Red Tide

by G. M. Ford

  Forty-five minutes of remonstrations had reduced Jim to claiming his cell phone battery was getting low and he’d better get off. He’d promised to keep in touch.

  The station he hadn’t called at all. After an hour of watching the news, all he knew for sure was that the media was playing up how he and this Frank Corso guy had been assisting the authorities with the investigation when they got caught in the lockdown. Short bios and small pictures of Jim and the six cops who were trapped on board what was now being called the Death Ship. Long bio and scads of pictures on this Corso guy.

  Jim sat down in front of one of the computers and hit the space bar with his thumb. The monitor hummed and then burst into life. “Welcome aboard the Arctic Flower. What would you like to do? E-mail? Chat with someone on shore? Download your photos to disk? Send streaming videos back and forth with someone? Make a DVD of your—”

  Jim stopped fiddling with the mouse and raised his eyes. The blank stare of the little TV camera met his gaze, and, for the first time in half a day, Jim smiled.

  52

  On the morning of the third day, a couple of moon-suited medics showed up to check Corso’s medical condition. They took his pulse and blood pressure and checked his side, which was pronounced safe but sore. Apparently, the tip of the knife blade had only penetrated as far as the surface of the rib, which had been partially displaced by the force of the blow. They administered an antibiotic and recommended rest. Soon as they left, Corso went outside. He’d thought the matter over at some length and could not make a compelling case for spending what could be his final days walking around in a haz-mat suit and respirator. After the scene with Holmes, he was unable to imagine a scenario in which he remained uncontaminated. Might as well be comfortable.

  The morning was steel wool gray. Everything…the sky, the city, the waters of Puget Sound, all of it so similar in hue it seemed as if the world could have been turned upside down and nothing much would have changed.

  Holmes’s body had been gone since early on the previous day. The area had been hosed down and then treated with some kind of bleach solution, so that when Corso strolled out onto the fantail promenade that morning the first sensation to reach his brain was once again the smell of a Laundromat.

  The ship was anchored a mile south of Four Mile Rock. Just about smack in the middle of the bay, as far from land on all sides as they could be without infringing on the shipping channel. The Arctic Flower was now surrounded by a flotilla of barges. A nearly endless stream of boats ferried supplies and medical personnel to and from shore. Isolation was a very busy place indeed.

  To the north and south, Coast Guard cutters stood sharp and ready, prepared to repel both media incursions and potential escapees, as Corso padded behind the bar and fixed himself a mimosa for breakfast.

  “What do the numbers look like?” the mayor asked.

  The CDC guy scoured his way through a computer printout until something caught his eye. “We’ve got a confirmed count of three hundred ninety people being held on board. Two hundred three crew members, six police officers, two civilians and a hundred seventy-nine maintenance personnel of one kind or another.”

  “What kind of…” Marty Morningway hesitated. “I mean of the three hundred ninety, how many can we expect to come down with the virus?”

  “Nearly all of them.” The guy looked around the room. “Allowing for a four percent incidence of people whose immune systems will successfully fight off the disease and another nine percent who will not become infected purely by chance, we can estimate that approximately three hundred thirty-nine people will likely become infected.”

  As a buzz began to circle the room, he held up a restraining hand. “If we factor in the fact that the wipe tests on the crew areas came back with only marginal signs of contamination and that the crew has been able to maintain a greater level of isolation than the passengers, the reasonable expectation would be that we will have somewhere in the immediate vicinity of a hundred and fifty infected people, of whom we can expect approximately a hundred thirty will die.”

  “You mean to tell me, what with modern medical science throwing everything it’s got at these people—”

  “There is no cure,” the CDC doctor interrupted. “No serum. No vaccine. At present, the best we can do is keep their fluids up and make them as comfortable as possible. Untreated, Ebola Zaire has a ninety-two percent mortality rate. Treatment, regardless of the quality or quantity, can be expected to drop the number by no more than six percent.”

  A pall settled over the room, as everyone considered the numbers. Finally, Harry Dobson broke the spell. “So sometime in the next five or six days, we’re going to get our first cases showing up. What then?”

  Dr. Helen Stafford leaned forward and folded her hands on the table in front of her. “The period surrounding the onset of the disease is going to be critical.” She took a deep breath and gathered herself. “Ebola damages the brain. It creates psychotic dementia. At Maridi, victims ran from their beds, out into the street, without knowing who they were or how they had gotten into their present situation.”

  “None of these poor souls will be running in the streets,” the FBI agent threw in.

  The doctor shook her head. “The point is, once we start to see victims, we’re also going to see people who are simply terrified, and it’s going to be very difficult to tell the frightened from the infected.”

  Harry Dobson checked his watch for the date. “Five days,” he said, as much to himself as to the room.

  Before anyone could respond, the conference room door snicked open. All eyes swiveled that way. A King County deputy pushed his two-tone brown uniform into the room. He walked quickly over to the sideboard which held the coffee pots and water and grabbed the remote control.

