Of Starlight and Plague

by Beth Hersant

  “Is there a Mrs. Wade? Someone to share all that success with?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a shame.” She turned over another card. “Yeah, see? The Jack of Hearts for a warm-hearted man.” She gestured to the three cards lying face up on the table. “All the cards can tell me about your past is that you suffered some great loss …”

  “So has everybody.” The friendly smile was gone.

  “It’s the first thing the loa have to say about you. It is a defining loss. And my guess is that, while it doesn’t stand in the way of your commercial success, it does interfere with your relationships. Do you know why that is?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Sweetheart, it’s a deck of playing cards, not an all access pass to your brain. I just figured that a lot of people have trust issues after they’ve been burned.”

  Daniel was on his feet. He was so angry, so outraged it brought tears to his eyes. “Well, you’ve obviously read about that!”

  “What?” she asked.

  “About the … the fire.”

  “Daniel, I didn’t know you were coming to see me. I had no time to prepare for this session. I don’t read the gossip columns and I haven’t googled you. Until two minutes ago, I’d never heard of your werewolf book…”

  “Vampire book…”

  “Whatever. If you don’t trust me, we don’t have to continue with this.”

  “You really didn’t know?”

  “Child, my best guess was that you’d been jilted. If I’d known that there’d been some terrible fire…” she sighed heavily, “I never would have used the word ‘burned.’ If you want to go, please do. But if you want to stay, I’ll finish the reading free of charge.”

  He looked at her for a long time. He’d encountered and exposed many charlatans and liars in this business. But if she was willing to continue without payment … well, it was a sign she might be on the level.

  “I’m going to make a cup of tea.” She rose and busied herself at the counter. “Want one?”

  “Why would you continue without payment?”

  “That look on your face just now. If I could ignore that, I wouldn’t be a mambo.”

  She carried a tray over to the table and poured him a cup. “Did you drive here?”

  “No, I took the bus.”

  “Good,” she said and added a generous measure of bourbon to his mug. Settling back into her chair she said, “Now. Do you want to talk about the fire? Or should I just carry on with the cards.”

  “It’s not like it’s a big secret…”

  The house had been a wooden two-story colonial in the historic district of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The family was in bed and the Christmas tree glowed with those old string lights with replaceable colored bulbs. That’s where the blaze started and it was hungry. It licked at the carpet and consumed the sofa which emitted poisonous dark smoke. And then the fire was at the walls and the door and up the stairs.

  If the family — which was now wide awake thanks to the high-pitched shrieking of the smoke alarm — had gotten out then … well, Daniel had tortured himself with the what ifs for years. If he, as a four-year-old child, had run to his parents’ room instead of hiding from the fire. If his panicked father had stopped to look under the mound of teddy bears in the closet where he hid. If they’d remembered to turn the damn tree lights off in the first place. All such little decisions, little omissions that became so big in consequence.

  Firefighters hauled them out — all three of them — and the Chester County Press reported that paramedics worked feverishly to save them. Joanne Wade was pronounced dead at the scene and Franklin R. Wade died on his way to the hospital. The article was accompanied by the picture of a child, sitting in an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket. His face was a mask of black smudges and streaks of gray ash. His whole world had just imploded and this certainly warranted a good howl. But he was struck dumb. He sat there in such unnatural stillness that he looked more like a mannequin or a doll, than a living breathing boy.

  That boy, now a grown man, was sitting in Tammany’s kitchen, the effort of telling even this truncated version of the story making him nauseous.

  “It must be a hard time of year for you,” Tammany said quietly.

  “It always starts after Halloween, when all the Christmas decorations appear in the shops and there’s the Black Friday sales and fucking snow.”

  “What starts?”

  Wade shook his head. “I don’t even have a word for it.”

  The silence that followed was long and heavy and Tammany knew that he needed a nudge to get him talking about what was on his mind. She turned over another card. Ten of Hearts.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Success after difficulty,” she paused, “or maybe because of it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I just wondered whether or not you found the writing to be therapeutic.”

  “It is. When I’m working, I’m just away. I’m somewhere else.”

  “And someone else?”

  “No, I don’t have the burden of being anybody. At its best, it’s like the book writes itself; it just flows through me and I’m in another world.”

  “That’s probably why you’ve done so well.”

  “Yeah, but then I have to stop or someone talks to me or asks me a question and then my brain — it’s like having spontaneous Alzheimer’s. I’m just not all there.” Daniel leaned forward, keen to explain something he’d never articulated before. “I can work on the book for ten hours straight and be surprised when I look up and see what time it is. But at my worst, I can’t pay attention to what someone else is saying to me for more than ten minutes. Because by then, I realize I’m back in reality and it sucks and I get this sick, empty feeling as if someone has reached into my gut and just ripped out my stomach and my lungs. And all I have left is this gaping black hole. And I’m afraid and there is nothing to be afraid of and that’s worse because it is so vague. It is a fear of nothing and everything — a whole world of terrible possibility. And then I don’t sleep and I feel like I’m losing my mind. But I’m sane and I’m smart. And yet I look at the calendar and can’t remember the day, the actual date, my parents died. It was the single most significant day of my life and I can’t remember.”

