The first of the black cars arrived a half hour later. It was an SUV with enough angry extras jutting from all sides to satisfy Mad Max. You ought to need a special weapon's license just to sit inside. Alex told the occupants who they were, and that they had the dead squirrel and the body of Elizabeth Cummings' dog and would be interested in speaking to someone about it. Twenty minutes later, after the second, third, fourth, and fifth through seventh imposing vehicles had arrived and men in suits were swarming over the hospital like maggots on a corpse, two people in white plastic suits arrived, took the dead things, and left. They nodded at the Wests. That was the full extent of their contact.
Hawk, being a good, law-abiding citizen, said, "Well, maybe they've got it all in hand," as she watched her baggie of cotton balls and dead, crystalized squirrel walk off in a stranger’s hands.
Alex, who had never been anything of the sort, said, "Fuck that noise, baby," and marched after the dead squirrel with all the majesty and promised violence of an army of Huns. Hawk followed, a baggage train of repeated excuses and sanity that was going to be ignored until dinner or consequences, whichever came first. Suits of this species tend to decant around their leadership. He searched through the cacophony until he found the greatest concentration. Finally, someone he could yell at for a while.
"Dude, they're not going to talk to us. We're randoms," Hawk said, in between the shouts of that's our evidence and where's your warrants and I want to talk to your superiors. Alex was doing his best impression of your average white Karen, minus too much hairspray in an asymmetrical cut.
"They should talk to us. We saw this stuff happen." Alex spun around to glare at yet another big man in a bad suit.
"People see a tornado too. They don't think it's their job to put a house back together," she said.
"And you want to leave a ninety-year-old woman in the hands of strangers?" He snapped.
"They look like feds," Hawk said.
"Until I see credentials, I'm not thinking fed. I'm thinking trumped up private army. What do you think would happen if," Alex thought real hard about this next part, because ten minutes ago he'd been racking his brain for official telephone numbers and coming up blank. Radiation, he thought, and went with the scariest boogeyman he could. "What if I called the EPA and FEMA and told them I had a suspected radiation leak at the Cummings' place? That a whole bunch of angry looking suits just disappeared a grandmother and the body of her dead dog before the authorities had a chance to assess the situation. What would happen then?"
The man he'd been shouting at got a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. "You go ahead, sir. You do that."
Alex wanted to punch him. Hard. Instead, he smiled. "Thank you. I think I'll do that, then. And the CDC. Babe, you think you can find those numbers for me?" He looked at Hawk.
"It looks like they're already here," Hawk said, and waved at the smug man in the suit.
"Nah. They're not that. You know how I can tell?" Alex couldn't hit the guy, so this was the next best thing. "It's the shoes." And the guy made eye contact on that. Bingo. They weren't feds. He decided to elaborate. "Corporations have very specific safety requirements. Best way to meet those is to buy from the corporate approved stores. Everybody here wears shoes from the same brand. Probably the nicest looking pair on a really cheap list. Nonslip, right? I can name the brand. Every corporation loves it. And maybe the CDC is happy letting private mercs handle public safety, but CNN is gonna fucking choke. Have a nice day, sir. I'm making those calls." And he turned around and walked away, pulling Hawk after him. "Look up the CDC, I've got FEMA," he said.
"How did you know? With the shoes?" She said.
"What?"
"You said you knew they weren't government by the shoes. He didn't look worried until you said that. What gave it away?"
He smirked, very briefly. "The look in his eyes when he said it. And I didn't need to be right about the shoes—though I'm pretty sure I am. We've got twenty guys all wearing the same pair of loafers, and that's a really shitty shoe to be that popular. But the truth wasn't important. Talking was important. I just needed to be right that he wasn't a fed, and have enough of a hook to hang the reason on to get him to react like that. That's the thing about lies, baby. They don't have to be good. They just have to be close. They're lying that they're feds, and they know it. And they just confirmed it to me, because nobody's really challenged them before."
"Who are they, Alex?" She said.
"That's what we're working right now. So we call the CDC and FEMA and then what?" He made a very big show out of looking at his phone and copying the number off a google search. Oh, for the days when phone keypads were actual, physical thing. The whole charade of dialing a number lost a lot of its fun when you couldn't angry punch the keys at your target. He had the last number punched in, number dialed, phone to his ear, and was just starting to doubt himself—the FEMA public switchboard was welcoming him for his call—when someone called out, "Mister West?"
