by Earl Merkel
I wish I could have talked to Dad about it,Katie thought. In early June, she had spent two weeks with him in Chicago, where he was getting ready to work for a semester or so.But he made it pretty clear that it was never quite the right time to bring up anything about Mom—exactly like she does, when I’m with her.
Katie stopped short, surprised at the intensity of the sudden animosity she felt.
Atbothof them, dammit, she realized.
Katie understood that she was the fulcrum of a natural alliance that could pit one parent against the other; she could shift her allegiance between the two adult antagonists as her own necessities dictated. That fact, she reasoned, gave her a large measure of power—and should have given her, at least, a small measure of satisfaction.
Instead, it merely made her feel even more alone.
“Hel-l-lo—Earth to Casey. Anybody at home in there?”
Katie opened her eyes, squinting against the glare of the day.
“Carly’s bailing on us,” J. L. told her.
“I said, I’m going to call it a morning.” Carly was standing, and despite the warmth of the day had pulled the large beach towel close around her shoulders. “I think maybe I’ve had too much sun. I’m going to go back to the room and sack out.”
“What—you make a date with the front desk guy?” J. L. chided. Carly tried to smile, and for the first time Katie saw how tired her friend looked.
“Want us to come along?” Katie asked.
“No,” Carly said. “You guys figure out where the parties are going to be tonight. I’m just pooped. Plus, I’m all achy from sitting in the car too long.”
“Well,” said Katie, “feel better.”
“I just need to rest up.” Carly added, “We’ve got a big night ahead. I guarantee it.”
Chapter 4
Columbia Falls, Montana
July 21
The damnedest thing about the goddamn crazy Jap—the term Orin Trippett invariably used when referring to the emissary with whom he had met—the damnedest thing about him was that he had been so . . . so . . .
Well, “helpful” is the only word that comes right to mind,Trippett told himself.Acts like he’s Santy Claus and it’s Christmas Eve. If Christmas came in July, that is.
He had been suspicious initially, and he had not been alone. Orin had taken it to the leadership council, and just about everybody in the Mountain Warriors’ Posse had been convinced that it was a government sting—a plot by the FBI or ATF or even those bastards from Internal Revenue, all aimed at undermining yet another citizens’ militia.
And it would be just like Cousin Dickie to step into that kind of shit,Trippett thought sourly.He’s never been the sharpest pencil in the box.
Early on, there had even been talk of bundling the lone Japanese into one of the panel trucks and taking him high enough into the mountains that no one would ever find the body. It had happened before, when the Posse had decided there was even a remote threat to the group.
But in the end, what the Japanese had been offering was simply too enticing to pass up. For the Mountain Warriors, it was the answer to their prayers. Nerve gas—sarin, the real thing. And another tantalizing prospect that the visitor would only hint at, but which—if true—would give Trippett’s militia a capability beyond his very dreams.
They knew about CBW, of course—at least, the ones among the Posse who had been military or who used their home computers for more than hunting up porn sites on the Internet. To Orin Trippett, the idea of the Mountain Warriors posing a credible chemical and biological threat was enough to make him salivate.
But it was only when he had verified some of the Jap’s claims that he began to consider the possibility was real.
That had come a month earlier, in late May, when Orin finally had decided to meet with his cousin in person. Dickie Trippett was an officer of the Empire State Legionnaires, a militia group in upstate New York. Despite his intellectual shortcomings, he was a man Orin trusted as much as he trusted anyone: they had done time together on a state weapons charge before Orin moved west in search of what remained of the real America. Now Orin had reestablished contact, and the two of them had met midway in an Iowa City motel.
“Waycool, man,” Dickie had told him, a grin stretching across his face. “I couldn’t believe it, y’know? This damn Jap—talks like some kind of egghead or something, doncha think?—anyways, he brings us this shit and, like, shows us exactly what to fuckin’ do with it. I mean, we took those spray cans and laid the stuff anywhere there was lots of birds. Out in the woods, ‘specially anywhere you got crows and jays—hell, one guy even drove into the Big Apple and sprayed it at the zoo. In the damnbird house, can ya dig it?” He laughed at the memory.
“You sure it was the real stuff?” Orin had asked.
“West Nile,” Dickie had said, nodding. “It’s a virus. Birds get it, pass it to mosquitoes. They go bite people and presto! Encephalitis. Don’t you read the papers, man? We got the stuff in, like, a year ago April. By the end of summer, people was comin’ down with it all over the place. It’s damn near everywhere in the country now.” He had smiled thinly. “I’ll give you two words: bug repellent. Don’t leave home without it.”
Orin frowned. “You think they had something to do with this other thing? You know, the foot-in-mouth shit over in England.”
“I got my suspicions,” Dickie said smugly.
Orin had been unconvinced.
“So how come you guys didn’t, you know, take credit for it or something?”
Dickie had shrugged, in a manner decidedly nonchalant.
“Jap guy said it was just a test,” he had replied. “So we could see how shit like that might work for us.” He had leaned closer to his cousin, and his voice dropped. “But now we’re gonnareally make some noise, man. That’s why I sent him along to you. Guy’s got us something serious to work with.”
