Containment (31 page)

"
You might be right," acknowledged Cecily. She sat down on the floor, cross-legged, in Sukhasana. She closed her eyes. "But I'll take the chance, and there's no better place to stay."

Sitting down beside her, Gordon tried to emulate the pose. He struggled.

"Don't force it," said Cecily, eyes still closed. "Do what you can. It's not a contest, it's a practice."

Gordon found a comfortable position. He closed his eyes, but relaxation would not come.
"Cecily...."

"
Yes?"

Gordon took a deep breath.
"If something happens, you know...if something happens before we get a chance to talk again...I want to tell you something."

"
Yes?"

"
I just wanted to say, you've got the greatest smile I've ever seen in my life."

"
Is that why you came looking for me?"

* * *

Right on time, at 5:00 p.m., Gary and Alicia sneaked into the meeting place. A few of the other kids were already there; all of them had been hiding out in nooks and crannies across a small area centering on the designated meeting place—an old abandoned row home that Gary had never seen before. Abe and Jimmy never seemed to use the same building twice, except for that burned out shell they pretended to call home.

The windows had been boarded up long ago, but the front door had fragmented, leaving the house wide open to any and all comers. Some light shined in from the gaping hole and from other cracks in the structure, but it was getting dark outside and the interior was poorly lit.

Now only one thing remained to do—wait until tonight. Then the action would begin.

Gary and Alicia sat down on the dusty floor in what was once the kitchen. They leaned against the peeling wall, crusted with hard water stains and heat damage, probably from the coils of a refr
igerator that had been shoved too close to the wall.

Another teenager crept into the house. He alone among the subdued faces showed any excitement. He was wearing a camouflaged jacket
—a winter coat, much too heavy for the mildly chilly spring weather—and he reached inside a pocket to pull out a wicked looking Colt submachine gun. He held it over his head and grunted, making ape-like noises.

"
Jerk," someone muttered.

Gary had his arm around Alicia
's shoulder. "Please go. Please...please go back home."

Tears ran steadily down Alicia
's cheek.

"
Go somewhere," pleaded Gary. "Go anywhere, but don't stay here. Don't do this."

Alicia didn
't respond. The tears continued; no sobs, just tears.

Gary leaned close.
"You're all I've got left. You're why I'm here, doing this."

"
She was my mother too," said Alicia. "My family too...."

"
I didn't think you cared."

"
Well, you were wrong, asshole."

Gary grew desperate. Glancing around, he saw most of the kids had already arrived. Only a couple were absent.
"You gotta leave now, Leesh. I'm not asking."

Through the tears Alicia gave a short, cough-like laugh.
"Like I'm scared of
you
."

"
They'll be here soon." Gary licked his lips. "If you don't go, I'll tell them you're going to mess everything up. They'll believe me."

"
No they won't. Jimmy and Abe like me better than you."

"
Leesh, please." Gary stared at her. The tears were finally subsiding. "One of us has got to live."

Alicia looked up.
"What are you talking about?"

"
One of us has got to...got to...you know, make it. I don't want our family wiped out!"

"
Everyone's gonna die."

"
No, no!" Gary shook his sister. "No, not if we break out. Don't give up, that's why I'm willing to...."

"
To get killed?" Alicia continued to look at him.

Gary fully expected to die tonight.
All them would die, all of the kids—but maybe Jimmy or Abe would make it, would manage to break out of the zone. Gary was prepared for what would happen to him. And, when he and Alicia had gotten home early that morning and had seen their mother and little brother, lying there on the bed, Gary had almost wanted it to happen right then and there. A raging emptiness opened in his chest and still hadn't been filled, hours later. He began to think it never would, no matter how long he lived. Better to die sooner than later.

"
I don't really care what happens to me," said Gary softly. "But I care what happens to you. I always have."

Alicia dried her eyes with a nimble set of fingers.
"You always embarrassed me. My dorky brother."

"
So how about getting out of here, then. So no one sees me with you, and gets the idea we're related or something."

"
You don't get it. I already told you, they were my family too."

"
Then how about living for them?"

Footsteps came from the walkway. Big, heavy footsteps.

"Leesh, please...." Gary pushed her toward a crack in the wall—a crack that went all the way to the outside, a convenient exit for someone to slide through. He started shoving her forcefully.

