The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro Read Free Book Online Page A

the rest of the world. A partnership so voracious that nobody asked, “How was your day?” in the downtime—mainly because there was no downtime at all.
    Such as here. Getting practically naked in front of each other in the least sexual way possible. Because donning a bio-suit is the antithesis of sensuality. It is the converse of allure, it is a withdrawal into prophylaxis, into sterility.

    The first layer was a white Nomex jumpsuit, emblazoned on the back with the initials CDC . It zipped from knee to chin, the collar and cuffs sealing it in snug Velcro, black jump boots lacing up to the shins.
    The second layer was a disposable white suit made of papery Tyvek. Then booties pulled on over boots, and Silver Shield chemical protective gloves over nylon barriers, taped at the wrists and ankles. Then lifted on self-contained breathing apparatus gear: a SCBA harness, lightweight titanium pressure-demand tank, full-face respirator mask, and personal alert safety system (PASS) device with a firefighter’s distress alarm.
    Each hesitated before pulling the mask over his or her face. Nora formed a half smile and cupped Eph’s cheek in her hand. She kissed him. “You okay?”
    “Yup.”
    “You sure don’t look it. How was Zack?”
    “Sulky. Pissed. As he should be.”
    “Not your fault.”
    “So what? Bottom line is, this weekend with my son is gone, and I’ll never get it back.” He readied his mask. “You know, there came a point in my life where things came down to either my family or my job. I thought I chose family. Apparently, not enough.”
    There are moments like these, which usually come at the most inconvenient of times, such as a crisis, when you look at someone and realize that it will hurt you to be without them. Eph saw how unfair he had been to Nora by clinging to Kelly—not even to Kelly, but to the past, to his dead marriage, to what once was, all for Zack’s sake. Nora liked Zack. And Zack liked her, that was obvious.
    But now, right now, was not the time to get into this. Eph pulled on his respirator, checking his breathing tank. The outer layer consisted of a yellow—canary yellow—full encapsulation “space” suit, featuring a sealed hood, a 210-degree viewport, and attached gloves. This was the actual level A containment suit, the “contact suit,” twelve layers of fabric which, once sealed, absolutely insulated the wearer from the outside atmosphere.
    Nora checked his seal, and he did hers. Biohazard investigators operate on a buddy system much the same as that of scuba divers. Theirsuits puffed a bit from the circulated air. Sealing out pathogens meant trapping sweat and body heat, and the temperature inside their suits could rise up to thirty degrees higher than room temperature.
    “Looks tight,” said Eph, over the voice-actuated microphones inside his mask.
    Nora nodded, catching his eye through their respective masks. The glance went on a moment too long, as if she was going to say something else, then changed her mind. “You ready?” she said.
    Eph nodded. “Let’s do this.”
    O utside on the tarmac, Jim switched on his wheeled command console and picked up both their mask-mounted cameras, on separate monitor feeds. He attached small, switched-on flashlights on lanyards from their pull-away shoulder straps: the thickness of the multilayered suit gloves limited the wearer’s fine-motor skills.
    The TSA guys came up and tried to talk to them some more, but Eph feigned deafness, shaking his head and touching his hood.
    As they approached the airplane, Jim showed Eph and Nora a laminated printout containing an overhead view of the interior seat assignments, numbers corresponding to passenger and crew manifests listed on the back. He pointed to a red dot at 18A.
    “The federal air marshal,” Jim said into his microphone. “Last name Charpentier. Exit row, window seat.”
    “Got it,” Eph said.
    A second red dot. “TSA pointed out this other passenger of interest. A German