H10N1 (2 page)

At least it was summer. Taeya couldn’t imagine what people might do in order to stay warm this winter.

Down on the streets, no fire trucks screamed for the right-of-way. No cars swerved or honked. There were no curious pedestrians clogging the sidewalks to hamper firemen. Manhattan was dead. Wiped out by a virus that Taeya still did not fully comprehend.

As an epidemiologist, she had spent the last ten years chasing outbreaks. Who carried the disease, was it bacterial or viral, where were the outbreaks occurring? She tracked host, agent, and environment like a board game. Mrs. Peacock, with a candlestick, in the observatory.

When the Army Medical Corps commandeered Bellevue as a safe zone, the top brass had requested Taeya from CDC. She never set foot on Manhattan pavement, never saw a show or dined in one of those cute sidewalk cafes. She came in from JFK, so she never even got a glimpse of Times Square. Just climbed out of the limo in the hospital’s parking garage and stepped into an elevator. As she lurched upward, a queasy lump twisted in her stomach. Even back then, she knew she was heading into a no-win situation. Just like Williamsport.

The smoke from the apartment building was a charred gray now. Thick clouds billowed into a putrid sky the color of canned peas. The hue seemed to change with the fires. When Canal Street burned, Chinatown burst into flames like a paper dragon, leaving the sky pinkish. Last month, when the garment district caught fire, bolts of burning fabrics had turned the sky purple.

A few times Taeya had slipped up to the top floor for a better view of the crippled city. When she’d first arrived, a nurse pointed out landmarks—the scorched hull of Madison Square Garden, the crumbled remains of the Empire State Building. Taeya had imagined charred buildings in other cities. Buckingham Palace, the Kremlin, Vatican City. Thousands of homes and apartments, millions of people—all gone.

She was certain her apartment in Atlanta had burned, and she regretted not bringing more of her personal belongings with her to New York. It never occurred to her that her stack of photo discs might melt into a plastic puddle; that the files of digital pictures on her computer could suddenly vanish. The older photo albums from her earlier years were much too fragile to schlep with her everywhere. All she had brought were a few framed pictures, and Abuela’s shell.

One of the route buses collecting survivors chugged up First Avenue toward the hospital. At the old wrought-iron fence out front, the bus door opened and a handful of passengers staggered out.

The queue of people already waiting to get into the hospital stretched beyond the building to her left. Newcomers shuffled in uncertainty, stepping to the curb to see if the line was moving; or they glanced at their neighbors without making eye contact. People who had been in line for hours sat languishing in the sweltering summer heat.

A man splotched with oozing sores on his face leaned against the fence, waving away flies with a bony finger. Another man lay sprawled on the sidewalk, his arms spread to his sides, as though offering himself to death. Farther up the queue, a woman sat cross-legged, her arms gripped to her belly as she rocked. Hunger? Diarrhea from the influenza? Dysentery from drinking unsafe water?

When the line moved, those who could not walk, crawled. An old man wobbled from a coughing bout before cacking out a blob of mucus and blood; it splatted on the sidewalk next to a body buzzing with flies. People stepped over the corpse as they shuffled toward the door.

A mini-bulldozer chugged out of the alleyway. The driver in the airtight cab was dressed in a contamination suit and helmet. As he aimed for the corpse on the sidewalk, the walking dead parted like pigeons. With one smooth motion, the driver scooped up the body then aimed a hose at a brown spot on the sidewalk and blasted the stain with disinfectant.

Taeya knew he’d take the specimen to the back dock of the hospital, dump the remains into a molded plastic container and tamp the lid shut with the dozer’s scoop. Within minutes, the sealed container would be on its way to Tom Johnson in pathology.

Was there a point any more? They’d picked and probed enough bodies to fill Johnson’s hard-drive. Maybe someday he’d sort it all out and write a book: a cautionary tale to future generations about how an organism had once again brought the Earth to near extinction.

Taeya’s own mission had changed over the months. She no longer battled the disease that consumed everything in its path. Now she was obsessed with finding the few
uninfected
and keeping them alive.

The hospital had become a way station. The people down in the queue would eventually get into the lobby, where computer stations had been set up. Data clerks in a safe control room would interview these patients. Unfortunately, the majority of applicants were already infected. A handful were given a Code Yellow status, admitted to the hospital, and observed to see if they pulled through. But the majority were Code Reds. They’d be given a bed, a sparse meal, and a dose of Nexinol to put them out of their misery.

