Containment (10 page)

"
Don't do that, babe." Abe shook his head. "Don't be sneaking up on us like that. You know that's not right."

Jimmy also walked out. Gary had not seen where he
'd been hiding either. Jimmy was as big as Abe, but he was a white guy. He always wore a beard, unlike Abe's clean-shaven face.

"
What you doing here?" Jimmy sounded suspicious. He sounded that way most of the year or so that Gary had known him.

"
School's closed," said Alicia. "And we thought we'd, you know, come over and see what's happening with you guys."

Sometimes the entrepreneurs gave Alicia and Gary little jobs. Gary made sure it was nothing serious, though.

"She's after some weed," said Abe, laughing.

Jimmy smiled and stepped back into the shadows. When he returned a moment later he held out a smoke. Alicia took it.

"Girl, what have we been telling you," said Jimmy, holding out his lighter. "You're getting hooked on this stuff. Rule number one, never use the merchandise yourself. Leave it for the customers."

Abe and Jimmy looked at each other and laughed again. Abe walked over to Gary and held out a massive palm.
"What's up, my man?" Gary shook Abe's hand, his own hand disappearing in the flesh of Abe's.

"
Why is school closed?" asked Jimmy. "It ain't no holiday today, is it? Is it, Abe? A holiday?"

"
No. There ain't no holiday today."

"
I don't know why school's closed," said Alicia, tilting her head back and exhaling a thick column of smoke, which became striped by the sabers of light coming in from the holed ceiling and poorly boarded windows.

Jimmy shot Gary a glance. Gary was the one they looked to for answers. Gary shrugged. He noticed Abe and Jimmy giving each other a different look this time. More serious.

But Gary was feeling better about coming here now. Abe and Jimmy scared him a little, but they were cool. He couldn't explain it but that's how he felt; it puffed him up when he was around them. Like he was important, not just some nothing teenager.

Another thing Gary couldn
't understand was what his mother and the teachers at school had always told him about drug dealers. From their description he'd imagined that dealers would have horns, forked tails, and smell of sulfur. But they were nothing like that, at least not these two. They were cool and friendly. Abe was black and Jimmy was white but they got along very well, never any racial tension between them. Isn't that what the teachers at high school were always preaching? Get along with people who aren't just like you? Abe and Jimmy presented two good examples of people doing just that. And although most of what they did for a living was probably illegal, Gary didn't see that it did much harm. If people wanted to buy something, even if it was something dangerous, they had a right to buy it and use it. That's what Abe always said, and it made sense to Gary.

Gary knew that the two dealers didn
't really live in the abandoned house, although that's what they liked to tell him and Alicia. Gary had noticed them winking at each other when they told him and his sister that they slept on cots in the "back room," and that they were just poor salesmen trying to scratch out a living in the city. Gary also knew they drove expensive cars; once he was walking down Glaser Avenue and saw Abe driving a Mercedes, all decked out with chrome rims and tinted windows.

Gary glanced at Alicia. Weed she used, nothing more. As long as they didn
't give her any hard stuff, it would be okay. He always made sure she never touched needles or pills.

Another thing that was cool about Abe and Jimmy: their stash of weapons. Not long ago Gary had glimpsed some of them underneath a mat at the house. Fierce-looking automatic weapons, along with hundreds, maybe thousands of rounds of ammunition. But they didn
't ever use them, at least not to Gary's knowledge. The guns were just to defend their territory, to show people they meant business.

Just like cops, Gary figured, who were conspicuously armed but rarely drew their weapons. He couldn
't imagine Abe or Jimmy becoming violent, shooting people. They just weren't like that. They were too cool. Nothing wrong with having a stash of guns as long as you weren't a terrorist or anything. Sure, Gary knew that his father and mother—especially mother—and his high school teachers and at least a few of his friends wouldn't approve. But that was because they didn't understand; they just didn't get it.

* * *

When Loretta arrived at the wholesaler's, she found everyone crowded into the rear office and watching television. The mayor of Medburg was making a speech.

"
...only temporary," said Mayor Xavia Williams, a small black woman with streaked gray hair and big round eyes. "Please, this is no time to panic. I want to urge all our citizens to remain calm."

"
Yeah," growled someone in the office, "easy for you to say, sitting there in City Hall instead of in the containment zone."

Loretta gasped.
"Containment zone?"

She was hushed. Someone turned up the television set
's volume.

"
I am in constant communication with members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," continued the mayor into an array of some sixty microphones that looked like a peacock's tail feathers, "as well as people from the Infectious Disease Unit, the Epidemiology Study Group, and the Micro-Investigation Unit, which is currently in charge of operations. I have spoken personally with the director of the Micro-Investigation Unit, Dr. Chet Vernolt, and he is coordinating the operation with full cooperation of our office in Medburg, along with the Pennsylvania National Guard and the United States Army. I have also personally spoken with the elected representatives of our district, Pennsylvania's two United States senators, and the president of the United States. They have all assured me that the situation is well under control. I repeat, there is no need to panic and I urge all citizens in the containment zone to remain calm."

"
That woman's full of crap," grumbled the office manager. "She ain't talked to nobody, bet you." The pasty-faced man launched himself out of his chair, and his potbelly jiggled. He glared at the television. "That's why I didn't vote for ya, ya black bitch!"

