The Missing Read online

  After smoking a bowl he opened the front door, but the Sunday paper wasn’t on the stoop. Instead he found a brown paper bag. He opened it and broke into a sweat. It was a horse’s tail. Somebody had gone Don Corleone on his ass! He lifted it from the bag. It was black and thick. He held it for a while before he realized the truth. It was Lois Larkin’s hair.

  Lila Schiffer lay in a hospital bed with her eyes open at dawn’s first light. She was the sole patient locked inside the Corpus Christi Hospital mental ward, and the staff had forgotten about her. She hadn’t eaten in more than a day, and though etiquette would have had her feign a lost appetite, she was starving. As soon as the sun went down last night, the screams began. From outside her door, she’d heard someone, maybe that nice nurse who’d given her a copy of O Magazine, cry “Jeeze—” And then there was squeaking, like sneakers running along the floor, and then a crash (a gurney? the front desk?) and then worse sounds. They begged for mercy, every one of them. She couldn’t guess how many. They all said the same things: Please, don’t, stop it, oh God. But the words were cut short by screams, and smacking lips, and grinding, like celery breaking. Lila curled herself into her cot and closed her eyes, but even with their voices lower pitched and monotone, she recognized them. Outside the door, Aran and Alice giggled at the nurses as they died.

  The people who went to work Sunday morning did so because in their shock they needed the security of routine. Bankers turned on their computers and sent e-mails assuring clients that they were safe. Before Time-Warner’s signal went out Donald Leavitt of Morgan Stanley wrote: “The stories you’re hearing are exaggerated. I assure you that the current situation in Corpus Christi will in no way compromise my ability to serve my clients. Please contact me if you have any concerns. In an effort to serve you during this time, I am extending my hours to eight P.M.” Then he logged off, and tried to rouse his slumbering wife, who’d stopped coughing early in the morning, and was now cold but still breathing. He rolled her over to her back. Her short page-boy haircut made her look like a lesbian, and for years he’d been trying to convince her to grow it out again. He crawled into bed next to her and whispered, “Don’t leave me.” Then he coughed.

  Maddie Wintrob watched the sunrise out her window. The cherry of her cigarette glowed, and though she hadn’t gone to church since her mom had enrolled her in after-school religious studies when she was twelve, she said a prayer for Enrique’s safe passage home.

  Meg Wintrob slept soundly. Her husband did not.

  Danny Walker sat in a small, dark room in a house that quartered his mother’s remains. He was alone for the first time in his life, and he wept.

  Albert Sanguine reached under his bed and found the last of his bread pudding. He drank it down to silence the virus inside him, and wondered if his suicide would be courageous, or cowardly.

  As the living rose to face the day, the infected took their rest. They slept under rocks, and in their beds. They slept in hospital gurneys, in the woods, in piles stacked and ready for the hospital incinerator, and in damp cellars. Their skin was cold, but their loved ones didn’t dare bury them; they saw small movements of the chest, flexing fingers and toes. They waited in the ominous silence of daylight.

  As dawn ascended into day, the thing formerly known as Lois Larkin lay in a clearing in the woods, surrounded by two thousand infected creatures of the night.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It’s Okay to Eat Fish, ’Cause

  They Don’t Have Any Feelings

  Fenstad pulled into the hospital parking lot. Not a single car was on the road at nine A.M. that morning. Traffic lights, when illuminated at all, blinked a cautious yellow warning. Throughout Corpus Christi, car and burglar alarms resounded, but no police arrived. The leaves of trees were turning red from the autumn chill. They were also dying, along with the lawns, weeds, and late-season tomato vines. He didn’t notice any of it. He was thinking about Meg.

  He’d spent half his day yesterday cleaning bones from the lawn. There were hollow-boned bird remains, and marrow-chewed fox thighs. The German shepherd had been too big for the trash, so he’d stomped on its spine until it fit into the bag. And then, as he’d dry-heaved into the withering azalea bushes that lined the front of the house, he’d had an epiphany.

