The Gemini Virus (16 page)

He slipped his arms into the coat and adjusted it to sit comfortably on his broad shoulders. He was a very handsome thirty-six, lean and trim and in excellent health. His primary care physician had assured him of the latter during his annual physical. Dr. Bateman was his name. The year before that it was Dr. Clark, and Dr. Evans the year prior. The company where he’d worked kept changing health-care plans. He didn’t really care one way or the other, but he made sure to complain along with his coworkers each time. Complaining was an American thing to do.

He slipped his hands into the large side pockets out of habit, and he found the greeting card. The phrase
Good Luck from All of Us!
stretched across the front in a gentle arc, surrounded by butterflies and flowers and a bright yellow sun. On the inside, over two dozen people had written little comments along with their signatures. Nothing surprising here—
Best wishes!
and
Keep in touch!
and
Really enjoyed working with you!
A guy named Leonard with long hair and wicked acne wrote,
Abduligan the Hooligan—Rock on, man! You’re the best!
He worked, at least in theory, on the maintenance staff, but he never seemed to do anything. He’d taken a liking to Masood since day one, something Masood did not want or need. There were a few like that, including a herd of young collegiate types who thought it would be cool to have a genuine Middle Eastern guy for a friend, and a girl named Tabitha who hated her parents so much that she wanted to date him just to get under their skin. She was particularly tough to shake. She had big boobs and a pretty face, and he admitted that he was tempted on a few occasions. But then he’d experience feelings of disappointment and self-disgust. Ultimately he told her he had a fiancée back in Pakistan and was trying to stay faithful. At first this seemed only to motivate her further, but she eventually gave up and set her sights on another target—a black kid in the sales department with nose rings and tattoos swarming around his arms and neck. He’d serve the purpose.

Masood told his boss he’d landed a new job in California. The truth, of course, was a little different. The email arrived last Friday: the one he’d been waiting three years for. It looked like spam, as expected. It had graphics, products, prices, and a fictional company name replete with phone number. He felt an excitement inside like none he’d ever known.
The time has come,
he thought with something close to giddiness.

He ripped the greeting card in half and replaced it in his pocket; he’d throw it in the public trash can by the front door when he got outside. Then he turned and took one last look around the apartment. This was not a gesture of sentimentality, but rather practicality. He scanned for clues to see if there was anything left to do. It still seemed like such a luxuriant place, especially in comparison to the mud-brick house in rural Sukkur, where he’d spent the first sixteen years of his life. Varnished hardwood floors, an icemaker on the door of the refrigerator, Jacuzzi jets built into the sides of the bathtub … The apartment had been fully furnished, too. The only possessions of consequence he had acquired were a copy of the Koran and a prayer mat, and he had donated both to a local mosque yesterday morning, leaving them in a box on the back step. He came with nothing, and he would leave only what he had been instructed to leave.

Satisfied, he opened the door and went out. He had a severe coughing jag in the hallway—the third in the past hour—and made no attempt to cover his mouth. It was a warm, phlegmy hack that came from deep down. The infection was taking root.

Good,
he thought.
Very good
.

*   *   *

Contracting the virus hadn’t been much of a challenge. There was a hospital a few miles away acting as a crisis center. New cases were coming in all the time, and the scene was often chaotic and disorganized. He simply waited by the emergency-room entrance until each victim arrived, then pretended he was a hospital employee rushing to lend assistance. Finally, he began showing the early symptoms—fever, chills, general malaise—late last night. By this morning, he was coughing and sneezing every few minutes. Based on what he’d learned about the illness via television and the Internet, he knew his window of opportunity would be small. He estimated he had about ten to twelve hours before he became incapacitated.

