Aside from my general curiosity in a breaking news story, there was something else about the headline that bothered me.
I could feel my subconscious tunneling for the connection, but Miranda was already talking again, asking where I was off to next.
I tried to stay polite and engaged for the rest of the meal, stowing my curiosity into a distant corner of my mind to return to later.
When Miranda left to use the restroom, I paid for my meal and hers and was sliding off my stool as she walked back toward the bar.
“You’re leaving?” There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.
“Long drive tomorrow,” I said. “Which means an early start.”
And then she embraced me, the tension of untouched need and isolation like vibrations in her bones. If I’d chosen to allow it, I could’ve been leveled by my empathy for her.
“I really enjoyed meeting you, Robbie.”
I wished her safe travels.
Then I walked out into the cold, spitting rain.
Even though I was in a town, my phone had no cellular service.
It was too dark and wet to risk the climb from the beach up the bluff to my rental house, so I ran south on the road out of town.
Faster and faster.
One of the few unapologetic joys of my transformation was my improved physicality. My body hummed like a perfect machine. I wasn’t just as good as I’d been at twenty. I was exponentially better. My bum ankle that had never fully healed after a nasty sprain in my thirties didn’t bother me anymore. Neither did the arthritis in my left knee. I could have six drinks, sleep a few hours, and wake as fresh as a daisy. And I never got sick. I’d been a runner in my younger years until the aches and pains of my middle-aged body finally relegated me to the ellipticals and rowing machines of air-conditioned gyms. But now, I had no problems. I ran marathon distances just for the hell of it. I raced up mountains. Swam alpine lakes. My energy was bottomless. I felt invincible.
As I glimpsed the lights of my seaside cottage, I realized what it was about that headline that was buzzing around in my brain like a fly. On my flight home from China to America, when I left my mother’s lab for good twenty years ago, I’d read an article in an in-flight magazine featuring Glasgow, Montana, as the most remote city in America. The parameters were specific. What is the place with a population of more than a thousand, which is farthest from a metro with a population of at least seventy-five thousand? The closest metro to Glasgow was four and a half hours away.
How could the most remote city in America be ground zero for the outbreak of a new virus?
I was drenched by the time I walked in the door of the cottage.
I hung up my rain jacket and stripped out of my wet clothes. The woodstove held nothing but glowing cinders. I opened the glass door, tossed a few logs inside.
Then I turned on the television and stopped at the first news channel I came to.
It was the top of the hour, and the anchor was saying—
“…monitoring a developing situation in northeast Montana, where ninety-five people have died in the last week from an unknown illness. The CDC arrived two days ago, and the National Guard has been called in to enforce a shelter-in-place quarantine order from the governor of Montana. Martial law is in effect, all roads in and out of Glasgow have been closed, and as of three hours ago, Wi-Fi coverage within the Glasgow city limits has been blocked.”
Onscreen, the footage changed to show a team of doctors in positive pressure suits carrying someone out of a house in a body bag.
“The CDC is expected to hold a press conference any moment now, and we’ll be joining that as soon as it happens. Meanwhile, we’re joined by Dr.—”
I flipped to the next news channel.
An epidemiologist was speculating that this could be a particularly virulent strain of the flu, but it was obvious that he was vamping to fill time and had no real information.
The next news channel I turned to was just recapping what I’d already heard.
I left the TV on and went to my laptop on the kitchen table, ran a quick news search on Glasgow. I read thirty articles from legit news outlets, but there was nothing new.
Social media was a cesspool of conspiracy theories and memes, but I kept seeing one video getting shared.
I muted the television and pressed play.
It was a minute and twenty-one seconds, heavily pixelated, and filmed on a mobile phone.
It started with a teenage girl leaning in close to the camera, which she held. There was a noise in the background that sounded like hysterical laughter. I couldn’t be sure because of the poor quality, but it looked as if she had tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know what’s going on here.”
She stood and walked through a blurred-out space.
The laughter growing louder.
She was moving toward it.
When she finally stopped, I saw that she was standing in the dim living room of a double-wide trailer.
She switched her phone’s camera. It showed a rail-thin man sitting in a recliner. He was trembling violently, and every few seconds, he let out an explosion of laughter that could only be described as pathological.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer her. Didn’t even look at her.
“What’s happening to you, Dad?”
He tried to stand, but his balance was ruined.
He toppled over, sprawled across the floor.
The camera view became blurry as the girl was on the move again, rushing down a narrow hall. The next room she entered was a bedroom.
A woman sat in a half-open bathrobe on the end of a bed. She was shaking as well, although not quite as severely.
“Mom, let me take you to the hospital.”
“Thehospitalisfull.”
“I’ll drive you both to Billings.”
“GETOUT!!! GETOUT!!!”
Her mother charged her.
There was a cut, and then the girl was back in her room, crying now.
“It’s like this everywhere. Our town is falling apart. I think I’m getting sick too. The past three nights, my whole body aches. Nine-one-one doesn’t work. I drove to the hospital, but there’s a line out the door. We need help. I don’t know what to—”
That hideous laughter started again, right behind her.
She turned her head toward a silhouette standing in the doorway to her room.
The video ended.
I sat in the silence of the cottage, the rain streaking down the windows.
My pulse was rising: 109. 110. 115.
The video had been shared forty thousand times.
I scrolled through the comments.
Holy shit! Is this how the zombie apocalypse begins?
Anyone else thinking this guy should play the next Joker?
Bitch, they ’bout to eat you. Run!
PUT THEM IN A CAR AND DRIVE THEM TO A HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY.
There was no real information to be gleaned. I couldn’t even confirm if the video was real.
Glancing back at the television, I saw that the press conference had started.
I moved back into the living room, sat close to the woodstove, and turned up the volume.
Command Sergeant Major Jackson Tolmach was speaking into a cluster of microphones as a Boeing C-17 military transport taxied down a runway in the background. Standing behind him was my old boss, Edwin Rogers.
“…anti-ram vehicle barriers at the intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 24 on the southeast side of town, Highway 2 on the northwest side of town, Highway 246, Aitken Road, and Highway 42. All schools, businesses, and government facilities are closed. The Glasgow airport and train station are closed. All trains on the Northern Transcon will be detoured around the city. There will be no hyperloop regional service to Glasgow. A stay-at-home order remains in effect with no essential activity exemptions. A shipment of MREs just arrived from the Montana Air National Guard, which will be distributed to all impacted residents of Glasgow. If you need immediate medical attention, field hospitals are being set up at the intersection of First Avenue North and Fifth Street North. At this time, I’m going to turn things over to Dr. Manpearl.”