H10N1

by M. R. Cornelius

  The few healthy ones received the coveted Code Green status, and were immediately shuttled out to the far end of Long Island—the colony in Brookhaven. FEMA called it Orderly Redistribution, but the goal was really to get the dying out of buildings and off the streets.

  The telephone on her desk rang, and she turned away from the window, switching on her Bluetooth. The instant the caller identified himself, Taeya pounced.

  “What’s going on over there? You tell Markham if he can’t get that incinerator at ninety percent we’re shutting it down. His emissions are drifting right toward Long Island.”

  While buses brought the sick to the Center, flatbed trucks hauled the dead to makeshift crematoriums. Both the CDC and World Health Organization had urged other countries not to resort to mass graves. This pathogen was way too virulent to be buried in the ground. Taeya wasn’t even confident that incineration was a hundred percent effective.

  Darryl from security skidded to a halt at her door, dancing impatiently from foot to foot. She waved him in and pointed to a chair. He stood as Taeya continued her telephone conversation.

  “Then tell Markham to reduce his hourly body count.”

  She watched Darryl drift around her office, feigning interest in the pictures hanging on the wall: the snapshot of her brother and parents dwarfed by a giant redwood in Muir Woods, Mai standing outside a Red Cross tent near Calang in Sumatra. Darryl hovered at the photograph of Taeya and her husband Randall, standing in front of a pagoda in Fukutsu. She was wearing a tank top in the picture, and she was sure Darryl was checking out her breasts.

  He was supposedly head of security, but from what she observed, he spent most of his time hiding out in the old neonatal wing. He wore his uniform too tight, accentuating his bulging biceps, preening in front of the younger nurses.

  “Look!” she barked into her headset. The outburst startled Darryl and he stepped away from the picture. “This isn’t a race with New Jersey to see who can dispose of the most corpses. You tell him this is my last warning.” She disconnected without waiting for a reply.

  What were they thinking? The whole purpose of incineration was to destroy. If they didn’t reduce the contaminated tissue to ash, the possibility for mutation occurred. Then they’d have still another viral strain on their hands. Taeya had argued, futilely, that they continue picking up corpses reported by the suicide centers, but Doctor Sherman insisted they didn’t have the manpower for such a monumental task. In the end, he decided that at the rate Manhattan was burning, all the corpses would eventually be obliterated. Had she actually called him a moron?

  Darryl laid his hands on her desk and leaned forward, going for the dramatics. “Doctor Sanchez, we’ve got a problem in pathology.”

  “I saw.” Most likely, he was referring to the corpse she’d seen out on the sidewalk. Johnson hadn’t wasted any time dissecting this latest casualty. “Maybe it was a drive-by dump.”

  “No. There’s nothing on our cameras. Plus, we got a guy who says he was there when this dude collapsed. Johnson’s sure we’ve got a new one.”

  “I’ll bet. He’s probably already named it.” She looked at her watch. “Okay, I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. Tell him I’ll be down in an hour.”

  She tried herding Darryl toward the door, but he had more news.

  “We had a real nasty one down in the lobby this morning. This woman had three different scarves tied around her face. And she was wearing this insulated parka like the Eskimos wear. Can you imagine? In that heat?” Darryl puffed out his cheeks and blew. “When the data clerk gave her the green light for Long Island, she refused. She was afraid Brookhaven was contaminated, too. Said she wanted in here, where it’s safe.” Darryl waved an arm at Taeya’s office. “She offered to sweep floors. Anything. When the data clerk said we weren’t hiring, she slashed the computer’s plasma screen.”

  “Where is she now?” Taeya asked.

  “I had a couple of the boys toss her into a red-code ward.”

  “What?”

  “Believe me, Doctor Sanchez, you don’t want a psycho like her in your Brookhaven colony.”

  Taeya pressed her fingers into her forehead and rubbed. Who wouldn’t be hysterical in a situation like this? If Darryl suddenly found himself out in that madness, what would he do?

