Jakarta Pandemic, The (34 page)

“Hon, you shouldn’t feel like that’s the wrong answer. I feel the same way. I wish we could help more people,” Kate said.

Alex looked up at her and saw a warm, compassionate smile that eased his regret. “I know you do. Sometimes I think about all of the drugs I gave to Dr. Wright. If I had just kept more of those, we could have made a huge difference around here,” he said.

Kate leaned forward, sliding her cup of tea across the island with both hands. “Giving those to Dr. Wright was the right thing to do. Keeping them for yourself at that point would have been totally illegal and would have yanked the moral and ethical chair right out from under you when it came to your final dealings with Biosphere,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I was already teetering on that chair. I’d hardly call it a moral or ethical high ground,” he said and laughed through his nose.

“You’ve never done anything clearly out of bounds. Taking a few samples here and there. So what? Every other rep out there does it, and so do the doctors and their staff. Please don’t tell me you think that all of the TerraFlu samples sitting in those office bins went to patients. You and I know exactly where most of those samples went. You could have kept most of those samples and forged Dr. Wright’s signature, but you didn’t. You delivered them to the right place at exactly the right time.”

“I still kept an extra case from that load,” he reminded her.

“And you think Dr. Wright didn’t? He’s got a family, too.”

“We have ten more courses of therapy left. Four of those stay here for us. That’s non-negotiable, no matter who crawls up onto our porch. The other six we can give out. I have no problems with that. Hon, I don’t want you feeling guilty about this. You’ve been doing an unbelievable job with all of this,” she said, getting up from her stool.

“I’ve been doing what I think is right, given the circumstances,” Alex said.

“And you’ve done an amazing job.” She wrapped her arms around his chest from behind, nestled her head over his left shoulder, and leaned her body into his, squeezing him tightly. Alex nuzzled his head against hers.

“I’m just worried that the situation out there is going to deteriorate as the winter gets worse. God forbid the power goes out. The decisions will get tougher, and they’ll have to be made quicker. If things get really bad in the neighborhood, we need to be prepared to make some tough calls, right on the spot. My mission is to keep you and the kids safe at any cost. I need you to understand what this might come to mean,” he said softly.

“I’m a mother, believe me when I say that I understand what it means to protect these kids unconditionally.”

Alex believed her every intention, but was still not convinced that she truly understood the full scope of what each of them might have to do in order to ensure survival in the face of a worst-case scenario.

“Nobody messes with the momma bear?” he asked.

“Damn right,” she said and gave him an extra tight squeeze before letting him go and walked around the island to grab her cup of tea.

“What are the kids watching?”

“I don’t know. Probably something borderline inappropriate, like every other movie they want to see nowadays,” Kate replied.

“Still no
Nightfall
on demand?”

“No. They haven’t put a new movie on that feature for a couple of weeks now. Not since the theatres closed.”

“I hope Emily’s forgotten about it,” Alex said, wincing.

“No, she had another emotional blowout earlier today about it. She checks the on-demand menu like three times a day for it,” Kate said, grabbing her book.

“Great. Is she still blaming me for not seeing it?”

“Of course. I’ve made sure to keep the blame focused on you,” Kate said.

“Thanks. Hey, I think I’ll head up and watch the movie with them. You coming up?”

“Why, you still worried about me sitting down here by myself?”

“I’d certainly feel better if you were at least in our bedroom, or somewhere a little closer to the rest of us. Pleeeeeease.”

“Don’t you want to watch the evening news? It’s recorded,” she said.

“Not really. I’ll catch up with everything later on the internet. Anything really big going on?” he asked.

“Department of Energy officials estimate that most coal-fired power plants are already operating on their emergency reserve supply. The White House is calling for a nationwide conservation plan to extend the coal supply until the whole system starts to come back online. Coal mining, transportation, all of it is nearly shut down,” she told him.

“I guess we should turn off some of these lights and sit upstairs with the kids watching a movie,” he said, glancing around the kitchen and smirking at her.

