by Gibb, Lew
George glared at her over the piles of folders covering his desk. He waved the red folder again. “I’m talking about the one written by these two doctors. Mendez and—what was it? Something Indian.”
“Patel. Indrani Patel.”
“That’s it. They claim Brazil is about to be responsible for putting an end to life as we know it.”
“Aha, that report.” Gabriella nodded. “As a matter of fact, I have read it.” She let her skirt ride up over her knees as she crossed her thighs and watched her boss stare at them as she spoke. “What do you want to know?”
“Since I pay you to find these things out, I want to know if they’re a couple of wackos or if there’s something to what they say.”
“Oh, that’s why you pay me. I thought it was so you could stare at my legs.” She smiled as his eyes rose to meet hers. “There is something to it. I spoke with Carlo Bonatura about it yesterday. He’s the director of the Secretariat of Health Surveillance at the Ministry of Health. He’s in charge of following epidemics and such. He begged me for a meeting with you and the president.”
“He did?” George’s bushy black eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “What does he want?”
“He’s read the report and even talked with Mendez about it. Seems they were at medical school together. Says Mendez and Patel are both top-notch scientists and need to be taken seriously. He also said the report understates the danger, if anything.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did. Yesterday as you were on your way out to lunch with your mistress. You told me to summarize it and leave it for when you came back.” Gabriella stood and leaned over the desk. She scanned the unruly pile of papers and files before reaching out and extracting a single sheet of paper between her index finger and thumb. “I left it on your desk just before I left last night.” She dropped the paper, and it fluttered into his lap. “I also sent you an email, which we both know was futile, but I was desperate.”
“Fine.” George frowned. “We can talk about who did what and when later.” Gabriella rolled her eyes as she sat back down. “What we need to do right now is get in front of this.” He fixed her with an intense stare. “Can you get a hold of him? I want to see him ASAP. And then we probably need to get in to see the PM.”
Gabriella held his eyes, a small smile on her lips, as she leaned back and crossed her legs again. “He’s on his way here as we speak. And I took the liberty of scheduling a meeting with the president and the council of ministers this morning. I of course made it sound like the request was coming from you. It’s all set for ten o’clock in the big conference room next to the president’s office. Just so you know, that’s in twenty minutes.”
“Okay.” George’s shoulders and upper body relaxed as he leaned back in his chair. “But why am I just hearing about this now?”
Gabriella uncrossed her legs, stood, and headed for the door. “Because you didn’t read the memo,” she threw over her shoulder as she headed out the office.
George yelled after her, “Let me know the second he gets here!”
***
After a brief discussion of what Carlo Bonatura planned to say, the scientist, the chief of staff, and Gabriella made their way to the president’s conference room. The president was seated at the far end of the massive conference table, and his council of ministers filled every one of the twenty-six seats. A phalanx of assistants hovered behind them.
“For those of you who don’t know him,” George began, turning to point at Carlo, “Dr. Bonatura here coordinates our response to infectious disease threats. He has something critical to tell us.”
As George moved to stand next to Gabriella in the corner of the room, Carlo’s hands shook, and he had to wipe his sweaty palms on his pants before standing and walking to the end of the table. He looked around, not stopping to meet anyone’s eyes—especially not the president’s—before he nodded to an assistant. The assistant then dimmed the lights and turned on the video projector with a small remote that he passed to Carlo.
The massive screen, which took up most of the wall at Carlo’s end of the room, was illuminated by the six-foot-tall, red-eyed face of one of the rain forest expedition survivors. Several of the assistants closest to the screen flinched away from the sight of the bulging eyes and snarling lips.
The minister for the interior spoke up. “Those whack-job scientists who went crazy in the jungle. Why are we looking at them?”
A few others made comments, and soon the room was filled with discussion.
“This man,” Carlo said loudly, attempting to continue in spite of the din, “was rescued from the rain forest by the military four days ago.”
He clicked the remote, and a photo of another of the survivors appeared on the screen. Next, he displayed a series of gruesome pictures from the rescue scene. Dead bodies, the flesh almost completely stripped from their bones, littered a clearing in the jungle. The noise died out as Carlo cycled through four or five more photos that had not been shown on TV news, and then a shot of the survivors strapped to their hospital beds.
He left the photo on the screen as he continued. “All four of these people were found wandering in the forest amongst the dead and almost completely eaten bodies of the rest of their expedition.” Every eye in the conference room was focused on the screen. “We believe these people are suffering from a form of rabies,” Carlo said, walking to the other side of the screen and gaining confidence. His gaze swept over the assembled ministers. “And we think this has the potential to become a deadly epidemic in a very short period of time. An epidemic that could threaten every man, woman, and child in this country—and possibly even the world.”
“How short a period of time are you talking about?” one of the ministers asked. The name plate resting before him indicated he was with the Ministry of Agriculture.
“It could spread throughout the country in a matter of weeks,” Carlo said. The report had said days, but he knew if he said that, he would be laughed out of the room. Instead, he hedged and hoped he could instill a sense of urgency in the notoriously risk-averse bureaucrats.
