Cold Silence (17 page)

Orrin had a vision of a cement block house in a village. Of an Iraqi tied to a chair, screaming as Orrin did things to him. The man had been nothing more than a thief who worked for a rival gang. Orrin had tortured and killed that man to find a thousand gallons of diverted lubrication oil. When he was done, even his socks and the space between his toes had been soaked with the man's blood.

“I'll try, Harlan. But if it's not possible?”

There was no hesitation in Harlan this time. “Kill him, Orrin. Find out what he's up to or not, but I don't want him back at that hospital. We have to hope he's the only one, of all of them, who may be figuring this out.”

Orrin Sykes clicked off and, dwarfed by the massive cathedral up the hill, sighed and missed Harlan. He missed the people back home. His friends. He wanted to go home.

It would be simple to walk up to Rush and just pull a trigger, but Orrin had asked him to try to do more.

There has to be a way
, thought Orrin.

Far up the driveway, in the dusk, a lone figure appeared on the cathedral steps.

Rush?

Back in 1980, at the height of the Cold War, the FBI commissioned a study by Stanford psychologists to predict public reaction to a biological attack on the United States. Academically titled “Probability Analysis of Mass Fear Among Certain Populations,” the study used as a premise that an unknown enemy had released a rapidly spreading infectious agent in the United States.

“Our purpose is to assist decision makers in designing effective policy,” the authors wrote after crisscrossing the country for months, taking surveys.

I'd read the report, one more attempt to mask anarchy as controllable. The researchers had driven from city to city, administering five hundred true-false or multiple-choice questions to sixth graders in Little Rock, Montana convicts, Ohio steel workers, welfare moms in Oakland, migrant farmers in California, Wall Street brokers, corn farmers, teachers, long-haul truckers, bank clerks, house painters, heart surgeons.

If law enforcement in your city ceased operating, and you were ill and knew you were infectious, would you:

a. lock yourself in your home

b. attempt to relocate to a possibly safer area

c. consider the use of firearms justified

d. go to a designated hospital

The dryly written report predicted an initial phase of mass confusion, during which, “eighteen percent of people will panic, while 23 percent willfully ignore health announcements and refuse to take precautions, not believing that the illness is infectious. Seven percent will flee, believing that safety lies elsewhere. Four percent will secure their homes, hoard food, even attack strangers. Between 2 and 5 percent ‘will turn to crime,'” the summary stated, as if prediction were fact. “We expect a brief period of mass confusion but general cooperation, followed by rapid descent into anarchy, and an abandonment of all essential services. Therefore, we recommend a quick establishment of martial law, and the temporary closing of mass news outlets in order to minimize confusion and promote a common agenda.”

Which had not happened.

I stood on the steps of the National Cathedral with an encrypted cell phone in hand, knowing that I was once again going to anger Chris Vekey. I saw in my mind's eye the frightened worshippers at my back, kneeling, praying, lips moving, eyes staring at the miracle windows inset into gray stone. I didn't need a ten million dollar report to confirm the obvious—that the illness was in the initial phase, and things would worsen if it wasn't contained.

In 1980, when that report was written, our government had, for all its faults, still functioned more efficiently than under the
unstable collection of extremists who currently kept the nation in gridlock. I punched numbers into the phone, readying arguments. But Chris didn't answer. The person I really wanted to speak to did.

“Aya, did you mean what you said about wanting to help?” I asked.

“Yes, Joe.” She sounded breathless, eager.

“Put your mom on the phone, please.”

I explained to Chris that I could use a researcher to replace the staffers Burke had pulled from the investigation. Aya could access social media with ease. She could surf the Net probably better than me, or half the adults I knew. She could check backgrounds on people, public records, at least. She could monitor news reports. She wasn't a pro, but she was competent, and I needed all the help I could get.

I took her silence for serious consideration until she said, “Only hours ago we were told to stick to the medical end. Are you out of your mind, Joe? If she looks into things, they can backtrack what she did on her computer. Then she's in trouble, too.”

