Mack was exhausted, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so there was no point going home. Instead, he sat with Nesbitt and Pincher in the War Room and deliberated whether or not to go outside for a smoke.
He glanced at his watch. Eleven pm. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “What’s that again?”
“You said we need to get masks distributed. Let’s put a couple of PODs at the high schools.” Nesbitt sat surrounded by papers. He pointed at a large map of the Reno metropolitan area with several circles on it. “We can put one here at Reno High School and another here. That will cover north and west Reno. We’ll put another POD at Damonte Ranch High School to cover the south.”
“What’s a POD?” Pincher asked from across the room. He held a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Point of Dispensing. Basically, PODs are temporary medical distribution centers.” Mack was very familiar with the concept. The CDC required each public health department to draw up plans should an epidemic or bioterrorism attack occur. The problem was staffing. The quarantines had been sprung on Mack so quickly, he hadn’t had time to do critical personnel assignments.
Nesbitt seemed to read his mind. “Look, I’ve got twenty agents. I can spare five to head up PODs. We’ll get a couple of nurses and some of the Guardsmen coming tomorrow to man the stations. It’ll give us the chance to hand out the masks and if anyone sick shows up, we can get them to the hospital.”
Mack looked over at the CDC officer with a tiny smile on his face. “I’m starting to like the way you think, Nesbitt. Maybe there’s hope for you in Public Health, after all.”
Nesbitt didn’t look up. “Oh, screw yourself, George.”
For the first time in days, Mack laughed.
Tyrone Hayden wore a respirator mask during his cut-ins for the eleven o’clock news. The live truck was a hundred feet from the ambulance bay at Washoe County Medical Center, but still, Tyrone and his crew were close enough that Tyrone worried.
“Any more, boss?” the cameramen asked, reaching for Tyrone’s lapel microphone.
“Not if I can help it.” In addition to live reports for San Francisco and Los Angeles, Tyrone had done reports earlier in the evening for CNN, New York and Chicago. If he hadn’t been so goddamn tired and frightened, he’d be elated. This story was getting him the national exposure that he had long ago given up ever hoping to achieve.
He wandered back to the truck and looked in. The live truck operator was sitting at a panel of equipment, peering intently at his iPhone.
“What’re you looking at, Mark?” Tyrone asked.
The operator glanced up. “Just checking Twitter. There’s a lot of crazy shit out there right now.”
“Like what?” Tyrone climbed into the front passenger seat and fished around for the remnants of the dinner they had picked up at McDonald’s. The cameraman slid into the driver’s seat beside him.
“You know, the regular paranoid stuff, that this is God’s action, the end of the world is coming, blah, blah, blah.” Mark swiped his finger upwards through the feed. “The thing that scares me shitless, though, are all these postings about it being drug-resistant.”
“Drug-resistant?” Tyrone frowned. “Public health didn’t mention anything about that. Neither did the spokesperson from the hospital.”
“Well, some of this stuff seems pretty authentic. Look at this one.” He turned the screen so that Tyrone could see. “The writer claims to be an employee at the hospital.”
Hayden squeezed a small dollop of sanitizer on his hands and rubbed. He leaned in to check the tweet.
“They’re not telling the truth cuz they’re afraid people will panic, but this lie will cost thousands of lives, because people won’t protect themselves like they should. It is DRUG RESISTANT! None of the antibiotics work. I know cuz I work at Washoe Medical Center #DRYP #BlackDeath”
“Jesus,” said Tyrone.
Mark showed him another.
“I have a cousin in Reno, and she said her neighbor’s entire family died of the plague, and nothing could save them. My cousin is scared to death. #DRYP”
“What the hell is DRYP?” said Tyrone.
“I don’t know, but it’s trending. Here’s another one.”