“I’ve never heard of a virus spreading that fast,” the minister of health said. “Why haven’t I been notified of this?”
The room erupted into chaos once again. Carlo opened his mouth to reply, but the chief of staff stood and put a hand on his shoulder. George was used to restoring order in the room, and his voice boomed over the din of the agitated ministers and their staffs. “All of your departments received this memo.” The room started to quiet as George held up a piece of paper and waved it back and forth in front of him. “For those of you who haven’t read it, there are copies in the folders in front of each of you.” The crowd was silent as George patted Carlo on the shoulder again and took a step back. “Let Carlo speak, and when he’s finished, we will discuss how to proceed.” George sat and directed his attention toward Carlo.
For the next five minutes, Carlo summarized the findings of Drs. Mendez and Patel and their predictions. As he spoke, he walked back and forth in front of the ministers, waving his arms with gathering confidence and pointing at supporting charts and graphs displayed on the screen. Not a single person interrupted his presentation.
“And so we come to the big question,” Carlo said, clicking his remote a final time. A spreadsheet showing the number of people infected over various timelines and with different infection rates glowed on the screen. “How do we prevent this from spreading and infecting thousands or hundreds of thousands of people?” Carlo’s eyes traversed the room. All eyes were on him. “Drs. Mendez and Patel recommend, and I concur, that we need to immediately quarantine anyone who has had contact with these victims. The people who have been bitten so far, except for the nurse and the police officer, are still out there. It’s probable they have, by now, infected others. With this in mind, we need to track these people and any others who become infected and bring them back to Brasília hospital for quarantine and treatment. In add
ition, we must establish a protocol to contain the spread of the infection. The doctors recommend implementing an immediate moratorium on travel, both within Brazil and outside of the country.”
Following Carlo’s last statement, the minister for tourism spoke. “We can’t shut down travel. It’s the busiest time of the year. The economic losses would be staggering. Look at what happened to the airlines in the United States after 9/11. We would never recover.”
The minister of the interior was next. “We don’t have enough police officers to handle something like that. We would have to get the army involved.”
After that, the room erupted into such chaos that it was a full five minutes before even George could regain control of the meeting.
What followed was several hours of heated debate that drained Carlo’s optimism as first, the moratorium on international travel was voted down due to the enormous economic ramifications, and then the curtailment of travel within Brazil was tabled due to manpower and budget constraints.
The bureaucrats did decide to issue a warning to neighboring countries and to the United States stating that they should be on the lookout for symptoms like those exhibited by the rain forest survivors, and that the people with those symptoms should be immediately quarantined. The hospitals would be advised to quarantine all suspected victims, and the army would be brought in to patrol the streets of the biggest cities.
Chapter Thirteen
“What the fuck, Jerry?” Rachel leapt off the couch and met him three steps inside the front door. The dogs trailed in her wake, their normally boisterous greetings subdued by her strident tone, almost as if they feared her anger would be directed at them if they associated with Jerry.
“Hi.” Jerry tried to go around her, but with two cases of MREs in his arms, it wasn’t happening. Bad language wasn’t the only thing she picked up over the course of eight years working in male-dominated kitchens before she’d started her own catering business. Rachel filled the small entry hall with her crossed arms and a don’t-fuck-with-me look that had left many an ornery cook quaking in his Crocks.
Rachel shuffled sideways, blocking Jerry’s halfhearted attempt to edge past her. He had hoped she would be out. For some reason, the calendar on his phone wasn’t working, and he hadn’t been able to see what her schedule was.
“Hi, yourself.” Her voice was cutting. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to go all doomsday-prepper about this zombie thing and that you would check with me before you did anything crazy.”
Jerry turned and set the boxes next to the door. They seemed bigger now that he had them inside. Fitting everything in the hall closet might be a stretch. “I know, but these were on sale and—”
Rachel jumped in, “I don’t recall saying, ‘Don’t be crazy unless there’s a really great sale on,’” Rachel bent to examine the box’s large black lettering, “meals ready to eat? What the hell?” She straightened and fixed him with a glare. “You know I’m a chef, right?”
“It’s in case we get trapped in the building.”
“By zombies?” Her voice got quiet. A serious warning sign.
“Ah….”
Rachel hadn’t come around like Jerry had hoped she would. Even as he became more convinced Bob was right and they were actually seeing the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse, Rachel had remained skeptical. Maybe Jerry wasn’t one hundred percent convinced either—it was a lot to process—but stocking up on some supplies and maybe getting a place ready to ride it out wasn’t a bad idea.
Everything had seemed so obvious while he, Bob, Alicia, and Mike had been prepping their stations for the coming chaos. Having Alicia on his side had made him optimistic about Rachel, but it didn’t seem like he was making any headway with her.
“Let me show you something.” Without the boxes, Jerry was able to slip past Rachel and into the apartment. He gave the dogs each a scratch on the head on the way to their home office. There, he sat at the desk and brought up the blog he had been reading before he’d gotten the idea about the MREs. “Check this out. It’s by a doctor in Brazil.”
