Cold Silence

by James Abel

  “Stop the car!” I said.

  “No. We’re uninfected and we keep it that way.”

  “You can’t just leave that guy!”

  “Call 911,” Galli said, hitting the accelerator.

  I reached for the knob and the admiral cursed, but he skidded into a U-turn and ordered, “Stay in the car.” Chris shouted, “No!” Galli bumped up onto the sidewalk and headed for the attack. He pressed his palm against the horn. Despite his anger, I think he was glad we’d made him turn around. Or maybe I fooled myself. I’d done a lot of that lately. Now he was trying to stop the assault the way you’d scare off wild animals.

  The attackers stopped and looked up, looked at each other, deciding what to do. One man raised his middle finger at us, but they all turned away, started running, and as we approached the guy on the ground, I reached for the door handle again, to get out.

  Galli snapped, “I’ll leave you here!”

  Chris was screaming at me, “Goddamnit! You don’t listen! What’s the matter with you?”

  My palms went up to soothe her. “Look, I know you’re upset. But at this point the actual odds of infection are smaller than—”

  “The odds? The odds? This is my daughter!”

  Looking back, I saw the figure on the ground stirring, lifting a bloody head up. I saw him take something from the snow and put it on his head, before pulling his hood over it. A woven skullcap. So he was Muslim. My last glimpse of the man showed him trying to stand.

  Chris had me by the jacket and was shaking me. “What is your problem?”

  “Mom, Joe was just trying to help,” said Aya.

  “You stay out of this!”

  The admiral sighed. “Watch committees, Joe, although that’s the first one I’ve actually seen. People looking for sick ones to beat up, chase out of their neighborhoods, or vent rage. Most people they attack aren’t even sick. A swollen face from a bad tooth. A guy with a limp. Bible Fever—that’s what I call it—initially resembles twenty things that are completely normal. A shaving cut. A pimple. Vigilantes have put more people in the hospital than disease.”

  “This bad after only eight days?” I said. My chest throbbed where Chris had grabbed me. She’d been right, I saw, aghast. If I’d gotten out, I could have infected them . . .

  “The first two days were tolerable. Then food in stores started running out. The numbers doubled in places. Then, thanks to the President’s warning, people stayed home and the spread slowed a little. Wikileaks made it clear to the world that we don’t know what the disease is, that the CDC is running around, lost. The numbers got worse. So by day three some truckers refused to drive in shipments. Plus the images on TV. Every new case reported. More cities!”

  The admiral’s eyes met mine in the mirror. I said, “I’m okay. I won’t do it again.”

  Upper Reno Road—normally busy—was as still as at 5 A.M. on a Sunday morning. Galli zigzagged back to Massachusetts and pulled to the curb outside the Homeland Security complex by American University. It’s an old Navy base, lots of redbrick buildings inside a double fence. Unlike other sites we’d visited, this one was bustling. Parking lot filled. Staffers moving up and down outside stairs that separated different campus levels. Guards in balaclavas at the drive-in booth gazed out at us, hands on their sidearms. The impression was effectiveness. But impression, half the time, is mirage.

  Homeland Security is like a company on the stock market whose value goes up during disasters. That doesn’t mean it is a good company. It’s the only one there at the time.

  “I never liked this place anyway,” Eddie said. “It’s a goddamn maze. Building H next to Building B. Rooms with three numbers. You need a roadmap to get around, and half the signs are intentionally wrong. Nobody trusts anyone else in there.”

  The guards didn’t like seeing a car idling outside the grounds, even beneath a two-hour parking sign. Three of the guards started toward us.

  The admiral pressed down on the accelerator and we headed off and I could see one of the guys with binoculars pressed to his eyes, recording our license plate, but fence cameras would have already done that.

  Galli said, “Look, everyone’s tired. We’ll have a good meal when we get back. There’s food on campus but a shortage elsewhere. Supplies distributed by social security number. Even numbers can purchase twelve items today. Tomorrow, odd. The Mayor’s trying different systems. New one every day.”

  “Twelve isn’t a lot,” Aya said.

  “Hopefully, as more food arrives, portions will get bigger.”

  “I bet there’s plenty for the high and mighty,” Eddie grouched, nodding toward Capitol Hill.

