by Rounds, Mark
Chris was there in his Washington Highway Patrol uniform, confirming the story they told about the arrival of Chris’s patrol car. He was taking an hour long break but was due to be back on duty by one. The number of absentee officers in the various police units was approaching forty percent and the National Guard was worse.
The neighbor had arrived in small groups, usually families or living groups. The party was subdued but happy. People attempted to avoid the plague as a topic of discussion, but it kept coming back.
“So Chad,” said Mitchell Davis, the stock broker who lived down the street. He had a very self-important view of himself. “How long do you think the current disturbance is going to last? The Market has been just devastated. All trading was suspended last Friday and now I can’t get a reliable feed from anywhere.”
“Mitch, most anything I can say has already been on the news,” said Chad stalling for a bit of time. “I wouldn’t count on anything like that being open for weeks if not months.”
“Surely you are overreacting!” exclaimed Mitch. “Money makes the world go round. If the markets don’t open, trade and commerce will fail! Why, I went to the grocery store yesterday and the doors were closed. I looked in the window and the shelves were quite bare. Things are going to have to change. What is the Government doing?”
“Let’s not get into this right now,” said Chad. “Relax, enjoy the party. Help us out by eating up this food that would surely go to waste.”
Chad was attempting to disengage from his neighbor when a shotgun blast brought them all up short. Chad looked over at Dave, who was now standing in a combat crouch with his Browning in hand.
“Wasn’t me, Chad,” said Dave simultaneously grabbing his shotgun and scanning the area.
Many weapons at the party were drawn but nobody was firing. Then there was another shot and another.
Chad went across the deck into the house and looked out the front window, Mary at his side. From there they could see a thin, unshaven man whose age appeared to be somewhere between fifty and seventy, stumbling down the street. His clothes were old, dirty, and in disarray. The sole of one of his shoes flopped loose as he tried to run. Four middle aged men were chasing him with weapons. Chad recognized one of them as his neighbor from the house on the corner, Mathew Williams, a dentist.
Chad unlocked and opened the front door. He picked up his AR-15 from the front closet and went out on to the porch.
“Matt!” shouted Chad. “What the hell ...”
He didn’t have a chance to finish his question because Dave had not been idle. He had come out through the gate and appeared behind them, his limp was gone for a moment.
“CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE!” bellowed Dave in his best gunnery sergeant’s voice. “This is a quiet residential neighborhood and you will not fire weapons without cause Dr. Williams! Is that clear?”
“Can’t you see him?” said Matt. “He has it!”
They were still agitated but the group with Matt slowed and lowered weapons they were carrying. Chad looked at the man they were chasing. He had a number of scrapes and bruises and he needed a bath rather badly, but it didn’t really look like the plague.
“What’s the deal?” said Chad as he placed himself between the four men and the object of their ire.
“This guy has been rooting around in our garbage cans for the last two days,” said Matt who was a bit calmer now. “I am surprised you guys didn’t see him. We have been shouting at him to get out and he would run off, but later, sometimes at night, he would creep back and keep at it. We tried to talk to him, but he just keeps mumbling. He has got the Plague I tell you!”
In the excitement, no one had noticed Chris as he had come out of the backyard and walked up behind the group in the street. Amber was two paces to the left and two paces behind, holding her gun in the classic depressed pistol stance as she moved to cover Chris’s weak side. He waited until he was perhaps thirty feet behind Matt before he spoke startling everyone.
“Did you call the police on this?” asked Chris in a more conversational tone, looking to dial down the confrontation.
Yeah,” said one of the men with Matt belligerently. “We called a bunch of times. We were told that if he wasn’t being violent, we should watch him but they had other problems. We decided to fix the problem ourselves!”
“So what were you going to do?” asked Chris who was using the time to close the distance. He had his hand on his pistol but did not draw it.
“Run him off, scare him good!” said Matt. “We weren’t actually going to shoot him.”
“Firing weapons indiscriminately to scare someone like that is often considered felony reckless conduct,” said Chris amiably. “I could take your guns as evidence and run you all in, but I won’t. I suspect you will need them before too long, but firing a shotgun down a residential street without a specific target is that special kind of stupid. There were kids playing in that backyard not fifty feet from where you fired.”
Matt and the men with him began have trouble meeting Chris’s gaze and started to back away, realizing that they could be in some serious trouble.
“But nobody got hurt, right officer?” said Matt trying to placate Chris and avoid trouble.
“This time, you’re right,” said Chris suddenly very serious. “But there are going to be a lot more civilians like yourselves involved in shootings aimed at controlling the infected, demands on law enforcement being what they are. So I have some advice for all of you. First, be damned sure of your target. Make sure the reason you are shooting is really a life threatening situation and not just because you are scared or angry. Next, you can only shoot to kill. People with the ‘Plague’ or hopped up on drugs don’t feel many wounds. You have to put them down. Finally, make sure that you know where your stray rounds will end up.