“Dammit, Jerry.” Rachel had followed him and was standing in front of the desk with her arms crossed. “You can’t believe every whack-job conspiracy theorist you find on the internet. Remember when you were convinced they built a whole city under the airport?”
“You have to admit, it seemed like a lot of digging for a something that’s basically a concrete road.”
“And then you found out what?” Rachel cocked a hip and raised her eyebrows. “After you and Bob got arrested?”
“I know.” He shrugged. “There actually was a lot of stuff below ground, like the train to the concourses and the baggage handler. But this is different. This guy is a legit doctor.”
“You are so lucky Bob knew the desk sergeant,” Rachel reminded him. Not for the first time. Jerry wondered if Rachel was ever going to let him off the hook for that one.
“Okay, that was bad. But this is different.” Her look said she wasn’t buying. “Seriously. This guy’s the director of pathology for one of the best hospitals in Brazil. I even found him on their website.”
“And he’s a zombie apocalypse fan-boy?”
“No!” Jerry shook his head, then rested both hands on the desk while he took a couple of breaths. If he lost his cool, Rachel would bury him. “Just listen for a minute.” He hated the pleading tone in his voice. He spun the monitor so Rachel could read the page. “He actually works at the hospital where they’re treating the ones from TV. He says they don’t respond to anything other than the proximity of food—by that he means people—and that the virus takes over in less than twelve hours.”
“And why isn’t any of this on the news?”
Jerry leaned back in the chair and blew out a long breath. “Come on, you know how people are. They’re so busy watching top ten fails on YouTube and trying to manufacture a life on Facebook that they have no time for reality. It’s just like Bob said.” It was risky invoking Bob’s name in the argument, so Jerry hurried on. “Nobody died, so people don’t care. And Dr. Mendez says the hospital administration and the politicians are more concerned with not looking bad or causing a panic than they are with protecting the public. Him and this other doctor, Patel—she’s a specialist in cellular biology—they’ve been trying to warn people. But no one’s listening. They all want to know why there aren’t any zombies in America.”
“An excellent question. And what do you think the answer is?”
“I don’t know. People don’t get it. I talked to a guy I know at one of the hospitals who said they had a patient that they had to sedate yesterday. The description matched the Twenty-Eight Days Later zombie to a T, but he thought it was just a normal thing.”
“And what did he say when you mentioned zombies?”
“He said I needed to grow up.”
Rachel could see Jerry looked really down. Some of the stuff he was saying seemed reasonable. Especially if he had what sounded like legitimate doctors backing him up. Rachel frowned and looked out the window. Dark clouds were gathering over the mountains. She didn’t have time for this. She had a major dinner to cater the next day, and she hadn’t even started shopping for the food, and now it looked like it might rain. She would have to check into these Brazilian doctors later.
She sighed and turned her attention back to her husband. “So how many of those things did you buy?”
“You’re missing the point.”
“How many, Jerry?”
“Twelve.”
“Oh.” Rachel dropped her arms to her sides, and the tension went out of her shoulders. “I guess having some extra food around won’t be a bad thing if the power goes out or there’s a blizzard or something.”
Jerry started to correct her but hesitated.
Rachel seemed to read something in his expression. “Wait a minute.” She was uncanny in her ability to read him. “Twelve what?”
The temptation to let her remain ignorant of his offense
was strong. A quick plan to take the MRE’s to the station formed in his mind, but they had promised to always be truthful with each other—and she was the one who paid the credit card bills—so he sucked in a breath and came clean. “Twelve cases.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jerry found Mike in the common room of their ambulance station. His partner had parked a recliner five feet from the fifty-six-inch TV so he could better see the aliens he was trying to kill. He was contorting his body in the chair as if it would affect the action on the screen.
“Nice body English,” Jerry said.
Mike didn’t seem to hear him. He usually didn’t when he was in the zone. Plus, it wasn’t easy to hear over the amplified sounds of explosions and the screams of dying space aliens. Jerry walked closer and waved a hand in front of Mike’s face until his partner glanced at him. “We have to transfer a patient down to Sky Ridge.”
Mike didn’t even look away from the screen. “What time?”
“Sorry, buddy,” Jerry turned and headed for the ambulance garage, “we have to leave now. No time for one more level.”
“Man, that hospital’s almost halfway to Colorado Springs.” Mike saved his game and shut down his console. “Sometimes this job really gets in the way of my recreational activities.”
Jerry chuckled. “Let’s just get this done and get back here. You can get back to your game, and I can quit worrying about getting caught far away from the station.”
As they pulled out onto the street with Mike driving, Jerry looked around. “It doesn’t seem like there’s any infected people in Denver yet. I can’t tell if it’s because there aren’t any bites yet, or if a lot of people just aren’t going to the hospital like we thought they would.”
“Dude, seriously? This is going too far. I mean, I’m all for a good weapons discussion at breakfast, but all this stuff with the supplies at the station and the fortifications, it’s fucked up. I saw Bob bring in a huge water tank today. Like one of those ones that goes in the back of a pickup for getting water to farm animals or something. By the way, where are Bob and Alicia?”