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“I don’t know,” Underwood said. “Most people will develop the disease from a fairly low contact with the virus—but in the cases of other viruses, a big dose sometimes means a more virulent disease. Idon’t know if actual contact with the stuff will make it worse, but I’d get it off first thing. There’s a bathroom in the church, I’ll have somebody get you in there right away. Do you have clean clothes with you?
“Yes, we have our bags.”
“You’ll need to change. Take everything you need into the church with you. We’re going to move your truck out and burn it.”
“All right.”
There were two people standing by the front door in isolation suits; both had air tanks on their backs, larger than the tanks Letty and Hawkins had seen. The unusual aspect to them was that they each had pistols strapped around their waists. One of them said, “Heard about you guys and what happened. Sorry about that, but you done real fine.”
He pulled open a door and they walked into the church, carrying their suitcases and equipment bags. Churchgoers were scattered around the pews as individuals by themselves, as couples, and as groups. Not as much talking as Letty had expected. A half-dozen people in isolation suits were working through the church, apparently taking blood samples or talking with the people held there.
A man in an isolation suit was standing to the left of the altar. He waved at them, calling them forward. They went that way, threading past some children in the aisle playing with hand-held video games. When they got to the man, he pointed, and said, “Bathroom through that door. Paper towels, put them in the burn bag when you finish cleaning up, along with your clothes.”
—
The bathroom wassmall, and contained a rack and a sign with “Burn Bag” on it, along with the usual bathroom fixtures, but noshower. A tall container of antiseptic soap stood next to a sink, the kind with a push-down spout. They stripped, threw their clothes in the burn bag, and scrubbed down with the soap and paper towels, washing their entire bodies, including their hair. When they were dressed again, they went back out to central part of the church, to a woman in an isolation suit who was waiting with a syringe. She took blood samples from both of them, put the samples in isolation bags.
When she was done, she said, “There’s food in the back rooms, over there.” She pointed, and Letty said to Hawkins, “I’m hungrier than hell.”
“So am I…”
They went that way, found people browsing through tables stacked with fruit, cereal snacks, candy, along with four large chest freezers filled with microwave dinners. A half-dozen upright refrigerators held milk, orange juice, lemonade, soft drinks. Another long, heavy table held six microwaves.
A man was heating a pot pie in a microwave and asked, “What’d you guys do?”
Hawkins said, “We ran into one of the virus people down in Albuquerque and he splashed us with the stuff that supposedly contains the virus.”
“Wow.”
“We were sent up here. Cop cars front and back to make sure we didn’t make a break for it.”
“Well, when you’re here for a while, you start to feel what’s really strange about it…”
“What’s that?” Letty asked.
“We’re all, all one hundred and thirty-four of us, perfectly healthy,”the man said. “For now, at least. Nobody even coughs or sneezes. I guess it’s a hundred and thirty-six with you two. We’re waiting to see if the disease is real, or fake.”
“Has anyone said how long we might have to wait?” Letty asked him.
The microwave beeped and he pulled the pot pie out, handling the aluminum pie disk with gloved hands. That done, he said to Letty, “They say we could start seeing the Marburg tonight or tomorrow. They take these blood draws, they call them blood draws…and they say we got it. What that means, we don’t know.”
“We got Wi-Fi? Or phone access?” Hawkins asked.
“Oh, yeah, we got it all,” the man said. “We still hope…but…I believe we’re in trouble. Enjoy yourself while you can. I talk to my wife every hour or so. I can’t wish that she was here, though to tell the truth, if shewashere, I’d feel a lot better.”
Letty and Hawkins got cereal and milk and a couple of bananas, and took their bowls out into the nave, where a line of tables had been set up along a side aisle with folding chairs. A half-dozen people were eating, and more were tapping on laptops. They sat next to the man with the pot pie, and Letty asked, “They brought in people’s laptops?”
“Yeah. If you don’t have one, they’ll give you one—Macs, Windows, whatever you want. I asked for a big MacBook Pro that I always wanted, and it was like,no problem, and I had it about six hours later. The kids got video games…”
The man started eating his pot pie, and Hawkins leaned over to Letty and said, “This is going to be…dreadful.”
“Yup.”
—
When they finishedeating, they watched the people in the church, got up and walked around, looking at the Stations of the Cross, the altar, the rack of votive candles, the medics in isolation suits, and soon enough, ran out of things to look at.
When the church had been sealed off, it had only been about two-thirds full, so there was plenty of sitting space in the pews. They found an empty space, opened Letty’s iPad and Hawkins’s laptop, read emails, and sent a few. Letty had several from her mother, Weather, and Lucas, and more from Greet and Cartwright. Cartwright was now in quarantine in a house in Taos, but not the same one as Lucas and Rae. Hawkins had three emails from his parents, and more from MI5 colleagues.