  “You can’t remember, child, because that’s a common symptom of PTSD.”

  “What?”

  “Joseph Turnbull, Wanda’s boy from the grocery store, came back from Afghanistan with it. He has trouble remembering too.” She pushed the cards aside and took hold of his hands. “You don’t need a card reading, Daniel. You need counseling so someone can guide you through this. They say that, um, CBT — that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy — is meant to be real good.”

  She fished a clean tissue out of her pocket and handed it to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, drying his eyes.

  “No need.”

  He made a brave attempt at laughter. “I was supposed to be here learning about voodoo.”

  “But Daniel,” she gave his hand another squeeze, “you just did.”

  They parted as friends with plans to meet up again in a day or two. He wanted to interview Tammany about Voodoo and life as a mambo. She was about to put the cards away when she realized that she never did finish his reading. Out of dumbness, she turned over the last two cards in column two: the Six of Hearts for a stroke of good luck and the Queen of Hearts for the appearance of a good-natured woman, a motherly figure. She chuckled. The loa knew her too well. She was always collecting strays and people in trouble and there was no way she could listen to that man’s story and not want to help him.

  The future cards in column three, however, wiped the smile off her face. There it was again, the Nine of Spades for illness and bad luck. The Eight of Spades came next with its warning of
danger and finally another of the same suit, the Ace. Those three cards had also come up in Otis’s reading, and to see them twice in one day was yet another bad sign in a day filled with omens. There was clearly danger here for Daniel Wade and she resolved to do something about that.

  But first, she needed a break. And so she went through her daily unwinding ritual. This one, however, did not involve burning candles, anointing with oil or praying to the spirits. No, it consisted of a nice crisp newspaper, her Lazy-Boy New Hampshire Power Recliner Armchair, and an ice-cold bottle of Grace and Grit beer. That’s a craft beer distilled by the Great Raft Brewing Company and Tammany bought a couple of cases of it every summer when it went on sale. She took a swig, savoring the earthy dankness with its hints of pineapple and mango. But then she opened the paper and choked on her drink.

  The headline read: “Local Man Found Dead” and all Tammany could think was “Don’t be Otis, don’t be Otis, don’t be Otis…” She quickly scanned the article: a local man, identified as Alan Tisono (oh thank Christ!) was found tangled up in the cattails along the bank of the London Avenue Canal. A spokesman for the NOPD announced that Mr. Tisono had been the victim of a violent attack and appealed for any witnesses who were in the area on Wednesday morning between two and six a.m. Tammany exhaled loudly and waited for her heartbeat to slow back down to normal.

  She turned the page. Next there was an article about a teacher at Benjamin Franklin High who was hit and killed by a truck. Witnesses claimed that, in the moments prior to the accident, she had not only looked “unwell” but had deliberately stepped out in front of the vehicle. A source at the school noted that Miss Emily Hardy had been off ill from her post since returning from a short holiday to the Caribbean. The coroner was expected to hold an inquest into the apparent suicide and the police were particularly keen to locate her boyfriend, a Mr. Nicholas Durand, who has been missing since Monday night.

  Below this was an article entitled, “Trouble in Paradise,” detailing a series of disturbing events on a tiny island called Cáscara:

  “To stand on the cliffs and look out over the glittering blue of the Caribbean is to stand for a moment in paradise.” So reads the holiday brochure inviting visitors to Cáscara, “an oasis of calm in a busy world.” However, this quiet little island off the coast of Puerto Rico has recently suffered a catalogue of problems threatening its vital tourism industry.

  Since the disruption caused by Hurricane Hildy late last month, Cáscara has been hit by an alarming rabies outbreak among wildlife and local pets alike. Local veterinarian, Carlos Báez, is pursuing legal action against Lyndo Pharmaceuticals who manufacture the vaccine he administered to the island’s pets. “It was obviously a bad batch,” he said, “because so many animals who received that vaccine have contracted rabies. These are not stray, neglected dogs. They are beloved members of many families. It has been heartbreaking to see.”

  The outbreak has resulted in many attacks on people who report that their docile animals “just turned on them.” A spokesman for Cáscara General Hospital confirmed that they have treated an elevated number of animal-related injuries, including a case in which a child suffered ‘life-changing injuries’ after being mauled by her family’s pet. The most shocking incident, however, was a wild animal attack on local coffee grower, Juan Valdez, who died of his wounds. This has led to an island-wide cull of stray dogs and cats and a program to revaccinate all pets. However, it is as yet unclear as to whether these measures have finally tackled the problem.

