Three Days in April (6 page)

I shake my head again.

“That's what I was trying to say before Anders interrupted. If everyone were really dead like they're saying, they could probably afford to wait for a while, maybe send in some bots to poke around and see what went down. With survivors, though . . . if this is a virus, all we need is for one person to sneak out of town with this stuff percolating in his gut, and before you know it, it's eighty-­eight percent of North America dead. Better to make it one hundred percent of Hagerstown, and leave it at that.”

Anders is glaring at me again. Terry's face is blank and slack as a rubber mask.

“And they said . . .”

“Right,” I say. “They said there were no survivors because saying that we're about to cook a few thousand adorable little scamps down to scrapple would probably upset some ­people.”

She stares at me through a long, awkward pause.

“But you think it's the right thing to do,” she says finally.

I kick the footrest up, knit my fingers behind my head, and look up at the ceiling. There's a crack in the joint compound that runs all the way from one end of the room to the other. I never noticed that before.

“I'll say this,” I say. “If I were in charge, and I had to make the call on whether or not to slag a few thousand rug rats in order to prevent the release of an engineered virus that had just ripped through an entire town in under an hour, with an eighty-­eight percent fatality rate . . . I would be very sorely tempted to do it.”

The sofa creaks as Anders shifts his weight. That crack runs right underneath the wall that separates Anders' room from the hallway. Is that a load-­bearing wall?

“Do your friends think that's what this is?” Terry asks. “A virus?”

I sigh.

“No, ma'am. They do not.”

We sit in silence then. Terry and Anders watch some idiot on the wallscreen drone on about containment protocols for a while, and then they cycle through the same clips they were showing before. I blink to my ocular again, and query similar incidents in the past fifteen years. I get a link to a feed about an outbreak of black pox in a CDC facility in Bismarck, a bunch of links related to that brain fungus thing that got set loose in Tokyo a few years ago, and a ­couple of dozen fictional vids about viruses that turn everyone into zombies.

I actually consider trying to do some research, but I kind of have a thing for zombie vids, so I wind up streaming one of those instead. This one is called
The Omega Protocol
. It's got a ­couple of decent actors, and a CGI group that usually does a nice job. It starts out with a little bit of promise, but after about twenty minutes, I click it off in disgust. I like zombies, but I cannot stand zombie vids that take themselves seriously. In this one, zombieism is caused by a virus that can only be spread through the bite of an infected person. Once a victim gets bitten, the virus gestates for a while—­to give him time for angst-­y conversations with his loved ones and contemplation of suicide, I guess—­and then turns him into a shambling, rotting wreck with a hankering for human flesh. At the point where the story picks up, literally everyone on Earth except for the heroes is infected.

Which is all well and good, I guess, except for this: We already have a virus that is spread through bites, that causes you to act crazy, and that is 100 percent fatal. It's called rabies. And yet somehow, not every person on Earth has contracted it.

Something bounces off my head. I blink the ocular back off and look over at Anders.

“Hey,” he says. “Why don't you check in with your friends, and see what's really going on?”

Fine. I pop open another chat frame.

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Sir Munchalot:

Angry Irish Inch:

Argyle Dragon:

Argyle Dragon:

Angry Irish Inch:

Fenrir:

Hayley 9000:

Drew P. Wiener:

Argyle Dragon:

I blink the frame closed again. They've clearly got nothing. I sit up and look around. Terry and Anders are sitting close together. His hands are in his lap, and she's leaning her head against his shoulder. The wallscreen is muted. The view is still cycling between static shots of corpses, overhead shots of corpses, and spysat shots of corpses.

“Nothing new,” I say. “Except that one of my peeps has NatSec crawling up his ass, I mean.”

Neither of them even glances at me. I kick the footrest down and stand.

“I'm gonna get a drink. Either of you want anything?”

Terry closes her eyes. Anders looks at me like I'm something he scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

“Um . . . I guess not,” I say finally, then turn and walk out to the kitchen.

The screen over the stove comes alive when I open the fridge door. I pull out a can of BrainBump, give it a quick shake, and pop the top. I don't usually drink this stuff straight, but I decide to make an exception under the circumstances. I down it in one long, sweet, chocolatey pull while a pretty blonde caster from Washington explains that while nobody wants to do what they're going to do, it's simply a matter of national survival.

