No Immunity

how endless it was. She floored the pedal and passed the clunker so fast, it had shrunk to miniature size by the time she could check the rearview.

    Tchernak squinted against the lulling dark. He couldn’t afford to space out. It wasn’t like the terrain was going to tell him if he made a mistake. He cracked the window and let the cool, dry desert air slap him alert. On this empty straightaway it would be so easy to drift off, and then even the fine new Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo’s four-wheel drive wouldn’t save him.
    And those boys... Tchernak jerked awake. How could Grady— But he knew only too well how Grady Hummacher could go flying after a dream and never look down at the consequences. Tchernak remembered the week he’d spent hustling beds because he wasn’t allowed in his dorm room, because he’d been suspended from school, because he had gotten caught in the Tasman Hall raid Grady Hummacher planned. When the campus cops stormed the building, Grady of course was gone. By the time Tchernak got back in his room, Grady was a hero and he, Tchernak, had pneumonia. But only a whiner would have mentioned that.
    Maybe nobody whined. Maybe Grady really didn’t know how nonchalantly he dangled people over the pit.
    But Grady wasn’t playing with undergraduates now. Tchernak floored the gas.

CHAPTER 37

    “Take a thermos of coffee with you, Kiernan. And gas for your truck? Do you need that?”
    “Thanks, Connie.” Her skin had that thick, heavy feel from lack of sleep. The coffee would only create a buzz in her nerves, but that would help somewhat. The hated thirty-six-hour rotations in med school had taught her well.
    She took a final look at the faded gentility of Connie Tremaine’s parlor in this isolated mine encampment. She could imagine Connie’s ancestors four generations back proudly hanging the oil paintings with their great gilded frames and staking their claim, not merely to silver or bauxite but to the future of culture in the West. At night when they sat on the pincushion love seat and the brocade sofa, their feet on the bright, thick carpet from the Orient, and the gaslight sparkled on long silk dresses, one of them had probably sipped from the brandy glass Connie now used. When they’d imagined this place a hundred years in the future, what had they seen? Could they ever have conceived of it all coming to this?
    In the silence she made out a low canine whine. The dog whose tennis ball she had spotted outside. It comforted her to think that Connie was not out here miles from town with nothing but a deep well dug in the days of gentility, a generator, and probably a cell phone.
    “One for the road.” Connie held out a cup of coffee. The china cup rattled on its saucer.
    Kiernan took it and drank gratefully. Taking a second swallow, she looked appraisingly at Connie Tremaine. The woman was exhausted. Her tan camouflaged blotches, but blotches were definitely there. And her eyes were rheumy. “How do you feel?” she asked.
    “Fine.”
    “No, really?”
    “Fine,” Connie snapped.
    “Let me take your temperature.”
    “I’m fine!”
    “You’re not fine. Maybe you’re just tired. But it could be more than that—”
    “It’s not!”
    “—in which case you could be contagious. So if you’ve got anyone hidden here—”
    “I don’t!”
    “—don’t infect them. I’ll get myself a thermos of coffee and the gas you offered.”
    “What? You’re afraid to be downwind of me?”
    Kiernan stared her in the face. “You got it.” There was no time to argue, and no sense in minimizing the danger. If she was going to help Connie, she had to find the dead woman and find out where she had contracted the virus that killed her.
    As she poured the coffee into the thermos, Connie handed her two Granola bars. “Still wapped, so you’re safe from me. And be careful out there. Back out. Don’t drive over the courtyard.”
    “The courtyard ?”
    “Yeah. It’s what we call the area between the buildings. There’s a mine under there. Real shaky. Dangerous. You can walk across it without caving it in, but I wouldn’t try it in your truck. You’d be fifty feet down before you got in gear.”
    Kiernan nodded in silent acknowledgment. “Take care of yourself, Connie. If you feel any worse, call a doctor you trust. I’m leaving you my number at home. If you don’t have a doctor, call me and I’ll get the right person here.”
    Connie laughed hollowly. “Which odds are better, me