The MHP had been tasked with establishing the outermost ring of checkpoints twenty-five miles from the epicenter.
Two hours ago, I’d called Col. Swicegood on a spoofed Atlanta phone number, impersonating Ron Auerbach, CDC director of intergovernmental and strategic affairs. I’d given her a list of three scientists who were inbound to Glasgow on Highway 2, including license plate numbers, vehicle descriptions, and Hinsdale checkpoint ETAs.
“What’s in the back of the van?” the trooper asked. He wasn’t being nosy or suspicious. I detected genuine curiosity.
I stepped out of the car. Even from a half mile away, the sound of the wind turbine’s enormous white blades was audible as they chopped the air, filling it with a dull, distant thrum.
I opened the sliding door, and the first thing we saw was a white hazmat suit hanging from the ceiling.
There was a -20° C freezer.
A minifuge.
A fluorescence microscope with videocam.
And a space-gray machine the size and shape of a microwave.
“That’s an automated, digital microfluid nanopore DNA sequencer,” I said. “I suit up, head into the outbreak zone, and collect DNA from infected people. Skin cells, mucus swabs, blood samples. Then I put the samples into that machine, which analyzes DNA to detect what diseases they may have. If we can discover the sequence, or work out what’s been changed genetically, then we’ll have a shot at figuring out what type of disease we’re dealing with.”
“I heard it had something to do with bad meat?” he said.
Something in his voice…more than just morbid interest.
“We don’t know yet. You live around here?”
“Malta.”
“You know someone who’s sick.”
It was a statement, not a question, and it caught him off guard.
“My brother-in-law. He and my sister live in Glasgow.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I haven’t been able to speak with her in two days.”
“What are their names?”
“Tiffany and Chris Jarvis.”
“What’s their address.”
He wrote it down for me on the back of a business card, which I tucked into my pocket.
“I’ll try to check in on them. We’re going to find out why this is happening.”
I could see that my offer had moved him, but all he said was, “I’d appreciate that very much. If you see her…”
I watched him try to push his emotions aside.
“I’ll tell her.”
* * *
—
The highway between Hinsdale and Glasgow was apocalyptically empty. I knew the roadblock I’d just made it through wouldn’t be the last or anywhere close to the most secure. But I didn’t have any intention of rolling the dice at another security checkpoint. The next one I came to would be manned by military personnel, not highway patrol stationed twenty miles away and largely out of the loop.
Three miles outside of Glasgow, I pulled my van off the road and parked in a stand of the only trees I’d seen all day, hiding my vehicle as best I could. They were cottonwoods, and they grew along the bank of the Milk River, a 729-mile long tributary of the Missouri, which happened to flow within a quarter mile of Glasgow.
* * *
—
My packing list included my hazmat suit, Garmin, binoculars, an H&K VP9 pistol, body armor, a pair of NightShades （next-gen night vision optics that resembled old-school Oakley sunglasses）， a laptop, and a case containing syringes and BD Vacutainer EDTA tubes for blood sample collection and storage.
Fully inflated, the raft wasn’t much to look at. I’d bought it yesterday for ninety dollars at the sporting goods department in a Spokane Walmart.
I loaded my gear into the raft and waited for darkness.
Helicopters, drones, and aircraft passed overhead frequently, on low-flying approaches into Glasgow. But not a single vehicle went by on the road.
I sat against the trunk of a cottonwood tree, watching the sun slip below the horizon.
With the light gone, cold set in.
I watched the first star appear.
At eight P.M., I dragged the raft down to the river’s edge, climbed in, and used one of the oars to push myself out into the current.
The water was bitterly cold.
Chunks of ice floated beside the raft.
The moon was just a glowing sliver. While my inherent night vision was solid, the NightShades made everything visible.
The only sound was the occasional dip of my oar into the frigid black water.
It was a perfect river for floating—it went nowhere slowly. Wide and not so much as a burble of whitewater.
It took its sweet time, not following the road into town, but twisting and turning on a meandering, serpentine course through patches of farmland.
I could see the distant lights of farmhouses glowing like green suns and the expansive, collective glow of the lights of Glasgow.
I was hours on the water.
Each time the raft swung around a bend in the river, the lights of town glowed a little brighter, a little closer.
I kept a vigilant lookout, carefully watching every foot of shoreline. While I was doubtful there’d be a security checkpoint at the river, you never knew. My guess was that, while the National Guard and the CDC didn’t want people coming into town, their main focus would be on keeping the townsfolk from leaving.
At 10:45 P.M., my Garmin chimed.
I’d spent much of last night studying the Google Earth satellite images of Glasgow and the surrounding terrain, and before setting out on the water, I’d dropped a GPS pin at what I had chosen for my take-out point.
I paddled to shore, hopped out of the raft, dragged it onto dry ground.
The edge of town was just under a thousand meters east of my position, on the far side of an open field.
I took out the binoculars and glassed the city.
From my vantage in the shadows, I could see a military checkpoint at Highway 246, approximately a hundred yards west of town. There were Jersey barriers and barbed wire strung across the road, and a half-dozen soldiers in biosecurity suits were milling around a couple of Humvees.
In one of the vehicle’s turrets, I saw a soldier in NightShades making slow, steady scans of the adjacent fields, including the one I would need to cross to reach the city. If I took a longer route across the field and kept low to the ground, I felt reasonably sure I could stay hidden behind the slope.
I stowed the raft in the trees, shouldered my pack, and began the long, slow crawl toward Glasgow.
* * *
—
It was midnight when I reached the edge of town.
I sloughed off the pack and pulled out my hazmat suit, less worried about contracting something and more interested in the cover it would hopefully afford me. How many red flags would a guy in a hazmat suit raise walking through an outbreak area?
I donned my magnetic body armor and spent several awkward minutes forcing my way into a Tyvek suit in the dark. Then I pulled on my respirator, tucked my H&K into a makeshift holster I’d rigged on the hip of the suit, and shouldered my pack.
I moved carefully through a stand of trees that separated the field I’d crawled through from Glasgow proper. The nearest building was a body shop at the edge of town surrounded by shells of vehicles rusting in the weeds.
I knelt down and took a moment to observe.
Modest houses glowed in the distance.