“If they’ve had no contact with adults, then it’s all the more important that I get some specimens,” Dicken said.
The woman dropped her hand from her mouth—it shook as if with palsy—and stared at DeWitt.
“Come on,” DeWitt said, taking her elbow and guiding her. “I’ll help.”
“What if some are still alive?” the small woman asked plaintively.
Some were.
38
PENNSYLVANIA
Mitch glanced down at the digital receiver in the Mackenzies’ Jeep. Kaye leaned forward between the seats and touched his arm. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It appears to be,” Mitch said. “Webcasts. Catches everything for at least an hour back.”
“We’ve been married too long,” Kaye said. “You don’t even ask what I’m talking about.”
“Do you think?” Mitch said, with precisely Kaye’s tone and phrasing.
Stella lay quietly beside Kaye in the backseat. She had gone through one more convulsion, but her fever had not spiked again. She was resting under a thin child’s blanket, her head in Kaye’s lap.
They had caught less than an hour’s nap before leaving the Mackenzie house. Kaye had had a nightmare in which someone very important to her, someone like her father or Mitch, had told her she was a miserable mother, an awful human being, and some shadowy institution was withdrawing all support, which meant life support; she had thought she was running out of oxygen and could not breathe. She had struggled awake and sleep after that was impossible.
The sun was peeking over the highway behind them.
“Turn it on,” Kaye said.
Mitch turned on the receiver. The dashboard display showed a map with a red spot, their position, and the radio tuned automatically to a Philadelphia station, giving stock market news for the morning.
“Did he—”
“George turned off the TheftWave years ago,” Mitch said. “I checked. It’s unplugged. We’re just tracking GPS, not sending.”
“Good.” Kaye reached forward with a grunt, shifting Stella’s head, and pulled out a remote folding keypad. “Fancy,” she said.
Mitch glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She looked haggard, and her eyes were too bright. He could only see part of the gently breathing, blanketed form beside her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She studied the keypad, then experimented with a few buttons. “Looks like HFMD to me.”
“That’s not a radio station,” Mitch said.
“Hand, foot, and mouth disease. It’s usually a minor viral infection in infants and children. I’m sure she’s been exposed before. Something’s changed. Whatever, we need to stock up on drugs and fluids.”
“Drugstore?”
Kaye shook her head. “I’m sure by now they’ve made this a reportable illness. Every pharmacy in the country will be on the alert, and the hospitals are refusing to take cases… Let’s hear what the world is saying.” The broadband sites were full of digital music, digital advertising, Rush Limbaugh thundering and buzzing away from somewhere in Florida, Dick Richelieu on building that new home, rants by evangelicals, and then BBC World News direct from London. They caught the story in progress. Kaye worked the touch pad and backed up several minutes to the beginning.
“Conditions in Asia and the United States have quickly deteriorated to what can only be described as panic. The prospect of the so-called virus children producing an unknown pathogen capable of causing a pandemic has haunted world governments for a decade, certainly since the strange and disturbing case of Mrs. Rhine seven years ago. And yet the children have remained healthy, in their schools and camps and with their beleaguered families. Now, this new and so-far unexplained illness—given no official diagnosis—is causing widespread disruption in North America, Japan, and Hong Kong. International and even some local airports are blocking flights from affected areas. In the past forty-eight hours, public and private hospitals in the United States have closed their doors to this new illness for fear of becoming part of a proposed general quarantine. Other hospitals in the UK, France, and Italy, announced that should the disease spread to these shores, which some regard as inevitable, they will accept SHEVA children and their relatives only in isolated wards.”
“If you see a vet’s office, stop,” Kaye told him.
“Okay,” Mitch said.
“The illness has not yet spread to Africa, which has the smallest population of SHEVA children, some say because of the prevalence of HIV infection. In Washington, Emergency Action denies that it has begun taking measures based on a top-secret presidential decision directive, a confidential order dating from the early years of Herod’s plague. On some widely touched Web sites, the specter of bioterrorism is being invoked with alarming frequency.”
Kaye turned off the radio and squared her clasped hands in her lap. They were passing through a small town in the middle of fields and grassy plains. “There’s a pet hospital,” Kaye said, pointing to a strip mall on their right.
Mitch swung off the road into the parking lot and parked opposite a square blue-and-gray stucco building. Kaye drew the sun shades in the Jeep’s windows, though the sun was still low in the east and the air was actually cool. “Stay in the back with her,” she said as they both got out. Mitch tried to give Kaye a brief, encouraging hug. She squirmed out of his arms like a cat, made a vexed face, and jogged across the asphalt.
Mitch looked over his shoulder to see if they were being watched, then climbed into the backseat, lifted his daughter’s head, and placed it on his lap. Stella drew breath in short jerks. Her face was covered with small red spots. She curled her knees up and flexed her fingers. “Mitch, my head hurts,” she whispered. “My neck hurts. Tell Kaye.”
“Mom will be back in a few minutes,” Mitch said, feeling a gnawing helplessness. He might as well have been a ghost watching from the land of the dead.
Kaye peered through the venetian blinds in the glass door and saw lights inside and figures moving in a hallway in the back. She banged on the door until a young woman in a blue medical uniform approached with a puzzled look and opened the door a crack.
“We’re just starting the day,” the woman said. “Is this an emergency?” She was in her midtwenties, plump but not heavyset, with strong arms, bleached blonde hair, and pleasant brown eyes.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but we have some trouble with our cat,” Kaye said, and smiled with her most ingratiating and harried expression. The woman opened the door and Kaye entered the hospital’s small lobby. She turned nervously and looked at the admissions counter, the racks of specialized pet food and other products. The woman walked behind the counter, perked up, and smiled. “Well then, welcome. What can we do for you?” Her pocket tag showed a smiling cartoon puppy and the name Betsy.
The good caring women of this Earth, Kaye thought. They are hardly ever beautiful, they are the most beautiful of all. She did not know where this came from and shoved it aside, but first used the emotion to put a sympathetic spark into her smile.
“We’re traveling,” Kaye began. “We’re taking Shamus with us, poor thing. He’s our cat.”
“What’s wrong?” Betsy asked with genuine concern.
“He’s just old,” Kaye said. “Failed kidneys. I thought I brought our supplies with us, but… they’re back in Brattleboro.”
“Do you have a doctor’s sheet? A phone number, someone we can talk with?”