The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  “Your dad told me to keep a lookout for you,” she panted, out of breath.

  “Where is he?”

  “We had to admit him.”

  “And my mom?”

  The doctor looked away. “ICU. C’mon. I’ll take you to your father.”

  Robbie handed him a blue paper face mask, pulling another up over her own nose and mouth. Then she turned to run interference as they made their way through the door and past an emerging fleet of gurneys.

  “What’s happening?” James asked. A stupid question. Of everyone here, he was the only one who might know the answer.

  Robbie half turned to him as they continued down a long hall. “You haven’t heard?” She picked up her pace as they broke through into a quieter hallway. “At first it had all the hallmarks of a flu epidemic. The CDC HealthBot app started lighting up with user reports. But it was strange. No fever. State Health was looking at vectors, trying to figure out a pattern. It’s all happened in just the past few days. Or at least, that’s when people started reporting. People are dying, James. And not just in California. HealthBot’s starting to track deaths in Florida and Georgia too. I’ll tell you this: We’re gonna need reinforcements, and soon.” They turned right, down a narrow, windowless hall lined with railings. On either side, James could see the metallic glint of more gurneys. “James,” Robbie said, her voice muffled by the mask, “we’re getting nothing at all direct from CDC. What the hell?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” James felt sick to his stomach. He wasn’t lying. He didn’t know what was going on in Atlanta. But if this was it—if this was indeed the beginning of the end—then the CDC was simply adhering to the plan they’d been ordered to follow. Limit news releases. Limit losses. Avoid an all-out panic. Hope for the best. He drew in a sharp breath. Calm. Stay calm.

  He felt a jolt as Sara’s voice reverberated in his mind. Maybe I have a bit of that flu that’s been going around . . . Sara had been in California for a full four days. Might she have come in contact with whatever this was? His mind swam through the late-night programs he’d scanned on the vid screens in the Albuquerque airport between fitful bouts of sleep. Ads for pain creams and dietary supplements, reports about the floods in central China. No mention of a flu epidemic, at least not in the U.S. And for one brief moment, he enjoyed a small surge of relief. IC-NAN couldn’t be here. He’d had no message from DOD.

  His stomach lurched. It was all part of the plan for preventing a panic: The feds would put a lock on media coverage, especially if they suspected an outbreak here. And meanwhile, the secure DOD alarm might have come through on his abandoned phone. He imagined the message—CODE RED. KEY IN ACCESS CODE FROM APPROVED TERMINAL FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

  He clenched his fists, gathering himself. “I haven’t heard anything . . .” he said.

  They came to an abrupt stop next to one of the gurneys. “Sorry,” Robbie said. “We didn’t have any more rooms. But you can stay here with him for as long as you’d like.”

  James looked down. His father’s ashen face was barely visible against the crisp white of the microfiber padding. With one quivering hand, Abdul Said removed the mouthpiece of an oxygen mask.

  * * *

  JAMES HUNCHED FORWARD, his attention fixed on the monitors that tracked his father’s vital signs. He could feel the heat moving up his neck as he took off his own mask. Amid the muted sounds of hacking coughs and beeping monitors and the pungent smell of disinfectant, he did his best to create a space that was theirs alone.

  “Son, I am so glad . . .” His father strained to speak, reedy puffs of air pushed from his tortured lungs.

  “Shouldn’t you be keeping that mask on?”

  “I have something to say.”

  “About Mom? Robbie says she’s in the ICU—”

  “No . . .” Abdul paused, a faraway look clouding his dark eyes as they fluttered closed. James waited, his hand finding his father’s frail grasp. Gently, he gathered the oxygen mask and untangled its tubing, preparing to reinstall it. But then his father spoke, his voice deeper. “I thought I was protecting you. I wanted your life to be free. And I was afraid of what might happen to me if I told. But a good father has the courage to tell the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “Listen.” Abdul opened his eyes, trying feebly to sit up, his breaths short and sharp as his thin hands pushed against the rails of the gurney. “I told you I was an orphan. But I lied . . .”

