“We must choose from terrible alternatives,” said Tildy.
“Perhaps Dr. Parsons has not been brought up-to-date on the Chicago outbreak,” the agency woman said.
Henry looked around the room. Everyone else seemed to know.
“Putin has been blaming us for Kongoli,” Tildy said. “Imagine the gall. In any case, he’s taken the next step. We’ve gotten a report that there have been five deaths in the last two days in Chicago from Marburg hemorrhagic fever. There’s a likely case in Seattle. It’s a Category A bioterrorism agent.”
“The Ustinov strain,” Jürgen added.
Henry felt his resistance crumble. The lines were all pointing in the same direction. For the first time, he allowed himself to focus the rage and blame that were boiling inside him but which had no way of escaping. It was clear now: they had killed Jill. The image of her sightless eyes in the grave flashed into his mind. This is the world we labored to prevent, he thought, Jürgen and I. All along we have known this might happen. We prepared for it. So did they. We bear the moral cost. Yes, there was a part of us that longed to see our work go out in the world, just to observe the spectacle of destruction that we had stored in our biological warehouses. And now it was done.
But what was the right response? More death?
“By the way, what do you call the agent?” Tildy asked Henry.
Jürgen answered for him. “We named it Enterovirus parsons, after its creator.”
54
Eden
Helen and Teddy had been at Aunt Maggie’s farm for a week before Helen discovered the body. They were harvesting the corn that Uncle Tim had planted in the spring. Maggie’s pantry had been raided and the marijuana in the drying barn had been picked clean, but the burglars missed a root cellar stocked with seed potatoes and turnips. Electricity hadn’t been turned on again in this part of Tennessee, but the gas stove worked. “We can live here forever,” Helen said.
That same day she stumbled over a boot in the cornfield and realized it was connected to a leg bone. She wanted to scream, but all the screams inside her were wrung out. A kind of animal indifference to anything except survival had taken hold.
The leg was there by itself. It had been partially eaten. Helen recognized the boot, so she knew the leg was Maggie’s. She set down the basket with the ripened ears and searched through the towering corn stalks. She didn’t want Teddy to see this. She could hear him rustling nearby.
The rest of Maggie’s remains were scattered about. Helen found a shotgun, which answered her question about where the head was. She picked up the weapon because it could be useful. There were pieces of Maggie’s dress caught up in the corn like calico flags. The torso had been torn open and eviscerated by coyotes or wild pigs. Maggie and Jill, sisters, both gone. Uncle Tim’s grave was in back of the house by the arbor. Kendall was there, too. The flowers and shrubs they had planted for that television show were in bloom. It was beautiful back there. Helen really didn’t want to leave Aunt Maggie out there for the vultures to finish.
She noticed the bulge in the pocket of what was left of Maggie’s dress. Her cell phone.
Helen walked out of the cornfield and stood by the gate, yelling Teddy’s name. He came toward her voice and emerged with a full basket. His eyes widened at the sight of the shotgun. “I found it,” Helen said. “And this.” She held up Maggie’s phone.
“She’s out there?”
Helen nodded.
“Any battery in the phone?”
“Totally dead.”
They went back inside. They were living in Maggie and Tim’s bedroom because Teddy didn’t want to sleep alone. He had seen the Confederate ghost again. He wasn’t as afraid of the ghost as he had been before, but it reminded him of when he had crawled into Jill’s lap and she had cuddled him and made him feel safe.
In a desk drawer in the bedroom, Teddy found a charging cord.
“What are you doing that for?” Helen asked.
“I got an idea.”
They went to the garage where Uncle Tim’s pickup was parked. The keys were in the ignition. Teddy got into the driver’s seat.
“No you can’t,” said Helen.
“I’m not going to drive, I’m going to charge the phone.”
He started the truck and plugged the charger into the USB port in the dashboard. After a moment or two, the screensaver lit up