There was a pause. Then, “Seconded,” from Spooky. He shot a look at Vinh.
“All right, motion is on the floor. All in favor say ‘aye.’”
Ayes rang out, some tentative, but clear.
“Opposed?” Daniel waited for Vinny to object, but he didn’t. “All right, that’s settled. Now, here’s my first bureaucratic act as Chairman – watch this presentation.”
Turning on the computer screen, he laid it out for them then, in graphics and charts and pictures, how he proposed to plague the world. Coming to the conclusion, he looked around again, his hands clenched behind his back. “So now you’ve seen my plan, in outline. Everyone will get a chance to weigh in on the methods, on the how. But for the basic goals, I need to hear all inputs now, and I need everyone behind me one hundred percent on this.”
They talked and wrangled well into the evening, breaking for a meal and coming back, until they had worked through all the misgivings and everyone raised his or her hand and said, “Aye” again.
After that it was just details.
-21-
The Council spent the next week keeping peace and soothing hurt feelings as the Eden Plague took hold. The virtue effect made it simpler, and Daniel had counted on it. Better-balanced brains and more stable minds made it easier to accept the insult of their own destinies being hijacked for the greater good. Still, once everyone was confident they wouldn’t turn into zombies or pod people, their little community settled down remarkably well.
One afternoon Daniel looked in on the scientists, who had turned their efforts away from research, toward simply breeding as much virus as they could and making doses. They had enlisted the whole community, and there was a group of people in a big room next to the lab chattering away like a knitting circle. Except in this case instead of needles and yarn, they had hundreds of containers and were filling them with virus solution. Plastic water and soda bottles dominated. A few filled syringes – from small ones, to large and heavy with enormous needles, as if they were to inject horses. Part of the plan.
Elise came over when she spotted Daniel. “It’s a good thing the virus is hardy. Not like HIV, for example, which dies after a few hours in the air. This stuff is more like influenza. I sure wish we had time to make it airborne.” She looked accusingly at him.
“Sorry. We all agreed we couldn’t risk taking the time.”
“I know. We’re doing the best with what we have. At least it looks like simply ingesting a little bit is highly effective. Although injections use less.” She ran her hands through her hair.
“Yes, all but two people acquired it the first time around in the drinks, and those two got it the next time.”
“With a higher dose. We’re going to have to accept the fact that it’s not one hundred percent.”
“Anything over fifty and I’ll be happy.” Daniel kissed her, a little longer and harder than was usual, and then moved on to “manage by walking around.” He checked up on Larry, Spooky and Vinny’s work on the Bunker. They and some of the other men were laboring away with the heavy equipment, digging a new tunnel, covering everything with rock dust. This was also part of the plan. Then Daniel tracked down Cassie. He found her working with her kids and a few of the Nguyen and Nightingale kids that had come in, an impromptu school. The room smelled like old-fashioned paste and new magic markers.
“Hey, Cassie.”
“You know you’re the only one who calls me that.”
“I like to be different. What do other people call you?”
“Cassandra, or Cass.”
“You wouldn’t look good in a mumu.”
“I’m not going to admit to being old enough to get that reference. Call me whatever you want.” She raised her voice. “Class, take a ten-minute recess.”
The kids bolted out the door.
“Okay, what is it?”
“I need your tradecraft. I want to go get my dad.”
She cocked her head. “Okay…you know they’ll be watching him. He’s your only living relative.”
Daniel sighed. “I know. Vinny did as much recon as he could via the web; it looks like they haven’t picked him up or anything.”
“He’s bait.”
“Yup.”
“Probably got everything wired and tapped.”
“Yup.”
“And you want me to figure out how to bring him in.”
“Yup.”
“Okay…well, I’m a bit out of practice but I think I can do it.” She smiled, a white shiny thing in her cherry-cheeked face. “By the way, I hate you.”
His eyes widened and he snorted. “Really? Why?”
“That damn Eden virus. Larry’s uncle Leroy is starting to look good to me.”
He laughed. “Well, he is a good-looking man for sixty.”
“He’s a good looking man for forty-five, which is about how old he seems now. And he’s been looking at me too. Do you think it’s too soon…” She put a finger in her mouth to bite the nail, a most un-Cassie-like thing.
He reached out to hug her. “Only you can decide that. Nobody here will hold it against you. This thing is making a whole new world, a whole new human biology.” He patted her, then let go to hold her at arms’ length. “What would Zeke have wanted?”
“Oh, I know. He was always so damn cheerful and understanding. Not my idea of a Green Beret when we met.”
“I’m sure you weren’t his idea of a CIA spymaster. So you have my blessing, whatever you do. Just remember, nine months later…” He let go of her, miming a big belly.
“Oh, God, that’s right. Well…I have pills, that may delay things.”
“Or the Plague may just laugh and run roughshod over your pills.”
“Okay, you’ve freaked me out enough. What about your father?”
“I don’t know. You’re the spy. Do some spy stuff. Make a plan of action for me to carry out.” Daniel pointed at little faces peeking in the door. “Your ten minutes is up. Come see me when you got something, hopefully in a day or two.” He waved on his way out to the children, who chorused, “Bye, Mister Daniel!”
Kids can adapt to anything.
***
Spooky and Daniel sat in the old beat-up pickup truck they had bought for cash that morning, no questions asked. They had put up reflective sun shades in the windshield and door windows, and they watched through the gaps around the edges. Parked in the lot of David Markis’ Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, their vehicle blended right in. As the sun went down the old men and women started arriving. Some younger ones too, from the latest wars, but the VFW was a slowly-dying institution, held together by camaraderie and cheap drinks under club rules. The marquee out front said “Bingo Tonight,” and Daniel knew his dad never missed it.
“There he is,” he said as he watched his father get out of his Chrysler. David Markis looked pretty good for sixty-plus, still slim and spry, so different from Daniel’s more muscular physique.
“And there they are,” answered Spooky, as a dark late model heavy sedan drove slowly past his parking spot, then backed into another.
“No imagination. I can smell the Big Brother on them from here.”
“You think they Feds or still contractors?”
“With that car? Contractors would have had more imagination. You know what that means, right?
“It mean Mister Jenkins spread the word. Not just INS, Inc. anymore.”
“Right you are, though I doubt he’s spilled his guts completely. So. You got them?”
“Easy as pie, Chairman DJ. You think there is more than two?”
“Yeah, but these are the closest ones. Hopefully we will be gone before the farther ones notice. Do your stuff now. I’ll go in the back and get Dad.”