IGMS Issue 10 Read online

  I spoke to my contacts at CDC, and here's what they tell me: It's a radical mutation of Marburg. Airborne, highly contagious, irregular latency and nearly 100% fatal. They're not even sure of the mechanism yet, except that it causes hemorrhagic bleeding.

  The governor says they have it under control, that the new, stricter quarantines will stop it, but she's lying. This will get much worse before it gets better. Stay in Vermont, and stay safe.

  -- H.L.

  Dr. L isn't normally such an alarmist.

  The next morning, Michael Decker calls. (He's the college sophomore I met in Dr. L's class, the one with transparent arm hairs.) Two people at his father's office have come down with the virus, and his mother's all panicked. When she found out he knew me, and that we have this fort in Vermont, she begged him to call. So I invite him and his parents to come stay with us at the fort.

  I find my father outside, caulking the kitchen window frame, and I tell him. He reacts like I expected.

  "No. They're not coming. This is our safe place."

  "I've already invited them."

  "Call them back. Un-invite them."

  "They're not infected, Dad," I say. "Michael's father wasn't directly exposed."

  He scrapes away an ivy stem, then squirts a caulk line down the window's vertical edge. Thick and straight. "You don't know that," he says. "They might be lying. I'm not risking our safety for some family I don't know."

  He's right, of course, about me not really knowing, but I'm not backing down. Not this time.

  "Mom would have."

  His finger's clench, and a glob of caulk squirts out of the gun, dribbles down to his hand. He curses, tosses the gun aside and turns on me.

  A dog whimpers behind us, and we both turn. Chase and Stevie are standing ten feet away, leaning against each other. Stevie's hands are covered with dirt from digging up dandelions, and he's staring at us, eyes wide.

  My father grabs my arm, smearing caulk onto my elbow, and pulls me across the porch away from Stevie.

  Eventually, he compromises. The Deckers can come, but they will have to stay in the barn, quarantined, for the next ten days.

  In the afternoon, my father sets up the quarantine. He drags three mattresses, a crate of food, and twenty gallons of water into the barn. He paints a red circle on the grass around the barn, a boundary, using up two cans of spray paint. He sticks a post in the driveway, at the edge of the red circle, and tacks a laminated note onto it. On top of the post, he leaves my mother's silver dinner bell.

  When the Deckers arrive a few hours later, my father has Stevie and I locked inside the house. I watch from my bedroom window, upstairs.

  The Deckers pull their Lexus wagon up to the post and get out and stretch. Mr. Decker finds the laminated note, reads it, then shows it to Mrs. Decker. He's gesturing furiously, pointing at our house. Mrs. Decker rubs her hand on his shoulder. Michael ambles over, glances at the note, shrugs, and starts carrying suitcases to the barn.

  I decide to pay them a visit.

  After dinner, when my father's out patrolling the perimeter in his Land Rover, I bring a pan of brownies to the bell post and read the note. It's quarantine rules, and they're pretty onerous. The Deckers are supposed to stay inside the red circle at all times. If they need something, they must call, and my father will drop it off at the post and ring the bell. For a bathroom, they're to use the stream behind the barn. If they violate any of these rules, the sheet says, they'll be forced to leave.

  I ring the bell then dash across the red line to the barn door. When Mrs. Decker opens it, I jump inside and pull the door shut behind me.

  The "barn" is really more of a fancy tool shed. It's a single room with a cork-wood floor, double doors in front and back, and shelving around the sides holding tools and lawn care stuff. There are windows with screens, and power outlets with fans attached. We've never kept animals in it, not even Chase, so it doesn't smell like anything. All things considered, it won't be such a terrible place to spend ten days.

  Mrs. Decker gasps when I jump inside, puts her hand on her chest. "You must be Rachel."

  I nod.

  "Aren't you supposed to stay away from us?"

  Mrs. Decker is a round woman with thick, wavy hair coated with a type of blond dye that sparkles under a scope.

  "Yeah, well, I don't always follow my father's rules."

  She winks at me, then points at the pan in my arms. "What do you have there?"

