Reaper (23 page)

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

It was a new mandatory morning briefing, attended by most of the same players as the meeting the night before, only this time it was held in the briefing room.

“Okay,” Jessica said through her mask, “Let’s hear the latest on what’s going on in the city.  Doctor Patel, how about you starting it off.”

Doc Patel stood.  “Well, in the last, what, twelve hours or so, Valley Med has received another seventy-six patients.  Thirteen of them were brought in by ambulance and …,” she looked at some notes, “eighteen of the total presented the dark lesions on their face, neck, and chest.  One of those was already purging blood and is expected to die within a few hours.  The rest are being isolated outside the hospital in those big truck trailers; you know, like a moving truck.”

“The other hospitals are all experiencing similar or worse numbers.  It’s also generally assumed there are even more victims who are staying at home and not seeking medical help.  This of course is extremely troubling, because it means they’re not in a controlled environment and are infecting others, who will, in turn, infect more.

All this has caused the county public health officer to declare a state of local emergency.  He’s closed all schools, though most weren’t open anyway because of the violence, cancelled all public events, and stopped all public transportation.  Supposedly, he has asked the FAA to halt flights coming into and going out of local airports, including Mineta International, and they’ve agreed.  He’s also given law enforcement the authority to enter any home or business to look for those who are sick, arrest anyone who is but refuses to submit to quarantine, and bring them to a local hospital.  Public service announcements are being broadcast every hour, suggesting people shelter in place and take the standard precautions; mask, gloves, hand washing, and to report anyone who appears ill by calling a special hotline telephone number.

These new numbers change my estimates significantly.  Theoretically, in six weeks, given the rate the epidemic is progressing, every living human being in San Jose will be infected and then die.  Of course, like I’ve said before, some will undoubtedly survive, but there won’t be many.”  Doc Patel’s voice quivered at the tail end of her last sentence, and she dropped back into her chair.

She took a shallow breath and continued, speaking almost too low to be heard through her mask.  “We will soon reach a point where hospitals will stop functioning, either because the health workers are themselves patients or because they stop coming to work …as I have.  Bodies will go uncollected, and because of that, other diseases will flourish as water becomes contaminated.” She looked at Will and Frank with eyes rimmed dark from lack of sleep.  “Water is something we should think about now; storing it, filtering it, decontaminating it.  I guess that’s really all the news I have.”

Jack Keeble raised his hand and waited for Jessica to point at him.  “Does anyone know how long a dead body will be contagious?”

Phyllis slowly shook her head.

“I’ve actually tried to find that out,” Dr. Patel said.  “First, we really don’t know what virus were dealing with here.  And even if it is hemorrhagic small pox, as it appears to be, we don’t know if the Russians, or someone they sold it to, reengineered it to survive longer.  As for the research on small pox in general, it isn’t clear exactly on how long it stays viable in a dead body.  Most say the virus will quickly die when its host dies, while others say it remains a risk for many years in a dormant state and, under the right conditions, can become active again.  So I’m afraid I can’t give you an answer right now.  But that aside, as I’ve already mentioned, with nearly a million dead in this city alone, our world will be a cauldron of disease and unpleasantness for quite some time.”

There was complete silence in the room for several seconds, with most people looking down at their knees or the tabletop in front of them, tears tracing the cheeks of a few.  Several were visualizing the bodies of six, seven, eight hundred thousand people, more, rotting in buildings, vehicles, or just lying there in the street.  The rest were just stunned.

Finally, Jessica cleared her throat and said, “Ah, Heidi, you have anything for us?”

Heidi briefly put the fingertips of both hands to her face, on either side of the mask, and said, “After that, I really don’t see the point of anymore bad news, do you?”

“You want me to do it?” Fran asked her.