"
Wait, you're crushing me—"

"
Go, go, go now!"

Suddenly she was gone. Gary listened to the soft, diminishing footfalls of his sister.

Turning back, Gary breathed a sigh of relief just as Abe walked into the house.

"
All right," said Abe in a strangely soft voice. He looked around. "Who we got?"

Everyone stood. Gary said nothing about his sister, deciding that if someone asked, he would tell them she got sick. Some of the rest of the kids had probably gotten sick too.

Abe glanced at Gary, but only briefly as the big man scanned the room. Pulling out a bunch of little bags from a pocket of his massive jeans, Abe smiled and said to everyone, "All right, now it's time for a pre-game warm-up. Just a little one. Just a little warm-up, to get us in the mood for tonight."

Gary looked around the rapidly darkening room. He didn
't see Jimmy or the hot-rod kid who was going to be driving, but they were probably making final preparations on the car.

Passing out the little bags, Abe said,
"Go easy with this stuff, gang. Wait and let me show you how to use it."

Bethesda, Maryland / 8:45 p.m.

Pradeep Rumanshan and Roderick Halkin crossed paths in the lab. Roderick looked up, nodded a greeting, and was walking past when Pradeep handed him a clipboard. Roderick flipped through the pages and glanced at each one briefly, then smiled. "Kraig will be pleased."

A minute later both scientists sat in Roderick
's office. Kraig's image appeared on the huge computer screen, and the speaker crackled with his voice. "It's about time!"

"
We're not quite finished yet," cautioned Roderick.

"
I don't care about side effects," Kraig said.

"
The patients will," said Roderick. "But there are other, even more important problems to be solved. We have to find a way to get this enzyme past the blood-brain barrier."

"
Rod, are you telling me with all the medical expertise we currently have available, and all the brilliant physicians in the world willing to consult with us on this, you're saying that we can't get the treatment past a vascular roadblock?"

"
No, all I suggest is caution. The drug has not been tested."

"
Caution be damned. Cook up a batch, a big fat batch of it. All I care is, does it work?"

"
It works," said Roderick, a trace of exasperation in his tone. "And for that you can thank the tireless efforts of Dr. Rumanshan."

"
Hair of the dog that bit you," said Pradeep.

Kraig looked puzzled, then understood.
"Combinatorial chemistry. You cooked up this enzyme, didn't you?"

"
Millions of parallel reactions," said Pradeep, nodding. "The right molecule was bound to turn up sooner or later."

"
So it chops protobiont into tiny little pieces?"

"
I wouldn't say that, but it successfully and completely cleaves the molecule, leaving it unreactive."

"
That's not good enough," said Kraig. "There's a chance the pieces will come together again. The soup inside a cell is pretty thick but molecules in solution bounce around all the time, and I don't want any possibility that one of those little monsters gets resurrected."

Roderick shook his head.
"That won't happen because the pieces are quickly metabolized. They don't rejoin."

"
Does it save the mice?"

A barely noticeable frown came over Roderick
's presently gaunt features. "We'll know shortly. Perhaps I should have waited to call you—"

"
Forget it. It's all right." Kraig paused. "Sorry. Congratulations to both of you. I know you've worked hard."

"
We had plenty of help," said Pradeep.

"
Can this stuff go out tomorrow?" asked Kraig. "I mean, a lot of it. Enough for everybody left in the zone and in the vicinity."

Roderick shifted in his chair.
"Kraig, I don't think it's wise to be giving such an experimental medication to healthy people."

"
There's no time to be dainty and cautious. We've only just begun testing the people surrounding the zone, and since they're not under quarantine, there's no requirement that they stay put. Nor are they compelled yet to take the test, and I'm told a few have already refused. We can't let this bug escape."

"
And you think they'll take the medication?"

"
We have to have it ready. If we find a single case outside the zone, then even Chet will realize that we'll have to take drastic steps. We'll force them to take it. Either the treatment or the test, and preferably both, to be sure."

Pradeep said,
"I'm not sure I understand. If isolated cases show up again, we'll be able to treat the disease now. I realize that it would desirable to keep protobiont confined, but if a small amount slips past I don't see how much of a threat it can pose."

