Containment (9 page)

Kraig shook his head.

The director pressed the issue. "Any sign of an epidemic? Any sign at all?"

"
Only among the mice."

The white mustache rested its case.
"Then I suggest you're dangerously close to hitting the panic button too soon."

Kraig said nothing.

"It's a catastrophe for the mice," said Chet, "but so far that's the extent of it."

"
Tens of thousands of people are at risk. Maybe more."

"
We're all at risk, Kraig. Every day, every hour of our lives. We could pick up a virus from some stranger. We could get food poisoning. A single cell in our body could start dividing uncontrollably and give us cancer. We could get hit by a bus."

"
But we're talking about a whole city. The danger level has to be raised when you're talking about so many people."

"
And what do you propose to do about it? Worrying isn't going to help." The white mustache splayed out, sensing victory. "Containment? Quarantine? Sure we've done it before, but you've got to be awfully damn careful. Suppose we quarantine the whole city, maybe even the whole county, over what proves to be a false alarm. Do you realize how well that would go over?"

"
Not well," admitted Kraig. "But it's our job."

"
Speaking of jobs...." The director glared at Kraig. "I'm well aware that you're ambitious. Now, what could be better for
you
if I were to commit the governor or the president to an unpopular decision?"

Kraig stared. The cyan lights returned.

"Oh, yes," said the director. "It's certainly happened before, in this Unit and others, in bureaucracies everywhere all over the globe. Suppose I flied off the handle and became alarmist, convincing the politicians to initiate a containment procedure that turned out to be unnecessary. Thousands of people will be inconvenienced, some might even be physically or emotionally harmed. Civil rights groups would get up in arms, as they always do, and call us Nazis, as they always do. Voters would become outraged. Politicians who represent those voters would be forced to become outraged if they weren't already, or at least feign outrage. Almost everyone would get hot and bothered and do you know whose scalp they'd come after? Well, Kraig, it wouldn't be the
assistant
director's, I can tell you that."

Sounds of bubbles and waves came over Kraig
's speakers. But he paid no attention. Instead he stared at an inset on the LCD screen; a text message, surrounded by a flashing box, scrolled by.

The white mustache went on indignantly.
"Yes, I would be the target of everyone's wrath. What's he doing, people would say? Why did he shut down our neighborhood and barge in with space-suited technicians to frighten our children? Why did he imprison us?"

The director didn
't seem to notice that Kraig wasn't paying any attention. He continued: "Nobody would protect me. Not the governor or the president or the HHS secretary or anybody else. Don't tell me they would, because I know damn well they wouldn't. Not with the angry voices of millions of people crying out for blood, and the rest of the country looking on. Bloggers, journalists, broadcasters, all of them would write up stories, goading the whole population. Finally the politicians would have to act. Early retirement—that's what they would suggest. Chet, they would say, we're going to make you a sweet deal, so don't you worry. Well, I'm too young to be put out to pasture just yet!"

Suddenly Chet noticed that his audience
's attention had wandered. "Kraig! You hear me? I know you're after my job. I know you want it bad enough to taste it. But you're not going to get me to commit to an unpopular decision after just two fatalities!"

"
You're wrong, Chet." Kraig's voice was calm. The cyan had vanished and the scuba gear had been packed away.

"
No, I'm not!" shouted the director. "It's as plain as the nose on your face: you want my job!"

"
Yes, you're right about that. I want your job." Kraig's gaze finally broke away from the text screen and he looked at the white mustache. "But according to the latest news alert, you're wrong about there only being two fatalities."

Kraig held up a palm,
five digits fully extended.

16 April, Friday

Medburg, Pennsylvania
/ 8:00 a.m.

"Garrrrrrry!"

His sister
's voice woke him. Gary Winters rubbed the sleep from his eyes, ran some fingers through his long blond hair, and looked around. His little brother's bed was empty, crumpled sheets piled in the middle. He must already be in the bathroom.

Gary sat up, looked at the clock.

"Gary, Gary, Gary!"

Annoyed, he raised his voice so that it would penetrate the wall.
"I'm up already!"

The door opened and Alicia rushed in and jumped on his bed.

"No school today!" yelled Alicia happily. "We get a three-day weekend."

"
What?"

"
Mom just heard it on the radio, WKH. School's been canceled. Cool or what?"

Another girl ran into the room and flopped on the other bed. She was eight years old, the baby of the family.
"Yippeeeeee!"

Still dressed in underwear and a white t-shirt, Gary walked to the door. Drifting up the stairs was the sound a news announcer.
"...repeat, all public and parochial schools in Medburg are closed..."

"
Holy crap," said Gary. He swung his gaze toward the window. "It can't be snowing!"