I argued into cold silence. I had not forgotten. I simply wanted Aya to look at public records, not government ones.

“You're not dragging her into this.”

Chris hung up.

I started down the driveway. At its foot, the block was deserted. Lights came on in some small homes, but residents in others might have left the city, as they were dark. I was preoccupied, thinking that once I returned to the hospital, I'd be busy with patients, and conducting even the most basic Internet searches would be difficult.

It was so quiet here that I heard my footsteps on snow, heard the distant organ start up in the cathedral, and the muffled swell of voices came through the revolving door as someone else went in or out. It was the daily 5:30
P.M.
evensong. Men and women, books open, voices raised. A pair of headlights came on down the block.

The choristers, singing.

I thought,
Two locations. Africa and Nevada. Two pairs of strangers. Two outbreaks. One song.

As I left Woodley Road and walked onto the small side street where I'd parked the 4Runner, my phone rang. I saw it was the number I'd just telephoned. My spirits rose. I hoped it was Chris, calling back. I was wrong. It was Aya.

“Joe, I heard what you asked. I want to help. Mom went out. I'm alone in our room now. They put us in a student dorm. I can keep a secret if you can.”

Go for it
, I thought.

I asked her to get from Eddie the names of the two grad students in Somalia who had been singing about the Sixth Prophet. “Try to find background on those guys. They're from the State University of New York at Albany, they said. Maybe you can access the school website. Try to find any phone numbers. Home addresses, family. Departments. Maybe we can call one of the faculty members at home.”

“Duh! I know how to look up things. It's not like I'm five years old, Joe.”

“Don't personally contact
anyone.
Stay on the computer. If nothing comes up, just stop. Move on to the next guy.”

“Sure.”

“This all stays between you and me.”

“Of course. If I tell Mom, she'll kill me.”

“She'll kill me more than you. Also, look up
the Sixth Prophet.
I don't know who it is, or if it even means anything.
The Sixth Prophet
. Check links with disease. Or religions. Any references over the last five years at all. Song lyrics. Online sermons. Prophecies. Try Galilee. Cults. Collect it all.”

“Thanks! I'm going crazy without something to do!”

“And, Aya, don't forget what I said about—”

She cut me off, her disdain making her sound exactly like her
mom. “You don't have to tell me twice.
Don't tell anyone.
You know what Mom said? She said if she was a man, a dad instead of a mom, you wouldn't have gone against her wishes. Joe? Is that true? You don't respect women as much?”

“Maybe we should forget this,” I said, but I also wondered uncomfortably if Chris had had a point.

“No!” Long pause. “Um, I, I better tell you that, uh . . .”

“Tell me what?” I asked, a drumbeat of alarm beating in my head.

She blurted out, “Burke knows you're not here, at the hospital. He knows you left.”

“How?”

There was silence. Then, in a smaller voice, almost a child's, she said miserably, “Someone told them.”

I was vaguely aware of the kiss of snow on my face. I asked who told them and she didn't answer. I heard jagged breathing. She was learning about choice. I think understanding the consequences of choice is what distinguishes childhood from adults. Suddenly I understood that her tortured breathing
was
her answer.

“Your
mom
told them?” I whispered into the phone.

Aya started babbling. “She was afraid for me! She got jailed last time you did something! She was scared we'd be separated, Joe, and she
argued
with Mr. Burke that you were right. She took your side! You should have heard her! Fighting for you, Joe!”

“Fighting for me. I see that.”

Christ,
I thought.
Burke knows I left. There might be soldiers on the way here right now. Judging from what happened in Nevada, I might never get to see Burke if they take me in. I might never get to tell anyone except a prison guard anything.

“Joe, she was shouting and she never does that. Don't be mad at her. I shouldn't have told you. But I think they're after you. I can't believe I said it. I'm such an idiot. I didn't know what to do.”

“You did right,” I soothed. “I'm not mad at your mom, or you.
Your mom was right. Absolutely right,” I said, thinking,
Fucking asshole fucking you didn't even tell me . . .
I said, “I understand. Thanks for the heads-up. Aya, why don't we just forget that you and I ever talked.”

