by Ginger Booth
Kyla pulled out her camera. “No filming!” the guard barked, and aimed his gun at her. She tucked her camera away, and we both held up our hands placatingly.
A harried-looking young woman approached. “Well, let them in,” she said, in exasperation. “Dee Baker and Kyla Osterwald? I’m Dr. Clarke Whitfield, Dr. Aoyama’s assistant. How do you do? Come this way.” Whitfield didn’t stop for breath, just glanced uneasily at the guard. She hoofed it as soon as we slipped in the gate. I knew from her CV that she was a post-doc, and thus probably around 30. But she was a very petite woman, who barely looked old enough for college. The once-white lab coat and severe short brown ponytail looked like a Halloween costume on her.
We scurried to catch up across a blank field of overgrown grass, toward a grey row of Quonset hut style temporary buildings. From outside the gate, I’d decided that the purpose of the empty field was a clear line of fire, and time to aim from the machine gun towers.
Whitfield slammed her way into the building, and kept us half-trotting along a central corridor. Judging from the sudden heavy drumming on the roof, we’d made it inside moments before the dark clouds let loose.
“Here,” she said at last, pushing open the last door to the left. “Tom,” she announced. She turned on her heel, and sped away.
“Tom!” I cried. “So good to see you!” I grinned warmly, before I took in the man before me.
I’d last seen him half a year ago, battered and bloody, drugged and asleep in the doctor’s camper of a gran caravan. He almost looked better back then. His face, once moon shaped, was hollow, his cheek bones clearly visible. The roots of his near-black hair had gone steel grey. He tried to stand and fumbled over his own chair wheels. I grabbed him by the elbow before he fell.
“It’s good to see you, Tom,” I repeated fiercely. I drew him into a hug, feeling his bony shoulders.
“Dee,” he said wonderingly. Once I let go, he sunk back into his chair.
“Oh! I have something for you,” I said, and rummaged in my pack. I handed him a manila envelope.
He opened it to pull out a crayon drawing from his daughter Charity. It showed a mommy and two kids, a smiling girl and frowning boy, on a big grey ship. And a man standing alone on a little island. Tom lovingly touched the crayon on the paper, that had touched his little girl. His fingernail had never regrown from his torture at HomeSec.
“She divorced me, you know. Beth.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice. “Did you see them? Charity and Dennis?”
“I’m sorry, no.” I shrugged. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me into Ark 7 again. “Do you remember Corporal Tibbs? He brought the envelope to me.”
“Cro-Magnon man,” Tom said. He’d called Tibbs that, while we were in the Ark 7 brig.
I snickered. “Funny, he remembers that, too. How are you, Tom?”
He rubbed his hair, and pointed a finger vaguely around the room. “This, is hard.” He nodded to himself and stroked the crayon tracks. The tears had stopped. “The guards. The misery. The hunger. It’s so very hard, Dee. That day, in the brig. I was so damned cocky then, you know? It all seemed so easy. They were just stupid. Cro-Magnon.”
“You saved a lot of lives, Tom,” I held his eye, willing him to believe that I believed in him. “You did it. You proved it could be done. Emmett will scale it up from here.”
Tom nodded, his whole body rocking. “Emmett hated me. I thought he was a cocky son of a bitch. He thought I was a cocky son of a bitch. We were both right.”
I held his shoulder and breathed deeply, slowly. I calmed his rocking. “Is it time for you to leave here, Tom? Maybe you need to come home to New Haven with me. Take a rest.”
“No. No!” he said, winding back up in agitation. “I’ll never leave here! There’s no end. No end!”
“Shh, Tom,” I crooned, and held him, rocking. “You succeeded, Tom. Thank you. You’re alright. Just cry if you need to. Cry it all the way out.”
Whitfield looked in on us, scurried away, and returned with a pill and a glass of water. “A mild sedative,” she offered. I stared her down until she placed them on the desk. She swallowed.
I needed to watch my temper here, I warned myself. Little Dr. Whitfield was the friendliest competent person we’d met yet. It likely wasn’t her fault that Tom was falling apart. She’d only tried to help with the sedative. The ions from the storm clouds were making me edgy as much as anything else, I told myself.
