and who knew what state it was in? He had to find his children, but where else could he turn? Where would they go? Were they in good hands? Were they in trouble?
So many unanswered questions awaited, but in this moment, he had to say goodbye. He asked the waiter for a glass of pinot grigio—what Jill had ordered the last time they were here. He set it across the table, where she would have been. Before he left, he took a single sip of the wine, like a farewell kiss. When he got home, the house was still empty. And haunted.
52
Now It’s in Us
The histories of the 1918 pandemic all observed that survivors rarely talked about it afterward. You could almost believe that it hadn’t happened, except for the gravestones with similar dates. We lived through it: that was the attitude. It wasn’t like the Great Depression or the world wars or terrorist attacks; survivors of those events lived their lives with one eye on the past even as they moved on. They wrote books, they joined societies, they had reunions. They brought their grandchildren to view the battlefields. They got therapy. But survivors of the 1918 flu did their best to purge the episode from their memories—and, therefore, from history. It was the nature of the era. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the epidemics of cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever, and typhoid were either still happening or resided in recent memory. Death by disease was so commonplace it was scarely remarked by history. The 1918 flu killed twice as many people as died in combat during the entire four years of the First World War, and yet the customary horror of another pandemic was overshadowed by the drama of combat.
Now Henry wondered if humanity was once again sleepwalking toward a pointless, civilization-annihilating conflict, astride another great pandemic that was randomly mowing down populations with industrial efficiency. The question that still haunted him was whether Kongoli was an engineered virus—an act of war—or a natural occurrence? He knew, as very few people did, how close the U.S. and Russia were to opening their arsenals and letting fly the instruments of apocalypse.
* * *
—
HENRY RODE HIS BIKE to the CDC, as he had done for years. It was a heavy red mountain bike, ponderous, many generations past the latest refinements, but Henry valued its solidity. He took the side streets into the Emory University campus. There were no students, but some of the maintenance crew were hauling furniture and personal effects out of abandoned dormitory rooms. Life almost seemed normal.
He had never seen soldiers guarding the gate to the CDC before, but now they were patrolling behind the fence in full combat gear. As Henry approached, two of them blocked his path. He showed his ID, but a stern young soldier told him that it was no longer operative.
“But I work here!” Henry said in amazement. “I run the infectious diseases section.”
“Sir, that may be true, but new identification has been issued, and your name is not on the list.”
Henry sputtered, demanding that they call the director. The impassive response of the soldiers infuriated him. He was still arguing when a voice commanded, “Let him in.”
“Catherine!” Henry said.
“Henry, we thought you were dead,” Catherine Lord responded when the gate opened. “We hadn’t heard from you for the longest time. God, we need you.”
The facilities were secure and intact, but Catherine explained that much had changed. “I’m the new director. We lost Tom. Your team, well, it’s reduced, I’m afraid. Marco is still with us. We’ve moved people around to fill in the gaps. You’ll have to take the stairs, the elevators are down. I’ll have new credentials prepared for you by the end of the day.”
When Henry entered his old lab, every face turned toward him. There was a world of explaining to be done, but that would have to wait. Marco approached him, and without a word they embraced. Then Marco guided him through the lab, reporting on the various strains that Kongoli had manifested, some more virulent than others, but all of them evading the prospect of an immediate cure or vaccine. “What we have is a mutant swarm,” said Marco. “Meantime, NIH has created an RNA replicon vaccine.” The replicon masqueraded as a virus-infected cell, fooling the body into believing that it had been infected. If successful, it would prompt the cells to make antibodies. “We’re running it through the ferrets. The assays suggest it might