She shook her head.  “No, I’ll do it.  It’s just …,” she stopped and flicked her hand dismissively before picking up her notes.  In a monotone voice she said, “Most of the beats aren’t staffed, hardly anyone, sworn, non-sworn, is showing up anymore.  They’ve put the few who are still reporting for duty on two radio channels just to make things work.  Most priority one calls, including homicides, felony assaults, and shots fired, aren’t being responded to.  The officers won’t go unless there is at least one other sworn to go with them, which seldom happens.  The Sheriff’s Department is in even worse shape, if that’s possible.  The gangs are engaging each other in full-on street battles all over town.  There were three that we know of last night.  The DHS raided a militia group, only to find out it was an ambush, so suffered a lot of casualties.  They seem to be the only ones left with any manpower …I’m talking about the DHS, not the militia.  And finally, you already heard about the airport being closed down. Well, apparently, all major routes in and out of the state are being shut down, too.”  She tossed her notes onto the table and added, “That’s it for me.”

Max looked at the faces around the room.  I’ve lost ‘em, …if I ever even had them.  They don’t believe.  They’re ready to give up.  They aren’t convinced that what we’re doing will work.  If he couldn’t get them to have confidence in the plan, he had to get them to at least have confidence in him.  But how?

“Will.  Frank.  It doesn’t matter; one of you can go next,” Jessica said.

Max interrupted.  “Before we get to them, I’d like to introduce everyone to Loren,” he said pointing to him.  “Loren, ah, he likes to be called Dancer, that’s his ham operator name, has set up a couple of radios on the top floor and is talking to people all over the place about what’s going on.  He can even get information outside the United States, but I’ll let him tell you all about that.  Dancer ….”

Dancer stood and nervously tugged on one of the straps of his suspenders.  “Um, well, you see, I’m afraid my news isn’t any better than the rest.  It seems like everyone is having the same troubles, although I don’t think every community understands exactly how deadly this disease is yet.  But the virus is definitely being talked about all over the country, except for maybe in some of the small, more isolated communities.  But that’s not all that’s going on.”

“I was telling Max last night that there’s quite the donnybrook going on along the Mexican border, and it’s still going on.  It’s the Mexican drug cartels mostly.  They’re on one side of it, along with some others I guess, and our military and militias on the other side.  I mean it sounds like it’s tanks, and machineguns, and all kinds of things like that.  Supposedly, we’ve lost control over parts of the border states.”

“About four this morning I was talking with this ham in El Paso, Texas.  Nomad’s his name.”  Dancer stopped talking a second, frowned, looked up at the ceiling, and continued.  “Yeah, that’s right, Nomad.  Sorry, I’m kinda tired I guess.  Anyway, Nomad said sometime yesterday there was a battle fought about two blocks from his house.  When all the shooting finally stopped, he sneaked a look out his window and saw a bunch of our soldiers fleeing the area on foot, carrying their wounded.  At the time he was talking with me, he said that his whole neighborhood was surrounded by hundreds of armed Mexicans, dressed in just everyday street clothes and driving pick-up trucks with machineguns mounted in the back.  He was pretty frightened I guess and said if they didn’t find him first, he was going to wait until dark and try to sneak out to the north.  That’s just one example of the stuff I’m hearing.”

“There’s trouble on the Canadian border, too.  The Canadian military is trying to keep Americans from crossing over, and there’s been violence as a result.  It sounds as if it’s on a much smaller scale than down south, but still, people are getting hurt.”

“What about outside the United States?” Max asked.

“Oh, right,” he said, adjusting his mask and then pinching tight the metal band over the bridge of his nose.  “They got the sickness, too.  The Brits got a name for it, though.”  He thought about it for a couple of beats before saying, “It’ll come to me.  Sorry.  But I think theirs must be more, um, how do you say it, advanced, no, more progressed than here, because it sounds like they got a lot of dead already.  They’re pretty scared and blaming it all on the terrorists.  Well, I guess we are, too.  Reaper!  That’s it.  Reaper.  That’s what they’re calling the virus, Reaper.  I knew it would come to me.”

“Do they have any other problems?” Jack asked.