He grinned, hung up the phone, and shoved it into his pocket. He looked to his wife, who was watching him with a kind of exasperated awe. "There we go. Not feds. Not wanting any additional federal oversight. We've just learned three important things." He gestured in acknowledgement.
"What's the third thing?" she said.
"That there's a private concern involved in turning a solid chunk of my client's yard into glass. I want to know why." He waited, watching his wife. Her curiosity and hero complex were warring with her sanity.
He almost wished sanity would win, this time.
Hawk nodded. "Yep. Me too."
***
But she didn't feel relieved. As they walked together towards the group of dark suits, Hawk thought she would rather have gone back to Mrs. Cummings’ house so she could sunbathe on the dead lawn.
They were herded into a car together. Attempts were made to separate the Wests from their belongings. Hawk was very sweet. She surrendered her anting kit. She did not surrender her cell phone. Neither did Alex. Hawk took her cues from her husband and was scrupulously polite, not because she thought he, as a man, knew more than she did. She thought he as a con artist knew more than she did, and if his instincts said being copacetic with these people was the best way to act, she was going to be the world's most pleasant entomologist.
They were driven back across town to the Cummings' house. Hawk told herself that she would pay actual attention to the world outside their car when they got within a couple blocks of the place, because she wanted to see if the dead spot had gotten any worse. But she spotted the first of the dead birds six blocks away.
"Alex," She said, and got his attention. She pointed at the street.
Questions of federal oversight were answered by the cop cars pulling people from their homes, at least as far as Hawk was concerned. Families with suitcases—they're being told to pack for a few days, she thought—were heading to their cars, fathers or mothers or older children speaking to cops as the rest of the family packed their things within. There were dead birds on the sidewalks; they were marked with little plastic tents with numbers. Crime scene, she thought, but that wasn't...right. It didn't remind her of old episodes of CSI or Law and Order. It took her another block to guess at why. The trouble was how they were marking and tenting the dead birds, dead squirrels and—her gut lurched—dead dogs and cats. There was a line of them, about three blocks from Mrs. Cummings' house. The grass was starting to look off, and Hawk hadn't seen a single living thing other than the humans being removed from the homes. There is a chorus of life at all times, and it was gone, here. They laid the dead domesticated animals out in the street in neat lines on a tarp.
"No pictures," She said, staring.
"What?" Alex said.
"If this were a crime scene, wouldn't they be taking pictures?"
His lips pressed together into a thin line, and his eyes darted to the men driving them, cluing Hawk into his silence. He'd already registered what she was fumbling towards, and was telling her eloquently that it was not safe to talk. Instead of speaking, his hand found hers. He squeezed. Both for reassurance and to make her shut up.
She shut up.
They reached the line two blocks from the Cummings' place. Death marched beige across suburban lawns. It was marked with green neon tape. About twenty feet behind it was a neon pink line, sitting firmly in the middle of a field of dead grass, peppered with dead birds, dead squirrels, a few dead mice, and a pile of fluff that might once have been someone's Shi-tzu. The long baby-fine hair was crumbling to dust under the weight of the wind. Beyond that, twenty feet further back, a yellow line. Beyond that, a blue one. Then the yellow caution tape she'd expected, right at the corner turn to Mrs. Cumming's cul-de-sac.
"Oh my god," she whispered, and then said, "Stop the car,"
"It's not safe—" One of them said.
"I'm going to puke," she said, and that got them to hit the breaks.
She would have loved to say that it was a ruse, that there was some impossible piece of evidence on the ground and she wanted to collect it. But she'd just realized what this was, why the crime scene comparisons bothered her. This wasn't how you analyze a crime scene.
This was how you track an active infection.
It's still happening, she thought. They're tracking it because they know it's going to spread.
And then the realization that had her gut in riot: They've encountered this before.
So she stumbled from the car as soon as it was parked, opened the door and made it two whole steps before she began vomiting up her pancreas. This was her body's full-cellular revolt against what it witnessed, and if her toenails didn't come up with her lunch, it wasn't for lack of trying.
Hands on her. Warmth against her. She was pulled into Alex's chest and she just went with it, because otherwise she was shaking too hard to talk. "Deep and slow, Hawk. You're okay." She started shaking her head, and he repeated this mantra until she listened to it. "You're okay. The world is not going to fall on top of you right this second. Take a breath."