“House,” I say. “Can you find me a feed that's a little less moronic?”

The screen switches over to
SpaceLab
.

“Ooooh, baby. You do know what I like.”

I've seen this episode before, of course, but it's a classic. Science Officer Scott is traveling back to the station by shuttlecraft when he runs into a temporal anomaly—­just as he's trying to fart in his spacesuit, loses control, and winds up sharting instead. The anomaly throws him back in time by thirty seconds, and he's forced to relive the sharting over and over until he realizes what's happening and finds a way to break the temporal cycle. In this case, breaking the temporal cycle requires squeezing the gas all the way up his digestive system and belching it out instead. I'm not one hundred percent clear on the physics behind this, but the BrainBump nanos are stimulating my giggle centers, and by the end of the episode I'm laughing out loud.

At least until Anders grabs my head in one giant spider hand, tilts it back until I feel my neck crack, and slams me to the floor.

I'm about to say something, maybe ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing, when I get a look at his face and abruptly shut my mouth. Just then there's a flash outside the window, like catching a reflection of the sun off the windshield of a passing car. He kicks me once in the ass, and then walks away. I lie there on the floor for a minute or so, wondering what just happened. I'm just getting to my feet when a boom like distant thunder rattles the windows.

Right. That.

F
orty-­five minutes later, and we're all three back in the living room again, watching replays of the bombs going off—­it turns out they actually used three of them, synchronized for simultaneous detonation—­from a half dozen different vantages. After a while, they switch over to orbital perspectives post-­detonation. I kind of expected everything to be on fire, but it's not. The whole town is just a big, black, lumpy splotch on the ground. Apparently, that's one of the beauties of a fuel-­air explosive. It sucks up all of the oxygen over a wide area, so that (a) you don't need to worry about survivors anywhere within the blast radius, as long as they're not wearing space suits, and (b) there's not a whole lot of secondary burn, which means your advancing forces can move into the area very quickly after a bombardment.

Of course, in this case we don't have any advancing forces. Just a bunch of bots poking around, looking for any evidence that would help clear up exactly what happened there.

Terry and Anders haven't said a word since the detonation. They're just sitting together on the sofa, staring at the screen. I get why Terry's upset, with her sister just getting vaporized and all, but I have no idea what's gotten up Anders' ass. The entire vibe in the room is making me very uncomfortable, though. It's almost like they think
I
did something wrong. On top of that, it's damn near eight o'clock, and I haven't had anything to eat since noon. I'm just about to ask if anybody has dinner plans when my ocular pings. I blink to a chat window.

Fenrir:

What NatSec Doesn't Want You to Know About Hagerstown

Earlier today, something truly horrifying happened in Hagerstown, Maryland. A terrible virus struck with lightning speed, killing the entire population, down to the last man, woman and child, in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, NatSec units were already positioned in the Hagerstown area, and they were able to secure the hot zone in less than an hour. A thorough search for survivors was conducted by drone and crawler, and when none were found, NatSec Acting Director Dey reluctantly made the hard decision to sterilize the area, thus saving the rest of us from the threat of contamination.

That's what our good friends at NatSec would have us believe, in any case. Here are the facts:

1. Within seconds of the outbreak in Hagerstown, every civilian drone, crawler, fixed camera, and orbital asset was taken offline, and all existing feeds were redacted to a point approximately ten seconds before the first casualty.
If every citizen of Hagerstown died within minutes of the outbreak, what were they afraid to let us see?

2. Throughout the crisis, the only data feeds coming from Hagerstown were those passed to the official media through NatSec channels.
What were they afraid to let us see?

3. The military cordon around Hagerstown was actually secured within twenty minutes of the initial outbreak.
How did they move so quickly,
if they were not aware beforehand of what was going to occur?

4. The fuel-­air explosives that were just used to destroy Hagerstown were far more powerful than would have been necessary to eliminate a biological pathogen.
What were they really trying to destroy?

I don't claim to know the answers to all these questions, but I do know one thing as certainly as I know the sun will rise in the east:
NatSec's story does not hold water!

Demand the Truth!