  The admiral looked surprised. “I thought you knew. The President’s gone. Congress. Supreme Court. The city woke up and our national leaders had left.”

  Eddie gaped at him.

  Galli said, “Protocol 80 is in effect.”

  —

  Protocol 80 had been theoretical, like a hundred other exercises that we’d worked on at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Rhode Island Avenue. And late some nights, on Grant Street, at the admiral’s home. My own kitchen cabinet, he called us as we pored over plans detailing food delivery in an outbreak, medical deployment, ways to distribute vaccines; ways, with transportation crippled, to move investigators around. Protocols for interviewing people who feared even the doctors sent to help.

  Protocol 80 had been originally designed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when lines of limousines had clogged roads out of Washington, filled with evacuating VIPs; heading for Mount Weather, the underground installation near Berryville, Virginia: 600 acres up top, 650,000 square feet underground, filled with lodging, radio and TV studios, even three 25-story buildings in which evacuees would live, work, and eat while running the government. In a nuclear attack, the limos would have been decimated. So we’d streamlined the process for those deemed crucial to get out.

  “Continuity of government.”

  Eddie quipped morosely, “Someone should have done this to Congress years ago. Quarantined ’em!”

  In my head I saw what must have happened a few nights ago. I saw FBI agents working with lists of those to be evacuated, spreading out, knocking on doors, hustling frightened men, women, and children into idling cars in lightly falling snow. Continuity of government involves saving more than the President, Congress, and nine justices of the Supreme Court. It means saving the computer files of taxpayers, a Treasury Department midlevel clerk who heads up disability check delivery for veterans, the anonymous crucial cogs in the social security system, a scientist working on a secret chemical program, a spy master getting information from a high-level official in Iran, a rotating list of those deemed important at that particular moment, updated annually, a cast of thousands to be saved to guarantee the survival and operation of the Republic.

  “Alpha,” I said. “Principal leaders to Mount Weather.”

  “Beta,” said Eddie. “Congress to Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania,” which was another underground facility.

  I saw more. I saw evacuation beginning in a two-story colonial in Bethesda, a Federalist home on Capitol Hill, a three-bedroom suite with lights blazing at 3 A.M., shared by three Congressmen, a Watergate apartment discreetly paid for by a billionaire Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for his mistress, who was asking, as he pulled on his pants, Why can’t I come, too?

  The chosen would be hustled to designated triage hospitals; Georgetown or Walter Reed—for blood tests. Healthy folks, step this way! Babies crying. VIPs, some angry or scared, some meek and helpful, a few demanding special attention, which had happened in drills.

  “Third group, Charlie,” said Chris. “Those remaining in the cutoff capital. Us.” She couldn’t resist adding in a voice low with fury, “Ordering Las Vegas sandwiches.”

  Her eyes swiveled to me. I wanted to tell
her that I was sorry. But sorry is a pathetic word. It means nothing. It means too late, too stupid, too slow, too fatheaded.

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t stop you.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped me,” I said, trying to make her feel better. But it didn’t come out right. It sounded aggressive. It sounded like I was telling her that I would have ignored her order even if she’d given it. And then I realized that I’d meant exactly that.

  She turned red as Eddie’s hand reached out and pointed. “Holy shit, One. It’s a riot!”

  “It’s like Baghdad,” I said.

  Aya said, eyes huge, “But it isn’t Baghdad. It’s here.”

  —

  Baghdad looting had looked different, of course. There we’d seen women wearing black chadors and veils carting baskets of oranges from a busted-up fruit stall, donkey carts loaded down with televisions, parades of men in short-sleeved shirts and sandals pushing hand carts piled with furniture, Lada taxis bulging with thousand-year-old museum artifacts, rogue soldiers rolling ergonomic office chairs out of a smashed-up furniture store.

  Here we were stuck in traffic outside a supermarket parking lot where denizens of upper-middle-class Northwest Washington—high-level bureaucrats, lawyers, doctors, even a Congressman’s wife I recognized—fanned in a stream from the smashed Safeway windows with their gloved hands clutching bulging plastic bags, knapsacks, or cardboard boxes stuffed with loot. So many cars were trying to exit at the same time that traffic was blocked, the air filled with screams, shouts, horns.