“Like what?”
“He didn’t tell you yet? Couple of new toys,” Dickie had said, grinning. “One of ’em—well, you ever hear of sarin, man?”
Orin had shrugged noncommittally. Family was family, but in militia matters it was usually smart to listen more than you talked. That went double when it came to chemical weapons.
“Nerve gas, something like that?”
“Got that right. He’s bringin’ in a shitload of it.” Dickie had leaned closer. “And he talks about having some kind of germ-warfare bug he can get us. Anthrax, maybe—fucker is playing it real cool, you know? But definitely military grade, can ya dig it?”
Orin had shook his head skeptically.
“Look,” he had told his cousin, “how do you know this guy ain’t federal?”
Dickie had looked up at him, and there was a serious expression on his face.
“ ’Cause he brought a little sample with him, man,” he had told Orin. “Had a spray can about the size of a can of Right Guard, okay?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“So we went out and found us one of those street bums—a homeless guy, you dig? Showed him a bottle of rye and he followed us back up an alley. And then my little Jap buddy sprayed that shit—p-s-s-s-s-t.Blast of nerve gas, right in his face.”
“Jesus.”
“It was intense, man. Fuckin’ bum diedhard, I’ll tell you that. Glad I was standing upwind.”
Orin had been silent for a long minute.
“Look, what do these Japswant ? See, that’s what I don’t get.”
Dickie had shrugged.
“Hell do I know? Like, maybe it’s the emperor’s birthday or something. All I know is we get this shit, and all we gotta do is use a little of it when they say the word. Raise a little hell. Screw with the G, right?”
Then Dickie had gone serious again, Orin remembered, and his tone shifted. For the first time, Orin had thought, his cousin sounded more like a militia leader than a kid who had been offered a new toy.
“All I know is, I get it, I sure ain’t giving it back. I got my own ideas fo
r the stuff.”
That had been more than a month ago. Orin Trippett had returned to Montana, and plans had been made.
Now, looking at the crate that had been delivered this morning—by FedEx,Orin thought,and how’s that for laughs? —Orin remembered what his cousin had said.
He felt the same way.
Chapter 5
Atlanta, Georgia
July 21
Nominally, the Surgeon General’s Office was a subordinate part of Health and Human Services. So there was not really an ongoing war between the secretary of HHS and the Surgeon General; it just seemed that way, which was almost as bad.
They were both political appointments, Beck recalled—HHS a former California congressman who had been instrumental in the current president’s initial campaign, the SG a women’s rights activist who had lobbied hard but fruitlessly for a cabinet-level post before settling for a position that was largely symbolic. Neither official was a physician. But both had brought to the CDC meeting aides who were, and that added an element of professional competition into the already volatile mix. The key question was the same that had bedeviled them throughout the day: Did the current situation warrant declaring an emergency? If so, there was no shortage of plans that could be put into action; but if they blew this call, the downside risk was, to appointees and career bureaucrats alike, potentially cataclysmic.
There had been heated words, some shouting, and no resolution. Porter had left in disgust, shaking his head as he stood to return to his office.
“I’m heading down to the outbreak site,” he said to Krewell in an angry aside. “You don’t need me here to deal withthis crap. Not when people are dying down there.” The physician stalked out without a backward glance.
“Damn it, Larry,” Beck muttered to Krewell, who sat at his side. “He’s right. How long do we listen to politicians and bureaucrats? Somebody has to show some leadership, for God’s sake.”
Krewell looked at his watch.
“The President expects a recommendation by six,” he told Beck. “That gives them no more than—whoops. Here it comes. Watch this, ol’ buddy.”
Billy Carson had stood, and the figure he cut in his shirtsleeves was enough to draw the attention of the room.
“There really is no room for discussion,” Carson said. He half turned to address HHS. “Mr. Secretary, there is no statutory question as to your department’s responsibility in the circumstances we face. In matters of public health, you are the lead authority. Like the rest of us here today, the Surgeon General’s Office is an advisory body only. We have, I believe, heard its advice. It is time to act, sir.”
The SG’s aide, an emaciated woman who had been a family-planning specialist in Philadelphia before assuming her present post, spoke angrily.
“Mr. Carson, I resent the way you’re—” she began, and Carson’s voice overrode her firmly.
“As Dr. Krewell pointed out, we are dealing with a matter of available time. History alone demands that we accept Dr. Porter’s analysis. H1N1 is, potentially, a catastrophic threat to public health. Look at the sheer numbers involved. Over the course of twelve months in 1918, at least a half-million Americans died of influenza. One in four was incapacitated. This disease constitutes a threat to our entire population—more than two hundred fifty million Americans.”
“History demands that we not overreact, either,” the senator said, and the SG nodded. “Do we want to risk a general panic? And as long as we’re talking about ‘potential,’ how about the potential for making a bad situation worse? If we rush to produce a so-called vaccine, we’re asking for a repeat of the swine flu fiasco in ’seventy-six. More people were harmed by the injections than even got the flu: some were in comas for months, others paralyzed by the Guillan-Barré syndrome the vaccine initiated. The lawsuits went on for years.”
