Plaguesville, USA

by Jim LaVigne

  “Well,” said Justin, sitting back contentedly, “it seems that our host is a most generous man. Food, clothing, clean sheets and beds, hot and cold running water.”

  “Yeah,” said Lampert, smacking his lips on the last of an apple. “Seems like a real prince. Makes me wonder what his angle is.”

  “Angle?” said Justin. “What do you mean?”

  Lampert raised and lowered his shoulders an inch or two. “Oh nothin’. It’s just that nobody does anything for no reason. Why’s this guy so hospitable, anyhow? Seems kinda… I dunno, too good to be true, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” said Justin. “But if Baron Zero wished us any harm, I think we’d know about it by now. After all, here we are, essentially locked up, at the man’s mercy.”

  “Yeah,” said Lampert. “I guess you’re right, Doc. But still, nobody does anything for nothing. You can take that to the bank.”

  Justin let this go; as powerless as they were at the moment, it didn’t seem worth the effort to question their host’s motives. Besides, the Old Man, cynical and nasty as he was, always seemed to see these same traits in others. Justin preferred to reserve judgment.

  They were also provided with books—about a dozen assorted genre novels from Before—for entertainment, and it was that afternoon, while Justin was trying to relax with one of these, a mystery novel, that Teresa came up, pointed at the book and said:

  “Show me.”

  Justin lowered the book. “Show you what? Oh, how to read?”

  “Yeh,” she nodded. “I wanna read. An’ write, too. Now show me.”

  He blinked at her, feeling suddenly impetuous and vaguely angry; he’d had about enough of her bossing him around.

  “And what,” he said, “makes you think that I want to teach you? After all, you heard what the man said: he doesn’t allow slavers, which means that you can’t sell me, which in turn means that you don’t own me anymore. Not that you ever did, but now that’s a moot point. The long and the short of it, though, is that it all means that I don’t have to do as you say any more. Or am I mistaken?”

  Teresa scowled dangerously, her features clouding like a sudden summer storm, but they then softened and resolved into a smirk.

  “Yeah, you right,” she said. “You free now, hey? But what about them C-heads back at St. Alferd’s? Wasn’t fer me, you all be cooked and ate by now. Cannibo dinner, hey? Way I see it, you owe me.”

  “Yes, but,” Justin began but then gave up. Teresa simply wasn’t someone with whom he could argue. And besides, she was right. He sighed and nodded at her.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll teach you what I can. But keep in mind, it will take a lot longer than two or three days to learn how to read and write.”

  “Well then,” she said, taking a seat, “we best get started, heh?”

  Their stay in quarantine wasn’t without another of the Old Man’s diatribes, either. At dinner on the second day, spurred by whatever motive, he wound up to a righteous pitch on the subject of how the United States had “lost its way”.

  “Ya ask me,” he said (though no one had), “it was basic laziness, pure and simple. We all got fat and stupid and addicted to our precious gadgets and technology and couldn’t be bothered to learn or work or create any more.”

  Justin sighed, already depressed by the topic, but most of the others seemed at least to be listening so he said nothing to discourage the Old Man and let him ramble.

  “Give’ya an example,” he was saying, “show’ya what I mean. Back when I still drove, I’d always see these rude fuckers who’d pull into a convenience store, like an SA or whatever, and, even though there are plenty of parking spots, park right in front of the door. Like it woulda fuckin’ killed ‘em to walk fifteen feet! And not always fat people, either! Just sheer, unthinking, lard-brained lazy, you know? Shit, they were prob’ly the same bastards who never used their turn signals.”

  No one responded. Justin more or less tuned out the rest of the Old Man’s screed—though the others seemed interested—and by the time the meal was over, so was Lampert. Another day, another spate of vitriol. At least some things stayed the same.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Q. Why did the survivor cross the road?

  A. He didn’t. He got creamed by a banger war truck about halfway across.

  —popular joke, circa 2075

  If he’d had a lot of questions for Baron Zero initially, by the time their time in quarantine was up, Justin, chafing at the delay, had come up with a whole lot more. Finally, though, they were all freed from their airtight quarters and left to rove the House at will, and the much-anticipated conversation took place. It couldn’t have come too soon for Justin and proved to be most interesting.

