Hot Zone (3 page)

“ … is saying the United States had no reason to attack China in this manner.” The announcer cleared her throat as video replaced her. I felt my jaw slacken as I saw people holding cloths over their mouths and noses as they ran about, and on the ground there were bodies of people. These people looked as if they had just dropped suddenly and become unconscious—or were they dead? The announcer continued. “I am told CNN has obtained confirmation that the attack was physically from Saudi Arabia, but that it was planned and executed by the United States.” The announcer sounded as shocked as I felt.

“The President will be making a statement in fifteen minutes, and we will have that live. At this time the White House is not making any comment on the attack, nor have they commented on the evidence that the United States ordered the seemingly unprovoked attack.”

I heard the door and knew that either Meri or Phil was back. “Come in here!” I called. “Have you heard about this?”

Phil came in, looking concerned. “I had the radio on. Is it true? The United States attacked them with chemical weapons? Thousands are dead?”

I pointed to the TV mutely, and we both watched the horrible videos.

We were still standing there, watching my tiny TV, when Meri came in. “Oh God,” she said as she came in the kitchen, giving each of us a hug. “What the hell is happening? Why would we do it? We’re the U.S.—we’re supposed to be the good guys.”

Phil finally suggested we watch on the other TV, and we trooped out to the living room, feeling shocked. All those bodies. The images of them—just crumpled where they had fallen, as if they were puppets whose strings had been cut. People who had seconds before had lives. Now they had nothing but an ugly, humiliating death being viewed by people all over the world. How criminally awful.

The President came on and looked calm and controlled. “Today the United States responded to a previous attack on our heartland. One week ago, three missiles were intercepted and destroyed high over the states of Iowa and Minnesota. These missiles, had they been successful, would have delivered a killing agent to the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as Des Moines, Milwaukee and Chicago. Millions of innocent people would have been killed instantly. It was our military’s quick response that kept this disaster from happening. This attack was traced back to China, and after much thought and prayer, I decided with a heavy heart to order a response. The videos from China show that we measured our response—those who died did so quickly, and the agent that was used dissipates within hours, so that we will not see lasting effects.”

The President leaned forward, his expression earnest and compelling. “The people of this great country of ours voted me into office over a year ago, and the decision to respond to this attack was mine. I felt we had to let the rest of the world know that we would not tolerate sneak attacks on our citizens at night as they slept. I realize that not everyone will agree with my decision, and so tomorrow I will resign my office as President. The Vice President has been notified and brought up to speed on what is happening. I want everyone to know that he is a good man who had no part in the decision to retaliate. I hope you will give him all your support during this trying time for our country.”

We all looked at each other as the announcer came back on, stuttering for a moment before slowly reviewing what the President had said. Meri grabbed the remote and turned the volume down. “I can’t believe it. He’s going to resign now?”

Phil narrowed her eyes. She had never been a big fan of this president. “He’d better. He might have just launched us into World War III. Instead of a nice easy resignation, he should be lynched.”

I said quietly. “The missiles. They were right here—would we have died?”

Phil laughed humorlessly. “I bet there wasn’t even any attack. I bet he just made it all up.”

Meri said softly, “If there’s a war …” Her voice trailed off, and we knew she was thinking of Cal. I put my hand on hers. “Maybe this will be it. I mean, he must have known that ordering the attack would possibly mean more attacks on us. Maybe that’s why he resigned. You know, get a new start with this guy who didn’t attack them.”

“Forget it,” Phil said flatly. She stood up and paced the room. “He can’t absolve himself of responsibility that easily. He attacked a bunch of civilians—not the idiots who attacked us—and how is that fair?”

“But if we’d done nothing—” I started to say, but was cut off.

“Then we would be the wiser country. What if it was some fringe element? Did you ever think of that?” Phil was breathing heavily and that scared me as much as the news.

“Phil, calm down.”

She hissed at me, “I can’t. Don’t you know what this means?”