My little internal pep-talk wasn’t working. What I wanted to do was scream at her, demand to know whether she’d told Emmett how bad off Tom was.
I blew through my lips trying to cool off. She saw it and flinched.
“Are you in touch with Colonel MacLaren?” I asked, as mildly as I could.
“Colonel who?”
“Major Emmett MacLaren was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel,” I clarified. I continued to stroke Tom’s back slowly. He sat placidly now, his head resting against my stomach.
“Oh! Emmett. Yes. I spoke with him the day before yesterday. We’d just started training a new team. He had them sent to Greenwich. He’s left us very short-handed.”
“That was the team of medics from the Army National Guard, correct?” I prodded.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Who were sent here to be trained for duty in Greenwich,” I completed the thought.
“He’s left us very short-handed,” she reiterated pissily.
“I don’t understand,” I said pointedly. “Did more people leave than Colonel MacLaren sent to you for training?”
“No,” she admitted. “I’m very busy.” She slammed back out of the room.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to piss her off, Dee,” Kyla suggested.
I sighed. “Probably not.” My watch said it was almost 10 a.m. Only six and a half hours to go until Cam came back for us.
“I’m alright, Dee,” said Tom, surprising me. He sat up and scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “That picture from Charity just overwhelmed me for a minute. Sorry.” He tucked the drawing into the envelope and handed it to me. “Toss that on the bed for me?”
There was a cot in the corner, under a tangle of clothes and bedding. “You sleep in here? You really need to get out more, Tom.”
“I don’t trust Whitfield. I need to stay here and keep an eye on things. My work is all I have left now.”
“Tom? You still have Charity and Dennis left,” I said.
“I may never see them again.”
“Even so. They live. You protect them. You make the world a better place, for them.”
“You’re ruthless, Dee.”
I shrugged. “How long have you been popping sedatives?” I asked, picking up the capsule.
It was a gaudy pill, bright aqua with black codes printed on it. It didn’t look like any sedative I’d ever seen. Those tended to feature brand names, to pose as stylish drugs of choice. Kyla zoomed in for a closeup on it.
I trusted that her video cutting room bit bucket would be very full when this trip was over. Nothing yet this morning was going public, if I had any say about it. And I did have much to say about it. But I let her do her thing without comment.
“That’s a tetracycline antibiotic,” Tom said, frowning. He plucked the pill from my fingers. “She said it was a sedative?” He punched an intercom button on his desk. “Whitfield, get in here.”
I wondered how many hours a day the woman wasted on saying she was busy. But the little package of attitude was soon back and glaring down across Tom’s desk.
“Why did you bring me tetracycline?” Tom demanded. “Why did you tell Dee this was a sedative?”
“I didn’t want to embarrass you, Tom,” Whitfield declared. “He let typhus escape quarantine –”
“Bullshit,” I said in surprise. Her tells were all over the place, that she was lying. She was sweating, panicked, eyes darting all over the ceiling. “Look me in the eye and tell me that Tom has typhus,” I demanded.
“Who the hell are you!” Whitfield shrieked at me. “Some human interest reporter!” Clearly she considered this an insult, human interest news reporters some category of sub-human. “I’ll have you know that I hold an M.D. from Harvard, and a doctorate in epidemiology –”
“Yes, I’ve read your CV,” I cut her off. “Who I am, is Emmett MacLaren’s partner. Who I am, is a co-founder of Amenac. Who I am, is Tom’s friend.” I let that sink in a moment. Then I pushed inside her personal boundary, and pushed her down into a chair. It was a novel experience for me, to physically intimidate a smaller person. The sensation made my skin crawl.
“Now try again, Dr. Whitfield,” I demanded. “What the hell are you trying to pull here?”
What followed was a long and trying couple of hours. Dr. Clarke Whitfield was not cut out for life as an agent, and not nearly as clever as she supposed. I almost felt sorry for her.
