David went to the fridge, stuffed his lunch bag inside, then stood there breathing heavily with his hands on his hips. He considered not coming to the college anymore, just like the students, for the sheer purpose of keeping away from Burt Langstrom. The man was setting him on edge. He no longer liked being around him. No, it was worse than that: He no longer felt comfortable around Burt.
“I’m no mathematician,” Burt spoke up suddenly, “but they say there’s a baby born somewhere in the world every eight seconds. The rate of infection from Wanderer’s Folly has just surpassed that. Like I said, I’m no mathematician, but I can figure out what that means.”
“I think you’re driving yourself mad,” David said.
“Conspiracies abound, David.” Burt turned and faced him. He’d lost weight so that his cheeks hung from him like the jowls of a hound dog. His eyes were rheumy as a hound dog’s, too. David didn’t like the pallor of his skin. “You should read the Nadsat Report,” Burt said.
“What’s that?”
“Online newspaper. Government cover-ups and the like. They’ve been posting some thought-provoking articles. They’ve got some insight, boy. Think the government might be responsible for this whole thing.”
“The government,” David said.
“They’ve been following the birds’ disappearances, too. Early on. Like, before the mainstream media. Suspected something was up from the very beginning. You know what they’re talking about now?”
“What’s that?”
“The quarantines. Say some are legit but others are a ruse. They think people are being taken away against their will and studied in secret hospitals.”
David said nothing.
“Government thinks maybe some people out there might be immune. If you’re in a quarantined zone, where pretty much the entire population has got the Folly, and you don’t, well, maybe that’s something important. What do you think about that?”
“I just don’t know, Burt.” He felt suddenly exhausted. These conversations made him nervous.
“The Nadsat Report,” Burt said, still staring at the TV.
“You been eating, Burt?”
“Sure. Say, how’s the family, David?”
“They’re okay.”
“You’re not still sending that daughter of yours to school, are you?”
“Kathy’s been homeschooling her.”
“Sure, sure.” Burt nodded. His wet eyes danced around the room. “Laura’s been doing the same for our girls. Don’t let their friends come over anymore, either. Moon-Bird complained on that score, but I wasn’t budging.” Burt turned a grim smile toward him. David imagined he could see the man’s skull through the thin, transparent fabric of his flesh. “Moon-Bird’s what we call our youngest. A nickname. It comes from a book of poems she likes.”
“I think you should see a doctor, Burt.”
“The only fellow I’m going to see, David, is the guy who rents those RVs off the beltway. Remember me talking about him?”
“Of course. That’s still the plan?”
That grim smile widened. Burt’s teeth looked gray. “Still the plan, Stan,” he said.
“Maybe I should drive you home.”
“Don’t think so. Thanks, though.”
“Do you even have any work to do? Papers to grade?”
“Not a one,” Burt announced. He turned back to the television. There was a toothpaste commercial on now. “I’m just out here gathering my thoughts. I guess I come out of habit. It makes it easier to pretend that things are still normal by coming in here every day.”
David understood. It was what he was doing, too.
“You said your little girl is all right, David? She acting fine to you?”
“She’s fine, Burt.”
Burt Langstrom’s brow creased. “Yeah, but . . . how do you know?”
“I . . . I don’t know, Burt. But she’s the same. That’s all. She isn’t sick.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess. That’s real good.”
“Are your girls all right, Burt?”
“Oh yeah, David. They’re beautiful. Just goddamn beautiful.”
David left him that way, opting instead to head across campus to the administrative offices. Only one secretary was there, reading a magazine behind a screen of bulletproof glass. She wore a surgical mask over her nose and mouth.
“I need to look up a phone number of someone in my department,” David said, speaking into the microphone box in the glass.
The secretary’s brow creased. “Who are you?” Her voice was barely audible.
He held his faculty ID against the glass.
The secretary got up and approached the glass. Once David gave her the information, she rooted through her computer before supplying him with the telephone number. He entered it into his phone, thanked the woman—she had already gone back to her magazine—then slipped outside into the quad.
It was springtime and the afternoon was alive with the sound of insects of all kinds. Without birds, the world was becoming choked with them, and in such a short amount of time. Long-legged things popped out of the grass, and a variety of flying thingamajigs navigated from flower to flower. It got so you couldn’t open your mouth outdoors without inhaling a few.
He dialed the number, heard it ring several times. He realized he was holding his breath. It kept ringing, and he was about to hang up when a woman’s voice answered.