“Sometimes we need to forget, just for a minute.”
“Here at the end of the world, trapped on an island, locked in a building, alone in a room—are we just closing our eyes to it? To everything that’s gone and everyone who’s died and…” He shook his head, gripping her shoulders, cursing himself for doing anything other than kissing her again. “I want this, and I want you, but I don’t want it to be a concession. I don’t want it to be the … going-away party for human civilization. Does that make any sense at all?”
“You want to celebrate life instead of hiding from death.”
His rush of a breath was like a sigh of relief. “Yes, that’s it exactly. Are you…? Is that okay?” He wanted her, but he wanted it to be right. “I don’t take a lot of stands, but this one seems important.”
“That’s fine,” said Lilly, and took a deep breath. “I know exactly how you feel, actually.” She looked down, sighing, then looked up again quickly and pulled him in for another kiss, longer than the others, deeper and more passionate. Lyle felt himself melting, almost ready to throw his stand out the window and throw her down on the bed, but she pulled away. “If we’re waiting I can’t stay here.” She rolled her eyes and hurried to the door. “I’ll be in my bunk.”
She closed the door behind her, and Lyle stared at it. “What did I just do?” He sat down, still staring, and took a long pull on his bottle. It was sweet and acrid, and he wished it were booze.
The start of a new world, he thought. Not just the end of an old one. There has to be more—I thought the world was over, but it’s not. For all her amazing qualities that’s the single most amazing one, hands down: she convinced me the world isn’t over. We can make a new one.
I just don’t know if we can make it here.
Cynthia was a terror, determined to hold power by any means necessary, and she wasn’t the only one. The general was just as power-hungry in his own, less Machiavellian way—he’d been the man who’d destroyed São Tomé, after all. He didn’t have the plans Cynthia did, but the plans he did have he would pursue with a single-minded ferocity. The three delegates were simultaneously useless and terrifying; their solutions, on the rare occasions they had any, were vast and sweeping and completely insane. All three of them had been willing to turn the entire human population into seven billion copies of the same person, the biggest eugenics crime Lyle could even imagine. How long before they came up with something even worse?
Worst of all was Dr. Shorey—not who she was, but who she was becoming. Lyle had watched her closely in the lab, in the truck on the way home, in the front room as they treated the dying man. She’d promised to watch Cynthia carefully, and in a way she had, but it was more focused than that. She wasn’t just watching Cynthia, she was watching Cynthia’s hands. She was watching the lotion. Lyle had even caught her staring at Cynthia’s pocket, obsessed with the ReBirth sample, her thoughts obviously focused on it constantly. As careful as they’d tried to be, they’d brought another plague with them from the depths of the lab: Shorey had become infected with suspicion and greed, and she would spread it to the scientists and the soldiers and everybody else. Even now, in the silence of the living complex, Lyle felt like he could hear them—half a dozen little factions, whispering and scheming, plotting their moves and staking their claims on the glorious throne of a windswept rock barely half a mile across.
“We have to leave,” Lyle whispered. “I don’t know where else we can go, but we can’t stay here.”
The trouble was that Plum Island really was the perfect haven. It had modern amenities, stored food, and that irreplaceable clean water system. As long as nothing dangerous got into it, they could recirculate their water for generations, and never have to worry about the ReBirth that tainted the rest of the planet. The only other alternative was to find a place the lotion hadn’t touched, but where? It was everywhere. That’s why they’d come to the island in the first place.
“The islands,” Lyle whispered, and he felt his heart race with excitement. The Samoan delegate wanted to go to the islands, to the Bahamas or Bermuda or the Caribbean. Somewhere so small no one else wanted it, and no one else has touched it, just me and Lilly alone on the beach. We could fish, and eat coconuts and bananas and anything we want. Most of it wouldn’t even have gluten—she’d never be sick. We could do it. We could live. We could take Cynthia’s boat and disappear forever.
But only one of us would live forever.
