The future war, p.13
The Future War, page 13
“Only if you get the medicine.”
“Tomorrow trucks will be arriving to take the sickest people to the central hospital. So the clinic will be receiving even less.”
“Well, fewer patients. One way or another.”
They were moving away, laughing. Mary stood and crept toward the voices. Moving carefully, she peered through the branches of the hydrangeas and saw three figures, dressed in what looked like army fatigues, moving down the path. They’d gone out of sight before she could get a look at even the backs of their heads. Moving quickly but carefully, Mary moved parallel to the path, trying to catch up to them enough to get a glimpse. She heard car doors slam and moved more quickly still, risking the sound of crunching leaves. But she was too late. By the time she reached a dirt road, a green van was just turning a corner, to be quickly hidden by some bushes and fir trees. Looking around, she saw no one else.
What was that all about? she wondered.
It had sounded as though she’d been listening to people who were happy about the epidemic, maybe even somehow causing it. But who on earth would that be? Even Arab terrorists had better things to think about these days. And this was the first she’d heard about patients being taken to a central hospital.
Or even that there is a central hospital.
She should probably tell someone. Not that she had anything concrete to tell, considering she hadn’t seen any faces and hadn’t recognized anybody’s voice. Still…But who could she tell? Matron? No, she had enough on her plate.
Maybe…maybe that good-looking lieutenant. She didn’t mind taking advantage of his apparent interest if it would help.
It galled her that she had no proof. Unless trucks do in fact show up tomorrow. That wasn’t something she would know. At least not yet. She glanced at her watch and gasped. Not now, later. Right now she needed to get back to work. She certainly had a lot to think about. Like how anyone would go about deliberately spreading cholera.
“You could spray the germs on raw fruits and vegetables,” Mary said.
Dennis Reese just looked at her, his mouth partially open. When she’d suggested coffee he’d been delighted; Mary Shea was a fine-looking woman, with a striking figure, long auburn hair, and hazel green eyes. She didn’t look like a conspiracy nut.
“We don’t have that many raw vegetables,” he pointed out.
“Yes, they’re scarce, which may be why everyone in the camp hasn’t come down with it. It sure isn’t in the water supply, which is the usual vector. The second most-likely source is contaminated food. But the kitchens and the food in storage have been checked without finding anything wrong. So what if food is being treated just before it’s served?”
Dennis took a sip of coffee, never taking his eyes from her pretty, anxious face. She’d related an overheard conversation to him and it was worrying. On the one hand, a simple explanation was that someone was playing a sick joke on her. Which begged the question why anybody would do that? Maybe she turned someone down and they resented it? The other, and actually most likely explanation was that Nurse Shea had fallen briefly asleep and had dreamed the whole thing.
“Let’s see if these ambulance trucks show,” he suggested.
“You think I’m making this up?” she asked. It was clear that she was offended.
“No.” He waved that away. “But it’s possible you dreamed it. You looked really tired, yesterday. And that conversation had a kind of dream logic to it. You know what I mean?” She shook her head, her expression cool. “What I mean is, one minute they seem to be saying they’ve caused the epidemic, then they’re talking about ambulances.” He held his hands up, moving them like two parts of a scale. “What you fear, combined with a hope of rescue.”
“Excuse me,” Mary said, rising, “but it never occurred to me that this epidemic might be the result of bioterrorism. If anything, I thought it was the result of shoddy construction. And since the idea hadn’t even occurred to me, it would be hard for me to be afraid of it. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Like I said, let’s wait and see about those trucks. Then we’ll know.”
“We’ll know that I overheard someone talking about ambulance transport,” she snapped. “We still won’t believe that I overheard the first part of the conversation, will we?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she snapped, and stalked off.
I seem to be seeing this woman’s back a lot, Reese thought. Nice view.
“Cute,” Chip Delaney said.
Dennis looked up at him; he and Chip were sharing quarters and getting to be friends. “You think?” he said.
“Uh-huh. Redheads, man. They’re testy but they’re worth it.” He slapped Reese on the shoulder. “The captain wants you, buddy. ASAP.”
When the lieutenant walked into Captain Yanik’s office, it was to find the head nurse on the verge of blowing a gasket.
“You can’t be serious!” she was screeching. “We can’t send these people on a trip. Most of my patients are too sick to be moved. And where are they being taken? How far away is it? What are we supposed to tell their families when they come looking for them? Besides, you know I can’t spare any personnel to go with these trucks and they didn’t provide any. What they’ll be delivering at the end of their journey is a load of corpses!”
“I have my orders, Ms. Vetrano. Worst cases to be moved to the central hospital. Doctor,” Yanik appealed, “surely they’ll have a better chance away from here.”
“That is not necessarily correct, Captain,” the Sikh physician told him. He frowned. “Perhaps we could send some patients who are very ill and some patients who are still ambulatory and might be able to administer to those who can’t take care of themselves.”
“Doctor, I don’t understand why we have to do this at all,” the head nurse said. “What we need are more supplies and more trained medical help. And we don’t know why this epidemic is happening, so maybe we should truck everybody out of here.”