  And it would appear that the animals are not the only ones falling ill. A strange flu-like epidemic has recently hit the island. While some locals suspect that this may be the result of contaminated drinking water after the hurricane, Mayor Louisa Gaultiero has dismissed this, citing the rigorous safeguards they place on their water supply. She has, however, arranged for the CDC to come and review the situation. In the meantime, the local hospital has been inundated with patients complaining of fever, sore throats, headaches and, in some cases, seizures. Among the stricken is prominent American neurosurgeon, Dr. Aaron Pickman, formerly of Bangor, Maine…

  Notes

  1 Vodouisants always recount their dreams in the present tense.

  Chapter Two

  Cáscara

  “Even a single outbreak … can go global. In addition, although the zombie plague is only spread through biting or other fluidic transfers, the infection rate is 100 percent. Even powerful disease vectors like smallpox or influenza have infection rates that are considerably lower. Because the zombie contagion is so powerful, its cross-border spread is a near-certainty.”

  Daniel W. Drezner,

  Theories of International Politics and Zombies

  “Time is of the essence. We must act now if we are to have the maximum possible opportunity to contain a pandemic.”

  Margaret Chan

  Dr. Edwin Caldwell stared at his patient in open-mouthed disbelief. As a field investigator for the CDC, he thought he had seen it all: Ebola patients bleeding from the eyes, the buboes of a plague victim bursting at his touch, and spontaneous miscarriages brought on by Lassa fever. But he had not been expecting this. The initial report, passed to him by the EOC, had cited a suspected outbreak of H1N1 on the island of Cáscara. The working case definition he’d been handed had read:

  Clinical Case Definition

  An illness presenting with fever, persistent cough, sore throat, muscular pain, shortness of breath, headache, chills, dizziness, loss of appetite, nausea and fatigue. Current H1N1 global mortality rates suggest that the infirm will be less likely to recover from the disease and generally succumb a few days after the onset of symptoms.

  Laboratory Criteria for Diagnosis

  A positive respiratory sample (nose and throat swab).

  Therefore, he’d headed off to the Caribbean ready to implement the same protocols he’d used in Northern Ireland in 2009. He had doctors on hand to care for the critically ill; he had flu shots ready to protect the local population with special emphasis on vaccinating new mothers and the immunocompromised. All he needed was a positive set of lab results and he could run with the plan. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

  On his tour of Cáscara General Hospital, he had indeed seen people with the flu-like symptoms described. Then Dr. Emmanuel Malavé had taken him to see “the more advanced cases.” One, Pablo Vasquez, had slipped his restraints and was pacing around a room that the nurses now refused to enter. Standing at the door, Caldwell peered through a window streaked with blood and bile. He knelt down to peek through a clear section of glass and saw Vasquez, bare-chested and wearing a soiled pair of jeans. Clawing at a bleeding wound on his cheek, the man babbled and screamed. He caught sight of Caldwell and charged at the door, slamming into it with enough force to make it rattle on its hinges.

  “Why didn’t you include the behavioral symptoms in your report to the CDC?” Edwin asked quietly.

  “Originally, everything we saw looked like swine flu. And then…” Dr. Malavé paused and cleared his throat.

  “And then?”

  “When the infected became aggressive, Mayor Gaultiero decided to get a CDC diagnosis before making the facts public.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh come on, doctor. With the current climate in the U.S., would you want to release footage like this?” He gestured at the door. “Just more crazy Hispanics and bad hombres, right? They’ll take one look at our friend in there and think it’s drug-related. And it’s not. The toxicology report on ninety percent of the cases came back clean.”

  “And nasal swabs did not test positive for H1N1.”

  “No.”

  “So that leaves us with the $64,000 Question: just what the hell is it?”

  The real detective work began with a detailed history of every one of the infected and a list of the people they’d come into contact with during the la
st two weeks. It appeared that the disease had already produced multiple generations of victims. The latest group of infected (Generation Four) all had contact with the earliest human cases. These interactions ranged from sexual contact to breast feeding to violent altercations, but in every instance the newly infected had received some fluidic transfer from a carrier of the disease. These were essentially the victims of victims. The story behind Generation Three chilled Caldwell to the bone. Each of these patients had previously been treated for an animal bite. As the island was in the grip of a rabies outbreak, each of them had received the standard Post-Exposure Prophylaxis that would have protected them from developing full-blown neurological rabies. And yet each had developed the flu-like symptoms and aggression of a lyssavirus infection. He ordered lumbar punctures across the board. If they came back positive, then the rabid dogs were clearly Generation Two. A trawl of the veterinary clinic’s records confirmed that each of the infected dogs had been brought in for stitches after tangling with some unknown vector, a wild animal and presumably Generation One.

  As a CDC physician, Caldwell could quote its Principles of Epidemiology chapter and verse. In it, in Lesson 6 to be precise, you will find the guidelines for identifying possible bioweapon exposure. The two criteria that stood out for him at the moment were: 1) “Unusual disease presentation” and 2) “Unusual pattern of death or illness among animals that precedes or accompanies illness or death in humans.” There was a clear link here between the sick animals and the sick people. And while high levels of aggression were common in cases of human rabies, the behavior he was witnessing on Cáscara was off the charts. He had never seen human beings respond this violently to the pathogen. Every patient was in a frenzy of unabating rage. Many of them should, by now, be too ill to continue and yet they showed no signs of slowing down. It wasn’t natural. It was just … all wrong.