The Nirvana Plague (52 page)

“Tell them I’m coming up there!”

Graham ducked out of the room and was gone. The room seemed to deflate. Everyone was disappearing out of it.

Marley stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do, his head whirling.

Benford said, “It’s happening in Washington.”

Marley looked around for her. For a second, he didn’t know where her voice was coming from.

“The government is being evacuated to emergency command sites.”

The room was emptying out quickly. Everyone had somewhere to go except for the two of them, and Tyminski, as always, standing by.

“How bad?” Marley said.

“Unknown. Bad enough. And other places too. There have been mass outbreaks in dozens of cities. All over the world. It’s been going on for at least a couple of days. Delhi, Beijing, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Rome. And lots of little cities like Juneau. Probably hundreds of those. Who knows. Nobody is saying. I couldn’t even tell you. Because the bambies couldn’t know.”

Marley sat down again.

“It’s breaking out in Abrams, too,” she said. “We released all the doors and abandoned the place.”

“Can’t I get to Skagway somehow?”

Before Benford could answer, the ship’s warning system split the air with a clanging blast.

Marley jumped up. “Battle stations!” he said.

“Yes,” Benford said.

He started for the door. “I’m going up on deck.”

She put out a hand to stop him. “No.”

“I’m going to see what’s happening!”

Marley quickly found his way out onto the main deck and ran forward. Benford ran after him, and Tyminski after her.

A fleet of small boats was pouring out of the harbor into the channel waters, swarming around the massive Navy and Coast Guard ships. They were all blowing their horns and flashing whatever lights they had. The sound was earsplitting.

Marley looked around the deck desperately. “Are they going to fire on them?” he yelled to Benford.

She still had her headset on, and one hand cupped over one ear, trying to hear. “I don’t know.”

“Look!” He pointed her toward several seamen taking up positions along the rail. They were carrying large shoulder weapons that looked something like rocket launchers. They were taking aim at the nearest vessels.

The boats couldn’t have been more than fifty yards off. Marley could clearly see people on the decks, jumping up and down, waving their arms, cupping their hands around their mouths, screaming, pathetically harassing the six-hundred-foot ship.

A second later he heard a sort of sharp thunk that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It made him shrink together the way an explosion does.

All the windows on the targeted boat’s cabin shattered. The man on the deck collapsed, curling up with his hands over his ears.

The earsplitting din of boat horns was not abated in the least.

Benford yelled in Marley’s ear: “Acoustic cannon.”

The next team chose another target and shattered its cabin windows.

The nearest boats reversed thrust and started to back away.

Benford tapped his shoulder and pointed toward the waterfront.

Vehicles were moving along Egan Street behind the harbor. Cars and trucks were streaming out from the city and lining up along the street, blowing their horns and flashing their lights. People were climbing on top of them, jumping and dancing, waving their arms and screaming at the ships in the channel.

Marley had never heard anything like it in his life. The air itself seemed supersaturated with sound. It was both terrifying and thrilling. He clung to the rail, leaning out, leaning into the ferocious roar.

Benford grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

He whirled on her, suddenly furious.

She pointed to the bridge over the water. “It’s breaking out again!”

The cars from Juneau were rolling out onto the bridge. But no one was opening fire. Troops were running down the bridge — in both directions. Some were fleeing back through the vehicles and huts, away from the approaching vehicles, back toward the encampment on the Douglas Island side. But just as many were fleeing forward, toward Juneau.

Benford tapped the headset over her left ear and yelled: “We’re pulling out!”

“What?” he yelled back. “What?”

“Before it breaks out on the ship! We’re pulling out! We’re putting to sea!”

He felt a tremor pass through the ship as the engines engaged.

“No!” he screamed at her.

“Graham has ordered the ship to sea!”

He whirled around again, facing the city.

The whole waterfront was alive, dancing, screaming, writhing with human beings. It seemed to him it was going to tear him apart, that the thrill of it would blow him to pieces.

“Marley!” Benford yelled.

He was leaning out over the rail. Leaning into the city. Yearning toward it.

And then he jumped.

Too late, Benford grabbed for him.

He swung his legs over the rail in one movement. The momentum of them pulled his hands from the rail, and he fell. He felt his body captured by the earth’s gravity. He felt himself filled with grace and lithe strength.

Twenty years passed in an instant. The body remembered its training. The body falling, righted itself. Without thinking, he snapped his legs together, crossed his arms tightly over his chest, lifted his head, and, thirty feet below the
Auster’s
bow rail, plunged boots-first into the cold sea.

The seawater drank him. Everything was bubbles and light and clear cold pressure.

And then he was swimming. Kicking and stroking, he pulled himself eagerly back to the surface, back into the furious uproar, and started crawling toward the boats.

No man-overboard was sounded. No lines or floats were thrown. And he didn’t look back.

