The Coward's Way of War (14 page)

He pressed on before Blake could continue.  “And then there is the racial, social and economic aspect to the vaccination program,” he said, quickly.  “The vaccines are mainly going to white bread, not to persons of colour or…limited economic means.  Is it not possible that the President has decided to manipulate this crisis and use it to exterminate a section of the American population?”

“I do not think,” Blake said tightly, “that
any
American President has been so insulted, not even George Bush II.  Like so many of your depraved political class, you believe that the world is inherently perfect and when it is not perfect, it is prevented from being perfect by evil right-wingers such as  myself.  There is no such thing as the Great Right Wing Conspiracy and never ever was.”

“Yet one cannot deny the figures,” Featherstone snapped.  “Thousands of people have been vaccinated by now, yet only a tiny percentage of them are black.”

“The President has said, and I believe that the figures support her, that vaccinations will be focused first on emergency response personnel and people in vital industries,” Blake said, tightly.  “You may feel that there is no real difference between a homeless bum and a trained doctor, but I can assure you that the doctor is far more important to the country than the bum.  The bum drinks cheap wine and gets philosophical; the doctor works tirelessly to save people from Henderson’s Disease.  Which one would you suggest be vaccinated first?”

His voice hardened.  “And before you answer that,” he added, “you might want to think about the dangers of having your doctors and nurses vulnerable to Henderson’s Disease.  Every doctor or nurse who is forced to become bed-ridden is one who cannot help look after patients.  Every…”

“I think I'm going to have to stop you there,” the moderator said, quickly.  Jim rolled his eyes.  He would have loved to hear Featherstone’s response to that tirade.  “We do not have much time left, so we will close with one final discussion.  We believe that terrorists inflicted this upon us and the FBI has stated that it is working to identify the group responsible.  What do you feel we should do about them?”

“They have unleashed a weapon of mass destruction on us,” Blake said, before Featherstone could say a word.  “We should retaliate in kind.”

“But you cannot use nuclear weapons against a terrorist group,” Featherstone objected.  “Quite apart from the moral issues of using nukes, the blasts would wipe out thousands of innocents along with the terrorists, creating thousands of new recruits willing to give their lives to harm the United States.”

“I just knew that you were going to wimp out,” Blake sneered.  “Let me see if I can put this in perspective.  Henderson’s Disease is not a natural variant of smallpox; someone created the disease with only one real purpose, its deployment as a biological weapon.  That someone has to be a state, because only a state would have such resources.  That state is compliant in the attack and must be destroyed.”

Jim clicked off the television and headed back to his chores, thinking hard.  If nuclear war broke out, as it might once the terrorists and their sponsors were identified, what would happen then?  He didn’t disagree with Blake that a nuclear response was necessary, yet would it not put the country in more danger?

Shaking his head, he went back to work.

It remains necessary to minimise personal contact during the opening stages of an epidemic.  Where possible, all personnel should use telephones, cell phones, computers and vid
eoconferencing equipment to remain in touch, rather than face-to-face meetings.  This is particularly important for the government, which must remain intact and operating in order to maintain the quarantine.

-Doctor Nicolas Awad

Washington DC, USA

Day 9

“The growing trend is leading to only one point, Madam President,” Gayle Freeman said.  The Secretary of the Treasury looked worried, even on the White House’s state-of-the-art secure videoconferencing system.  “We are looking at a total collapse of the economy within three weeks at the most.”

The President scowled.  Her two predecessors had wrestled with the financial crisis caused by the collapse of several big-name banking companies on Wall Street, yet they had never had to face the complete collapse of the American economy.  It wasn't a single financial storm, but a thousand minor cuts, each one bleeding the economy dry.  The men and women who made America work – everyone from an engineer to a Hooters Waitress – were not showing up to work if they could avoid it.  Her own orders had made that trend possible, yet the costs were staggeringly high.  The country depended on its workforce to make it work and that workforce was refusing to work.

She couldn’t really blame them, of course.  The CDC had released enough data on Henderson's Disease – at her encouragement, to be fair – to convince most workers to remain at home.  Medical personnel had been carrying on anyway, including thousands who were not yet vaccinated, but almost every other profession was trying to remain at home.  It was creating a knock-on effect that was staggeringly powerful and yet incredibly difficult to tackle; every person who missed work affected another person…thousands of businesses and corporations would be collapsing, were it not for the government’s efforts to keep them open.  Every CEO in the country was screaming at his or her tame politicians for government money, yet there was very little to go around.  The emergency services came first.

It didn’t help that global trade had almost completely collapsed.  The President’s declaration of a state of emergency had been matched with other declarations from around the world, destroying the global balance of trade.  With the country’s internal and external supply network collapsing, entire industries were failing, even the ones that seemed impregnable to chaos.  Even if Henderson’s Disease were to be cured overnight, with everyone who was ill returning to work the following day, the economy would take years to recover.  The value of the dollar had fallen so far that wags were already joking that it could be used to replace toilet paper.