“Nice try,” she said and walked to the bank of switches next to the sink. She turned off the under-cabinet lighting, which darkened the kitchen. The soft glow of a lamp in the great room cast more than enough light into the kitchen for them to see. Alex looked out of the wide window over the kitchen sink and stared at the numerous lights in the windows of the several houses within his view.

“Looks like nobody else cares,” he said, nodding toward the window.

“They’ll care when the power fails,” Kate replied, walking over to the great room. “It’s a good practice anyway…pandemic power failure or not. We keep way too many lights on around here. The kids turn on every light, in every room or hallway they use. I think your marine protégé is still afraid of the dark,” she said, referring to Ryan.

“He respects the dark,” Alex countered.

“Then according to your weird logic, shouldn’t he be learning to embrace the dark? Like maybe using one less light at a time until he is walking around the house in the pitch black?”

“All right, whatever…he’s afraid of the dark. Nobody likes the dark. Like I always say, most of the bad shit usually happens when it’s dark. You coming upstairs?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ll join you guys after I close up down here.”

“See you in a few,” he said, walking toward the staircase. He suddenly remembered the pistol and turned around. The light in the great room went out and Kate met him in the kitchen.

“Forget something?” she asked, and Alex detected a cheeky tone.

“Maybe,” he said, standing between the island and the kitchen desk, hoping that she’d head upstairs.

“Last week I put it in the nightstand for you.”

“I know. Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I got your back around here,” she said and slapped his butt. “Can you make sure the doors are locked?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Alex sat bathed in the soft glow of his office computer screen, examining the ISPAC world pandemic map. He placed the cursor over the United States:
“United States. Population 310,810,109. 1,920,341 reported cases. Borders closed. Uncontained.”

Before opening the ISPAC site, he read several articles confirming that the national healthcare system’s surge capacity had been exceeded nationwide. This assessment included all of the available mobile Federal Medical Stations, which, as of late last week, had all been deployed to major metropolitan areas. At this point, almost no effective inpatient or outpatient care was available for the treatment of new cases.

He moved the cursor across the Pacific Ocean to China:
“China. Population 1,350,678,400. Massive outbreak. 152,843,000 reported cases as of 11/26/013. Further case reporting to be based on data samples and mathematical estimates. Borders closed. Uncontained.”

Reluctantly, he pushed the cursor over Maine:
“Maine. Population 1,415,484. Large cluster outbreak. 88,434 cases confirmed. Uncontained. Surge capacity exceeded.”

“Portland. Population 66,144. Large cluster outbreak. 21,400 cases reported. Uncontained. Surge capacity exceeded.”

Alex resisted the urge to analyze Boston, knowing the situation would be considerably worse, and that way too many of those people were already on their way up to Maine. He was mostly concerned with eastern Massachusetts, specifically the densely-populated areas around Boston. Headlines throughout greater Boston strongly indicated that the area was on the brink of exploding into a full scale civil riot. If that happened, the city would turn into a war zone, further escalating the refugee situation and the desperation of those fleeing north.

That’s when the real fun’ll start around here.

Alex put the computer into standby mode and turned off the screen, which darkened the room. He stood up from the chair and kneeled down to peer through a two-inch opening at the bottom of the office window shade. With the lights out in the office and the adjoining hall, he could scan the neighborhood unobserved.

He could see only a few scattered lights, mostly on the second floors of homes in the neighborhood. He stared at a fixed point above the Sheppards’ front door for about one minute, relying on his peripheral vision to detect any movement in the neighborhood.

Nothing. No creepers yet.

Before standing up, he stared at the McDaniel house, wondering where Amanda and Katherine bunked for the night, hoping they took his advice to stay in the same room and barricade the door with a folding chair. He told them to call either his house or Ed’s if they heard anything unusual inside or outside of the house. He felt bad that they were alone without an adult, but not bad enough to risk bringing the flu into his own house. He pulled the shade down to the windowsill and walked out of the office.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Alex was startled out of a shallow sleep by the home telephone on his nightstand. Without looking, he reached over to grab the handset out of its charging cradle, knocking his smartphone onto the floor, hearing it bounce off the carpet and hit the nightstand.

