Blind Panic (13 page)

“Unless those bastards have taken our RV, too.”

“Well, if they have, they have, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. But at least we’ll know where the road is.”

“Oh, like you’re suggesting we
walk
back? Do you know how far it is, even to Route Three-fifty-nine? Eight miles at least, and that’s if we don’t get lost, which we probably will.”

“There’s no future in being pessimistic,” said Mickey. “What are you going to do? Sit here and starve to death? Come on, Stevie Wonder made himself rich and famous and he’s just as blind as we are.”

“Stevie Wonder didn’t get himself abandoned in the middle of Modoc County with nobody to show him how to find his way back to civilization.”

All the same, they groped their way to the edge of the river, then waded across it, balancing and slipping on the rocks that Mickey had described as “bowling balls covered with snot.” When they reached the far side, they began to make their way upstream, toward the recreation area where they had parked their Winnebago. They walked Indian file, with Mickey in the lead and the others keeping a hand on the shoulder of the one in front of them.

“I could murder an Egg McMuffin,” said Charlie.

“That’s so typical of you,” Remo told him. “Out of all the food in the entire world that you can’t have, you choose an Egg McMuffin.”

Mickey said, “Do you smell smoke?”

Remo stopped and sniffed, and said, “Yes. I can. And I think I can hear a fire burning.”

“Maybe we’ve caught up with them,” said Cayley.

Remo sniffed again. “That’s no campfire. That’s more like oil and rubber.”

Charlie said, “You don’t think—”

“Oh, shit,” said Mickey. “I’ll bet it is. I bet they’ve set fire to it.”

They negotiated the rocks by the side of the river as quickly as they could, although Charlie and Cayley both lost their balance and had to be helped back onto their feet. But the ground gradually began to level out, and from the echoes of their voices and their footsteps they could tell that they had reached a much wider space. Mickey said, “Listen. Hear those ripples? I’m sure this is where I was fishing.”

They felt as though the Winnebago must have been very close now, because the stench of burning rubber was even more toxic, and they all began to cough. They crossed the parking lot, and then they stopped, because the heat was scorching their faces. They could hear metal clicking and pinging as it expanded, and windows cracking, and the soft flaring noise of foam-rubber seat cushions.

“The
bastards
,” said Remo.

Mickey said, “We’d better stand way back. This smoke is totally poisonous, and the gas tank’s probably going to blow.”

“I don’t understand,” put in Cayley. “Why did they go to all of that trouble to rescue us when all they were going to do was burn our RV?”

“Less those Indians set fire to it.”

“I don’t care who the hell set fire to it. It’s all burned out now.” Mickey paused. “Not that we could have driven it.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Remo.

Mickey was just about to answer when the Winnebago blew up, with a bang like a huge door slamming. They felt a wave of heat, and pieces of aluminum clattered onto the rocks all around them.

“Everybody okay?” asked Mickey.

“Fricking-A,” said Remo.

“I’m terrific,” said Charlie. “I can’t breathe and I can’t hardly walk, but otherwise, terrific.”

Cayley said, “I’m so darn tired. And my whole arm feels like it’s burning.”

“I could use my belt and make you a sling,” Mickey told her. “That would take some of the weight off it.”

“And then what?” asked Remo. “Then we start walking?”

“Do you have any other ideas? So long as we follow the road, we should be okay.”

He felt his way across to Cayley, and then he took off his wide canvas belt and looped it around her wrist. The whole time he was buckling it up and tying a knot in it she said, “Ow!” and “Oww!” and “
Owwahh!
”

He was still fixing the knot when they heard a deep beating noise in the distance.

Remo said, “That isn’t
drums
, is it? Not more Indians, please!”

But the beating quickly grew louder and louder, and then they heard a high-pitched whistling sound, too.

“
Helicopter!
” Charlie said with a gasp.

Remo let out a whoop. Cayley took hold of Mickey’s hand and gripped it tight, and then Mickey found Remo’s hand, and Remo reached out for Charlie. Together they lifted their arms upward and shouted out,
“Here! We’re here!" “Don’t go away!” “We can’t see!” “Don’t leave us here! We’re blind!”

But as they linked hands together, Mickey saw a flash of white light in front of his eyes. For a split second he glimpsed bright blue sky with dazzling white clouds floating in it. He even saw the brown blur of a jay flying past. Immediately he let go of Cayley’s and Remo’s hands, and put his fingers up to his eyes, but the instant he did so, he went blind again.