  “I think you’re gonna want to see this,” he said.

  The picture had a fun-house effect. The poor quality of the transmission allowed Jim’s face to remain fluid, to move from thin to fat to square to round and back. Any hint of mirth, however, was immediately trampled by the grim expression on his face. “This is Jim Sexton reporting live from aboard the Arctic Flower.”

  He spent five minutes relating the current state of affairs aboard the ship. Then, one by one, he introduced the other ten inhabitants of his area and allowed each to broadcast a greeting to whomever they chose. Some were long-winded. Some too overwrought to finish. Several were in Spanish. The cops went last. Everybody got their say. When the sounds of men shuffling in and out of the room finally subsided, Jim looked steadily at the camera and said, “I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon since I’ve been aboard the Arctic Flower.” He tried to smile, only to have it wither on his lips. “I mean most of us spend our days glued to the tube watching CNN and the national news, hearing all this Ghost Ship stuff, listening to the figures about how many of us are going to die, and you know what?” He paused a beat. “Nobody thinks it’s going to be them. Everybody thinks they’re the one who’s going to survive.” He shook his head. “I mean like…me too. There’s just something inside us refuses to believe we’re going to”—he stopped—“that we’re going to end up being just another statistic. That we’re going to be one of the ones they find melted down in their own beds.” He looked away from the camera for a moment. “Maybe that’s why we’ve survived for this long. Maybe that’s the skill that’s allowed us to…”—he waved a diffident hand—“what are we gonna call it? Maintain dominion over the planet? This absolutely unreasonable sense of hope…this kind of totally unwarranted optimism, that allows us to go on almost no matter what.”

  The tone of his own voice brought his monologue to a close. He ran a finger beneath his nose and looked at the camera. “This is Jim Sexton reporting for KING Five News.”

  53

  Dr. Helen Stafford adjusted the microphone. “I think it would be safe to say that sometime in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, we should start seeing our first cases aboard the Arctic Flower. Yes.”


  She pointed at Wolf Blitzer, holding the CNN microphone in the front row.

  “Sources tell us that, as of this morning, there have been two cases of Ebola found among shoreside personnel. Would you care to comment on that?”

  “Actually three,” she corrected. “A union electrician. A truck driver. And a security guard in the employ of the steamship line. All three were, at one time or another, aboard the Arctic Flower on the night of the terrorist attack. All three are presently in Level Four isolation at Harborview Hospital.” She ignored the sea of waving hands. “As of an hour ago, we have identified fifty-six citizens who have had face-to-face contact with any of the three. Members of my staff and of the Centers for Disease Control are taking all the appropriate steps to minimize the spread of the virus.”

  She listened again. “No. Privacy laws prevent us from releasing the names.”

  The questions and answers went on for another fifteen minutes before Helen Stafford rose from her chair and pointed to her watch. “It’s been a long day, ladies and gentlemen. The seventh in what I imagine will be many such days. If you’ll excuse me.”

  They’d run the video feed through a bevy of electronic enhancement techniques in an attempt to stabilize the image. Despite their efforts, the results were, at best, sketchy. Jim’s face no longer morphed as he talked, but the stabilization process had so flattened his features as to render him nearly unrecognizable to all but his closest relatives.

  “Jim Sexton reporting live from aboard the Arctic Flower. Day Seven,” he intoned. As he rambled on about the weather and the discovery of a cache of liquor in a forward locker, his voice once again began to rise and to take on a more stentorian tone. The change in his demeanor had been noticed by any number of national commentators. Some suggested that he was unsure of his equipment and thus felt a need to be more forceful; others lay the change in his demeanor to the fact that his live feeds had become a regular staple of every major news organization in the world, thus catapulting him from local also-ran to internationally recognized reporting icon.

  “Tonight the decks are deserted.” He paused. “As we near the end of the incubation period, people have begun to take our situation more seriously. In the past couple of days everyone seems to have taken to their rooms, venturing forth only when absolutely necessary. Tonight we truly are the Ghost Ship, the one you see on the television, our own little universe floating on the waves of Elliott Bay, waiting to face our fate, wishing each other well when we can and hoping like the devil that we’ll be the one who survives, even if it means they won’t.” He shrugged at the camera. “So for tonight anyway, this is Jim Sexton reporting for KING Five News. Good night.”

  The presence came to him slowly. Like a finger gently lifting an eyelid or the soft arrival of dawn. He’d been dreaming he could fly. All the other kids in his elementary school stood openmouthed and dumbfounded as he soared above the playground with a dreamy expression etched on his face.

  In the moments before he opened his eyes, he was overcome by the clarity of the images. The green of the grass. The deep red color of the earth and the fine gray gravel of the road. He opened an eye and it all disappeared.

  The digital clock read twelve-fourteen A.M. The ship was motionless. Corso lay on his back staring at the ceiling. As the moments passed, he began to feel a tingling sensation run across his bare chest. Almost as if he could feel someone’s eyes on him from across a crowded room. Although he wasn’t cold, he had the sudden urge to pull the blanket over himself, but instead sat up in bed and stretched.

