Plague (20 page)

Sam nodded, not taking her eyes off the
patients
, their eyes empty, many of their faces
caked
with dried blood. She took out her cell phone and stepped outside. She felt
the
urge to take a deep breath and exhale furiously to get everything out of her lungs. It was instinctual, nothing based on reason, and she fought the urge and instead dialed Ralph Wilson’s cell.

“
What’s going on
,
Sam?” Wilson said, answering on the second ring.

“We need a bigger space than the rec center. We’ve run out of cots.”

“Already? How many patients are there?”

“I don’t know
,
the staff didn’t keep track.
I would guess somewhere around twelve
hundred.”

“I’ll get some more volunteers down there. What else do you need?”

“Duncan’s going to ask you for more pain meds. Just start shipping those now. I saw a stadium on Salt Lake Boulevard.”

“Yeah, it’s Aloha Stadium. They hold the University of Hawaii football games there.”

“We need to take it. I’ll call the stadium people. I haven’t read Pushkin’s report. Is it as bad as I’ve heard?”

“Well, he basically says this agent doesn’t meet the criteria
to be identified as any
known biological agent. It hit three similarity points for Ebola and four for smallpox, but that’s it. Not enough to classify it as either.
And it’s
not black pox like we thought
,
though it has the same symptomology. This is something we haven’t seen before.”

Wilson cleared his throat and didn’t speak for a moment. Sam knew what that meant. She sat down on the curb and waited for him to speak first, but he didn’t.

“What is it, Ralph?”

“
T
he military present
ed
an option
last night that is looking more and more viable.”

“What is it?”

“
There are
a lot of smaller islands in the Hawaiian chain. Easy to clear the populations out and put them on the larger islands.”

“Don’t tell me this is going where I think it’s going.”

“It may come to that.”

“You want to take all the uninfected people to another island and let the infected j
ust die here. Like dogs, Ralph? You’re talking about
genocide.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“And what are you going to do when a mother
is infected but her child isn’t
, Ralph? Are you going to rip a child away from their mother?”

“We’re not to that
point yet and there’s no n
eed for worst cast scenarios
. It’s just an option if t
his thing gets out of control. But we don’t need to talk about
it yet
. The vaccines have arrived. Pushkin doesn’t know whether they’ll be effective, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll need you to set up locations throughout the island to distribute them.”

“I’ll take care of it right after I get the stadium.”

“Okay. Keep safe, Sam.”

“I will. Thanks.”

She hung up and got on her bike. If she was going to get permission to us
e
an entire stadium to hold thousands of ill patients at no cost, she would have to meet with the owners in person.

CHAPTER 26

Robert Greyjoy chec
ked the clip in his silenced Ru
ger .22 caliber pistol and waited around the corner of the restaurant. It was an Italian place, red brick with the white and red checkered table clothes in cartoon depictions of Italian restaurants. It had been closed this morning but friends and relatives of the owners had been coming and going all day, stocking up on supplies
,
as
everyone was uncertain of
exactly where meals would be coming from
over the next few days
. People were no longer comforted by government officials telling them food would be shipped in. Robert had had a sense for decades that every successive generation trusted their government les
s
and less.

A car pulled up with four men inside. Three of them exited the vehicle and went inside, leaving the driver alone to bury his head in his phone and ignore the outside world.

Robert waited until the other three men had disappeared inside the restaurant and then he casually walked down the sidewalk, the gun held low by his leg. He opened the passenger side door to the car and got inside, holding the barrel
to
the man’s crotch.

“If you honk the horn or scream I’m going to blow your dick off and then drive the car myself. No, don’t talk, just listen. Put the car in drive and start going. Turn right at the intersection that’s up ahead.”

“Ain’t got that much cash, my man. But you can take it.”

“I don’t want your money and if you don’t do what I say
,
you better hope you’ve already slept with a
lot of
women
‘
cause you’re not getting another chance.”

“Easy
, brother.”

The man started the car and pulled away from the curb. Robert ducked down in the car and to anyone watching it would have appeared like only the driver was in the vehicle. The man turned right at the intersection. The streets were empty and he drove slowly, not saying anything.

Robert sat up, the gun still pointed at the man. “
Y
ou made
a delivery
two months ago and you were paid quite handsomely for it, Richie.”

“Hey, I don’t know nothin’ about—”

“Don’t lie to me
. It’s
very cowardly and if there’s one thing I can’t stand
,
it’s cowards.”

Richie stayed silent a moment and then said, “All right. I remember.”

“Did you look inside
the package you were delivering?
”

“No.”

“You sure? You seem uncertain. Maybe I should blow one of your balls off and see if that jogs your memory?”

“No, man. No they told me not to look inside and I didn’t look inside.”

“Okay, good. You’re doing very well
,
Richie. Now, who did you give the package to?”

“The dude.”

“What dude?”