The few healthy ones received the coveted Code Green status, and were immediately shuttled out to the far end of Long Island—the colony in Brookhaven. FEMA called it Orderly Redistribution, but the goal was really to get the dying out of buildings and off the streets.

The telephone on her desk rang, and she turned away from the window, switching on her Bluetooth. The instant the caller identified himself, Taeya pounced.

“What’s going on over there? You tell Markham if he can’t get that incinerator at ninety percent we’re shutting it down. His emissions are drifting right toward Long Island.”

While buses brought the sick to the Center, flatbed trucks hauled the dead to makeshift crematoriums. Both the CDC and World Health Organization had urged other countries not to resort to mass graves. This pathogen was way too virulent to be buried in the ground. Taeya wasn’t even confident that incineration was a hundred percent effective.

Darryl from security skidded to a halt at her door, dancing impatiently from foot to foot. She waved him in and pointed to a chair. He stood as Taeya continued her telephone conversation.

“Then tell Markham to reduce his hourly body count.”

She watched Darryl drift around her office, feigning interest in the pictures hanging on the wall: the snapshot of her brother and parents dwarfed by a giant redwood in Muir Woods, Mai standing outside a Red Cross tent near Calang in Sumatra. Darryl hovered at the photograph of Taeya and her husband Randall, standing in front of a pagoda in Fukutsu. She was wearing a tank top in the picture, and she was sure Darryl was checking out her breasts.

He was supposedly head of security, but from what she observed, he spent most of his time hiding out in the old neonatal wing. He wore his uniform too tight, accentuating his bulging biceps, preening in front of the younger nurses.

“Look!” she barked into her headset. The outburst startled Darryl and he stepped away from the picture. “This isn’t a race with New Jersey to see who can dispose of the most corpses. You tell him this is my last warning.” She disconnected without waiting for a reply.

What were they thinking? The whole purpose of incineration was to destroy. If they didn’t reduce the contaminated tissue to ash, the possibility for mutation occurred. Then they’d have still another viral strain on their hands. Taeya had argued, futilely, that they continue picking up corpses reported by the suicide centers, but Doctor Sherman insisted they didn’t have the manpower for such a monumental task. In the end, he decided that at the rate Manhattan was burning, all the corpses would eventually be obliterated. Had she actually called him a moron?

Darryl laid his hands on her desk and leaned forward, going for the dramatics. “Doctor Sanchez, we’ve got a problem in pathology.”

“I saw.” Most likely, he was referring to the corpse she’d seen out on the sidewalk. Johnson hadn’t wasted any time dissecting this latest casualty. “Maybe it was a drive-by dump.”

“No. There’s nothing on our cameras. Plus, we got a guy who says he was there when this dude collapsed. Johnson’s sure we’ve got a new one.”

“I’ll bet. He’s probably already named it.” She looked at her watch. “Okay, I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. Tell him I’ll be down in an hour.”

She tried herding Darryl toward the door, but he had more news.

“We had a real nasty one down in the lobby this morning. This woman had three different scarves tied around her face. And she was wearing this insulated parka like the Eskimos wear. Can you imagine? In that heat?” Darryl puffed out his cheeks and blew. “When the data clerk gave her the green light for Long Island, she refused. She was afraid Brookhaven was contaminated, too. Said she wanted in here, where it’s safe.” Darryl waved an arm at Taeya’s office. “She offered to sweep floors. Anything. When the data clerk said we weren’t hiring, she slashed the computer’s plasma screen.”

“Where is she now?” Taeya asked.

“I had a couple of the boys toss her into a red-code ward.”

“What?”

“Believe me, Doctor Sanchez, you don’t want a psycho like her in your Brookhaven colony.”

Taeya pressed her fingers into her forehead and rubbed. Who wouldn’t be hysterical in a situation like this? If Darryl suddenly found himself out in that madness, what would he do?

But there was no point in trying to coax some humanity from Darryl. Chances were, that trait didn’t exist. As she ushered him out, she spotted a man in low-slung blue jeans and a dingy tee shirt saunter past her door.