“I can’t tell you how many police officers have lost their jobs and in some cases have been prosecuted because they were involved in what they thought was a righteous shoot, only to have the round penetrate the wall board of a cheap apartment or shatter a windshield and injure someone.
“So why don’t you guys get a long home and think about what I said?”
Chris was by then among the men and looking at the unfortunate that was the focus of their dispute.
“I know you,” said Chris. “Your name is Charlie Hanson.”
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” mumbled the old man. “Old Charlie ain’t telling anybody anything.”
“Charlie, I have run you out of half a dozen rest stops for spending the night in the past two years,” continued Chris. “I thought you were in a half-way house in Spokane for alcoholics?”
“I was and then I wasn’t,” said Charlie vaguely. “The whole place was full of busy bodies and holy rollers. A man couldn’t think.”
By this time Chad and Dave were standing near the group, armed but not menacing.
“Chad, you’re the expert,” said Chris. Chad winced inwardly. “Does this guy have the plague?”
“Let’s look at the symptoms,” said Chad trying to sound reasonable. “He is not violent or aggressive. He isn’t bleeding except through some pretty recent scrapes that he probably got running from you. He isn’t trying to bite anyone. He is hungry but not out of control. If he was infected, he would have attacked you the first time you yelled at him.”
“He yelled at us!” said one of the men defensively.
“Them kids was throwing rocks at me!” shouted Charlie with some heat.
“It is my professional opinion,” said Chad crossing his fingers as he was by training a statistician and not a medical doctor, “that this man is in the advanced stages of alcoholism. Much of the physiological evidence you see is from living on the street for years. The dementia you are seeing is most probably a result of delirium tremens.”
“I ain’t seein’ no pink elephants,” said Charlie defensively.
“His habits indicate that he has been obviously foraging in the garbage cans outside o
f restaurants downtown,” said Chad, trying to steer the mood to a less violent focus. “They characteristically throw away a lot of food. When the restaurants shut down last week, apparently so did his meal ticket. He is just an old homeless alcoholic with nowhere to go and no support, but he is not infected yet.”
“He still doesn’t belong in this neighborhood!” shouted one of the men.
“Maybe so,” said Chris becoming a bit more forceful. “But it doesn’t give you leave to go shoot innocent civilians because they bother you. Lynch mobs are illegal in the state of Washington last I checked. I suggest you all either go home or join Chad’s nice little party.”
“But what are we going to do with you?” said Chris as he turned towards Charlie. “If it were six months ago, I would call the wagon and we would get you dried out, but times have changed. Nobody out there is going to help you much when their own family’s safety is jeopardized.”
“Don’t want no help,” said Charlie truculently.
“What are you going to eat Charlie?” asked Chris. “Where are you going to live? You keep hanging around on the street, and soon, one of the infected will make a meal out of you!”
“Charlie’s too tough and stringy to be food for anybody!”
“Charlie, my best advice is to get down to the Union Gospel Mission because you can’t stay here,” said Chris sincerely. “They are still accepting people off the street but I don’t know for how long. Maybe they can help you, but these folks won’t. Better get moving.”
Chris turned away from Charlie. Matt and his friends had backed away, embarrassed. Dave and Chad were watching the would-be vigilantes as they left. Amber kept her eye on Charlie as he ambled down the road. Mary was gone but in a few moments, she appeared from the house. She had raced back to the party and made half a dozen sandwiches which she put in one of Connor’s school backpacks that he had outgrown. She caught up to Charlie and handed him the pack.
“Ask for Ruben at the Mission,” said Mary kindly. “He is a good man. There is a message in the pack for you.”
Charlie grabbed the pack and walked off with a little more purpose, headed toward the center of town.
“What was the message?” asked Chad as he walked up and put his arm around Mary.
“It’s the same thing I put in the kids lunches for school since Connor entered kindergarten,” answered Mary. “In each sandwich package I put something like ‘You are not alone’ or ‘dream big’ or ‘being scared is OK’. I have a bunch of these printed up in the kitchen, when I wrapped the sandwiches, they automatically went it. I hope it’s not too corny.”
“It’s just exactly right,” said Chad pulling his wife a little closer.
May 25th, Monday, 7:23 pm PDT.
The lights had come back on after a brief power outage that afternoon and Chad was feeling lucky. He opened up his cell phone and low and behold, he had a signal. He had been hoping to get a call out to Dr. Grieb since he had spoken to Amber but the signal strength was erratic. Since he had it, he was going to try. It rang twice and then Terry picked up.
“Grieb,” said Terry when he answered.
“Hi Terry, this is Chad. Say, do you remember when we tried to visit that Airman at Fort Lewis?”
“You mean the guy that … oh right,” said Terry as he caught the drift of Chad’s circuitous approach. They didn’t know if their communications were compromised, but they weren’t sure they weren’t either.
“Well I have met another … like that,” said Chad warily.
“Damn!” said Terry. “Is he still around, like available for questioning? I love to …”
“Yes, but I don’t want much attention given the way things work out,” said Chad hastily. “We have talked. I have some stuff I would like you to see symptom wise, but that will have to wait until we can visit in person. I did want to tell you though, that there is some sort of mental compulsion to submit to … something. That’s why they vanish. They are fully helping whatever it is.”