“There was a guy, a Spanish guy. Mexican or something. He came down to where I was and he picked it up and that was it.”

“You sure? You didn’t lose it? Leave it at the airport or something?”

“Nah, man. I ain’t no amateur. I done this before for you guys.”

“All right, all right. Here’s what we’re gonna do; you’re going to go—”

Richie twisted the wheel as far to the left as it would
go
, hitting the curb. Robert’s head flew into the passenger side window, cracking it. Richie jumped out of the car while it was still moving and rolled on
to
the pavement. Robert got off one shot, the sound of the ricocheting slug filling the car as it hit a lamppost.

Robert leapt from the car, holding his head as blood began to flow down and soak his collar. He ran around to the back of the car and saw Richie running down an alley. He aimed his pistol but Richie turned down a side alley and was gone.

“Shit,” Robert said, starting a slow jog down the sidewalk.

H
e saw Richie running down to the intersection a block away. Robert ran back to the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. He backed away from the lamppost and then sped down the street, turning at an intersection down to the block Richie was on.

The street, like the rest of the city, was empty. The only other place Robert had seen
such desolation
had been in Afghanistan last year. Insurgents would send word that they were going to take a town and cut off the heads of anyone that remained. The town, within a few hours, would be nothing but buildings and trails of animal dung leading out of the city from the livestock the resident
s
took with them.
Many times, the insurgents never came. When they did, they held true to their promise and by the time Robert came in there would be heads thrust onto pikes along the
roadsides
.

Robert saw movement to his left. But when he turned his head there was nothing there. To the side of a building were several dumpsters and trash bins. He stepped out of the car.

“Richie,” he said, in as kind a voice as he could muster, “come on out
,
Richie. I’m not going to kill you. But if you make me sift through garbage, I am.”

There was no answer, just the breeze blowing bits of debris over the streets. Down the road he could hear a radio playing somewhere but couldn’t make out what it was saying.

“Richie,” he said, walking close to the trash bins, “I’m going to count to three. If you don’t come out I’m going to start firing into the garbage bins. One
…
two
…
three.”

There was no response. Robert aimed at the first bin and fired two shots. He aimed at the second and did the same, one shot low, one shot high.

“All right!”

After
the sound of trash being displaced
,
Richie crawled out of one of the bins. His clothes already had stains on them and Robert could smell putrid garbage coming off him in wafts.

“Really? Was that worth it, Richie?”

“You were gonna kill me.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you. If I wanted to kill you I would’ve walked by when you were sitting in your car and put two slugs into your brain. Now I didn’t do that, did I?”

“What’d ya want from me?”

“Information. The
man that picked up the package, you said he looked Mexican, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Could he possibly have been Middle Eastern?”

“What’s that?”

“Wow
, our education system is going to be the death of us. From the Middle East
,
dipshit. Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran
. Did
he look like he could be Muslim?”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah I think so.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he sound like Speed
y
Gonzalez or Apu?”

“What?”

“Nevermind. What did his accent sound like?”

“Um, I don’t know, just an accent.”

“Richie, you’re not thinking hard enough. And if you’re not thinking hard enough
,
you’re not helpful to me.”

“You don’t have to get all crazy, man. I’m tryin’. Um, his accent, I don’t know, I guess it didn’t sound Mexican.”

“Good, good. What exactly did he say to you?”

“He just said he was there to pick up the box. That’s what he called it, the box. I gave it to him and he asked if anyone else was with me. I said yes. I said there was two other guys
watchin’
us. There wasn’t but I got a creepy
feelin’
from this dude and didn’t want him to think we was alone.”

“Oh, so you do have some brains
after all
. What happened next?”

He just took it and went back to
a
Jeep
that was waitin’ for him. I swear, man. That’s all that happened.”

Robert stared at him a long while, but Richie didn’t look away. “Okay,” Robert said, a smile coming over his lips. “Okay, I believe you.”

“So can I go now?”

“Here’s the problem
,
my young friend
. In
the years and years I’ve been doing this, no one’s ever seen my face.”

“Whoa, whoa, dude, look I just—”

Robert raised his weapon, pointed at Richie’s throat. He took a step forward and Richie screamed.

“You sound like a girl. At least try
to
have some dignity when you die.”

“I’ll give the money back,” he said frantically, taking a few steps back and realizing he’d pinned himself against the garbage bins. “I’ll give all of it back.”

“No, no, not enough. What else you got?”

“My girl, y
o, my girl is hot yo. I’ll let you fuck her, man. I’ll let you do it.”

“Sex doesn’t interest me. You’re running out of time.”

“Um,
” he said, panicked, “
a
h
, um, I can find the dude that has the box.”

Robert stood frozen, he didn’t move and didn’t speak for what seemed like
a long time. Then he lowered the
pistol by his side. “Now you’ve got my attention. How do you plan to find him?”