Cayley yelped, “I
saw
something! I saw the sky!”

“Me too, man!” said Remo. “It’s gone again, but I saw it for sure!”

Charlie started coughing, but between wheezes he managed to splutter out, “I saw it! I saw it, too! Maybe we’re getting our sight back!”

The beating of the helicopter was much louder now, and it sounded as it was hovering directly overhead. Mickey said, “Hold hands again!”

“What?” said Remo.

“Hold hands again! Now!”

They groped around until they found one another’s hands. Then they lifted their arms up, as they had before. Again, each of them saw a flash of light, and their eyes were suddenly flooded with the brilliance of the sky, and the dark green pine trees, and the sparkling Pit River. Only thirty yards away, they saw the black smoking skeleton of their Winnebago. But right above their heads a white LongRanger helicopter was slowly circling, its nose dipped, its rotor blades shining in the sunlight like two scimitars. For a few seconds it blew gusts of smoke all around them, and ruffled the surface of the river. Then it tilted sideways and landed on the far side of the parking area.

Mickey dropped to his knees, exhausted and relieved, but he made sure that he didn’t lose his grip on Cayley’s hand. Cayley knelt down beside him, and then Remo and Charlie, too.

“You know what this means?” said Remo, hoarsely. “We’ll have to hold hands for the rest of our lives!”

“Hey,” said Charlie. “That’s better than being blind.”

“Oh yeah?” Remo retorted. “Think about it, man. We’ll even have to go the bathroom together.”

“You
would
think of that,” said Cayley.

The helicopter’s doors slid open, and two khaki-uniformed park rangers climbed out, a man and a woman. “You folks okay?” the woman called out, over the whistle of the rotors. She was handsome and bespectacled, her hair tied back like Sarah Palin’s. “Need any urgent medical attention?”

Mickey gave Cayley’s hand a squeeze. “There,” he said. “Didn’t I promise you that God would take care of us?”

The four of them awkwardly stood up, and started to walk toward the helicopter, still holding hands. The woman park ranger turned to her colleague and pulled a quizzical face, but all he could do was shrug. Who could tell why four
young people would walk around holding hands, as if they were on a peace march?

As they approached him, the male park ranger looked them up and down. He had red-tinted Ray-Bans and a bristly brown mustache. “My name’s State Park Ranger Edison and this is State Park Ranger Butowski,” he announced. Then he nodded toward the burned-out Winnebago. “What in hell’s name went down here? How did you all get yourselves so messed up? How’s that arm, miss? Is it broke?”

“I think I dislocated my shoulder,” said Cayley, miserably.

Ranger Butowski came around behind Cayley and gently felt her shoulder. Cayley winced, but Ranger Butowski gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’d say you’ve pulled it pretty bad, honey, but it’s still in its socket. Believe me, I dislocated my shoulder once, when I was skiing, and I never stopped screaming.”

“We—uh—we were kind of
attacked
,” said Mickey. He wasn’t sure how they were going to explain what had happened to them—or what they
imagined
had happened to them. He was beginning to wonder himself whether their experience had been nothing more than a spectacularly bad trip.

“Well, we can fly you down to Alturas,” said Ranger Edison. “You can have yourselves checked over at the Modoc Medical Center, and then you can talk to the highway patrol—tell them who did this to you. Who was it? Bikers? We get a whole lot of trouble from bikers. Neo-Nazis, too.”

Mickey and Remo looked at each other but neither of them could think of what to say.
We were attacked by a Native American in a black suit who called himself Infernal John, and two white-faced creatures who looked like suitcases on stilts? They struck us all blind and then made us jump off the top of the rimrock?

“Let’s get you aboard,” said Ranger Butowski. She climbed up into the helicopter and shifted a backpack and a
medical bag off the seats to make room for them. While she was sorting out their seat harnesses, Mickey looked around him. They wouldn’t be able to hold hands in the helicopter, and if his sight never came back to him, he wanted to make the most of these final few seconds.

He frowned. On the far side of the river, standing amongst the tules, he thought he could see twenty or thirty men staring back at him. They were strangely colorless and almost transparent, so it was difficult for him to make out who they were. It was like looking at a black-and-white photograph that had been faded by the sun.

