by Ginger Booth
“No. If you had to pick a headland it would be that one, not this one. You can’t tell because of all the trees in the photo, but this one is densely populated. That one’s mostly a wildlife sanctuary, with a marshy lagoon. But still, kids are always ripping off the islands and the points. Even when they’re not crowded, they’re rich. They’re well worth ripping off. And they make great party pads.”
Adam snorted rueful agreement. He owned just that sort of property, a break-in Mecca for partying teenagers.
“The islands are a little harder to reach and easier to defend, but then you need a boat to get food on and off the island. Over here in the marsh, there’s actually a nice wide paved path starting here, with a little parking lot that’s always empty.” I marked it. “You’re under tree cover the whole way to the bunker. There’s a nice overlook about here to watch a great white heron’s nest.”
Zack laughed. “And that’s why there’s a path?”
“I have no idea why they paved the path,” I replied. “It was dirt when I was a kid. I’ve never seen anyone else there. Though I know the guy who built the heron perch. He was a few years ahead of me in school.”
“Raspberries all through there, I bet,” said Zack, grinning.
“You know it,” I agreed. “Blueberries, too. Deer. Heron. Great crabbing in the marsh.”
Zack nodded, smiling appreciation. “I’ll have to check it out. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I powered off the displays.
“So, Zack,” Adam interjected. “We had dinner plans tonight we ought to get to. So… Thanks so much, man, for helping out with the battery. That would have taken us twice as long without you.” He offered a manly handshake.
“Yeah, thanks, Zack. And thanks for helping with Alex,” I chimed in. I relieved him of his empty beer bottle and steered him toward the front door. “And I’ll think about the, um, cache thing. There might be some other spots. Of course, you want more than one.”
Zack’s head whipped around toward me. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. More than one would be good.” Maybe he hadn’t considered that. Two egg baskets are better than one, after all.
“Maybe even a line of them running up the coast. In rampant paranoia,” Adam chimed in cheerily. Zack laughed pro forma.
We finally got him out the door.
Adam wandered back toward his handiwork on the battery, but then leaned up against the wall and looked at me. “So, I’m not sure how to ask this.”
“Have I slept with him?”
He grinned crookedly. “That was the question, yeah.”
“No.” I pulled off my grubby sweatshirt and tossed it on the couch. This showed off the pink striped steampunk corset beneath. “I haven’t.”
Adam smiled and took a stroll around me to examine the corset. He drew a finger down a lace side insert to rest on the jeans waistband. “And you make these?”
“I do. There’s a lot of piece work. Like here.” I traced the seaming on the cup nearest his hand. “I try to match the stripes neatly.”
He raised the cup to examine it more closely. “Yes, it’s beautiful work. And these grommets are so tidy down the front.” He twanged the strings tying the grommets together down the front.
We ate later.
I was just getting used to Alex when Mangal moved in next door, the following weekend.
“Dee!” Mangal launched in when I answered his video call. “You said Alex is finding plenty of vacant houses near you.”
“Yes?”
“And is there violence?”
“Violence! No. Mangal, what’s going on?”
“There’s this survivalist group. They grabbed Shanti outside the supermarket today and flung her to the ground.” Shanti was Mangal’s wife. “They kicked her in the ribs, saying how all Muslims should die. They stole all the food she bought. Right in front of the children in the shopping cart. A cop was just standing there. He turned his back on her. The supermarket guards did nothing. This was a crowded parking lot. No one helped her. They just looked away.”
“Oh, my God. Is Shanti alright?”
“She’s very upset. The bruises will heal. But we don’t feel safe here. She wants to pack up the car and leave right this minute. She’s putting food in the car right now.”
“Wow. Yes, the house next door with the swimming pool is empty. Looks like they left all their furniture. I pay the utilities so the pipes don’t freeze. I could get a group together and come help you pack?”
“No, I’ll get the community here to help with that. If you could get the refrigerator running and the heat on and stuff like that?”
“Will do. Muslim, huh?”
