Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  The operations area, where most of the work seemed to take place, was much roomier and felt almost spacious. A few dozen airmen sat in clusters of four facing each other across desks filled with yet more consoles. They all appeared exhausted and she wondered if they ever took breaks. She could smell the dried sweat. “They’re evacuating the subs from New London,” she overheard and slowed. “Sending them all down to Kings Bay in Georgia. I guess that’s lights out Connecticut. Not much of New England left.”

  When the two buzz-cut airmen looked up at her, Isabel walked away pumping her arms in ridiculous, exaggerated fashion like a housewife on a morning jaunt.

  The titles at workspaces grew ever more impressive the farther forward she walked. Rather than vague names like Tech 1 and Tech 2, these labels were more descriptive: controllers, launch system operators, planners, and weather officers. The airmen at those stations were almost all officers, some senior as suggested by the graying hair and the star on the epaulettes of a man whose workstation was labeled “Chief of Battle Staff.” The other general on board, Grier, must have been in the cockpit.

  The next cabin forward, which she called the theater, but that presumably wasn’t its name, was like business class to her economy. There were rows of plush chairs, half filled by crewmen she presumed were off-duty because some were napping. All faced a conference table and wall-mounted flat-screen behind it on which were displayed an indecipherable series of circles, lines projecting from or to them, and numbers denoting range, or speed, or something else.

  Beyond that, the door was guarded by men in dark suits: Secret Service, she guessed. From glimpses through the door, once left open, she’d seen a small conference room and table with its own screen. The map on that screen had looked similar to those displayed in the Situation Room under the White House. Red shading of various intensities covered most of New England, and to her surprise also bathed new areas of outbreak along all the northern tier of states around the Great Lakes. On her second pass by the open door she’d made out Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit in medium-intensity magenta. On her third, she noticed a pale pink descending into Virginia that almost certainly included the Old Place, and isolated pockets of deep crimson in Philadelphia and St. Louis, and around Washington, D.C. The last—the nation’s capital—was ringed in dark red but lily white and uninfected at its center, where she had last seen Rick. On her fourth pass, and on every trip forward since, the conference room door had been closed.

  When she returned to her rest area, a small semi-circle of airmen were kneeling, and a chaplain was placing wafers in their hands. This must be Sunday, she thought. It appeared to be a Catholic communion service, and she was Presbyterian, but the chaplain held a wafer out to her in invitation, and she knelt without thinking. She wasn’t religious, but the first tears began when she ate the sacrament. By the time the cup of wine appeared, she was sobbing but trying hard not to. The male and female airmen to either side of her patted her on the back and stroked her dirty hair. They had no idea who the petite woman in stinky army camouflage was or why she was there, but they shared that moment with her. Her fears and anguish were theirs too. Isabel’s feeling of despair transcended religion, politics, race, gender, and nationality. For the time being, they all belonged to the same dwindling identity group: the Uninfected.

  Chapter 30

  THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY

  Infection Date 58, 1200 GMT (8:00 a.m. Local)

  Emma called out to her niece, who sat beside the barn door with her rifle. “Chloe, could you let me in?” The girl darted from tree to tree as she came over to unlock the gate. “Where are your parents?”

  “In the house,” Chloe replied, taking cover behind a thick trunk. She waved her arm, and Jake returned the gesture from the tower.

  “I don’t think you need to be quite so careful,” Emma told her. “We took care of the Nichols problem.”

  “You did?” She still remained in a crouch beside the standing Emma. “Well, Dad’s gotten to be a total asshole since they came up here and shot at Jake. He’s acting like we’re in the army or something. Always shouting orders. He gets really pissed if we don’t, you know, play soldier.” Emma had nothing to say in response and headed for the house. “Hey,” Chloe called out, “if you’re gonna see Dad, could you please, please, please ask him for my phone back? He took it down to town the other day, and he yells at me every time I ask him for it. ‘Get your head in the ga-a-ame, Chloe! Pay attention! Head on a swivel! You’d just get distracted by your iPhone!’”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Oh, and did you hear? The local TV stations both went off the air. They, like, played the national anthem, showed pictures of wheat fields and flags, then just turned off.”