  About an hour after he’d been released, as he and the others were marveling at the Commons area of the House, a bewildering tangle of small kiosks, shops, and restaurants, he was approached by a smiling, well-groomed, sandy-haired young man named Carver who asked politely if he’d like to meet with Baron Zero.

  “Right now?” asked Justin. “As in immediately?”

  “If it’s convenient,” said Carver.

  “Well, yes, of course,” said Justin, tearing himself from the welter of intriguing micro-businesses. “By all means, lead the way.” To Cass, Teresa, and the others, he said, “Well, I guess I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “OK, Dr. Kaes,” said Cass. “We’ll keep an eye on Mr. Lampert.”

  “Yes, good,” he said, seeing the Old Man already wandering away. “And with any luck, I’ll have some good news when I come back.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Swails.

  Carver led Justin a winding route through the House, upstairs and down, along narrow corridors and through a few doors, finally depositing him in a most remarkable office, inhabited by a most remarkable man.

  The space itself was large compared to the other rooms he’d seen, with a lofty ceiling and one wall composed of floor-to-ceiling windows. There were bookshelves lining every other wall, crammed to overflowing with books of all size, some comfortable-looking couches and chairs, a round table covered in papers and electronic gizmos, and, dominating the space, a desk at least seven feet long, also strewn with drifts of papers and bits and pieces of electronic ephemera.

  Sitting behind the desk, now rising to meet his guest, was Zero himself; about six feet tall, middle-aged, hirsute but not overgrown, heavy of brow and lank of limb and peering intently from behind the antique green glass lenses.

  “Ah, Dr. Kaes,” he said amicably, extending a hand. “Welcome! Please, come in, have a seat! I hope your quarantine wasn’t too unpleasant?”

  “No, it was fine,” said Justin, advancing to shake. The other man’s hand was cool and dry, the grip strong but not crushing. Up close, Justin would put his age at about forty or forty-five. “It was very relaxing, actually.”

  “Good, good!” Zero said, resuming his seat. “And I’m glad none of you was infected. Can’t be too careful, can I? But first things first. I’m sure you have a lot of questions. Most folks do.”

  Justin nodded, enjoying the civility, and sat down and crossed his legs. “I certainly do,” he said. “But where to start… Well, for one thing, what is this place? What do you call it?”

  “Well, for my part,” said Zero, “I just call it home. Other folks have called it different things. Zero’s House is probably most popular, but there have been others. Shangri-La, Haven, New Haven. One Tolkien fan even called it Rivendell. But, like I said, I just call it home. As to what it is, well, that’s a little more complex, but essentially we’re just a great big family, trying to work together to make life a little less unbearable. Sort of a co-op, if you will, for anyone who survived and is interested in living in a, well, shall we say slightly more civilized environment?”

  “I see,” Justin nodded. “And what about you? I don’t mean to be impertinent or rude, but surely your name isn’t really Baron Zero?”

  Zero laughed, a raspy, throat
y sound filled with genuine amusement. “Oh, of course not!” he grinned. “That’s just for effect, to impress people. Actually, my name is Bill. Bill Borden, to be exact, although no one’s called me that in a long time… I got the whole Zero thing from William Gibson, the sci-fi writer. He had a book called Count Zero I’ve always liked and, well, I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I took that and then gave myself a promotion. To Baron. But really, like I said, it’s just to impress the impressionable.”

  “Hmm, yes,” Justin said. “And what about Before the Fall? That is to say, I can tell you’re an educated man. What did you do before the Plague? I had heard you were some sort of scientist?”

  “Oh, I was into lots of things,” said the other evasively. “Little of this, little of that. Why, is that important somehow?”

  “No, I don’t suppose it is,” said Justin. “I was just curious. May I ask, how many people live here?”

  “Last count, about two hundred,” said Zero. “Give or take.”

  “What, all in this one building?”