Argyle Dragon:

Fenrir:

Drew P. Wiener:

Fenrir:

Drew P. Wiener:

Fenrir:

Argyle Dragon:

Fenrir:

Sir Munchalot:

I'm pulled away from the chat window by a soft
knock knock knock
at the front door. I look around. Anders is staring at me.

“Are you expecting somebody?”

I shrug. The knock comes again, a little louder this time. Anders closes his eyes, and leans his head back against the wall.

“Answer the door,” he says.

Fine. I get up and walk into the foyer, set the chain, and unlatch the door. Outside on the stoop is what looks like a supermodel who just lost a cage fight. She's got dried blood on her face and in her hair, her knees are ripped and bleeding, and her eyes don't seem to be pointing in the same direction. Behind her is a shorter, dark-­skinned shifty-­looking guy in baggy shorts and a pink golf shirt. He's banged up as well, though not as badly as her. They smell like a tire fire.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

Her eyes focus on mine, and I wonder if I've just woken her.

“Hi,” she says. “My name is Elise. Is Terry here?”

 

5. ANDERS

I
'm sitting at the little table in the breakfast nook, starting in on my second glazed doughnut of the morning, when Gary comes into the kitchen. He's wearing a surgical mask.

“Really?” I ask. “A mask? Where did you even get that thing?”

“Last Halloween,” he says, and takes a seat across from me. “Remember Doctor Love?”

I look up at the ceiling, then back down at Gary. No, he hasn't gotten any less ridiculous.

“Right,” I say. “Doctor Love. So that mask is actually from a costume shop, not a hospital.”

He shrugs.

“It's the same thing, right? You don't think they make special nonsurgical surgical masks just for Halloween, do you?”

I cram the rest of the doughnut into my mouth and chew. He may actually have a point.

“Still,” I say. “You think—­”

“Dude. Swallow.”

I wash the doughnut down with half a glass of orange juice.

“Still, do you really think a little square of cloth is going to protect you from something that wiped out an entire town in less than five minutes?”

“No,” he says, and I can tell he's not smiling under the mask. “What would protect me from something that wiped out an entire town in less than five minutes would be not letting the outbreak monkey, her fiancé, and her sister spend the night. But I got overruled on that one by the guy who only pays his rent every other month. So, here we are.”

I sigh, lean back in my chair, and finish the rest of my juice. I thought we'd hashed this out last night, but apparently not.

“Look,” I say. “Your guys don't think what happened in Hagerstown was a virus, right?”

“So?”

“So, if it wasn't a virus, then it was something else, right? Poison? Death ray? Voodoo?”

His eyes narrow.

“Maybe. So what?”

“So,” I say. “Those things are not contagious.”

I reach across the table, and snatch the mask off of his face. He jumps to his feet and tries to grab it back, but I'm much too fast and he's much too short. He drops back into his seat, crosses his arms and glares.

“Fine,” he says finally. “But when my liver dissolves and comes pouring out of my ass, my last act is gonna be to roll around in your bed.”

I smile and pocket the mask.

“Fair enough.”

Gary takes a doughnut from the box on the table. I went out and picked them up from the Jolly Pirate down the block right after I woke up. We have no actual food in the house, and I figured we needed something for our guests other than the case of BrainBump Gary keeps in the fridge.

“So,” he says around a mouthful. I resist the urge to tell him to swallow. “What do you think her real story is?”

“Whose real story?”

He rolls his eyes.

“Elise, jackass. What do you think really happened to her yesterday?”

“What?” I say. “You don't believe that this Tariq guy rode into town at the last minute, found her injured and unconscious on the side of the road, and rescued her on his super-­cool ATV? Their story seemed totally not impossible to me.”

He snorts.

“Right. His ATV. His electric tricycle, which has a maximum speed of thirty-­five miles per hour. On that piece of shit, which I would not use to escape from a pack of angry banana slugs, Tariq penetrated the NatSec perimeter, located his lady love—­who, by the way, claims that at the time she was directly in the line of fire of a NatSec killbot—­and spirited her away just ahead of the bombs.”

I sigh.

“Well, they did both say that she was concussed. She might have imagined the bit about the killbot. Have you ever heard of someone having a conversation with one of those things?”

“No,” he says. “But their control hardware is capable of loading a fully interactive avatar, so that part is definitely possible. The part that is not possible is that she was inside the perimeter when it was buttoned up and is not currently a greasy black splotch in the middle of the road.”

