“Joe!” she cried. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, baby,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the wall. “How are you? How’s Ethan?”

“We’re good, Joe,” said Junie. “We’re in Baltimore with Sean, Aly, and the kids.”

Sean was my younger brother. He was a detective in Baltimore, a good husband and father of two great kids. There was talk about him being on the shortlist for commissioner and I hoped like hell he’d have the chance. But I could hear the TV on in the background and the news reporters were yelling.

“Listen to me,” I said quietly, “you need to get out of town. Get out to my uncle’s old farm in Robinwood. Load up with everything you can carry—water, canned food, medical supplies.”

“Joe, is what they’re saying true? Has this plague really spread out of control?”

I don’t lie to Junie. If there are things I can’t tell her because of mission restrictions, then I tell her that. That was yesterday’s rulebook. I told her everything. She isn’t the kind of person who falls apart. She’s been through the badlands herself. Junie is tough in the way that real women are tough, which is pretty fucking tough.

“It’s going to be crazy out there,” I said. “People will panic, so—”

“Sean has plenty of guns,” she said. “I’ll make sure we bring them, too.”

Sean’s wife, Aly, was a good shot, and so was Lefty, their son, who’d just started college on a full-ride baseball scholarship.

We talked details for a few minutes. Junie was so practical that it actually calmed me down, and I’d called to reassure her. I heard the bing-bong signal telling us that we were beginning our descent.

“Call me as soon as you get to the farm,” I said.

“I will.”

“Call me if anything happens along the way.”

“Joe . . . I will. We’ll be fine.”

I didn’t say anything for too long.

“Joe . . . will we be fine? I mean, this is going to pass, right? We’re doing something about this, aren’t we?” By “we” she meant me, and people like me. Special forces, agents of the infrastructure, the methods and protocols and everything that went into motion when there was a major crisis.

“I’m going to give it a hell of a try,” I promised. It was not the reassurance she wanted to hear or I needed to give. But it was all I could offer, and Junie knew it.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

“Come home to me,” said Junie, which is what she always said when I was going off to war.

“I will,” I said.

I meant it. I really did.

The plane tilted toward the mainland.

— 7 —

San Diego looked normal from the air.

Distance is a liar.

Perspective, on the other hand, is a brutally honest motherfucker. As the Galaxy began our descent we could see the fires. Closer still we could see whole sections of Old Town and the Gaslamp District thronged with people. On any other day you’d have thought it was a party. Fourth of July. A Day of the Dead joke occurred to me, but I kicked its ass back into the shadows of my mind.