  “Must be one hell of a big sale,” Eddie said.

  I saw an elderly woman fall and a man reach and pick up her mesh bag and run. I saw a Nissan Altima smash into a backing-up Mini Cooper. I saw kids, roughly twelve-year-old identical twins, dressed in matching ski parkas, running between parked cars and carrying identical bulging canvas bags that read, SAVE THE PLANET. I saw a man in a police uniform breaking up a fight, but then I realized he wasn’t doing that; he was carrying bags. He disappeared on foot as the first faint sharp edge of sirens became audible through the screaming and barking of a lone Labrador retriever in a car nearby.

  “Hey, Eddie! That’s Kendall Bates,” I said, recognizing a looter.

  Bates was a State Department analyst who sat in on planning sessions at HS. Now he was dressed out of the movie Fargo, calf-high furred boots, ballooning green down parka, furred flap-eared hat, surgical mask slipped down off his panicked face, and his breath frosted as he threaded parked cars, heading our way, hauling bound-up starter fireplace logs in each hand.

  I put my mask on and rolled down the window halfway and called, “Kendall!” He stopped, heaving, wild eyed, hearing his name, but needing a moment to place my face. Recognition replaced confusion. Bates was medium sized with a largish head, small eyes, and arms that seemed long, partly due to the too-short sleeves of the parka, partly because the wood weighed him down and made him slump, simian-like.

  “Colonel Rush,” he said in his official State Department voice, as if we sat in his office over coffee.

  All around us people were running. Bates looked down at his starter logs like a kid caught stealing chocolate bars in a candy store. He stood mortified and frightened, as if I’d arrest him, which I could not. I just asked, ignoring the loot, “What happened here?”

  He relaxed slightly, seeing that I wasn’t trying to stop him. I recalled that one time during a conference—bioterror in the new century—when he’d made reference to having three children, and living near here. He probably owned one of the big Victorian homes nearby, expensive when heating bills came. He was probably planning on stuffing those chemical logs into his fireplace, trying to provide heat or light, or maybe he was trying to get ready in case the power went out.

  He said, gasping from the running and the cold, “It was orderly. But then one woman started an argument by the vegetable section, it’s mine. And then someone else started yelling about needing more food than other people. The guy had six children. How come childless couples got the same amount as him, he shouted.” Kendall’s voice sped up. “Someone pushed me. Then Frank Carlyle, my neighbor, broke for the door without paying . . . and . . .”

  He was heaving. A man with an overcoat open to a clerical collar ran by, carrying a stuffed shopping bag.

  “The front window shattered. I guess someone threw something.”

  The sirens—multiple ones—sounded very loud now.

  “Get away, Joe. They’re shooting looters on the news. But I’m not . . . my neighbors . . . I’m not a looter.” He looked down at the stuff in his hands. He said, “I’m just me. I’ll come back and pay later. I will!”

  “Sure you will,” Eddie said in a flat voice.

  Washington as truncated capital, an instant, enormous, upside-down refugee camp for the once elite. I stared at Kendall Bates. Somehow he looked smaller than usual. Part of his job—until now—had involved facilitating food aid delivery to suffering nations. I recalled that one time in a meeting he’d complained that more guards were needed to keep aid from being stolen in southern Sudan.

  “There must be order!” he’d said.

  He ran now, past the priest, who was trying to unlock his car, Kendall’s boots leaving skid marks in the clumpy snow.

  My eyes fixed on the priest. The man’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t get the key in the lock of his Mini Cooper. A priest. I stared, fascinated, as the admiral got us moving.

  What was it about a priest? No, that wasn’t it. It was something else, triggered by the sight of a priest.

  “You said to try other avenues,” I said thoughtfully to everyone in the car.

  Chris, hearing my request, grew quiet and then, shocked, erupted in a mother’s rage. “I can’t believe you’re even thinking this! I just can’t believe you!”

  I could not fault her. But if we went to Georgetown, we’d be stuck there, so I kept my eyes on the admiral’s in the rearview mirror. “Were you serious about what you said, sir, about other ideas? Little detour? Or not?”