  “Yeah, most of ‘em,” said Zero. “This place is bigger than it looks. A lot of it’s underground. But we have the Farm, too, and maybe fifty or so people live and work out there.”

  “The farm?”

  “Yeah,” nodded the other, leaning back. “Maybe a half mile to the west. We raise corn, wheat, soybeans, vegetables, chickens, pigs. That’s just for food. But there’s also the algae pond, which is the source of our electricity.”

  “Ah, a biomass generator. Yes?”

  “You got it,” said Zero. “We have this great big pond, nice and shallow, fed by a natural spring, and we grow algae on it. Then we take all of this glop, once it’s good and thick, and we dry it out and burn it in an old converted smelting furnace, which spins a turbine we salvaged and voila! Juice! And, we also raise some carp in the same pond, so it’s kind of dual-purpose.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Justin. “And did you invent this power source?”

  “More or less,” Zero shrugged. “At least this particular version. But I had a lot of help, too. It’s really pretty simple, actually: grow the algae, dry the algae, burn the algae. And besides, the basics of the technology were common knowledge, even before the Fall. Mainly it was just a matter of some hard-core scavenging.”

  “Still, it’s amazing,” Justin said appreciatively. “It’s almost like Before. But, um, you mentioned earlier that you were in need of a surgeon. May I ask why? Does someone need surgery?”

  “Yeah, me,” said Zero, pointing a thumb at his chest. “It’s nothing that critical—at least I hope it’s not—but it sure is annoying. And painful. See, from what I can figure out from old medical books, I’m pretty sure I have an inguinal hernia. That or some kind of cancer. Like I said, I hope it’s a hernia. But the problem is that we don’t have a doctor here. Not to mention no Gamma Ray scanner, no MRI machine or CT scanner. Not even an X-ray machine. There’s a registered nurse, and he agrees with me on the diagnosis, but then again, neither of us is an MD, so who knows? All I know for sure is that I’d sure as hell like to have it taken care of.”

  “I’m sure you would!” said Justin. “A hernia can be quite painful. But why exactly do you think that’s the trouble?”

  “From the symptoms,” shrugged Zero. “I mean, like I said, I’m no expert, but Denny Pollner—that’s our nurse—he says that it’s a pretty basic thing. Not a lot of room for conjecture, right? Not like it’s leukemia or some disease or whatever.”

  “Hmm, yes,” nodded Justin sagely. Even he, with only an elementary background in Diagnostics, knew that an inguinal hernia would be a fairly easy condition to identify. But now came the big question: “Is there anything I can do to help? I’m not a surgeon, of course, or even a General Practitioner, but I could examine you, if you’d like. We could at least confirm your diagnosis.”

  “Yeah,” said Zero. “I guess that wouldn’t hurt. But, uh, let me think about it, OK?”

  “Well, of course,” said Justin, more than a little relieved that he wouldn’t have to go groping under this man’s scrotum anytime soon. “Just let me know.”

  “Yeah, I will,” said the other. “But what about you, huh? I mean, it’s not every day folks from the CDC come calling! What the hell are you doing? How did you get here? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”

  “Not at all,” Justin said, and, starting from the beginning, when they’d first met Dr. Bahrara from California, ran through the whole story. He left some parts out, of course, mainly for the sake of brevity, but the main points, that they were more or less on a mission to save humanity and that Lampert was the key to it all, were more than emphasized. Finally, after maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, he wound down and gave a shrug.

  “So that’s about it,” he said. “We’ve been walking for the past few days and, well, we ended up here.”

  “Wow!” said Zero, who had managed not to interrupt. “That’s some story! All the way from New Atlanta to Minneapolis, and then all the way to here? Given what I know of the open country around here, not to mention all of the survies and bangers, I really don’t see how in the hell you made it!”

  “Many of us did not,” said Justin sadly. “Most of us, in fact. Nurse Cass, Miss Swails, myself, and Mr. Lampert are the only ones left.”

  “Yeah, that’s too bad,” said Zero, shaking his head. “Not to mention, you lost all of your gear, all your instruments and tools and gadgets, all of the transport and the medicine. You must feel, well, kind of lost without all that stuff.”

