Page 17 of 56 Days
The second is one of thegovernment-issued,bright-yellowCOVID-19information sheets. One of the early ones, going by the fact that it only contains three recommendations: wash your hands, practice good coughing etiquette, and maintain a distance of two meters away from other people.
The third framed notice is what to do in case of an emergency. Lee takes out her phone and dials the number for the management company printed in red across the top. It’s immediately picked up by an answering machine that instructs her to call a different number outside of office hours.
She checks the timeon-screen: eightforty-five.
She dials the second number from memory. It rings twice before bringing her to the very same voicemail.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she says out loud. She leaves a message with her name, rank, and number and a demand that someone call her back immediately.
Then she turns to the letterboxes. Four neat rows of slim boxes withstainless steeldoors fixed low to the rear wall. She pulls a pair of blue latex gloves from her trouser pocket and puts them on, snapping them over the cuffs of her blazer to form a seal. She uses an index finger to open the narrow flap of the box marked “1,” bending down to see if she can see what’s inside.
There’s a slim, white envelope, but she can’t see any text on it from this angle.
She starts down the corridor, passing a set of lifts. It’s lit by strips of overhead fluorescents, motion activated; they flick on as she goes. The corridor curves to the left, revealing three more doors and Garda Declan—Casey? Is that his last name?—standing with his arms folded outside the door marked “1.”
He has two masks on: an inch of the blue, papery material of a disposable one is just visible behind the black cloth that covers his face from the bridge of his nose to his jawline. Not a bad idea, Lee thinks. A thin sheen of sweat glistens by his hairline and what she can see of his face seems to have a bit of a grayish tinge to it.
“You can go wait outside,” she says. “Get some fresh air.”
The young officer doesn’t need to be told twice; he’s moving away before she’s even finished talking.
The apartment door is about an inch from being completely shut—closed, but without the locking mechanism lined up. No visible marks or stains on the door, the frame, or the handle. Looks like there’s a light on on the other side.
Lee takes out the two clean Silvermints, lifts her mask with a finger, and pops them into her mouth. She lets them sit on her tongue, waiting until she can detect the sting of their menthol. Then she exhales hard, filling the mask with the smell of peppermint. It won’t last long—the mints are already softening, chalky edges crumbling—but it’s better than nothing.
She pushes open the apartment door—lock looks intact, nothing stuffed in the mechanism—revealing a narrow hallway. Hardwood floor, white wall, asilver-framedmirror hanging on the wall to the left just above a console table. The light is coming from a fixture on the ceiling but it looks like there’re other lights on elsewhere in the apartment too.
On the right is a door that opens outward, open about halfway, blocking most of her line of sight into the rest of the apartment.
Hitting her is what feels like a solid wall of smell.
Smellisn’t even the word for what’s in the air. A smell is something you have to breathe in to detect. What’s emitted by a decomposing body does all the work for you, leaving you no choice in the matter. It floods your nostrils and rushes into your mouth and claws at the back of your throat. It clings to every skin cell and clothing fiber and strand of hair. It makes your eyes water. It’s less of a smell and more of an invasion. Anall-outassault.
So much for her bright idea with the mints—every last molecule of menthol is immediately vaporized.
Lee steels herself and steps inside.
50 Days Ago
Leo is about to make a statement, live from Washington, DC. The apartment doesn’t have a TV so Ciara finds a live stream online and watches it horizontal on the couch with her laptop balanced on her stomach.
It’s not even light over there yet. He walks to an artificially lit podium set up outside agrand-lookingbuilding shrouded in predawn darkness, his face solemn and serious.
She wonders what he’s thinking. He’s a medical doctor as well as the leader of the country. He must understand more than most.
He begins to speak, slowly and deliberately, reading easily from some unseen teleprompter, but looking as if he’s talking directly to the lens.
The virus is all over theworld.
We have not witnessed a pandemic of this nature in living memory.
We will prevail.
As soon as the program cuts back to the talking heads in the news studio, Ciara shuts the laptop and then surprises herself by bursting into hard, hot tears.
She’s not scared, at least not physically; the virus may be in the country but it still feels very far away from her. It’s mostly a benign flu, from what they say. She trusts that the people who are supposed to know how to protect her from this will, that they already are. But all this is still...
Well,scary.