He takes another doughnut. I probably should have gotten a second box.

“So what do you think really happened?”

He chews and swallows.

“Dunno. Maybe he was there with her when the shit went down, and somehow they managed to sneak out before the cordon closed. Maybe they were never in Hagerstown at all, and this is all some kind of bullshit long con. Or maybe the way she told it first is truth, and Tariq's an evil wizard. Who the hell knows?”

I think about that for a minute.

“You know, Terry did say he's some kind of street magician or something. Maybe there was some spiriting involved.”

He stops mid-­bite and leans forward.

“Terry said that?”

“Yeah,” I say. “She said he makes a living doing stunts. Mind reading and whatnot.”

“Huh.” He chews thoughtfully. “I was there in the living room until everybody turned in last night. When did Terry say all this?”

Here we go. He taps his chin with one finger.

“Now that I think of it,” he says. “Where is Terry right now?”

I look away.

“I don't know. Probably taking a shower.”

“Uh-­huh. And where was she an hour ago?”

I look back. He's grinning.

“Fine,” I say. “She spent the night in my room. Elise and Tariq needed the privacy, and I've got a queen bed.”

He's laughing now.

“Oh, this is perfect. You finally get to live out your dream of dating the captain of the football team.”

This is the problem with Gary. He has a 150 IQ, ­coupled with the emotional maturity of a twelve-­year-­old boy.

“Look, Gary. Terry had a rough day yesterday. Try not to be a total tool about this.”

He's still giggling.

“Sure,” he says. “I'll try. No promises, though.”

A
s it turns out, Terry doesn't like doughnuts. Terry likes meat, which we do not have any of. Tariq and Elise, on the other hand, are strict vegans, and can't eat the donuts because they don't know what kind of oil they were fried in. This presents a problem, since our neighborhood is what city planners call a food desert—­no grocery stores, no produce stands, no dead mammoth vendors or whatever Terry needs.

“I don't get this,” says Elise from in front of the open, empty freezer. “How do you guys live?”

I shrug.

“It's never really been an issue for us. Gary pretty much lives on BrainBump, and I get all the nutrition I need from Jolly Pirate doughnuts and the occasional pizza delivery.”

Elise scowls. Apparently she doesn't approve of BrainBump any more than she does Jolly Pirates.

“I have a solution,” says Tariq. These are the first four words he's said since he came downstairs twenty minutes ago. “My ATV is outside. I can go shopping.”

“Your ATV?” says Gary from the living room. “Well, of course. If it can get you in and out of a NatSec quarantine zone undetected, I guess it can get you to the Giant on 33rd and back.”

Now Tariq is scowling as well. He lays his hand on Elise's arm, leans in and whispers in her ear, then turns and stalks out the door.

“That went well,” says Terry. “You annoyed him enough that he left without asking me for sausage money.”

Elise closes the freezer door and sits down with us at the breakfast table. This table is the only piece of furniture in the house outside of my bedroom that belongs to me. It's a simple rectangle of Formica supported by four spindly aluminum legs. Gary doesn't know this, but I actually found it in a dumpster about a week before I moved in.

Elise leans forward and rests her forehead on her hands. I can see the spot on the top of her head that was bleeding yesterday, still red and angry-­looking. When she looks back up, there are tears on her cheeks.

“Ellie?” says Terry. “Are you gonna be okay?”

“I don't know,” Elise whispers. “I've got no home. I've got no job. I've got some credits, but I'm afraid to access them. I don't know what to do now.”

Terry slides her chair over, puts her arm around Elise's waist, and rests her head on her shoulder.

“You can stay with me,” she says. “I've got plenty of room, and . . .”

“Stop,” says Elise. “Just stop, Terry. You think I'm stupid, but I'm not. NatSec tried to kill me yesterday. I can't stay with you. I can't believe these guys let me stay here last night.”

“Yeah, me neither,” says Gary.

“Come on,” I say. “They didn't try to kill you
per se
. They just tried to kill everybody who happened to be where you happened to be. It's not like it was personal.”

She shakes her head.

“It doesn't matter. They know I was there. They've got video and audio of me from the killbot. Even if they didn't think I was contagious, they'd have to kill me just because I know there were survivors when they dropped the bombs.”

