The woman frowned. “Uncontaminated by what?”
“By me,” said Lyle. He stood and shook her hand. “I’m Lyle Fontanelle.”
“The original?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I’m Dr. Kendra Shorey,” said the woman, “lead researcher for the ADC. Let’s go, then.” They loaded everyone into the two trucks, and Lyle found himself crammed in the front seat between Cynthia and Dr. Shorey. The engines had been left running, and the cabs were almost hot after the cold run across the yard. Shorey threw it into gear and rumbled down the unlit road.
Lyle pointed to a bright glow just visible over the tree line to the north. “Is that the lab?”
“Yes it is,” said Shorey, “but you’re not getting anywhere close to that. Living quarters are all farther west on another beach.”
“Are there other refugees?” asked Cynthia.
Shorey shook her head. “Most people in the middle of a worldwide plague run away from contagious disease centers.”
“It was his idea,” said Cynthia.
“And it was a good one,” said Shorey. “We’re not exactly happy to have you, but I can’t deny that this is probably the safest place on the East Coast right now.”
Lyle felt a warm glow of contentment, and watched the trees flash by in the beams of the headlights. They reached a wide clearing, and the small lights at the far end of it slowly resolved into buildings—a handful of single dwellings, followed by a cluster of larger, barracks-style structures.
“This used to be an army outpost,” Shorey explained. “It can hold a lot more people than the skeleton crew we’ve got running it today.” She parked in front of one of the U-shaped barracks buildings, and the second truck pulled in behind her. “I’ll unlock it for you and then see if I can get the heat turned on. I’m pretty sure this building’s still connected.…”
She led them in and then wandered off through the halls, her voice echoing faintly through the empty building as she talked herself through her search. Lyle breathed out, watching the moisture form a visible cloud in the cold front room, and followed Lilly into the room beyond. Someone had apparently declared the empty barracks to be a storage facility, for the walls were stacked high with crates of canned food, bottles of water and soda, old computer equipment, and rows of dusty filing cabinets. The other refugees wandered in after them, then continued on through the rest of the building, searching for beds and blankets and other stores of food.
When they were alone again, Lyle looked at Lilly and was struck by a sudden urge to be close to her. He picked up a bottle of Coke—unfrozen, which spoke well of the building’s insulation—and stepped closer. “Lillian Washington, would you care to join me for a drink?”
He couldn’t distinguish her features in the darkness, but she took a step closer to him. “I’d like that very much.”
“Might I offer you…” He peered at the label. “Whatever I just picked up? Diet Coke.”
She cocked her head to the side, and he saw the faint outline of a wince on her features. “Do they have anything else?”
Lyle’s smile fell. “Oh, the caffeine thing.” He turned back to the stacks of supplies. “They might have something caffeine-free, but I can barely read the labels in here.”
“My concern is the food dye,” said Lilly. “A lot of places make caramel coloring with cereal proteins, so even if the bottle says it’s gluten-free, it’s safer to just say no to any kind of cola.” She smiled sadly. “Sorry to ruin the moment.”
“It’s okay. I never realized how hard it was for you to eat something that won’t kill you.”
“Food labeling is only accurate to a point,” said Lilly. “A lot of things don’t even show up on an ingredients list. When was the last time you saw fluoride on a bottle of Coke?”
“Why would there be fluoride in a bottle of Coke?”
“Because we fluoridate our water,” she said, “and then we use water in everything. Even the regions that don’t fluoridate still get it through soda and juice and hot dogs and whatever else gets shipped all over the—”
Lyle ran from the room in a panic, shouting for the others as he careened through the dark house. “Don’t drink anything! Where are you? Don’t eat or drink anything!” He heard voices and a handful of answering shouts, and caught up to the rest of the group at the top of some basement stairs. Dr. Shorey was just getting ready to go down when Lyle ran up to them, still panting from his sprint through the halls. “Don’t drink anything.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Cynthia. “You’re the one who said this place was safe!”
“We have a closed water purification system,” said Shorey, “both here and at the lab. Everything else is canned—nothing’s contaminated.”
“The canned stuff is the problem,” said Lyle. “Any food made in a contaminated area could have the ReBirth retrovirus. We can’t eat anything packaged in the last five months.”
60
Thursday, December 13
3:53 P.M.
Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Long Island
1 DAY TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“I think I’ve got somebody!” said Blauwitz.
Lyle looked up, and the delegates and scientists with him, a row of heads popping up like gophers. The entire group had been on laptops and cell phones and radios for two straight days, trying desperately to get a signal in or out. In the corner, the man with a broken ankle slept fitfully, doped on painkillers and antibiotics. The group dropped their own equipment and ran to the general, clustering around him eagerly.
“Who is it?” asked Dr. Shorey.
“Let me talk to them!” Cynthia demanded.
“Be quiet,” Blauwitz hissed, “I can’t hear.” He pressed the phone close to his ear, covering his other ear with his hand. They held their breath and listened to him listen. “Hello?” he probed. “Hello, can you hear me? I can hear you, can you hear me?” He sighed in relief. “Oh, thank God.”
