White Plague

by James Abel

  Eddie said, “One, you want to tell me what the hell just happened over there?”

  “He’s honoring him,” I said.

  “Oh, honoring. Some honor. Shoot a guy and salute him.”

  I turned to Eddie, who, close up, was as green as the Hulk. “Zhou had the same choice we did. Zhou decided—or was ordered to—keep the potentially infected guy off. He knows what happened in the Montana. He got the samples for analysis. They’ve probably got that bag in a locked freezer that no one will go into until Zhou gets home.”

  “Honoring,” said Eddie.

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Yeah, so how will they honor us? A torpedo?”

  Zhou turned to us, as if he felt our eyes on him, and knew we tried to figure out what he was doing. I felt him staring back. Maybe he even had a photo of me.

  But oddly, probably because we were both motionless, it was not a tense moment. I had no sensation of antagonism across the black water. Just a sort of connection through the green world of night vision, as if we both understood that we’d faced the same choices, that the consequences of missteps in the microbial world we’d been thrust into had spiraled far from human control.

  It was, I knew, just a feeling. And feelings can be dangerous. That feelings in a confrontation can—if you deceive yourself, if you fall victim to wishful thinking, if you get tired, as I was, and were scared, as I was, and confused, as I knew myself to be—lead to disaster.

  And yet the moment lengthened, and I could not help but believe that a fellow consciousness linked our two vessels.

  He would protect his crew better than I did mine, I couldn’t help thinking. He would take the samples and disappear below and turn west, staying in international waters, heading toward the U.S.-Russian border, then veering south into the narrow Bering Strait, and the northern Pacific, the main sea lanes, and ultimately to whatever secure lab awaited that ziplock and its contents somewhere in the People’s Republic of China.

  That’s what I figured would happen.

  But it did not happen.

  The submarine remained on the surface. The real truth, I saw, was that whatever was going on lay far beneath any surface that I knew. Zhou stood there, looking back, as the sub began turning in our direction.

  I didn’t have any torpedoes with which to protect us this time. There wasn’t even a single deck gun on board.

  “Shit,” said DeBlieu, and told the bridge to start us up again, head south again, full speed ahead in relatively clear seas, no point in hanging around waiting to see what Zhou intended. In fact, if he was going to fire, why leave the ship sitting broadside to him, fat and open?

  I felt the icebreaker’s engines rev, felt us turning.

  “Sweet Jesus,” said Marine Lance Corporal Frederick Fastbinder beside me at the handrail.

  Waiting . . .

  Waiting . . .

  Then minutes later we got a message on our handheld radios, channel 13, required to be monitored on all vessels. Our ship radios were out.

  “Captain Zhou wishes to escort you as far as the U.S. twelve-mile limit.”

  “That will not be necessary,” I replied.

  “Captain wishes me to say that you are in no danger. He would appreciate it if you might be so kind as to allow us to trail behind you, like one of your research vessels. We do not wish to encounter ice. Even small amounts might damage our hull. Please to not be alarmed. If you like, we can coordinate speeds. Again, we have no hostile intent.”

  He wasn’t asking permission, I knew. He sounded like he was, but he was informing us, not making requests. There was no way for us to stop him.

  “Hostile intent?” said Eddie. “This is a guy who threatened to kill us all yesterday.”

  “My captain heard that and assures you that the situation is quite different now.”

  “Different how?”

  “The Montana has gone to the bottom. We are on a humanitarian mission.”

  All fires on board were extinguished, and a vague smell of burned rubber drifted from the ship’s vents, and across deck, a dirty, infected odor, a whiff of destruction, enhancing the sense of near escape that worsened moment by moment, along with the growing sense of danger. The Wilmington steamed south, 300 more miles to Barrow, 288 miles to U.S. waters, seventeen hours minimum, if we could hold top speed, and the British-accented voice of the Chinese translator clear and bright, all of us aware that, thanks to Peter Del Grazo, there could be listening software anywhere on the ship. Zhou’s people might be riveted right now hearing any private talk between us.

