Cold Silence (18 page)

“I'm not. I can walk it. Don't worry.”

The man continued to stand there awkwardly, torn between the Good Samaritan instinct and survival. He made up his mind. He even took a half step forward. His left hand stayed in his jacket pocket, rummaging for keys, I guessed.

He said, “No! You're risking yourself to help people like Dad, and I won't just leave you here like a hypocrite who goes to church and then ignores the needy.” The man laughed wryly. “I'm Robert Morton. I was just asking God to help my father. I swore if he did
that, I'd be a better person. Maybe you're a test,” Morton said. “From God.”

“I doubt it. But thanks for the ride.”

“Well, only if my tires still work. Let's check.”

—

“I thought you said your car was on this block.”

“It's just around the corner.”

We walked in the opposite direction from the cathedral. We reached a section where three streetlights were out. We stayed six feet away from each other, proper plague distance, in the middle of the street. The wind seemed stronger on this block and piled snow in irregular mounds on front lawns.

“Have you doctors figured out how to cure the Bible Virus?”

“I wish.”

“Still no idea where it came from? Fox News says terrorists spread it, but nobody knows if it came from a lab or not. Wikileaks says the White House blames Al Qaeda or ISIS.”

“We don't know that for sure,” I said. “By the way, it's not a virus. It's a bacteria.”

“There! My car! Hope
my
tires are okay. Ah! All good!”

I wondered if I'd be arrested when I got back to the hospital. I considered not going back but then where would I go? I hoped that Secretary Burke would understand what I'd done, but I wasn't particularly comfortable with throwing myself on his mercy. Maybe I should phone the admiral or Ray Havlicek, tell them what I was thinking, tell them about the singing and the Sixth Prophet and afterward try to approach Burke.

“Why were you in the cathedral?” Robert Morton asked as he unlocked the passenger door on his car. “Is someone in your family sick, too?”

“No. I was just . . . curious about something.”

“You must be pretty religious,” said Robert Morton.

“Not really.”

“I'm going to put on a surgical mask while I drive. I don't mean to be rude. I hope you don't mind. I mean, we'll be sitting close together. I don't have an extra. Sorry.”

“No problem. It's smart for you to do that.”

His Honda smelled of wet wool and air freshener, strong chocolate, and surprisingly and pungently, I detected the long-familiar mint/banana/gasoline tinge of Hoppe's Number 9 gun bore cleaning solvent. Robert was probably a sports shooter. Or he kept a firearm for self-protection. Considering the emergency, it was probably a good idea. In fact, I wished Burke had not ordered my own sidearm taken. The Hoppe's smell was strong, which told me that Morton had either spilled some recently, or that a freshly cleaned firearm was in the car right now.

“You law enforcement or a sports shooter?” I said.

His head swung toward me. His eyes, above the mask, looked surprised. I tapped my nose. “Hoppe's.”

He laughed, his eyes merry.

“My wife says it's her favorite cologne,” he said. “I'm a sports shooter.”

“What model?”

“Glock 9.”

I waited for him to volunteer more. He glanced at the glove compartment and sighed.

“It would be dumb to drive around without it, but I don't have a concealed carry permit. I'm not supposed to have it outside the house. Hey, Doc, don't turn me in when we get to the hospital, okay?”

“No problem.” I relaxed a bit. Still, there was something about being in a car with an armed stranger. He turned the ignition key
and we half jerked, half slid from the parking space, swerved on slush, and made the corner as the car slippery-climbed Woodley Road toward Wisconsin. I saw more people exiting the cathedral. The radio was on and played a show tune, from
Annie,
so softly that it was almost part of the engine hum. Annie sang, “Tomorrow!”

The dashboard was dirty and the heater threw more dust into my face. The right-hand windshield wiper moved faster than the left, scratching against the glass. Robert Morton drove with his gloved right hand—closest to me—cupping the wheel. The left hand lay on his lap, by his door. The ride should take seven to ten minutes, even going slowly due to storm and road conditions. There were no plows or salters out. Other than an occasional police car or Humvee, we were it.

