Plague (23 page)

“Don’t rely too much on the government, Dr. Bower.
The g
overnment’s just people, and unless people have a strong interest, they do just enough to get by.”

She nodded, though she didn’t agree with him, and they watched television a couple of minutes.

“How are things here?” she asked.

“Same as always. Patients show up at our doors for help and we have no help to offer them. This isn’t why I became a doctor: to choose who gets a bed and who doesn’t.”

“
Sometimes we don’t get to choose our circumstances. We just have to deal with them the best we can.”

“I’m leaving the island.”

“When?”

“
Day after tomorrow. I can’t
…
it infected a day care for young
…
” She saw tears well in his eyes and he wiped them with the back of his hand. “It’s amazing how evil nature can be. Man’s got nothing on it.”

“It’s not evil, Jerry. It just is.” She watched the screen a few moments and then said,
“Where
are
you
gonna
go?”

“California. I have relatives there
.
I’ll take the licensing exams. This island was
a paradise for me
,
but even when
this is all over,
it’ll be
ruined for me. There’s nothing left for me here but memories of people dying.”

Samantha rose.
“You’ve done good work, Jerry. I wouldn’t give up just yet.”

As she walked down the corridor, she glanced back to see his face buried in his hands.

Ralph was sitting at his desk when she walked into the administrative offices of the hospital. Other than a few military personnel and the handful of staff volunteers that had stayed to care for the sick, the hospital was empty.

It reminded her of some of the old hospitals from the fifties she’d been given tours of as a medical student. They still had equipment
,
and many
of the
rooms were unbearably creepy
,
as they still had clothing from old patients that had long since passed away. At least
here
there
isn’t
a thick coating of dust on everything, she thought.

She waited by the door until Ralph looked up from what he was doing and motioned for her to sit down.

“I’m sorry about what happened today. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. A little
shaken
up, but I’m grateful someone was in that mall.”

He tapped his pen against the desk. “You’re going home. Tonight. I’ve booked a flight for you on a military charter that’s dropping off another shipment of vaccines.”

“What? Ralph, you need everyone you can get out here.”

“
I’m leaving too.”

“What’s going on?”

“Martial law is being declared. The military is fully taking over operations and the World Health Organization is sending infectious disease bio teams
to handle the patients. Our work is through.”

“What are you talking about?
H
undreds of people a day are getting infected. How is our work through?”

“We’re containment people, Sam. We deal with the initial stages
of a crisis
and make sure it doesn’t spread. Once it’s contained, our job i
s done and we bring in the disaster
handlers
. That’s the mi
litary. It’
s their show now. Anyway, your
flight’s at one in the morning. Enjoy your last day in paradise.”

“I don’t think I should leave.”

“Sam, I know we’re friends, but I’m also your boss and you need to treat me as such. You’re leaving, end of story. There’ll be other epidemics and other curious agents. Don’t get too hung up on any one.”

CHAPTER 30

Robert Greyjoy drove through a quiet suburb near Honolulu in a stolen Range Rover. Well
,
stolen wasn’t the correct word; most cars
had been
abandoned on the side of the road and he happened to
find
one that had a half tank of gas left.

The neighborhood was clearly middle to upper class. You could always tell based on the cars parked in the driveway. Some people put themselves in massive lifetime debt over their homes and then had nothing left over for the cars.
Cars
were much
more useful for
predicting the socio-economic climate of a neighborhood than any other factor except for the maintenance of the lawns.

A group of men were walking by on the street and they eyed him. One had his shirt off and he had a large tattoo of a shark on his back. He threw up some sort of gang sign and Robert laughed despite himself. He kept driving.

There was a young girl on the corner, perhaps no more than twelve. Another shirtless man with tattoos held her by the arm and was clearly scolding her. He looked over and saw Robert’s car and said something to the girl before disappearing into a house.

The girl casually walked in front of Robert’s car and he had to slam on his brakes to avoid a collision.
She came up to the window. She was lovely, Robert thought. Dark hair with emerald eyes rimmed red from crying. She was wearing a sundress with high-heels that she clearly was not accustomed to.

“Are you looking for sex?” she said.

Robert grinned. “I think what you want to ask is if I’m looking to party or looking for a good time. If you say
‘
looking for sex
’
you’ll scare most people off.”

“Are you looking to party?” she said timidly.

“How old are you?”

“Old enough.”

“No, you’re not. Why are you out here?”

She looked down to the ground. She seemed somewhere else for a few moments and then looked up again. “Do you want sex or not?”

“No.”

She turned and went back to her corner. Robert pulled his Range Rover over to the curb and stepped out. He locked the doors, not that that would really help now, and then walked to the girl.

“That man that was out here with you. Who is he?”

“None of your business.”

He leaned down, looking into her eyes. His stare had power.
There was a time when he would work on it in the mirror, but that seemed like ages ago.
His eyes
were reflections of what was inside. Work on the interior, and the exterior will follow.