“So we need to get word to the Greenwich garrison. These two medics we trained for them are actually agents for Pennsylvania,” Tom explained to the quarantine border commander, Captain Elizabeth Spelt. He handed her a slip with the names. He’d summoned Spelt to his office when we were done extracting what information we could.
Spelt studied Whitfield in puzzlement. “What were they trying to accomplish?”
“Discredit the quarantine procedures,” I supplied. “Prevent the relief of New York by creating public fear of the refugees.”
“That would carry the death penalty,” Spelt observed to Whitfield. “Inciting public panic.”
“They planned to infect people with typhus, just before release outside the quarantine zone,” Tom elaborated. “Bio-terrorism, not just rumors.”
Spelt’s eyes widened in horror. She pulled out her phone. “Bridget? Beth Spelt. You know that group of medics we sent? We need to detain all of them for questioning. Separate out these two.” She rattled off their names from the scrap of paper. “Hold them for HomeSec.... That’s fine, it’s a capital charge... We believe they plotted with Pennsylvania to release typhus into Connecticut via post-quarantine refugees... To stop Project Reunion... You’ll contact MacLaren?... The agent here was Dr. Clarke Whitfield, Tom Aoyama’s assistant... Thanks, Bridget. And – sorry.”
I ached to tell MacLaren myself, instead of going through proper channels. But he was far away and buffered by many uniformed layers. I let the cog-works do their cranking.
“What are you going to do with me?” asked Whitfield pitifully.
“Hand you over to the Coast Guard on tomorrow’s boat,” Spelt replied. “I imagine they’ll deliver you to HomeSec in New London.” She summoned guards to take Whitfield away until then.
Tom shook his head at Whitfield. “What did you hope to accomplish, Clarke?” It was a rhetorical question, perhaps for Spelt’s benefit. Whitfield had already told us that.
“I could have done a lot of good with a properly funded lab!” she screeched. “Not this half-assed, sorry excuse for mud-hole! With proper food! Pennsylvania has drugs and supplies!”
The guards came, trussed her up, and dragged her away.
My phone rang, startling me. I didn’t realize it would work here in the quarantine complex. “Emmett! It’s so good to hear from you!”
He was in a noisy place, with machine thrumming and plenty of voices in the background. “Hey, darlin’. Just got off the phone with the quarantine commander in Greenwich. She told me about the medics. Well done! Thank you. How’s Tom?”
“He’s OK. He’s right here. Wanna talk to him?”
“God, no. I’ve got people coming up from CDC. Tell Tom I’ll send one to replace Whitfield. It’ll take a few days.”
“Will do. Cam and Dwayne send their love –”
“Sorry, Dee, I have to go. I love you.” And the connection abruptly cut off. I realized self-consciously that I’d been stroking the phone while he spoke. I put it away.
I rallied and turned back to Tom and Kyla with a forced smile. “Alright! Now that’s out of the way, we have an interview to shoot!”
The day’s process was messy, but the eventual video came out great. Tom and I introduced ourselves, and conveyed the basic story of how we met, and how this got started. Most of the show comprised quarantine surveillance footage downloaded from Tom’s computers, with our conversation overlaid as the narration. They had plenty of footage – Tom’s facility used two-way video to supervise the quarantine batches, only risking staff in bio-hazard suits when absolutely necessary. Tom also kept records, of course. We included animated graphs from that data as well, to illustrate points he made during the discussion.
Mora was right. Not only the Northeast, but the entire country, and then the world, flocked to see my interview with Tom Aoyama. The surge in web traffic brought down Amenac’s servers several times as we hustled to scale up.
Cam’s episode didn’t get as much traffic. We tacked a teaser for it onto the end of Tom’s interview, promising to show Long Island refugees after quarantine, which drew some people in. Cam’s discussion of the Resco manual generated thoughtful buzz. Rescos and Cocos adored his episode, and left encouragement. But most important, Cam got more volunteers to help rebuild on Long Island. By Thanksgiving, he and Dwayne had a bigger force of Cocos and militia than they’d ever led in northeast Connecticut. Each volunteer reported to the pier with a four-month food supply and camouflage uniform, for the Coast Guard to give them a ride. Many of them came from Boston-Prov.