  Emma found Natalie in the kitchen cooking. “Is Noah here?”

  “He was up in the tower all night. I told him he could just watch the security cameras on his iPad, but…So I made him get some shut-eye. He hasn’t gotten more than a couple hours sleep at a time since the attack. Is it…done?”

  “Yes. They’re all dead.” Natalie appeared on the verge of asking another question, but hesitated a moment, then handed Emma a tray with a plate of bacon and eggs and a mug of coffee. “He needs to eat. Tell him that’s the last of the bacon, so enjoy.”

  Emma carried the tray to the master bedroom, knocked on the door with the toe of her boot, and managed to turn the knob without dropping or spilling anything. Her eyes took time to adjust to the darkness. There was a rumpled form on the King-sized bed. “Noah?”

  “What?” came Noah’s startled response as he bolted upright.

  “I’ve brought you breakfast.” Emma put the tray on the bed. “The last of the bacon.”

  “What about the Nicholses?”

  “You don’t have to worry about them anymore, but there’s plenty more trouble coming.” Noah asked only about the earlier threat. “They’re all dead. We burned their house down and shot them as they came out. But you do need to worry about the violence when the contagion passes through. I’ve got plans.”

  “What kinda plans?”

  “Plans for the future. For survival. I need your help. You’re a lawyer, you majored in political science, and you took economics courses too, right?”

  “Emma, I’m too busy for this.” But he wasn’t doing anything.

  “While you’re eating breakfast, maybe I could ask you a few questions?” He took a bite, which she interpreted to be an invitation to continue. “Question one. What should be done with Infecteds, in an Infected society, who are unable or unwilling to work?”

  It was dark. Emma couldn’t see Noah’s face, but she wasn’t good at reading expressions anyway. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “It’s mainly legal, but also economic. Post-infection society is going to be impoverished and food-insecure. Ensuring that its members are all economically productive will be vital in staving off starvation and disease. Other diseases, not Pandoravirus. Infected societies won’t be rich enough to support a class of the idle, except possibly for children, who are needed long term.”

  “So what’s the question?” Noah asked amid a huge yawn.

  “What should be done with people who can’t or won’t work? If we compensate workers with food to incentivize them, then the non-working will resort to violence to feed themselves.”

  “Why do you even care about this shit?”

  “I’m trying to organize society to help ensure order and survival.”

  In the darkness, she could tell Noah rubbed his face from the sounds and the rocking bed. “Okay. What are you thinking the rules might be in Emma’s brave new world?”

  “Imprisonment is costly. Banish people and they will come back. Execution works, but seems imprecise.”

  “Execution? For not working? Emma, that’s freakin’…crazy
. And how do you define not working? One day’s absence? A week of slothfulness? A bad quarter?”

  They talked for the next few hours, interrupted by Noah’s potty break and shower, and his opening of the shades and arranging of two chairs. Democracy seemed like an unnecessary luxury despite Noah’s repeated attempts to sell Emma on it. Private ownership of property made sense, but beyond the essentials required for survival the topic lost her interest. Capitalism and the accumulation of wealth felt as archaic as feudalism. Some centralized form of capital and resource allocation made more sense, especially for a society perpetually at war with well-armed uninfected survivors.

  Noah shouted a request for his wife to bring more coffee. When Natalie arrived, Emma found the coffee she brought stimulated even more questions.

  “So,” Noah said, “you’re proposing a command economy. Like the old Soviet five-year plans, production quotas, things like that.”

  Natalie asked, “Will this new society of yours admit Uninfecteds?”

  That was actually one of Emma’s questions. But she had refrained from asking Noah about it for fear that the answer would be an obvious, “No,” and the implications he might draw from that answer. Emma instead replied with a list of complications. “Even after a couple of weeks, when Infecteds cease shedding the virus through respiration, Uninfecteds will fear close contact…like this. Being infected will remain a stigma.”

