DRYP Trilogy | Book 1 | DRYP [The Final Pandemic]

by Scheuring, R. A.

  He didn’t remember what nonsensical things he’d said as he squatted down on his haunches and scratched Gage’s head, only that the dog’s eyes had widened slightly at the sound of his master’s voice, before resuming their filmy gaze into nowhere.

  I’m pathetic, thought Harr. A grown man getting all worked up about a dog. But the sad truth was that Gage was all the family John Harr had. His father had gone AWOL shortly after his birth, and his mother, a woman who seemed to attract bad luck like shit attracted flies, had died when she was forty-five, a victim of a car crash that should never have been fatal.

  Harr shuddered at the memory. A sheriff’s deputy had found her body at the base of an embankment on Highway 299 outside of Alturas, still in the car, her legs pinned beneath the dashboard. The coroner had told Harr that she likely died of hypothermia, because she’d been trapped waist deep in the creek’s chilly water, both legs broken, no one aware on the road above that she was slowly dying down below. Harr hated to think of that. Hated to think how alone she must have felt as death slowly claimed her. Hated to think of the pain she must have been in.

  He had come back after that, stopped his wandering and moved back to Harney County. Moved back to Lola. He had some money by then, from his years as a hired hand, to put a down payment on the ranch where he now lived. It wasn’t an expensive place, because aside from grazing, land in Harney County wasn’t good for much. But somehow buying the ranch felt stabilizing.

  “John?” The voice came from behind him, startling him out of his memories. He turned and found Lola standing on the sidewalk, wearing an old-fashioned waitress uniform, a little apron tied around her waist.

  The question must have been on his face, because she explained, “I work the night shift at the twenty-four-hour diner. I started working there last week.” She yawned. “Busy night for boring old Burns. What are you doing in town at this hour?”

  He told her, and the compassion in her face made his throat tighten.

  Harr thought suddenly, she was always nice to my mother. Maybe the only person who really had been.

  “You want a cup of coffee?” she said. “You look like you could use one.”

  He followed her home. Later, he told himself that his guard had slipped because he’d been feeling lonely and his dog was sick and maybe dying. It was all of those things, he told himself.

  After breakfast, he pulled off her uniform and buried his face in her breasts, his mouth traveling over her body. It was all of those things, he thought, as he lowered himself on top of her, his legs between her legs, pressing his body into hers.

  It was all of those things, he thought, as he felt her body stiffen with excitement, his own body’s jolting climax. And then he didn’t think anymore.

  George Mack was furious. He had expected concern. He had expected phone calls. But he hadn’t expected the phones to ring non-stop, all night and all day, ever since Tyrone Hayden’s report had hit the air.

  Mack couldn’t blame Hayden, whose report, on the whole, had been pretty balanced. But who knew people harbored such a deep and completely irrational fear of bubonic plague? They were going nuts!

  And, Mack thought grimly, they don’t even know about the drug-resistant part.

  Mack lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. On his desk sat a stack of little pink While You Were Out notes. Every reporter this side the Mississippi had called. Hell, even Ellen’s people had called.

  Mack ignored the notes and stared out into space. He wondered how Harold Pincher, his deputy director of public health, was faring. Pincher and two of his assistants were out trying to track down everyone the ER doc Vangsness and his wife had contacted. Bob Sparks was tracking Jason Tippett’s last movements. And that didn’t even include coordinating the rodent kill up on Donner Summit with the Placer County Department of Public Health, which Mack had been managing until this morning, when the phones had started ringing. Damn it, thought Mack, it’s too much!

  Someone knocked at the door. “What?” Mack growled.

  The department secretary poked her head in. “It’s Jeremy Nesbitt from the CDC. I thought you might want to take this one.” She recoiled as her eyes traveled the smoke-filled room, which was terrible, even by George Mack standards.

  “Patch him through, Carol.”

  “Right.” She disappeared.

  The phone on the desk rang, and Mack snatched it off its cradle. “Nesbitt?”

  “George!”

