Chapter Six
Bottled water will be available free of charge. You are also entitled to pick up pre-cooked foods at the local grocery store. Menus and options will be chosen or approved by your local FEMA representative. Please let us know about any dietary restrictions. [FEMA Supplemental Broadcast for Relocated Individuals, 3/31/05]
“Great fucking plan, Nilla.” Charles grabbed the map out of her hands. “Look, now it’s torn. This is so whack!”
Nilla looked through the windshield. The road they’d been following—one lane, only partially paved—ended in a T intersection. There were no street signs or any kind of indication of where they were. The level cultivated land around Bakersfield had given way as they traveled north to trees and mountains and the roads had become sparser. They hadn’t seen a human being or a car for half an hour and now, officially, they were lost.
East, Nilla thought. They should head east. Except that she couldn’t see anything through all the trees. Sparse scrub pines and towering aspens crowded together on both sides of the road. East. Except they had turned around so many times and switched roads so often she had no idea which compass direction she was facing, much less which way was east. She felt something stir in her belly. Hunger, yes, of course it was hunger, it was always hunger. But the familiar pull was drawing her in a particular direction. It was telling her to go left.
Nilla had taken advice before from a naked man she had probably just hallucinated. “That way,” she said. One of the few compensations of having no memory whatsoever was that you couldn’t remember how many times your gut feelings had steered you wrong. “Seriously. That way.”
No one will be allowed into or out of the quarantine area without official written permission. Violators will face criminal charges and possible lethal force for non-compliance. [FEMA Travel Advisory for Las Vegas, NV and Salt Lake City, UT, 3/31/05]
Three hours and change in an Airbus from DIA to Ronald Reagan National on an empty flight, just Bannerman Clark and a pair of exhausted Air Marshals who took one look at him and started ordering drinks. When was a flight to DC ever empty? He realized that he hadn’t been watching much CNN since the incident began but he’d had no idea people were scared enough to stay off of planes.
At least the quiet flight gave Bannerman Clark some time for the paperwork that had been piling up since his interrupted dinner at the Brown Palace. He couldn’t concentrate, though, and barely made it through a single Incident Account Report before he had to give up and snap shut his laptop. In the vibratory space of the jet engines he couldn’t seem to shut off his brain and things kept occurring to him, things he’d forgotten, things he needed to think about later. The girl’s face kept jumping out at him, the look of terror in her eyes. The stuff that dripped from her nose. The fact that she could talk. She had to mean something. She was less affected by the pathogen than any other victim he’d seen or heard about. Did she possess some natural immunity? Or maybe she’d been infected with a different strain of the virus or bacterium or whatever it was.
He’d been putting together a requisition for some troops to go looking for her. He couldn’t just grab men and women out of their barracks willy-nilly, even a Rapid Assessment and Initial Deployment officer had to formally request personnel from their commanding officer. He had a line on some really promising folks, veterans from Iraq who’d been pulling weekend warrior duty every since they got back and should be rested and ready for a new adrenaline rush. Then Vikram had come in to break the news. He was wanted for a breakfast interview in Washington with a DoD Civilian.
It was all over. Initial Deployment was his Military Occupational Specialty, his MOS and the initial deployment was complete. His role in the crisis was finished. He didn’t resent it, really. There were other people, people far more qualified in dealing with widespread medical emergencies waiting to take his place. He just wasn’t sure what he was going to do next. The world was on fire and he was holding a bucket full of water and he didn’t know where to throw it.
When he touched down at DCA a limo was waiting to take him right into Georgetown. He was a little surprised he wasn’t going to be debriefed in the Pentagon itself but he had a lifetime not questioning orders to quell his unease. After passing through a metal detector and an inspection by a nosy dog barely kept on leash by a man in a uniform shirt that simply read CANINE SUPPORT he found himself in a fourth floor office of lacquered cherry wood and office chairs wrapped in plastic. A stack of multi-line telephone units with no handsets had been shoved under the conference table. At the head of said table stood a chilled bottle of water and a cellophane-wrapped box of marshmallow Peeps. Clark knew they weren’t for him. He decided not to sit down and instead stood by the window, peering through the Venetian blinds at businessmen in dark suits or dress casual jeans rolled toward their various offices like Pachinko balls falling into their appropriate holes.