He kicked and clawed his way across the no-man’s-water between the ship and the ring of boats. The bambies stood yelling and waving at him from their decks, but he could hear nothing over the din of the horns and the smack of water in his ears.

A dinghy appeared from amongst the boats, two men in it, and pulled toward him slowly on oars. The ship did not fire her acoustic cannons on it.

The dinghy met Marley midway. Reaching into the water the two men hauled him over the gunwale by the belt of his trousers. He flopped into the floor of the square dinghy like a half-stunned fish, gasping and smiling.

Amid the mad scream of horns the
Sea Word
made her way carefully toward the harbor.

The Navy ships were coming about, harried by the smaller vessels. The crew and passengers on the
Sea Word
watched as the grey ships swatted back with acoustic cannons at their tormentors. But where each little boat stumbled, deafened and incapacitated, three more came on.

The news crews filmed in all directions. The earsplitting noise made it impossible for the two reporters to add comment, so they scribbled notes on their tablets to voiceover later.

Giving all this commotion as wide a berth as he could manage, Banger threaded his boat in through the harbor gates and brought his passengers to port. Cutting the engines, he slid up to the dock, and the young first mate jumped out and made fast.

The news teams were off like rabbits, dashing up the docks, toting their equipment after them.

Banger handed Karen and Ally onto the dock.

“Boy, fetch the ladies’ bags!” he yelled over the din. “Ladies, welcome to Juneau!”

The first mate jumped back on board and grabbed the two pillowcases stuffed with clothes.

Karen’s eyes filled with tears. With her small form she embraced Banger’s larger one roughly, crying.

“Ma’am!” he said, patting her. “Now, ma’am!”

She pulled away, too excited now to stand still for more than a moment, and clutched her bag from the hands of the boy. “How much can I pay you?” she said.

“No charge, ma’am! This is the Lord’s work! Anyway, the newshounds paid in advance.”

She embraced him again. “I can’t thank you enough!”

“Well, that’ll do then! — Now you two go and find your husbands! We’ll meet again!”

Ally waved from the end of the quay.

Karen gripped her ridiculous bag and ran after her.

All along the waterfront, Juneau danced the night away. All down Egan Drive, cars sat sideways aiming their head beams across the channel where the fishing boats paraded up and down. Most of the Navy and Coast Guard ships were gone. The others had been abandoned. In empty lots bonfires burned. Along the docksides trashcans glowed with the heat of flame, around which the natives danced and sang, shouted and laughed. Children ran up and down, jumping and screaming. Dogs howled back at the noise.

Marley was sitting in a lawn chair on the boardwalk. Roger and Delacourt sat either side of him. The whole length of shore across the channel glimmered with fires, reflecting off the bright waves. Marley was enjoying the best warm beer he’d ever had. He tried to remember the last time he’d had one, warm or cold. On his lap, the screen of a borrowed tablet shimmered with interference. Humanoid shapes drifted through the haze of signal jamming, dissolved, reformed, and dissolved again.

Nearby the bronze effigy of a bull terrier sat watching the water lights with them. Further down the dockside, the pale hulk of the stranded cruise ship lay at ease under blazing deck lights. The brass of her orchestra blared and the kettle drums thundered. And every now and again, the blast of her massive horn came booming over the city like a triumph.

Marley was happy. He was a guest here, like an escort at someone else’s class reunion — welcome, but incidental. Who could have guessed the end of the world would be so festive?

Roger offered to fetch him another beer. His voice was thick: the whole side of his face was swollen where Tyminski had slugged him; but, as far as Marley had been able to tell without X-rays, none of his facial bones were broken.

“You once told me I drank too much,” Marley said.

“I did?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember? It was right after you started refusing your medication.”

“Hard to remember that time. Very scrambled.”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you?”

“Drink too much?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“I was clever then,” Roger said. “Pity I can’t remember it!”

Marley took a drink. “I have a question,” he said.

“Why haven’t you turned?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know, doc.”

“Do you think everyone will turn eventually?”

“Don’t worry. We won’t lock you up in a hospital. Not as a patient anyway.”

“I suppose I’m going to have to find another line of work.”

“What would you like to do?”

But as Marley began to answer, Roger suddenly stood up. On the other side of him, Delacourt got up as well. Marley stood up with them. “What’s happening?”

“It’s over,” Roger said.

The world seemed hushed. Waves lapped against the dock piles beneath their feet. All else was silent.

From the doorway of a shop across the street behind them, a woman called in a loud voice: “The news is on!”

The sound of her voice, cutting through the clear silence, sent a chill through him. He looked down at the tablet where he’d dropped it on the deck.
Newsline
was playing. The jamming was gone. He stooped, picked it up, and dialed the volume all the way up. Roger and Delacourt and others gathered round him to see it.