was daylight. His hand was gripping my wrist. But he was dead — dead of the thing. Symptoms were plain." She had to clear her throat again. "I guess I've about had it." Verney was speechless. They just looked at each other. The old Lady lifted a bag and looked under it. "Lots of homeless have it?" he asked her. She continued to rummage through the plastic bag. She pulled out a bottle of cheap wine and took a big swig. After swallowing it as if to savor it for a second, she exhaled an ahh-sound and nodded to Verney. "Yeah. Lots. Ain't turnin' themselves in. No one's turnin' them in." She gulped another swig of wine. "They know it's all over. All over for all of us." She gulped down another swig and screwed the cap back on. "I mean, look at me. I lived this way for two years now. You really think they can find a cure if they can't even find us a home?" She reached down to the cart and put the bottle back in the bag. "Anyway, it's over for me, Mac. Better go before you catch it." Verney held up his right hand as a gesture of good bye and hurried back to his car. He took a glance to make sure the old lady had not followed him. He took another at the evocative scene of the dying dusk over the nation's capital. Then he got in and drove home. On the way home he called Idris on his cell phone. He explained the accidental conversation with the elderly homeless woman who was sure that she had become infected. No one knew what spread the disease or how much distance people might need between one another to avoid it. Wild theories were being banded about. There was one that claimed that the pre-virus attached itself to oxygen molecules in the air. Another claimed that it attached itself to ubiquitous organic pollutants now all over the planet. The CDC and other researchers faithfully followed even these leads. The only conclusions were that no one knew how it was being spread. Idris and Lionel quickly decided that he would stay in the vacant house next door for the rest of the week and test himself daily. The neighbors had fled to a vacation cabin in the West Virginia mountains and had left almost everything in their house. To avoid even minimal contact, Idris took the key that they had given her over to their house and put it in the front door for Lionel to find. She called him on his cell phone and told him where he could find the key. And so he lived there that way for a week, testing himself daily, gladly finding a negative reading each time, and calling Idris next door to tell her the good news.
COUNTDOWN NINE In a generous gesture the new president had donated use of Air Force One to move Idris, Adrian, Lionel, the three children, and most of their belongings to Beale Air Force