I had arranged for my mom to pick me up at the airport. As I walked out into the ground transportation area, however, a different familiar face waited for me. Shaunessy.
“I told your mom I’d bring you home,” she said.
I used my good arm to lift my luggage into the trunk of her black Infiniti, and then joined her in the front seat. She pulled out and navigated the airport parking lot back toward the highway.
I knew it wouldn’t take long to reach my father’s house, so if I was going to talk with her, I would have to get right to it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You told me when Melody hired me that I would disregard the rules and screw things up. And I guess I did. I’m sorry I shot you. And I’m sorry you had to shoot me.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry about that,” she said. “It was a pleasure.”
I grinned. “Thanks. I don’t believe you, though. I put you in a position where you had to shoot your own teammate, with seconds to spare, and you did it. You came through. You saved the world, though I doubt many people will ever know it. You should be getting that medal, not me.”
“Maybe I’ll write a book when I retire,” Shaunessy said drily. “And just so you know, they’re giving me a medal, too.”
“Oh! Good. I’m glad. I mean, of course they are. You deserve it.”
“You didn’t think I would get one, did you?”
“No! I mean, yes. Well, I hoped they would.”
“Relax, I’m just messing with you,” she said, grinning. “Besides, they’ll give me the medal, but they’ll never let me write a book. Not about the good parts, anyway.”
A good portion of that final battle had been classified, with those people who were present sworn to secrecy. Since most of them were government employees of some stripe, and many were still under the influence of McCarrick’s strain of the fungus, it wasn’t hard to enforce. The US government didn’t want to admit the degree to which it had enslaved its own people to fight that war, nor how close we had come to detonating the nuclear arsenal.
“How are things in South America?” I asked.
“It’ll be years cleaning up that mess,” she said. “But the Ligados are slowly disbanding. As soon as the US threatened to bomb major cities with McCarrick’s spores, the Ligados reached the consensus opinion that symbiosis with humanity was ultimately toxic to the fungus, and it had a better chance for survival if it left us alone. We’ve been sending antifungals to the continent as fast as we can ship them. I’m sure there will be Ligados enclaves for years, holdouts who still believe that humanity is good for it, but their numbers are shrinking.”
“It’s a pity,” I said. “The fungus is good in some ways—increasing intelligence, curing neurological disorders. It’s a shame we can’t have the benefits without the problems.”
“Isn’t there any way?”
“Well, not directly. Allowing the fungus to grow in our brains means opening our minds to its emotional manipulation. But I heard there’s going to be a research facility of mycologists formed specifically to investigate that possibility.”
We pulled into my father’s neighborhood. “So what do you think will happen to all those people who attacked Albuquerque?” Shaunessy asked.
“I don’t think much of anything. The New Mexico government decided not to prosecute any of the Ligados, so long as they returned peaceably to their homes.”
“Seriously? All that destruction and violence, and they’re not arresting anybody?”
“The official stance, at this point,” I said, “is that actions committed while under the influence of the fungus were committed by a different person—by the fungus itself—and are not prosecutable. We’ll see if the civil courts uphold that opinion when the lawsuits start rolling in, but that’s the approach the Oval Office is promoting. They want their citizens to take their antifungals and reintegrate into their old lives, not try to imprison and prosecute thousands of them for something over which they had little to no control. They want things to go back to the way they were before.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Shaunessy said.
“What do you mean?”
“McCarrick’s spores. They’re still making them. Growing them by the billions, in case the Ligados rise up again, or there’s another major outbreak somewhere in the world. They talk about them as if they’re only for defense, but that seems naive.
“What happens when another country won’t do what we want? How long will diplomacy or even standard warfare last when we know we have the ultimate weapon in storage over at Fort Detrick and Walter Reed? We’ll have a way to force compliance without loss of American lives. And how long will it be before other countries or private parties start getting their hands on them? Pandora’s box has been opened, and there’s no closing it again. It’s going to change everything.”
We pulled up in front of my father’s house. “Thanks for the ride,” I said.
“No problem.”
“Hey, listen,” I said. “Do you want to go out and get drinks sometime? Maybe after work?”
She laughed, and then stopped when she saw that I was serious. “I forgive you for shooting me,” she said. “And I’ve gotten used to the idea of working with you. But I don’t see it becoming any more than that.”
I nodded, heat rising to my face. “See you Monday, then,” I said.
She popped the trunk, and as I lifted out my suitcase she got out of the car and came around the back to where I stood. She stuck out her hand. I shook it. “You’re a good man, Neil Johns,” she said. “I’ll see you Monday.”
“Monday,” I said.
I walked toward the house, still thinking about Shaunessy as her Infiniti backed up and pulled away. I couldn’t figure her out. I didn’t know if she liked me or hated me. But I was glad that, once again, we were on the same team.
I opened the door, and there was Mom, throwing herself at me in a fierce hug. “The arm!” I said, laughing. “Watch the arm!”
She examined the cast. “Does it hurt?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“Well, if someone tries to mug you, you’ll have a club to take them out,” she said. “Just don’t try to put your arm around a girl in a movie theater.”
I headed back toward the den and found my dad deep in thought over a crossword puzzle. I looked over his shoulder to check his progress. All of the blank spaces in the puzzle had been filled with the letter A.
He spotted me and shouted in fright, flinching away and covering his head with his arms. “Who are you?” he shouted. “Get out of my house!”
I stepped around the chair so he could see me more clearly. “It’s me, Dad,” I said.
He peered at me, suspicious. “Paul?”
“No. I’m Neil. I just flew home from New Mexico. Don’t you remember?”
He didn’t. Mom explained how quickly his awareness had declined once he started on the antifungals. He still took them religiously, remembering them even when he couldn’t recall whether he had eaten breakfast, but without the fungus, his mind had quickly reverted to its old patterns.
“He wrote you a letter,” my mom said. “When the antifungals first started taking effect, but before dropping back into the Alzheimer’s, he was lucid for a few hours. He wanted to leave you something.”
She handed me a handwritten letter. It was short and simple.
Neil. In case I can’t tell you in person, I’m sorry for what we did to you. I’m glad to have known you again, even for a short time. I’m proud to have a son in the NSA.
I folded it carefully and clutched it tightly in one hand. It was possibly the most precious thing anyone had ever given me. I wrapped my arms around my mom again and held her for a long time.