  There were more bones on his lawn than on any other house on the block, which either meant that his family had been divinely marked for disaster, or that someone—a skinny Italian with a big mouth—was trying to break him. He figured it out right then. She’d heard him moaning about the dog in his sleep Tuesday morning, and had devised a plan beneath her crocodile tears. She’d seduced Graham Nero into killing Kaufmann, littered the lawn with butcher waste, and bribed Lois Larkin into playing the tit game, all so she could declare him insane and have herself a clean divorce.

  He’d stood on the lawn with a Hefty bag full of dry bones, and peered at her pink skin through the distorted bedroom window on the second floor. His house. The beautifully steadfast Victorian with its original moldings and built-in bookcases. Its Persian rug in the hall worth seven grand. She was tearing it down. She was setting it on fire. She had to be stopped.

  The moans out his window kept him awake all Saturday night. He thought he was imagining them, the way he’d imagined Sara Wintrob in Lois Larkin’s bed. What else could they be, if not manufactured by his mind? Surely they weren’t screams.

  Next to him, Meg had slept in the nude. She rolled into the crook of his arm and inserted her uninjured leg between his thighs. He realized then that he had all the proof of her faithlessness that he needed. Normally she’d be chewing a hole of nervousness into her cheek right now. With all that was happening with the virus, she’d be pacing the carpet off the floors. So why was she sleeping? Because she knew something he didn’t: There was no virus. She and Graham Nero had planted those bones.

  As the sun rose, he reached over her still body and placed his hand just above her mouth and nose. The shadow of his fingers made her brows appear furrowed. He decided that if she woke, he’d smother her. If she slept, he’d leave her be. He teetered, like balancing on a long razor blade in bare feet. On which side of the blade would he fall?

  After a while, Meg stirred. She squeezed her eyes tight, as if in her dream she was crying. He knew he should feel sympathy. This was his wife. He knew that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, because these moans out his window sounded human. Still, he wanted to smother the bitch.

  A tear rolled down the side of her face. After a while, she turned toward him, and, still sleeping, kissed his bare chest. Her lips were warm and wet. He rolled away from her, a failure. He could not hurt her. He loved her far too much.

  The sun rose, but the day didn’t brighten. It was raining out. Still, by 6 A.M., the night sounds (screaming!) resolved into quiet. The calendar on his alarm clock told him it was Sunday. A wave of worry hollowed out his stomach. When had he last been to work? Thursday? Would they fire him for breach of contract? Then he remembered the virus. And then he remembered Lila Schiffer. She’d been in lockup for days. With all this chaos, had anyone bothered to let her out? Had they even fed her? If he failed one more patient, he thought he really would lose his mind. He bolted out of bed, grabbed whatever clothes he could find, left Meg a note, and headed to the hospital to find Lila.

  The streets were thick with morning fog. As he pulled out of his driveway, he didn’t notice the abandoned cop car where, during the night, the Simpson twins had been assigned to survey the Walker house. One brother had been bitten, and had turned on the other. His plea for help had awakened Maddie from a sound sleep, and now his bones lay scattered in the street. Fenstad’s Escalade rolled by, and smashed them to dust. It sounded like passing over a pothole, and he saw what looked like chalk in his rearview mirror.

  On the national news radio, Corpus Christi got a scant mention. Instead of the normal news hour, the radio host was taking calls. A woman from Austin reported that she’d called an ambulance for her sick h
usband, who’d been coughing all day, but instead of an ambulance, an army truck arrived. They locked him in the back with the rest of the infected, some of whom were dead. She didn’t know where her husband was now. There were more calls. Fenstad turned off the radio, and rolled down the window so that his face got wet with drizzle. To calm him nerves, he whistled the Beach Boys’ “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” and wasn’t sure whether this reaction confirmed or disputed his sanity.

  The hospital lot was quiet, and the few cars he recognized looked like they’d been parked there for days. Since Thursday night, the hospital’s main entrance had been blocked by CDC staff, but now the CDC was gone and the place looked abandoned. Not even the army was here. The automatic doors near the ICU opened and closed and opened again, as if waiting for a very late guest, while light drizzle fell.