  But there was no point in trying to coax some humanity from Darryl. Chances were, that trait didn’t exist. As she ushered him out, she spotted a man in low-slung blue jeans and a dingy tee shirt saunter past her door.

  “How did that man get in here?” she demanded.

  Darryl raised a hand to keep her from charging after the intruder. “That’s Rick DeAngelo, one of our new drivers. He’s the one who found the wavelength filters for our Hb readers.”

  Unclenching her fists, Taeya took a deep breath to slow her pulse. She’d heard stories about this driver. Someone could show him an illustration of what they needed and he’d come back with it. But his talent had gotten so exaggerated, she’d begun to think he was an urban legend.

  “Why isn’t he wearing a hospital-issued uniform?”

  “Take it easy, Doc,” Darryl said. “He’s also the one who tracked down those Fentanyl patches after we tapped out our morphine supply. Sherman figures he can bend the rules with this guy.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “Come on. I’ll introduce you. He was telling me some strange stuff about the D.C. facility this morning. Maybe you should check it out.” Darryl launched down the hallway after the slob. “Hey, Rick!”

  After the two slapped hands in some juvenile greeting, Darryl asked him how things were going.

  “They’re gone, man.”

  Rick’s eyes drifted past Darryl. For an instant, he met Taeya’s gaze, but then his eyes scanned slowly down and up again. Was this bozo checking her out?

  Darryl was oblivious to the leer. “Rick, this is Doctor Sanchez. Tell her what you were telling us this morning. You know, about D.C.”

  “Doctor Sanchez.” Rick’s voice had the sleazy cadence of a barfly. “My pleasure.” He held out his hand.

  Taeya hesitated, making sure he caught her own slow scan of his slovenly appearance. His hair was longer than hers, but board-straight and pulled back in a ponytail. Evidently, he did not feel the need to shave on a regular basis. His ratty tee shirt was frayed at the neck, and had a tear above an illustration of a wrench. She looked away when she realized the drawing was supposed to symbolize a man’s genitalia. What a creep.

  She accepted his hand for a brief shake.

  He cocked an eyebrow, as if he couldn’t believe she didn’t find him as charming as the rest of the staff.

  “I just got back from D.C. last night,” he said. “Bad news down there.”

  “I already know,” Taeya snapped. “They’re processing twice as many patients as we are. That’s because they opened another wing.”

  Rick snorted. “Is that what they told you? Well, I ran into a nurse who just got canned. She said that eighty percent of the staff was fired.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She dismissed both men with a smirk and a wave of her hand. No doubt a nurse had been terminated, and she’d used this delivery driver’s shoulder to cry on. He was certainly the type who would take advantage of a situation like that, assuring the sweet young thing that if she’d been fired, everyone would be fired. Had he rubbed his hands all over her as he sympathized? Coaxed her to his room?

  “And I think it’s irresponsible for you to perpetuate this rumor any further,” she added.

  “Rumor?” Rick’s dark eyebrows scrunched together. “You need to get your head out of your ass, Doc. The reason they don’t need the nursing staff anymore is because they’re dosing everyone who comes in the door with Nexinol, green codes and all.”

  Her mouth dropped open. Who did he think he was speaking to? When she had him ushered to the front door, would the rumors start that all drivers were being let go?

  He tapped his fingers on his chest. “I’ve
seen the trucks lined up. They’re hauling bodies to the incinerators as fast as they can get them loaded. President Birch and the rest of those motherfuckers have given up controlling the situation. They’re bailing and they need a bigger secured facility.” He leaned into her face. “The D.C. unit.”

  For the first time, Taeya’s confidence faltered. Could politicians be taking over the Walter Reed facility in Washington? The idea was so unbelievable that she got the uneasy feeling it might be true.

  * * *

  Clutching the arms of his desk chair, Tom Johnson, the hospital’s pathologist, hunched close to his monitor, studying a blank screen. Taeya leaned past his shock of brown hair to see if she was missing something.

  “Maybe you should change channels,” she said.