“GET OUT! GET OUT! THE POLITICIANS ARE LYING TO YOU. DEATH HAS COME TO RENO AND THERE IS NO CURE. IT’S DRUG-RESISTANT PLAGUE! IT’S DRUG-RESISTANT YERSINIA PESTIS! THEY’LL LEAVE YOU TO DIE IN THE CITY! #DRYP”
Tyrone leaned back, his eyes still on the screen. “Yersinia pestis is the bacteria that causes plague.”
The cameraman let out a small whistle. The three men looked out the door of the live truck at the ambulance bay one hundred feet away. Hundreds of people clogged the driveway, blocking the approach of ambulances, which were forced to disgorge their patients at the periphery and fight their gurneys through the crowd to the double glass doors. Tyrone could hear faint hacking float over the distance.
A body separated itself from the mass of patients. The three journalists watched, frozen, as the man slowly made his way over, one trudging step after another.
Tyrone bolted out of his seat and slammed the door shut as hard as he could.
Fifteen
Five hundred miles south, Susan Barry woke to sound of honking. Lots of honking. Blaring SUV horns, high pitched beeps, and, Susan was certain, the insistent squawk of a police cruiser.
Baffled, she sat up, pulled on a robe, and went outside.
Cars clogged her street, waiting to get on to the main street around the corner, which dumped onto the Pasadena Freeway. Several of the cars had their entire back seats crammed with stuff: suitcases, coolers, TVs and computers. Susan scanned the drivers in confusion. There was no one she recognized.
“They’re all trying to get out of town,” said a voice beside her. Susan turned to find her landlady, also in a robe, her thinning gray hair down and in disarray. She held a portable radio in her hand.
“What’s going on?”
The landlady held up the radio. “The mayor announced a quarantine, effective this morning.”
They really did it. Outrage penetrated the remnants of Susan’s morning fog. They’d enacted a quarantine without even letting the doctors know!
“I didn’t even know we had any sick people here,” the old lady went on. “But now they’re saying we do, and that we need this quarantine just to be safe, to keep from spreading it.” She gazed at Susan anxiously. “You know about this, don’t you, Susan? You’re one of the doctors. Is it really so bad?”
The old lady held the radio in trembling hands. She was obviously scared out of her wits, but Susan didn’t have the heart to lie to her. Instead she used the even, noncommittal tone so carefully ingrained by years of medical training. “It’s pretty serious, but we’ve only had a few cases at County that I’m aware of. Not enough to warrant a quarantine, at any rate.”
“I hope it’s not going to be like Reno here. I’ve seen all those clips showing the traffic jams and fighting in the streets up there.”
“Fighting in the streets?” If Reno had fighting, Susan shuddered to think what would happen in LA “Have you talked with your son, Mrs. Pemmington?”
“He told me to stay indoors until we find out more.” The old woman shook her head worriedly. “I just hope it doesn’t turn out like Reno. I can’t get those pictures of the fires out of my mind…”
Susan peered at her landlady’s hunched, skeletal body and little-old-lady robe. Apprehension washed through her. “It might be better if you stayed with your son for a while,” she said. “You know, until this thing blows over.”
“Maybe you’re right, Susan,” the old lady said. “I’d better call him.” She turned and hurried to the house, her slippers clapping against her heels.
Mack sat in the War Room, sipping coffee that tasted like burnt charcoal. The sun crept over the eastern horizon, spilling shafts of smoky light through the slatted windows and across the room. Despite the wreckage of the night and the disaster that was their em
ergency response plan, he felt a moment’s rising optimism, which, in his life, had always accompanied the dawn.
Nesbitt lay asleep on the floor, his glasses folded on the table, his button-down shirt untucked and rumpled.
Mack didn’t disturb him. He turned on the TV again, leaving it on mute and watched the flashing pictures. The local news replayed shots of yesterday’s havoc, but the live shots of the morning showed a calmer picture, the reduction of the fires to embers, the traffic finally and mercifully thinning. In fact, everything looked better, except Washoe County Medical Center, where people remained camped outside the ambulance bay, wrapped up in cream-colored hospital blankets, huddling against the cold night air.