"They've seen this before. Somewhere. These people came prepared. Where do you find six different shades of emergency tape?" She said, mostly to his shoulder.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
"Probably more than that, and I can think of a few places. Amazon," he shrugged. "Wal-Mart. But you're right. And this is not the place for it, Babe. We're in deep shit right now."
"What? You think we're going to get shot by government contractors?" She said, dryly. It should have made him smile. It didn't. "Alex. You're kidding me."
He glanced behind him at the two suits. They even had the little squiggle ear piece. Like...was bluetoothing too newfangled for these people? "Can you follow me, Hawk? You with me?"
The thing about relationships is, they come with shorthand. Words and phrases that come to mean so much more than surface. This was more than are you alright? This was West-speak for Can you follow my orders? Can you take your cues from me? Can you play a con?
Survival, she thought, sometimes means dishonesty.
"I can. I'll keep my mouth shut."
"Good girl. You need anything?"
"Unless Batman and Robin over there have a bottle of water...Alex...this is how you measure the progression of an infection. If you knew ahead of time that something like this was going to happen...wouldn't you warn people?"
"And risk the lawsuit?" he whispered.
"You think this is some kind of coverup?" She said.
"Well...wouldn't that make sense? Government or corporation, you tell people ahead of time, give them time to plan, they start talking to lawyers and thinking dollar signs. You wait till the last minute, everyone’s too scared to ask questions. You only tell people what your plans are when you want them to participate. Come on, Hawk. Let's find out where the suits are taking us."
He helped her to the car. This time neither of them bothered with seat belts. Hawk reached for hers and Alex stayed her hand. He watched their drivers—jailers?—in the rear view with cool hostility, and folded her hands together in his lap. Neither men noticed. Or if they did, they didn't care. And he tapped her hand, softly, jerking his head towards the dynamic duo. Raised an eyebrow. Inviting her assessment? Maybe.
We aren't worried about the cops, then, Hawk thought. Was that the conclusion he wanted her to see? Yes, she decided, as they turned one street before the Cummings' street, and began making their way towards an empty field. There was a police blockade here, and their two suits had no problem getting through. They weren't even stopped, though they did at least slow and show badges at someone on the other side.
"Loose security," Alex commented. They didn't get a response.
There was a large, cleared field. A playground, she thought. There was the central climbing structure and slide, standing like dinosaur bones over a sea of beige ash. A double line of black trucks, black vans, black sedans and two white cargo vans lined the side nearest the street. There was a space for more cars, and then a structure of white plastic tents, like a sci-fi construct in a fever dream. People dashed between cars and tents, all in lead suits, or something like it. Large spacesuit-style ensembles, but not all of one kind. Some were huge enveloping monstrosities of silver and chromed plastic, as if going for a disco spacewalk. Others were close fitting and made of orange rubber. Hawk recognized a few as standard biocontainment protocols, and she would have felt a whole lot better having spotted them if she could also find some outdoor decontamination stations. She did not.
Their car pulled up to a clear plastic tent. A panel was lifted to admit the car. It was lowered as soon as they'd cleared, and the whole tent was filled with some sort of mist. Hawk had to assume it was safe to breathe, largely because she didn't have a choice. She could smell it, a hot and tense smell themed vaguely like cinnamon. The two suits waited until the mist had mostly settled over the car before the driver gestured towards the door.
"Your own vehicle will be brought to you. Please, get out."
"Funny. I don't remember giving you people the keys. Maybe you could get it detailed for us?" Alex said, smiling pleasantly. There was something hungry about that smile. Something that reminded her a lot more of the Alex she'd met when he'd come to con her mother.
Silence from the suits.
"Maybe you can check the left taillight? I think it went out and it'd really suck if I ended a day like today with a ticket," Alex said.
No response.
"I think we need to leave the car before they shoot us, love," she said.
"I don't know, babe. You don't get a chance to be an exhibitionist every day. We could make out—"
"Please." The driver said, and then in a more restrained tone, "Please get out of my car."
They went into the biological security version of a mud room. Here to Hawk's considerable relief were the expected neon-colored kiddie pools full of various soaps and water. But that relief lasted only as long as it took for her to be led over to one. She had expected this—they'd been practically bathing in this lethal substance cooking all the plants—but not the sheer cacophony of detergents stacked against a far wall. She recognized two as major cleansers for biohazardous waste. These were the kind of chemicals reserved for bubonic plague or Ebola. She also recognized both parts of RDS 2000 and bottles of TFD foam. These were radiation decontamination agents and she was pretty sure neither belonged anywhere near human skin. There were virucidal compounds and an exceptional amount of antimicrobials, everything from wet wipes and hand sanitizer to the sort of chemicals that would sterilize the planet if they opened that plain brown box the wrong way. A very large number of the things on that shelf could take the skin off an elephant, but none that could tell her what, exactly, they were dealing with.