  "Brownies. To welcome you."

  "How sweet!" Mrs. Decker takes the pan. "See Hal," she says, "they've brought us brownies."

  Mr. Decker is sitting against a side wall, in front of a makeshift desk he's built from two suitcases, his legs in a yoga pretzel. He grunts at her, but doesn't look up. Mrs. Decker sighs and carries the brownies to the opposite wall, where she's arranged the food crate and water bottles into a makeshift kitchen.

  Michael sits with his back propped against the rear double door. His long legs stick out in front of him, the bottoms of his bare feet pointing at me. His thick, curly hair is uncombed and flops over his forehead. He's wearing a BU sweatshirt and expensive jeans with holes in them.

  "Hey Michael," I say.

  He looks up, gives me a half wave, then looks back down. He's reading a thin paperback entitled "Community Manifesto," or something like that. I can't fully make it out.

  I turn to Mr. Decker. He stares at a laptop propped on top of his pile of suitcases. He's got a narrow head with a tuft of black hair on top, like Bert from Sesame Street. He's much older than Mrs. Decker, so the hair is probably frayed and fuzzy under 25x.

  "Can you get wireless with that?" I ask, pointing at his laptop.

  He looks up, blinking. "Supposedly, but there's no signal. Hard to believe there are still blind spots."

  "We've got WiFi through our satellite, but you need a special key to see it." I give him the key. He types it in and buries his face in the computer.

  I glance once more at Michael . . . and catch him staring at me. I smile at him and slip back outside.

  That night, just after 1:00 a.m., I awake to a thumping sound on the wall outside my bedroom. I turn on the bed light and stick my head out the window. Michael is standing on the ground below, tossing one of Chase's tennis ball against the outside of the house. He's dressed in the same jeans and sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up over his elbows.

  "Are you crazy?" I whisper-scream. "If my father sees you out here, he'll kill you!"

  Michael stands politely, one hand behind his back, the other holding the tennis ball. "I read on CNN.com that there was a solar flare today," he says. "We might be able to see the Northern Lights."

  "I've been to Alaska and Iceland," I say. "I've seen lots of aurora."

  Michael pulls his hand out from behind his back. He's holding a rectangular bottle of some kind of alcohol. He shakes it in front of him, making the liquid slosh.

  "I'll be right down." It seemed the clever thing to say.

  I put my fleece jacket over my nightshirt, slip into my sandals, and turn off the bed light. I then lower myself out the window, climbing backwards down the ivy trestle. About halfway down, my shirt gets caught on a loose nail, yanking it up over my waist, giving Michael a square-on view of my butt. I quickly unhook the shirt and jump the rest of the way down.

  "Full moon tonight," says Michael, and takes a swig from his bottle. I act all embarrassed, but truth be told, I'm not.

  I steer Michael to the path behind the barn, the one that leads uphill to the apple orchard. We've had a wet spring, so the blue spikes are already in full bloom. They line the path, nearly three feet high, looking gray and spooky in the moonlight, like sentries. The mosquitoes are out as well, feasting on Michael's and my exposed arms and necks. He slaps at them but doesn't complain.

  Before tonight, I've only talked to Michael three times: twice during labs in Dr. L's class, and once for half an hour while waiting for the Green Line on Comm Ave. He knows that I'm in high school, that I m
et Dr. L in an honors program a few years ago; I know that he's a sociology major, that he's the VP of a student group that protests genetic engineering, and that he's taking Dr. L's class to bone up on the basics. He invited me to a college party once, but I was watching Stevie that night, so I passed.

  As we climb, Michael launches into his theory of the virus outbreak. He claims that the big pharmas were doing illegal research in Africa, and accidentally released the virus. "They've got a vaccine ready," he says, "but they're waiting until it spreads more before they start selling it."

  It's total bullshit, of course, but he seems so eager to convince me, and I like listening to him talk, so I just nod along.

  We reach the top of the hill. I can smell the apple blossoms, but it's too dark to make out the colors. I lead Michael to a clearing with a good view of the north sky, and we sit with our backs against two adjacent trees.