“I don’t know. We’re brown, so it’s OK to hurt us and steal from us. Maybe…”
For a Jain, that was a remarkably immoderate and judgmental statement. Picture Mahatma Gandhi dealing with thugs. Gandhi wasn’t even a Jain. He was just inspired by them.
In the end, four households worth of Jains transplanted from Broomfield to my neighborhood. Alex selected houses for them. In retrospect, I imagine Zack helped him pick. Mangal and Shanti moved in next door that very day with their two preschoolers, and a very old man we just called ‘Grandfather.’ Grandfather wasn’t too clear mentally, but Shanti insisted he was a great help with the children.
I called my state legislator to complain of hate crimes in Broomfield. At first she thought I was talking about our district and was shocked and eager to get right on it. But when I clarified it was Broomfield, she changed her tune. “Oh. Well, it’s good that they got away from there. If they run into any trouble here, let me know.”
No one was going to do anything about Broomfield. The local news, of course, said nothing. Who knows. Maybe in this case it was for the best. Stressed people latch onto weird ideas. I sure didn’t want copy-cat hate crimes on defenseless women with small children.
The Jains soon hooked up with the local enclave of Nepalese Buddhists and assorted other minorities in the overwhelmingly white township. Alex, and probably Zack, placed them together for mutual support. Shanti’s days were packed with community service. One day a week their home was packed with a community preschool, filled with an adorable rainbow of little kids. The eventual white kids looked as colorful as the rest, with their olive or white or speckled pink skins, red frizzy or brown wavy or pale yellow straight hair. It took a couple months for the school to expand beyond the first Jain and Nepalese kids, though.
But four days a week somebody else had Shanti’s kids and she was free to pursue other projects. Her burning priority was that she wanted a community that had her back. So she was a whirlwind of helpfulness.
The best part of having Shanti next door was that procuring food was getting to be a time-consuming hassle. She processed her trauma in Broomfield by becoming a lead shopper for her family and friends. If there was bulk rice or flour or sugar or cabbage to be found anywhere in the New Haven area, Shanti found it. And she braved any crush of people to get it. She did get bruised a few more times. Grandfather came home once with a terrible gash to his forehead that needed stitches. She left him home after that. But she would not back down, or compromise her pacifist values. She charged back into the fray again and again with courtesy and respect for her fellow shoppers, no matter how they behaved.
It was a shame she wouldn’t buy meat. But she was willing to acquire dairy products and eggs for me, and that would do. She probably saved me a lot of money that way. Meat prices were skyrocketing.
Alex preferred the violent sorts of video games popular with boys his age. He kept the Jain camp and their Buddhist buddies at arm’s length when they tried to share their values with him. He and Mangal especially became the most cautious of friends. Mangal was consistently courteous, even-tempered, and interested in Alex’s activities. Alex kinda sidled around the edge of the room to avoid him when the topic of video games came up.
Alex longed to use my giant display for gaming. I made clear that wasn’t going to happen.
But Alex and I cooperated with community cooking. Meaning, we cooked as Shanti directed us sometimes, and made extras as instructed. We rarely ate Shanti’s cooking, though, because it was hotter than hell.
The net result was that Alex was no burden on me at all, just a young friend who was frequently around. Between Zack, Shanti, Mangal, and me, he was well looked after and encouraged. He came out of his shell regularly seeking food, and we put him to work. He tackled his work with a will. Pointed assignments led him to team up with other teens.
Alex was still sad about his Mom. He still insisted on living alone in his own house, with his guinea pigs and rabbits. But his self-esteem soared, and he seemed to be well-liked. I certainly liked him. He was good company.
I wasn’t used to having so much company around. Aside from Mangal, the crowd respected my workday, though. Mangal often came over to beg a quieter place to work.
Our work assignments were aggravating as hell.
