Nilla had no idea what was going on but she pulled the mask over her mouth and nose. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to see what she was through the thick paper. She fumbled with the gloves but managed to get them on somehow.
“Okay, up there, the balcony there. You take units B through G. It looks like it’s going to be a bad one, tonight.” A feathery thin layer of sympathy in his voice startled her. “St. Rose Dominican is already full up. We’ll need to take this bunch all the way out to UMC.” Nilla looked up and saw a split-level apartment complex with a red tile roof. The doors looked close together, each separated from the next by a single rectangular window. Blue flickering light came from most of the windows—probably the wavering campfire glow of television sets.
“I—I’ve never…” Nilla stammered.
“Christ, you’ve never been on Plague Patrol before? Well, it’s pretty simple. You go in there and you see somebody who’s sick, you drag them back down here and they go in the truck. They give you any trouble and I’ll shoot them for you. Think you can handle that?”
Nilla nodded, knowing she couldn’t handle it at all but also knowing she wasn’t being given an actual option. She turned away without further comment and started up the stairs to the complex’s second level.
“Jesus Fuck. The Chamber will take anybody these days, won’t they?”
He wasn’t talking to her. Nilla approached a door marked B and knocked. There was no answer but she could hear the television set inside blaring away so she knocked again, much louder. Finally she tried the knob and found the door unlocked. She stepped inside onto seafoam green shag carpeting littered with twists of paper tissue. Blood flecked some of them a dark rose red.
The tv played an old cowboy movie. John Wayne or somebody shooting two-handed from the back of a horse. Its ghostly blue light was the only illumination in the room.
Nilla moved through a filthy kitchenette—dishes in the sink full of dried-up rice grains, refrigerator chugging unhappily—and down a short hallway toward a bedroom. “Hello?” she called out. No answer, of course. The bedside table was covered in plastic bottles of over-the-counter medication.
Mael had mentioned “poisoning the waters” with Dick. Was it really this bad, that armed thugs had to cart off the sick to avoid massive outbreaks of disease? Nilla could think of few things worse than the dead coming back to life to devour the living. A widespread pandemic of disease might fit the bill.
She turned back the sheets of the bed, half-expecting to find a dead man hidden there. Nothing. She turned around to head out of the apartment. Maybe the next one.
Someone sneezed right next to her left shoulder. Nilla wheeled around and threw open the door of a linen closet to find an enormously obese man wedged inside. He wore a white t-shirt and a pair of striped boxer shorts and a look of abject fear. He also had a ten-inch kitchen knife in his hand, raised over his head as if he was about to bring it down and slice her forehead open.
Nilla froze—no time to subtract herself from the equation, no time to hide, no time to think. Her hands were up, open, empty and he seemed to notice that fact.
“You,” she said, the words bubbling out of her like swamp gas, “have got the drop on me, mister. Tell you what. I’ll run away now. I can’t go out the front, though. Is there another way?”
“Maybe.” He looked down at her. His knife hand didn’t move. “If you’re skinny.”
A narrow little window in his bathroom opened over a back courtyard. It was a good ten foot drop but there were piles of trash bags down there. The obese man helped by pushing her through the narrow opening, his hands pushing hard on her back and her buttocks until she went flying out into the darkness. Nilla landed with a meaty thud and rolled away. In a second she was up, collecting the brown hat that had fallen off her head in mid-flight. It was more than just a way to hide her face, she realized. The obese man had been afraid of it. It had to be a symbol, as respectable as a policeman's badge. A badge that allowed her to be out past curfew—and something that would scare the hell out of everyone she met. She adjusted it carefully, low over her forehead, and headed back out into the night.
I have about THREE days worth of food. We WERE starving before but with only my MOUTH left to FEED… if you find this I guess that means I’m probably DEAD… if you don’t find this I guess that means we’re ALL dead, and this is really IT for the HUMAN RACE [Diary inscribed on the circulation desk of the Harold Washington Library, Chicago, IL, 4/14/05, emphasis as per original]
The Civilian took a handful of valerian root capsules as soon as they boarded the military flight back to Las Vegas. He fell asleep with his mouth open minutes after takeoff and snored obnoxiously the rest of the way. When the captain called back over the intercom to say they were being kept in a holding pattern above Las Vegas Clark woke up his patron to give him the news.