In fact, it reminded her of a scene from a horror movie, in which a man hangs every religious symbol they could think of on their person to keep a ghost away. Every major cleaner, sterilization chemical or decontamination agent she knew of were there, plus some brand new things she'd never heard of. Please, prayed this display. Please let something work.
She'd gotten a woman. Of course she had. She had entered Corporate America, in which the stain of misconduct must be avoided, even if misconduct is the name of your business. They probably had special staff just to strip contaminated female guests. "What are you going to use on me?" She said.
The woman approached the way one would a wild animal, with soothing words and wary movements. "It's real basic. Mostly water and essential oils, and this specific brand of shampoo. And you're going to get a list, because we recommend you use this for at least the next week." The woman was soft spoken and very nice. "I'm Mary Dwardie. Doctor Dwardie."
"Hawk," Hawk said.
"My paperwork said Haven," the confused worker said.
"Your paperwork," Hawk said, through clenched teeth, "Said either Haven Centered West or Haven Centered Rayne, and either way, my name is Hawk."
Her cleaner got the yes, but I was trying to be polite about it, look, and handed her a towel.
"All these cleaners and we're using—" the slop they intended to scrub her with had arrived. The shampoo was a particular brand that Hawk did indeed recognize...as flea detergent for the chemically wary. "dog shampoo and essential oils? Really?"
The cleaner's polite smile became fixed. "Yes. We've tried a lot. This is what works."
"Does it work, though? Really?"
The cleaner lost her smile. "I have a double doctorate in radioactive sciences. I designed two of those chemicals on that wall over there. I am absolutely livid that I'm looking at a lethal contamination and the only thing that will clean this shit up in ways that won't kill half the neighborhood is one specific brand of flea shampoo, ylang-ylang oil, ground cinnamon, frankincense and tomato juice. But I'm here and I am offering you the flea shampoo because of the six hundred and forty seven other things we've tried, this is the one that keeps me and my coworkers alive. Now. Do you want to keep snarking at me, or do you want me to wash the contamination off your body before it kills you?"
Hawk got into the kiddy pool.
"Thought so," the cleaner muttered, and stuck out a hand. They shook. "You're an entomologist. Specialty?" She began dropping Hawk's clothing off to one side, then broke out the scrub brush.
"Myrmecology," she said. "With an emphasis on Myrmecocystus and Camponotus." Which translated to Ants, especially honeypots and carpenters.
"...sorry," Dr. Dwardie said. "I don't..."
That's what I thought. "Ants, with a special interest in honeypots and carpenter ants. I got roped into this because my husband is a PI and we thought somebody was poisoning his client's garden."
"And you're here because..." Dr. Dwardie said.
"My husband threatened to call FEMA and the CDC and anyone else he could think of in front of a whole bunch of those black suits. He did it on purpose," she added, and rolled her eyes.
She winced. "Effective." She began scrubbing Hawk's back with the shampoo and tomato juice mixture. The acidic juice clashed with the florals.
Hawk nodded. "I take it whatever umbrella you're operating under, it's not federal?"
"It is," there was a lot of hesitation. Probably the sort one makes when one reviews one's NDA. "But it also...isn't. And dealing with an organization like FEMA is going to make things complicated. You haven't been briefed...and to be honest, you probably won't be. Look...Hawk, right?" They were mostly done with the wash, so Dwardie picked up a hand-held shower wand and began getting the goopy stuff off of Hawk's shoulders. "We're a very, very carefully chosen team, and you're not the first locals to turn up and offer services. But this...it's not the kind of thing you tell CNN. Not without riots and religious crazies going up all over the place. Mr. Wilheim hand selected—"
"Mister Wilheim?" Hawk pounced on the name, even as Dr. Dwardie flinched. "As in Kaiser Willheim? The billionaire? Founder of Willheim Technological Group? He's backing you?" She was so glad Alex had taught her how to read people, because Dr. Dwardie was an open book. Her flinches could have been encyclopedic, given how much info they gave Hawk. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, straight across the board. Holy shit.