"
Don't you use that kind of language around here," said a woman.

Loretta leaned toward the manager. Two of my kids are outside, she was thinking, playing around in an epidemic of some sort.
"What's this disease?" she whispered.

The manager shrugged as he sat back down.

Loretta persisted. "They don't know? Or you haven't heard them say?"

"
Nobody knows, Loretta. Least they won't say. I don't know anybody who's sick."

On the television the mayor had been replaced by a robust, white-haired man with a large white mustache.
"We at the Micro-Investigation Unit are fully aware of the inconvenience and disruption the quarantine will cause in the affected neighborhood. We, along with officials at all levels of the government, sincerely apologize for those of you who must endure this hardship. I wish to emphasize that the quarantine is only precautionary. It does not mean that everyone, or even anyone, in the zone has the disease. It only means—"

"
Liar!" said the manager. "They don't do a quarantine unless people are sick—"

A red-faced woman turned around and yelled at the manager.
"Quiet!"

"
—we do not yet know what sort of thing we're dealing with," said the Micro director. "It is because we are not at this time able to positively identify the disease that we feel it necessary to take what must seem to many people as a drastic step. But this is no indication that we are not in control. The situation is well in hand. There have been five fatalities—truly unfortunate for the victims and their families—but five is a small number, and there are no signs at the present time of increasing incidence of the disease. It is my conviction that the quarantine will last only a few days, and the disruption will be minimal."

Murmurs erupted in the off
ice. Loretta listened to her co-workers, realizing that they felt the same way she did—like she'd just been kicked in the belly. They were quarantined, contained, imprisoned. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was an outrageous thing to do. They were American citizens. They had rights!

Di
splayed on the screen was a map showing the containment zone. The streets and avenues inside the boundary were familiar. Glaser, Adams, Kingway, Chestnut, Highway 63. A good chunk of Medburg along with some of the unincorporated part of the county, and a sliver of Montgomery County surrounding a short stretch of the Moshatowie Creek, totaling in all an area of about eight and a half square miles. The serpentine dividing line of the containment zone had been chosen to follow natural barriers, such as the copse of trees to the south and a park to the north. The division within Medburg ran along the interstate highway, a boundary that had for a long time neatly separated two sections of the town: a small section in which many residents had money and nice houses, and the one in which they didn't—which was the one in the zone.

"
Why isn't any of Madison Township in the containment zone?" asked someone in the office.

"
Because they're in Montgomery County," spat the manager. "You didn't think they'd include the private country clubs along Greenview Avenue, did you?"

N
o unauthorized personnel would be allowed to enter the zone. Certainly no one was getting out, and as for getting in, who would want to? The television showed pictures of National Guardsmen standing beside a twelve-foot-high fence that had been erected in the early hours of the morning. Adams Street, thought Loretta. That part of the fence cuts across Adams Street.

Several announcements repeated that the quarantine would only last until the
"disease is identified and its characteristics are understood."

"
What the hell does that mean?" cried the red-faced woman.

Announcers described the
"rules of the zone," and text scrolled across the screen. In one corner of the screen a woman presented the information in sign language.

"
Food and water will be brought into the containment zone and distributed as necessary. Supermarkets and banks are ordered to remain open for business as usual. Prices of all goods and services will stay the same—no increases will be permitted, and any businesses that try to take advantage of the situation will be immediately fined and the managers arrested. The clinics will be manned not only by their resident staff but also by specialists from all over the country. Police will continue to patrol the zone and respond to calls, fire fighters will answer any alarms, the post office will deliver mail. Traffic is to be detoured around the zone in the most strategic manner possible. Anyone who lives or works in the zone but is not currently within may not return. Anyone who visited the zone yesterday on foot or got out of their cars for any length of time within the zone should report to the authorities at once. This is for your own good as well as for the health and well being of your fellow citizens. You will be quarantined in comfortable quarters. People inside the containment zone need not take any drastic steps but should observe normal health precautions, such as careful washing and hygiene. Further details will be posted."

"
This won't do a bit of good!" cried the manager. "People have been comin' and goin' and have spread this thing all over the state by now."

"
Save your breath," said the red-faced woman. "How many people come to this crummy part of town unless they have to? Almost nobody. People lock their car doors and don't stop, they keep on driving."

Mayor Williams came back on the screen. She assured everyone that there was no reason to suspect terrorists were involved, and there were no known factory accidents in the area. What was probabl
y happening, she said, was that they were dealing with a new or unusual microbe that affects only a small percentage of people. They did not at the present time believe that the disease was highly contagious, but containment was necessary because of its as yet undetermined nature. She reminded the citizens of Medburg of the hardships their city had endured over the course of the city's long history, from the battles of the Revolutionary War to the shutting down of the factories and mines in the area over the last century, and the mayor was certain that the good citizens of the city would pull through again. She advised people outside the zone to go about their business as best they could, and for people inside the zone to sit quietly and stay inside their residences as much as possible. They should of course report all illness to authorities, although the mayor failed to specify exactly what symptoms the victims of the disease had experienced. On the screen a telephone number flashed. The mayor cautioned that people inside the containment zone would see, from time to time, medical and epidemiological personnel working in protective gear that looked like space suits. People should not be concerned about this because the suits were simply precautionary.

The manager snorted.
"Why don't they give us some of them suits."