"
A great big threat," said Kraig.

Roderick patted Pradeep
's shoulder. "Epidemiology isn't your specialty. Kraig is worried about reservoirs."

"
Reservoirs?"

"
We have to exterminate protobiont," explained Kraig. "I mean, every molecule of it. And keep the formula a secret forever. If some of it gets out into the world, then protobiont will find places where it can thrive. It may only kill a few people every once in a while, or it may cause another serious epidemic, but either way, it'll be loose and there will be no way to destroy all of the molecules. We'll never get another chance to completely exterminate it. You see? It'll spread from farm to farm, city to city, country to country, and we won't be able to stop it. Reservoirs of protobiont will form; by reservoirs I mean hosts—people and mice and whatever else this thing will infect and in which it lives and replicates and spreads farther and farther."

"
If protobiont starts to evolve in some form or fashion," said Roderick, "then we would have to contend with periodic outbreaks, some of which would undoubtedly be severe, causing thousands or even millions of casualties. This is exactly what happens in influenza and other similar diseases."

"
It'll be a new plague," said Kraig. "Only worse, because we can't prime people's immune system with a vaccine—this bug slips in under the immune system's radar screen."

A look of understanding, tinged with horror, appeared on Pradeep
's face.

23 April, Friday

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
/ 12:05 a.m.

Reddy had just come on duty. The shifts, being staggered along the line, meant that the men on either side of his position had been posted for at least half an hour. They waved to Reddy and he waved back. After he climbed up the rungs of the platform he gave the other men a thumbs up, then he hunkered down in his booth, behind his shield, and kicked his boots twice against the lip of the platform's raised edge.

It promised to be a long night.

Guys had gotten tired of listening to the warnings of the heroes who stayed behind, well away from the front lines, and who offered advice and supervision. The last 48 hours the rear echelon had been parroting every conceivable doomsday scenario. Reddy wanted to keep himself alert and psyched as much as anybody, but the sky-is-falling warnings had become as stale as last year's pop star.

Sure, the guys working the south side had killed a couple of men. One of the men walked right up to the fence, openin
g fire with some pop gun, the slugs of which bounced harmlessly off the armor plating. He'd gotten plugged, not because he was a threat but because he was such a damn nuisance.

It wasn
't funny, but Reddy had smiled when he heard it, along with the rest of the guys. Nothing funny about a man getting killed, even the biggest fool in the world—but Reddy had smiled. The whole ridiculous thing made you laugh; sad, but funny, in a grotesque sort of way.

Soon everybody in the zone would be dead. Then Reddy and the rest of the guys would ship out, get debriefed
—"thanks much for your contribution, and don't tell anybody anything about what happened here"—and they would go home and settle back into their routine, their dull jobs, family outings, playing baseball with the kids, humping the old lady.

Reddy imagined himself lying awake at night. Listening to his wife grind her teeth
—he'd be surprised if she didn't wear away every bit of her enamel before long—and the creak and pop of their new house settling into the soil. And he'd be wondering about what he did here, at the Montgomery County border. Wondering if he'd done the right thing enlisting in the Guard. And he'd be seeing things too, as he lay awake at night. Seeing some of the twenty thousand victims. Seeing some of their faces superimposed on his wife and his child, his neighbors and his relatives.

Could you get posttraumatic stress disorder even if you never fired a shot? Perhaps, though Reddy didn
't like his chances of scoring a diagnosis and a compensated disability out of it.

Just as he tried to clear his mind of morbid thoughts, a car came screeching around the intersection near his post and headed straight for the fence.

* * *

Gary cradled his machine gun and followed the crowd. Creeping along a row of duplexes, mostly dark but with a window or two lit up, he and the rest of the gang made their way toward the fence just as the car sped down the road.

Most of the kids were high. Not stoned, not loopy or fall-down drunk, but pretty well buzzed.

All except Gary. He hadn
't taken the drugs. He thought that was kind of funny. Why was it funny? He couldn't be sure, but it sounded funny. Maybe, he realized, the drugs had gotten to him anyway. Maybe they'd seeped through his skin.