“Bannerman.”
The man in the door had the sort of heavy body shape and steel-blue freshly-scraped jaw of a desk officer with the CIA but he wore the dark suit, red tie and American flag pin of someone who regularly appeared at press conferences. An under-secretary, surely, one of the Department of Defense’s leading lights but nobody Clark would be expected to recognize on sight. He didn’t offer his name. He sat down in one of the wrapped chairs, not bother to remove the plastic, and cracked open his bottle of water. “Look at you. Veteran of multiple wars. Well decorated and commended. Thirty-five years on service and you’re still just a Captain. I think we both know why.”
Clark moved his cover from one hand to another. He didn’t care for the civilian’s easy familiarity. “I’ve never questioned my lot in life. I simply serve at the pleasure of my Commander in Chief.”
“You never married, that’s why. The Army likes married men. It means they’re not gay. Sit down, will you? You’re annoying me with your conspicuous body language.” The civilian tore open his box of marshmallow treats and stuffed one into his mouth. “My big weakness,” he intimated when he’d swallowed the yellow goo. “It’s less than a week since Easter, right? Anyway, I don’t care if you were screwing Freddy Mercury in the seventies. I don’t care if you dig sheep. Sit down, I said.”
Clark did as he was told.
“They’re in Chicago now, did you know that? We’re keeping a lid on it but it’s bad there, very, very, very bad.” The Civilian inhaled a long, slow breath and then laid down the law. “Look, you’re off the case, you know that. FEMA is taking over in California. We need the flexibility and the ability to make snap decisions out there you only get with civilian agencies. The Army’s great for doing the same thing a hundred times over and nobody questions your loyalty but this. This is serious.”
“What about Colorado? That’s the state I’m sworn to protect.”
“Yeah, the Adjutant General of the COARNG gets to keep Colorado, whoop-dee-doo. He’s got full-bird Colonels to put on that and you’re not on the short list. But who cares about Colorado? I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not but these dead fuckers are taking over Los Angeles. I care about Los Angeles. The President cares about Los Angeles. Right?”
“No.” Clark placed his hat squarely on the table and turned it so the brim was facing the civilian.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, you’re not entirely right. You’ve fallen for what I hope will very soon be classified as an urban legend. The infected are not dead. They’ve undergone some kind of basal metabolic change, something that depresses their vital signs but they’re not dead. I have a team from Fort Detrick looking into it right now. If I’m being reassigned I just wanted to get that fact on the record.” He began to stand up.
“Sit down. You’re off the case, yes.” The civilian stood up instead. He peeled one of his Peeps away from its fellows and held it in his hairy hand as if he were cradling an actual baby chicken. “But you’re not done. I like you, Bannerman. I like your first name, I think it’s funny, and I like people with funny names.” He walked over to stand behind Clark and slowly, deliberately, placed his yellow candy on top of Clark’s cover. “I also think you’re a wonk and the President loves wonks. You were the first responder, the early adapter on this mess. I want you to be my go-to guy.”
Clark inhaled slowly and folded his hands in his lap. “In what capacity?” he asked.
“As my wonk, I just said that. I don’t care what you’re called. The President doesn’t care what you’re called. You can make up your own MOS for this. You can have what you need—I’ll rubber stamp anything because I know you, I’ve read your dossier so many times I know you would die, physically die before you would requisition a Bic pen that wasn’t job-vital. What do you say, Bannerman? Are you my wonk or are you my wonk?”
It would mean reporting to this civilian. It meant operating as a free agent, without standing orders—something unthinkable to a career soldier like Clark. It also meant he would have carte blanche to find the girl and maybe bring resolution to the biggest public health crisis since the influenza of 1918.
Clark reached forward and picked up the yellow sugar bomb sitting on his cover. Without hesitation he put it on his tongue as if he were taking communion and bit down. The answer was yes.
