Dustin Thomason - 12.21

If Chel was surprised to encounter Venice’s finest example of a human freak, she didn’t show it. She remained silent, her mind still back at the Getty.

“How’d you two find each other?” Stanton asked as they started unloading equipment from Davies’s vehicle.

“I knocked on your door in Venice,” Monster said. “No one answered, so I let myself in. Brother, your place looks like one fucked-up science experiment, all those mice in there. When you didn’t come back, thought I’d call over to your lab and see if you were all right.”

“Good thing it was me who picked up the phone,” Davies said, “and not one of Cavanagh’s lackeys. She’s monitoring everything we do at the Prion Center. I couldn’t get a glass slide from there without getting caught. Much less a microscope.”

Stanton looked at Monster. “So you got all this from my place?”

“Electra helped me. She’s still there taking care of those mice.”

“You two should stay there for now. Until it’s safe.”

“Don’t know when that’ll be. But we’ll take you up on the offer.”

“You really think you can find these ruins without the book?” Davies asked.

“We have the digital copy, the translation, and a map,” Chel said. They were the first words she’d spoken.

“I’d tell you you’ve gone mad, but you already know that,” Davies told Stanton.

“You got a better idea?” Stanton asked. “Radio says they crossed the five-thousand mark in New York.”

They transferred the biohazard suits, testing tools, a battery-powered microscope, and other equipment needed for a mobile lab into Stanton’s Audi. Finally Davies pulled the last bag from the trunk. “Twenty-three thousand in cash,” he said. “Everyone in the lab got whatever they could. And this.” He opened the bag wider, revealing the gun from Stanton’s safe at the bottom.

“Thank you,” Stanton told the men. “Both of you.”

“How you gonna get out, Doc?” Monster asked. “They just sent in another fifty thousand troops to patrol the border. They’ve got men at every mile, and you’ll never find a private plane or a chopper now.”

Stanton glanced out over the Pacific.

THE CAMPUS OF Pepperdine University came into view at the stretch of coastline just south of Kanan Beach. Stanton took a hard left onto a long dirt road and followed it until there was nowhere else to go. It took half a dozen trips by foot up and down the rocky embankment to get all the gear onto the beach. Then they waited. This was one of the most uneven sea terrains in Malibu, making it dangerous for anyone sailing at night, unless they knew every outcropping. And they could only assume the coast guard was still patrolling parts of it.

Finally they saw the beam of a flashlight a few hundred yards out. Minutes later Nina approached the shore in a small dinghy. Her hair was wild, and salt caked her skin.

“You made it,” Stanton said as she beached the boat.

They hugged in the darkness and Nina said, “Lucky for you, I’ve been hiding from harbormasters my whole life.”

Even under the circumstances, it was strange for Stanton to be in the company of both these women. “Chel, this is Nina.”

But the two of them seemed immediately at ease around each other. “Thank you for this,” Chel said.

Nina smiled. “Couldn’t pass up the chance to have my ex-husband be forever in my debt.”

They loaded the equipment onto the dinghy and headed off to Plan A , anchored about two hundred yards out. As they climbed onto the big boat, Stanton heard a comforting chuff. He bent down and hugged Dogma’s soft, wet coat close to his chest.

Their destination was Ensenada, Mexico, two hundred forty miles south. Nina had contacted the captain of a larger boat, who’d agreed to meet them in a secluded part of the resort town. From there they’d travel past the Baja peninsula, where they’d have a better chance of chartering a plane to Guatemala. The McGray had a top speed of forty-two knots, which put the trip to Ensenada at about eight hours with refueling.

In the bight that took them to the North Pacific Gyre, Stanton searched the horizon for the coast guard. On her way in, Nina had deciphered the patrol pattern through the bay and navigated several miles out for the safest passage. The only chatter on the radio was from a few others trying to get away, speaking in code.

Out on the ocean, Nina and Stanton alternated at the wheel, with Nina taking on the more difficult stretches. Chel stayed below, sleeping or staring off in silence.

JUST BEFORE SUNRISE, they ran into an offshoot of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the hull of the boat gathered tiny fragments of discarded plastic at the bottom, causing it to drag and bump wildly. Only a captain as good as Nina could have gotten them through it, and as Stanton watched her steer them into calmer waters, he marveled at the skills she had honed over so many years at sea.

Comfortable as she clearly was, things had to have been really weird for her all alone out here for the last week. It was one thing to escape from the world, another thing entirely to imagine there might not be a world left to return to.

“You all right?” he asked her once they were past the gyre.

Nina held the wheel, glancing over at him. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“We were married for three years,” she said. “So we spent about a thousand nights together, minus the third of them you spent in the lab. And the fifteen or so you spent out on the couch when you pissed me off.”

“Practically a rounding error.”

“Well, I was thinking,” she continued, ignoring him. “We sleep eight hours every night. But during the week we spent only a few hours a day together, right? So we’ve spent more time together asleep than we ever have awake.”

“I guess so.”

They listened to the gentle rhythms of the ocean. Nina shifted the wheel, changing their course slightly. Stanton sensed something still lingering in the look on her face. “What?”

She nodded down at the hold, where Chel was. “You know it’s pretty strange to see you look at someone else that way,” she whispered.

“You haven’t seen us exchange a dozen words.”

“Don’t need to,” Nina said. “I know better than anyone what it looks like when you want something.”

Stanton shrugged it off. “I just met her.”

As Stanton finished the words, Chel emerged; it was the first time she’d come on deck in hours. She moved slowly, pulling herself up by the railing. The strangeness of Stanton and Nina’s conversation lingered, and Chel seemed to sense a slight shift in the emotional weather.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“You have to eat something,” Nina said, changing the subject.

“There’s a year’s worth of junk food down there.”

“I will. Thank you.” She turned to Stanton. “We should go over the maps and the trajectories together soon. I started projecting the different paths from Lake Izabal and identifying possible places where the city might plausibly have stood, based on what we know.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

“I need to make a call first,” Chel said. “Can I use the satellite phone?”

Stanton handed it to her, and she went back down below.

Nina whispered, “That woman just lost her friend, she was screwed by her mentor, and people took that book from her. If I’d been through what she has, it’d take me years to even think straight again. But she’s down there working. I’ve only known one other person in the world who could do that. So don’t be so damn rational. Get to it, for God’s sake.”