The crowd of hungry refugees clasped each other’s arms and shoulders excitedly, biting their tongues to keep from cheering.
“My name is Glenn Blauwitz, I’m a general with the United States Army, who is this?” Pause. “Hello? Are you still there? Hello?” He snarled and slammed the phone on the table. “I had him! He said he could hear me!”
The group deflated, many of them already wandering back to their own fruitless searches. The general rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, and Lyle shook his head. That was the closest one they’d had—their first two-way communication. Lyle’s stomach rumbled, and he thought of the giant pile of food they’d locked in the back room, too suspicious to ever eat it. There was no real danger with anything packaged before July, but the lotion had technically existed since March, and their fear of misprinted packaging dates had caused them to eventually rule out anything from the past full year. They had water, constantly recirculated and repurified, but their food supplies were critically low.
“It was just a kid,” said Blauwitz. “Probably didn’t even know how to use his cell phone.”
“How many kids do you actually know?” asked Lilly.
“You should have let me talk,” said Cynthia. “You came on too strong—‘I’m a general with the United States Army.’ What was he supposed to think, that you needed his help? He thought you were going to arrest him and he hung up.”
“I don’t think you talking to him would have made him any less scared,” said Lyle. “We need Lilly to talk to people—she’s sweet and innocent; people will be falling over themselves to help her.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said the general. He raised his voice so the whole room could hear him. “The next person who gets a connection, let Lilly talk.”
“What is she going to say?” asked Mexico. Lyle still had trouble remembering the man’s real name.
“I’ll ask them for help,” said Lilly. “Tell them where we are, that we have no food—”
“You can’t tell th
em where we are,” said Cynthia, “what if they come for us?”
“We want them to come for us,” said Lyle.
“We don’t know anything about them,” said Cynthia. “They could be bandits coming to steal our supplies.”
Lilly frowned. “Who would answer a distress call by stealing all their stuff?”
“I would,” said Cynthia.
“If we’re not asking for help why are we even doing this?” asked Dr. Shorey. “Are you just lonely?”
“We don’t need to be afraid,” said the general. “If anyone tries to attack us we’ve got five armed soldiers on the island, not to mention Ambassador Larracilla’s better with an assault rifle than any of us.”
“We’re doing this because we need to see what’s out there,” said Cynthia. “We’ve got the manpower, like he said, and we’ve got enough boats to stay mobile—we need to learn who’s out there, learn where they are, and strike.”
“I’ll make sure to leave that part of the plan out when I finally talk to someone,” said Lilly.
“We’re not pirates,” said Lyle.
“He’s right,” said China, “we don’t need to raid other refugees. We can probably get all the supplies we need just crossing to Long Island and raiding empty houses.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Lyle.
“We have at least a week of food,” said the general, “more if we ration it carefully. If we haven’t made contact with anyone in a week, then we can start thinking about supply runs.”
“The earlier the better,” said Samoa. “No sense waiting for the last minute.”
“There is if we’re trying to avoid breaking the law,” said Dr. Shorey.
“You think there are still laws?” asked Cynthia. “You’re adorable.”
“We’re talking about days, but we might be here for weeks,” said China. “For all we know it could be months. We need to plan for the worst-case scenario.”
“The worst-case scenario is that the world has too many Lyles in it,” said Shorey. “Some temporary instability followed by some very specific clothing ads. Give the riots time to die down and the government will restore order.”
“The Russian government, by then,” said Cynthia. “I don’t think you’re grasping the full weight of our situation.”
“I don’t think any of you are,” said Lyle. “The Plum Island scientists haven’t seen what it’s like out there, but the rest of you have. ReBirth is in the water, it’s in the food, and it’s warping the human genome in unexpected, horrifying ways. People have extra chromosomes, they have not enough chromosomes, they have two genders, they have monkey DNA, for crying out loud. We didn’t even know it worked on nonhuman DNA, but guess what? It works on everything. It goes everywhere. For all we know it’s in the water table now, systemic to the entire biosphere—do you have even an inkling of what that means? It’s going to change the entire biological population of this planet, and it’s reached a point where almost every single one of those changes is a degradation of function.” He pointed at the Chinese ambassador. “He said our worst-case scenario was spending a few months here, but that is hopelessly, stupidly optimistic. We’re going to be here for years, and that’s a best-case scenario. Cancer is somewhere in the middle. The worst case is that you get so much competing DNA in your cells that you spend eternity as an androgynous chimpanzee squirrel with a cognitive disorder.” He gestured at the building. “We have a self-sustaining clean water system here, and that makes us potentially the safest people on the planet, but it also means we can’t go anywhere.” He shook his head. “Maybe ever.”
“You said the retrovirus was prone to mutation,” said Mexico. “Eventually it’s going to stop working.”
“Each one that mutates will be rebuilt by the billions of others,” said Lyle. “It’s never going away.”
Dr. Shorey looked at Cynthia. “Is he right about all that?”
“He’s being typically histrionic about it,” said Cynthia, staring at him coldly, “but yes, he’s probably right. He usually is.”