  He pulled up to the entrance and let the car idle. The large building was shaped like a rectangular collection of cinder blocks, topped off by a round widow’s peak. It was as still as a mausoleum, and he wondered how many of the dead or infected might be inside. “I don’t want to go in there,” he muttered as his windshield wipers swished. They made shadows like crashing waves against his face. In his mind he saw pretty Lila Schiffer’s bridge of freckles, and her crestfallen expression when he’d taken her children away.

  He got out of the car and strode through the blinking electronic doors just as they opened for him, as if it was he they’d been waiting to swallow, all along.

  The stench was thick, and sulfurous. His eyes watered, and a wave of nausea passed through him like an electric current. The hallway buzzed with fluorescence, and the generator hummed. There were no orderlies or nurses carrying mops or pills. No phones ringing. No doctors drawing blood, sipping coffee, complaining about HMOs. He didn’t even hear anyone coughing. Just the blinking electronic doors, and the wind that rushed through them, and sent papers and charts skittering along the floor like leaves.

  He walked past Admitting and toward his office. There was an elevator, but he didn’t trust it to work, so he headed for the stairs. At the intersection between the ICU and Admitting, his eyes lingered on the red streaks along the white tiles that had dried like rust. They traveled in the direction of the yellow tape, and toward the basement.

  Better run, Fennie, he thought. In his mind, he saw Lois Larkin’s unbuttoned nightgown. His hand was on her breast, and she flashed a monstrous grin. Had he hit her the other day? Knocked out her tooth? He didn’t want to believe it, but the knuckles on his right fist were black and blue.

  The stairway was empty, save for a bloody pair of pink scrubs. He gave it a wide berth as he walked, and he moved daintily, so that his shoes made no sound. He could feel something intelligent within the walls of this building, and it wasn’t human.

  On the second floor, his office door was open. Papers were strewn across the desk, and files lay open on the floor. His Dali print was smashed against the couch, and the wall where its melted watches had once rested was especially white. Someone had torn the place apart.

  “Dr. Wintrob?” a voice asked.

  He spun around with clenched fists, and almost punched his secretary Val in the chest. Then he took a breath, felt his mouth to make sure the mask was still there, and pretended to be calm. “Yes, Val,” he said.

  Instead of a rubber band-clasped ponytail, her hair hung loose around her face. “I wanted to say good-bye. I called your wife. She told me you’d be here,” Val said. “You were my boss for seventeen years, you know?”

  “I know,” he said.

  Val held her arms wide as if hoping for a hug, but he didn’t come any closer. Instead of khaki trousers, she was sporting skin-tight jeans. When civilizations fell, it was the small social mores that frayed first. Men stopped wearing suits, women started showing their bellies. Walls were tumbling all around him, and in his mind he heard his Victorian groan from within. Val nodded at the mess in his office. “They stole Albert’s files Friday night. I couldn’t stop them. The CDC people, I mean, though I don’t think they were all CDC. A few looked like regular army. My cousin’s a sergeant, so I’d know.”

  “What did they want with Albert?” Fenstad asked.

  Val shrugged. “I’m going to sneak across the border to Canada. I have family there,” she said. “There’s no gas at the Puffin Stop, but I figure I can siphon some if I need it…It can’t be that hard, right?”

  “Is it better in Canada?” he asked.

  She looked at him for a few seconds, and then burst into tears. He opened his arms. It was an automatic response. No feelings associated with the gesture. He wasn’t ready for feelings just yet. She wept on his chest, and the vibrations tickled his skin. In his mind, a song was playing. The tune was familiar, and it soothed him. His wife, his daughter. They were not against him. They loved him. More importantly, they needed him. But that didn’t change the fact that this virus was spreading like poison ivy. It didn’t dry all the fucking blood on this carpet that was sucking off his shoes.

  “I killed…him last night,” Val murmured, and at first Fenstad thought she was Meg. Meg had killed him in his sleep, and now he was dead. He was relieved. He could stop worrying now.

