Chapter 17

Waiting around the next morning until time to go to the exit ramp to wait for our newcomers, I got a chance to talk to Bridgett about the Famous Meeting.

"Ingmar wasn't too thrilled, about what you said last night," I said.

"We got that squared away, though," she said, "right afterwards... Ingmar's big problem wasn't so much that he hadn't been my first-ever lover. But, at the meeting, when I said I'd been with somebody else, his first thought was that I was two-timing him, here and now."

I laughed. "Well, sure! The last thing he'd of thought was that you might have given the Kid a piece!"

"Seriously," Bridgett said, "he was a lot happier when he found out it had been you! And especially when I explained that it had all happened before his time."

"Well, I'm glad somebody's happy," I told her. "The pickin's have been pretty thin for some of us, lately."

"Your day will come, Carter, m'boy... Patience!"

"Listen, Bridgett, help me figure something, here."

"OK. What?"

"Brenda. Last night. You heard her. She said she'd slept with two guys, from the group. Right?"

"Yeah. So? Yeah?... What?"

"Two guys. Think about it. Who were they?... Not me -- worse luck! Not Roald. Elbert Franklin claims he hasn't been with anybody. Avril? OK, maybe Avril, I guess, but... who's the other guy? Not fucking Max Coward! You know that if he'd scored, we'd have all heard about it!"

I had Bridgett's interest, now. She thought about it. "I know it wasn't Ingmar," Bridgett said. "He's not fooling -- he wants me and him to go steady -- 1955-style!"

"I don't think it was Martin Kazner, either," I told her. "Not the way Martin talked, at the meeting, about Sandra! I got the definite impression he'd been with Sandra, and only Sandra."

"Could have been Raymond, though," Bridgett said.

"Sure, it could have been, but I don't think so -- do you? I mean, you heard him, last night. Did it sound to you like it was Raymond?"

"Well, it had to be somebody. I guess it could have been one of the women, but I don't think that's quite what Brenda said."

"Well, it's a mystery," I said. "Either one of the guys has got us fooled, or else Brenda's just making the whole thing up."

"I'm even surprised -- kinda -- about Avril," Bridgett said. "But Avril's just about got to be one of the two! Hey!... Maybe Brenda was just, y'know, showing solidarity with Sandra."

"But, why? After all, you had already said something about being with two guys by that time -- hadn't you?"

Bridgett gave me a truly evil grin. "OK, then. Maybe little Edward got lucky!" she said. "Or Uncle Harry!"

Surely not!

Brenda?

C'mon!... No! No way!

Roald and I left the ship at 11:30 a.m. and waited at the exit ramp in Corpus Christi until late in the afternoon, hoping for and expecting the arrival of our Mexican visitors. At last, around 5 p.m., they came. They were in two late-model Toyota minivans. At first, we thought the vehicles looked crowded, but it was an illusion. They were crowded with goods that the occupants had brought with them. Only four people -- three men and a woman -- alighted from the two vehicles.

One of the men who had been driving extended his hand to Roald. "I am Orestes Montoya," he said, "... from Monterrey. These people are Aurora Perez, Diego Salazar, and Umberto Gomez."

Roald and I introduced ourselves and shook hands with each of the newcomers. Montoya appeared to be, perhaps, 40. The other three were adults, but younger.

"How many people do you have in your group?" Montoya asked.

"We have twenty," Roald said. "Four are small children."

"We started out with six," Montoya said. "All of us adults. But two people have since died."

"You saw no one else? In Monterrey?"

"No one else -- anywhere," Montoya replied. But I am concerned, about the deaths."

"You mean -- the two people... ?"

"Yes. We had gathered together, six of us who survived, but the two people -- a young man and a young woman -- healthy people -- became ill, and died after only a few days."

"After the... the Virus, you mean?"

"Yes," Montoya said. "They survived the... the Virus, but died later. We don't know why."

"I saw something like that," I told him. "Near Chicago, it was... A young woman, dead on the highway, but it was clear to us that she had died long after... the others."

"I am a physician," Montoya said. "The two young people who survived the virus were known to me. They worked in a laboratory, on the premises of an industrial facility where we manufactured drugs. They were working, overnight, in a sterile room, at the time the Virus came."

Roald was immediately interested. "Were you... the rest of you... also in that room?"

"No, no. None of us. I am the only one, of this group, who also worked at the facility. Three of us who worked there survived -- initially. But I was at home, in my bed, when it happened. Nobody else with me there, at home -- in my own family -- survived."

"And the other two -- the two in the sterile room? They are the ones who died?" I had a lump in my throat when I asked Dr. Montoya my question.

"Yes," he said.

"And these people -- with you?"

"No," Montoya said. "Aurora was a secretary in Monterrey. Diego is a laborer from a village, far south of the city. He came to Monterrey after the incident, looking for others who had survived. Umberto is an engineer. He is from Ciudad de Mexico -- the capital."

"No I mean... none of you were... protected... when the Virus came?"

"Protected?" It was the man who'd been introduced to us as Umberto Gomez. "... I don't understand," he said.

"I mean -- you weren't in a sterile room, or underground, or somewhere that, perhaps, allowed you to escape from the Virus?"

Dr. Montoya answered for them all. "No. None of us was. Only the two who have died since then."

"I was deep in a mine, far below ground," I said.