  Mack instantaneously felt his hackles rise. “Nesbitt, we got a problem—”

  “I agree. I think you need more people out there. I’ve booked myself on the next flight out.”

  Mack’s eyebrows rose. So quick? His cigarette hung between his lips.

  “I saw the report,” the CDC officer continued. “They rebroadcast it on CNN. You obviously need someone more comfortable doing TV interviews. You can tell the press I’ll be available tomorrow morning. I’ll be staying at the Silver Legacy, but we’ll do our first interview at the lodge. What did you call it?”

  “The Evergreen Club Lodge.”

  “Yes, that’s it. We’ll get it out on social media that we’re on top of the rodent kill, and people will calm down.”

  “I was thinking we ought to brief the local hospitals. There are a lot of rumors going around about antibiotic-resistance and pneumonic spread.”

  Nesbitt sighed patiently. “Of course, but first things first,” he said, as though he were talking to a child. “I’ll do the press conference. When I’m done, you can brief me on your containment efforts, and I’ll take it from there.”

  Jim Carson stood in his San Francisco apartment, clutching his cell phone grimly. “When?” he barked.

  “An hour ago.” It was Ryan Milosz, the medicine resident. “He’s bad. They’ve got Niklas in isolation up in the unit. I thought you’d want to know.”

  So much for quarantining at home, thought Carson. Goddamn! “Has anyone called his family?”

  “They’re trying, but the family’s in Germany. There’s a time difference.”

  “No shit,” snapped Carson. “What do they have him on?”

  “Jim, I don’t know. I’m at home, just like you are.” Milosz’s voice was patient. “The ER called me to let me know. I thought you would want to know, too.”

  Carson shook his head in disbelief. It had only been two days since he, Milosz, and Niklas Vollmayr had gone into quarantine, and now Vollmayr was in the ICU with suspected plague. “We’re fucked, Milosz,” Carson said.

  “Yeah, it kind of looks that way, doesn’t it?” The normally upbeat medical resident sounded subdued.

  Carson wanted to shout at him, “And if you’d kept the guy in isolation, none of this would have ever happened,” but in his heart, he knew it wasn’t true. The death sentence had been signed in Reno when the Japanese exchange student had been transferred out of isolation.

  Rage swept through Carson, as scorching as a wildfire. He wanted to kick something, destroy it, all the pent-up anger of his medical training suddenly focused in one direction.

  Fucking outside hospital!

  If Carson had been angry after the first phone call, the second call filled him with terror.

  It had come at seven o’clock, just as he was sitting down to eat a microwaved dinner. Carson looked irritably at caller ID. Blocked. He figured it was an update from the hospital on Niklas. The hospital routinely blocked caller ID on all its outgoing calls.

  Carson snatched up the phone and barked, “How is he?”

  There was a moment’s silence on the other end, and then a male voice said, “Dr. Carson?”

  Ah great, thought Carson, a telemarketer. “Who’s this?” he said, not friendly at all.

  “It’s Michael Manseau. I’m the director of the ICU here at George Washington University Hospital.”

  Carson drew a blank. George Washington University Hospital?

  “We’ve got a patient here who wanted us to call you. She’s very sick.” The man cleared
his throat. “She may not live much longer.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Her name is Helena Wang.”

  Nine

  It was a beautiful spring morning, the glittering, crystal-clear, blue-skied variety for which Lake Tahoe is famous. The surrounding peaks were beginning to shed their snow coat in earnest, waterfalls and small creeks emptying along the roadside. Wildflowers bloomed everywhere.

  George Mack stood across the road from the Evergreen Club Lodge, smoking a cigarette he’d bummed from one of the satellite truck operators.

  What a cluster fuck, he thought.

  There were three satellite trucks along the road, as well as several other press cars. Nesbitt stood in front of the now-tented lodge, surrounded by a semi-circle of cameras and reporters, who were firing questions at him. From what Mack could make out, Nesbitt was telling them absolutely nothing.