  Noah seemed to agree. “Uninfecteds will want to segregate themselves.”

  And kill us, came the voice in Emma’s head. She carefully avoided a furtive look up in search of the comment’s origin.

  “How big will this new society you’re planning be?” Natalie asked.

  “However many Infecteds there are.”

  “I mean hundreds? Thousands?”

  “More like a hundred to a hundred and fifty million.”

  Noah chuckled even though she hadn’t told a joke. “You think this society of yours is just going to…spread? The Infecteds will all sign up and whistle while they work?”

  “I don’t know about whistling, but if they’re provided with food, medicine, shelter, clothing, security, and sex, then yes. They’ll join.”

  “Sex?” Natalie said. It sounded like a question.

  “Society will have to meet their needs. And it will also, as I mentioned, long-term have to perpetuate itself with future generations of workers.”

  “How are you gonna regulate sex?” asked Emma’s sister-in-law.

  “I was thinking that it should be used, along with the other things I listed, to incentivize work. If an Infected was incapable of working productively, or refused to, those necessities would be withdrawn until, at some point, execution was appropriate. And as to who decides whom to execute, that would devolve bureaucratically to the administrators of the rules and regulations that prescribe rewards and punishments.”

  “Meaning you’d have state-sanctioned brothels and death chambers?” Noah asked.

  Although Emma was the one who came prepared with questions, she was finding this give-and-take to be useful. State-sanctioned brothels, she noted mentally. Uninfecteds were far more creative and imaginative than her cabinmates, with the possible exception of Samantha. “And permits and permissions,” Emma said, “for recreational sex, or for intercourse leading to reproduction, which would necessarily imply a general prohibition of sex absent those permits.”

  “How can you stop people,” Natalie asked, sort of giggling despite the seriousness of the topic, “who wanna have sex?”

  “Punishment. Death, in the case of rape or repeated disregard for the rules.”

  Emma looked at her phone, which she now used only for its clock. Dwayne would be returning soon from his reconnaissance of the town. She should meet him back at the cabin. “Oh, Chloe asked for her phone back.”

  Noah fished in his camo backpack and handed the iPhone to Emma.

  At the door, Natalie reached out for Emma’s arm. “You never said whether we’d be invited to live in your new society.”

  Say yes, came the voice. Lie! “Yes,” Emma said. “But you’ll have to agree to abide by the contract…and the punishments.”

  “Meaning death for breaking the rules?” Noah asked.

  “Yep.” Emma departed the silent bedroom. Just as she thought, they wouldn’t agree. Would any Uninfecteds agree to that deal? Infecteds would…in droves.

  “You were in there a long time,” Chloe said as she sat incorrectly in a chair, dangling her legs over an arm. She muted the TV news. They still received many of the national satellite signals. There was video of a small crowd of people outside a tall fence pleading with the thin line of soldiers guarding it. Kneeling. Wailing. Gesticulating. Clearly Uninfecteds, who shouted across the line of troops and tossed bundles of food or containers of water into the enclosure to Infecteds. Former loved ones, probably. Small, vicious fights broke out where the supplies landed.

  “Did you get my phone?” Chloe asked.

  Emma handed it to her. Chloe hesitated, then used her paper napkin from the lunch she’d eaten in front of the TV to take the phone from Emma. Unnecessary, but smart, came the voice. She’s careful. We could use Uninfecteds like her. Chloe pressed a few buttons and wiped her fingertips on her jeans.

  “Hey, Chlo, it’s Justin,” the recording played from the phone’s speaker. Chloe instantly smiled ear-to-ear. “Texts aren’t going through, so I thought I’d call. Where you been at?” Where have you been! noted the voice. “You’re not answering. Call when you get this.” The boy, “Justin,” then related to Chloe the story of two classmates whose families were evacuating to different parts of the country. The boy had asked the girl to marry him. The girl had responded by breaking up with the boy. “Can you believe that shit?” Justin said before concluding, after a long pause, with, “I love you.”

