Any serious disease in your family? No. Any allergies to medicines? No. Onset of first symptoms? Four days ago.
He said smoothly, listening to her galloping heart, “Every patient we see adds to our knowledge about the disease. You never know when the big break will come. It could come at any time. Let’s check your blood pressure.”
Then came the standard leprosy check. He poked the eight spots on her hands and feet to test sensation, which she lacked. He checked the eyes for inflammation, and found a forest fire of inflamed veins. Squeezed the base of the thumb, the median nerve. Checked the ulnar nerve for tenderness by the eyes, for a lack of ability to shut them.
What’s the point of diagnosing the same thing over and over? What we really need is to kill it. The normal multidrug therapy has no effect at all against both the paucibacillary and the multibacillary strains. Complicate that with fasciitis, and the fucking third piece that the CDC finally identified today, the tiniest almost hidden fraction of norovirus DNA. Making it spreadable by touch and air. Making it the goddamn hydrogen bomb of man-made disease.
“Thanks so much, Mrs. Haverhill. Take your paperwork down the hall to the nurses’ station. The helpful folks there will set up a bed.”
Yeah, except every bed is filled and we’ve got people coming in faster than we can handle them.
He took a break, which meant that he turned his attention from the endless patients to Joe. He had a cell phone connected into the encrypted emergency med network, and security network. He tried Burke’s office and got the overworked fourth-tier assistant again, who’d been clearly ordered to keep Joe’s and Eddie’s calls away. He tried the Junior Senator from Alaska — a woman he and Joe knew from work there — but the office was shut and the Senator underground. He reached FBI Special Agent Ray Havlicek and got a noncommittal “We’re aware of Colonel Rush’s theory.” He called a D.C. police commander and former Marine, who told him, after checking records as a personal favor, that “Rush is on a special list. We’re to hand him over to the FBI if we get him. And he’s wanted for murder, by us, Eddie.”
The commander added, somewhat harder, “He shot at cops, Eddie. The way things are out there, things getting worse, no one sleeping, tempers rising, I can’t guarantee that if we find him, he’ll be brought in alive.”
“Do you think I enjoy seeing so many people suffer?” said the warm, calm tones of Harlan Maas.
Connecticut Avenue was in slightly better shape than Wisconsin had been. There were two cleared lanes on each side, but traffic remained sparse. I passed locked-up strip malls and apartment buildings with private guards outside, or perhaps they were vigilantes. Traffic lights still worked, sending directions into an anarchistic void. The voice on the tape was soothing, therefore more terrifying. I thought I heard the voice catch, as if the man battled away tears.
“Do you think I enjoy knowing that we will have a role in children losing parents? Men and women with faces eaten away? Neighbors fighting people who they once considered their best friends?”
The road — if open — would take me into Maryland at Chevy Chase Circle, a few miles ahead. It would continue through residential suburbs until reaching the ramp to the Beltway, and I-95 North. I passed an apartment building where Army Rangers in biogear were arresting people; herding at least two dozen handcuffed men into a canvas-topped truck. Police and soldiers had opened mass detention centers, Admiral Galli’s TV had informed me. Those arrested would be confined there, possibly for weeks, before they could get a lawyer. And that was if, the announcer said, courts reopened at all.
“Hopefully within a month, there will be a way to process these people. We can only wait and do our best,” the mayor had said.
When the Humvee swung in behind me, I was planning the trip: I-95 to Baltimore, then past Wilmington, Delaware. I’d exit on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, avoiding New York City. I’d hopefully figure out how to get gas. If not, I’d come up with another way to move. I’d stay on the west side of the Hudson River at first and make my way to Columbia County, and New Lebanon, New York.
As for the cult and compound, I’ll wait to see the place first, then decide what to do.
In the little rectangle of rearview mirror, I saw the boxy Humvee swing onto the road, stay back, and follow.
Harlan Maas said, “I can’t stop thinking about those poor sufferers; yet we must ask, why were these people chosen? The scientists in Somalia were out to disprove creation. Imagine! Making lies up about rocks and sediments to argue that human beings are descended from apes!”
What?
“The actors and directors making that film at Paramount would have mocked my father’s work, if not stopped.”
It can’t be this, I thought. Who is his father?
“The air base, where prayers were banned! The sports stadiums! Where thousands ignored Holy Sundays! My friends! The last time I came to Earth, I told my followers… Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Don’t you think I know that we have done that? But there was no other way.”
He thinks he’s Jesus Christ!
“When I see a little child, a six-year-old boy or girl, sick, I admit it, I ask myself, maybe we should stop,” said Harlan Maas.
I’ve got to get this tape to the right people!
The voice began weeping. I heard great intakes of air. The voice composed itself enough to begin speaking again.
“But this suffering will end all suffering for all of humanity. When the transformation is complete, those hurt will be whole. War and hunger will be memory. As we begin the last phase, I thank you for your faith and love. You are the special ones. You will lead the world into a new age of peace, love, and understanding.”
What does he mean, “the last phase”?
Something went wrong with the tape. It snagged and tore. The Humvee in the mirror closed the gap between us, but I did not speed up, despite the urge. My armpits were soaked. I stopped at a light and the sand-colored vehicle pulled up beside me. The soldier in the passenger seat wore sunglasses, and his face — with the helmet on and surgical mask — turned in my direction.
I reached and tried to remove the cassette from the player. A long, thin trail of snagged plastic film caught in the slot. When the Humvee’s horn boomed beside me, I realized the light had turned green. But the tape was still snagged; the cassette dropped toward the wet carpet as I pressed down on the accelerator. The Humvee fell in behind me again. I saw the front rider on a phone, gesturing toward me, checking on my license plate, I guessed.
Harlan Maas, whoever he was, hung upside down in plastic, swinging back and forth and knocking gently against my right knee each time I hit a bump.
Ahead, some kind of portable traffic alert sign was coming up on the side of the road. The Humvee closed the gap again as I approached Chevy Chase Circle, the border with Maryland. Funny thing about those traffic circles. They were designed by Frenchman Pierre L’Enfant, George Washington’s city planner. L’Enfant created traffic circles so that troops could gather there, to repel invaders or deal with rebellious citizens. And now a rebellious citizen, me, approached a traffic circle. The headlights on the Humvee flashed on and off. There was a loud-hailer on top but the soldiers did not use it. There was no way I could outrun a Humvee. I thought they wanted me to pull over. I was preparing to do that, trying to think of a lie to tell them, when I read the words on the electric flashing sign.