“My neighbor says this disease is the apocalypse,” said Robert Morton. “Punishment from God.”

I snorted.

“He says it's like the ten plagues of Egypt. He says we've lost sight of who we are,” Morton said.

“Everyone's got a theory.”

Morton nodded. “Me, I agree with Fox News. This is an attack by ISIS or Al Qaeda. Fox says the President may order air strikes. Do it. Go get 'em, I say.”

“That's a little premature.”

“How can you say that?” He seemed agitated. “The President knows the whole picture, knows the things we don't. Shit, if Franklin Roosevelt would have attacked Tokyo before Pearl Harbor, we never would have had World War Two, that's what I say. But Roosevelt did nothing. Ever think of that?”

“I hadn't,” I said.

“I'm
serious
,” Morton said, nodding. “First the Bible Virus hits us in Africa. Then the air base. Then, suddenly, it's in all these cities. No-brainer. Attack the fuckers.”

“It's not a virus,” I repeated.

“Whatever. They hate America. They want to destroy our way of life. What are we supposed to do while they slaughter our wives and kids? Nothing?”

“Trying to figure out what's happened isn't nothing.”

He looked offended. Our argument, I thought, was probably going on all over America at this very moment—in homes, on street corners, even deep beneath the earth at the continuation of government campus in Virginia. Robert Morton snapped, “Well, who the hell
else
attacked us if not
them?
”

“I'm just saying, if you hit the wrong people, you can
cause
your apocalypse, start a whole religious war. Drive a few more thousand people to jihad.”

I looked down at the seat divider and saw a couple of plastic cassette holders lying with some change. The tapes were labeled. HARLAN AT CHRISTMAS
.
HARLAN
,
SUMMER SOLSTICE
.
Robert Morton pumped down on the accelerator in agitation and the car lurched and settled down. His eyes in the mirror were hard. “What are we supposed to do then? Stand around and watch our families die? I'd think that a doctor who sees such suffering wouldn't be so liberal. Liberals! Always a reason to do nothing! They make me sick.”

“I'm not saying do nothing. Just get proof first.”

“What were you talking to Dean Huxley about?”

We were in Glover Park, the high ground abutting Georgetown, a historic neighborhood where the Army Signal Corps was founded during the Civil War. He made a right turn off Wisconsin onto 39th and a quick left onto Tunlaw, a narrow graded street that seemed more suburban than urban. We passed a row of stores, the back side, that is; rear of a liquor store, barbecue joint, sushi place. We skidded in silence down an incline and into a residential area of
small homes and townhouses, and descended toward flatter, row-house-lined 37th Street.

A Humvee filled with Marines passed, the helmeted faces gazing out at us sternly. Extra patrols had been instituted around the hospital complex. Lights in most homes were on. I glanced at Morton and for an instant our eyes met. There was something off in the car. His friendliness on the street had become something harder.

“The dean and I were discussing leprosy,” I said, answering his question in a mild tone.

“You mean, like, where it comes from?”

“Leprosy. The Bible. Religion and the disease.”

“Is she an expert on that?”

I saw a third plastic cassette sticking out from under the two others. I picked it up. It had a label scrawled on white tape on the side. The label said, HARLAN
,
EASTER
.

“Yes. Who's Harlan?” I picked up the tape.

“A really great singer.”

His eyes flickered and watched me put the cassette down. We came up on a two-car accident that must have happened since I'd passed here before. The wreckage normally would have been cleared away, except with city services interrupted, the smashed-in van and pickup remained where they'd collided, half up on the curb, jutting into the road. No people around. Falling snow coated the cold hoods. We veered around wreckage. It reminded me of Baghdad again. Baghdad in D.C.

Robert Morton doesn't seem too concerned about catching the disease from me
.

“Did you know that in the Old Testament, leprosy was a punishment?” I asked, pushing.

“The Old Testament? Punishment? Really?” Morton said.

Once the first thought in a chain appears, the next one rolls out.
A row of tires gets punctured. A Good Samaritan appears out of the blue and asks questions. But how would he have known I was at the cathedral to start with? He wouldn't. I'm being paranoid.