“Remo,” said Mickey. “Charlie. Look over there. No, that way. Do you see those guys?”

Remo narrowed his eyes, “Yes. Yes, I do. They’re
soldiers
, aren’t they? Like old-style cavalry.”

He was right. The men were wearing wide-brimmed hats and they were all dressed in military uniforms, with epaulets, and some of them had swords hanging from their belts.

“Maybe those were the guys who rescued us,” Charlie suggested.

“Oh, you mean the guys who rescued us and then took away our blankets while we were sleeping and left us to die of hypo-what’s-it’s-name?”

“Ready?” asked Ranger Butowski. “Let’s get this young lady in first, shall we? What’s your name, honey?”

“Please—wait just a second!” said Mickey. But when he looked back across the river, the soldiers had vanished as completely as if they were ghosts.

Washington, DC

“All commercial and private flights have now been grounded, Mr. President,” said Doug Latterby, snapping his cell phone shut. “All incoming foreign flights have been instructed to turn back to their points of departure, or the nearest non-U.S. airport, except if they have insufficient fuel.

“Military and rescue flights are now restricted to essential and emergency operations only, and all flight personnel are subject to stringent eye tests before takeoff.”

President Perry was sitting up in bed at the Washington National Eye Center, where he had been taken for further tests. He was wrapped in a green silk robe with white polka dots, and Doug Latterby thought that he was suddenly looking much older than his fifty-six years, and deeply tired. His eyes were puffy and although he was blind, his pupils kept darting from side to side, like two trapped blowflies.

The entire fourth floor of the WNEC had been commandeered for the president’s stay, with Secret Service agents guarding every stairwell and elevator, and a temporary command center had been set up in the rooms immediately adjoining his treatment suite.

Outside, on Irving Street NW, it was a bright, windy afternoon, with huge white cumulus clouds rolling past like a heavily-laden fleet of galleons, and the trees waving at them madly, but of course the president couldn’t see them.

So far—despite five intensive examinations—his team of
five leading ophthalmologists had still been unable to determine how and why he had lost his sight. As far as a cure was concerned, they had discussed both corneal transplants and laser treatment, but without knowing what the exact cause of his blindness was, they were reluctant to subject him to radical surgery. They were worried that they might blind him permanently, without any hope of recovery.

“How many planes have come down so far?” the president asked.

“Forty-seven altogether, with a total fatality figure of seven thousand, four hundred six.”

“Holy Mother of God. How about the road-traffic situation?”

“Impossible to say, as yet. But somewhere in excess of eleven thousand serious accidents, with two thousand reported victims.”

“We’ve imposed restrictions on highway use?”

“Pretty much the same as air traffic. No civilians are allowed to drive on major roads—only military, police and emergency services, and in every case they have to carry a backup driver with them. Civilians can drive on minor roads, but no faster than ten miles an hour. We may cut that down to five, if necessary.

“Similar picture on the railroads. Freight trains only, with two extra engineers on every run. And shipping, too, especially oil tankers and ships carrying toxic chemicals. None of this is going to be easy to enforce, but we’re appealing to people to be sensible, and not to panic.”

“What’s the public reaction so far?”

“What do you think? They’re as scared and as mystified as we are. There’s been looting in some of the major cities. Baltimore, parts of Chicago, Detroit. But the National Guard seem to be containing the worst of it. It’s not like people are angry, like they were in Watts. They just want to make sure they don’t run short of supplies.”

“Any further developments from the FBI?”

Doug Latterby shook his head, but then remembered that
the president couldn’t see him. “No, nothing. I talked to Warren Truby only a half hour ago. There’s been no chatter on terrorist networks. No overt threats. No Al Qaeda-type videos. And no faction has claimed responsibility, nor made any demands. Except for the usual loony tunes on the Internet, and almost all of those have checked out negative.”

He prodded at his BlackBerry. “There’s one worrying development. We’ve had six outbreaks of blindness on Army bases—Fort Lewis, in Washington; Fort Ord, in California; Fort Carson, in Colorado; Fort Sill, in Oklahoma; Fort Sam Houston, in Texas; and Fort Meade, in Maryland. So far the numbers of military personnel going blind isn’t
anywhere
near as many as civilians—only two or three hundred, at most. Buteach of the outbreaks on Armybases seems to have spread very rapidly.”