Lilly frowned. “Then why are you so mad at him?”
“She’s not mad, she’s planning something,” said Lyle, looking back at Cynthia. “That’s a lot more terrifying than anything I just said.”
“You’re not talking about a riot,” said Samoa. “You’re talking about … Armageddon.”
“And that means we’re not waiting out a riot,” China continued. “We’re founding a civilization.”
“That’s a little extreme,” said Mexico, but China cut him off.
“Is it?” he demanded. “Years, he said, the last uncontaminated humans on the planet. We shouldn’t be focusing on scavenging food, we should be bringing in more people. We’re supposed to repopulate the planet with what, three women?” He looked around at their group. “How many are on this island?”
“I’m not comfortable with the direction this conversation has taken,” said Lilly.
“We’d have to get them soon,” said General Blauwitz, “before they become contaminated—and we’d have to make sure they were clean.”
“The Connecticut coast would be better than Long Island,” said Cynthia. “You’ll get working-class people with a wider skill set than just ‘gestation.’”
Dr. Shorey’s jaw dropped. “Are you encouraging them to raid the coastline for women? Are we Vikings now?”
“I’m not a brood mare,” said Cynthia with disdain. “If we’re going to do this we’re going to do it right.”
“We’re not going to do it!” said Shorey.
“Let’s all calm down and think about this,” said Lyle. “I’m sorry I scared you, I’m … pretty scared myself, and I’m sorry. The general’s plan is still the best—for now. Wait here, try to contact anyone we can, and hope there’s still a government left when the dust settles. We might need food, but we do not and will not need women.” He grimaced, and shot a sidelong glance at Lilly. “Beyond the obvious equality-based reasons for which a society will always need women. You know what I meant. The future’s going to suck, maybe not as bad as I said, but we can deal with that when the time comes. For now we’ve got a food shortage, a potential power shortage if or when the gas lines shut down, and what I’m fairly certain is a Libyan diplomatic adviser with a broken leg and a raging infection. Let’s solve these problems first.”
“Those are all important goals,” said the general, “but we can’t stop trying to make contact. A lucky break there could solve all our other problems for us.”
“We split into teams,” said Mexico. “Lilly and the general stay on the phones, the rest of us on the other problems; we can break into smaller teams when we come up with solutions.”
“The dying man is our first priority,” said Lyle. “Dr. Shorey’s medicines have been helping, but they’re not enough. We need a real doctor, or a paramedic, or … I don’t know.” He rolled his eyes. “What we really need, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, is blank ReBirth to turn him into a clone of himself. That would fix the ankle for us and solve most of his problems right there.”
“We have some,” said Shorey. The entire room gasped, frozen in place, staring at her. She looked back with wide eyes. “We’re Homeland Security’s private pandemic lab, you didn’t think they’d send us a sample?”
“We need to destroy it,” said Lilly, but almost everyone in the room shouted “no” in unison.
“We might need it,” said Blauwitz.
“We could use it,” said Cynthia.
“We can save our sick guy,” said Lyle. “The only possible good use for that lotion is medical; that’s what I told NewYew, and that’s what I’m telling you. With the limited facilities we have, turning him into a clone of himself is the only realistic way to save his life.”
“How much do you have?” asked China. “We could turn all of us into clones of ourselves.” He looked around the group, hoping for support. “It’s the best preventative measure we can take to keep everyone healthy—un
less you like the idea that a broken ankle might kill you, too.”
“Our food is low as it is,” said Lyle. “Give everyone the elevated nutrient needs ReBirth requires and we’d never be able to feed everyone.”
“You’re already a ReBirth clone,” said Dr. Shorey. “Does that mean you get more food than we do?”
“It also means he lives forever,” said Cynthia, “while the rest of us age and die.”
Lyle shook his head. “You say that like it’s part of an evil plan.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t have evil plans,” said Lyle, “I … barely have plans. I’m just telling you that a bunch of clones will eat more food than we, at this point, can reasonably produce.”
“If we have to start farming this island we’d be prone to a lot more injuries,” said Mexico. “Continually regenerating bodies would be a big help.”
Lyle almost laughed. “Now you’re using subsistence farming as an argument in favor of accelerating your subsistence needs?”
“Do we even have enough for everybody to use?” asked Samoa. “How many people are on the island?”
“We can manufacture more,” said Cynthia. “We know how now.”
“But we don’t have the ingredients,” said Blauwitz, “and I have yet to hear a plan compelling enough to risk a trip back to the mainland to get some.”
“Immortality,” said Russia.
“Immortality with the chance of adult-onset congenital disorders,” said Lyle.
Cynthia shook her head. “The chances of that with a single dose are infinitesimal.”
“But we could get another dose from anywhere,” said Lilly.
Shorey shook her head. “What we really need is a genetic record of each one of us now, in our current bodies. If we run into trouble later and get contaminated with chimpanzee DNA or some other nightmare scenario, we can change back.”
“Not all of us are happy with our current bodies,” said Cynthia. “I’m almost sixty—if I’m going to reset myself I want to do it in something a little younger.”