“Yes, in the New Testament, it's cured,” I said.

“We could sure use a few miracles now,” Morton said.

The man has a gun in his car. So he's the suspicious type to start with. But why would a suspicious person offer a stranger a ride during an infectious outbreak, and risk contagion? I bet Robert Morton's fingerprints are on these cassettes.

I shrugged, and said, “You said it! The lepers appear before Jesus. Jesus touches them, and they're cured! I wish we had something like that now.”

“He didn't cure all the lepers,” Morton said. “Just the ones who deserved it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at those windows in the cathedral. The men he cured were believers. It's not like Jesus cured bad people. You had to have the right things in your heart.”

The friendly curiosity in the eyes was back.

I need to get some sleep
, I thought, and said, “You're right. I had not thought of it that way
.”

“What else did the dean say?” he said.

The gun oil smell seemed stronger. We warn ourselves of danger in different ways. I wished I could remember more of the song that I'd heard in Somalia, and which also may have been sung in Nevada, where the outbreak had started. I couldn't remember more. Anyway, I was a poor singer. I couldn't carry a tune. But I recalled the cadence of the music, even if I could not summon specific notes. Four low notes followed by two high.

Hell, try it.

I looked out the window, as if bored or tired. I tried to reproduce the musical notes in my off-pitch voice.

“Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, MMMM MMMM!”

“That a song?” he asked.

“Was I humming? Sorry! My girlfriend says I do that all the time. Drives her crazy. I don't realize I do it. The tune? Just something I heard recently. Catchy.”

“Heard? Heard where?”

“Overseas and out West,” I said, a bland enough answer if he didn't know what I was talking about, but a threateningly specific one if he did.

“Overseas?”

“In Africa. I was stationed there.”

We were less than a mile from the hospital, crawling along on a deserted street in the dark. If he was going to try something, he needed to do it fast. When we reached the hospital, I'd try to get the guards to somehow detain him. Then we could question him, and if he was simply Good Samaritan Robert Morton, he'd be allowed to leave.

On 37th Street, we passed row townhouses and parked cars and bare trees and an empty block-sized park. He made a right turn onto a smaller side street. There was no reason to do this. The hospital lay dead ahead on the straightaway. But the side street was darker, and narrower, and more private.

Go for it
, I thought.

I clicked out of my seat belt to give me more room to move. He didn't seem to notice it, but if he was a professional, he'd noticed it all right.

“Who is the Sixth Prophet?” I said.

“Excuse me?” His voice was lower. “The sick what?”

“Not ‘sick'.
Sixth
. The Sixth Prophet.”

“What are you talking about . . . Hey!
Those are the same kids who hit your car!
”

My gaze flicked right and I caught his blur of speed. He was
fast, but he'd moved a fraction of a second too soon. His left hand was up, drawing the pistol crosswise from the hiding space between door and seat, bringing it up between belly and steering wheel. It had never been in the glove compartment. He would have blown my face off if he'd waited that extra fraction of a second. But the fraction gave me a chance to react.

BOOM . . . BOOM . . .

I parried his wrist and the pistol fired twice. A Glock 9 sounds like a firecracker in open air, like a bomb when detonating inside a car. The decibel level of the shot is actually higher than many shotguns and rifles. There was a hot, searing pain along my jaw.
A fraction of an inch closer . . .
My eardrums seemed to cave in. I could barely hear except for firing. Or maybe I didn't hear it, maybe I just felt shock waves.

The car was straying sideways as our hands rose and fell; parry, hit, parry, parry. Holes appeared in the windshield, fringed with white. The laminated glass didn't shatter but each shot webbed the areas around the holes. The Honda bounced off a parked car and kept going. His foot was off the accelerator, but the car remained in gear.

BOOM . . .

An ejected shell bounced off my forehead.

I parried again.

His face seemed huge, inches away, all yellow teeth and onion breath. He was screaming something. I smelled urine. I could barely hear and then I heard one word,
virus . . .
A flash of headlights swept past and something big rumbled by. Our front grille bumped into a parked Smartcar. Its alarm went off. The Honda pushed the tiny vehicle against the curb as we fought.