“So you brought me out here on purpose. For this.” Gabriel grinned. “Thank you.”
“I guess… I dunno. I didn’t have to, but I just thought that you deserved something nice for once.”
Gabriel laughed again, feeling a deep, comforting warmth within his chest. He wiped the moistness from his eyes. He knelt and placed his hands back in the water, his fingers resting on the backs of textured shells and wet seaweed. He felt the wind on his damp face as he stared into the horizon and took a mental photograph, because even if all his other memories went to hell, he didn’t want to forget what might easily be his final glimpse of the ocean.
When he started to shiver, he got back to his feet and walked over to Michael. He ran his hand across the giant slug’s spongy back. “So shall we go find this sample?”
“Yep.”
Gabriel collected his cane and followed Michael down the beach. The angular black outline of Bright New Day looked down on them like a watchful eagle perched on the rocks. The night sky was a beautiful sprawl of stars, reflected in the equally beautiful ocean. Tiny gold lights dotted the distant shoreline.
As they moved outside of the public area, a sloping hill obscured their view of the nursing home. After entering a clearing of tall grass, Gabriel spotted the metal surface of a buried pipeline. Using his massive tail like a broom, Michael swept away some of the debris to reveal more of the surface. A thin crack running the length of the exposed metal was slowly bleeding grey, copper-scented water. Some kind of slimy goo had oozed out of the pipe, leaving a black line that led toward the ocean.
The creature had escaped through the pipe then fled to the ocean. Closer inspection revealed multiple sets of streaks, which meant multiple creatures. Gabriel realized that more infected residents had died. His stomach felt queasy.
Gabriel reached into his pocket and pulled out the microscope slide. Crouching—ah, Christ, there’s that back pain again—he gathered a sample of the black slime, careful not to touch it with his fingers. He held the glass up to the moonlight to make sure he’d gotten enough. To his revulsion, the sample actually squirmed.
“Okay. Well, enough of that.” Gabriel tucked the slide back in his pocket.
A light rain began to fall. He’d gotten his sample just in time. As water dripped from the brim of his fedora, he stared out at the ocean and lit a cigarette. Waves rolled more aggressively over the sand, their white froth forming a wound on the beach’s surface.
A few minutes later, they began the long walk back to his bedroom window. He would need to wash his muddy clothes in the sink to avoid suspicion. As for the screen, he would blame that on the weather. Michael had bent it far too much for it to fit back into the window frame, but maintenance could easily replace it with a new one.
“This Black Virus,” Michael said, “with the elaborate deaths and black eyes, there’s something so disturbing about it, don’t you think? Something that doesn’t quite fit?”
Gabriel exhaled smoke. “I don’t understand it. I’ve seen so many diseases in my life, but this particular strain…”
“It defies understanding?” Michael said.
“Nothing defies understanding. But it’s confusing, certainly.” Each step was murder on Gabriel’s leg. His tiny bed on North Wing started to seem like a luxury suite. “The Black Virus is a virus like any other. A highly sophisticated and unique one, perhaps, but still just a virus. I’m not going to treat it any differently.”
“Gabriel, I like you. You’re a swell guy. And I want you to know that when you test that sample tomorrow, you’re not going to like what you find.”
“Why not?”
“You need to see it for yourself, fella. You’ll know why when you see it. If I told you now, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Climbing the hill, Gabriel bore down on his cane for support. “Sounds like a cop-out answer from someone who doesn’t know as much as he claims.” He frowned. “Regardless, it doesn’t really matter whether I like what I find or not. The only thing that matters is that I learn more about the virus so I can find a cure.”
“Gabriel, this isn’t gonna be like AIDS.”
“What do you mean?”
“Finding a cure for the Black Virus… that’s not gonna work, at least not the way you think it will. What you need to do is understand the virus. Because pretty soon, you’re gonna know more about that virus than anyone else in the world, and when you do, well…”
“Care to explain?”
“Ahh. Sorry, I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
The top of the hill was in view but still a good distance away. Gabriel paused to catch his breath. “Fine. In that case, just shut up. I’ll work on my cure, and we can eradicate this virus before it infects half the population. Just give me space, Michael. I’ll do all the work.”
Michael’s antennas twisted around to stare at him. “Gabriel, why are you lying to yourself? You know full well that the Black Virus is a lot more than just a disease. You saw it give birth right before your eyes. What kind of disease does that? What’s going on here is something way scarier than a disease.”
The rain was getting heavier, pounding on Gabriel’s fedora. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” They were nearing the crest of the hill.
With his rain-spotted head, Michael gestured back toward the ocean. “Why do you think this virus is hitting here, of all places? Why here at Bright New Day, where you are? C’mon, you can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.”
Gabriel’s bedroom window came into view, and he worried that someone had seen the open window. He didn’t think so since the light was still off, but he wanted to get back inside as quickly as possible so he could start washing his clothes. When they reached the building, he put his cigarette out against the wall.
“I gotta say, Gabriel,” Michael said, “this is bigger than an epidemic. This is something you can’t just find a miracle cure for and move on from, like you did before. It won’t work, and if you’re reckless about it, you run the risk of killing millions of people in the process.”
“I’m trying to save people not kill them. What do you expect me to do?”
“Finish your research. Study it, learn everything there is to know, and figure out how to negotiate with it. Then, together, we will capture the center of it, the core of its being. And we need to—”
“Capture the center? The core of its being? Negotiate with a virus? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Together, we can capture the core of its being. And then we’ll take our case to the Sky Amoeba.”
Gabriel glared at the big slug. He didn’t have time for such nonsense. The slugs were probably just hallucinations brought on by his Alzheimer’s. Without responding, he clambered through his bedroom window. As soon as he was inside, relief swept through him.
Michael inched up to the window. “Gabriel, you—”
“I’m going to bed, Michael. And tomorrow, I’m going to prove you wrong.”
Gabriel took off his coat. Bernard wasn’t in the bathroom, so he could wash his muddy clothes out in the sink. Nothing in his room had been moved, and the bed linens were still as untidy as he’d left them. He would call maintenance the next morning and say the window screen had fallen off in the night.
Michael stared at him through the open window. The slug’s posture suddenly looked weighted down. Even his antennas were lowered. “Sorry, man,” Michael said.
“For what?”
“Tomorrow, the truth is gonna come out. And like I said, you’re not gonna like it.”
Gabriel shook his head, closed the window, and shut the blinds right in the giant slug’s face.
Chapter 27:
Ellipsis
Spring 1983
Father Gareth walked across the wooden planks of the Clamshell Tavern, a small outdoor restaurant less than a mile from the famous Santa Monica Pier. Every step caused another old joint in his leg or hip to creak.
The last few years had not been kind to him. His beard had become a long, frizzy tangle of white hair. His once straight-backed, nimble figure had been devoured by Crohn’s disease, leaving little more than a fragile skeleton with transparent, speckled skin. The bags under his eyes grew heavier with every passing month. Gareth had often liked to joke that the wrinkles on his face might someday pull the skin right off, but lately, he worried that his joke might actually come true.
He’d once stood at a proud six foot two, but now, the stoop in his back had lowered him to five foot nine, on a good day. The knockout combination of arthritis and carpal tunnel had transformed even the simple task of holding a pen into a painful chore. Osteoporosis had dealt the final blow in his body’s self-destruction. His bones had gotten so hollow that even the hottest days of the summer did nothing to warm him. So whenever he left the church, he always wore his new favorite outfit, a trench coat and fedora.