My cell phone reeled off the tune to Sexyback by Justin Timberlake. I grabbed it—it was Mom’s ringtone. It took me fifteen minutes to rehash everything we knew from the broadcast with her, and another fifteen minutes to talk to Dad about it. She and Dad were planning a trip to Aunt Cathy’s cabin up near the Boundary Waters, and they thought they should cancel. They hadn’t been there since Aunt Cathy had moved to Florida. I told them to go—they could always return if the situation worsened. Finally they decided to go, and Mom got back on the phone to run through all the things I should do for the house while she was gone and gave me the phone numbers to nearly all the people I knew, so I could call for help if I needed something. I ignored the numbers—most of them were already stored in my cell. By the time I hung up, my phone was hot in my hand.

Meri and Phil were still watching the TV and took turns telling me what new information there had been. Meri seemed to be herself, but Phil was snappish and tense. We sat and watched TV all night, eating the spaghetti hotdish in a desultory manner. The news didn’t have much new information. Pundits spoke about political ramifications, and new “experts” rehashed the same information. And every ten minutes or so there would be more footage from China. There was one other piece of news that, for some reason, chilled me to the bone. The cameraman who had taken the original footage had died. Now the disaster had officially taken a U.S. citizen’s life as well. Little did I know he was only the first of many.

I wish I could say that life then went back to normal. It didn’t. Much like we had after 9/11, the people around me seemed to be in a kind of fog. We just talked about it. That’s pretty much all we did. We watched the TV footage, what little there was. Not surprisingly, China had cut off what they could of our footage, and no one knew what happened to the journalists. The UN was having an emergency meeting to decide what to do. Strident statements came from several countries, most notably Russia and Great Britain. Neither exactly took sides, but Great Britain was condemning of our decision to retaliate without the sanction of the global community, and surprisingly to me, Russia was supportive of our decision to protect ourselves from attack by responding. Cal hadn’t called or had any contact with Meri since the attacks. He had only talked to her once since the missiles had attacked us, and hadn’t seemed any different, according to Meri. She was holding up well, but never was far from the computer or cell, and was more shell-shocked than we were.

School had been cancelled for the rest of the week. They hadn’t planned on doing that originally, but so few parents sent their children to school, they decided to take a week off until things “settled down.” The problem was, no one knew what form the settling would take. Most expected some sort of retaliation from China or one of its allies, but so far there hadn’t been one. As the days went on, the UN came down with surprising firmness on the side of suspending hostilities at this point. China was balking, wanting sanctions against us, but as many of our more verbal pundits said, who wanted to cut us off? Who else wanted to anger what was arguably the only superpower left in the world?

We talked a lot about that statement. Our conversations went around and around, and the whole thing gave me a headache. I felt like, okay, we had been attacked, but did two wrongs make a right? Meri argued (along with Mom and Dad) that if we had just shaken our political finger at China for attacking us (China said it was because we had—our spies had—busted some dissident I’d never heard of out of one of their jails. I didn’t know that there had been increasing tension between China and us over that for months. Note to self: stop watching Entertainment Tonight and thinking that’s the news). Anyway, if we just shook our finger at them, we would look weak. And in our world, weakness was attacked—it was as simple as that.

I don’t know. Maybe the people who said that were right. I didn’t know if it was the stress or whatever, but I had been having increasing headaches, and Phil was becoming so agitated over relatively little things that she had broken a lamp in a fit of temper.

Eddy was MIA. He hadn’t called since the day after our retaliation on China, and even that call had been short. So when he showed up at my door about two in the afternoon three days after the retaliation (I don’t know what else to call it. CNN’s banner was: “Biological Weapons.” MSNBC ran with “American response.” Fox just called it, “America Attacked!”). I hoped like hell that the first attack really happened—reports were sketchy on this. China alternatively said they hadn’t responded, and that they had executed a minor strike that had been a warning only.

So anyway, when he just showed up I was rather shocked to see Eddy. Phil snarled something as she went by, uncharacteristically tripping and nearly falling down. Eddy looked around my apartment as if he had never seen it before. And I realized then that he had actually knocked and waited to be let in. This was not normal Eddy behavior.