The little girl giggled.
"I'm tellin' Momma you said that."

"
Quiet, you," said Alicia. She grinned at Gary. "I had a test in biology today."

Gary stood at the window, pulling open the drapes. He saw a mix of clouds and blue sk
y. "No way. It's not even bad outside. And we hardly ever get any snow this time of year. What's going on?"

"
Who cares?" Alicia looked at Yvonne. "Scoot. Go back to our room. I want to talk to Gary."

"
I wanna hear."

"
No." Alicia pointed toward the door. "Out!"

"
I'm tellin' Momma what Gary said unless you let me stay."

"
What if I tell Mom what you said the other day? You know what I'm talking about."

"
What?" asked Gary, smiling. "The 'f' bomb again?"

Reluctantly the little girl trudged out.

Alicia shut the door, then turned to Gary. "Let's go. Right now, before Mom gives us stuff to do." She smiled at him. "You know where."

Gary glanced out the window again, then gave his sister a puzzled look.
"Did the president die or something?"

"
How the hell should I know? Come on, let's get out of here. Put on your pants."

Suddenly Gary noticed his sister was already dressed. In a manner of speaking, that is. Tube top, sweater, jeans. Before going downstairs Alicia would button up the sweater so Mom wouldn
't notice there wasn't much underneath.

"
Mom'll want us to look after Yvonne and the scamp," said Gary, using the preferred nickname of his little brother.

"
We'll get Mrs. Virge to do it." The kindly old lady lived in the row house next door and didn't mind children. Lonely old thing. The kids liked playing with her cat, although sometimes the scamp got a little rough with it. Once he came home with a nasty scratch on his arm.

"
I don't know. I might see what the guys are doing."

"
No, don't," cried Alicia. "I wanna go!"

"
You want to go, go! Why don't you ask Derrick to take you in his car?"

Alicia
's pleading expression transformed into a defiant one. "Okay. Okay, I will. And maybe I'll drive it again too." She turned toward the door.

"
Wait," said Gary. He sighed. "Okay. We'll go."

* * *

Loretta Winters finished making a salad and sealed the bag, stuffing it among the rest of her lunch inside her oversized purse. She glanced upstairs. "Gary! Alicia!"

In the background, the WKH announcer droned on about the
"situation" in Medburg. The radio station had yet to play a song the whole morning. Just a lot of talk about the schools, why they're closed, and who ordered them closed. Callers phoned in, adding to the speculation. Somebody said something about fences but nobody knew what he was talking about. The announcer kept listing the names of the school board members. "Bet those folks are going to get a lot of phone calls today!"

It
's bacterial meningitis, thought Loretta. They're not saying that's what it is, but that's probably it. A student gets sick, and they close the school. She turned down the volume.

Except this time they closed
all
the schools. Loretta didn't remember exactly what had happened during the last meningitis scare, but she didn't recall the closing of every school. But at the time Gary would have only been about ten, and her two youngest wouldn't have been in school at all.

It
's meningitis, she thought. Has to be.

"
Gary!" she repeated.

Loretta was a young-looking 37 years old, light brown hair, carrying a few extra pounds here and there but carrying it well. Her
two jobs kept her busy. She did the morning shift at a furniture wholesaler on Glaser Avenue, where she was responsible for inventory, then on to Merchandise Plus on Adams Street, where she was an evening watchperson.

When Gary didn
't answer she headed for the staircase. The small floor space in the row home meant that the stairs started near the front door and gained altitude quickly.

The phone rang. Loretta went back to the kitchen to pick it up on the cordless.

"Loretta," said a familiar voice. "Glad I caught you."

Her ex. Cayles was probably in his truck somewhere, calling from his cell phone.

"I've got to go soon," she said. "What do you want?"

"
Keep the kids inside today. Okay?"

"
What?"

"
I said, keep the kids at home today. Don't let them go anywhere. Okay?"

Loretta paused. Cayles rarely worried about what the children were doing, even when they
'd been married. Although, she had to admit, he'd been good about child support. Not many divorced women on the block could say that.

"
Why?" she asked.

"
Because of this thing. Didn't you hear?"

"
They closed the schools," said Loretta. "Is that what you're talking about?"

"
I heard they've done more than that. Do you know why?"

Loretta started to tell him it was meningitis. Then she remembered that this was only her assumption.
"No, why?"

"
Because people are getting sick."

"
Sick? With what?"

"
They don't know. That's why they're trying to contain it, keep it from spreading."

"
How do you know?"

"
I heard some guys talking over the CB." Cayles paused. "They said this could be bad."

