“Seriously?” Chase said. “Well, give me some names. I’ll fuck them up.”
Jamie smiled appreciatively. “No. That’s okay. I can’t condone violence. Even if they are a bunch of small-dicked man-children.”
“Wow.” Chase released a spurt of laughter directly from her belly. “I didn’t think you had that in you. And I wasn’t suggesting I beat them up. Have you seen the size of those guys? They’re, like, seven feet tall. Shoulders like LeBron! I was just saying I could put some eyedrops in their coffee or something. You know, good, old-fashioned payback.”
“Thank you for that offer. But I’d hate to see the havoc that would wreak on the latrines.”
“Fair point. And hey, youdohave friends, by the way. I’m your friend.”
“Yeah?” Jamie pouted her lips nervously.
“Yeah. If you want.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good,” Chase said. “I would too.”
Jamie turned to go but turned back to Chase, still grasping the tent door. “Hey, Chase?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you, I mean if it’s all right—You and Norah…”
Chase swallowed hard, wanting all at once to tell Jamie every last thought and feeling she’d had since laying eyes on Norah again in this strange apocalypse, while also knowing full well Norah would hate nothing more.
“I think you better ask her.” Satisfied she’d found the safest answer to Jamie’s inquiry, Chase sat down on her cot. “Good night, Jamie. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
There wasn’t a chance in hell Norah would get any sleep. Not that she’d slept more than a few hours a night since she’d arrived in Louisiana. She wasn’t entirely sure how much of her insomnia was thanks to the work at hand, or to the unexpected reappearance of the hurricane better known as Chase in her life. But she did know that her job had never kept her up at night before.
The remaining hours until sunrise held two options for Norah: lie on her back and stare at her drab-olive ceiling, or work. She pulled the stool she’d managed to snag from the CDC up close to her shipping-container desk and touched the screen of her iPad. A brilliantly bright screen lit up the darkness around her with a picture of Pumpkin, perched in a bowl chair, legs curled under him. Norah loved that photo, mostly because it looked likehe was smiling, and she wondered how he was getting along with Mrs. Brooks. Suddenly gravely homesick, Norah dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes until they were blurry and the longing had passed. She didn’t make attachments these days for a reason. Instinctively, she found herself looking in the direction of Chase’s tent.
The large white digits on the iPad that overlay Pumpkin’s rather voluptuous figure read 3:29 a.m. Norah swiped her right index finger up the screen, typed in her passcode, and pulled up the spreadsheet she’d been working on earlier that night, before overhearing Chase talking to Jamie. Before feeling Chase’s hands on her thighs. Before Chase’s lips were so precariously close to hers. Norah stared at the screen for a few more minutes, not actually looking at anything, and when the memory of Chase’s fingertips on her skin turned so real she could feel them again, she hit the tiny button on the upper right-hand corner of the device and accepted defeat.
Really, she had three options to pass the time until she could talk with John and review figures and vaccine studies and meetings with governors. Sleep wasn’t happening. And trying to work with Chase trespassing through her brain was hardly productive either. So Norah did what she’d done when she was deployed, when the nights stretched out endlessly in front of her and rest was all but as foreign as whatever country she was in. She walked. Exiting her tent, Norah began what would be her first of many loops around the perimeter of the new CDC/army barracks. The darkness was incredible. A heavy cloud cover eclipsed a sliver of a moon, and she could see only the hazy lights from far-away New Orleans on the distant horizon. Peepers hummed in every which direction, interrupted only by the subtle clomping of Norah’s boots as they struck the firm ground. By her second lap, a familiar peace settled around her. She’d stopped thinking. She wasn’t tired, but she wasn’t exactly on edge either. She felt almost meditative. That was, until the sound of footsteps to herleft sent her angling for her pocketknife. Her first instinct was to reach for her Glock, which she’d regrettably left in the travel safe in her tent. But when the initial endorphin rush had settled, she remembered she was in the safety of the army’s camp, with armed privates in every which direction on the outskirts of where she stood. Still gripping the tactical knife at her side, Norah released the breath she’d been holding as the figure producing the footsteps came into view.
“Jamie.” My god. This girl was everywhere tonight.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t mean to disturb you. I just couldn’t sleep. I like to walk when I’m like this. It usually calms me down.”
Norah gently folded the blade of the knife back into its sheath and slid it discreetly back into her pocket.
“Same,” Norah said, smiling. She liked Jamie. And it was clear from her conversation with Chase that Norah had so tactlessly disturbed that she was struggling with everything happening around them.
“I feel like I’ve done nothing but interrupt you tonight, Captain.” Jamie let out a stifled chuckle.
“It’s okay. Really. I could use a little company. Walk with me?”
Jamie nodded and followed in stride next to Norah as she continued her next lap around the barracks.
They walked in comfortable silence for a while. Norah knew it would be incredibly inappropriate, professional suicide even, to bring up what had happened with Chase earlier. But she was hungry for someone to talk to, hungry to say out loud the madness that had invaded her head worse than any virus could. She wished for a moment it were Mrs. Brooks walking next to her, not one of her subordinates. The silence persisted.
“I’m sorry again about earlier,” Jamie finally said. “Chase found me pretty upset tonight, you know, about the state of things. She was a good friend. I just wanted to thank her.”
“I’m glad.” Norah had nearly forgotten the snide comment she’d made about Jamie and Chase sleeping apart.
“Captain. Can I just say something? You know, woman to woman?”
Norah chuckled, pausing before deciding how to answer her. “Okay. Shoot.”