  “Sanchez!” Johnson swiveled around. “What took you so long?”

  She straightened and curled her upper lip. “I’ve been listening to Doctor Sherman’s plans to wipe out the remaining survivors of the five boroughs.”

  “Come on, Sanchez. When are you going to turn in that bleeding heart for reinforced Kevlar like mine? The Brookhaven facility is reporting that some of our Green Codes are coming down with infections they picked up out in that line. It’s time to give up. I guarantee no one is going to come back to haunt you for slipping a Nexinol into their juice.”

  “Sorry, Johnson. When I took this position, I didn’t see genocide in the job description.”

  “And I’ll bet you told them all that.”

  Taeya didn’t feel like rehashing her outburst against Doctor Sherman at the departmental meeting. She knew she’d gone too far when she slapped the tabletop and asked Sherman if they would be replacing the Medical Center sign with something like Auschwitz. None of the other department heads ever stuck their neck out, but true to form, as soon as the meeting ended, they came running to her with their comments. When Taeya asked why they didn’t bring up their objections during the meeting, they always gave her the same tired excuse. “It wouldn’t do any good.” What they really meant was they didn’t want to get bumped to second shift, or have their credits reduced.

  She rubbed the tension out of her forehead. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “You’re going to love this one.” Johnson turned back to his keyboard, clacked a few keys, and in the sealed examining room beyond, a mechanical arm drew a tissue sample from one of two cadavers on stainless steel gurneys.

  “I thought Monicolitis was a good mutation,” he said, “but this one is perfect.”

  Johnson had been naming new viral strains as they came along. Monicolitis had been named for his ex-wife Monica because the virus attacked the alimentary system and he’d always said she was a pain in the butt.

  With precision, Johnson guided the mechanical arm to a petri dish and an image of squamous epithelium appeared on his screen. “Healthy enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  The irregular mosaic design of cells looked like a cluster of fried eggs, their nuclei protruding from each center.

  “Watch this.” Johnson guided the mechanical arm and drew a sample of blood from the second cadaver. He released a drop into the tissue sample and within seconds Taeya watched the nuclei shrivel and disappear. “This is why Sherman came up with the new directives.”

  Johnson switched off the program and the screen went blank again. “If this is airborne, I can guarantee anyone downwind of this sucker will be dead tomorrow.”

  Taeya could only stare at the screen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Exhausted, Taeya unlocked the door to her living quarters in the nurses’ wing. Not a day went by that she didn’t smart from the insult. She tried to tell herself she was lucky, that seven doctors had been dismissed while she had only been demoted to second shift. But mostly, she berated herself for speaking her mind to Doctor Sherman. Even today, she’d jumped into the fray without thinking, telling Sherman he was no better than a third world dictator, an executioner. Now she wondered if Sherman had been baiting her, giving him a good excuse to bump her down again.

  Many times her husband Randall had warned her about her volatility. In fact, when they first started working together, she’d questioned his procedures and motives. But with most of the world in chaos now, maybe Randall would understand her need to insist on compassion.

  Her room wasn’t much larger than a dorm room, with a small desk and computer, an armchair with a reading light, and the daybed. The space was half the size of her doctors’ quarters. At least she didn’t have to share a room like most of the other nurses. She slipped her shoes off and changed into a pair of flannel pants and a tee shirt.

  Sitting in her armchair, she pulled out her Blackberry and checked inner office e-mails. For someone who had been relegated to the second string, she was still on a lot of mailing lists. She deleted most of the messages, pausing a couple of times to rub her tired eyes.

  She had nearly dozed off when a swooshing sound startled her. Squinting, she checked the time on her PDA but it was rebooting.

  Once it flickered back on, she typed in her user ID three times and failed to gain access. Surely, Doctor Sherman wasn’t so cowardly that he would pull the plug on her in the middle of the night. Then again, at the staff meeting he had listened to her arguments without his usual insistence that she submit her comments in writing. At one point he even said he appreciated her concern. Now she understood why. He knew it was the last time he would have to put up with her.