Abe had disappeared shortly after dispensing the drugs. No sign of either him or Jimmy. Instead there was some other adult, a man in his thirties who Gary had never seen before. Ugly, red-veined face, scarred and with a perpetual sneer. He was in charge, and had marched everyone along, bringing up the rear.

Bullets buzzed near Gary's head. He ducked. The man at the rear fired round after round at the fence, a hundred yards away.

Gary wasn
't scared. He was numb inside. It was already over for him. This was it. Soon he'd join Mom and Yvonne and the scamp.

Kids ahead were screaming, taking cover, firing wildly
, and getting shot and killed.

Gary could see the fence, and the blinding lights behind it, searing the ground with their brilliance. Kids aimed at the lig
hts; Gary could hear one exploding as it was hit. Then another, and another.

The troops fired back. Gary hid behind an air conditioning duct of the last house on the street, closest to the fence. The gang had spread out, as they
'd been told.

Gary wondered where their leader had gone off to. He didn
't seem to be anywhere.

The car
's engine roared. Looking up, Gary saw that it headed straight toward the fence— it would ram it at full speed.

He realized he
'd been watching the whole scene with a dreamy fascination—the car, the kids, the soldiers, everything—playing out all this time, and he had never once fired his gun. He realized he didn't want to.

Sparks flew from the hood and roof of the car
as the National Guard bullets sprayed everywhere. The windshield shattered and collapsed in a spray of glass, but the car kept going forward, despite the punishment. It seemed to have the momentum of a tank. They must have put a ton of metal on it, thought Gary.

The crash resounded like nothing Gary had heard before, splitting the air, even drowning out the staccato of gunfire. Instinctively he reached up to his ears, still holding the cold, unused gun. His hands failed to block out the thunderous roar, the pain as the ear
drums vibrated with a punch of air as strong as a hurricane.

As the car hit the fence, the
front wheels smashed into some concrete blocks reinforcing the bottom. The car bounced almost straight up. The chassis cracked as the front end flew skyward. Momentum pushed driver through the empty space that had once held a windshield. The body looked like a flimsy doll as it bounced off the shattered hood and flew up in the air, a high arc that curled back toward the zone because it had been swatted backward by the hood.

With the front wheels still spinning and pieces of the engine flying off, the car
climbed the fence. It cleared the barbed wire at the top and seemed to hang there, in space, as if in orbit. Then it came crashing down, landing on the fence. Poles snapped and braces buckled. A portion of the fence fell. Both fence and hulking, smoldering car sagged to the ground, the car right side up and the fence lying sideways on the ground.

The driver came down behind the wreck, hitting the asphalt inside the zone with a sickening plop.

Gary saw the driver's face—what little remained of it.

Then everything made sense. Everything and nothing. Gary saw the face of his sister, lying there dead in the street. She hadn
't gone home. She'd gone straight to Jimmy. And the hot-rod driver, the one who was supposed to drive the car—he had gotten scared and wimped out or had gotten sick with the disease and died. But Alicia would have gone through with it. Had gone through with it.

The fighting raged on, but Gary paid no attention. The house next door exploded in a fireball,
flames licking the night sky.

Gary threw down his weapon and starting walking away.

* * *

Reddy inserted another magazine. The barrel almost glowed with heat.

After a response to the initial machine-gun fire coming from concealed positions, Reddy had trained his weapon upon the onrushing car. A suicide mission, obviously—its intention to penetrate the barrier. When the car hit, Reddy expected an explosion and started climbing down the rungs of his platform.

But the explosion never came. There was only a painfully loud crash and the sound of metal being crushed, wrenched, and ripped.

Why was there no explosion?

Reddy, crouching on the ground beneath the platform, looked around. The kamikaze car lay on top of barrier, straddling the broken fence. The riddled hood yawned open; with strips of rubber still clinging to one of the hubs, the front end teetered just over the fallen barricade.

Did the explosives fail to go off? Were they timed for a later detonation?

The car
's driver, clearly dead, lay inside the zone. Surely the explosion hadn't been delayed to let the driver get away—it was a suicide mission all the way.

Reddy stared at the car with a growing horror. He would have to investigate it
—he must do his duty.

And yet the thi
ng could very well blow up in his face.