“Who is he?” he said flatly, menace in his voice.

“My
…
my mama died and they take care of me.”

“How do they take care of you?”

“They gimmie food and I can sleep in the closet. They protect me.”

“How many of them are there?” She didn’t say anything and Robert grabbed her arm and squeezed gently. “How many?”

“Six, and two other girls.”

The man that had been out here before came out again, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Hey
,
man, you gonna fuck her or what?”

“How much?” Robert said, beginning to walk toward the man.

“We ain’t take no money no more. Ain’t no stores open anyway. You gotta come up with somethin’ to trade. Last dude gave us a gold watch.”

Robert was only a few feet away from him now. “Gold watch? Hm. How
’s
this one?” he said, holding up his watch.

“That don’t look like no watch I—”

Robert spun and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind him so violently that the man sucked down his cigarette
. He forced the arm up, nearly parallel to the shoulder, using the man’s body weight and gravity
. There was a
snap
in
his shoulder. The man screamed.

The man reached for a gun that was tucked in the small of his back. Robert grabbed two of his fingers and jerked them to the side, breaking them, and to
ok the gun himself. It was a Be
ret
t
a.

“Nice gun,” Robert said, admiring the weapon. He put the barrel to the back of the man’s head near the cerebellum and pulled the trigger. There was no blood at first, just a hole with a bit of gray smoke wafting out.

The man dropped to his knees and Robert pushed him over with the tip of his shoe. He looked to the girl and smiled, before walking up the street into the house.

There was a woman of about forty and a man on the couch smoking something out of a broken lightbulb. Robert put a slug into his left eye. The woman was about to scream and he grabbed her by the hair, using it as a handle, and slammed her face through the glass coffee table. He flipped her back to the couch. Her face looked like bloodied meat and she began to scream.

“No! No, please. I didn’t do nothing.”

“Exactly,” Robert said, leaning over her and picking a few shards of glass out of her face. “God is not passive. He doesn’t forgive you simply because you do nothing in the face of evil. Inaction, is action.”

She opened her mouth to speak and Robert put his palm against her chin and violently jerked her head with his other hand.
After
a muted
crack
, like a cob of corn snapping in half, she went limp. There was still some life in her eyes as Robert leaned her back on the couch and watched her. It would take three minutes
for her
to faint from lack of oxygen, four minutes
for her
to fall into a deep unconsciousness and
her
heart to stop, six minutes for
her
brain to die. He wondered what those last few seconds before death were like.

The essayist and philosopher Montaigne had been severely injured in a horse riding accident and his lungs slowly filled with blood
as
he drifted off to death, though he survived by some miracle
. H
e said it was the most pleasant sensation he had ever felt.

In a way, Robert envied this woman. In six minutes the Great Secret would be revealed to her. She would have more knowledge than any scientist or philosopher that had ever lived.

He sighed, and continued through the house.

A man with dreadlocks was in the kitchen with food
lying
out on the counter in front of him.
His earphones were
blaring metal. He
turned to Robert and gave a quizzical look just as Rober
t put two holes in his chest.

Robert
went upstairs a
nd found another man, who he
shot in the back of the head while he was sitting in front of a computer, and then came back downstairs. Including the woman, that was five. Did the girl mean six men or six
adults
total?

Robert quickly went through the rest of the house. It was in squalor with garbage thrown on the carpets and colonies of ants and
cockroaches
throughout the various rooms. Robert pulled out a scented handkerchief and kept it to his nose as he walked through the final bedroom. There was no one else here.

He heard
a
noise outside and instinctively lowered himself to the ground. He duck-walked out to the back door and saw a man working on a car, a cell phone glued to his ear. Robert glanced around and saw no one else. He waited a full minute, and then stepped outside.

“Excuse me,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

A
large metal cylinder lay on a small workbench
next to the man
and Robert grabbed it and bashed it into the man’s mouth. He hear
d teeth crack and the man
flew off his feet.

Robert brought the heavy cylinder down onto the man’s toes and then his ankles, slamming it into his flesh over and over and over. When he was convinced his feet were too mangled to walk, Robert sat down on a crate that was turned upside down just outside the garage entrance.

“I asked you what your name was.”

The man was cursing and shouting and yelping in pain. His mouth was foaming as he spit curses, holding his limp feet in his hands.

“You
fuckin’
broke my legs!”

“No, I did not. I broke your ankles and your feet. Don’t be such a coward. Now, what was your name?”

“Fuck you.”

“Fine, then let’s avoid pleasantries and get to the only question I actually care about: that girl you’re pimping outside, where did you find her?”

“Fuck you!”

Robert picked up the cylinder again and crashed it into his wrist, causing another round of screaming and swearing. He waite
d until the man had calmed down
and then asked him again, “Where did you find her?”