But that was all weeks later.
15
Interesting fact: About 1 in 5 people died before graduating from the Project Reunion 4-week quarantine program. Actively contagious disease cases were shifted to hospice wards instead of quarantine, where they usually died. But more commonly, some refugees simply ‘let go’ after entering the program. These patients would pass disease screening, but whether in the first week or the last, simply laid down and died in their sleep. Cause of death was listed as R.I.P. – rest in peace.
“What do you mean, Emmett’s already taken Staten Island!” I yelled at Carlos Mora over the phone. Mora left a message to call him as soon as I got home from Long Island. “Why didn’t anyone tell me!”
“Cam knew. Emmett didn’t want you to worry,” said Mora. “The raw video is on the staging server. I’d like you to upload the two Long Island collections the same way, for HomeSec –”
“HomeSec!”
“Dee...” Mora’s croon had a warning tinge. “Remember how Emmett delegated military censorship to me? And HomeSec. This is how I make HomeSec play ball. They see all the raw footage, and submit suggestions. We treat them as partners, not the bad guys.”
“But Carlos, why would you do that? Sell us out to HomeSec?”
“I’m giving HomeSec a chance to join the good guys. HomeSec is going to co-sponsor the Project Reunion website. They’re eager to see your Whitfield footage. They’re talking about putting together their own episode for your web series. I’m giving them a chance to clean up their public image.”
“Whitewash their image, rather. Christ, Carlos – do you have any idea how much this will piss off the Amenac team?”
Mora sighed. “Dee, I’ve already OK’d this with Dave and Popeye and Leland. Amenac has the upper hand. We have the means to publish whether HomeSec likes it or not. But, if HomeSec stays happy, Project Reunion goes mainstream – Calumet-approved. Everyone is allowed to link to our website. Re-broadcast our webisodes. Discuss our agenda openly. Not just inside Amenac’s little protected sandbox. World-wide. We increase our audience by a factor of ten, at least.”
I hung on the phone, boggled into silence.
“Dee? You still there?”
“No muzzle? Carlos – you won us back freedom of speech?”
“Hardly. Dee, we have an agenda, same as HomeSec. Don’t get all self-righteous on me. I intend to use HomeSec and Project Reunion to wage a propaganda war against Pennsylvania.”
“...Why?”
Mora sighed. “To buy Emmett
time to relieve New York.”
I rubbed my forehead in frustration. “Project Reunion was going to be all positive. Yay us. Not boo them. Pennsylvania didn’t create New York.” A moment too late, I remembered who I was talking to, the anguished Mora of that night in the pool.
“Actually, Dee, Tolliver did create Fortress Pennsylvania. And he seeded that Ebola epidemic. If you want to play Little Miss Pollyanna Sunshine – fine. But there’s a real risk here. Tolliver could move while Emmett’s got us over-extended saving lives. In case that happens, I want our version out there first.”
“OK. I can see that,” I said, only because I didn’t have much choice. “But Carlos, Project Reunion is a humanitarian mission. Yay us. The mission critical message is, ‘Yay us.’ The mission Emmett left me is high public morale, to sustain a long hard effort.”
“Understood,” he said grudgingly. “Anyway, Emmett’s footage is there if you want to see it. It’ll be a couple weeks before that episode is edited. By the other team, not yours.”
“We’re not going to publish that right away? But it’s...news.”
“No. What Tolliver knows, is that we hope to start moving refugees into quarantine by Thanksgiving, or maybe Christmas. We let him think that as long as possible.”
The light finally dawned. “Emmett already launched Project Reunion? Really?”
“The videos are there if you want to watch them.”
I wanted. So I dove in. I couldn’t waste too much time, though. I had my own webisodes to produce, and a major site launch in a few days.
Emmett stood at the ship’s rail, peering through binoculars at the industrial shore. A gaggle of marines stood near him. They wielded sturdy tablet computers. Emmett had one of those tucked under his elbow as well. It was an unpleasant early morning in New York harbor. The men’s uniforms flapped at them, drizzle damping their hair and faces. Heavy chop and whitecaps lay on the waves beyond.