Damn it.

He found the phone and brought the light blue LED illuminated handset to his face. “Walker, Edward.”

“Hello? Ed?” he answered.

“Alex,” Ed said urgently, “someone forced their way into my basement, through the bulkhead door. I heard it creak open. I think they might still be here. I have the kids in our room. I don’t want to—”

“Just stay where you are, Ed. I’ll be over there in less than a minute,” Alex assured him, shooting up out of bed.

“Should I call the police? I don’t know if you—”

“You can try, but I don’t think we’re going to see any cops around anytime soon. Ed, stay in your bedroom, away from the door. Open one of your back windows. I’ll be right over. I’m hanging up now.”

He rushed over to his closet and pulled on a pair of jeans that were lying in a heap on the closet floor, hastily pulled a gray sweatshirt over his head, and grabbed the Mossberg shotgun. He pulled down a box of “double ought” buckshot shells and opened it, stuffing several of them into the front pockets of his jeans. As he emerged from the closet, he heard Kate’s voice emanate from the bed.

“What’s going on?” she murmured.

“Ed thinks someone has broken into his basement. I’m going over to investigate.”

“Why doesn’t he call the police?” she mumbled.

“Because it’ll take the police hours to respond…
if
they respond. You should bring the kids into the bedroom, or at least lock their doors. I’m heading out right now.”

He didn’t want to waste any more crucial time talking to someone that he knew wouldn’t be capable of a lucid conversation for at least another ten minutes, and right now, he didn’t have time to brew the coffee necessary to speed up the process.

Alex reached the mudroom and grabbed his keys, stuck his bare feet into his running shoes and took a powerful, compact LED flashlight off the same shelf as his keys. He tucked this into his right back pocket along with the keys and opened the door to the garage. He locked the door as he slid through and closed it behind him, skirting along the 4Runner and performing the same action on the back door of the garage.

He slipped into the frigid air of a dark, overcast November night and tested the door to the garage.
Locked.
A violent shiver overtook him as his body registered the change in temperature, and he immediately regretted the decision to ignore the wide selection of fleeces and jackets available to him in the mudroom. Pushing the self-pity aside, he moved swiftly across his backyard to the concealment of several squat pine trees near the back of his lot, keeping his eyes trained on Ed’s house.

High in the western sky, Alex could barely perceive the moon’s glow, which cast no useful illumination through the thick layer of clouds. As he reached the trees, the open bulkhead doors materialized from behind the Walkers’ deck. Alex took to a knee behind one of the trees, extending his head out far enough to monitor the doors. He took a shotgun shell out of the speed feeder in the stock of the shotgun, ignoring the shells in his pockets, and loaded it into the bottom of the shotgun, repeating the procedure two more times.

He pumped the shotgun, loading a shell into the chamber, stiffening at the sound of the pumping mechanism, hoping that the sound didn’t carry all the way to the Walkers’ house. In close proximity, the sound of the pump action was unmistakable and usually enough to stop even the most stubborn adversary. At this distance, he didn’t think the sound would be loud enough to elicit the same response. He quickly ensured that the safety was engaged and started to move swiftly toward the Walkers’ deck.

With my luck, I’ll trip on some frozen dog shit and set this thing off.

He crouched slightly, carrying the shotgun by the receiver with his right hand, struck by the absolute silence of the night in the late fall. Halfway to the deck, a dark figure darted out of the open bulkhead door, sprinting toward the Andersons’ backyard. A second figure emerged from the evergreen bushes on the border of the Andersons’ and Walkers’ property, and ran to join the intruder toward the back of the lot.

A lookout?

Alex changed his own direction to match that of the two figures and sprinted toward them yelling, “Stop! Police! Stop! Don’t move!”