  “Please, lie back,” James urged. As he steadied his father back onto the thin mattress, he could feel the sharp bones of the old man’s spine. “Maybe now’s not the time . . .” He looked around them, wondering if anyone might be listening. But no one was. The people on the other gurneys coughed unremittingly, the white-suited medical staff hovering over them like helpless ghosts.

  His father grasped his hand. “My mother died when I was very young. But I had a father, two brothers. My older brother, Farooq—”

  “A family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they still . . . Do you want me to call them?”

  “Listen,” Abdul gasped. “Listen.” James felt his jaw stiffening as his eyes locked on his father’s. “Farooq . . . was involved with bad things . . . arms supplies, assassinations.”

  The shout of an orderly calling for assistance cut through the air. James leaned closer. “Were you . . . ?”

  Abdul’s eyes widened. “No! No. Nothing like that . . . I only helped the Americans to capture my brother.”

  James touched his father’s arm. “You did what you thought was right.”

  “The Americans told me they only needed information to help them find the man in charge of the cell. They promised me that no one in my family would be harmed. And I believed them.”

  “They lied?”

  “Once I gave them the information they wanted, they killed my brother.” The words hung in the air, inhabiting the space between them. “He was a father. A husband.”

  “Dad . . .” James said. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  “The Americans told me I had to go to the U.S. if I wanted them to keep me safe. I made them promise I could bring your mother here with me. And they agreed—if I would keep my silence.”

  James watched his father’s face. There was something more, he knew. “But what about your father?” he asked. “Your younger brother?”

  “Gone. Killed. I got them all killed.”

  James reached out to stroke the fine gray hair on his father’s head. Gently, he reset the mask over Abdul’s mouth. “Dad, it wasn’t your fault.”

  The old man fumbled for a moment, feeling along the rim of the gurney until his hand found the plastic hospital sack containing his belongings. Slowly, he drew out a thick book, its covers embossed with symbols in bright gold. Once more he pulled the mask from his face. “A gift from your mother,” he murmured. “May she rest with Allah.”

  James took it, cradling the spine with his right hand, its leather surface warm like the skin of a living thing. He fingered the delicate pages, multicolored designs framing a neat Arabic script. The Koran. He stared at his father. “May she rest . . . ? Is Mom . . . ?”

  He felt his father’s grip, surprisingly strong, on his arm. “My son,” Abdul said. “You gave us a future in our new home, something to look forward to. But we never gave you your past. Every child has a right to know where he comes from.”

  James placed his hand over his father’s. “I’ll look for her,” he said. “I’ll find Mom.”

  As James placed the book gently into his briefcase, his fingers brushed against the corner of the small cardboard box—the cure in the gold canisters. But it wasn’t a cure. It was only a prophylactic, and one whose efficacy was still in question. His limbs going numb, he breathed deep. His lungs were still clear, no cough. But it was beginning to dawn on him—he no longer needed a Code Red from Was
hington. For everyone here, and for countless others yet to come, it was already too late. His father had carried a world of guilt—and for so many years. But this? The guilt he himself would carry was far worse. He’d set out to save the world. But he couldn’t save his father. He couldn’t save anyone.

  18

  RICK SAT HUNCHED in Rose’s office chair, his eyes glued to her computer screen as he waited for the scheduled meeting in D.C. to begin.

  He hadn’t left the Presidio since Blankenship’s call the previous afternoon, and had allowed himself only one call out—to Rudy at Los Alamos. Once he’d made sure that Dr. Garza was safe and would stay there to keep watch over the Gen5 embryos, he’d remained close to Rose’s secure line, waiting for news from D.C. Allowing himself only brief “bio breaks,” he’d slept fitfully on her small divan, then busied himself taking reports from the Presidio team on the status of the lockdown. The last of the munitions had been stowed in the old hangar down by Crissy Field. The perimeter was secure. Finally, late in the morning, a cryptic message had appeared on his wrist phone: Mtg. 1600 hours.