  “You’re a heavy sleeper,” the voice said.

  The sound pulled Corso out of bed in a single bound. He stood, quivering, sweeping the room with his eyes until he caught her outline seated in the armchair in the far corner of the stateroom. “You might want to put your trousers on,” she said from the darkness. She smiled. “It’s up to you of course,” she added.

  Realizing he was naked, Corso bent at the waist and felt around on the floor. He took his time, buttoning up his jeans before slipping the T-shirt over his head. When he was finished, he snapped on the light over his nightstand.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Not long.”

  He took a deep breath, trying to quiet his pulse. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask you how in hell you got in here.”

  “No,” she said. “Probably not.” Before he could speak, she rose from the chair. “Aren’t you going to offer a lady a drink?” she said. “From what I can see, you’ve got a whole bar to yourself.”

  “What’s your preference?”

  She thought it over. “A martini. Bombay Sapphire. Olives.”

  “I can manage that,” he said and headed for the door.

  She followed him outside. Around the back of the ship to the bar, where Corso snapped on the bright lights and proceeded to put together a shaker of martinis. She watched in silence as he worked.

  The persistent fog had cleared, leaving the lights of the city spread out across the dark water like fallen stars. Corso slid her drink across the bar at her and raised his own glass. “Salute.”

  “Salute.”

  He watched her throat move as she swallowed, waited until she put the glass back on the bar. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” he asked.

  She took another sip. “I came to make you an offer,” she said.

  “One I can’t refuse.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why me?”

  It was a question for which she was prepared. “Because you have a history of being where you’re not supposed to be. You seem to have a knack for ending up in the middle of things, of making trouble, both for yourself and for others.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as your problems with The New York Times.”

  “Done our homework, eh?”

  “Always.”

  “What do I get in return?”

  “Your life.”

  Corso folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t catch this, can you? This hemorrhagic fever, you’re immune to it.”

  “Yes, I’m immune to it, and I can make you immune to it also.”

  “There’s several hundred people on this boat and god knows how many others elsewhere who could use the same thing.”

  “That wouldn’t do at all,” she said.

  Corso smirked. “Because then you’d have to admit you made the virus in the first place, wouldn’t you? There wouldn’t be any other credible explanation for having the antidote, unless you’d manufactured the original virus.”

  “If you say so,” was all she said.

  Corso opened his mouth to speak, but she waved him off. “Everyone makes it, Mr. Corso. How could they not? How could they be unsure what their enemies were doing and purposely not keep pace? How could that kind of largesse be explained away later? What could be said to a decimated people? ‘We thought nobody was doing this kind of thing anymore’?” She made a disgusted noise with her mouth. “Everyone who can create germs is doing so. Some are merely more adept than others.”

  “Hundreds of people are going to die before this is over.”

  “Hundreds of people are going to starve to death in Africa while we’re having this conversation.” Her tone was flat. Her eyes unwavering.

  “And you want me to do what?” Corso asked.

  “I want you to deliver a package for me.”

  “In return for which you’ll make me immune to the virus.”

  “Yes.”

  “This package…does it contain any type of—”

  She read his mind. “No,” she interrupted. “It’s merely a photograph.”

  “Of?”

  “Of the person you’ll be delivering it to.”

  “Memento?”

  “Loose end.” She reached behind herself and pulled out a manila envelope which she had secreted under her belt and beneath her coat. She dropped it on the bar and picked up her martini glass. “Go ahead,”
she said.

  Corso pulled the flap back and extracted the photo. Two men, passing something between them. Corso recognized one of them immediately. He’d seem him on TV.

  “The other man’s name is David Reubens. He used to be a genetic engineer for the Russians.”

  “Used to be?”

  “The Russians went broke.”

  “So?”

  “So he sold his product to the highest bidder.”

  Corso flicked the photograph with his fingernail. “The other gentleman here.”

  “Precisely.”

  Corso threw her a disgusted look. She made a rude noise. “What else was Reubens supposed to do. He had a wife…children. A nice apartment in Moscow.” She waved a disgusted hand. “What was he supposed to do, when overnight everything he had worked for was gone? It’s like you Americans are so fond of saying: ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’”

  He studied the picture for another minute and then looked up. “I take it this…”—he shook the picture—“this explains how a bunch of pathetic East Indian terrorists get their hands on a high-tech bioengineered virus.”

  “This completes the circle.” She checked her watch. “Time is short, Mr. Corso. What do you say? Do we have a deal or do we not?”

  Corso found himself suddenly filled with voices, as if his solitary inner dialogue had suddenly become a heated debate. The call to refuse the antidote as a matter of principle. The call to die a noble death rather than profit from anything tawdry. The call to insist that everyone on board the Arctic Flower be given the antidote as well. Each righteous incantation he dreamed up more infeasible than its predecessor. They went on and on. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing. “Deal,” he said.