to tell them the truth. I opened my mouth to tell them I was infected, that they couldn’t trust me, that everything they said would be communicated directly to their enemy. But I couldn’t make the words come out. Just the attempt produced waves of terror and disgust that threatened to overwhelm me.
“Things have been happening fast here,” Melody said. She gave me a brief overview of the advance of the Ligados forces north from White Sands through Valencia County and the communities that hugged the Rio Grande. They moved slowly, not for lack of organization, but because they consisted mostly of foot soldiers—citizens of New Mexico who had succumbed to infection. US forces controlled all the major roadways into Albuquerque, with significant air support massed at the Santa Fe and Las Vegas airports, ready to rain fire down on the Albuquerque valley at the first sign of a Ligados offensive.
“Most of the nukes are at Kirtland,” Melody said, “but there are some at Los Alamos and at a few facilities in the desert around Sandia. We can’t afford for any of these to fall under Ligados control.”
I knew more than she did—knew, for instance, how many people in Albuquerque and even on the Kirtland base itself were already Ligados, and how quickly life as we knew it would fall apart if the Ligados took control, but I kept that knowledge to myself. The thought of a Ligados victory alternately made me feel ill and elated, but no matter what I thought, I couldn’t change my actions.
“So, are you free now?” Melody asked me. “Or are you still taking care of your father?”
“He’s with my sister in Ithaca now,” I said. “I’m here and ready to work.”
“Glad to hear it. Pack your bags, all of you. We’re going to Albuquerque.”
CHAPTER 31
On the plane, I slept. I dreamed I was locked in a cage, raging against my captors and battering helplessly against the bars. An imposter had stolen my identity and was living my life while I rotted in a dungeon, far from the world above. Worse, no one even knew I was gone.
When I woke, the sense of wrongness passed quickly. I felt comfortable and content with the fungus inside me, secure in the knowledge that when the time came, I would be told what to do. I tried to recall the urgency of the dream, but it slipped away like smoke.
I looked down at the new book of crossword puzzles I had brought with me on the plane. Scrawled across one of the puzzles were the words HELP I AM INFECTED. I had written them in my sleep. A shudder ran through me, and I glanced quickly at Shaunessy sitting in the seat next to me. She was engrossed in the novel in front of her, paying no attention to me. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t seen the message. I tore the page out of the crossword puzzle book, crumpled it, and stuffed it into the magazine pouch on the back of the seat in front of me.
My heart hammered against my chest and my hands shook. Almost. I had almost beaten it. I could do this. I could be as strong as my father had been and get a message out.
But I couldn’t. My rapid breathing subsided, my pulse slowed, and the feelings of fear and hatred faded back into contentment. That felt better. Why was I making this so hard on myself? There was no point in resisting, and I knew it. The fungus was going to win, no matter what we did. Far better to be on the winning side.
A few hours later, we landed at Albuquerque International Sunport, overshadowed by the Sandia Mountains to the east. The city stretched to our north, a flat grid of houses and roads converging on the towers and skyscrapers of the city center. To the south, all sign of human habitation disappeared abruptly in an expanse of sandy scrubland as far as the eye could see. It was from that direction that the Ligados would advance. Many would die, perhaps even myself among them, but that would hardly matter. We would live on.
The commercial airport shared its runways with Kirtland, an Air Force base that comprised a good portion of south Albuquerque, including blocks of living quarters for the airmen and their families, a movie theater, pharmacy, bowling alley, credit union, restaurants, fire station, dental clinic, and the Nuclear Weapons School. The base also extended well beyond the city into the apparently empty scrubland, where the Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage Complex held a significant percentage of the country’s nuclear arsenal.