Pestilence

20

Samantha watched the twinkling lights of the Midwest below her. In the dark, inside the gray military plane, she couldn’t really see that she was being held aloft by a machine, and she appeared almost to be floating above the surface of the earth.

Duncan sat next to her and listened to an audiobook on his phone. She watched him for a moment, thinking back to the proposal she had received in medical school, and wondered what her answer would have been if Duncan had been the one making it.

“I never get over planes,” he said, removing his earbuds. “That, with the power of our minds, we’ve been able to lift off the ground and sit back and fly. It’s an incredible accomplishment of the human mind, and no one appreciates it. They just complain when their flight is ten minutes late.”

“I think people have always been that way.”

He took a sports drink out of his gym bag at his feet and took a long drink before offering it to her. She took a few sips, then pulled out some aspirin and took one with a drink before handing the bottle back to him.

“How ya doing with everything?” he said.

“Good as can be.”

“Do you still get panic attacks sometimes?”

“They’ve been reduced. But I heard a loud crash the other day, just my mom dropping something, and it gave me one. Any time I’m startled. And I can’t go to bed without checking all the doors twenty times.” She glanced out the window again. “I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how you would react.”

“Sam, someone tried to kill you. Not to mention everything that happened in South America and Oahu. You’ve been through some serious trauma. I would be surprised if you didn’t go to therapy. I went to a shrink for about five years a little bit ago.”

“For what?”

“Depression. It runs in my family. My grandfather and biological mother both committed suicide.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s not something I talk about much. But anyway, I’m terrified of that, and so when I get even a hint of the blues coming on, I go to a shrink. Sometimes, talking is enough, but occasionally, I need meds.”

She placed her hand over his. “I’m glad you told me.”

He smiled awkwardly and took a drink of his bottle.

When her plane landed at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Samantha had been on the plane for three and a half hours, which was actually less time than she would have spent on a commercial flight. She and Duncan stepped onto the tarmac, and a warm gust of wind hit her. The sensation was both pleasing and ominous. The last time she was in this city, she was nearly killed.

A national guardsman in a jeep saluted Duncan, not knowing he was a civilian scientist working for the army, and threw their bags in the jeep.

“Sir, I’ll be taking you into the medical station.”

Sam climbed into the backseat, allowing Duncan the passenger, then the jeep started and peeled out from the tarmac, heading toward the city.

“Who’s in charge of the medical station?” Duncan asked.

“Lieutenant General Olsen, sir.”

Samantha asked, “Clyde Olsen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She thought back to the time she had met Dr. Clyde Olsen. He had joined the army to pay for medical school and had decided that a career in the military suited his temperament better than one in medicine. “Medicine is guesswork,” he told her once, “but the military requires no guesswork. You do what your superiors tell you, and your underlings do what you tell them.”

The last time she had seen him was at a conference in London. He had gotten drunk afterward and invited her to his room, but she turned him down. So he’d picked up one of the other doctors at the conference, and they were arrested for having sex in the hotel pool after hours.

As the driver hopped on the interstate, she sensed something extraordinarily wrong. Not a single car was on the road. She saw no motorcycles or buses-nothing but military vehicles, particularly large trucks with people crammed in back.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

The driver glanced at her and then back to the road. “You’ll have to take that up with General Olsen, ma’am.”

As they got onto the 405, she still didn’t see any cars, but did spot at least five UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. When they exited the highway, she knew what had happened inside the homes and stores, and it made her stomach churn.

No people were there. Doors on homes were left open. Stores had lights on, but no one was inside. The city was empty.

“Duncan-”

“I know,” he said, reading her thoughts.