  His pronouncements to the Presidio detail the previous day had seemed premature. For “reasons that will be revealed to you as needed,” the armed lockdown of the Presidio was being carried out due to an “abundance of caution,” he’d assured them. And so far as he’d known at the time, this was true—this action, like those at U.S. bases all over the world, had been ordered based solely on worst-case predictions of infectious archaebacterial spread, not on actual numbers. And not on the cyberattack at Fort Detrick, which was still top secret.

  But of course, the cyberattack alone was a disaster worthy of military readiness. For the Russians or their foreign agents to expose themselves to such an extent, there had to be cause. Why else would they be so intent on gathering the intel in those files? Had they, as Sam Lowicki suggested, isolated IC-NAN from an outbreak on Russian soil? Had they somehow reverse engineered it, traced it to its source? The specificity of the hack was troubling . . . How would they have known which Detrick files to target? Most likely there was a mole, someone embedded there, feeding them information from the inside . . . Rick tried in vain to keep his thoughts in check. There was no use jumping to conclusions.

  But now, even without the hack, he was beginning to think that the base lockdown hadn’t come too soon. The news stream flashing across the bottom of Rose’s computer screen said it all. “Deadly Flu Strikes California.” “Doctors Stymied as Flu Victims Flood Hospitals.” The vids showed cars pulling up in front of a Bay Area hospital, people being hooked up to oxygen tanks, loaded onto gurneys. Outside Rose’s office window, the whine of sirens continued unabated, carried on the wind. And the enlisted men at the Presidio had begun talking about a rising panic in the city’s streets, people emptying grocery store shelves and buying out stocks of bottled water. To make matters worse, the governor of California had grounded all flights into and out of the state. Rick remembered the stories out of Tokyo just the day before, reporters coughing into their mics as masked pedestrians flooded the streets . . . He could no longer deny it. This was real. This was IC-NAN.

  Suddenly the vids went dead. The center of the screen lit up and he squinted, moving his hand in a circular motion to adjust the brightness. A single word, URGENT, appeared in large red letters, followed by the words CODE RED. These words took turns appearing in succession, each for a few seconds. Then Rose’s desktop phone buzzed.

  “General, key in your personal access code on Dr. McBride’s computer.” It was Blankenship. “Stand by.” There was a click, and the phone connection went dead.

  He’d memorized the code, an old habit from the field. Slowly and carefully, he punched it in on Rose’s screen. Then he sat back, his hands shaking. Code Red.

  On the screen, a long, narrow room appeared. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. It was a place he’d only seen on video, somewhere he himself had never been—the president’s Situation Room. Stunned, Rick watched as President Gerald Stone settled into a seat at the far end.

  The president briefly scanned a tablet before carefully placing it to one side. The light from the ceiling glanced off the lenses of his reading glasses as he slowly removed them. “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said, his voice a measured calm. “First, I’d like to thank all of you for your service. Your mission has been a difficult one. And you have performed it admirably.”

  From somewhere in the room, there came a muffled thud as something dropped to the floor, a stifled “sorry” as someone nervously retrieved whatever it was.

  “However, as some of you are aware, things are coming to a head. We’ve traced the so-called flu on the West Coast to IC-NAN. And we have confirmed cases in the Southeast as well.”

  The room darkened, and a U.S. map appeared on the wall behind the president, showing the parts of the country believed to be impacted. “We’ve also confirmed the outbreaks in Russia, parts of Europe, China, Japan, the Middle East. And of course, in South Asia. Close to the . . . uh, initial release.” The map expanded, showing splotches of red that grew like bloodstains. “At this point, we believe it’s only a matter of time before the entire U.S. is affected.”

  The president paused, his deep sigh rattling the connection.