The mayor was scheduled to hold another press conference at nine am, with the governor at his side, as well as representatives from the Nevada National Guard, the police department, and emergency medical services. The declaration of martial law would explode like an atomic bomb across the national consciousness, Mack knew, which was why he wanted a moment to think.
He couldn’t get a number out of his head. It kept revolving and revolving like an old motion picture, replaying the same scene over and over again.
The number was 480,000.
That was the number of respiratory masks available in the greater Reno metropolitan area. Since half of those were tied up at hospitals and with the military, Mack did not have nearly enough masks to supply ordinary people. The feds had promised several hundred thousand more masks from the Strategic National Stockpile but said that it would take at least twenty-four hours.
Mack chewed on what was left of his fingernails. The key to controlling the plague was keeping people indoors with masks. It was the only way to slow down the disease enough to do proper contact tracing, isolate the sick, and control any rodent population that might be serving as a plague reservoir. Without martial law or enough masks, the possibility of slowing the epidemic shrunk to near zero.
He had martial law. Now, he needed more masks. He picked up the phone to call the federal agency in charge of the SNS. In his heart, Mack knew there weren’t twenty-four hours to spare to wait for the masks. It didn’t take much epidemiological training to know the disease was spreading exponentially now.
As he waited to be connected to one of the emergency allocation coordinators, his eyes wandered to the television set, the scenes now changing to dawn in another city, aerial views of long, snaking highways choked with motionless automobiles. He did a double take.
The banner across the lower half of the screen, written in all caps like a tabloid headline, read: QUARANTINE SPREADS TO LOS ANGELES AND SACRAMENTO.
Mack’s jaw dropped. The quarantines were happening faster than he had expected, which meant the demands on the strategic national stockpile would be even greater.
He took a slow breath and closed his eyes. An incubation period of one to three days, he thought. An animal reservoir. And a botched attempt at quarantine. He didn’t want to think how many had been infected in the previous day’s panic. Nor did he want to contemplate how many would show up at Reno hospitals in the next twenty-four hours.
But he needed to. He left a message for the emergency allocation coordinator, and then, with a gentle hand, shook the CDC officer awake.
Brooke looked unkempt.
The word stuck shamefully in Alan’s mind when his wife sat up after spending the night stretched across three seats in the ICU waiting room. Her normally well-coifed hair stood up on one side, and her clothing looked slept in, but she’d refused to leave the hospital. It was as though she knew something that he didn’t, her mother’s intuition giving her insight into coming events that remained, for him, utterly unforeseeable.
“Coffee?” he said.
“That’d be great,” she said with a little smile.
Alan thought she looked older: her eyes puffy, the high-gloss Beverly Hills glamour stripped from her in the gray morning light.
She touched her hair gingerly, grimacing. “I need a mirror.” She reached for the large leather bag at her feet, pulled it to her shoulder, then slowly stood up and wandered off.
She’s too old to camp out all night, Alan thought, as he watched her depart. The thought depressed him, so he stood up and went the other way, down the hallway toward the elevators, to the front lobby, where he knew there was an espresso stand.
Several uniformed security officers stood around the central front desk. They looked up at him as he stepped out of the elevator, but then they turned back to look at a cell phone one of the men held. As Alan passed by, he realized that they were watching a news report. It wasn’t until he stepped through the front door to the circular driveway and patient drop-off that he understood why.
There was no one there. No patients being dropped off for surgery. No people for early clinic appointments. Even the espresso cart was abandoned. Alan checked his watch. Just after seven o’clock.
He scanned the two large glass buildings that flanked University Hospital, looking for some evidence of life. When none presented itself, he turned back to the lobby.
The security guards were still glued to the news report. Alan walked up to them. “What’s going on?” he asked.
One guard, a short, stocky man, looked up. “It’s the quarantine, sir.”
“What quarantine?” Alan craned his neck to look at the little screen. The picture was small, but he could make out two long columns of cars stretching in either direction on Interstate 5.
