Scott Sigler: Pandemic

This was the part of the dance where he’d say something like just a grunt? I’m not as smart as you, so I don’t matter? and then she would tell him he was exactly right, because that would hurt him and she wanted to hurt him. She didn’t have anyone else to lash out against.

His eyes narrowed to black slits. His skin gleamed brighter, because the arguments always made him sweat. He took in a nostril-flaring breath. There it was, the anger she wanted to see.

She waited for his usual response.

He didn’t deliver it.

The big, held breath slowly slid out of his lungs — not as a yell, but a sigh of defeat. And he didn’t even look angry anymore. He didn’t look hurt, either.

He looked… spent .

Clarence stared at the floor.

Margaret felt a pang of alarm; something was wrong, more wrong than normal — Clarence Otto always looked people in the eye, as if he was a lighthouse perpetually flashing confidence, forever broadcasting a constant message of Alpha male.

Margaret felt hot. Her left hand pulled at the leg of her sweatpants: tug and release, tug and release, tug and release .

“Margo,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Her hand speeded up: tug and release, tug and release, tug and release . He was going to say the words she constantly hoped he would say, the same words she never wanted to hear.

He cleared his throat, an oddly soft noise from a man of his size.

“Us,” he said, the single syllable loud, definitive. “I can’t do us anymore.”

She took a step back, a step so weak she almost fell. And still, he stared down.

This man, this tall, strong man who had served his country in one form or another for twenty years, this black man who had put up with anything he’d had to in order to climb the ranks of the white-run CIA, this lover who had once put her on the back of a motorcycle and raced her out of Detroit while the world went crazy around them — now this man could not look at her.

That tiny inaction said more than any words ever could. Clarence had already made up his mind. He had made the decision days ago, probably, and had been waiting for the right moment to tell her. Knowing him, he’d been waiting for a chance to be kind, to at least try to be kind, but she’d forced it out of him. She’d been a self-involved bitch and backed him into a corner.

“Honey…” she said. There was more to the sentence, but she lost it. The single word hung in the air, lonely and impotent.

She thought of their early years together, their happiest years, and how they’d squandered much of that with days and even weeks apart due to her marathon sessions in the lab or his other assignments. She thought of how they’d console each other by saying they had all the time in the world to catch up, because they were married , because they were together .

Now it was all gone.

Clarence sniffed. He blinked back tears. “I’m getting older, Margo. I want a wife who’s here . I want a family.”

“I can’t,” she said instantly, feeling better for the briefest moment because this was another familiar argument. “I can’t bring a child into this world.”

A world of death and violence. A world of constant hatred. And she was too old, too old for a baby… those excuses and a hundred more.

Clarence sniffed again. He wiped the back of his hand against his eyes. “I know you can’t,” he said. “I accept that. Once I was willing to give up children if I could have you” — he looked up, spread his hands to indicate the room where she spent almost all her time — “but you’re not you anymore, Margo.”

She shook her head. “Honey, you don’t—”

“Stop,” he said sharply, the word a slap that landed in her soul instead of on her face. Then, softer: “You know me. You know I wouldn’t start this unless it was already finished. I love you. I always will. You didn’t kill millions, you saved billions . I tried to help you realize that. But you know what? It’s just not something you want to hear.”

Margaret spent much of her time hating him, wanting him to go, but now that he’d brought the idea out of the shadows and into a squirming reality, she suddenly, desperately wanted him to stay. She couldn’t have let this slip away.

“I won’t give you babies, so you’re leaving me,” she said. “That’s all I am to you? Just a breeding factory?”

She’d used that argument before, and it had always worked. This time, however, his eyes hardened.

“You’re not a breeding factory,” he said. “You’re not a wife , either. We don’t even make love.”

This was about his goddamn dick ? Her hands clenched into fists. “We just had sex a couple of days ago.”

“Two weeks ago,” he said. “Only the second time in the last four months.”

It seemed like more, but she knew better than to argue with him. He probably kept a calendar somewhere, tracked the actual days. That was often the difference between the two of them: Margaret reacted , Clarence planned .

He weakly waved a hand at the laptop. “You don’t want me because that is your lover. You want the hurt and the misery. You want to read the awful things people say about you.”

She felt a stinging in the back of her eyes, and a hard piece of iron in her chest where it met her neck. “They despise me,” she said. “I deserve it.”

The sadness faded from his eyes, replaced by conviction. That look stabbed deeper than his angry stare ever could — it was done.

“You don’t deserve to be hated,” he said. “But I’m done being your punching bag. If you can’t love yourself, I won’t spend any more time trying to convince you why you should. You’ve given up on life. I haven’t. I need someone who’ll fight by my side, not roll over and wait for death. I need a soldier . That’s what you were, once… but not anymore.”

She felt her hands gripping her shoulders, felt her body start to shake. Her rage had vanished. The puppeteer that made her say horrible things had fled the field of battle.

“But Clarence… I love you.”

He shook his head.

Margaret wanted to go to him, hold him, have him hold her, but a barrier had sprung up between them, a distance that might as well have been miles.

His cell phone buzzed. He pulled it out in an automatic motion, so fluid and fast it was more muscle memory than conscious thought.

“Don’t answer that,” she said. “Please… not now.”

He looked at the screen, then at her. “It’s Longworth.”

“I don’t care if it’s Jesus. Not now, Clarence, please .”

He stared at her for another moment. The phone buzzed again. He answered.

“Yes sir?”

Clarence listened. His eyes widened. “Yes sir. Now is fine.”

He put the phone away.

She felt numb. Not cold, not hot, not even angry or sad — just numb . “You just told me you’re abandoning me, and now you’re going to go to work ?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Murray will be here in fifteen minutes.”

The director of the Department of Special Threats was coming to their house. At three-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. It was important, but she didn’t care.

“You know I don’t want anyone here,” she said. “Why didn’t he have you drive in?”

Clarence took a step closer. “Because he’s coming to see you .”

She felt a cold pinch of fear. There could be only one reason Murray wanted to see her:

It was starting again .