The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal Read Online Free PDF

could, because sometimes a week could pass with only a phone call or two, and it was like going a week without seeing the sun.
    “What the …” Eph thumbed his controller, this foreign feelingwireless gadget in his hand, still hitting all the wrong buttons. His soldier was punching the ground. “At least let me get up.”
    “Too late. Dead again.”
    For a lot of other guys Eph knew, men in a situation similar to his own, their divorce seemed to have been as much from their children as from their wives. Sure, they would talk the talk, how they missed their kids, and how their ex-wives kept subverting their relationship, blah, blah, but the effort never really seemed to be there. A weekend with their kids became a weekend out of their new life of freedom. For Eph, these weekends with Zack were his life. Eph had never wanted the divorce. Still didn’t. He acknowledged that his married life with Kelly was over—she had made her position perfectly clear to him—but he refused to relinquish his claim on Zack. The boy’s custody was the only unresolved issue, the sole reason they still remained wed in the eyes of the state.
    This was the last of Eph’s trial weekends, as stipulated by their court-appointed family counselor. Zack would be interviewed sometime next week, and soon afterward a final determination would be made. Eph didn’t care that it was a long shot, his getting custody; this was the fight of his life. Do the right thing for Zack formed the crux of Kelly’s guilt trip, pushing Eph to settle for generous visitation rights. But the right thing for Eph was to hang on to Zack. Eph had twisted the arm of the U.S. government, his employer, in order to set up his team here in New York instead of Atlanta, where the CDC was located, just so that Zack’s life would not be disrupted any more than it had been already.
    He could have fought harder. Dirtier. As his lawyer had advised him to, many times. That man knew the tricks of the divorce trade. One reason Eph could not bring himself to do so was his lingering melancholy over the failure of the marriage. The other was that Eph had too much mercy in him—that what indeed made him a terrific doctor was the very same thing that made him a pitiful divorce-case client. He had conceded to Kelly almost every demand and financial claim her lawyer requested. All he wanted was time alone with his only son.
    Who right now was lobbing grenades at him.
    Eph said, “How can I shoot back when you’ve blown off my arms?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe try kicking?”

    “Now I know why your mother doesn’t let you own a game system.”
    “Because it makes me hyper and antisocial and … OH, FRAGGED YOU!”
    Eph’s life-capacity bar diminished to zero.
    That was when his mobile phone started vibrating, skittering up against the take-out cartons like a hungry silver beetle. Probably Kelly, reminding him to make sure Zack used his asthma inhaler. Or just checking up on him, making sure he hadn’t whisked Zack away to Morocco or something.
    Eph caught it, checked the screen. A 718 number, local. Caller ID read JFK QUARANTINE .
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintained a quarantine station inside the international terminal at JFK. Not a detainment or even a treatment facility, just a few small offices and an examining room: a way station, a firebreak to identify and perhaps stall an outbreak from threatening the general population of the United States. Most of their work involved isolating and evaluating passengers taken ill in flight, occasionally turning up a diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
    The office was closed evenings, and Eph was not to be on call tonight, or anywhere on the depth chart through Monday morning. He had cleared his work schedule weeks ago, in advance of his weekend with Zack.
    He clicked off the vibrate button and set the mobile back down next to the carton of scallion pancakes. Somebody