  Eddie said, “Fucking Del Grazo.”

  Zhou repeated patiently that his intents were honorable, that he understood that we might not trust him.

  I asked him what his intentions were exactly. Or rather, why he felt it necessary to escort us at all.

  When he answered, when the stuffy British-sounding translator spoke next, Eddie turned bone white.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I’ve come to believe that all human actions are explicable. Understand motivation and you can reconstruct an act. You may be horrified by it, you may be disgusted or appalled, but at least you see how it happened. The madman’s murders make twisted sense if you understand his delusion. The future acts of an Adolf Hitler might be predicted if you observe his unique twisted growth, his particular step-by-step path in life.

  Now the Wilmington hit full speed in the iceless summer waters. Only now we had an escort, mile for mile. But even if Zhou submerged, his top speed would exceed ours. From the bridge, or on monitors, or from the fantail, anyone could follow the dark fin shape, frothing at the bow.

  Zhou’s words to me were ice in my veins, as I recalled his answer to why he was staying close.

  He had said, through his translator, that low voice clear over the handheld radio, “To help, if you need it.”

  “Considering what happened earlier, that is hard to believe.”

  After a hesitation, he said stiffly, “I’ve been instructed to tell you, in order to alleviate any concerns you may have, that in light of new developments there’s been an . . . adjustment of our policy.”

  “What is that supposed to mean, Captain?”

  “I’ve been instructed to tell you that there’s been a reappraisal on my end. I am ordered to make myself available to you should emergency assistance be required.”

  “Oh, we’re friends now,” I said skeptically.

  There was no answer, and then the voice said, devoid of emotion, “If it makes you feel better. Good luck.”

  He clicked off. The radio buzzed with static. But that click didn’t mean Zhou couldn’t hear us.

  “Hey, One,” Eddie said, “remember those vultures in Afghanistan. The way they’d appear magically, in the air, following guys, troops, Taliban, watching, circling. Those fucking carrion birds, just waiting for people to die.”

  “I remember.”

  “What’s he really been ordered to do, swoop in if we’re dying?”

  On the monitor, from the aft camera, I could see the sub back there as a sort of luminescence, a frothy V-shape marking the forward-most progress of the black hull.

  “Captain Zhou Dongfeng, everybody’s buddy,” said Eddie.

  “There’s nothing we can do about him. There’s no one we can even tell about him. Let’s get back to work,” I said.

  “Good luck,” Eddie repeated as we went cot to cot, taking temperatures, peering into eyes and throats, hoping the medicines had had an effect, seeing that they had not. “Good luck. Like he’s wishing us good luck?”

  “Ever get the feeling he knows more than we do?”

  “I get the feeling everyone knows more than we do.”

  “It’s goddamn creepy, having him back there. Maybe he doesn’t know the long-range is out. Maybe he’s waiting for us to send a general SOS. Then he sw
oops in and boards the Wilmington. He’s got the ship. He’s got,” I said, “the film.” I stopped. My left eye was hurting. “It can’t be the film, can it?”

  “Give me a break, man. It’s a hundred years old. Forget the film. We can’t even see the first part of it. What I can’t figure is, why does Zhou stay on the surface? Why advertise that he’s here? He’d be safer submerged, from the ice, from Washington seeing him on satellite, from someone at the Pentagon deciding he’s aggressive.”

  The throb in my left eye spread to my temple. “Plus,” I said, “if Del Grazo planted listening devices aboard, he could monitor us remotely. Like those hackers who broke into the Defense Department, or the banks. Hell, those guys were on other continents.”

  Eddie blew out air, turning possibilities over in his mind as we moved between patients. “I read this article in Time magazine. About bad guys driving around suburban neighborhoods, and they can see what’s going on inside homes ’cause they hijacked the owner’s webcam. It’s called drive-by programs. They hack in, or you click on an infected website—and then they access you remotely whenever they want, use your own mike to listen to you argue with your wife about money, activate your webcams to watch your daughter get undressed as they jerk off. Anyone can buy this shit at spy stores, and God knows what the really sophisticated stuff that governments have can do.”