Still half-asleep the Civilian nodded and looked out the window. “What’s the hold up?” he asked. Before Clark could answer that he didn’t know the Civilian offered to get on the radio and bully the air traffic controllers into submission.
“I don’t imagine that’s necessary,” Clark told him, and tried to get back to the paperwork he had called up on his ruggedized laptop.
Eventually they put down and were met at the gate by a team of men in brown caps with carbines slung on their backs. Both of them were forced to submit to having the inside of their cheeks swabbed and tested on the spot.
When the results came back one of the men looked down at his shoes and offered Clark his hand. Clark took it, out of simple courtesy. “I am truly sorry for the inconvenience, Captain, but we can’t take any chances right now. One of ours turned up dead—dead and walking, I mean—earlier today. Half his face was chewed off. It’s not the first time but this one’s a little weirder than usual and it’s got us all spooked.”
“Weird? How?” Clark asked.
“Well, there’s no sign of a forced entry, anywhere on the perimeter fence. And when you get dead people chowing on security personnel you expect to find a bunch of them but from all signs this was just one guy or whatever and our guy was armed to the teeth. Then there’s the fact we never found the kid’s hat. It feels like they’re trying to infiltrate our ranks or something. Impossible, yeah, I know, they don’t have the brains for that.”
All seven bones in Bannerman Clark’s spine went rigid at once. The girl: the notion tore through his brain like a howling wind. “At least one of them does. They’ve shown organized behavior before, too—that’s what happened to Denver. Listen, I’m way out of my jurisdiction here, but I think maybe I need to talk to your superiors about—”
“Yo, Bannerman, hold up there.” The Civilian moved in with practiced ease. He switched his overcoat to his left arm and got his right hand on the brown cap’s shoulder. “I’m sure these fine fellows have this thing under control. You guys work for, what, sheriff’s office, state bureau of investigations, what?”
“The, uh,” the brown cap stammered, “the Chamber of Commerce.”
“Small business is the backbone of this nation,” the Civilian intoned, putting every spare watt of power he had into the look of gravitas on his face. “Carry on, good man, carry on.” He reached for Clark’s arm and pulled him away. When they were out of earshot of the brown cap he hissed at his wonk. “We are so out of here. I’m not a very bright guy but I know one thing: when the local troopers start talking about weird and unexplained deaths, it’s a short walk to doomsville. Las Vegas is going right down the shitter and I am not sticking around to watch. Is that clear?”
“The girl may be here,” Clark protested.
“Yeah, and Wayne Newton might be doing three shows a night but you will not put me in danger for your personal obsession. Don’t cross me on this, Bannerman.”
Clark frowned. “Alright. Our chopper is waiting in the other terminal. I suppose we should get back to Florence.”
He had his orders.
He didn’t have to like them.
>
Chapter Fifteen
mike oppenbach, fought gators and bears in his life but this was too much. he was a good man to have with us when it hit the fan. real handy with a gun and a machete and he never complained. guess that’s all i got to say [Eulogy carved into a makeshift grave marker, Emeralda Marsh, FL 4/16/05]
“Step right up, folks, this is no time for the bashful. All the money you give tonight funds further research; we also take medicines and pharmaceuticals of the illicit kind. One to a customer, it’s all you need. Guaranteed to keep you dead.”
Nilla sat on a bench outside of a CVS pharmacy and watched what was happening in the parking lot with a critical eye. She was in the right place—this was the main distribution point for the vaccine in Las Vegas. Her informants—a couple of teenage kids out after curfew and scared shitless of her brown cap—had not steered her wrong. Yet she couldn’t believe that so crucial a program could be run like this.