  It actually is a fullish moon, so we can make out Sable and Gore Mountains to the north, and a few lights from the tiny town of Simms Hill -- where our caretakers, Mario and Julie, live -- to the east. Our fence snakes around the property like a medieval wall. There's a light breeze which flaps the bottom of my shirt and chills my legs, but otherwise, it's comfortable for nighttime in Vermont.

  Michael opens his liquor bottle.

  "Have you drunk straight Schnapps before?" he asks.

  "Yes," I lie.

  He takes a sip and passes to me. I put the bottle to my lips and swallow a large gulp, like chugging beer, and then cough volcanically, spraying my fist. He pats my back but doesn't laugh.

  "Go slowly," he says. "I don't want to carry you down the hill."

  I take a smaller sip. It still burns, but goes down. I pass the bottle back to him.

  We watch the north sky for aurora. We don't see any, probably because of the bright moon. I point out a few constellations my father taught me (for navigation), and we see several shooting stars.

  We drink a little more, warming up, and I scoot next to Michael, sharing his tree. He moves his hand onto my knee, gingerly, and squeezes. I put my hand on top of his and slowly push it up my thigh, until he starts moving it on his own.

  He slides his fingers under my nightshirt, over my hip bone, and slowly up my side, until his thumb brushes against the side of my breast. Much more gracefully than Stu and the other high school boys. When he leans over to kiss me, I jump him.

  I wake up the next morning on top of the hill, with my head resting on Michael's chest. My nightshirt is still on, but it's covered with dew and clinging to me. I sit up slowly, rubbing my eyes. It's bright outside. Really bright. I look down at Michael.

  He's asleep on his back, his head resting on my fleece jacket, mouth open, snoring slightly. His hair is flopped across his forehead, making a triangle over his eyes, and he needs a shave.

  I pull back the neck line on his sweatshirt and study his chest. There are a few hairs growing there, light-colored and thin and straight. I carefully grasp one between my thumb and index finger and pull it free with a quick pluck. Michael's eyes pop open. I palm the hair and let go of his sweatshirt.

  "Wake up!" I say. "It's already morning. We have to sneak back down."

  Michael sits up slowly, rubbing his eyes against the brightness. Then he sees something over my shoulder and freezes.

  I turn around. Behind us, not ten meters away, is my father. He's standing still and straight, as if he's been there for hours, his hair neatly combed and parted. The barrel of his shotgun rests against his shoulder.

  His right hand is in full twitch, the bicep tendon popping in and out, his fingers curling around the gun barrel.

  Michael straightens, glances quickly at the empty Schnapps bottle lying next to him, and looks up at my father. I can feel the pulse racing through Michael's arm.

  "Nothing happened, Dad," I say. (Which is true, I think.) "We just came up here to watch the aurora."

  "Michael was under quarantine," says my father. "And now you are, too. You will stay in the barn with the Deckers for the next nine days."

  Just the punishment I'd hoped for. I point at the damp nightshirt, clinging to my chest. "Can I at least get clothes?"

  "I'll bring your clothes to the bell post." He turns and heads back down the hill.

  "There's nothing to worry about, Mr. Gamut," Michael calls after him. "None of us are inf --"

  My father swings around, now holding the shotgun with two hands, pointing it over Michael's head. He glares at Michael with that cold, feral stare that used to melt his business rivals. Michael closes his mouth and looks down at his knees. My father starts to say something, stops, then turns and walks quickly down the hill.

  Once the tip of my father's shotgun drops out of sight, I feel the throbbing in Michael's arm begin to slow.

  "Your dad is quite the hard ass," he says.

  "Yeah," I say. "Rambo nerd."

  I've spent the last nine days in the barn with the Deckers.

  At first, I thought it would be fun to stay with Michael and his parents, but I was wrong. The barn is small and cramped, and it's embarrassing to pee out by the stream five times a day. Mrs. Decker is doting and insufferable, and Mr. Decker just sits next to his desk all the time, pleading for silence, complaining about his colleagues abandoning work.