  Val pulled away from him. “You should know. It’s the smell you want to avoid when they’re infected. That’s how the virus reads your mind. Like…a probe. It’s trying to figure out if it wants to live inside you, or eat you.”

  “Made for These Times” played softly in his mind…They say I got brains but they ain’t doin’ me no good. I wish they could…

  Val was weepy and snotty. Two of his least favorite bodily functions. Her tears were wet against his chest. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. The death scent here was different from the Boston County morgue, where he’d done his clinical rotation. It was electric, and full of copper. He suddenly realized the difference. The human body produces adrenaline when it’s frightened. Like animals in a slaughterhouse, their adrenaline hits the air when they’re cut open. He thought about the dried blood in the hall and something clicked: This place stank of murder.

  “Jeremy was such a good kid, you know? I loved him so much,” Val said. He patted her back. A tune played in his mind (…Sometimes I feel very sad…), and he pictured the sun setting, and hundreds of infected rising up like an army in this very building, and gutting his colleagues like fish.

  “They lie when they’re infected. When he came home last night his eyes were black. He told me he hated me but it wasn’t him talking. It was the virus. That’s why I had to take him out,” Val said.

  Fenstad blinked, and replayed what she’d just said in his mind. He thought of Meg, and then Madeline, and finally, David. He said a silent prayer for them: I’ll never do that to you. Never. Be-okay-be-okay-I-love-you-so-much-be-okay.

  “I was right, wasn’t I?” Val asked.

  He nodded, because from her expression he understood it was what she needed from him. Probably it was why she’d come here looking for him. She wanted absolution from someone in authority. It suddenly occurred to him that she’d murdered her son. He was thinking about that when she said good-bye. He told her Good luck. Take care. Get to Canada safe.

  When she was gone, he sat on his couch for the first time since he’d bought it. There was a view of his desk, and diplomas, and a Winslow Homer seascape on a calm, cloudless dawn. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his blood felt cold and exposed, as if his skin had peeled away. His organs were turning to liquid, and pooling inside his groin.

  He thought about Meg, and the ways he might murder her. Like idle masturbation, the thoughts were comforting. She’d done nothing wrong. He knew that. Meg Wintrob wasn’t the problem here. He was suffering from an acute dissociate disorder precipitated by the tide of blood in this hospital that was sucking off his shoes. Still, it felt good to imagine his fingers around Meg’s throat. Her skin was thinning with age, and would be soft in his hands.

&nbs
p; When he got home he would have to tell her what was happening, not just at the hospital, but inside his mind. For her own safety, she needed to know that he was falling apart. He pictured doing this, and the way she would raise a single eyebrow, like he’d just announced that his real name was Tinker Bell.

  It was after ten A.M. when he looked at his watch again. He’d been sitting for so long that his feet were numb. For a second he thought the carpet had sucked them into the floor, along with his shoes. But that was crazy, right? He laughed aloud. The laugh echoed in the empty room, and it sounded like a ghost laughing. This hospital had to be full of them. Was he dead, too?

  He thought of a solution, and it seemed like a fine one. He left his office and found the supply room down the hall. He popped open a bottle of the opiate OxyContin, and crushed one of its pills between his teeth. The feeling tingled and then warmed his stomach.

  He climbed the stairs, even though it wasn’t the way out. “I want to go home now,” he whispered as he walked. The room was locked from the outside, and the hall was red with dried blood. He didn’t see any bodies. Funny, where were the bodies?

  She was sitting up in the bed, fully dressed with her lipstick applied, waiting for him. She didn’t turn to face him when he opened the door. “Dr. Wintrob,” she said.

  “Lila.” He smiled widely, like the world was wine and roses. His whole gullet was numb. This stuff was better than cocaine. While he talked, he popped another in his mouth. “How’s my favorite patient feeling today?”

  “Fine.” She looked at him without flinching. The gauze on her bandage was torn, and the wound was bleeding again. She licked the blood, then looked up at him and explained. “I don’t want them to catch the scent.”