Small arms fire from the zone kept kicking up the ground, whining through the air, flicking the needles of the overhead tree branches. Reddy and his squad mates answered. So did the heavy artillery and the helicopters, now hovering overhead. A house exploded, then another. Finally the enemy fire dwindled to nothing.

Cautiously Reddy emerged from behind his armored platform. I've put this off long enough, he thought. He crept forward, staring at the wreck through his face shield as if nothing else in the world existed. Lit up brilliantly with lights coming from all directions, the twisted metal glinted and sparkled.

His buddy at the next booth was thinking the same thing as Reddy, for Reddy heard something in his suit
's internal speaker.

"
Why doesn't the damn thing go off?"

Studying the smoldering hulk, Reddy noted once again that the car had in fact penetrated the barrier
—but if it'd been loaded with explosives, as would be expected, it would have blown a hole in the fence wide enough for people to escape. If they could have survived the gunfire of the soldiers and the helicopter gunships—which was doubtful. They would have had a tiny chance of success, but a tiny chance is better than none, wasn't it?

Reddy whispered,
"Maybe we shot out the detonator."

His buddy said,
"Maybe we'll win the lottery tomorrow."

Reddy stopped and checked his weapon. Then he continued forward, each step carrying its own nightmare. His buddy moved in from the other side.

"Maybe they didn't have any explosives." Reddy knew the flaw in that reasoning even before he'd said it.

"
Then why crash a car into the fence?" asked his buddy.

Just for the hell of it, thought Reddy. Just to age me twenty years in a single night.

"We should wait for the bomb guys," said his buddy, stopping.

That sounded good to Reddy. Except that something told him otherwise. Something was wrong.

"Reddy...."

Inching forward, each muscle contraction registering in his brain, Reddy kept his gaze fixed on the wreck.

"Reddy, you're getting too close...Reddy...."

The plastic shell of the car had been shot away, only shreds remained attached to the steel frame and roll bars. All the glass was gone. The front axle had snapped in two.

"Reddy, get back from that thing!"

He could almost reach out now and touch it. On his haunches, walking like a duck, Reddy waddled along the side.

Then he saw the body. "Got something!" he said frantically.

Someone from command had been listening.
"Soldier, report!"

An arm dangled out from the trunk of the car. Except there wasn
't any compartment, not like a normal trunk. Metal plates had been welded onto the frame. The rear seats had been yanked out.

Now Reddy understood.

"Soldier, report!"

Reddy dived to the ground and aimed his weapon. He switched on his suit
's external speaker.

"
Come out now! Come out with your hands up!"

The arm didn
't move. Reddy crawled closer. The motionless arm, dangling between metal plates ripped at the weld, defied his order.

Peeking between the cracked plates, Reddy saw the rest of the body. On the head was a football helmet. A bloody face, with wide-open eyes, stared back at him. The chest and back were crushed into a bloody mess.

"One male," said Reddy, switching over to his radio. "Caucasian, between thirty and forty years of age. Deceased."

The car rocked forward. Reddy
's buddy yelled, the shout piercing his ears until the suit's automatic damper cut in.

Rolling away from the wreck, Reddy heard gunshots.

"He's coming your way, he's coming your way!"

Reddy looked up to see a huge man leap down from the car. He landed three feet away, losing his balance and throwing out a massive hand to keep from falling. Before Reddy could blink he raced away.

Redford Zunan jumped to his feet.

He
'd never shot a man—a target he could see, as opposed to the faceless, concealed enemy at whom he'd fired so far—and he'd never even considered the possibility of shooting a man in the back. But there wasn't time to worry about niceties and ethics. Somebody in the zone was about to get away and Reddy couldn't let that happen.

This was a civilian and he was retreating, but this time he was headed
away
of the zone.

On one knee, Reddy braced his firearm and sighted the target as searchlights swung to and fro, trying to follow the man as he sprinted away. Reddy knew all the reasons why he should hesitate, why he shouldn
't shoot this man. The man was an American, confined in a containment zone against his will, all of his constitutional rights had been suspended. He was only trying to get away, trying to do the same thing that Reddy would have done in his shoes. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair. All of these things went through Reddy's mind in the second and a half it took him to get into position and pull the trigger. None of these things made Reddy hesitate in the slightest. Squeezing the trigger twice in rapid succession, Reddy felt the gun kick against his shoulder.