  The cell phone on Mack’s belt beeped. A new message with a blocked caller. He dialed his voice mail while watching Nesbitt gesture expansively at the Sierras.

  It was the ICU doc. “George, it’s Ajay Singh over at Washoe. I thought you’d want to know right away—we’ve got three new cases, and they look like plague. We don’t have any lab evidence yet, but we should have the Giemsa stains back within the hour. Can you call me as soon as possible?”

  Mack had expected this, but still, his stomach sank. He looked at his watch and wished he wasn’t trapped on the summit with Nesbitt.

  Three painful hours later, Mack, Harold Pincher, and Bob Sparks gathered in the county health department’s conference room to review the new cases. The men had nicknamed the conference space the War Room, because the maps and dry erase boards inside were reminiscent of an old World War II planning center. Carol, the administrative assistant, walked in and deposited three cups of Starbucks coffee in front of the men.

  They ignored her. Their eyes were fixed on a dry erase board, on which a line and staff diagram outlined the contacts they had established for each plague case. At the top of the diagram, like Adam at the top of mankind’s family tree, stood Yoshiki Yahagi’s name, with “Index Case” written in parentheses below.

  Pincher pointed to three new cases on the board. “The ER doc was at a soccer game two days before he died. One of today’s new cases is Valerie Cordrey, whose son was on the team with Vangsness’s son. I think we can establish a contact there.” Pincher drew a line between Vangsness’s name and Cordrey’s. “I’ve put her family in quarantine. So far, none of them are sick.”

  “And the others?” Mack asked.

  “No direct link that I can see.” Pincher pointed at one name. “She’s a cashier at a gas station. Lives in north Reno. Hasn’t been in contact with Vangsness or the index case.”

  Mack looked contemplative. “Yet Singh is telling us all three cases are pneumonic. That means there had to be contact.”

  “Which means there are other cases out there,” said Pincher.

  “Exactly.” Mack’s eyes traveled over the board. “Who’s the third case?”

  “The ER nurse’s boyfriend. Remember Joliet, the ER nurse who worked with Vangsness?” said Bob Sparks, who been silent up until this point. “Well, the boyfriend dumped his dying girlfriend in Sacramento and then drove back up here. A real charmer.” Sparks drew a line between the two names. His cell phone chirped, and he ducked out of the room.

  “Where’s Nesbitt?” Pincher asked.

  “Reporting to Atlanta.” Mack reached for his breast pocket, pulled a pack of cigarettes out. Nesbitt seemed to be doing a lot of reporting to CDC headquarters.

  “You know, George, you really ought to quit,” Pincher said, eying Mack’s cigarette.

  “You worried about my health, Harold?” Mack leaned toward his deputy. “I can tell you right now, cigarettes aren’t what’s going to kill me.”

  Pincher looked suddenly sober. “You think it’s pretty bad, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s bad.” Mack lit a cigarette, sat back and looked at the board. “Bad enough that we need more manpower. I broke it to Nesbitt on the way back from our ‘media opportunity.’ He told me to call the state.”

  Pincher frowned. “The state? I don’t get it. I mean, sure, we can call the state, but what we have here is an outbreak of drug-resistant plague. You’d think the feds would be all over it.”

  Bob Sparks appeared in the conference room doorway, his cell phone glued to his ear. He flapped his free arm at Mack and Pincher. “What’s that? Five cases, you say? Documented?” He spoke into the phone.

  Pincher looked at Mack and mouthed, “Sacramento.”

  Sparks was still talking. “All five pneumonic? Who were their contacts?” He grunted in acknowledgement several times.

  Later, after Pincher, Sparks, and Nesbitt went home, Mack sat alone in his office, eating takeout Kung Pao chicken and wondering why, with eight cases of drug-resistant Yersinia pestis confirmed in Reno, the CDC had sent him only one woefully inexperienced EIS officer to help out.

  He mulled over this incomprehensible and inadequate response for nearly half an hour before finally giving up and dialing the number he swore he’d never call again.

  Harry Kincade.