“How’s it being done, Doug? What do you think? Lasers, maybe?”

“I don’t have any idea, Mr. President. But I think
why
is more important than
how.
This isn’t some collection of nut jobs, blinding people for the hell of it. They want something. If only we could work out
what
.”

“What time is my broadcast?”

Doug Latterby checked his watch. “Five after six, Eastern time. We put it back five minutes so that we could run the latest news headlines first. Henry and Leland have almost finished recording your announcement, so you’ll have plenty of time to listen to it and make any changes.”

“Okay. But I prefer to ad lib. ‘My fellow Americans, I think we’re all in the shit. However, I can’t be one hundred percent sure. I can feel that it’s soft and I can feel that it’s warm, but for the hell of me I can’t see what color it is.’”

At that moment, the president’s personal secretary, Jean Fallon, came knocking at the door. “Mr. President? You have a phone call.”

“The president isn’t taking any calls,” said Doug Latterby. “He’s tied up in a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“I’m sorry, Doug. It’s President Petrovsky and he knows where the president is, and why.”

“Fuck. You’re kidding me.”

The president held out his hand and said, “Give me the phone, Jean. I’ll take it. Right now, I don’t think there’s any future in pretending that everything’s hunky-dory.”

Doug Latterby said, “Mr. President, you need to be real careful here. This is the president of Russia we’re talking about. The same Russia that has six thousand six hundred eighty-one nuclear missiles aimed at us, at a time when we have never been so vulnerable in our entire history.”

“I know which Russia, Doug. And I also know how many warheads they have.”

“Come on, Mr. President. Let me tell him you’re otherwise engaged, and you’ll call him right back. Let’s you and me talk this through first—decide exactly what we’re going to admit to, and what we’re not.”

“Doug, forty-seven airliners have crashed. Thousands of Americans have been killed and injured in serious traffic accidents. Our soldiers are going blind.”

Jean Fallon said, “There’s also been an accident on that giant roller coaster at King’s Island in Cincinnati—the Mother of All Monsters. It was just on the news. More than fifty people dead, thirty-six in one of the trains and more than a dozen on the ground. They’re saying that one of the operators went blind and pulled the wrong switch by mistake.”

“Hand me the phone,” said the president.

“Whatever you do, do
not
admit to Petrovsky that you’ve lost your sight,” Doug Latterby hissed at him. “Or if he’s found out already, tell him that you’re going for an operation this evening, and that your doctors are predicting a complete cure.”

“Mr. President!” said Gyorgy Petrovsky. The phone line was so clear that he sounded as if he were calling from only a few blocks down the street instead of the Kremlin.

“Gyorgy,” the president greeted him. “Good to hear your
voice, my friend. And right now, I need all the friends I can get.”

“You have my sincerest condolences for all of your countrymen who have perished,” said President Petrovsky. “What a terrible scourge, this blindness. Do you know yet what is causing it?”

“Our security services and our disease-control people are working on it flat out, as you can imagine. They have a number of leads, but so far nothing definite.”

“So…you don’t know how
you
became blind, and if you will ever get your sight back?”

The president didn’t answer that, but covered the receiver with his hand and mouthed to Doug Latterby:
He knows.

“You are maybe wondering how I found out,” said President Petrovsky, making no attempt to conceal his self-satisfaction. “But of course I started to have my suspicions when we last met, and my people have been keeping a very close eye on you, if you will forgive me for such a phrase.”

“Well, Gyorgy, I guess there’s no point in my trying to deny it.”

“You have my sympathy, believe me. My own mother went blind when she was eighty-one years old, and it was a tragedy. She could no longer read or sew, which she loved. She used to make such embroidery! Flowers, cats, dragons!" He paused, and then he asked, “What is your doctors’ prognosis?”

“Pretty good, as a matter of fact. They’re planning to operate tonight.”

“Really? So soon? What has led them to change their minds?”

“What do you mean? We’re talking about corneal transplants, that’s all.”

“That is not what I heard. But of course I must be mistaken.”

“So what did you hear?”

“I heard that your doctors could not yet come to a decision. They were afraid that if they chose the wrong procedure,
you would stay blind for the rest of your life. And, of course, they cannot be certain that they will choose the right procedure—not until they know exactly what has happened to your eyes.”