“Nurse Vetrano has a point,” Ramsingh said. “Close investigation has not turned up an answer to what has caused the epidemic. Everyone is boiling their water and washing their hands carefully, yet the contagion keeps spreading. Perhaps the problem is this place.”
“This place has been a fairground for more than a hundred years,” the captain pointed out. “Not once, to the best of my knowledge, has it ever been the source of an epidemic.”
“Then what is?” Reese asked.
They all looked at him, the captain scowling. The look in his eyes informing the lieutenant that he wasn’t helping. Dennis steeled himself, deciding to tell them what Mary had reported.
“Nurse Shea claims to have overheard some men speaking in a way that indicated they might be deliberately spreading the contagion. She suggested that they might be spraying germs onto raw fruits and vegetables after they’d been put out for consumption.”
“Who?” Yanik demanded. “Can she tell us?”
“No, sir. She claims to have only caught a brief glimpse of them from the back before they drove off in a green van. She said they were wearing fatigues.”
“Very useful,” the captain drawled.
“It might be worth looking into,” Reese suggested.
“You believed her?” Yanik said. His tone implied that the lieutenant had a screw loose.
“I have my doubts, sir. But she also heard them say that trucks would be coming for the patients and that its arrival would correspond with a decrease in medical supplies.”
The captain and the doctor exchanged glances.
“All we would need to do is station someone in the cafeteria to watch,” Ramsingh said.
“Better set up a video camera,” Reese suggested. “They wouldn’t be expecting that. Besides, if anyone is just lingering in the cafeteria, they’ll be noticed. We could make sure it’s a different someone every few hours, but even that would stand out. And since we don’t know who might be doing this, we might blow our cover before we’ve even started by enlisting the perpetrator.”
“Like I said, you believed her,” Yanik said flatly. The captain looked more contemptuous than annoyed.
“Under the circumstances, sir, I think it’s worth investigating.” Reese stood at ease, hoping Mary Shea hadn’t dreamed her encounter.
“I don’t know,” Yanik mused, rubbing his chin. “Electricity is at a premium right now.”
“How about human life?” Nurse Vetrano snapped. “That at a premium, too?”
The captain flicked a look at Dennis that said, “Thanks! Thanks a lot!”
“All right,” Yanik said. “We’ll set it up. I’ll check to see if Nurse Vetrano’s proposal is acceptable to HQ and get back to you. Meanwhile, you two can be deciding who goes.”
“If we can’t come to an agreement on this,” Ramsingh said regretfully, “then I’m afraid I can’t release those patients, Captain.”
“Let’s just assume everyone is working in good faith, shall we?” Yanik suggested. “I’m sure not sending medics with the trucks was an oversight. Everyone, everywhere, is overburdened at the moment. HQ is working with too few resources, too. Remember that saying: never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.”
Vetrano looked somewhat mollified. “Truer words have never been spoken, Captain.”
“Sad, but also true,” Yanik agreed.
Dilek, Alaska
The little cove hadn’t been much even before the bombs fell, and it was less now—a dozen shacks, a pier for fishing boats, and a fuel store, grubby and shabby against the steep, austere green beauty of the coastal mountains. Dieter and John had planned to meet Vera in some out-of-the-way spot, avoiding anyplace too populated. They’d reasoned that at this point people might be so desperate that they’d mob the ship. But Vera had rejected their suggestion.
“I need fuel,” she said. “You can’t get fuel from bears.”
It might well be that they couldn’t get fuel from people either, but they had to try. John couldn’t believe that they’d forgotten to set up a fuel dump in their own backyard when they had a number of them elsewhere.
“It’s not our oversight,” Dieter had insisted. “It’s Vera’s. She should have asked us where she could fuel up when she was still off California.”
But when they came to the dock where Love’s Thrust was moored and the great white yacht with its touches of pink came into view, John decided that he couldn’t go with them.
Just when I think I’m over Wendy, something comes along to remind me.
And Love’s Thrust held far too many memories. He could feel them weighing down his gut, making the world turn gray and purposeless.
“I keep thinking of those kids,” John said. “Their parents may be fools but that doesn’t mean I can just give up on them.”
Dieter didn’t question John’s motivation for heading back. He just handed over the Harley. “Keep in touch,” he said. “And for God’s sake, stay alive. I don’t want to have gone through all this only to find Skynet in the catbird seat.”
“Me either,” John said. He offered his hand and the big Austrian took it, squeezing with careful strength.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Back atcha,” John said, grinning.
Dieter snorted, but returned the grin, ruffling John’s hair. “You remind me of your mother,” he said.
“Then I’m sure to survive.”
They grinned at each other for a moment.
“Give Vera my love,” John said, and kicked the Harley to life.
“She’ll be disappointed,” Dieter said.
“Truth is, sometimes she scares me more than Skynet,” John told him. He thought he caught a glimpse of champagne-blond hair at the rail and with a wave started off.
Dieter watched him go, laughing, remembering that he’d occasionally felt the same way himself.
Black River Relocation Camp, Missouri
Captain Yanik walked up to Reese, who was checking on the installation of cots inside the bodies of the trucks. “Good work, Lieutenant,” he said heartily as his boots splashed through the gray mud.