  The last meeting between Mack and the former Deputy Chief of the World Health Organization had resulted in a horrifying spectacle: two fortyish men, brawling in the muddy streets of Uganda. Mack couldn’t remember what the fight had been about, only the outcome. Mack had emerged from the fight with a corneal abrasion and a knee to the groin that had left Mack’s balls tender for weeks. Kincade, meanwhile, hadn’t fared much better. He’d looked like a prize-fighter who’d gone twelve rounds and lost.

  Mack hoped Kincade would take his call because, even though the retired virus hunter was a first-rate asshole, he was still thick with the CDC brass, and Mack knew he had inside information.

  There was the soft buzz of static, and then Kincade’s voice, unchanged by the years, said coolly, “Well, if it isn’t George Mack. You still trying to beat up your superiors?”

  Mack tilted back his head, looking heavenwards for patience. “I didn’t know you were my superior.”

  “Should have been obvious. I’m the one who had ‘Chief’ in my title.”

  “Deputy Chief,” Mack corrected.

  “Still more ‘Chief’ than you.” Which was true, because Harry Kincade was an MD, and in the public health world, where PhDs and MDs were necessary sets of initials for advancement, Mack’s lack of initials meant a role as a permanent underling.

  “Well, Chief, I was wondering what you know about this little outbreak we have going on down here?”

  There was a pause. “I’ve heard about it. Doesn’t sound good, George.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Mack said. “And I want to know why all the CDC has sent me is some wet-behind-the-ears Hopkins grad. It’s drug-resistant plague, for God’s sake.”

  “Jeremy Nesbitt knows what he’s supposed to do,” Kincade said. “Keeping people calm is half the battle in these kinds of outbreaks.”

  “But telling people to avoid fleas doesn’t stop pneumonic spread. We’ve got eight cases already, two of which we can’t explain through contact tracing, which means there are other cases out there. I can’t understand why the CDC isn’t taking a more active role in this.”

  There was silence for what seemed like forever. Kincade spoke again, only this time, the sarcasm was gone from his voice. “For your information, George, the CDC is very involved. Far more than you know. They’ve set up a coordinating team with the Department of Homeland Security and USAMRIID.”

  “USAMRIID?” Mack repeated blankly. USAMRIID stood for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the Department of Defense’s lead laboratory for medical biological defense research.

  “Yes. They’re trying to sequence the bacterium with help from some academic institutions. As you probably have figured out, there is some urgency to this, especially since Helena Wang died. You know
how the whole establishment starts to quake with fear when a famous researcher dies.”

  Mack didn’t know Wang personally, but he knew of her. “When did she die?”

  “Today. This afternoon.” Kincade gave a gruesome little chuckle. “Just two days after she delivered the keynote address at the World Scientific Conference on Infectious Disease. Glad I missed that one, aren’t you?”

  Mack whistled softly. “That’s a big conference.”

  “She only attended one day of the conference—apparently, she was feeling too ill to do more—so we’re thinking that her infectious contacts were minimal, but the CDC has taken the precaution of contacting every attendee anyway.”

  “And this hasn’t hit the national news?”

  “She died today, George. Besides, this is one story we’ve got to handle extremely carefully. Nesbitt might drive you nuts, but he knows how to stick to a script. That’s our number one concern while we get things organized.”

  “What things organized?”

  “You know, the standard stuff. EIS teams to all affected areas, quarantines, rodent kills, military preparation.”

  “Military preparation,” Mack repeated slowly.

  “For the travel restrictions,” Kincade answered calmly.

  Of course, thought Mack. Of course, there will be travel restrictions. It only made sense. But he asked the question anyway, a dull sort of horror spreading throughout his body. “What kind of travel restrictions?”

  “You know we have to do it, George. Otherwise, there could be international panic, and we can’t have that. It would have devastating economic consequences.”

  “Cut the political bullshit, Harry,” Mack said, suddenly quite angry. “What kind of travel restrictions?”

  Kincade’s answer was blunt. “We’re locking down Reno, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.”