  “Oh, let’s go!” enthused Aya.

  “Not a chance,” snapped Chris.

  “Admiral?”

  “No.”

  I wasn’t surprised. And I was ready. I said, “You said we had to get to campus, but we don’t have a mandatory arrival time. Once in, we can’t leave. But we’re not there yet. So how about this?”

  —

  Orrin Sykes sat in his Honda outside the Georgetown University Medical Center and fretted. Harlan Maas had told him that Joe Rush was supposed to be stationed here, had landed hours ago, and was on his way, but the man had still not shown up.

  “I want confirmation that he goes inside,” Harlan had said.

  The campus had been sealed by Marines, and anyone entering the sprawling complex had to use the Reservoir Road entrance. The grounds included a collection of redbrick hospital and research buildings, med offices, restaurants, a parking garage, the adjoining college campus, and the Jesuit cemetery. McDonough Arena was set up to handle overflow patients. Student and faculty housing had been given over to med staff.

  Sykes observed the grounds from a block lined with small attached townhouses, each featuring an identical patch of snow-dusted lawn. An assembly line of private shared student housing or midlevel bureaucrat homes.

  “Once he goes in, he can’t get out without a pass, and he won’t get that pass,” Harlan had assured Sykes.

  Sykes had to go to the bathroom. He used an empty mayonnaise jar and sealed it back up. He sipped water to stay hydrated. All vehicles bound for the medical center formed a line on Reservoir Road that inched toward the sandbagged guard booth. The line moved so slowly that Sykes could see inside the cars.

  Why wasn’t Rush here?

  Then Orrin saw him.

  Sykes pressed the glasses close. A Toyot
a 4Runner had just taken up position as eighth car in line. The back window was down. Rush was unmistakable, arguing with the four other people in the car, and Sykes matched the face of Eddie Nakamura to Harlan’s provided photo on the front seat. There was Chris Vekey. And the admiral. And some kid.

  Sykes felt relieved. They were here.

  But suddenly the 4Runner halted, the argument grew animated, the back door opened, and Rush got out. Then everyone else got out, too. The argument was continuing. Sykes’s consternation grew.

  The four other passengers stayed on the sidewalk. Rush climbed back into the 4Runner, into the driver’s seat.

  Nakamura tried to open the passenger-side front door, but Rush locked him out. Nakamura knocked on the window clearly asking to get in.

  “Shit!” Sykes said.

  The other passengers began walking toward the driveway entrance, digging in their bags or coat pockets for ID.

  The 4Runner broke from the line, made a U-turn, and headed back along Reservoir Road, toward central Georgetown. Rush was the only one inside now.

  Sykes put the Honda in gear and pulled out from his space and rounded the corner, skidding slightly on slush. He could see the red brake lights on the 4Runner half a block ahead, where Rush turned onto Tunlaw Road.

  Sykes reached for the encrypted cell phone as he followed Rush back up toward Wisconsin Avenue, in lightly falling snow, making sure to keep a block behind. He could not get closer without risking being spotted, since there were only two vehicles on the road.

  It was easy to hang back and keep Rush in sight. Three minutes later, it became clear where Rush was going.

  Rush figures things out, Harlan had told Sykes.

  Uh-oh, Sykes thought, reaching to call Harlan Maas.

  TWELVE

  “What do you want to know about leprosy?” the Very Reverend Nadine Huxley asked.

  She was dean of the National Cathedral, America’s intersection point between God and government. Here lay saints and soldiers, tributes to both heaven and earth. I’d entered the gray Gothic building beneath the gaze of rooftop gargoyles including the movie villain Darth Vader. He stared out beside traditional demons and monsters, set there after children across the nation voted to add a modern icon to the collection. Inside, stained glass windows depicted religious figures but also the Apollo 11 moon mission. Altar pieces in Saint Mary’s Chapel showed the mother of Jesus near a statue of Abraham Lincoln, whose visage, in pennies, lined the floor. The Humanitarian Bay honored Saint Francis of Assisi and also George Washington Carver, who’d studied peanuts. Last time I’d been here, I’d attended the funeral of astronaut Neil Armstrong. Diana Krall had sung, “Fly Me to the Moon.” Not exactly religious fare.