Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “A hundred fifty, last year.” Bettario nodded. “Yeah, sums it up pretty well.”

  “Sounds better than getting jabbed in the eye with a sharp stick.” Morgret glanced around the small patch of land he owned by virtue of squatter’s rights. He had grown roots here, but somehow it didn’t feel like he was leaving anything behind.

  “Carlos, get your boys to help me take down this LAST CHANCE sign, then I’ll be ready to go.”

  Chapter 37

  A pounding on the door pierced through the layers of fog that enveloped Jeffrey Mayeaux’s mind, waking him out of a blissful few hours of sleep. He hated the constant interruptions that came with being an “important man.” Well, in another year he could forget all that bilgewater.

  Mayeaux woke up, smelling the disorienting strangeness of new sheets. Pieces fell into place. Two-story resort apartment in Ocean City, a getaway Weathersee had arranged for him a month ago. And nobody was supposed to know where he was. Pickled crawfish! Weathersee must have blabbed.

  The pounding returned from somewhere outside the darkened bedroom… the front door. It was too damn early for a person to think. Besides, this was what, Sunday?

  He started to roll over and get off the bed when the woman beside him moaned softly in her sleep; her head rested on his arm. Mayeaux could still smell sweat on the sheets. She was in her early twenties, large breasts, small ass, long blond hair. She brayed like a mule when she came, but it had turned him on a little. Too bad she had the face like a mule, too, but who cared?

  As memories of last night came back to him, he felt another erection stirring. Weathersee had arranged for the babe to be waiting for him at the condo. Mayeaux never knew whether his Chief of Staff actually paid for these women, or if he enticed them in some other way. Good old Weathersee.

  Mayeaux’s wife knew the locations of his “love nests,” and she even called him once in a while when she needed his help with one of the houses or some other emergency. But no one was supposed to know about the Ocean City place.

  The door would probably splinter soon under the relentless pounding. The sheer monotonous nature told him it was probably some security goons. Anybody with half a brain would have figured out by now that Mayeaux didn’t want to talk to anybody. What a great way to wake up and start the day.

  Mayeaux somehow managed to slide off the side of the bed and pick up his robe without waking the babe.

  He could hear a muffled voice yelling his name as he closed the bedroom door behind him and padded down the stairs. “Hold on, Boog, for gawd’s sake,” he said.

  The saeside apartment smelled of stale wine and ripe cheese. Sunlight streamed across the foyer where he had forgotten to close the curtains the night before. How he wished he could find someplace in the D.C. area that served decent cafe au lait and beignets for breakfast.

  With the spreading panic and the mechanical breakdowns caused by the gasoline plague sweeping across the country, Mayeaux should have realized he couldn’t get away for a day. Just one fucking day, and it had been planned for months. Granted, he could recognize the magnitude of the growing crisis—but he wasn’t in charge. Other people could take care of things for a few hours, couldn’t they?

  By Friday night only a few outbreaks had been reported in Maryland and a few in Virginia, but the news got more frantic hour after hour. California had closed its borders, far too late to stop the spread of the plague, and information from the west coast was sporadic.

  Vice President Wolani had been stuck in Chicago on a speaking tour when the FAA ordered an immediate shutdown of the entire commercial airline industry in the wake of a dozen major crashes that had been blamed on disintegrating plastic components.

  Mayeaux had chuckled upon learning that President Holback was stranded in the Middle East on his widely publicized diplomatic tour to Qatar, or one of those countries, when Air Force One itself was found to be infected with the petroplague… and now the petroleum-eating microorganisms were ravaging some of the largest Arabian oil fields. He wouldn’t want to be in Holback’s shoes at the moment.

  “Mr. Speaker? Are you in there?” The voice from outside sounded loud and firm enough to pierce the solid door.

  Mayeaux peered through the peephole. Two men in dark suits stood on his porch, wires running from their collars to earplugs. He could see three other men standing out in the sand. Secret Service? Jeez, couldn’t they be a bit more subtle? They stood out like a day-glow billboard in this beach town.