After a few days of paranoia, we realized there was no reason for Mangal and me to be shy about saying anything we wanted to each other in my office, about the classified materials we’d been given. Our story was that we shared staffing and workload and subbed in for each other, so we shared classified background files, and we stuck to that story. I don’t know if anyone up the food chain would have agreed with us. Our boss Dan certainly wouldn’t want to know. But no Secret Service types arrived to drag us away.
Mangal knew exactly where the borders were going. He had full satellite intel on how they were progressing. He had complete plans and schedules and even the military headcounts. He came up with suitably cheerful cartoony overlays showing the borders extending into place over time. His copywriter must have rewritten the explanatory blurbs a dozen times just for the northern section of the I-95 corridor, the Northeast. But every prototype got shot down by the censors.
With the weather interactives, I tried going for a strictly you-are-here approach, featuring only the strange weather events for the user’s own local area. The prototypes and copywriting were approved when I submitted samples explaining familiar old weather patterns. What creates a thunderstorm. How hail forms. But new weather innovations like St. Elmo’s Fire, ball lightning, the Dust Bowl dust storms, the hurricane and tornado seasons that were now twelve months long, the new and improved Alberta Clipper – all censored, redacted, or turned into lies by the censors.
“Our viewership asked for these things for a reason,” I complained to Mangal one day. “If these interactives don’t answer the user’s questions, they’re garbage.”
“You’re preaching to the choir again,” Mangal replied with a sigh.
“But look, I tested these blurbs through Google Censor yesterday. It passed,” I said, loading it in again to demonstrate.
Calumet was a free plugin hosted by Google that virtually all social sites depended on these days to comply with the Calm Act. It conveniently encapsulated communications with the censorship web services provided by Homeland Security. Much to Google’s annoyance, everyone called it Google Censor instead of Calumet. Google even ran an advertising campaign to explain and politely disown the utility. But that just cemented ‘Google Censor’ in everyone’s minds.
“Hello. It’s down,” I said.
“What’s down? Google Censor?” Mangal tried it himself.
Calumet is temporarily offline in your area.
Please try your post again tomorrow.
“Shit,” said Mangal.
“You said a bad word,” I observed mildly. He didn’t like to do that.
“No, I’ve read about this on the hack sites. Google Censor goes down in an area when events are expected that they just don’t want discussed. In any way.”
We shared a look. We turned back to our keyboards and told our people to get home if they weren’t home, and batten down the hatches. I couldn’t reach Shelley, but figured she’d be alright. The interns didn’t telecommute. I asked Dan to keep an eye out for her at the Stamford office, and have her check in by email.
“National Weather Service?” I asked.
Mangal checked. “It’s partly cloudy today. With a 30% chance of showers later.”
I snorted. It had been drizzling all day. “And the real National Weather Service?” As opposed to the censored one. Sometimes it was interesting to check both and see how they diverged.
“That was the real one. Checking real satellite… Nothing interesting.”
“OK.” I called Alex. He was at a friend’s house helping with a carpentry project. I asked him to stay put for now, and promised to feed his furries for him.
Mangal called Shanti and told her something was wrong and he didn’t know what. Shanti took the ball from there for everyone Mangal knew.
I checked on Zack. He was working on building the cache out in the marsh. I told him exactly what I knew – no clues so far except Google Censor down. “It could just be a network glitch,” I said.
“No, thank you for telling me. I mean, yeah, it could be, but – I appreciate the head’s up. We can wrap up here and head home.”
“Any food stashed in there yet?”
“Not a crumb.”
Last I called Adam. Not because he was less important, but because he was more likely to be somewhere safe. I was wrong.
“Hello, Dee! I am amazed. I haven’t been able to get a single phone call out in the past hour. Everyone around me now is grabbing their phones, and yeah, failing to getting a signal. How did you get through?”
“Uh, magic pixie dust, you know,” I replied randomly. “You’re at the ark?”
“No. In fact. I was in Manhattan for a meeting. Now I’m walking along the railroad tracks just east of the New York line. The border closed very suddenly. I caught the last train out. Along with several thousand new friends. I have never seen a train that long on the New Haven line, not even the holiday trains. It was supposed to be an express to Greenwich. But they kicked us off at Port Chester and told us to walk to Greenwich station. Along the railroad tracks. They were quite specific on that point.”