“The mayor’s announced a quarantine this morning because of the plague.” The guard was polite, and for the first time, Alan noticed what he held in his right hand. It was a surgical mask. “It’s just a precaution. We don’t expect to see any plague here, but they’ve had a few cases over at the County Hospital, so the Department of Public Health is being cautious.” He motioned to the video. “The traffic is awful this morning.”
“Is that why no one is here?”
“I suspect that it’d be pretty hard to get here, sir. I’m sure it will all settle down by this afternoon.”
Alan frowned. A quarantine for a few cases? A quarantine of all of Los Angeles? The phone’s small screen was tilted so that he could barely make out the picture. He left the guards and headed for the elevator. He wanted to watch the full-sized TV in the ICU’s small waiting area.
Brooke was already there, standing in front of the television set, her eyes glued to the screen. She looked up when Alan approached.
“Did you see this, Alan?” She had reapplied her make-up and brushed her hair.
He stood by her without answering, his eyes on the TV screen, which now showed an empty podium, in front of which stood a reporter.
“We’re at City Hall. In about half an hour, the mayor is expected to explain why city officials feel the quarantine is necessary for what apparently has only been a handful of plague cases. Officials this morning are stressing the need for calm in this time of community crisis. They’re also advising people to get off the roads and to return home—”
“Oh my god, Alan. Plague,” Brooke whispered, her voice filled with dread.
He knew instantly what she was thinking. “Not here, Brooke. The security guards told me. Only over at County Hospital. Jason will be fine.”
She hugged herself, as though she were suddenly cold. “Where do all those diseases come from, over at County? It’s like a third-world nation over there. I’ve heard they have patients with leprosy and parasites and worms. And now plague.” She shuddered.
The shock in Alan’s face must been obvious, because she added, almost angrily, “Don’t look at me like that, Alan. You know where plague comes from. It’s rats!”
“And squirrels—”
“Yes. Squirrels, too. But I guarantee you, if it’s at County Hospital, it came from rats. Look at the people who go there, for heaven’s sake!”
There was no use talking to her when she was so upset. Much better to wait for her to calm down. From years of experience, he knew it wouldn’
t take long. Maybe five minutes, maybe ten.
But to Alan, standing there in silence, measuring the distance that had grown between them, it seemed like an eternity.
The cell phone rang, and Susan snatched it off the passenger seat. “Ezra?”
“What’s the big urgency, Susan?” Ezra sounded annoyed. “You called me twice.”
“I’m stuck on Huntington Expressway.”
“Are you worried about being late to work?”
Irritation flickered through her. “No, you clod. I’m calling about the quarantine. They’ve sprung it on us.”
“Evidently.”
“What’s happening at the hospital?”
Ezra sounded exasperated. “How should I know? I’m stuck on the freeway myself. Did you actually think I’d spend another night in that rat-infested hole?”
“Ezra!”
The infectious disease fellow laughed. “Ah, the ever sweet and idealistic Dr. Barry, shocked at the truth. C’mon, Susan, call a spade a spade. The place is a dump.”
Susan tried to peer around the long line of cars in front of her. “Ezra, there are sick people there.”
“Yes, and do you really think any of them are going to survive? I bet not. That’s why they’ve called this quarantine. This plague’s a killer, and they know it. I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but a whole lot of people are going to die.”
Susan tried to control her temper. “You’re still coming in, aren’t you?”
He sighed as though he were talking with the biggest moron in the world. “Yes, Susan, I’m coming in. Despite what you—” There was an audible click. “Hang on, it’s the other line.”
Susan sat motionlessly, staring out the windshield at the beat up old Ford Tempo in front of her. It belched sooty gray exhaust into the air, which her own car’s ventilating system picked up and blew into her face. She rolled down the window, but it was no better outside. She wanted to bang her head on the steering wheel.
DRYP Trilogy | Book 1 | DRYP [The Final Pandemic] Page 15