Guillermo Del Toro - The Complete Strain Trilogy - The Strain, The Fall, The Night Eternal

Eph’s mobile started vibrating again, crabbing across the tabletop like the chattering gag teeth his uncles used to give him for Christmas. The awakened device interrupted their roughhousing, Eph releasing Zack, fighting the impulse to check the display. Something was happening. The calls wouldn’t have come through to him otherwise. An outbreak. An infected traveler.

Eph made himself not pick up the phone. Someone else had to handle it. This was his weekend with Zack. Who was looking at him now.

“Don’t worry,” said Eph, putting the mobile back down on the table, the call going to his voice mail. “Everything’s taken care of. No work this weekend.”

Zack nodded, perking up, finding his controller. “Want some more?”

“I don’t know. When do we get to the part where the little Mario guy starts rolling barrels down at the monkey?”

“Dad.”

“I’m just more comfortable with little Italian stereotypes running around gobbling up mushrooms for points.”

“Right. And how many miles of snow was it you had to trudge through to get to school each day?”

“That’s it—!”

Eph fell on him again, the boy ready for him this time, clamping his elbows tight, foiling his rib attack. So Eph changed strategy, going instead for the ultrasensitive Achilles tendon, wrestling with Zack’s heels while trying hard not to get kicked in the face. The boy was begging for mercy when Eph realized his mobile was vibrating yet again.

Eph jumped up this time, angry, knowing now that his job, his vocation, was going to pull him away from his son tonight. He glanced at the caller ID, and this time the number bore an Atlanta prefix. Very bad news. Eph closed his eyes and pressed the humming phone to his forehead, clearing his mind. “Sorry, Z,” he told Zack. “Just let me see what’s up.”

He took the phone into the adjoining kitchen, where he answered it.

“Ephraim? It’s Everett Barnes.”

Dr. Everett Barnes. The director of the CDC.

Eph’s back was to Zack. He knew Zack was watching and couldn’t bear to look at him. “Yes, Everett, what is it?”

“I just got the call from Washington. Your team is en route to the airport now?”

“Ah, sir, actually—”

“You saw it on TV?”

“TV?”

He went back to the sofa, showing Zack his open hand, a plea for patience. Eph found the remote and searched it for the correct button or combination of buttons, tried a few, and the screen went blank. Zack took the remote from his hand and sullenly switched to cable.

The news channel showed an airplane parked on the tarmac. Support vehicles formed a wide, perhaps fearful, perimeter. JFK International Airport. “I think I see it, Everett.”

“Jim Kent just reached me, he’s pulling the equipment your Canary team needs. You are the front line on this, Ephraim. They’re not to make another move until you get there.”

“They who, sir?”

“The Port Authority of New York, the Transportation Security Administration. The National Transportation Safety Board and Homeland Security are winging there now.”

The Canary project was a rapid-response team of field epidemiologists organized to detect and identify incipient biological threats. Its purview included both naturally occurring threats, such as viral and rickettsial diseases found in nature, and man-made outbreaks—although most of their funding came thanks to Canary’s obvious bioterrorism applications. New York City was the nerve center, with smaller, university-hospital-based satellite Canaries up and running in Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago.

The program drew its name from the old coal miner’s trick of bringing a caged canary underground as a crude yet efficient biological early warning system. The bright yellow bird’s highly sensitive metabolism detected methane and carbon monoxide gas traces before they reached toxic or even explosive levels, causing the normally chirpy creature to fall silent and sway on its perch.

In this modern age, every human being had the potential to be that sentinel canary. Eph’s team’s job was to isolate them once they stopped singing, treat the infected, and contain the spread.

Eph said, “What is it, Everett? Did somebody die on the plane?”

The director said, “They’re all dead, Ephraim. Every last one.”

KELLY GOODWEATHER sat at the small table across from Matt Sayles, her live-in partner (“boyfriend” sounded too young; “significant other” sounded too old). They were sharing a homemade pizza made with pesto sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, and goat cheese, with a few curls of prosciutto thrown in for flair, as well as an eleven-dollar bottle of year-old merlot. The kitchen television was tuned to NY1 because Matt wanted the news. As far as Kelly was concerned, twenty-four-hour news channels were her enemy.

“I am sorry,” she told him again.

Matt smiled, making a lazy circle in the air with his wineglass.

“It’s not my fault, of course. But I know we had this weekend set up all to ourselves …”

Matt wiped his lips on the napkin tucked into his shirt collar. “He usually finds a way to get in between the two of us. And I am not referring to Zack.”

Kelly looked over at the empty third chair. Matt had no doubt been looking forward to her son’s weekend away. Pending resolution of their drawn-out, court-mediated custody battle, Zack was spending a few weekends with Eph at his flat in Lower Manhattan. That meant, for her, an intimate dinner at home, with the usual sexual expectations on Matt’s part—which Kelly had no qualms about fulfilling, and was inevitably worth the extra glass of wine she would allow herself.

But now, not tonight. As sorry as she was for Matt, for herself she was actually quite pleased.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she told him, with a wink.

Matt smiled in defeat. “Deal.”

This was why Matt was such a comfort. After Eph’s moodiness, his outbursts, his hard-driving personality, the mercury that ran through his veins, she needed a slower boat like Matt. She had married Eph much too young, and deferred too much of herself—her own needs, ambitions, desires—helping him advance his medical career. If she could impart one bit of life advice to the fourth-grade girls in her class at PS 69 in Jackson Heights, it would be: never marry a genius. Especially a good-looking one. With Matt, Kelly felt at ease, and, in fact, enjoyed the upper hand in the relationship. It was her turn to be tended to.

On the small white kitchen television, they were hyping the next day’s eclipse. The reporter was trying on various glasses, rating them for eye safety, while reporting from a T-shirt stand in Central Park. KISS ME ON THE ECLIPSE! was the big seller. The anchors promoted their “Live Team Coverage” coming tomorrow afternoon.

“It’s gonna be a big show,” said Matt, his comment letting her know he wasn’t going to let disappointment ruin the evening.

“It’s a major celestial event,” said Kelly, “and they’re treating it like just another winter snowstorm.”

The “Breaking News” screen came on. This was usually Kelly’s cue to change the channel, but the strangeness of the story drew her in. The TV showed a distant shot of an airplane sitting on the tarmac at JFK, encircled by work lights. The plane was lit so dramatically, and surrounded by so many vehicles and small men, you would have thought a UFO had touched down in Queens.

“Terrorists,” said Matt.

JFK Airport was only ten miles away. The reporter said that the airplane in question had completely shut down after an otherwise unremarkable landing, and that there had as yet been no contact either from the flight crew or the passengers still aboard. All landings at JFK had been suspended as a precaution, and air traffic was being diverted to Newark and LaGuardia.