  “We’re calling Code Red. And we’ve had to make some tough decisions. As you know, our supply of antidote is limited. Further manufacture will focus on supplying those individuals already on the protocol, in addition to a list of eighty-four other individuals deemed critical at this time.” The president’s gaze swept the room. “Of course, all of you are included in this cohort.”

  Rick gripped the edges of his seat with both hands, willing the pain in his leg to subside as he scanned the frame for Rose. She was nowhere in sight. On the screen, hands were flying up.

  “What about the other countries, sir?” a female voice asked from somewhere in the room. It wasn’t Rose.

  The president looked down at his hands. “We’ve released the antidote sequence to WHO. They’re setting up satellite labs in secure locations throughout the globe. They’ll manufacture doses as quickly as possible.”

  Rick stared at the screen. The president knew full well how long it would take to establish production of viable antidote. Rick had pushed as hard as he could for transparency, for some sort of controlled sharing of information with health organizations in other countries. But of course, his pleas had been ignored. And now there wasn’t near enough time for the other labs to gain a foothold. His mind went to the place it was trained to go in emergencies. It was time to hunker down, and . . . His head spinning, he leaned forward. “Might I ask a question?”

  “Yes, General?”

  “What about Los Alamos?”

  “New Dawn?”

  “Yes.”

  The president drew a slow breath, then looked off to one side. “Joe?”

  “We always knew that the bots were a long shot, Rick,” came Blankenship’s deep voice. “Now, we’ve gotta keep our eyes on the prize. The antidote is all that matters.”

  “As you know, General Blevins,” the president said, “there are only three Los Alamos personnel currently on the antidote. Dr. Said, Dr. Jenkins, and Lieutenant MacDonald. They’re all valuable assets. We’ll need you to call them back to Detrick to help with the production effort. And of course, Dr. Garza is still in Los Alamos at the moment. He’ll need to come back with them.”

  But Rick wasn’t listening. His mind was on Rose. “What about Fort Detrick?” he asked. “What do we know about the cyberattack? Was there a mole?”

  “We’re on it, Rick,” Blankenship stated flatly.

  “We haven’t yet determined if there was a mole.” A thin woman with large glasses, sitting along one side of the room, spoke up. “But we’ve circumvented the hack. We’re cleaning up the systems as quickly as we can, and we think we’ve closed all the trapdoors.”

  Ric
k struggled to keep his voice calm. “I assume Captain McBride won’t be coming back to the Presidio?”

  “No,” Blankenship replied. “Nor will we be sending her replacement. We’ll need you to put her second-ranking officer in charge.”

  “But he’s not on the antidote—”

  “Understood. Tell him that the Presidio detail will be needed to help keep order on the streets in the coming days. Our bases worldwide are all being put on alert for possible civilian aid duty.”

  Rick sat back, drained. The Presidio team was being tasked with a hopeless final mission. “What about me?”

  “We need you on a plane back here.”

  “But flights have been grounded . . .”

  “Not ours.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  BLINKING IN THE late-afternoon sunlight, Rick emerged onto the front porch of the institute headquarters. The grounds of Fort Scott, once abandoned by the military, were teeming with men and women in uniform. A young officer stepped up, saluted.

  “Sergeant,” Rick said, “I need to get to the federal airfield ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir. I have a car out back on Ralston.”

  Rick followed the young man around the side of the building and toward a nondescript black vehicle with tinted windows. “Could you take me over to Captain McBride’s apartment first?” he asked. “She requested I pick up some of her personals there.”

  He was lying, of course, but the sergeant didn’t flinch. “Sure thing.” Rick slid into the backseat while, in front, the young man read in the coordinates for Rose’s apartment building.

  At the Lombard Gate, two guards saluted as the car sped out onto the city streets. As they swung left to travel north on Lyon, Rick looked up at the high wire fences that the engineers had erected along the borders of the old Presidio. The car veered right on Francisco Street, then left on Divisadero, tracking yet another ambulance headed north.