“About that,” I say. “Do you really think that stuff you said about the killbot actually happened? Because Tariq says it didn't. He says he found you blacked out on the road by your wrecked bike, and I thought last night that you were kind of agreeing with him.”

She leans her head against Terry's, and closes her eyes.

“I don't know,” she says finally. “I love Tariq, and I'd trust him with my life—­but you know as well as I do that what he says happened yesterday doesn't make a bit of sense.”

“That is true,” says Gary.

“Look, Gary,” I say. “If you're going to be part of the conversation, come out here and sit down. If you're going to sulk in the living room, then link in a
SpaceLab
episode and shut the hell up.”

“I'm just maintaining basic pathogen containment,” Gary says. “If someone hadn't taken away my protective gear, I'd be happy to join you out there.”

Terry gives me a questioning look. I pull the surgical mask out of my pocket and toss it to her. She rolls her eyes, and drops it on the table.

“So,” I say. “If we can all agree that Tariq did not ride into Hagerstown on his trike, engage in some light banter with a NatSec killbot, sweep you up in his spindly little arms, and ride back out without being either incinerated or shot, then what do we think actually did happen? You really were there, right? And you really got out?”

Elise nods.

“So how did that happen? 'Cause it seems like you're the only one who made it out.”

Terry's glaring at me now, and I get that I'm pushing someone who's had a really rough ­couple of days, but I've got a feeling that this is important. Elise lifts her head from Terry's, and opens her eyes.

“I don't know,” she says. “I really did wreck my bike, and I'm pretty sure I blacked out for at least a little while. Then I got up and started walking, and I ran into the killbot. I tried to get it to let me pass, but when it wouldn't I just sort of . . . gave up, I guess. I thought it would be nice to watch the sunset. It was a beautiful sunset. Then the drone came up over the horizon, and . . .”

“And then what?” says Terry.

“And then Tariq was there. He tackled me and we were falling together and the killbot was firing and . . . the next thing I remember is being on the back of his ATV, halfway to Baltimore.”

“You mean like teleporting?” I say. “You just disappeared and reappeared in another place? Because I'm pretty sure that's impossible.”

“No,” she says. “It wasn't like that. I told you, he tackled me. Maybe I hit my head again? I remember the killbot firing, and then . . . I don't know. It's all just a jumble from then until I was standing on the stoop, waiting for Gary to open the door.”

“A
nders,” says Gary. “Come here. You need to see this.”

I look up from the griddle. Gary's face is on the kitchen wallscreen at five times normal size.

“I'm frying sausage,” I say. “Can it wait?”

“No sir, it cannot. Get in here. I'm sure Terry knows how to handle a sausage.”

And he giggles. Honest to God, he's an infant.

“Just go,” Terry says. “It's crowded in here anyway.”

This is true. Tariq and Elise are taking up most of the breakfast table and all but one of our bowls with their chopped-­fruit-­and-­nut platter, and Terry has bacon going on one of our working burners and sausage on the other. I've actually known some vegans who wouldn't be in the same room with frying sausage, but Tariq and Elise are apparently from the reformed branch.

“Fine,” I say. “Make sure you turn off the burners when you're done. That stove doesn't have a brain.”

Terry gives me a disbelieving look.

“It's like you guys are animals.”

I walk into the living room. Gary is sprawled in the recliner closest to the wall. He has a bandana tied over his face.

“So,” I say. “Are we holding up the stagecoach later?”

“Bite me,” he says. “Look at this.”

He winks, and the wallscreen fills with text:

NatSec
has told us that every citizen of Hagerstown died yesterday, and that is certainly true. However, as
Lone Stranger
and others have documented, their story of how Hagerstown died is nonsensical.
Deep-­dive literature searches
have uncovered no known pathogen or toxin that could produce the effects described by NatSec in the citizens of Hagerstown. It is simply not possible that every man, woman and child in that city died within minutes of one another as a result of
superbugs
or
terrorists
. So, what really did happen?

First, it is becoming increasingly clear that not every citizen died after all. Multiple sources have posted
links
purporting to be video feeds showing at least some citizens of Hagerstown alive and well hours after the attack. All such feeds have been redacted within seconds, and those posters who were not sufficiently secured may well have been redacted themselves, but so many independent voices must amount to more than rumor.