“Well now, you know I can’t ask ‘em questions.  I can only listen on that particular radio.  So I only get a little bit here and there.  But in both London and Paris, it sounds like there’re large parts that are barricaded off with fighting going on; fires, too.  Big ones from what I hear.  So you see, it sounds pretty much the same all over.  We aren’t the only ones.”

Dancer sat down, but immediately got back up again.  “So is that the kind of stuff you want to know about?”

“Yes, that’s perfect,” Jessica said.  “Please, keep it coming.  Find out if there are other groups like us, too.  It would be nice to keep in touch with them if they exist.”

“Oh, I already did,” he said pointing at Max.

Max cut him off.  “Yeah, I’ll fill them in about that.  Thanks Dancer.”

He sat back down again.

“Okay,” Jessica said.  “Back to Frank and Will.”

At that exact moment, two things happened.  First, Arnie Dunn hustled into the room making straight toward Max with one of those, the shit’s going down, looks on his face.  This, of course, caused Max to glance in his direction.  As he did so, Max spied Myra walking down the hall just outside the briefing room.  She was wearing her work clothes, strapped into a backpack, and carrying her med bag over one shoulder.

“Damn,” Max mumbled.  A mixture of anger and fear rose up from his gut, right into his throat.  He didn’t want her to go.

When Arnie got near, he said, “Max, you better get out to the gate.  We got big problems.”

Max grabbed his carbine, slapped-in a magazine, slung it, and trotted toward the front of the building.  When he cleared the doors, he charged his weapon and made straight for the gate.  As he approached, he saw almost the entire on-duty security team standing about twenty feet back from the gate, to the driver’s side of the sand truck, which blocked Max’s view of who or what they were confronting.  He also saw Myra, several yards in front of him, moving in the same direction.

He caught up to her before he arrived at the gate, and said, “I thought you were going to wait for me.”

“I told you I would think about it.”

Just as she said that, the people on the other side of the gate came into view.  It was Chief Flanders, several other uniformed officers, and some civilians, probably family members, behind him.  None of them looked too happy.

If Flanders looked bad a few days ago, he looked absolutely terrible now.  His eyes were swollen, he was squinting, and the skin underneath them was several shades darker.  He appeared to be sweating, hadn’t shaved in a day or two, and his uniform was dirty and wrinkled, with a couple of the top buttons unfastened.  But what really got Max’s attention was the dark bump, about the size of a dime, on his left cheek, with two matching ones on his forehead and another on the front of his throat.

Max knew a challenge like this would eventually happen.  It had to.  He just didn’t think it would be this soon and with the Chief of Police.

“What the hell’s this all about, Calloway?  You can’t keep me out.  I put you here.  If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened.”  Flanders’s voice came out sounding as if he’d smoked three packs a day for life.

“Open the gate, Max.”  This time it was a cop named Marvin (Pearl) Billowy talking.  The Pearl, because he always carried this two-inch, five shot, pearl-handled revolver in an ankle holster. He stood slightly behind and to the right of the Chief.

Although Max hadn’t really worked around Billowy, so had no firsthand knowledge about him, he was known as a big mouth and had a reputation for antagonizing his and other officer’s prisoners.  Max ignored him and concentrated his attention on the Chief.

“You’re right Chief, you made this possible.  But when you put me out here, you told me to protect the people who came for shelter, and that’s what I’m doing.  That’s also why I can’t let you in.  Nobody comes in until this virus thing is over, including you.”

“I’m relieving you of duty then. Right now.  You’re out.  I can see I should have never put you here in the first place.”  He looked past Max at whoever was standing behind him.  “You there, open this gate.”

Billowy was smiling.

“They’re not going to let you in either, Chief,” Max said.  “What’s that on your cheek?”

He put his hand on the spot and immediately pulled it away.  “It’s nothing.  I cut myself shaving, that’s all.”  He craned his head and shouted, “Somebody open the gate …now!”  The effort seemed to take all the energy out of him.