  A few times, I've tried to convince Michael to sneak back up to the orchard, but he's only willing to meet me out by the bathroom, which is gross. The whole area smells like an outhouse -- you can see Mr. Decker's turds at the edge of the stream, sticking out of the water.

  So we just sit around the barn. Michael reads his books and emails his socialist friends, tracking the virus's progress in Africa and Indonesia. I read biology texts and study Michael's hairs under my scope.

  I also miss Stevie. He poked his head through the barn door once, and I shooed him away. Another time, he threw a tennis ball inside, sent Chase in after it, and then slammed the door, giggling like only hyper eight-year-olds can giggle. Chase ran wild, knocking over Mr. Decker's desk and swiping the remains of the brownies before Michael and I shoved him out the back door.

  Yesterday, I exchanged emails with my high school friends, Stu and Chelsea. Stu says things are worse in Boston. Thousands of people infected now. They've closed the country club and converted Mass General into a mandatory quarantine center. His parents want to flee west, but they don't have anywhere to go. I tell him not to worry -- the virus will run its course before it ever reaches the western suburbs.

  Today, finally, my father has lifted the quarantine, and we're all moving back into the house. Michael and I have made plans to go up to the orchard in the evening, after I've spent some time with Stevie.

  It's gotten crowded in our house, now that the Deckers have moved in. Mr. and Mrs. Decker are using the guest bedroom and the library, and Michael has moved into Stevie's room.

  Michael has also joined my schoolwork sessions with Stevie in the mornings. He's trying to "supplement" Stevie's education by lecturing him on history and his personal theories of the state of the world.

  None of Michael's rants are really getting through to Stevie -- he tries to listen, but mostly he just wants to look at the pictures of frog guts and dog anatomy I give him and tramp through the woods with Chase, looking for dead squirrels. Still though, Michael's rants are cutting into Stevie's limited focus time, which pisses me off.

  We've been at the fort for almost a month now, which is longer than any previous "emergency" stay. I'm ready to go home. I ping Dr. L for an internet chat, to ask him how much longer he thinks the outbreak will last. He says that we're just on "the first plateau of a stepped exponential function." When I ask him what that means, he tells me where to look it up, and then says he has to go. Turns out some of his colleagues think the "universal antibody" models he worked on in grad school might be useful against the virus, so he's running gels in his lab. It wouldn't surprise me if Dr. L is the one who cures this thing.

  Bottom line, though, is we'll be stuck here
in Vermont for at least the summer.

  Our dog Chase disappeared yesterday. He sometimes runs off on his own when he's out with Stevie, but he always returns by dinner time. Yesterday, though, he didn't.

  My father and I fear he might have electrocuted himself on the fence, so we drive around the perimeter in the Land Rover looking for him. We don't find Chase, but we do find something else. A body.

  The man is lying on the far side of the east fence, next to a pile of bricks and an old pickup truck. It looks like he tried to stand on the bricks and climb over the fence, but electrocuted himself and fell backwards.

  I've seen dead bodies before. I took a summer Honors course at BU after my freshman year, which is where I first met Dr. L. He took us to a med students' lab

  and let us watch them dissect a cadaver. A few of the kids ran out, and one guy barfed, but it didn't bother me. The body was pink and bloated and smooth, with rubbery skin that didn't bleed, and it smelled like formaldehyde.

  But the man lying outside our fence now looks nothing a cadaver. He's wrinkled and twisted, curled up on a bed of roots and pine needles, with biting flies circling him. His face and ears are caked with black blood, and his mouth hangs open, as though caught in mid sentence. He smells much worse than formaldehyde.

  "Is that Mario?" I ask. "That's his truck, isn't it?"

  My father doesn't answer. He powers up the windows and speeds away from the fence, his mouth in a line. When we reach the house, he showers on the porch and orders me to do the same.

  At dinner that night, my father announces that we must all stay away from the eastern boundary of the property.

  He begins doing more frequent patrols of the perimeter, alone, in his jeep, with his shotgun.