“I know what this sounds like. You have to trust me on this, Harry. I know what I saw. I know that it’s not my Alzheimer’s. This is real.”

“Okay. Okay.” Harry ran his hands over his short hair. “Let’s say all of this is true. When the virus kills a person, what exactly is being born?”

“Reborn,” Gabriel corrected. “It’s not a birth. That’s the other thing I was wrong about. It’s a rebirth.”

“A rebirth of what, exactly?”

“How shocked would you be if I told you that it was the immune system itself?” Gabriel felt hysteria bubbling in his throat, and he barked out a laugh.

Harry froze. “Sir, are you okay?”

“No, not even slightly okay! I mean, it’s perfect, isn’t it? Perfect irony. I’ve finally stumbled upon the twist in the Möbius strip of my life story. It’s fucking perfect!” Gabriel took a deep breath, trying not to go totally nuts.

Harry stepped back. “I get it. You’re saying that the twist is that after all your work curing HIV, a new virus has appeared that’s immune to even the great Schist Vaccine?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No. No. Don’t you get it? The virus isn’t immune to the Schist vaccine. It doesn’t have to be immune. Hell, it isn’t even a virus. It is the immune system. Death by emesis is death by the rogue immune system. Emesis is the rebellion of the immune system as it gains consciousness, merges into a single organic entity, then violently ejects from the human body after it kills the victim with its violent bombardment of the symptoms of every disease it can possibly conjure up from its bag of tricks.”

“But h-how does it know these symptoms?”

“Because we’ve trained it to memorize them! We’ve injected ourselves with so many goddamned vaccinations and medications that the immune system is now a magna cum laude graduate. It’s finally learned all it has to learn, and it’s done putting up with us. What we’re seeing here is the immune system going to war against us. It’s finally speaking up for itself, and after all the mistreatment we’ve heaped on it, it’s telling us to fuck off.”

Harry stared at him, slack jawed.

“How many people have died?” Gabriel asked. “What’re the latest numbers?”

“F-f-fifty-four, I believe.”

“God. Harry, this growing epidemic is the direct result of my vaccine. All these people are dying because some stupid idiot named Gabriel Schist messed around with the human body.”

“No. Stop it, sir. Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true. I created it. It’s my fault.”

Chapter 29:

Ekename

When Gabriel awoke, he was sitting at a table in the communal kitchen. With its dining tables and basic kitchen appliances, the room had a nice, homey atmosphere. The range was only for show, of course. They couldn’t take the risk of some nutty senior citizens setting the nursing home on fire.

Gabriel didn’t remember coming to the kitchen. He didn’t know what time it was, he didn’t know what day it was, and he definitely didn’t know why he was holding an old photo of Yvonne. She looked exactly how he always remembered her: young, draped in bright colors, lying on an empty California beach, the sunlight casting a crystalline glow on her sand-covered skin.

His notebook was open in front of him, the pages covered corner to corner with notes about the Black Virus. Apparently, he’d been pretty busy until he’d dozed off. He heard the quiet hum of a mechanical wheelchair as Lew Gates entered the room then stopped at the counter. Gabriel slid the photo of Yvonne underneath his notebook.

Lew, a broad-shouldered, bearded resident with a shaved head, went straight to the coffee machine. Lew’s coffee-drinking ways were well-known in the nursing home. He drank constantly, day and night, especially when the Red Sox were playing. Coffee mug in hand, Lew acknowledged Gabriel with a friendly thumbs-up then hummed back out the door.

Gabriel started reviewing his notes. He couldn’t continue to call the thing the Black Virus, since it wasn’t a virus at all. He needed to frame the situation in an entirely different way in his mind so that he could approach the problem from a new angle. He didn’t know whether the new entities had a language, whether each entity was unique, or what their thought processes were like.

He decided to talk to Victor about it. While he was at it, he could also ask Victor about that bizarre skeleton doll that had been left in his room the other night. Victor was highly intelligent, and he might have some unique insight about the matter.

Gabriel heard the wheels of a wheelchair moving down the corridor. He quickly covered his notes—not that it mattered if anyone saw him, but the lifetime habits of old privacy hounds never died. The shiny bald head and sparkling glasses of Mickey Minkovsky, the Jewish ladies’ man, came around the corner.

“Hi!” Mickey shouted, clapping his hands. He rolled over to Gabriel, put a finger over his lips, and pointed behind him. “You shoulda seen the legs on that one. Woweeeee, what a doll!”

Gabriel rubbed his forehead.“Oh?”

Mickey clapped his hands again and let out a loud whooping noise. He put out his hand, and when Gabriel shook it, Mickey wrenched his arm so forcefully that Gabriel thought his whole shoulder might pop off. “Yeah!” Mickey shouted, clapping Gabriel on the shoulder.

Gabriel’s other hand was tensely clasped around his notes, hiding them. Then, he reconsidered his territorialism. He looked into Mickey’s face. Somewhere behind those glasses—behind the Alzheimer’s-inflicted man that Mickey Minkovsky had become—was the amazing husband and father whom his wife often described on her daily visits.

“Pardon me, Mickey, but your wife has told me you used to be very reserved. A man of few words, she said. What happened?”

“Me?” Mickey slapped his stomach. “I got loud!”

Gabriel laughed. He released his notes and allowed them to settle on the table. “Hey, I have a question for you, if you don’t mind.”

“Shoot.”

“Let’s say that you happened to discover a new species.”

“Okay.”

“Actually, let’s say that a part of the human body evolved, and it became its own species. Let’s say that every time it did this, though, the human being that it was a part of died. Let’s say that it was your fault this happened. Would you feel guilty, even though you didn’t know that it would happen?”

Mickey bobbed his head. “Oh yeah. Damn right I’d feel guilty.”

“Yes.” Gabriel bit his lip. “That’s what I thought.”

“But hell, don’t beat yourself up over it. We all got our mistakes. And as long as you got your heart in the right place, then nothing else matters, not a damn thing.” He leaned forward in his chair and gave Gabriel’s chest a hearty thump that almost knocked the wind out of him. “That’s what I always say, pal! It ain’t easy to do the right thing. It’s hard to keep workin’ to fix your own mistakes, and it’s easy as hell to beat yourself up for it. But no matter what, you always gotta do what’s right, not what’s easiest.” He gave Gabriel’s shoulder a rigorous shake.

Gabriel smiled. “Thanks. I have another question.”

“Shoot.”

“If this new species did exist, what would you name it?”

Mickey frowned, then his huge grin returned. “Hell if I know!” He laughed loudly, clapped his hands, and rolled out of the kitchen.

A couple of hours later, Gabriel headed over to West Wing in search of Victor, but the hallway was closed off. They’d had a new Black Virus infection that morning, and that wing’s ex-military nurse was taking more extreme precautions than most of the others.

Gabriel walked back to his room. Bernard was standing beside the closet, dressed in his usual T-shirt and underwear and eating a cup of chocolate pudding.

“How’s it going, new guy?” Bernard said.

“The same as usual. You?”

Without responding, Bernard shuffled over to ring his call bell, probably realizing that the only thing better than pudding was fruit punch. Gabriel pulled the curtain divider closed and took off his coat. He decided a nap might be in order and pulled back the covers on his bed.