by Jack Mars
As Luke watched, bullets strafed the defensive barrier the people in line were hiding behind. The giant sandbags stopped the bullets cold, but the people screamed, they crawled, they groveled in the dirt and the mud. The guy in the building fired a tear gas canister. The street began to fill up with smoke.
“Remain calm! Stay on the ground! Cover your nose, mouth, and eyes. It’s only tear gas. It cannot hurt you.”
Just below Luke, a woman squatted, her back to the sandbag wall, her eyes closed, her mouth moving frantically, her hands clasped together in prayer.
*
The chopper landed in the blowing rain on the roof of Roper Hospital.
The hospital was inside the quarantine zone, less than a mile north and west of where the attacks took place. A line of about fifty medical and support personnel snaked toward a doorway, just out of reach of the helicopter blades. A big Marine Corps staff sergeant paced back and forth along the line, talking into a megaphone.
“Attention!” he said. “You are now in the hot zone. You ARE NOT entering the hot zone. You’re already there. Below this roof is the eighth floor of the hospital. The eighth floor is the staging area. No one… I repeat… no one goes below the staging area without fully donning a personal protection suit. The hospital is contaminated with live Ebola virus. If you go below the eighth floor without a personal protection suit, you WILL become infected, and you WILL die. Before you die, you will put other people at risk. We WILL NOT allow you to put other people at risk. So you WILL NOT go below the eighth floor without donning a personal protection suit. You can thank me later.”
Luke was barely out of the chopper before it took off again. He approached the line, but was intercepted by a young Army captain. The guy looked like he had hardly shaved in his life. “Agent Stone? Come this way, please.”
They bypassed the line and entered a dim stairwell. Stone followed the man down, their footfalls echoing on the metal grates. The captain pushed through a heavy door into a bright room. Stone walked in behind him.
It was a locker room. Twenty people were in the room sitting on wooden benches, slowly pulling on vinyl personal protection suits. Another ten people were helping them get dressed. Cases of bottled water were piled in strategic spots around the room, the plastic coverings ripped open. Piles of hazmat suits and equipment dominated the far corner. Every few minutes, a hydraulic door would wheeze open and a few more fully dressed people would pass out of the room.
A young woman in blue hospital scrubs approached. She was no nonsense. She didn’t smile. She didn’t greet Luke in any way. She seemed in a hurry to get started. Move ’em in, get ’em out.
“This is Nurse Rader,” the Army captain said. “She’s going to help you get dressed. Once you’re dressed, another nurse will inspect your suit before you go in. They will read from a checklist, and confirm each item on the list, so it may take a little while. We ask for your patience. Have you worn something like this before?”
Luke nodded. “Yeah. This morning, as a matter of fact.”
The captain looked at him.
“It’s been a long day,” Luke said.
“Good. It’s about to get longer. And you already know it gets hot in the suits. There’s bottled water, as you see, and I suggest you drink some before you go downstairs. Alert me before you leave. Dr. Connors will be waiting for you at the stairwell door on the seventh floor. He knows you’re coming. He’ll give you the grand tour.”
“Is he the hospital director?” Luke said. He couldn’t be sure, but this afternoon, it had seemed like the hospital director was…
“No,” the captain said. “Dr. Gupta was the hospital director. He died about an hour ago. Dr. Connors is from Doctors Without Borders. He built and ran a two-hundred-bed field hospital in Liberia during the crisis there. He’s taken over Dr. Gupta’s responsibilities.”
Behind Luke, the hydraulic door wheezed open again. It made an awful sound.
“Very important,” the captain said. “Once you leave this room, you are considered exposed to the virus. That means you can’t come back the same way you left. Every door you pass through is going to lock behind you, and you can only go forward. Am I being clear?”
“Crystal clear. But how do I get back out?”
“The staging area for removing the suits is on the other side of this floor, and we have no access to it. They have no access to us. Your equipment will be contaminated when you arrive there. You come up the stairwells on the northwest side of the building to reach them. There are hand-lettered signs indicating the way. If you find a door locked against you, do not panic. Don’t try to find another route. Just wait. The door will open again. They’re trying to prevent logjams in the disinfection process.”
“Are people panicking?” Luke said.
The captain nodded. “I haven’t been in there. But what I hear is no one has seen anything like this before. And people are panicking. I’m talking about experienced people.”
“Okay.”
It took half an hour to put on the suit. For once, Luke didn’t try to rush anything. This was the real deal, live virus, and he was happy to take it slow and let his dressers get it right. He let himself drift as they worked through their checklist. When they were ready, he stood.
He wore a white vinyl coverall, with doubled-up rubber gloves, rubber boots, a hooded respirator with a full face shield, and a helmet. The respirator made it hard to speak. The helmet and mask made it hard to hear. The helmet had no intercom or speaker. This was going to be wonderful.
They sent him through the hydraulic doorway and he tottered down a flight of stairs. At the bottom, he pushed through a heavy door. He heard it latch shut behind him. A man stood in the hallway, waiting for him.