“No! I'm going to help you!” the poor girl said. She clicked off.

A wave of futility hit me. I was dragging people I cared for into things again. Chris was right.
What's wrong with you, Joe!
I called back but Aya didn't answer. The truth was, Chris had done the sensible thing if she wanted to make sure she stayed with Aya. Burke might wait for me to return before lowering the boom. He wasn't stupid. He just hated me. It would be stupid to waste manpower by sending troops after a doctor who'd temporarily absented himself from a hospital.

What had I learned anyway?

Nothing really.

Go back and throw yourself on his mercy. Damnit, Chris. All you had to do was shut up and I would have come back.

Either way, no good.

I rounded the corner and turned onto the small side street where I'd left Galli's 4Runner. It was darker here as a streetlight was out. Who was I kidding anyway? I'd gone from depending on trained researchers to begging a fifteen-year-old kid for help. And the fifteen-year-old, almost instantly, had started questioning everything I asked her. I could no longer see the cathedral. I was almost at the car.

I saw, in my mind's eye, exactly how far I'd sunk.

I'd fallen victim to the delusion of feeling essential, Washington's principal disease. I was tired. I needed to get to the hospital and ride out Burke's anger and
see
patients, be useful
, instead of imagining I had answers that everyone else had missed.

Still
, I thought,
maybe I can convince them. Maybe when I tell them about the Sixth Prophet, they'll at least check it out. But what will I say? I don't even know whether it means anything, or if it is a dead end.

Where the hell had I put the car keys?

Then I saw the vandalism. Four cars in a row were tilted sideways, toward the middle of the street. Someone had gone down the line and punctured tires, two on each car. Two flat tires meant my spare would be of no use.

Of all the times for this to happen, I thought.

Then the stranger appeared up the block.

—

“Goddamn kids. They got you, too? I chased them away on Woodley Road. They were slashing tires there, too.”

The man had walked up to me as I was trying to call the admiral's road service 800 number. The admiral's GEICO help sticker was on the window, but when I punched in the number, a recorded voice told me that service was “temporarily suspended” due to the national emergency.

I clicked off. The man and I stood ten feet apart, slightly farther than the usual distance for polite conversation, but with sickness spreading in the city, that was, at best, the probable new norm.

“Kids,” I said.

“Yeah. Teens. Just going car to car, laughing. I hope they didn't get my car, too. I'm at the end of the block. I'd offer to help you with the spare, but,” the guy said, as if embarrassed, “everyone's nervous about infection.”

“I understand. Anyway, I've got two flats. The spare won't help.”

“All the gas stations are closed.”

“I know.”

“You live near here?”

“I was heading over to Georgetown Hospital.”

“My father is there,” the man said, taking one step closer. “He got sick at the stadium. They won't let me see him. They won't tell me how he is. Are you sick, too?”

“No, I'm a doctor. I work there. I'm sure the staff is doing their best for your dad,” I said.

“Hey, I recognize you,” he said. “You were in the cathedral, praying.”

I squinted in the dark and realized that the man might be the same guy who'd come in while I was talking to Nadine, and who had kneeled in the Miracle Chapel. I saw a bland face below a stocking cap. The snow-dusted jacket covered an average-sized man, maybe thirty years old. No accent to speak of, except helpfulness. A man who, like any normal stranger, showed a combination of courtesy and wariness that was understandable on this particular night.

“My dad phoned me two nights ago and said his lips were tingling, then he said he had sores on his nose. He said he thought he had the Bible Virus. I told him to go to the hospital, like the TV says.”

“That was the right thing to say.”

The stranger started to walk away. Then he turned back.

“Oh hell,” he said. “Nobody helps anyone out here. They're all scared. I guess I could drive you to the hospital. It's only a couple of miles. You're not sick, are you? If you're a doctor, they wouldn't have let you out of the hospital if you had symptoms. Don't lie to me. Are you sick?”