Pandemic Page 109

Cooper moved to the sink. He watched the membrane-covered man out of the corner of his eye as he turned on the hot water. He saw soap on the sink’s edge, used it to scrub his hands until they stung. He pulled handfuls of paper towels from a dispenser on the wall and used them to clean the piss from his pants.

He finished and turned off the water. He was dabbing himself dry when he heard a metallic click — the sound of the boiler room door, closing.

Cooper turned quickly, expecting to see something coming down the aisle toward him, but all he saw was the closed door. Had another of the creatures left?

Jeff.

Cooper looked left, to the base of the wall, to his friend … …

the membrane, disgusting and tattered and torn, lay in a rumpled heap on the concrete floor.

Jeff was gone.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

“I’m pregnant.”

The words stunned him. Clarence Otto stared at Margaret, but he wasn’t really seeing her. He wasn’t really seeing anything.

His lungs didn’t work. The little air he still had in them came out in a single syllable:

“What?”

Margaret hadn’t talked to him for almost four days, not since the videoconference with Cheng and Murray. She’d hidden in her private mission module. She hadn’t even come out for meals. The SEALs waited on her hand and foot, bringing her whatever she needed.

And then, not even fifteen minutes ago, that tall black SEAL, Bosh, had found Clarence up on the helicopter deck, told him Margaret was waiting to speak with him in the conferencing module.

Clarence had entered. She had pointed to a chair, told him to sit. He had. Before he could even say how are you, she’d hit him with that mind-numbing news.

“I said, I’m pregnant.” Margaret stared at him. She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t frowning.

Pregnant. His wife, the woman he still loved, pregnant with his child.

“That … Margo, that’s fantastic.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Is it? Is it really fantastic, Clarence? Then I wonder why being a single mother isn’t at the top of every little girl’s lifelong wish list.”

Single mother? What was she talking about?

“I’m right here,” he said. “This is great. I mean, it’s a shock, but it’s great.”

She pointed at him. “You’re not right here, Clarence. You left me, remember? And irony of ironies, you left me because I wouldn’t have a kid.”

Everything he’d ever wanted — the woman he’d fallen in love with, a child, a family — right there in front of him. He’d waited so long for her, then made an agonizing decision. Would he lose his dream because he hadn’t been able to wait just a little bit longer?

“I know,” he said. “I did leave you, you’re right. But that was before.”

She smiled. “Oh, before? You mean when I was a total mess? Now that your old Margo has returned, you want a do-over on abandoning your wife?”

No, that wasn’t what he … well, yes, he did want that. He never would have left this Margaret.

“Things have changed,” he said. “Think about it — we can be a family.”

She crossed her arms again. “If I decide to keep it.”

Clarence sagged in his chair. If I decide to keep it: those six words carved a deep chasm, with her on one side and him on the other. And that decision, the fate of his unborn child … that lay on her side of the line.

“Margaret, you can’t even think that.” He tried to sound authoritative and conciliatory at the same time. All he managed to do was sound small, weak.

“Don’t tell me what to think,” she said. “This isn’t exactly an ideal world for a newborn, now is it?”

Margaret had always been pro-choice. So had Clarence. But now he had no choice. He had never felt so powerless.

He couldn’t read anything in her eyes.

“We can make it work,” he said. “We’ll stay together. That’s what you wanted.”

She nodded. “Right. What I wanted — past tense. It’s only been a few days, Clarence, but maybe me coming back to my normal self happened because you weren’t there to smother me, stifle me.” Her eyes narrowed. “You weren’t there to trap me in that house, to leave me alone all goddamn day, to …”

Her words trailed off. She closed her eyes, gave her head a tiny shake. Then she looked at him. Her expression softened a little, but there was still a hardness in there, and also something … vacant.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “But it goes without saying that you better take good care of me, Clarence. You’ve got a lot of making up to do.”

She was going to make him grovel? The proud man inside wanted to turn around and walk out; the father-to-be inside, the husband inside, made him keep his ass right in that chair, made him nod.

“Whatever it takes,” he said. “Anything you need, Margo — anything.”

SOFIA

Cooper Mitchell stared down the barrel of a gun.

A woman held it. She was twentysomething, young enough to still be called a girl. She’d tied her black hair back in a loose ponytail. A look of anger and pain swirled in her dark eyes.

The girl’s right hand clutched her right side, where blood turned her yellow shirt a disturbing reddish-orange. She looked pale and weak. She held the black pistol in her shaking left hand.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t you fucking move.”

Chapter end