The first thing Luke noticed was the man was covered in blood. His suit was stained with it. His faceplate was streaked and smeared. There were other fluids and substances on him. Some of it was black like tar.
The man was older, perhaps sixty-five. He had white hair and was a touch overweight. His face had gone slack. When he saw Luke come in, his eyes brightened and he became alert.
“The red stuff is blood, as you know,” the man shouted, evidently so Luke could hear him. “The black stuff is vomit. Mostly bile mixed with deep internal blood. You’ll get some on you. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Dr. Connors?” Luke said.
“Agent Stone?”
“Yes.”
“They tell me the President sent you.”
Luke nodded. “Something like that.”
“Will you report what you see to her?”
Luke shrugged. “If she’s still speaking to me.”
The man looked at him quizzically.
“Yes,” Luke said. “I will report to her.”
“Good. Then I’m going to show you everything.”
“Fair enough,” Luke said.
They went on a tour of hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
June 12th
3:15 a.m.
Georgetown, Washington, DC
The taxi dropped him off in front of a row of handsome brownstones. The tree-lined streets were quiet and empty. They seemed to shimmer in the light from the ornate overhead lamps. Luke paid the driver and got out. As the cab pulled away, he stood for a moment, deciding what to do.
Oh, well. He was nothing if not decisive.
The shades were drawn, but lights were clearly on in the street-level apartment of the building nearest to him. He climbed the wide stone steps on unsteady legs.
Luke had flown back to DC in a twenty-seat Lear normally used by Virgin Atlantic executives. It had been donated to the cause, and it came complete with a wet bar and a flight attendant. Luke was all alone on the plane. The flight attendant wore a painter’s mask and rubber gloves, and she stayed in the back, as far from him as she could.
“Are you afraid I’m infected?” he asked her.
She pulled a bright yellow infrared thermometer from a drawer. She po
inted it at him like a gun, and looked at the readout.
“Ninety-eight point six,” she said. “You’re in the clear for now. From what they tell me, if you’re infected, by the time we get to DC, you’ll know.”
He nodded. “Do you mind if I make myself a drink?”
“Help yourself.”
He opened the bar and set about pouring himself a strong one. Maker’s Mark. One ice cube. He drank that one fast, and then poured another. Then another. He tried to drink away the things he had seen. It was impossible.
The hospital had 530 beds. They weren’t enough. People were laid out in rows on the floors of open wards, and in gurneys along the hallways.
“CDC protocols are out the window,” Connors shouted at him. “You’re supposed to isolate Ebola patients, one person to a room. We ran out of rooms in the first two hours.”
It wasn’t a hospital. It was a slaughterhouse. The floors were awash in blood, in urine, in black and red vomit. All the sheets were stained with it. All the bedclothes were stained with it. There were white buckets in corners, filled with black vomit and feces. People bled from the eyes, from the mouths. It was hard to tell who was alive and who was dead. Once, a weak patient raised an arm to Luke, trying to touch him, trying to get his attention.
“Help me,” the muscular young man mouthed. “Please help.” The words didn’t make a sound.
“We don’t have enough personnel,” Connors said. “We don’t have any aides, we don’t have enough nurses, or orderlies, or anyone at all. People come in here, people who were in West Africa, and they leave twenty minutes later. I had a dentist come in here and have a heart attack. I don’t know what he was thinking, and I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I’ve had experienced staff passing out at the sight of all this fluid. There’s a river of it everywhere you look. Blood, piss, puke… Jesus.”
The tired old doctor looked at him, eyes full of meaning.
“We were lucky,” he said. “The alarm was sounded right away, and this city is a peninsula, so it was easy to quarantine. But if the virus had gotten off the peninsula…”
“It might have,” Luke said. “We still don’t know.”
Connors shook his head. “If it had gotten off, you would know.”
A thought came to Luke unbidden. They’re testing us. They gave us an easy one to see what the response would be. What about a big, sprawling, wide open city, one that wasn’t surrounded on three sides by water? It was a horrible thought.
Now, hours later, on the front steps of a brownstone, on the silent city streets of Georgetown, Luke was drunk. And he was numb. He should have gone home. He knew that. Becca didn’t want him right now, but she was at the country house. He could have gone to their place in the Fairfax suburbs, but the thought of sitting in that big empty house alone…
He didn’t like that thought. He didn’t want to be alone, now or ever again. His hand reached out, practically of its own accord, and pressed the bell.
Ding…Dong.
It had that loud, formal doorbell sound.
In a moment, there was movement behind the door. The peephole slid open, then slid shut again. A big heavy bolt slid back. The door opened.
Trudy Wellington stood there. Her curly black hair was down. She had red-framed eyeglasses on her pretty face. She was braless, and wore a long baby blue T-shirt. It hugged her shapely body and barely came down to her thighs.
The shirt had a cartoon of various animals all standing together. A black bear. A moose. A white-tailed deer. A few ducks, and some furry rodents. An elephant. A rhinoceros. Even a small brown boy and a little blonde-haired girl.
Underneath the crowd was a caption: Too Cute to Shoot.
All the same, Trudy herself held a gun in her hand. It looked very large in her small hand. Luke nodded at the gun.