  A chill raced down his back. Damn, what could they want? Was this a sting? His initial fear that he was in trouble left him quickly—someone in authority would be present, an official from Justice, if he had done anything wrong. And Mayeaux had never made any secret about his affairs.

  But Secret Service, here? If it was so damned important to wake him up on a Sunday morning, Weathersee should have telephoned him. Then he remembered having his calls forwarded to the office; he’d unplugged the phones here since his wife and kids were staying with friends.

  The Secret Service man seemed to sense him standing on the other side of the door. “Mr. Speaker—it’s important, sir. We have to speak with you.”

  Mayeaux peered beyond the man in the peephole. The beach had been cordoned. The place was surrounded by plain-clothes officers.

  “Yes?” Oh, shit. Mayeaux’s mind whirled. For the first time in years, he found it difficult to keep his political mask in place.

  “It’s urgent, sir.”

  As Mayeaux unbolted the door, the Secret Service man pushed his way in. The other, as big as a professional linebacker, motioned to the rest of the team. Mayeaux smelled the wash of cool, damp air from the ocean.

  The first Secret Service officer seemed relieved to see him. “Mr. Speaker, thank God we found you.” But he didn’t look Mayeaux in the eye as he spoke—instead, his eyes darted around the apartment, checking, verifying. He wasn’t sweating, or ruffled in the least from all his pounding on the door.

  Mayeaux sputtered. “What are you talking about?”

  Another agent pushed into the townhouse. He spoke to the first man. “Satchmo’s secure?”

  “Right,” said the first agent, who relayed the information through a walkie-talkie.

  Mayeaux drew his bathrobe around him, and suddenly froze. Satchmo? The Secret Service used code names for the president, the vice president, and their immediate families….

  He’d had enough of this crap. “All right, what’s going on? Did Holback send you here to harass me?”

  The first agent stopped, his face suddenly screwed into a hard look. His blue eyes continued to flick back and forth. “No, sir. We have to inform you that Vice President Harald Wolani was killed last night in an elevator accident in the Sears Tower in Chicago. The plague has spread there, sir, somewhat more extensively than expected.”

  “Wolani’s dead?” Mayeaux stepped back, bumping into the pale blue sofa. He automatically started to sit down, but he locked his knees and stood up again.

  Mayeaux wanted a Bloody Mary—hell, make it a George Dickel, neat!—but he couldn’t get up the nerve to walk to the wet bar.

  “We have also lost contact with the president, sir,” the first agent said. “There’s a great deal of turmoil in Qatar, and the last communication we had from the ambassador was that the Qatar government is refusing to guarantee the president’s safety. We have been unable to reestablish communication.”

  “Jeffrey, what’s going on? Should I come down?” A sleepy voice drifted from the bedroom upstairs.

  “No!” Mayeaux shouted. He didn’t have the slightest idea what the bitch’s name was.

  An agent ran up the stairs. “I’ll check it out.”

  “You know what this means, sir—” the first agent continued, finally halting his roving gaze and meeting Mayeaux’s eyes.

  “Of course I know!” he said. Then he finally allowed himself to slump onto the sofa. “I’m acting as president until you can reestablish contact with Holback.”

/>   “If we can reestablish contact, sir. President Holback is a prime target for retribution.”

  “You damn well better reestablich contact!” Mayeaux climbed to his feet again, feeling his legs shake. “Get me some coffee.” Turning his back on the Secret Service agent, he walked slowly and carefully toward the kitchenette.

  The agent continued, as if he had been wound up and needed to finish his routine. “The beach area is secure, sir. We need to get you back to DC. To swear you in.”

  Mayeaux drew a breath and felt his head hammer with panic. Everything was happening too fast. He had expected to retire after this term, and settle back in New Orleans. He had arranged everything for a quiet and lucrative lobbying career. Everything had been arranged. Mayeaux flopped out a hand to steady himself.

  Strangers shoved into the apartment; loud voices and activity swirled around him. Everything seemed unreal. Outside, the Secret Service people checked the convoy. An army gasoline truck pulled up, ready to follow the limousines. It was only a three-hour drive back to the White House. Even if some of the vehicles broke down en route, at least one would make it all the way.

