Many of these symptoms were easy to overlook, even by someone who found themselves suffering from them. After all, how often did David zone out while grading papers? Wasn’t it true that he could practically drive to the college on autopilot after all these years, paying no attention to road signs and exits?
It wasn’t until the final stage that the disease made itself truly known. Instead of daydreaming through fields of sunflowers or apple orchards, several people took to meandering, terrified and confused, down an interstate and into oncoming traffic. Others walked off rooftops. Others—like Deke Carmody, David couldn’t help but acknowledge—were found stumbling around outside in the middle of the night, often naked. Early in the game, a young mother in Nebraska set herself and her infant son on fire; witnesses observed her walking serenely from her house cradling the baby to her chest while both were engulfed in flames. A young man in Ohio became paranoid that there were tiny bugs under his flesh; he proceeded to shear the skin off his face with a steak knife while his wife stared at him in horror. It was reported that dozens and dozens of people would wake up one morning, get dressed, and drive to a job they hadn’t held in years. In many ways the early stages of Wanderer’s Folly mirrored Alzheimer’s. Yet doctors were at a loss as to how to treat it. It was believed to be airborne, given how widespread it was, though epidemiologists were split on whether you had to breathe the disease into your body or if it simply gained access to the body through osmosis. Others went as far as suggesting that the virus itself wasn’t alien to the human body, but was actually created within it, and functioned as some sort of built-in self-destruct button that, for reasons unknown, had suddenly been activated. But in truth, no one really knew anything for sure. For now, it was incurable. Incubation time varied. Once symptoms were exhibited, the person could last for hours or weeks, depending on what they might do to themselves during one of their hallucinatory spells. And in the end, the results were invariably the same as the brain ceased working altogether—death.
David rubbed absently at his chin, feeling the roughness of his two days’ growth against his fingertips. Ellie always squealed when he kissed her while sporting beard stubble, and he would laugh and continue to rub his face against hers while she giggled and pretended to fight him off.
The sound of the back door closing jarred him from his reverie. Ellie stood there with dirt on her knees and her braid undone.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s tough work,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Looking for birds.”
“You still worried about those eggs? You’re being silly.”
“They won’t survive without a mother.”
“Mama bird will come back.”
“Not if someone touched the nest. Birds can smell if a human touches their nest. They won’t come back, not even if there’s babies in it.”
“Did you touch the nest?”
“No way.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t. And I’m pretty sure Mom didn’t, either. So you’ve got nothing to worry about. She’ll come back.”
“I don’t think so,” Ellie said. She went to the fridge, took an ice pop from the freezer, and proceeded to peel the wrapping off as she leaned against the dishwasher. “Haven’t seen a bird all week.”
“Yeah?” he said, still gazing at the charred struts and blackened brickwork of all that remained of Deke’s house across the street.
“Nope. Not a single one,” she said, and disappeared with her ice pop into the living room.
19
There was a staleness to the air, a gray moldiness that seemed to clot halfway along his nasal passageways. He thought about the events of the past several days, then stopped Ellie in her tracks with a single hand to her chest.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Be careful.” She sounded like an adult.
He crossed over to a display of camping gear, a trio of mannequins seated in camping chairs outside a bright orange pup tent, camouflaged knapsacks at their feet. He was alerted to a ghostly moan that started out low, then ascended through the octaves. He froze in place, looking around. The store looked empty; there was no movement from the rear of the shop, where darkness encroached upon racks of clothing and shelves laden with camping gear.
“There,” Ellie said, pointing to a spot on the ceiling just above David’s head.
He looked up and saw a set of bamboo wind chimes swaying from an acoustical tile; a gentle breeze was issuing in through the hole he’d punched in the glass and causing the bamboo chimes to howl.