  It was unclear whether Chloe was happy or found Justin’s story or profession of love to be humorous, but she was grinning broadly. “It’s gotten really creepy,” Justin reported in the next voicemail. “Nobody goes out at night.” No one. “And if you run into anybody,” anyone, “during the daytime, everybody,” everyone, “keeps their distance.” As Justin relayed an anecdote to which he inexplicably ascribed immense significance—coming upon an overturned, burning SUV, whose occupants fired on anyone attempting to rescue them—Emma considered whether remedial grammar and diction courses should be a priority. “I kept waiting for them to scream when the flames, like, exploded, but those last shots must’ve been, you know, suicides ’cause they didn’t. Scream. It really shook me up, babe. I mean, why would somebody do that?” But while uniform rules of communication were beneficial, they didn’t rise to the level of importance of food production and societal security.

  The map shown on the muted TV displayed outbreaks of Pandoravirus all across the northern tier of states, meaning Canada just beyond was succumbing rapidly. But isolated pockets farther south in the U.S. were misleading. They were only the known, reddish-tinted outbreaks. But the intervening, all-clear, unshaded areas around them were, in truth, being infected home-by-home, town-by-town, hour-by-hour, Emma knew, in an inexorable biological process.

  Justin’s third voicemail seemed to depress Chloe’s mood. “It’s like, I dunno.” He wasn’t articulate, even for a high school boy. “This rumbling that you feel and can almost hear. It rattled my mom’s decorative plate right off the shelf even though there wasn’t really any sound. It’s like what I bet an earthquake must be. And this red glow in the sky at night. They’re bombing all around D.C. My dad says Infecteds are trying to find a way to bypass the defenses around the city. Last night, the bombing was closer. You could hear boom-boom-boom-boom.” Chloe leaned forward, listening intently to the phone cradled in a napkin. She’s too smart for him, came the voice.

  His next message pled for Chloe to respond, and she groaned. “Our parents said nobody goes outside
any more. A bomb broke all our front windows even though it landed a block away. It was a mess. We’ve pushed our heavy furniture up against the doors, but the windows are wide open. My dad was gonna go take some of the plywood the neighbors put up before leaving, which is what we shoulda done, but my mom said that was stealing. Stealing! Who the fuck cares? Ya know? Really? I don’t know what’s gonna happen. The last few nights we heard people shooting, and it’s gotten closer and louder. Then, today, the shooting kept going after sun-up. There! Can you hear that? There. Hear it?” Chloe’s brow was creased and mouth drooped open. She looked up at Emma. On the muted TV were images from Fort Worth, Texas, where tanks were being unloaded from rail cars.

  Justin’s next message, probably his last, was recorded in whispers. “Chloe! They’re inside our house! They’re coming up the stairs!” His voice was quivering. Moisture welled in Chloe’s wide eyes, and she covered her mouth with her free hand. In the background, the sound of tramping feet, children crying, and adults praying could be heard. “This is it! They’re coming to the closet door. This is…!” There was a crashing sound. A woman begged for the lives of her children. A man grunted and then screeched in pain like a wounded animal. Their feeble attempts to confront their attackers were obviously ineffectual. The phone was dropped, shouts, of “No!” and “Please!” were ended with piercing shrieks and wails that went on and on. Agony after agony ensued, grew weaker, and was followed by relative calm. Pants from exertion or rage could be heard. Superfluous blows rained hollow thuds on by now surely lifeless bodies. Then, a woman’s voice. “Somebody’s in the kitchen getting at the food!” Off the footfalls went. After the brief rustling as the mob departed and a few seconds of shouting and crashing sounds from a distance, a deep and permanent silence descended on the recording.

  Chloe was ashen, shaking…and staring wide-eyed at Emma.

  “So,” Emma said, “you got your messages.” But from Chloe’s reaction, that wasn’t the right thing to say. What about, You’re gonna need a new boyfriend ’cause that one’s dead? Don’t say that! advised the voice. “See ya later,” she tried in an upbeat tone.