“You gonna let me have it with that?”
“Luke?” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Listen, I’m sorry I rode you so hard earlier today. It’s just that this day has been a nightmare, we were in a crisis, and I needed you to do your thing. I could have been nicer about it.”
Their eyes met and locked on.
“Is that why you came here?” she said. “To apologize?”
He shook his head. “No.”
She pushed the door all the way open. “I think you’d better come inside.”
“I think so, too.”
He stepped into her apartment.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
1:15 a.m. – Pacific Time
Los Angeles International Airport
The airport was quiet.
A handful of people moved here and there under the soaring four-story ceilings. Airport service personnel, people who had come in on late flights, people who were stuck on layovers, waiting for early morning flights. The distant whine of a vacuum cleaner came from somewhere.
Pierre and his daughters had landed just moments ago. The girls were sleepy, and with good reason. It was a long flight. He held each of their hands as they stumbled along, eyes half open. They were flanked by Secret Service men and women. Red caps pushing their baggage in carts followed along behind.
An advance Secret Service man in a blue suit approached.
“Mr. Michaud? I’m Agent Ferguson. Sir, the cars are several minutes behind schedule. They’ll be here shortly. It’s the normal configuration. Three SUVs. You and the girls will ride in the second one. Your car is fully armored. We’ll have a Los Angeles Police car at the front, and two motorcycles at the rear. We’ll be spotted from above by a Secret Service helicopter. We’ll have you home in about forty minutes.”
The arrangements sounded fine. Even so, Pierre could barely hide his irritation. He was as tired as the girls. “Why are they late? They knew our arrival time.”
“Sir, there was an accident. The lead SUV was in a head-on collision. The other driver crossed the median strip. Our driver is okay, but the man in the other car…” The Secret Service agent shrugged. “He didn’t make it. We’ll have a toxicology report and an ID in the morning. In the meantime, we had to bring up a replacement SUV. The first one is totaled.”
Pierre let out a long sigh. “Okay. That’s too bad.”
“In the meantime, sir, if you and the girls want to relax in this waiting area, we swept it and it’s secure. There are restrooms and a water fountain. Unfortunately, there’s not much open in the airport this time of night.”
“Okay,” Pierre said. “Thank you.”
He sat with the girls across a row of chairs. Across the way, an overhead TV was on, showing a twenty-four-hour news station. All the news was about Charleston. They kept showing the same smartphone clip of the helicopter flying overhead, spraying the people below. A GPS tracking chip mounted on the helicopter by Charleston County suggested that it had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Pierre looked away from the TV. Thankfully, the sound was off.
He closed his eyes. Normally, his brain gave him a steady stream of ideas. He came upon things out here in the world, and he saw how they could be improved. He saw gaps and opportunities everywhere. That wasn’t the case today, and it hadn’t been for at least a week. With his eyes closed, all he saw was nothing.
“Dad, can I go to the bathroom?”
It was Michaela. He opened his eyes and looked at her. Beautiful, beautiful girl. Just like her mother. Pierre never played favorites, and he didn’t want to think it, but it was possible that Michaela was more beautiful than her sister, Lauren. He hoped that neither of them suspected he thought that.
“Go ahead, honey. Just don’t dilly-dally. The car will be here soon.” He turned to the female Secret Service agent assigned to Michaela. Pierre could never seem to remember her name. She had been with them a lot this past week. The woman stood about five feet behind them. She wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Of course,” the woman said, without waiting for Pierre to say anything. “Let’s go, Michaela.”
The agent seemed very fit, with larg
e arm and shoulder muscles for a woman. Pierre wondered idly if she took steroids or some other performance enhancer. People who used themselves as lab rats, testing the boundaries of human performance—this was a topic that interested him.
He looked at Lauren. Also a very beautiful girl. Lauren had her headphones on.
“Do you need to go, honey?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“We’ll be in the car a long time,” Pierre said. “Better safe than sorry.”
She rolled her blue eyes and flipped her long brown hair. “Dad.”
Michaela and the Secret Service agent were already halfway to the bathroom. As Pierre watched, an older lady with gray hair and a big yellow suitcase on rollers reached the door just ahead of them. The woman seemed to be having some trouble with the size and weight of the suitcase.
The Secret Service agent held open the door for the old woman.
*
The old woman was not old.
She did not have gray hair. She was having no trouble at all moving her oversized suitcase along. Her lined and aged face was an elaborate makeup job that included the use of putties and gels. She had waited, sitting still for over an hour while the artist transformed her from young and strong to old and infirm.
She stepped into the ladies’ room, moving slowly. Just behind her, she heard the door slide to a close.
“Okay, Michaela,” a female voice said. “Use any stall and do your thing. I’ll wait here.”
The old woman slid a silenced gun from her jacket, turned, and shot the Secret Service agent in the head at nearly point-blank range. The agent barely had time to flinch. The back of her head sprayed out in a fountain of blood and brains and bone.
She dropped instantly to the floor, as though a trap door had opened below her. The sound of the gun was the sound of two hands clapping once.