  A feeling of doom weighed on her shoulders. The nerve endings in her fingers tingled. If her intranet access had been revoked, it must mean she was off the staff. She envisioned being ushered to the front door in the morning, along with the nurses. Her top lip puckered in a snarl as she thought of Rick DeAngelo hovering nearby, scoping out potential babes-in-distress.

  What a way for her career to end. Four years ago, during the Williamsport incident, she’d been selected over dozens of others by the World Health Organization, hand-picked by Randall Anderson to join his premier team. Later, when she was chosen by the CDC to head up their national surveillance division, she’d been the youngest woman to ever hold that position. It was only Sherman’s military background that put him in the top slot here at the Army Medical Center, not his ability.

  She jerked open the small refrigerator under her desk, and pulled out a bottle of wine. Usually she didn’t barter with the underground here, but when rumors circulated that some guy had a case of Pinot Grigio — was it that idiot Rick? — she’d traded a whole week’s credits for a single bottle. What had she been saving it for? Anger boiled in her veins as she drilled a corkscrew and yanked out the cork. The end of the world, evidently.

  She flipped the switch to a shortwave radio on her bookshelf and grabbed the mike. “This is W2TMS calling K6MAI. Are you there, Mai?”

  While she waited, she took a long drink from a plastic cup, and pondered her next move. If Walter Reed was reducing staff, she didn’t see much hope in getting on board, particularly if it meant taking another doctor’s position. The same probably held true for hospitals in Chicago, Denver and Atlanta. Supplies were severely limited. From now on, it would be every man for himself.

  Maybe it was time to change fields. Most of her medical career had been the pursuit and management of disease. Why not work with people who weren’t dying for a change? Monitor high blood-pressure, advise patients on lowering their cholesterol, take pap smears, prescribe Viagra. Some day, when the population recovered, and children were plentiful again, she’d tend to their sore throats and sniffles, advise mothers on the best way to ease the itching from chicken pox.

  The idea didn’t depress her as much as it used to. But she would surely miss the chase. It was like taking a homicide detective and giving him a ticket book for parking meters. Taeya swigged another long gulp of wine.

  One thing was certain. She wouldn’t be practicing at the Long Island colony in Brookhaven. Not with Sherman as liaison. Maybe the Cape Charles colony in Virginia?

  Fear sou
red the wine in her stomach and reflux brought it up her throat. She swallowed hard. “This is W2TMS calling K6MAI…”

  “Taeya, is that you?” a voice crackled through the radio.

  “Mai! Thank God!” The sound of a friendly voice brought some of the feeling back to her fingertips. She exhaled a lungful of tension. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Are you all right?”

  “I couldn’t be better.” Mai squawked out a laugh

  Her friend’s cheeriness annoyed Taeya. “Are things going that well out there?”

  The radio sputtered and popped. Whatever Mai replied was floating somewhere in the sky between New York and Arizona. Taeya lowered the volume until the static died down.

  At least her friend was still alive. And it sounded like she was doing well. How did Mai always manage to pull some crazy stunt and make it work? She’d met some guy over the shortwave radio and just took off for Arizona like a mail-order bride.

  Taeya drained her glass. Mai had done the same thing with Jason. How long had she known him? Six days? She’d met him one drunken night at a club in Jakarta and by the next weekend, they were married. If he hadn’t been re-stationed in Teheran and gotten blown to bits, they might still be together.

  The radio buzzed on, so Taeya poured another glass of wine. Who was she to judge Mai? A month after Taeya joined Randall’s team, she was bouncing over dirt roads with him, on the way to Puttalam, Sri Lanka for a quick marriage ceremony. People didn’t love each other so much as they needed each other, to keep sane.

  She flicked off the radio and turned it back on. The static continued. Annoyed, she turned it off. Maybe she would try again later, although she wasn’t sure what the point was in telling Mai she’d been dismissed, unless it was a little self-castigation. She decided it might be better if Mai’s last memory of Taeya was not about her ultimate failure.