“If we’re going to talk about history, let’s allow an expert to have a word,” HHS interrupted. “Dr. Casey, I apologize. I have not read the complete report you prepared, but I have reviewed the executive summary. You’ve been waiting patiently, and I’d appreciate your insights, sir.”
“There’s not much to add to my original work, Mr. Secretary,” Beck said. “The question is, do we have an emerging epidemic here? To a society, epidemics are the biological equivalent of nuclear war. In extreme cases, as the disease spreads through the population, social systems break down. Plagues cause a social meltdown. The network of services and supports that civilization depends on fail, in varying degrees.”
“Based on what?” HHS asked.
“Ironically, based on the technological level the society has attained,” Beck said. “Historically, the more complex the civilization, the worse the collapse.”
“Specifics, Doctor,” the senator said.
“Specifically, Senator, the values that bind humans together progressively dissolve during an epidemic,” Beck said. “This was the case during Europe’s Black Death in the Middle Ages; the same effect occurred in 1918, the last killer-flu pandemic.
“In the beginning, a plague engenders fear, most commonly a sort of xenophobia. People begin to view ‘outsiders’ as the enemy, as potential disease vectors. They pull away—for example, by ignoring people who collapse on public streets. As the outbreak expands, they build walls to keep the disease outside—and I mean that literally, in many cases. If you read Poe, his ‘Masque of the Red Death’ could well have been written as journalism rather than fiction. Extremes of behavior begin to occur—everything. Riots. Drunken orgies, group suicides. Fanatical religious fervor, complete with doomsday messiahs.
“Inevitably, as the plague expands and family members sicken and die, the social contract breaks completely. Parents are too frightened to care for their children, spouses abandon their dying mates.
“By then, of course, essential public systems are decimated. Health care is overwhelmed, both through the sheer volume of cases as well as the fact that many physicians and nurses have themselves contracted the disease. Fire or police protection is virtually nonexistent. And with all due respect to the representatives of our armed forces here, the military is no better off than the rest of society. They’re usually worse off, in fact; living in barracks or on a ship is tailor-made for widespread disease transmission.”
The senator snorted. “The Black Death. Edgar Allan Poe. There’s a big difference between medieval Europe and the modern world.”
“Not so different,” Beck said, “if you’re dealing with a disease you can’t cure, or even prevent.” He looked around the room. “Anybody here know how to keep from getting the flu?”
“Which raises the question of a vaccine.” The SG spoke up. “We’ve been making influenza vaccines for years. Mass immunization has been around since the polio years.”
“Assuming that this particular strain of H1N1 lends itself to development of an effective vaccine,” Carson said, “we’re looking at an immunization program that is unprecedented.” He nodded in the direction of Krewell. “CDC’s Special Pathogens Branch has the figures. Dr. Krewell, what is your assessment? Is such a program possible?”
Krewell remained seated.
“Of course it is possible,” he said. “We have a great deal of experience in developing flu vaccines. We do it annually, once we’ve analyzed which flu strain we’re facing for the year. But H1N1 is not merely an evolutionary mutation of a virus we’re already familiar with; it’s a different animal entirely, and so there will be some time lost in our learning curve there.
“The key word is ‘time,’ ” Krewell emphasized. “If we have enough time, we can dissect H1N1, decode any genetic mutations, develop and test possible vaccines. If we have enough time, the pharmaceutical firms can gear up to produce the two hundred and fifty million doses we’ll need in this country alone. Given some breathing room, it is possible to set up a mass immunization in every city, town and one-stoplight crossroads in the country.”
“In your opinion, do we have this time?”
HHS looked worried, Beck thought.As well he might.
“In my assessment,” Krewell said, “no, sir, we do not. We’d need at best six months, more likely eight.”
In his peripheral vision, Beck saw the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency nod grimly. Alone among the group, the newly appointed head of FEMA had hands-on experience, in his former post as New York City’s chief preparedness official, in planning for widespread public health emergencies. That experience had earned him his present position: New York City was acknowledged as the place best prepared to deal with critical situations, due in large part to the man’s efforts.
In the months before he had left for his current Washington posting, he had tackled the specter of biological terrorism in America’s largest urban center. He had written plans, devised contingencies, bullied funding for police and health personnel training. And then he had supervised exercises and drills to test how effective all the activity had been.
The news reports, even as sanitized and as spun as they had been, had been more accurate than kind, Beck recalled. It had been woefully apparent how unprepared even all the official’s efforts had left his city.
And that wasonecity, Beck thought,not the whole damn country.
“This one scares me, people,” FEMA was saying to the group. “Look, even limiting our concerns to the continental United States, this influenza is already here. And that means it’s spreading as we speak.”
“I concur,” HHS said. “Short-term, mass vaccination is not an option. Given that, what is our best immediate course of action?”
“The only course of action is to contain it, at least as much as possible,” Carson said. “We fight a delaying action, while we develop an effective vaccine.”
“The girl in Florida died a week ago.” Krewell spoke up. “Summer is vacation time, and people are traveling. It’s reasonable to assume her death has a direct connection to the Fort Walton cases. I have people trying to draw up a contagion chart right now. I can already tell you, this could turn into a nightmare.”