Мэтт Рихтел - Dead on Arrival

“Counseling, Lyle. You’re in or I’m out.”

He studied her face. The water retained in her rosy cheeks.

“You’re pregnant, Melanie.”

“Shut up, Lyle.”

He looked down so he couldn’t watch the wave of revelation spread over her face. He’d suspected for a week or more. He suspected she didn’t know. How could he know before her? How did he ever understand these things? It started with a sensation, like an itch, and it made its way from his body to his brain to his consciousness.

“No, Lyle, it’s not…” She stopped and her blue eyes turned steely. “I’m pregnant? I’m pregnant!” Her utter disbelief transformed quickly into wonder. Lyle so often was right about things like this. Could he see it before she knew? “Why did you let me go?” she demanded. No words to capture her betrayal.

“Maybe the better question is why you went.”

The tears leaked from her crimson-tinged eyes and one dripped off her chin. She had no strength to wipe them away.

“What’s happened to you, Lyle?”

Jackie and Denny hit the Nevada border just after two on a bright Saturday afternoon in Denny’s Tesla. They’d taken the “scenic” route, Denny joked, which meant driving the flatlands east of the Bay Area, skirting the more populated route to the north, and taking two-lane highways where Denny got to test out the “autonomous driver” mode on his Tesla. The car’s new software drove itself while Denny told Jackie more about Lantern, the project they were studying in the desert. With his hands free, he could even show her slides on the seventeen-inch touch screen in the Tesla, which he’d hooked up to his iPad.

At the Nevada border and truck weigh station, they slowed at the request of a soldier who waved them to the side.

“An army checkpoint?” Jackie asked.

“I assume because of what happened last month.”

Three weeks earlier, the army had raided the home of a family in the Big Smoky Valley to the east. The family’s ranch was on federal land to be used for military exercises, but the parents had refused multiple requests and legal maneuverings to get them to move. They holed up on the property with a veritable cache of munitions, including a grenade launcher, and declared themselves sovereign. On Instagram, they posted a sign of their twin nine-year-olds, a boy and a girl, draped in the American flag, holding AK-47s. The army assault, pressed by manifold interests, including concerns about the children, used nonlethal gases and took back the house.

Three days later, in retaliation, two men attacked the guard post at the military base in Hawthorne. They killed a soldier and injured three others, before they were killed.

At the border, the grim-looking soldier looked into the Tesla’s trunk and waved on Denny and Jackie.

Martial law, Jackie thought. She said, “You never said why here—in Hawthorne.”

He explained how Nevada was about the most business-friendly place in the world. Low taxes, lax regulations. Totally hassle free, he said, sounding mostly kidding, but not totally. “In Silicon Valley, we spend more for an hour of a lawyer’s time than we do to rent an office for the month.”

Jackie listened to Denny on two different levels: on one, she was getting basic information, and on the other she was assessing whether he was being straight with her, if she could still have faith in him, follow his direction. The lines beneath her eyes told how much sleep she’d lost, some nights making lists of the evidence in his favor and against. She’d let him lead her from wilderness, pull her from two decades in shadows—and what if she’d been wrong to do that all along?

“Jackie?”

“Huh?”

“You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“Not really.”

Another long stretch of road and silence.

“You spent much time in the hinterlands?” Denny asked.

“Did some backpacking, after college.”

“Yeah.”

“Nepal.” She gritted her teeth. Almost didn’t come back.

“You grew up in…”

“Ohio.”

“Really?”

“No, but why’d you ask if you already knew?”

“Trying not to be presumptuous.”

“Salt Lake,” she said. How much did he actually know? Who was she kidding; Google knew everything.

“Family?”

“Sister.”

“Oh, yeah, what’s her name?”

Jackie gripped the leather seat next to her right leg. “Marissa.”

“Beautiful name. What’s she up—”

“I’d rather not talk about it, Denny.”

He nodded. “Were you trekking—when you went to Nepal?”

She wondered if he knew about that, too.

“Finding myself, I guess.”

“What did you find?”

“A near-death experience—rabies.”

“Say what again.”

“I got scratched by a monkey. Not that common, the monkey part. But there are lots of rabies attacks there, mostly from dogs’ bites. You know much about rabies?”

“I know you don’t want it.”

“We’ve got a winner. It is a hundred percent fatal once the symptoms set in. The good news is, it’s also preventable during the incubation period if you get the vaccine. The trick is getting it in time.”

“Which you obviously did or you’d be salivating even more than you already are.”

She laughed. “The vaccine is available there, if you get to a clinic. And I was on my way to one when there was an earthquake.”

His eyebrows raised, like Holy shit .

“Flights canceled, trains down, chaos. Long story short, I was in deep trouble when I was essentially rescued by an American doctor who was over there dealing with a cholera outbreak. He saw me waiting at an airstrip that had ground to a halt due to the earthquake. I’d never have gotten to Kathmandu in time. If not for him, I’m not here to experience”—she focused out the window—“lovely Hawthorne.”

The town now loomed, just three miles across the border. It was the kind of small highway town where the low-slung building with the red word “Motel” stood out like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And it seemed even to lean. Another business sign read classic car, which probably meant “Old.” And another, which made Jackie laugh, said wash and referred to a Laundromat but the sign was encrusted in filth.

“That’s a remarkable story,” Denny said. “Does it explain your interest in infectious disease—that class you’re taking?”

The insightful nature of the question startled her. She hadn’t even told the whole of it to Denny, and how it really had been the turning point in her life. Truth is, had it not been for the heroism of Dr. Martin—Lyle—she well might’ve let herself just die. Sitting on the ground outside the airstrip, she had actually gotten peaceful with the idea. After so much bullshit in her life, so little faith in herself and people around her, it felt in the moment like a blessing to curl up there on the ground and let the hot wind carry her away.

“The guy who teaches it is a genius,” Jackie said.

“High praise coming from you.”

“I mean the real McCoy, Denny. You ever really want someone to figure something out, Dr. Lyle Martin is the guy…”

“I’m starting to feel jealous,” Denny said, as he slowed at a stoplight. “Okay, it’s decision time. I figured we’d stop at the restaurant, unless you want to go straight to the shop.”

“ The restaurant?”

“I guess there’s more than one. I’ve never tested the theory.”

They got turkey sandwiches with canned cranberry chunks on white bread to go and Denny drove them a half mile east of town and down a dirt road. Jackie noticed the preponderance of army trucks driving both directions. The army base here was a large munitions storage facility, located outside of town, and essentially was this place’s raison d’être. The Rocky Mountains loomed to the east. Two miles down a dirt road, and then a few serpentine turns later Denny parked his Tesla in front of a place that looked, appropriately, like a scientific outpost but one you might find in a frozen tundra. Two corrugated metal buildings with a generator by the side and a horizontal unit Jackie recognized as housing cooling equipment.