  “I certainly do,” said Justin. “Almost naked, you might say. I don’t have so much as a microscope. But the main thing is, we still have the Old Man.”

  “Ah yes, your Mr. Lampert,” said Zero, sitting up. “What’s the story with him? That is, I know he’s very old, but why is he so… disagreeable?”

  Justin barked a laugh. “Disagreeable? I’ve never heard the Old Man called that before. Cranky, yes. Mean as hell, yes. A royal pain in the ass and a cantankerous old coot? More than a few times. But merely disagreeable? Ha! You can’t begin to imagine!”

  “OK, so,” said Zero, “he’s a pain in the ass. But why?”

  “Oh, who knows?” said Justin, shaking his head. “Personally, I think it’s simply because he’s a mean-hearted person with no more empathy for his fellow human beings than a lump of oatmeal. But then, through sheer proximity, I’ve become a bit biased on the subject. I’d have to say, though, that if you really want to know, you’d have to ask Mr. Lampert himself.”

  “Huh, OK,” said Zero, frowning. “I guess maybe I’ll do that. But this whole plan of yours, taking Lampert to California so they can develop a cure for the Plague. Do you really think it’ll work? Provided you can make it there, of course.”

  “Oh, yes,” nodded Justin. “In theory, and given the proper facilities, it’s not even that hard to do. But, as you said, it’s all predicated on our arriving in San Francisco. And with Mr. Lampert.”

  “Hmm, yeah,” said Zero musingly. “But I gotta admit to a certain amount of morbid curiosity about the Big Sick. As in the disease itself. Not that it really matters much anymore, but, since you’re an expert…”

  “Why, certainly,” said Justin, more than comfortable with the topic but unsure of how much this man would be able to grasp, technically-speaking. “What would you like to know?”

  “Well, it all happened so fast, you know?” said Zero. “I never did hear what started it or even what it really was! I mean, they all said it was some kinda plague virus, but, other than that…”

  “Well, it is indeed the plague virus,” nodded Justin. “Yersinia pestis, to use the Latin name, and number 1257 by strain.”

  “So why did it kill everyone? Why didn’t the usual vaccines take care of it?”

  “Ah, well that’s the thing,” Justin said. “Strain 1257 is particularly dangerous for three main reasons. One, it is an extremely virulent pathogen; almost 99.99 percent of those who catch it wil
l succumb. Two, it is very hearty, in that, even in a deceased host body, it will remain alive and infectious for as long as a month. And three, it’s deadly because it is mutative. That is, it rearranges its DNA whenever it’s presented with a host which it cannot infect.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Zero, nodding. “So it’s a mutagenic thing… makes sense. But how did it start? My bet’s always been on some kinda terrorism—you know, Muslim extremists or Maoists or whatever.”

  Justin shook his head. “As far as we could determine, it was entirely natural. Of course, we’d always feared that some new super bug, some kind of specially mutated strain of a pre-existing virus or bacteria, would be released, either accidentally or in an act of aggression. After all, during the late 20th century, all kinds of these things were created, thanks to genetic engineering. Hell, the CIA had one of the largest germ banks in the world, and the Russians and Chinese were close seconds in the field of biological warfare. But no, there was no terrorist attack, no accident in some secret lab. All that happened was that Nature itself, as it always does, produced a new and better breed of microscopic killer. And our fast-paced, globally-connected world did the rest.”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Zero said. “I woulda swore it was terrorism. But, like I said, it doesn’t much matter anymore, does it? It’s gone now, and we’re left to pick up the pieces of what’s left. Hell, at least it didn’t turn people into zombies, right?”

  “I’m sorry, zombies?” said Justin. “I don’t—”

  “Never mind, Doc. The thing is, it’s over, right? It’s done its worst.”

  “Wrong,” said Justin sternly, sitting forward. “No, that’s not right at all. As I said, this strain of plague virus mutates. When one strain has done its worst and used up all of its available hosts, it changes into a new strain. In fact, before we left the labs in New Atlanta, we’d identified three new versions. We were up to strain 1260. Do you understand?”