  “You mean, like, the sub is a drive-by?”

  Eddie looked at the ship camera, which would be picking up our images, broadcasting them to the bridge. “Hey, Zhou! You listening? You watching right now? You studying us, Zhou? You waiting to see on your monitors how we die? Little research for your guys? What we look like when we get sick? How fast it jumps from person to person? That’s it, isn’t it? Help us? Give me a break! Break out the popcorn over there! Help us! You’re just watching the guinea pigs get sick!”

  “Maybe he needs to stay surfaced to watch. Maybe the programs Del Grazo planted won’t work if he’s submerged.”

  “Fucking maybes. Fucking goddamn maybes. Maybe he’s from Venus,” Eddie snapped.

  We continued our rounds, checked for the twentieth time—in despair—to see if we’d made progress.

  We reached Clinton’s cot. The big Iñupiat was worse now, his breathing jagged, bile dripping from the corners of his mouth, a tearing, ripping noise coming from him with each exhalation. Clinton lay beneath the piled parkas and extra sweaters and on sweat-soaked sheets, breaking into shivers so violent that they approached convulsions. Clinton’s fever at 104, hitting possible brain damage level. Clinton hooked to the IV that had been freed up when one of the Montana crew died. Clinton muttering Iñupiat words. I had no idea what they meant.

  “How many people in the United States, Eddie.”

  “Three . . . four hundred million?”

  “Triage,” I said.

  “Don’t go there, amigo. We have no control over what Washington does. Let’s concentrate on us.”

  I gave Clinton his prescribed three-hour dose of aerosols. We covered him up and moved down the row. I felt my heart tearing inside me. I was responsible for this scene. I kept hearing Zhou, even though I tried to block it out. Good luck.

  Had I misread the tone? It would be easy over distance. Had I misread intent? It would be simple with a translator involved. Was Eddie right? They were just watching and recording us, trying to deal with the disease? Triage. What if Zhou was here to blow us up? What if he was waiting while some high-level negotiations were going on between Washington and Beijing? We can’t blow up our own ship, so you guys do it. My imagination was getting the better of me. I saw a room in Washington. I saw the director meeting with men and women whose faces I knew from the nightly news. I knew the decision that faced them, because wasn’t it the same one I’d faced in Afghanistan, on a smaller scale? Blowing up a truck instead of a ship? Killing eight men to save thousands, instead of hundreds to save millions?

  Good luck, Zhou’s translator had told me.

  I told Eddie, “Well, we can use luck either way.”

  But there was no luck, because what we were seeing was worse than the 1918 strain; that much was evident. The death toll aboard hit twenty-one. Eddie and I went back to the microscope, and saw differences that we’d missed before—minuscule alterations—between the oblong microbes in the photos that the CDC had sent out, and the view of inside Clinton. Reconstituted version versus real-life disease.

  “Extra spikes on Clinton’s strain,” said Eddie an hour later, staring at the two pictures. “It’s narrower in the middle, and that tiny hook on top, see the way the two strands entwine? The curl is more pronounced, and the tail.”

  Three Marines were down with fevers of over 103, coughing up bile, skin patchy, blotched blue.

  “Not getting oxygen,” Eddie said.

  Six Wilmington crewmen, who had been stationed elsewhere in the ship when Del Grazo escaped, new patients, had been carried to the hangar, in similar shape.

  The cook had gone in one shocking two-hour period from merrily serving breakfast to breaking out coughing, to collapsing in his bunk after throwing up on the man below.

  He had then died.

  The hangar was a nightmare filled with sick and dying. DeBlieu stayed permanently forward, now that he’d left the quarantined area anyway. He ran the ship from the bridge. I heard his announcements regularly, and my respect for the man grew. He kept the crew busy with a steady stream of jobs: clean decks, check equipment or lifeboats, or do one more drill, or work harder trying to fix the radio room, get the long-range working since the fire. He was trying to snuff out panic before it began. DeBlieu on the intercom saying, “If you want to help the doctors, do your jobs.”