He got on the ferry in Hoboken, a good place to start. In spite of the outbreak, it was still jammed with commuters.
The great American rat race,
he thought as he stood on the lower level, staying inside so the contagions would have a better chance of spreading.
Rat race
was a phrase he’d heard several times.
They live to work, no matter what the risk
. Some of them were wearing surgical masks; others stood by the railing outside, in the fresh air. The rest were apparently comfortable taking their chances. He walked by as many of these types as possible, taking in deep breaths and blowing them out slowly. He had to fight off the coughs and sneezes, but he was getting good at it. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to himself.

When the ferry reached the other side, he strolled casually down a very busy West Thirty-ninth Street. He noticed a street vendor, and an idea occurred to him. He bought four large coffees, black and hot, and sat down on a window ledge. Removing the lids one at a time, he took a long sip and then regurgitated it. Then he walked around until he found four homeless men, giving one cup to each. The last man shook his hand and told him he loved him. Masood smiled back.

He ate lunch in the most crowded restaurant he could find—an ESPN Zone—sitting at the bar near the front door so as to infect as many people as possible. The bartender, a bald and muscular man who looked like he attended neo-Nazi rallies in his spare time, eyed him suspiciously. This made Masood nervous. He tried some friendly chitchat, but the guy wasn’t interested; he just kept watching. This forced Masood to leave earlier than planned. Before he did, however, he went into the restroom and soaked a cocktail napkin with a copious wad of phlegm and saliva. Then he tossed it onto the counter when the bartender wasn’t looking. Maybe Nazi Boy would pick it up.

By midday, everyone was back in their offices, and the sidewalk traffic thinned somewhat. Masood adjusted his strategy by getting on one bus after another. The fever had fully established itself by now, and he was feeling faint and dizzy. At Thirty-third, amid a hail of complaints from the other passengers about his occasional coughs and sneezes, the driver requested that Masood please disembark. He chuckled as he went listlessly down the stairwell, saying harriedly, “Okay, boss, I disembark, I disembark.” On the street again, he saw an ambulance zoom by. The driver was wearing a PPE suit. Everyone stopped to watch, petrified. This delighted Masood enormously.
It’s starting to seep in, starting to saturate
.

He spent rush hour on the subway. He found a seat in the third car, picked up a discarded copy of the
Times,
and did his able best to act as though he were reading it. A lot of eye contact was being made; the air was thick with tension. It was as if everyone had abandoned hope of fending it off and simply decided it was only a matter of when. He had to work hard to suppress any coughs or sneezes here, as his final destination was coming up and he couldn’t afford to get thrown off again.

Most of the other passengers were sporting the obligatory surgical mask and gloves. A few had taken it a step further with rubber masks and oxygen tanks. The tanks ranged from thermos-sized models to about the length of a standard fire extinguisher. Masood saw a commercial on television the night before where you could get even smaller ones—“Guaranteed twelve-hour supply!” the salesman raved, for the reasonable price of $340 plus shipping and tax.
Personalized oxygen tanks,
he thought, shaking his head. America’s devotion to personalization never ceased to amaze him. The tanks would soon come in designer colors so they didn’t clash with your outfit. Then you could get your initials engraved. After that there would be filling stations in case you ran low while you were still out. Then a subscription service where, for something like $39.99 a month, you could get unlimited refills.
Only in America
.

He reached into the side pocket of his coat and took out some loose change, which he pretended to count before replacing it. In truth, he was checking yet again to make sure the pump-spray bottle was still there. It was about the size of a roll of nickels, the plastic a transparent blue. And it was filled with a clear liquid.

He felt an upwelling of euphoria as the subway zoomed along. He couldn’t help but look at some of the other passengers, feeling an indescribable warmth at the knowledge of what was about to happen—and, more to the point, that he knew about it and they didn’t. This was going to be a moment for the ages, one that would be written about for years to come, first in newspapers and blog sites, then in history books all over the world. Once everything was revealed—and it would, because that, too, was part of the plan—he would be lauded as a hero. They would revere him, utter his name with the deepest respect. Fathers would name their sons after him, encourage them to emulate his bravery and courage. His image would hang in homes; maybe he would even be mentioned during prayers. He always believed in his destiny, always felt a kind of certainty that he was headed for greatness. And he would achieve that greatness today. He would become immortal.
And it will be so easy
.
So easy …

The subway car squealed to a halt at Union Square, and he rose to leave with the others. The platform, he was happy to see, was fairly busy. He was also relieved, although not surprised, that there were uniformed police everywhere. Their eyes were moving about restlessly, looking for anything suspicious.
Let’s help them out,
Masood thought to himself.