“He that believeth in me shall not live forever. Step right up. This little pill, this red and perfect ellipsoid, is the cure to what ails modern man. Thank you sir, please, tell your friends. One quick jolt and you’re safe forever. Step right up.” The barker stood six and a half feet tall and he was as wide through the shoulders as a professional wrestler. The waxed ends of an enormous mustache drooped from his face: up top he was going bald. He wore a stained baja shirt with bandoliers crossing his chest, sealed film canisters stuck in where rifle cartridges should be.
His associates weren’t as outlandish in appearance, but they had their eccentricities. They worked out of the back of a passenger van airbrushed with stars and moons and galaxies. Two men, one thin as a rake and twitchy, his head moving from side to side constantly as if he expected to be attacked at any time. The other pudgy and withdrawn. The former took the money from the block-long line of people waiting in the parking lot, while the other handed out thick capsules full of something sparkling and red.
“One to a customer, no greedy folk need apply. This is the love, the love you’ve been looking for. Who knew it came in pill form. Maximum love, step right up!”
Nilla rose from her bench and stepped into the sodium vapor glow of the parking lot’s lights. In the line of waiting people her appearance made soft explosions of whispering panic but nobody fled. It was the brown cap. It masked her dark energy wonderfully. People saw it and they knew why her very presence seemed wrong and frightening. She was one of the jackbooted thugs who ruled Las Vegas with an iron fist.
“Do not be alarmed, folks, everything is under my personal control.” The barker placed an enormous hand across his chest. In the orange light his flesh looked like cured ham. Nilla’s presence was a signal and he was receiving it calmly but with all due attention. She could see his shoulders come in slightly, his stance changed to one of wary readiness. It felt like she was walking to the gunfight at the OK Corral. “I will not rest,” the barker continued, “until each and every one of you is satisfied.”
The people in the line stared at her with open faces. Various fears chased each other through the furrows of their foreheads, the way they kept their hands shoved resolutely in their pockets. They looked like they were hunkering down against a dank and chill wind though the night air of Las Vegas was dry as a bone and late-Spring warm.
“I’m from the Chamber,” Nilla announced, to back up her one weapon in this showdown—the brown cap. “Who the hell are you?”
The big man placed a hand across his belt buckle and bent slowly toward her in a graceful bow. “I am he whose name was writ in water. I am the very model of a modern Major General. Some call me the space cowboy, while others refer to me as the gangster of love.”
Nilla squinted her eyes. “Fuck this. I can shut you down with one phone call, jerk. In fact I might just do it on principle.”
“Then call me Mellowman, the stoned superhero. I’m here to bring a little peace of mind to these benighted people. May I ask who you are, young filly?”
Nilla shook her head. “I’m from the Chamber. That’s all you need to know. You people, get out of here now. Don’t you know there’s a curfew?” She leered at the scared people in the line and they scattered like pigeons. “Now. I want to see your operation here. I want to know just what the hell you think you’re doing.” The bravado act she was putting on made Nilla’s nerves sing. She was no longer capable of getting an adrenaline rush but something ice cold and lethal blossomed inside of her and she liked it. Sure. For the first time in her death she actually had some power.
“Right this way, miss.” Mellowman or whatever the hell his name was gestured for her to follow him. “Welcome to the Space Van, my home that gets up and goes when the home I got is done and gone.”
“You’re selling vaccine, right? Does it actually work?” Nilla stepped around to the open back of the van to look inside. Bright red plush interior, crammed full of boxes and jars and rolled-up blankets.
“How about a free sample? Find out for yourself?” Mellowman picked up a box and slung it under his arm. Revealed below sat a jar full of the sparkling red capsules she’d seen handed out.
“Hey, dude, come on, let’s not do this,” one of his associates said, the thin and twitchy one. Nilla speared him with a glance. When she turned back Mellowman had one of the capsules in the expansive palm of his left hand.
Nilla wondered what would happen if she took it. Would it kill the virus or microbe or whatever it was that had reanimated her? Would she collapse in a lifeless heap? Probably it would do nothing. She picked up the jar and shook it. The capsules inside rattled with a satisfying noise. “Is this all you have?”