  XO Gordon Longstreet lay in row two, close to the sliding door of the hangar. Karen Vleska was one cot over, she and Clinton the patients I had the most trouble viewing. But I sat by her side, put my hand on her forehead. She was ashen, shivering, asleep.

  I must have fallen asleep myself, sitting there, and this is what I dreamed. I was in the back of a troop truck with eight Marines, in Afghanistan. There were oil drum bombs lashed to the sides, and I smelled alkaline desert, diesel fuel, unwashed guys, and roast lamb. I felt the hard hum of tires on dirt road, felt the jolt each time we hit a rut. Guys smoking. Guys shutting their eyes to doze. Me filled with dread, knowing that something awful was coming, and opening my mouth to warn them, but I couldn’t talk, and then I could not move, not even a toe.

  And then there were two of me, because I was also watching the truck approach from the guard post bomb barrier, and I was yelling into a radio for the truck to pull over and stop. I gripped the handles of the .50-caliber. I felt the weapon buck. Suddenly I was inside the truck again, with the doomed troops, instead of firing at it.

  The chassis rocked. The blast seemed to pierce my eardrums. I was pinned. The truck had turned over. I smelled fire. I was on fire myself. I tried to move but still could not.

  “Wake up, One. You were having a nightmare.”

  I jerked out of it, gasping for breath, and still feeling hot flames licking at my trousers. I was surprised to see the hangar around me. I looked right. There was Karen Vleska, still asleep and looking very white, very small.

  “I screwed up, Eddie.”

  “No.”

  “Zhou was right to shoot Del Grazo.”

  “One, keep your mind on the job. You got some shut-eye. You’re a new man, One. You’ll figure it out.”

  “We’ll prepare the inoculations, Eddie. Put out a call for anyone who got over the flu to come to the lab. We’ll reuse syringes if we have to. Time to take blood. No more time to wait.”

  I looked down and Karen’s eyes were open. They were watery and red but still focused, like her pupils were the only healthy part left. I felt something cold touch my hand. It was Karen’s hand. I took it. I felt the bones of her knuckles, and her tremors, and I heard the
creaky whisper of double pneumonia attacking her lungs as she forced air in or out. Perspiration flowed down skin turned gray as death.

  “You didn’t make a mistake,” she croaked. “You hear me? You didn’t. You saved the old woman, not the painting.”

  “At the moment I prefer the painting. How do you feel?”

  “Like I look. Like shit,” she said, smiled weakly, a skull smile, and let go, and then she closed her eyes.

  But she kept talking. “My father used to say, when I was little . . .”

  “What did he say, Karen?”

  A flicker, at the corner of the mouth, of a smile. “He’d say, things are hard because they aren’t easy. Dumb, huh? He was full of stupid sayings. He was . . . a great guy. And I think . . . Colonel, that so . . . are . . . you.”

  We left Andrew Sachs with her, mopping her brow, mask off; the guy seemed unconcerned for his own safety. I placed my hand on his bony shoulder, saw the watery iron-colored eyes turn up toward me in a question. I guess everyone was thinking of mortality, getting out the good comments while we could.

  “Mr. Sachs, you’re a jerk under normal conditions, but pretty damn good in an emergency,” I said.

  He grinned with an almost pathetic look of gratefulness, a broad sunny smile, and I saw his past in that moment; I saw other, bigger kids making fun of him when he was young, on a Boston street corner. I saw skinny Andrew being chased down a street outside of a school. I saw nerdy Andrew in college, winning A grades but looking yearningly at the baseball field. And later taking refuge in officialdom, as many in Washington do. What’s the old saying? Politics is show business for ugly people? All those power brokers on the surface walking around, chests thrust forward, thinking, inside where you can’t see, I’m big now. I’m smart. So how come I still feel like that jerk of a kid?