In the thick of crowd, he pulled the spray bottle just far enough out of his pocket to expose the nozzle. Then, supporting it in his palm, he began pumping with his thumb. Little mist clouds appeared and just as quickly disappeared. He made every effort to be casual. This was crucial to the plan—
as though you’re trying to hide it
. As much as he would like to yank the thing out of his pocket and blast someone square in the face—or, better yet, jam it up the nostril of one of these contemptible insects and fire repeatedly—he knew that would blow everything. So he walked along and just kept pumping.
At least I’ll infect a few of them along the way,
he thought, regarding this as a kind of bonus.

He was almost to the stairs and started to worry that the sequence of events might not roll out as he’d hoped. But then it happened—he heard someone shout,
“Hey! That guy’s spraying something!”
and in a matter of seconds, the scene descended into chaos. People began screaming, running in every direction. Some jumped like Olympians over the turnstiles; others stumbled back into the train. From the corner of his eye he saw a middle-aged man with a briefcase push aside a mother and her little boy, his tie flying ridiculously over his shoulder as he fled away.

He saw two of the transit cops come running at him, their eyes wide with fear over the cotton masks; they no doubt hated their jobs at the moment. Masood did his best to appear frightened, backpedaling before turning to run. But he let his feet twist around each other and fell to the smoothed concrete. He tried to squeeze out a few more spritzes, but some Good Samaritan—Masood couldn’t help but admire him, all things considered—grabbed his wrist and jarred the bottle free. The cops were on him instantly, flipping him onto his stomach. One pulled his hands together and cuffed him; the other placed his booted foot on the spray bottle and ordered the Samaritan to stand back. Then he produced a plastic bag, rolled the bottle into it, and zipped it shut.

Masood was heaved to his feet and marched away. Of the few people who were left, several had their cell phones out and were taking pictures or making little movies. Masood made sure he appeared regretful, almost ashamed. But he wanted to smile. They would drink in his honor this night, and millions more would do the same for years to come.

It was just the beginning.

*   *   *

Andi sat on the grassy hill behind the cabin—knees raised, elbows on their peaks, hands together—and focused solely on her own, measured breathing. The moon looked down from its high place above the rip of the tree line, bathing everything in an eerie luminescence. And the near-perfect silence, which seemed peculiar in the dead of spring, was a godsend.

What would be an even greater godsend right now would be a cigarette,
she thought decadently. She hadn’t set one between her lips since she and Dennis were engagees. Even then it hadn’t been much of a vice. Maybe one pack every two weeks. She’d never been one for addictions, wasn’t an “addictive personality,” as some liked to say. The worst was her senior year in college: about a pack and a half a week. She groped her memory for the name of the brand.
Parliaments—that was it
. It was a choice of convenience, as several of her friends smoked them, too. For all she knew, they had the most disagreeable flavor on the market. But she hadn’t tried any other brand and had no intention of doing so. She knew she wouldn’t be a smoker for long. She kicked the habit altogether when they decided to start a family. Cravings came once in a while, but never to the point of distraction. Most days she couldn’t even believe she’d smoked at all. It was like remembering a detail from someone else’s life.

Sure as hell wouldn’t mind one now, though
.
I’d suck it down to the filter faster than a Shop-Vac.

The silence was broken by the metallic stretch of a rusted spring on the other side of the house. The fact that the door wasn’t allowed to slap shut told Andi it was Dennis; he always guided doors to a close. Then the muted shuffle of his footsteps on the grass until he came up alongside her.