And that was causing a massive social crisis.  No matter what the far-left claimed, the ordinary Americans had enough to eat, under normal services.  Now, with the dollar’s value falling, it became harder for the average American to find food for their families, if they could muster up the courage to head outside to the stores.  The collapse of the internal supply network meant that there was a growing shortage of food to place on the table.  It hadn’t exploded yet, but the President had seen some of the contingency plans and knew that it wouldn’t be long before riots started to break out.  The starving population would come out onto the streets and wreak havoc.

“I understand,” the President said, tiredly.  “Is there nothing we can do to delay it?”

“Producing and distributing enough vaccine to get everyone immune to the disease would help,” Gayle said.  She rubbed her eyes.  She had just finished a conference call with her counterparts in other countries, trying to get a global response together and failing miserably.  The super-rich were moving their money around the world, trying to save it from being rendered valueless, or seized by an increasingly desperate government.  “And the unions are getting in on the act.”

The President scowled.  She disliked unions on general principles, a legacy from her early struggles with teaching unions.  They seemed to exist only for the purpose of making it impossible to fire incompetent teachers and had such a heavy level of clout that, even as President, she had been unable to clip their wings.  The teacher’s unions were probably already advising their members not to go to work, although
that
would be just a waste of time.  The schools were shut down and would remain shut down for the foreseeable future.

“Hit me,” she said, tightly.  “What are they complaining about now?”

“The medical unions want all of their members vaccinated before they catch the disease,” Gayle said.  “We still haven’t managed to get to all of the medical professionals in the country and some of them have definitely caught the disease from their patients.  Some of the leaders are already talking about going on strike if their demands are not met.”

“Are they mad?”

“From their point of view, they’re perfectly rational,” Gayle pointed out.  “They want to have their members vaccinated before they catch the disease, so they’re just serving the interests of their workers.  They’re claiming that morale is falling and that containment is failing.”

The President rubbed her eyes, wondering again why she’d wanted the job in the first place.  “Tell them…tell them that we are vaccinating people as quickly as possible,” she said.  It seemed that everything she did met opposition from well-meaning people.  “Let me know what they say.  We might have to take legal steps to prevent them from going on strike.”

Gayle broke the connection, leaving the President alone in the Oval Office.  The White House itself was nearly deserted, with everyone who wasn't essential to the smooth functioning of the building sent home for the duration of the emergency.  Half of the government had been dispersed around the country, while both Congress and the Senate had been spread out for safety.  She looked down at the photo of her husband on the desk and wondered, just for a moment, what he would have done in such a crisis.  He had always favoured the most direct route possible.

“Madam President,” her assistant said.  “Doctor Awad is requesting a personal meeting.”

“Good,” the President said.  Perhaps he could shed some light on the problem.  “Have him sent into the office at once.”

***

The Secret Service, Nicolas was amused to note, had turned the White House into a giant quarantine zo
ne.  A group of armed guards had inspected him as he arrived, insisting that he stripped naked, passed through a chemical mist and UV lights, before giving him an ill-fitting suit to wear.  His briefing notes were, luckily, on a memory stick; it was inserted into a White House computer and the files were transferred onto a secure server.  A blood sample was taken from his arm and run through a sensor, leaving him to wait until the doctor finally cleared him to go into the building.  The precautions seemed excessive, but Nicolas knew better.  They were desperately needed, if only to ensure that the government remained intact.

“Madam President,” he said, as he was shown into the Oval Office.  His new suit chafed uncomfortably against his body, forcing him to struggle to keep his discomfort from showing openly.  “I apologise for disturbing you.”

The President looked up at him.  Her eyes were very tired.  “Give me some good news,” she said.  “Do we at least have someone to blame yet?”

“I think we have part of the puzzle,” Nicolas said, as he took the seat in front of the desk.  “I believe that we now have a very good idea of where the disease actually came from, although we don’t know how it was actually deployed.”

He took the remote control from the desk and activated the plasma screen, showing an image of the smallpox virus.  “Back in the 1970s, there was an outbreak of smallpox in India, one caused by a particularly virulent strain.  The Russians dispatched a team of researchers to India, who eventually managed to secure samples of the virus and transport it back to Russia.  This strain was eventually codenamed India-1.  We do not have any direct samples of India-1, but we do have similar strains and we believe that Henderson’s Disease is directly related to India-1.  Of course, all forms of smallpox are related, but India-1 is particularly worrying for several reasons.

“The Soviet Union’s commitment to eradicating smallpox was genuine, but not for the reasons they claimed,” he continued.  “Their biological warfare experts believed, correctly, that a world without smallpox would eventually no longer be immune to smallpox and that, if they developed a form that could be used as a weapon, they would be able to exterminate vast numbers of people in a relatively short space of time.  Unknown to us, at least until the Russians suffered a number of high-profile defections, the Russians proceeded to not only stockpile the virus, but also to modify it.  Their overall aim was to create a strain that would be unimpeded by the vaccine.”

“My God,” the President breathed.  “Were they out of their minds?”

“They believed that they could get away with it,” Nicolas admitted.  “I must admit that they were right.  The international treaties against the development of biological weapons were nothing more than pieces of paper to them.  They played a shell game with inspectors, concealing a military program under a civilian program, carefully hiding just how far they'd come.  What little we did pick up on was fumbled; we didn’t challenge them or pressure them into coming completely clean.  If it hadn’t been for the defectors, we would have known nothing about the sheer scale of their program.