Meaning, Reese thought, that because I stuck my oar in, Yanik has decided I’m the perfect person to liaise with the hospital on this matter. He certainly doesn’t want to contend with Nurse “Virago” Vetrano.
Reese turned around and saluted.
Yanik returned it and handed the lieutenant some papers. With a glance at the CO, Reese took them and at his nod started to read.
“Oh!” he said, pleased.
The captain grinned. “Thought that’d make your day.”
They were Reese’s orders to report to the Central States Regional Command for reassignment.
“Yes, sir!”
“Keep reading,” Yanik directed.
“They want Nurse Shea, too?” Reese looked up. “Why? They’ve got your report and she doesn’t know any more than she told us. And she’s really needed here.”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, the phone lines are down, and our commanding officers are a bit busy,” the captain drawled. “And if it gets out that she heard this stuff, she might be in danger here. Besides, it’ll soothe Vetrano no end to have a professional nurse with the convoy. And since it’s not my idea, she can’t complain to me about it.”
“Yes, sir,” Reese agreed. Nurse Vetrano in full cry was a formidable lady. And Nurse Shea might prove to be very pleasant company at Central.
“I’ll leave it to you to tell her,” Yanik said.
“Yes, sir.” Reese saluted, but the captain had already turned away. Dennis was so pleased about his new orders that it took him a minute to realize that he was going to have to face the head nurse’s wrath.
On the Road, Missouri
Reese had planned to ride in the cab of the first truck, but Vetrano’s glare and Shea’s pleading eyes had quickly changed his mind.
“I have no medical training at all,” he’d protested for a final time.
“It’ll be all right,” Mary said, taking him by the arm. “There’s nothing complicated about this type of nursing. All you’ll have to do is occasionally change an IV bag, wipe some brows, give sips of water, that sort of thing. It’s tiring, but it’s easy, you’ll see.”
A glance at Vetrano had told him that he certainly would. He touched the orders in his breast pocket like they were a talisman against evil and allowed himself to be led off for instructions about the care and feeding of IVs.
He had been assigned the first truck, Mary the last, and the two in between were being tended by a pair of ambulatory patients. In case there was a problem, each group had been given a radio. Reese had been given a code that would stop the first truck if he had cause, and when it stopped, the others would automatically stop as well. With luck, it wouldn’t be necessary to use it.
Nursing was tiring work, also disgusting and tedious and anxiety making all at once. Maybe it got better after you’d been doing it for a while. But Reese hoped he never had to do this again. The patients diapers needed constant changing; so far he hadn’t had time to bathe anyone’s brow, which all six of his patients needed.
He’d been at this for hours. Where the hell are we going? he wondered impatiently. He pulled a tiny section of the curtain secured across the back of the truck aside to see where they were. Woods. Nothing but woods and hills. No buildings, no people, and not a very impressive roadway. They were somewhere up in the hills, he realized, heading toward the Ozarks.
He stumbled back to the innermost bunk to check the IV and found that his patient had died. “Mary!” he said over the radio. “Mugamba is dead!”
“Are you sure?” she came back.
“He hasn’t got a pulse and he’s not breathing.”
She didn’t answer for a moment and Reese imagined what she was thinking: yup, that’s pretty much the definition of dead, all right.
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Just cover his face and do your best for the rest of your patients,” she answered. “This isn’t your fault, Lieutenant. He was very sick.”
“Will do,” he said, and signed off.
He wondered why he’d called her. Had he expected her to come leaping from truck to truck to hold his hand? Of course, he was an engineer. He’d never had anyone die on him before…before this all started; since then, it was becoming an unpleasantly familiar experience.
As if some malignant fate is out to kill us all. So maybe he just wanted someone to take this burden off his hands. Make that I’d give anything for someone to come along and take this off my hands.
The truck seemed to rear up like a frightened stallion; then it jounced fiercely as it inexplicably left the road. Reese grabbed for one of the hoops that held up the tilt and braced a boot against the side slats, swaying with the lunging pull. Either they’d left the road or the road had gone out of existence. Since he was near the side of the truck anyway, he reached out and lifted its canvas tilt enough to look out.
Yep, we’re off the road all right. And the patients were bouncing around like beans in a can. If the cots hadn’t been secured to the truck bed and the patients secured to the cots, things would have been pretty ugly back here.
The radio at his waist squawked and Mary Shea bellowed, “Stop the truck!”
Good idea, he thought, if easier said than done. They’d rigged up a connection to the truck’s computer back here, but it was up front, beside the corpse of Mugamba. The truck seemed to be climbing and hitting every rock in the way, causing it to buck like a mad thing. By the time Reese had struggled to the front, he’d collected some serious bruises.
The bouncing made it difficult to read the computer’s screen, but not nearly as hard as it was to type in the code they’d given him. He hit enter on the third try.
“Lieutenant! Are you all right?”
He unclipped the radio from his belt. “Yeah, sorry. I just entered the code; it didn’t work.” He spoke with his teeth clenched because he was afraid of biting off his tongue. “I’m going to try again.”