A chill swept over Loretta. But then she remembered how often Cayles heard rumors, and how easily he believed anything anybody told him on those CBs. Like some get-rich-quick schemes that Cayles bought into, which had left them poorer than ever.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"
Hauling a load of frozen birds from Charleston to Baltimore. I just passed Fredericksburg. The word is, don't go north of Philly."

"
That's not what they're saying on the radio." Loretta thought back—the announcer had said something about "precautionary measures," whatever that meant. "They didn't say anything about any kind of bad sickness."

"
Forget what they're saying on the radio. They just tell you what they think you want to hear."

"
That's not true."

"
Hon." Cayles didn't get mad, he got sarcastic. Loretta
hated
that. "Hon, you probably believe their advertisers too, don't you?"

"
Everything you hear over the CB isn't always true either."

Two sets of footsteps came from the stairs
—Gary and Alicia stomping down.

"
That them?" asked Cayles. "Loretta, that's them, coming down? Stop them!"

Loretta instantly went toward the door, taking the receiver with her. Then she thought, why I am always following his orders?

Gary jumped and landed on the floor from three steps above. "Mom, Leesh and I are out of here. I called Mrs. Virge on my cell, she's expecting Yvonne and the scamp."

"
Where are you going?"

Gary and Alicia exchanged glances. Loretta saw it and didn
't like it one little bit.

"
Rec center," said Alicia.

Loretta gave her a skeptical look.
"Your father wants you both to stay home. He's heard there's some kind of disease going around."

Alicia made a face.
"If there is, he'll be the first to catch it."

As always, Loretta didn
't quite know how to deal with Alicia's hostility toward her father. Toward almost all adults. So Loretta ignored it. "I think your father has a good point."

Alicia
's face turned red. "You can't do this!"

"
Mom," said Gary, calmly, "we're just going to hang out. We'll be careful, I promise. We won't eat anything and we'll wash our hands and stuff when we get back."

Gary was only a year older than his sister but several decades wiser, thought Loretta. With him she had few concerns. She gave her eldest daughter a reproachful look
—at least as much as Loretta could muster, which she acknowledged wasn't going to scare anybody—and then she waved them away. "Be careful."

"
We will," said Gary. They raced out the door.

Loretta returned to the kitchen.

"Wimped out again," said Cayles. He hung up.

* * *

Gary and Alicia started down the street in the direction of the Lawnvale Recreation Center, but they quickly veered off and made their way to Beason Street. They walked along the badly cracked sidewalk of this winding, no-outlet street that had been fashionable sixty years ago; at the time it'd been home to a bunch of factory executives. None of the executives remained because none of the factories did—a few blocks south was a gutted old factory surrounded by rusty railroad tracks that the city kept promising they would bulldozer and make into a park. Beason Street residents had cascaded down the socio-economic ladder over the years, reaching the bottom rung by the time Gary and his friends were old enough to go out and toss stones through the windows of the many abandoned houses.

"
I don't feel right about this," said Gary.

"
We're not hurting anybody," said Alicia. She walked at a rapid pace and Gary had to step lively to follow her. Alicia was as tall as he was and Gary kept wondering when his growth spurt was finally going to show up.

"
How do you know they're there?" asked Gary. Then he frowned and answered his own question. "You phoned them."

"
No, I didn't. Think I'm stupid? They don't like that."

Abe and Jimmy
—those were the only names they went by, even though it was obvious to the kids in the neighborhood that those names were fake—valued their privacy. As was normal for dealers. Or entrepreneurs, as they styled themselves. They were, to quote Abe, into consignments, retail sales, public distribution, and any number of other terms that kids didn't quite understand.

But Gary knew what Abe and Jimmy did for a living. So did Alicia. Especially Alicia. Gary gave her a sideways glance as they
neared the end of the dilapidated street.

Alicia approached a large fire-gutted house along the turnaround loop of the cul-de-sac. Gary followed a few steps behind. Dark and forbidding, the shell of a home was boarded up but one of the boards had a loose end. Alicia went up to it and started rotating it.

"They're not here," said Gary.

"
Let's see." Alicia gave him a look. "Come on, Gary. If they're not here we'll leave in a second."

Gary frowned but helped Alicia swing the board out of the way. They squeezed inside.

Shards of light pierced the gloom. In the next room—if it could be called a room, since the wall no longer existed except in crumbling pieces—part of the ceiling was gone and sunlight poured in, offering more light.

As Alicia stepped forward a rat squealed and padded across the floor, churning up dust as its claws dug into what was once a parquet surface.

"Hello?" said Alicia. "Guys?"

A big African-American suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He pocketed something quickly, something that Gary didn
't quite make out. But he could guess what it'd been.