  And Mayeaux would be sworn in.

  He stood blinking in surprise.

  He didn’t want to be president in the middle of what looked like the gravest crisis since World War II. If not worse.

  Chapter 38

  The world around Albuquerque broke into smaller and smaller pieces, and General Bayclock knew survival might depend on the Air Force Base’s stockpile of emergency supplies. In the late afternoon, he stepped out of the dim Base HQ building and looked around at the streets of Kirtland, appalled at the rapid change.

  The silence was deafening, where once the roar of airplanes landing and taking off from the flight line had soothed Bayclock all day long. No flights had come into the airport in two days, now that all air traffic had been frozen.

  Relying only on scrambled, broken communications that did more to cause panic than convey information, Bayclock had placed Kirtland Air Force Base on DEFCON 3 status, pulling all essential personnel onto the base and increasing guards at each of the gates. Within hours of the first evidence of the plague’s effects, he had ordered the commissary and BX on strict rationing.

  Now, the once-chaotic streets were empty of traffic. Under Bayclock’s orders, the base quickly adapted to the new routine. A few airmen and civilian workers walked down the sidewalk across the street, past a parking lot full of cars, vans, and government vehicles that would probably never start again. One rider puttered down the empty lanes on a moped that ran on alcohol. It wouldn’t be long before its plastic components gave out and caused the vehicle to break down like its gas-burning counterparts.

  Having dismissed his aide, Bayclock set off on foot toward the base exchange to take care of his own needs. Food. Canned goods. Bottled water. His personal quota should be there waiting for him. He wondered if he needed to place an extra set of armed guards at the BX doors.

  He trusted his people, and he knew they would follow orders. They’d had the chain-of-command drilled into them since Basic Training, but Bayclock felt uneasy about his tenuous grip on civilization. He felt out of touch, forced to make decisions with too little information. He was reluctant to risk overreacting in the face of the plague, but now it appeared that the germ was even more voracious than his worst fears. In mere days, Albuquerque had become a shambles.

  Bayclock crossed the avenue in front of the HQ, habitually looking both ways before stepping into the crosswalk, then headed down the block. He saw no lights on in any of the barracks-style buildings, though some of the base personnel had opened windows to let the breeze in.

  As he walked through the eerie, stifled silence, he thought about the death of Vice President Wolani two days earlier. It had shocked him deeply, but even with the President out of the country, Bayclock had solid faith in the chain of command.

  The base exchange annex looked too crowded as he approached. Bayclock straightened his cap and walked briskly forward, squinting in the low-slanted sunlight. Hand-painted sandwich board signs stood propped by the BX gas pumps. CONTAMINATED FUEL. As if anybody could drive there to fill up their tanks!

  A handful of people in and out of uniform milled around the BX. A ripple passed through the crowd as a tall captain noticed Bayclock and gave a salute. Bayclock returned the salute and walked through the open glass doors.

  He set about gathering up anything he might need for the next few days, focusing his attention with relentless determination. The shelves looked half empty, well picked-over. Up at the cash register, the middle-aged male checker argued with an enlisted man over how many boxes of dried milk he could take. Bayclock felt like he was in combat again as he took the two remaining cans of soup—tomato and split pea, which he didn’t even like—and some bags of Cracklin’ Hot pork rinds.

  As he picked up the pork rinds, though, his fingers slipped through the plastic package as if it were a half-cooked egg white. The thin film broken, air seeped out of the package, and the bag collapsed into a mucous-like slime. He stared in disgust and shock, then shook his hand to fling away the goop.

  Down another aisle, plastic bottles of soda wept droplets of moisture. One bottle of Nehi grape split and collapsed, spurting purple liquid over the floor. From the sticky mess on the floor, he could tell that random bottles had been doing that all day long as different types of plastic succumbed to the microbe.

  One of the BX employees, a youngish black woman with her hair trimmed as bristly short as Bayclock’s, see-sawed with a mop, frantically trying to clean up foul-smelling chlorine bleach that dribbled over the shelves into boxes of other detergents. Bayclock stiffened as he thought of the nearby plastic bottles of ammonia. If all the chemicals spilled together, they might mix to form a cloud of deadly chlorine gas.

