Dustin Thomason: 12.21

After studying the sixth, he leaned back in despair.

There were no beech molecules on any of the slides. This species, like every other one Stanton had ever tried, like all the ones they’d used to make pentosan, could not pass the barrier into the brain.

A wave of hopelessness crested inside him. He might have quit right then and just wallowed in the darkness if he hadn’t heard Chel making noises on the other side of the tomb.

He ran to her. Her legs were kicking wildly.

She was having a seizure.

Not only had the drug failed; the conditions in the tomb—the heat, the concentration of prion—had accelerated the disease’s progress. If her fever climbed any higher, it could kill her. “Stay with me,” he whispered to her. “Stay with me .”

Stanton felt around for the extra shirt in the supply bag, ripped it into rags, and soaked them in the dregs of their water bottles. But before he could even apply the compresses, he felt Chel’s forehead getting cooler. He knew that her body was giving up. He brushed his fingers along the skin of her neck, just under her jaw, and found a thready pulse.

Her seizure slowly subsided, and, for the first time in a long time, Stanton prayed. To what, he didn’t know. But the god he’d worshipped his entire adult life—science—had failed him. Soon he’d be walking out of this jungle, having failed the thousands, and eventually millions, who would die from VFI. So he prayed for them. He prayed for Davies, Cavanagh, and the rest of CDC. He prayed for Nina. But mostly he prayed for Chel, whose life was no longer in his hands. If she died—when she died—all he would have left would be the knowledge that he hadn’t done enough.

Stanton glanced at his watch. 11:46 p.m.

Across the chamber, the ancient skulls seemed to taunt him with the secret they were keeping. Stanton wouldn’t let Chel spend eternity in a staring contest with them. He would take her out of here. He would—

It was then that he had the horrible realization that he would have to bury Chel in the jungle. He thought back to something she’d said the night before, when they were slumped against another wall, on the outskirts of Kiaqix.

When a soul is taken, it needs the incense smoke in order to pass from the middleworld to the underworld. Everyone here is stuck between worlds.

How would he burn incense for her? What could he use?

Then it occurred to Stanton that Paktul had written about incense too.

When I set the macaw down and kissed the wretched limestone, the aroma had changed, and I could no longer taste it on the back of my tongue as I once had.

What if the smell and taste of the incense in the air changed for a reason? Paktul knew the king’s usual incense combination. If the taste was gone from the back of his tongue, maybe it was because it was no longer bitter…

Stanton stood up and scooped Chel into his arms.

He had to get her outside.

Carrying her from the king’s chamber, he bore her weight back down the hallway, then hoisted her over his shoulder and began up the first set of stairs. As diffi cult as it had been to get down the stairs alone, they seemed even steeper and narrower than before.

But minutes later they reached the top and tasted the night air. There was a small clearing about ten feet from the north face of the pyramid, with enough room to make a small fire—most likely where Volcy and his partner had pitched their tent.

Stanton laid Chel down in a small crook between tree roots and sprinted to the reverse side of the pyramid. He frantically gathered more beech, circled back around, and dumped the branches in a pile in front of Chel. A minute later he was lighting the kindling, and soon flames danced up into the sky. The acrid smell of the smoke filled the air.

Stanton sat close to the fire with Chel’s head in his lap. He placed his hands on her head and opened her eyelids as wide as he could. He forced his own eyes open too, even as the smoke made them begin to tear. If VFI got into the brain through the retina, then maybe the treatment for it had to as well.

For five silent minutes, as the flames grew, Stanton held Chel in the jungle night, looking for a sign. Any sign at all. He brushed the hair from her face to check her pulse. He didn’t even notice his wristwatch—he was concentrating on Chel’s heartbeat—but the second hand clicked off the last two ticks of the fourth world.

It was midnight.

12/21.

FOR MILLIONS AROUND THE WORLD, IT WAS THE END OF LIFE AS they knew it. As long as anyone alive could remember, the arrow of progress had pointed in the direction of technological innovation, urbanization, and connectivity. In the years leading up to 2012—for the first time in human history—the majority of humans lived in cities, and it had been projected that by 2050 that proportion would rise to more than two-thirds.

The end of the Long Count cycle changed all that. Some of the largest metropolises in the world had been overrun by Thane’s disease, and there was no way to know if they would ever be completely safe again. Because there was still nothing that could destroy the protein, new contaminated places had to be quarantined every day as they were discovered. In malls, restaurants, schools, offices, and public transportation from America to Asia, the hazmat vehicles and cleanup crews became something to live with—or escape from.

Within weeks, this contamination prompted a mass exodus from many of the world’s largest urban centers. Some economic data suggested that a quarter of the populations of New York, San Francisco, Cape Town, London, Atlanta, and Shanghai might leave within a three-year period. Transplants went to smaller cities, to the reaches of suburban sprawl, to the countryside, where self-sustaining agrarian communities popped up.

L.A. was in a category by itself. Thane’s disease touched every Southland citizen. It was impossible for many to imagine staying, even if it were safe.

The most famous doctor in the world hadn’t returned either. Along with the international team of scientists now under his command, Stanton was living in a tent that the Guatemalan Health Service had erected in the ruins at Kanuataba. The day after walking out of the jungle with the samples he’d taken in the tomb, and driving the jeep two hours to a working phone, Stanton returned with the Guatemalan Health Department. He hadn’t left the jungle since.

From trees surrounding the king’s tomb, Stanton and his medical team had synthesized an infusion that could reverse Thane’s disease if taken within three days of infection. The ancient citizens of Kanuataba had overused beech to the verge of extinction. But when they abandoned the city, the trees had returned in full force.

The question of why they were concentrated right around the tomb remained. Species sometimes evolved together, even those working in direct opposition to one another. Microbes got stronger in reaction to antibiotics. Over hundreds of generations, mice became better at eluding their predators, and snakes became better at hunting their prey. Some scientists argued that the prion and the trees had been co-evolving for centuries, making each other stronger and stronger through mutation, until Volcy opened the tomb. The term the broadcast journalists favored was an evolutionary arms race .

The Believers, of course, called it fate.

After successfully convincing the scientifi c community what VFI should really be called, Stanton had stopped trying to give any of the rest of what had happened a name.

On a particularly grueling day in late June, he gave instructions in broken Spanish to his team of mostly Guatemalan doctors and headed for the residential tent. Rain soaked his clothing, and mud weighed down his boots as he trudged forward into the shadow of the twin temples and Jaguar Imix’s palace. Jungle living was hard, and he missed the ocean, but he was getting used to the heat and humidity, and drinking a cold beer at the end of a long workday in the ruins felt good.