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“Pasta should be ready,” Catton said. “There’s shredded cheese in the refrigerator…”
“Let’s pile it on,” Scott said. “The last supper.”
“Not funny,” Catton said.
“A little funny,” Scott said. He was getting tense.
—
At eleven thirty,he pushed the bicycle to the garage’s side door, strapped on the helmet, pulled on the gloves, leaned the bike against the garage wall and said, “Give me a hug, Clarice. Sending me off into the great unknown.”
She gave him a loose hug—she didn’t much like to be touched—and said, “Call me when you have a car and are ready to make your run.”
“I don’t know whether I’ll have one before you leave for church,” Scott said. “I don’t know what’s out there—it could take me a day or two to even get loose.”
“Okay, then I’ll call you before I go to Mass.”
“Well, then,” Scott said. He opened the door, pushed the bike through, and with his face barely visible in the dark, his teeth flashed, and he said, “Good-bye, Clarice.”
An uncommonly cool parting for two conspirators almost certainly heading for death, he thought, but that was Clarice.
—
When Scott disappearedin the night, Catton went back to the family room to watch the television news broadcasts, but it was all politics—even the virus speculation was politics. If the virus got loose, how would that effect the presidential race? If the virus got loose, would New Mexico lose a critical congressman? She should call them, she thought. Identify herself. Tell them, “If the virus gets loose, you won’t have to worry about losing the New Mexico congressman. You’ll have to worry about losing New Mexico. Along with California, Texas, New York…”
And she thought about what would happen in the morning. She would arrive early for Mass, try several different pews, spread the viral medium as carefully and as invisibly as she could. Then leave before the Mass started. If she were to be caught, she’d want that to happen somewhere else so the people in the church would have dispersed.
That was for tomorrow.
Right now, she had to pee. She got up from the couch and, without thinking, opened the door to the powder room, saw the body of Marilyn Wong. She looked at it, so still, thoughtThat could be me. Tomorrow.
But, she still had to pee. She closed the powder room door and headed for the main bathroom. Afterwards…did she see popcorn in the cupboard?
—
Scott thought aboutbushmeat hunters he’d met at a hospital in the Congo. They hunted chimpanzees with rifles, nothing ascrude as bows or spears, but still: hunting to eat wasn’t easy. The key to success, they said, was stillness. If it was not possible or unproductive to sit still, then very slow movement was the ticket. Very slow. Step, stop. Step, stop. Movement catches the eye.
Riding through the neighborhood on his bicycle, he remembered that and took it to heart, as best he could. He stayed close to the ubiquitous walls. Stopped when he heard sounds or saw lights. Steered from one dark spot to the next, working his way through the heavily residential area around Wong’s house. The dark of the moon had been four days earlier, and now a thin crescent was rising in the east. Not much light, but enough to see the surface of the streets. He had one deadline: he had to be well out of town by dawn.
—
Wong’s house wasin a lane off Valverde Street. He worked his way south down Valverde, then west on a couple of narrows lanes out to Upper Ranchitos, and then he was on the highway he’d stay on for miles. The road was reasonably straight and flat, the houses spaced out from each other, and now he could risk some speed. He would be almost invisible in the dark, he thought; but onlyalmost. He could hear helicopters in the distance; he’d read of border patrol helicopters using heat-detection devices to pick up warm bodies crossing the Rio Grande, but according to the television news, these were Army helicopters. Did they have heat detectors aboard? If so, he’d be a white globule on their video screens, now moving swiftly along Highway 240.
He sensed something in front of him, a movement, an animal? He dodged, but never actually saw it—a dog, a bobcat, a skunk.
“Please, not a skunk,” he muttered to himself.
There were no cars for the first couple of miles; then he saw headlights coming up from behind, moving slowly, and he swerved into roadside brush, pushed through it, waited until the car had passed. A Taos cop car. He waited until it was out of sight, did another mile, maybe four minutes in the dark. A snatch of music from a house behind a screen of trees; the unintelligible sounds of television.
Another car came up from behind, with a growling engine. Whatever it was, it had a searchlight and was probing the roadside brush. He slipped off the road again, behind the thickest clump of weeds he could feel, and lay flat on the ground. The light flicked over him, the truck went on.
Another mile, and he saw the blinking lights of a helicopter, coming north toward him, but slightly off to the west. He swerved toward a house where he could see lights in the back, and stopped outside the walled courtyard, leaned the bike on the wall, and walked back and forth along it. Just another homeowner, going about some late chore. Taking the garbage out? Certainly not trying to hide in some roadside brush. The helicopter must have been a half-mile west and didn’t slow. When it had gone, he was back on the bike, pedaling smoothly, picking up speed.
He made a big turn to the east, toward the Rockies, and in the distance, saw the traffic signal at Highway 68 and the flashing lights of a police light bar. Marvelous that he’d made it this far, and so easily—and as the thought passed through his mind, the bike’s front wheel dropped into a pothole and threw him sideways onto the road surface, stunning him.
“Ohh…crap.” He lay there, shaken, surprised, but apparently not injured. He stood, shook out hands, arms, and legs; he might be sorein the morning, he thought, but that was minor. He might be dead in the morning.
He’d had worse falls in the mountains, but not from something so hard-edged as the pothole. He checked the bike’s front wheel, and it seemed okay. He got back on and pedaled toward the traffic signal, more slowly now. He’d gotten ahead of himself; he couldn’t do that.