“How did that man get in here?” she demanded.

Darryl raised a hand to keep her from charging after the intruder. “That’s Rick DeAngelo, one of our new drivers. He’s the one who found the wavelength filters for our Hb readers.”

Unclenching her fists, Taeya took a deep breath to slow her pulse. She’d heard stories about this driver. Someone could show him an illustration of what they needed and he’d come back with it. But his talent had gotten so exaggerated, she’d begun to think he was an urban legend.

“Why isn’t he wearing a hospital-issued uniform?”

“Take it easy, Doc,” Darryl said. “He’s also the one who tracked down those Fentanyl patches after we tapped out our morphine supply. Sherman figures he can bend the rules with this guy.”

“Of course he does.”

“Come on. I’ll introduce you. He was telling me some strange stuff about the D.C. facility this morning. Maybe you should check it out.” Darryl launched down the hallway after the slob. “Hey, Rick!”

After the two slapped hands in some juvenile greeting, Darryl asked him how things were going.

“They’re gone, man.”

Rick’s eyes drifted past Darryl. For an instant, he met Taeya’s gaze, but then his eyes scanned slowly down and up again. Was this bozo checking her out?

Darryl was oblivious to the leer. “Rick, this is Doctor Sanchez. Tell her what you were telling us this morning. You know, about D.C.”

“Doctor Sanchez.” Rick’s voice had the sleazy cadence of a barfly. “My pleasure.” He held out his hand.

Taeya hesitated, making sure he caught her own slow scan of his slovenly appearance. His hair was longer than hers, but board-straight and pulled back in a ponytail. Evidently, he did not feel the need to shave on a regular basis. His ratty tee shirt was frayed at the neck, and had a tear above an illustration of a wrench. She looked away when she realized the drawing was supposed to symbolize a man’s genitalia. What a creep.

She accepted his hand for a brief shake.

He cocked an eyebrow, as if he couldn’t believe she didn’t find him as charming as the rest of the staff.

“I just got back from D.C. last night,” he said. “Bad news down there.”

“I already know,” Taeya snapped. “They’re processing twice as many patients as we are. That’s because they opened another wing.”

Rick snorted. “Is that what they told you? Well, I ran into a nurse who just got canned. She said that eighty percent of the staff was fired.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She dismissed both men with a smirk and a wave of her hand. No doubt a nurse
had
been terminated, and she’d used this delivery driver’s shoulder to cry on. He was certainly the type who would take advantage of a situation like that, assuring the sweet young thing that if she’d been fired, everyone would be fired. Had he rubbed his hands all over her as he sympathized? Coaxed her to his room?

“And I think it’s irresponsible for you to perpetuate this rumor any further,” she added.

“Rumor?” Rick’s dark eyebrows scrunched together. “You need to get your head out of your ass, Doc. The reason they don’t need the nursing staff anymore is because they’re dosing everyone who comes in the door with Nexinol, green codes and all.”

Her mouth dropped open. Who did he think he was speaking to? When she had him ushered to the front door, would the rumors start that all drivers were being let go?

He tapped his fingers on his chest. “I’ve seen the trucks lined up. They’re hauling bodies to the incinerators as fast as they can get them loaded. President Birch and the rest of those motherfuckers have given up controlling the situation. They’re bailing and they need a bigger secured facility.” He leaned into her face. “The D.C. unit.”

For the first time, Taeya’s confidence faltered. Could politicians be taking over the Walter Reed facility in Washington? The idea was so unbelievable that she got the uneasy feeling it might be true.

* * *

Clutching the arms of his desk chair, Tom Johnson, the hospital’s pathologist, hunched close to his monitor, studying a blank screen. Taeya leaned past his shock of brown hair to see if she was missing something.

“Maybe you should change channels,” she said.

“Sanchez!” Johnson swiveled around. “What took you so long?”

She straightened and curled her upper lip. “I’ve been listening to Doctor Sherman’s plans to wipe out the remaining survivors of the five boroughs.”

“Come on, Sanchez. When are you going to turn in that bleeding heart for reinforced Kevlar like mine? The Brookhaven facility is reporting that some of our Green Codes are coming down with infections they picked up out in that line. It’s time to give up. I guarantee no one is going to come back to haunt you for slipping a Nexinol into their juice.”