“Well, let me put it this way, Gyorgy. An operation has been scheduled, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s going to go ahead.”

“Mr. President! Whatever happens, operation or not operation, I wish for you a very speedy recovery. I want you to know that we Russians will assist you in every way possible. If you need them, we can send doctors, or transportation, or manpower. In the face of such a crisis, let us set aside all of our differences of opinion.”

President Perry pulled one of his famous scowling faces, which early in his political career had earned him the nickname of Pug Dog. He may have been blind, but he wasn’t stupid, and he knew when he was being flimflammed. All the same, the inescapable fact was that most of the Air Force was grounded, most of the Navy was confined to harbor, and if the blindness spread to any more military personnel, the United States would be dangerously incapable of defending itself.

To President Perry’s politically attuned ear, “let us set aside all of our differences of opinion” sounded like an exact paraphrase of “we will not take advantage of your present vulnerability if you decide to not deploy a missile shield in Poland.”

“That’s a very generous offer, Gyorgy,” said the president. “And I thank you for your consideration and your good wishes. Maybe I can get back to you if I need to call on you for any logistical support.”

“Of course, my friend. Please give my affectionate best wishes to your beautiful wife. Oh—and one thing. One small favor.”

“Oh, yes? And what would that be?”

“I understand that the district attorney’s office in New
York is about to file charges against Mr. Lev Khlebnikov for certain financial dealings.”

“And?”

“And…Mr. Khlebnikov has influential friends here in the oil industry who would be very unhappy to see him face such charges.”

“And?”

“I think you understand me, Mr. President. There is a saying—is there not?—about boots and other feet?”

President Perry took a deep breath. Then he said, “Very well, Gyorgy. I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t make any promises.”

“I understand, Mr. President. Promises never buttered any bread.”

With that, Gyorgy Petrovsky hung up. President Perry slowly lowered the receiver, and then he dipped his head from side to side, frowning, trying to sense where Doug Latterby was standing.

Doug Latterby said, “What? What did he say?”

“Douglas? I want Kenneth and George and Dick here, ASAP. I also want the Joint Chiefs. Gyorgy Petrovsky has already started asking me for favors.”

“What does he want?”

“Not much this time. Lev Khlebnikov to be let off the hook for racketeering. But if I know Gyorgy Petrovsky, this is only the beginning. We need to formulate a totally new national defense plan, and we need to do it right now.”

“You think the Russians are causing this blindness?”

“I don’t know, Doug. I really don’t. But we’re bleeding, and Gyorgy Petrovsky has a very keen nose for blood.”

The First Lady came in to see her husband once his emergency defense conference had finished. She was looking as pale and strained as the president, but she had made a point of dressing up in a pink silk blouse and spraying herself with L’Air du Temps, which was the president’s favorite perfume.
Even if he couldn’t see her, she wanted him to feel that she had made the effort to look attractive for him.

“How did it go?” she asked him, sitting on the side of the bed and taking hold of his hand.

“It’s going to be pretty damn complex,” the president told her. “All three forces have to arrange contingency procedures in case a pilot or a ship’s captain or an Army commander suddenly goes blind. But I’m not going to leave this country with its ass hanging out.”

“Do you want to something to eat?” Marian Perry asked him. “How about some chowder?”

“That sounds good. I don’t think I could manage much more than that.”

Once a smiling Korean waitress had brought his supper, Marian Perry fed him.

“I feel so goddamn helpless,” he said, as she crumbled up crackers for him and dropped them into his chowder.

“You’re still the president.”

“A president who can’t even find his own mouth with a soup spoon.”

“You’ll soon learn to cope. What about Eugene Salsy? And Thomas Pryor Gore? He was elected senator for Oklahoma three times. And Kristin Cox? They were all blind.”

“I know that. But I don’t
want
to be blind, Marian, for Christ’s sake. I want to read books. I want to look at the sky. Most of all, I want to see you again.”

The First Lady carefully wiped her husband’s mouth with a napkin. “I talked to the doctors again, after you had that retinal scan. They’re thinking of trying a lens implant in just one eye, to see if that works.”

“I’ll try anything—believe me. One eye is better than no eyes at all.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. They didn’t want me to get your hopes up. But I think they’ve pretty much run out of ideas. They’ve been looking at dozens of other people who have gone blind in exactly the same way that you did, and they can’t understand how it happened to
them,
either.”