The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [26]
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, when I stopped behind his truck and got out of my car.
"Trish called. She's worried about you."
"You're shivering. Come on inside."
The inside was a shambles, things strewn about, drawers open, boxes everywhere. He led me to the kitchen where it was more of the same. The table was piled high with books and notebooks; others were on the floor, on chairs.
"Sit down," he said. "You're shaking, you're so cold." He poured us both whiskey with a drop of water, and he sat opposite me, with the piles of stuff between us. "Trish," he said after a moment. "I shouldn't have called her, I guess. She was surprised. I made her leave, you know."
I shook my head. "Why?"
"Because I was dangerous for her and the boys," he said, gazing past me. "A menace to her. I told her that and she would have hung on, but I told her I was a menace to the boys, too, and she left, just like I knew she would."
"I don't understand what you're saying." My glass rattled against the table when I tried to put it down. He took it and refilled it.
"I'm contaminated," he said. "Four, five years ago I nicked myself in the lab and got some of the viroid material in the cut. We thought I would die, Warren and I thought that, but as you can see ..." He drained his glass and put it down hard. "But it's there, the viroid, waiting to meet up with A-type blood, fulfill its destiny. Trish is A, and the boys are AO. It was just a matter of time before something happened, no matter how careful was. I sent her away."
It is all muddled. He said he would not be a guinea pig, live in quarantine. No one knew about him yet, but he would tell them soon. He had made Warren promise to let him tell them in his own time, his own way. I was drinking his liquor and having trouble following his words, but I finally had become warm, and even drowsy as he talked on. He couldn't infect me, he said, driving me home, and Warren was all right. I was safe. He insisted that I couldn't drive, and he called a cab to return home afterward. Blood contact was necessary he said, between a contaminated O and anyone else. Alone, the viroid was inert. And the virus? I asked. "Oh, that," he said grimly. "That's one of the things they'll be finding out in Atlanta. We, Warren and I, think it might be passed by any contact, or it could be airborne. They'll find out."
Today, Friday. I braided Sandra's hair and made Mikey brush his teeth, and told Chris that he couldn't go to a football game after school, not with his cold. Sandra was sneezing. I dragged into my one class, and then a committee meeting, and a late lunch with my friend Dora who told me to go home and to bed because I looked like hell. I felt like hell, I admitted, but I had to go to Portland to meet Warren. I wanted to go early enough to miss the traffic rush. I would have a snack in the restaurant and read and wait for his plane.
I heard the news bulletin on the car radio. Dr Gregory Oldhams had died in a fire at his house. There were no details. I pulled off the road onto the shoulder and stared ahead through tears. He had called Trish to tell her goodbye. He had packed up things he couldn't bear to have burned. A guinea pig, live in quarantine, in isolation, his own time, his own way...
Lights have come on in the house across the ravine. They are looking for me; Warren must have told them this is where I would come. Home. I wonder if he is with them; if he is, he may think to come up here. I rather imagine that they have him in a high-security lab somewhere, drawing blood, testing it, or packaging it to send to Atlanta.
They may send him back. He will be so tired. Would I scream at him if we met now? Probably, and he doesn't need it; he knows, and he will know for the rest of his life. If we met, and if I had a gun,