  “You! Move those bottles of ammonia!” he snapped. The woman jumped, looking at him. She dropped the mop handle. It clacked against the metal shelves as it fell. Bayclock raised his voice, annoyed at her hesitation. “Do it now.”

  Without watching to see if she followed his order, Bayclock collected his rations and took his place in line at the cash register. The woman in front of him held a plastic gallon container of milk; as Bayclock watched, the handle stretched and snapped off. Milk poured down the woman’s leg and gurgled onto the floor. She dropped the container, staring stupidly at it as if her pet dog had just bitten her. Milk splashed on Bayclock’s clean trouser leg.

  He stepped back, frowning at the mess she had made of his uniform. The floor felt tacky, as if from many spilled substances—but then he noticed that the linoleum itself had begun to soften.

  He grabbed his supply of canned food, glanced at it, and tossed a twenty-dollar bill at the middle-aged cashier. “Keep it,” he growled. “That’s more than enough.”

  Bayclock left the store at a brisk walk. He wanted to get back to the office, where he felt in control of things. It was time to establish more stringent control of the whole rationing process. Time to crack down on a lot of things.

  Chapter 39

  Heather Dixon wasn’t the only one who had realized the world was going to hell. Not by a long shot.

  She fought with the crowds in the camping-supply store, smelling the sweat of other people. It would take little to turn the rest of the shoppers into a mob.

  Heather began to panic, moving quickly and breathing hard, afraid she wouldn’t get the equipment she needed to survive the coming months. She pushed past a tall, rail-thin woman in dissolving polyester slacks, banged into a half-empty set of metal shelves, and made her way toward the back of the store.

  Two truck-driver types—one bearded, one balding—came to blows over nylon sleeping bags; Heather wondered if the nylon would last after the petroplague swept through.

  At the front counter, the owner of the store—a dumpy man who looked as if he had never been camping in his life—rang up purchase after purchase with a glazed look in his eyes. He couldn’t s
eem to believe his luck.

  Heather made her way down the aisles, clutching a sweat-wrinkled piece of paper on which she had jotted down her list of essentials. She felt sick when she saw that all of the large aluminum-framed backpacks were gone. Why had she wasted time writing out the damned list? She should have run the half mile to the store to fight for the items she had to have. Obtaining the right equipment could mean the difference between life and death, and people—a growing number of them—were just beginning to realize the scope of the breakdown.

  She pushed to the backpack section, saw labels and crumpled tissue packing material scattered across the floor—and a single remaining backpack frame on the bottom shelf. One of the aluminum support bars was twisted, as if someone had tripped over it; the neon-pink fabric was garish, but what did that matter? She hoped the fabric wouldn’t dissolve, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  As she hurried to the last pack, a man wearing jeans and a Bugs Bunny t-shirt sprinted for it. Heather hesitated, then decided to race him. She’d had enough of being stepped on, and things were damn well going to change!

  Bugs Bunny had tucked three bottles of propane for a gas cooking stove under his arm, which gave him trouble running. Heather grabbed the bent strut of the backpack, and the man pulled on the opposite side.

  “I got it—” the man said.

  Heather answered by jamming an elbow in his gut. With a surprised “oof!” Bugs dropped his three metal bottles of propane. They clanged and bounced on the floor, and Bugs released his hold to scramble for them.

  Heather yanked the neon-pink backpack free and clutched it to her chest. “It isn’t your color anyway,” she said, then stalked down another aisle. The incident sparked her mood. It was time to stop accepting everybody’s leftovers.

  Heather stood taller than most of the other women in the store and a good many of the men. She quit excusing herself every time she bumped into another shopper. They could damned well get out of her way. She recalled the advice given in the self-defense seminars Surety Insurance required their employees to take. “Don’t look like a victim.” She tried to appear stern, imagining Al Sysco standing in front of her. The thought brought a flash of cold-metal anger, and she could feel her face tighten.