“God this awful,” said Terry. “This is useful but it opens more questions than it answers. Is there any way we could get some sort of secure comm?”
“I have spoken more than I should,” said Chad. “Work your end of the deal. If there is some way you can come over here without raising too much fuss or come up with some secure comm, I very much want to share this and pick your brain, but I will not hazard this person. Am I clear?”
“As a bell,” said Terry. “I’ll call or send smoke signals or something when, not if I get something worked out.”
“Right.” said Chad. “As long as I have battery power, I will check my cell phone for messages every morning at 6:45 am. If you need to get some information or you want to make arrangements for a meeting, tell me that way.”
“I’ll work my end,” said Terry.
“Keep this under your hat and tell no one,” said Chad. “Remember your theory? See you soon Terry.”
Chad broke the connection before he could say more and hoped he hadn’t given away too much.
May 25th, Monday, 7:26 pm MDT.
Deep in the bowels of the Cray computer located at the NSA data center at Camp Williams Utah, several keywords triggered an automatic response. The message did not go to the regular channels but rather to a small non-descript office in Maryland. An analyst there, fed in some additional parameters to a NoSQL Dynamo database that coordinated information from several data warehouses across the US. The communications for this system was a peer to peer military satellite network and was thus free of the outages that the internet and other communications channels were experiencing.
The results came out and the analyst’s eye bulged. He reached for a special phone that he only used for very special calls.
“I have another,” said the analyst into the phone, not waiting for the person on the other end to answer.
“Good, send me the information,” said a voice that Special Agent Macklin would have recognized. “We will have a team on it soon. Keep me abreast of events.”
May 26th, Tuesday, 3:57 am PDT
Connor Strickland couldn’t sleep. The power was out again and they had been cautioned to reduce electricity usage so he was wandering around the family room down stair in the dark. His original thought was to use the bathroom, maybe get a drink of water and go back to his own room.
He was trying to be quiet because Amy was sleeping on the couch and she hadn’t slept well at all the previous night. As Connor moved through the family room he heard quiet sobbing. He looked over at the couch and while the bed clothes were rumpled, no one was there. He followed the sound of the sobs and found Amy curled up in the corner, furthest away from the stairs, wrapped in a blanket trying unsuccessfully to cry quietly.
“Amy?” said Connor hesitantly. “Are you OK?”
“How could I be OK!” said Amy more violently than she had intended. “Crap, I am so sorry Connor. You have been so very sweet to me. I shouldn’t be like that to you.”
Connor sat down on the floor next to her.
“No worries, Amy,” said Connor, “you have had a lot on your mind. I don’t know that I could cope as well as you have.”
“I am not coping,” said Amy through a half stifled sob. “I’m hiding. I don’t want to do anything and there is so much work to do and I need to go over to my house and get some of my things, maybe there is something you guys can use and …”
“Hush, Amy, hush,” said Connor as he put his arm around her. “Uncle Dave and my Dad have locked up the place and are keeping an eye on it. Everything will be there when you are ready.”
“But what about …” started Amy and then she bit back and sob and snuffled a bit. “What about her body … I ought to do something. She shouldn’t just lie there … like that.”
“My ‘cousin’ Chris called in a favor,” said Connor. He was still uneasy with the whole new family member thing but Chris seemed alright. “The County Coroner took care of … everything. Just be for a while Amy, things will get bett
er.”
“I hope so,” said Amy in a small voice. “I am glad you are here though. You have been so nice. Can you sit with me a while? I know you have watch in a few minutes but I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“Take all the time you need,” said Connor.
May 27th, Wednesday, 9:03 am EDT.
Special Agent Macklin’s last three days had not been pleasant. When he showed up at his office, his supervisor, Deputy Director Erickson had berated him at length for coming back without being recalled. He was now involved in something called information fusion. It meant trying to find patterns and connections in the security data. Most of it was done with sophisticated data mining techniques but you still needed a human to see, and bring together seemingly unraveled threads.
He suspected that the data he was going over had already been reviewed and he was shuffling paper to keep him quiet and out of the way. He didn’t know how much longer he would have a position in government and right now, he didn’t particularly care.
His special phone rang. Ever since he had arrived in Washington and reported back to his office, he had dreaded that call. It was the third day and he had hoped that they had forgotten him.
“Macklin.”
“We have a job for you to do today,” said the disembodied voice from the phone, “one that even your limited skills would find difficult to screw up.”
“What is it?” asked Macklin with trepidation.
“Tomorrow, a package will be delivered to your apartment. Take it to work and leave it in the control center in your building. Then leave immediately. We may need you again.”
“Wait, the post office has stopped delivering and I don't even think Fed Ex will come to my neighborhood anymore?”
“Cretin!” said the voice. “The delivery will be made by our drivers, though they will be dressed as postal service employees.”
“But what is in the box?” asked Macklin nervously.