Plague

CHAPTER 33

Samantha stepped on the plane and turned around to get one last look at Honolulu. Even at night it was beautiful. At one in the morning, the moon was a crescent slit in the black sky and the tips of the palm trees shimmered under its light. The night air was warm and salty and she inhaled deep lungfuls before turning and sitting down in her seat.

It was early morning in Atlanta but she knew that Pushkin tended to answer his phone at any time. She took out her phone, fully charged thanks to Benjamin’s charger, and called him.

“This is Dr. Pushkin,” he said on the third ring, sleep still in his voice.

“This is Samantha Bower, Doctor.”

“Sam, how are you? Are you on your way back to the States with everybody else?”

She glanced around at the twenty-five or so people on the plane with her. “Yes.” She wasn’t quite lying. They were heading back to the States before going to Peru, as there’d be no way to get a straight flight to South America from Hawaii. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything.”

“The girl in Peru, the survivor, I may be shipping some tissue and blood samples back to you for analysis. We need to figure out what made her unique.”

“I thought that operation was cancelled?” She didn’t say anything. “Oh, I see. Well, I don’t like doing things off the radar but this seems sufficiently warranted. Send them through the normal biohazard but have them labeled for me instead of Infectious Diseases. I’ll keep my eyes open.”

“Thank you. And thanks for not asking questions.”

“I’ve been here a long time, Sam. And I’ll be here long after you’re gone. You’re not the first field agent to go against policy. But this time I agree with you. The smallpox vaccines were ineffective. We’re completely exposed to this agent and they won’t even go down and interview this woman much less examine her. Just do me a favor and be careful; we don’t know how the initial transmission occurred. It could’ve been something as simple as a mosquito. You won’t know until it’s too late.”

“Thanks, I’ll be careful.”

She hung up and glanced next to her. Billy Donner sat next to her reading a copy of Tropic of Cancer.

“You wouldn’t just lose your job for disobeying orders,” she said. “They’d bring criminal charges against a law enforcement officer.”

“I know. But the bureau’s not as efficient as all that. I’ll be back before they miss me.”

She glanced back at Benjamin who was already asleep with headphones poking out of his ears. “What made a man like you put your trust in him?”

“He’s sincere. That’s a rare quality. And unlike most people in the government, and major corporations helping us out, he actually cares about curing this disease, not just avoiding blame.”

There was a bottle of water tucked into the back of the seat in front of her and she took it out and opened it, taking a sip. “They’re going to fire me for this. Pushkin’s unique; they can’t get rid of him. They’ll put all the blame on me and I’ll be the scapegoat.”

“You never know. Things could go well and we could discover a vaccine. That’ll probably buy you some leniency.”

She chuckled. “You haven’t worked for the government long, have you?”

He smiled, lowering his book. “I’m not used to bureaucracy if that’s what you mean.”

“I disobeyed a direct order from my boss and didn’t follow the accepted procedure from the head of the department. They care more about that than any benefit they get out of it.”

“Well, I won’t hold it against you,” he said, smiling as he brought the book back up.

The plane roared to life. It began to rumble down the strip that had been cleared and turned into a runway, and then slowed and turned the other way. It began to speed up and then lifted into the air. Samantha looked out the window and watched as the lights on the island sparkled like gems in the darkness and then began to fade. Eventually, there was only darkness beneath her as the plane leveled out, and then only the open sea. She took a deep breath and leaned back in the seat, closing her eyes and drifting off.

Sam felt a hand gently placed on her arm. She glanced down and saw the finely manicured nails of Agent Donner’s hand. She looked up and saw his smiling face.

“You slept the whole flight,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I haven’t gotten much sleep lately.”

“It sounds childish but warm milk really does work.”

She unbuckled herself as Donner did the same. He stood in the aisle and offered his hand to help her up. She grabbed her gym bag from above the seats and slung it over her shoulder. They walked down the aisle and she saw Duncan up front. He smiled to her and took her bag.

“I was going to switch seats with Billy here, but you looked so comfortable I left you alone.”

“I was out cold. Did you get some sleep?”

“A little.”

“Let’s get some breakfast somewhere.”

They walked out onto the tarmac and through the airport. There didn’t appear to be any other planes.

“The runway’s been cleared,” Agent Donner told her, “so that we could land. I’m sure we’re going to have some upset people inside, so it was for the best not to let them know we were on that flight.”

LAX appeared as it always had: modern and rundown at the same time. The maintenance was top notch and kept it as clean and well oiled as possible, but where a mass of human beings gathered and moved about every day, there was always decay.

Benjamin caught up to them and gave them keys to their hotel rooms at the Marriot. He and Agent Donner said they’d see them in the morning and left together in one cab as Sam and Duncan got into another.

“What’s the best for breakfast around here?” Samantha asked the driver.

“Dinah’s is the best I think,” the driver said, his voice raspy from prolonged cigarette smoke.

“Dinah’s it is.”

As they pulled away and got onto the freeway, Sam leaned back into the seat and watched the multitudes of cars and SUVs passing by. She had grown so accustomed to seeing no one and nothing on the streets that at first it seemed odd to her that people would be out. She marveled at how quickly the mind adjusted to changing circumstances; it was what was responsible for our species’ survival. Adaptability was more important than intelligence, than power, than connections…it made and broke men in seconds.

“You okay?” Duncan asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You look lost in your own little world over there.”

“I’m just wondering about this virus. How many more like it are out there? If this is just a random fluke of nature, there’s probably more, and some of them might even be more deadly. How many outbreaks like this until our species succumbs?”

“Extinction is the most natural process on earth. It even predates our understanding of evolution.”

“I think that’s why climate change is such a debated issue. Some people think we’re causing our own extinction and others think it’s a myth. Since we haven’t studied extinction as long as adaptability, it’s all conjecture.”

“It is and it isn’t. We know about one species per day has gone extinct since life on earth began. From that we can come up with averages. For most animals, the mean timeframe before a species goes extinct is a little over four million years. But for humans and other mammals, it’s about nine hundred thousand. So, I guess you could say we’ve already outlived our mean. Maybe it is just a matter of time until our number’s up?”

She looked out the window again as the cab got off the freeway and onto the lamp-lit streets of Los Angeles. She had lived here once for a period of three years during a graduate fellowship and her mind was instantly flooded with memories of college parties and cramming for exams.

“I think it’s deeper than that,” she said absently. “I think mammals are perfectly capable of adapting to different environments but they still die out. I think the problem is that their behavior advances to a point that they’re no longer receptive to what’s happening in their environment. They lose their intuition, their imagination, and begin to rely solely on reason. When that happens, they don’t respond to their environment anymore. They die.”

Duncan shuddered, exaggerating it for effect. “Creepy.”

He reached down and held her hand. She didn’t object and turned and gave him a smile.