"Look. I'm terrible with people. He'll explain things and...and you'll see. This is for the best. And everything's going to be okay."
Hawk would have felt better about it, if this hadn't been delivered with the tones of a child assuring her that God really would answer her prayers if she meant them hard enough. Hawk didn't care much for religion either way—she'd seen too many horrors done in its name to believe in anything, but she'd seen too much secular manipulation to completely blame belief—but that kind of blind faith gave her the serious creeps.
You wait, Hawk. Wait until you have more information. Or until Alex comes back. Alex had the best gut instincts. That wasn't blind faith. That was experience talking.
Obedient, she allowed herself to be scrubbed and dressed. The protective liturgy, as administered by science's priests. Was there a significant difference between science and catechism, when you aren't inside your specialty? She could have told this woman the entire life cycle of an m. mexicanus replete, or explained the value of soil creatures. Everything she knew about radiation could be summed up with the radiation symbol and the words bad touch. And she had the feeling they were all priests now, praying to a god in the hope that it would be sensate, and sensible. Because that would make it something you could reason with. Stupid, stupid, and yet she'd seen the icons of the educated, the saints of science, the chemicals lined on the shelves like votive candles. Please, God, and the RDS-2000 two-part protocol sitting in frosted plastic, Hail Mary full of Grace, and you must apply the foam according to the directions, a small white square unfolded without gilt edge or marginalia to defend against the bare implacability of the divinity thus described. The liturgy of Material Safety Data Sheets. Be with us now and at the hour of our death, and she was shriven in a white terrycloth towel, waiting only for an iodine eucharist to finish off the Tableau. Fiat, fiat, fiat, and she was jettisoned into the world, renewed and scrubbed pink.
Her husband joined her. He glared, grumpy, in a set of white scrubs.
"I don't know if I'm going to be sacrificed to Dagon or forced through a medical exam," he groused.
"I'm trying to remember that Latin bit they repeat during the Boondock Saints." Hawk said.
Alex said, "Hawk. That's the end of the Lord's Prayer."
“It’s in Latin,” She said.
“That’s still the Lord’s Prayer.”
They walked down a short hallway with a be-suited escort. One of the men there had a perpetual smirk. She'd have rather liked to punch him. Repeatedly.
"You sound like I should know it." A pause. "April, remember?" this was a Westian short-hand for remember that my mother is a goddamn flake who sent us nineteen boxes of cake pearls and hideous yarn and had me believing the earth was hollow at seven. Hawk was lucky April hadn't raised her as a Jedi or a Water Bender, Avatar-style.
"Most people assume you're hyper religious. You know. Heaven Centered West."
"Bite me," she said.
"That's for tonight, dear." He said.
The smirking suit had stopped smirking. He looked, in fact, like he was starting to contemplate exits.
"Are you flirting with me, Mister West?" she said.
"I dunno. My wife has--"
"Please, stop," one of the suits said.
Alex gave the former-smirker a long look. "Middle brother. More than one sibling in front...two behind."
Smirk gone and forgotten, dust in memory, the guy said, "How the fuck do you know that?"
"You knew exactly what we were doing. Winding you up with taboo subjects so you'll stop paying attention to us. You've been tag-teamed before. Older siblings aren't going to use sex because they're still new to it. It takes younger siblings to really get obnoxious."
"How'd you know they were obnoxious?" ex-smirk said, in spite of himself.
Alex did not quite smirk, but he did look very pleased with himself. "Your reaction. It kind of borders on C-PTSD. Low grade annoyance to the point of triggering survival instincts? That's younger siblings."
And neglectful parents, Hawk thought, but did not say aloud.
"You got a good act there," the smirk said. He'd almost found that smirk again.
"Well, you get a gun. I get my mouth. Works out. You wanna break ranks and tell us who we're about to talk to?"
"The guy who's trying to save the world." The smirk gestured towards a door they'd stopped in front of. It sat in a steel frame that had been mounted to the ground with tent spikes, a kind of semi-permanent structure. The dead and crumbling grass lay in fragments beneath the plastic under their feet. "He's waiting for you."
The Wests stepped through the door. Alex let it close behind him.
"So which you thinking?" Alex muttered, to Hawk. "Wizard of Oz, P.T. Barnum, or Peter Popoff?"
"None of the above," said a grizzled voice from within. "Please. Won't you come in?"
.