“Until we make some more. My aide de medecin over here, we call him Morphine Mike, he’s the man with the magic recipe.”
Wow, Nilla thought. This was going to be so easy. Trash the pills, kill the guy who made them. Mael would be satisfied. Maybe he would even let her go. She put the jar back inside the van and turned to announce that she was going to arrest them all.
She found herself looking into the twin barrels of a sawn-off shotgun. It must have been in the box Mellowman had grabbed. The black OO looked like the symbol for infinity.
“You stupid bitch. I’m on the steering committee of the goddamned Chamber of Commerce. I don’t know who you are, thinking you can come in here and rip us off, but you have made one truly dumb mistake.”
She had time enough to turn herself invisible but she panicked. His finger jerked on the weapon’s two triggers and she heard a noise like hell cracking open.
{fursuit19} is somebody there
{fursuit19} hello
{fursuit19} hello
* fursuit19 HAS LOGGED OUT *
[AOL Instant Message transcript, 4/18/05]
The Blackhawk came in low and slow over the juniper-studded arroyos that surrounded the prison. Clark touched the Civilian’s arm and pointed out Pike’s Peak. As they drew closer he said, “Let me officially welcome you to the Big One.” He felt strangely proud of Florence-ADX—though he certainly had not built the prison, nor did he particularly like it. It had become his headquarters, however, and in a sense his home.
The Civilian looked excited. “Is it true you’ve got Pineapple Face there? You know, Noriega? And the Unabomber?”
“All the prisoners were removed in the first days of the Epidemic.” The Civilian looked disappointed, yet as they circled around for final approach it was Clark whose expectations were truly shattered. When he’d left the prison had been a safe, discrete structure, hidden carefully behind its multiple layers of unimpregnable fencing.
In his absence it had turned into a shanty-town. Tents and primitive shacks of corrugated tin had been erected in a wide semi-circle around the side of the prison facing the road. Narrow alleys ran between the ramshackle housing units and these were full of people in civilian dress. More than a few waved at the Blackhawk as it roared overhead. They looked healthy enough. There were children, too, and some animals: dogs, sheep, even a few horses. A stretch
of rolling hillside had been cleared of vegetation and turned into a parking lot for dozens of vehicles. Not just the buses and vans of the convoy Clark had personally lead from Denver but smaller passenger cars, too, motorcycles and bicycles and a smattering of single-engine airplanes.
The Blackhawk set down on a pad on the roof of the prison where Vikram and Sergeant Horrocks were waiting to meet it. Vikram had his iron bracelet on and had added a new accessory, a strangely curved knife long enough to qualify as a short sword. Horrocks had dressed up in full uniform as if he expected Clark to demand an immediate inspection of the troops. Clark introduced the Civilian around and then gestured at the small town that had sprung up outside the gates. “Word gets around, I suppose. When did this start?”
“It is only a very recent phenomenon,” Vikram assured him. “But more come in every day. We do not let them inside of the fence but they don’t seem to mind. They know your name, Bannerman, and they expect you to protect them. We could hardly turn them away, you know.”
Clark shook his head. “This means new security issues, a whole new perimeter to keep secure, not to mention the health problems they’ll face without proper sanitation. And we can’t offer them any kind of medical care.”
The Civilian grabbed his arm. “Jesus! Who's a gloomy gus? Come on, Bannerman. You’ve earned this.”
He lead Clark to the main gates. Horrocks ordered for them to be opened and they swung out to reveal a gathered throng of people who pressed up close to the entrance as soon as it became clear. A man in a tattered business suit rushed up and grabbed Clark’s hand.
“Captain, I’m Jim Jesuroga. I’ve got to thank you—my family couldn’t make it on our own.”
“Let me kiss him!” a woman shrieked, a middle-aged matron with dyed maroon hair. She wrapped her arms around Clark’s neck and pecked at his cheek. Her children came up behind her, their eyes bright with hope, while others moved in, all of them wanting to get close, to touch him, to speak with him if only for a moment.
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