Port Chester was the last New York town on the train line, with Greenwich the first Connecticut stop. A river between them formed the state and town border.
“Is there an armed escort?”
“Yes, plenty of company. A lot less now, though. The railroad bridge across the river to Greenwich was interesting. I had ID proving Connecticut residency, a valid passport with proof of Ebola vaccination, and my security clearances. That got me expedited permission to cross the bridge. Most of the others – Wait, hang on.”
Adam didn’t muffle the phone, but I couldn’t hear the other party to his side conversation well. Someone was yelling at him, but not from close by. “My girlfriend… I don’t know, she called me… Absolutely, officer… Trooper, excuse me…
“Dee, sorry about that. Me talking on the phone is causing unrest here. I’ll call you when I make it home, OK?”
“Please. No matter how late, OK? Bye, Adam.”
I turned to Mangal. “CDC and borders. Maybe Ebola.”
“On it.” I filled him in on what Adam said while his fingers flew on the keyboard.
Mangal was incensed. “If that was an emergency closure for quarantine, no one should have been allowed out.”
“Adam had proof of Ebola immunization. It’s not clear the rest of them are getting out,” I said.
“Found it,” said Mangal. “This can’t be right. Looks like over 150 confirmed cases. All boroughs of New York, plus Hoboken, Newark, Hempstead on Long Island, all over. Why would they allow anyone into the city from Connecticut today?”
“When were the cases confirmed?”
Tap. Tap-tap. “Just last night, for the first one. A couple more before dawn, and then blam, most of these just since this morning. Another 50 or so cases added just since we’ve been looking.” Mangal sat back. “Does that… make any sense?”
“Does seem odd.” We contemplated that for a moment. “Do you do
ubt that it’s really an Ebola outbreak?”
Mangal considered that. Unlike me, he’d been to the pandemic areas in Africa, and was immunized. “Lifestyle makes it hard to catch here. Ebola is communicated through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. That’s hard to avoid in West Africa, but it’s really unusual in New York. Well, for bystanders. First responders and hospital staff are more at risk. If they didn’t realize quickly enough that’s what they were dealing with, I suppose it could be Ebola.”
I checked the borders status. All New York City borders were closed tight, over two weeks ahead of schedule. The remaining fragment of open border on the western edge of New England, between New York state and Massachusetts and the northern bit of Connecticut, appeared to be closing as fast as they could manage it. The Coast Guard was deployed in force along Long Island Sound. The Sound separated Connecticut and the 100-mile Long Island just south of us. Long Island hosted two of New York City’s five boroughs, and perhaps six million other people. Other New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey borders seemed to be a mishmash of open and closed.
“Passing 500 confirmed cases,” said Mangal. “A lot of these are at border checkpoints.”
“How long does it take to verify Ebola?”
“Oh, it’s pretty quick these days,” he assured me. “They’ve had a lot of practice managing the situation in Africa. There’s a 10-minute screening test with a low rate of false negatives. Once someone has a fever. Quite a few false positives.” He sighed.
That was not a test you’d care to have a false positive on. In Africa, you’d immediately be thrown into an Ebola ward with active disease cases. If you didn’t really have Ebola yet, you would soon.
I checked the incoming video news, stories UNC was submitting to the censors for approval. The first ‘Breaking News’ report was probably already self-censored. I pulled it up to watch. Rapidly developing story of Ebola outbreak in New York. Video of a crowded hospital ward in Brooklyn, caregivers in hazmat suits. Sudden border closings to prevent contagion. Rioting and trampling deaths in Grand Central Station and Penn Station. Commuters caught inside the city, while public transportation shut down. Video of a veritable army trudging down a pedestrian lane in the Holland Tunnel into New Jersey. A wide shot of a blocks-long line of commuters waiting to descend into the Tunnel. Authorities are urging citizens to –