Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

“Yes. She told me that a contagion—a sickness—came upon the people there over the winter. It was a sickness that spread very quickly—far more quickly than anything that we know. And its mortality rate—the rate at which it killed—was extremely high. Nearly everyone.”

“Except me,” said Jason. “Because I am immune.”

Dr. Bergstrom’s lips tightened in something cousin to a smile. “You seem healthy,” he said. “That I do grant you. But Jason—that does not mean you do not carry the disease.”

“My aunt and me figured that out,” said Jason. “We burned things and I kept bathed, even when it was fierce cold.”

Dr. Bergstrom shook his head. “The germ might nestle in your soft tissues. It might thrive in the warm places inside your ear—in your throat. Perhaps waiting for a moment to return.”

“That’s not how germs work.”

“And you are expert in this? No. I am sorry, young man. You must remain here for a time.”

“Where is here?”

Dr. Bergstrom crossed his hands behind his back and rocked on the balls of his feet. “Quarantine,” he said. “For at least tonight.”

“Tied down?”

“There is no other way,” said Dr. Bergstrom. “As your, ah, aunt attested: you show a tendency to wander.”

“How am I going to relieve myself then?”

“No… other… way,” repeated Dr. Bergstrom slowly.

Jason turned to Aunt Germaine who still held his arm. “Aunt! Get me out of here!” He twisted again against the straps. Panic was moving through him like an ugly liquor, and he could hear it in his voice, and he hated it.

Aunt Germaine looked down at him with pursed lips and a crinkled brow. “Doctor,” she said, “leave us a moment. The boy is distraught. I will calm him.”

“As you wish, Mrs. Frost.”

When Dr. Bergstrom had withdrawn sufficient distance, Aunt Germaine bent down to Jason’s ear and made shushing noises until Jason stopped twisting and struggling and glared at her.

“I am sorry, Nephew,” she said quietly. “Dr. Bergstrom is wrong. You are fine, and this is wrong. But I cannot stop it. It is beyond my authority.”

“Wh-what am I going to do then? What—”

“Shh. Dr. Bergstrom means for you to be trapped here. But you need not be.” Aunt Germaine leaned even closer, so her lips brushed Jason’s ear, and she whispered: “You are a hero, Jason Thistledown. Your survival… well, it proves that. You are as great a Man as Nature might commit. Dr. Bergstrom does not understand that. But he has not seen what you have lived through. He has… underestimated you. Foolishly, he has underestimated us both.” She pulled back a bit, so her face was now inches from Jason’s own. “Now turn your hand, slow and careful.”

Jason unclenched his fist, and turned it to meet with Aunt Germaine’s gloved hand. There was something metallic nestled in her palm.

“Careful,” she said. “You do not want to cut yourself. This is a scalpel—a tiny knife. It is small, but wickedly sharp. Should anything happen…”

“What?” he whispered.

“Cut yourself free, my darling hero,” said Aunt Germaine, “and run.”

9 - The Quarantine Obscenity

Jason fingered his scalpel and glared into the dark. Anger was all over him like fleas, nestling anywhere it smelled blood.

He was angry at Dr. Bergstrom, who had snuck up on him, stuck poison in him and put him here, tied like a dog for no good reason, without even knowing what sort of fellow he was. Although she had given him this scalpel and said kind things to him, he was angry at Aunt Germaine for what he identified as nothing but cowardly betrayal. She said she had no power to stop this—but in that bag of hers she had two guns (one belonging to Jason’s mama) and a pile of ammunition (ammunition that Jason had, at no small risk to his own skin, stepped into the Dempsey Store in Cracked Wheel and faced the putrid corpse of Lionel Dempsey, to retrieve). Jason thought that she was plenty powerful to stop this if she wanted to.

And then Jason stumbled on another source for his anger—an unholy pit of it that ran so deep it dizzied him to look down:

His ma.

His ma, who, if she had not been so weak and slow, might have lived through the sickness that took the rest of those damn fools in Cracked Wheel; who might then have just invited Aunt Germaine in for a meal that winter’s morning she showed up with her two pair of snowshoes; a meal where the three of them would have caught up on the goings-on in Philadelphia and New York, and Aunt Germaine could have told how she was doing eugenical research for Dr. Charles Davenport whose privy was filled with damn gold nuggets he was so fine a gentleman. And then together they could have figured out something more intelligent to do about pulling up stakes than getting on a train for this God-damned supposed paradise in Idaho.

All that they might have done and more, if only she hadn’t abandoned him.