Chapter 19

"You said you would sleep,” Erik said wearily.

”I know, I know,” Zoe replied, “I did sleep, I swear!... for a reasonable length of time,” she assured. .

Erik sighed: though she was older (not by too much, however, now that he thought about it), Zoe reminded him very much of his kids.

Finding Zoe at all hours in front of the computer did remind him of how he would wake up at night to go to the bathroom and find the light on in Maja’s room: sometimes she was still awake reading, otherwise she was asleep with a book in her hands.

"You must sleep, Maja, you'll have enough time to read tomorrow," he would tell her.

"But Dad,” she would retort, "I need to know how it ends!"

Zoe’s determination to find the infectors was very similar to Maja’s desire to know how the story ends.

Then it occurred to him that maybe he misunderstands her; maybe it is not simple stubbornness. Hernandez could have personal reasons to make absolutely sure there were no more waves of the epidemic.

After all, almost every family had suffered losses in the former years.

”Zoe,” he asked her, “Have you lost someone to the plague?”

She raised her eyes from the screen, surprised.

It had been an abrupt question, so uncalled for and unexpected... he should have thought before speaking. The only excuse Erik had was that he had run out of cigarettes and when he knocked on his neighbour's door he hadn’t found anyone.

He always said that he could quit smoking whenever he wanted to, but doing without his morning cigarette threw him off balance.

”Um... didn’t everyone lose someone?” Zoe finally answered, then went back to staring at her screen.

Erik waited for a moment, then realized Zoe would not elaborate.

”Who was...?”

“To tell the truth, I’d rather not talk about it,” she cut across him.

”I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“That’s OK,” she said, smiling to show him that she was not angry, “Maybe we can talk about it some other time.”

The fact that Hernandez refused to talk about her personal history surprised Erik: usually she was so talkative and ready to share anecdotes from her daily life. However, at that moment he realized that, although he knew all about her adventures with the maintenance of the boiler in her apartment or the recurring issues of her food card, he knew very little about her private life.

”So... “ Erik spoke again, more to change topic than for any other reason , “Found anything new?”

“Actually, I have,” Hernandez replied, instantly switching to the practical tone that characterized her work interactions, “Take a look.”

Erik moved so he would be able to see the screen of her computer, where the image a grainy grey figure was shown; he could only make out that the person was wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

”What do you think about it?”

“Dunno,” he admitted, “It could be anybody.”

“Wait, look here now,” Hernandez pulled out a blown-up photo from a pile of papers on her desk: it clearly showed one of the two fugitives.

“This is Weber in the video of the station in the third ring. See? The sweater is definitely the same... see the raised seams on the pockets, and the print on the shoulder? She’s even wearing the same trousers and her height is more or less the same. Even the posture is recognizable... look how she bends the shoulders forward, as if to be noticed as little as possible. I think it's her, I'm sure!” she exclaimed.

”Where did you get this?”

“The security camera of a medical police station in the sixth ring. We should send someone to that area. Which, of course, means that we must go there ourselves,” she added with a sarcastic grimace. “It is unfortunate that there are so few cameras in that area,” Zoe mused.

Erik threw a disconsolate look at the pile of dossiers that had accumulated on his desk. Lately he had been neglecting his routine work a little to follow the tracks of the two fugitives... soon he would have to pay the price for that.

He considered whether to stop by that night to take care of the paperwork, but then he remembered that Maja was coming over for dinner.

”Maybe we can go and take a look this afternoon,” he said eventually.

Catching up with the paperwork would have to wait for another day.

In the afternoon Erik and Zoe took the train to the sixth ring, dressed in civilian clothes. Under their clothes, however, they were wearing very thin protective suits, and they took the thinnest gloves and face masks with them.

Taking a car would have been more convenient, but they wouldn’t know how to justify it to Hoffman.

Erik watched the city whiz by outside the train window: the transition from the third to the sixth ring was especially sad to observe. The farther away from the centre they got, the bleaker and more degraded the landscape became: the buildings were dilapidated, the streets dirty, with heaps of garbage overflowing from trash cans.

The contrast with the first and second ring and their carefully restored historical buildings was even more striking.

Here one would see no historical houses or gardens enclosed by wrought iron gates; there were only high-rise condominium buildings and an industrial plant now and then.

Erik knew he was privileged to live in his quiet residential neighbourhood in the fourth ring. It wasn’t as luxurious as the innermost rings, but it was still built on a human scale, the last outpost before the most degraded areas.

The vast majority of people in Europa, however, lived and worked in the outer rings.

The idea of an epidemic spread in those overcrowded condos was simply terrifying.

Next to him, Hernandez fiddled incessantly with her handheld computer, seemingly indifferent to the changes in the landscape around her.

”Zoe, which area do you live in?” Erik asked.

”Fifth ring, north side, why?”

He shrugged: “Just curious.”

Perhaps the fifth ring was not so bad, he thought, there were liveable areas there too. If one wasn’t too picky about urban decor...

Meanwhile, the train had arrived at their station.

As he stepped out, Erik wrinkled his nose: the outer rings even had a distinctive smell of their own, a mixture of trash, illegal spicy food and humidity.

First they went to the local medical police station, where Hernandez showed their colleagues the images of the suspects she had found on the surveillance videos.

Unfortunately, none of the officers seemed to remember seeing the hooded young woman.

After leaving several copies of the photographs at the police station, and asking the officers to send for them if there were any news, Erik and Zoe decided to take a survey of the area.

”Where do you think they could hide?” Zoe asked, thoughtful.

Erik thought about it: “Well, it depends. There are two possibilities: either they are in contact with the rebels, and in this case they could be literally anywhere - those creatures know how to hide - or they are on their own. Here’s what I think: if they had been picked up by the rebels, they wouldn’t accidentally show up in front of surveillance cameras. They wouldn’t appear at all: the rebels would make them vanish, as happened with all the other infected they managed to free.”

“So you think they are still somewhere around here, frightened and pretty helpless?”

“I think so.”

Zoe bit her lower lip, brooding. ”But why?” she finally asked. “Why didn’t they try to contact the rebels? Assuming they are now basically the same as the lizard-men... why didn’t they look for protection?”

Erik shrugged: “Maybe they don’t know how to reach the rebels. Or maybe they don’t know for sure they have the plague, and they want to wait out the incubation period and see what happens.”

“Or maybe they are too scared, and they prefer to face the disease on their own than associate with those creatures,” Hernandez mused.

Erik thought about the infected that killed Lang, his ravaged face, his hollow eyes. “That’s definitely possible,” he confirmed.

Instinctively he patted his pockets in search of his cigarettes, then remembered that he had none left.

Damn. Although, now that he thought about it, maybe it would be easier to find some in this area.

”I don’t get how you can smoke that crap,” Hernandez observed, noticing his survey of his pockets, “It’s so unhealthy, everybody’s known this since the twentieth century or so.”

“What can I say?“ Erik sighed. “Everyone has their vices. Janssen plays those stupid online games, Laurent occasionally drinks one glass too many, and I have my cigarettes.”

“I wonder what Hoffman’s vice is,” Zoe muttered. “Espionage?”

Erik avoided her eye, trying to think of a way to change the subject. He preferred not to take sides in this inner feud, at least until he had come to any conclusion.