Lyle stood now, pacing the room, searching through the variables to find a way through them. We could leave, and we could sail south, and we could get to our island, but I’m immortal. I’ll spend sixty years with Lilly, watching her age and die, and then I’ll spend a thousand years alone. Ten thousand. I can’t do that. What good is a paradise if it ends in death, and emptiness, and maybe even suicide?
The answer, Lyle knew, was in Cynthia’s room, in Cynthia’s pocket, in a tiny glass vial. It would be easy—Lilly wouldn’t even have to know at first. He had her water bottle right here, with her DNA on the mouth and floating in the leftover water inside. All I have to do is drop the lotion in it, just a tiny drop, and let it drift around and pick up her DNA code. And then she can drink it, and become a clone of herself, and stay young and healthy and beautiful forever. We can be together forever.
All I need is one drop.
63
Friday, December 14
12:18 A.M.
Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Long Island
THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle opened his door. The hall was empty and dark. He crept through the corridor carefully, quietly, watching for shadows in the corners and doorways, and listening for any other sound of human life. The building was as silent as a tomb. Lyle walked slowly to Cynthia’s room, forcing himself to be patient. If he could slip in while she was asleep, if he could take what he wanted without waking her, without anyone knowing, then they could slip away in the night. He could wake Lilly and they could run.
Lyle put a hand on Cynthia’s doorknob, cold and rough from ancient use. He turned it, slowly, warily, using just enough pressure to test the lock. It was open. He turned it farther, hearing the mechanism slide, hearing the bolt scrape across the rim of its housing, an inaudible whisper that seemed to scream in his ears like a freight train. He turned it farther, felt it open, pushed the door gently and held his breath, waiting for the squeak of rusty hinges. The door opened smoothly, silently, not alerting a soul to his plans. He looked inside.
The room was empty.
Lyle frowned. He slipped in, looking behind the door, searching the closet, and his spirits plunged as he realized Cynthia was gone—she had left, or someone had taken her. Lyle raced back to the hall and looked around wildly, his heart racing. Someone had come for her! One faction or another had already made its move, and the lotion was gone. He ran to the front room and looked outside. All the vehicles were still there. He looked in the storage room, in the bathroom, in the empty bedrooms. He looked in the kitchen and saw a slim, skeletal shadow in the corner, sitting at the cracked kitchen table.
“Lyle,” said Cynthia. “I never guessed you would be the first.”
“The first?”
She clicked on the light, and Lyle blinked his eyes against the sudden glare. As they adjusted he saw the vial on the table, a tiny glass monolith a few inches from Cynthia’s hand. Lying next to it was her handgun, black and gleaming.
“The first to make a play for the lotion,” said Cynthia. “I knew someone would try it, maybe several someones. You won’t be the last tonight, I assure you, but it surprises me that you’re the first.”
Lyle found a second light switch and turned the lights back off. “Lower your voice,” he whispered, “they’re probably all still awake.”
“How very noble of you,” said Cynthia. Lyle heard the gun slide across the worn Formica. “Protecting me from the others’ schemes. What’s your own scheme, Lyle? Is it equally noble?”
She already knew, so Lyle saw no sense in waiting. He walked toward her slowly, wary of the gun. “I want to save Lilly.”
“Disappointing,” said Cynthia. “I was hoping for something original, but I suppose you only have two settings: ‘Don’t use ReBirth ever, for any reason,’ and ‘Use ReBirth to save the girl I’m currently lusting after.’ That didn’t work out so well for Susan, did it?”
“This is a selfish motivation, and I admit that,” said Lyle. “I’m going to live forever, and I want Lilly with me. All I need is a drop—nobody else has to know.” He shook the water bottle, hearing the liquid slosh. “I have her saliva, it’s as good as a mouth swab.”
“And by then we can concoct some other plausible scenario,” said Cynthia, as if she’d known the plan all along. “We can pretend it happened before the fall, in the UN, perhaps, or we could feign ignorance altogether.” Lyle saw the outline of her grim smile in the darkness, and felt a chill. Somehow, no matter what he said or did, he always felt like he was following her script.
How had she gone so quickly from surprise to control? Was it all an act? Was she really that smart?
Or was she just evil?
“She’ll still have celiac sprue,” said Cynthia.