“What’s up?” I asked rather stiffly, holding the door, listening to Meri and Phil talking. Phil was apologizing to Meri who was accepting gracefully. I didn’t know specifically why Phil needed to apologize, but in her crabby mood, she had no doubt said something overly caustic.

Eddy stuffed his hands in his pocket. Other than a hooded Vikings sweatshirt, he was coatless. We were having a little thaw, but the temperature couldn’t be above forty degrees. He shuffled his feet and said in a low voice, “Let’s go for a drive. I need to get out of here.” His face looked lost and rather forlorn.

I suddenly felt like a total bitch. Maybe he was even more devastated than I was about this. Who knew how people reacted to these things? Even if we weren’t on the best of terms, I had known him a long time, and he obviously needed me. I grabbed my lighter coat from the hook and told my roomies I’d be back soon.

I followed Eddy out to his car—a red five-year-old Alero, and got in the passenger side. Eddy didn’t say anything as he started driving, and he seemed so amazingly stiff and unreachable that I didn’t say anything either. We had driven out of town and were on the far side of the lake when I said, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Eddy looked over at me as if I had spit on him. His face seemed haggard, as if he hadn’t been eating or sleeping or something. I swallowed and a stray thought suddenly zipped through my mind—Eddy was a lot larger than I was. I nearly shook my head to push this uncharitable thought away, but didn’t since the headache had started again. I decided that when I got back, I was going to have to call a doctor and get something stronger than ibuprofen to deal with this. I was taking three tablets every six hours, and Meri was sure I was going to ruin my liver or kidneys or spleen—I don’t think she even knew which one. I do remember hearing something about too much Advil being dangerous, but they couldn’t sell it if it was too dangerous, could they?

Eddy still wasn’t talking but was driving up Chicken Hill (I don’t know why it’s called that—I haven’t seen one chicken anywhere near it). I decided to wait and let him talk in his own good time. He pulled off in the look-out/picnic area, ignoring the “closed” sign and driving past the broken chain that was supposed to be keeping cars out. It hadn’t been plowed here, and the Alero bounced over the snow packed by the recent warm temps. I held on to the door, more than a little worried we were going to get stuck. He finally stopped the car and hit the steering wheel hard enough to make me wince.

He turned to me, leaving the car running in drive, his foot on the brake. He glared at me.

In spite of my decision to remain quiet, I said, “What? What did I do?”

Eddy said in a rather hoarse voice, “Where did all this fucking snow come from?”

I opened my mouth but couldn’t think of how to answer that.
From the sky you dope?
Probably not the best answer.

“I hate the goddamned snow!” he snarled, looking around. The car began to roll, and I realized he had let up on the brake pedal.

“Well, that’s Minnesota for you,” I said rather carefully.

He was breathing heavily. “I hate the goddamned snow!” he yelled again.

“Eddy, you’re scaring me,” I said quickly.

He stopped breathing and looked at me. “I hate it,” he said with venom.

“Why?” I blurted out.

Instead of answering, he grabbed at me, getting a handful of my coat. He pulled me towards him, and the seatbelt cut into my side and legs. “What the hell?” I started to say.

He let go and seemed to gather himself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, again putting his foot on the brake. The car stopped and settled a little deeper in the snow. He swallowed and suddenly put his hands up to scrub at his face. “Did I hurt you?”

I shook my head. “Eddy, what is going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I’ve been sick or something. Not really myself.”

“What can I do?” I asked this with sincerity, but part of me was thinking that I was a total idiot to come out here with him. He seemed almost like two different people. Oh God, was he schizophrenic? Multiple personality disorder?

He said softly, “I just can’t seem to focus anymore. Everything is coming at me so damned fast! It’s just too much.”

“You mean the attacks? China? Is that what you’re talking about?”

He frowned at me. “Who gives a crap about that?”

My concern for him floated away. I noticed that one of his fists had gone up into his hair and was clenched in it. I started to feel adrenaline flood me. I slowly moved my hand to the buckle of my seat belt.