Steele returned to the couch with a huff. Nash gingerly took a seat in the recliner.
“What did you hear about my patient?” Nash said.
“That he was infected but not bit.”
Nash nodded. “You mentioned others.”
“You haven’t heard?”
Nash shook his head.
“Shit,” Steele said and huffed again. He leaned forward like he was going to get up again, then changed his mind. “Bunch of others today were infected all of a sudden without being bit. At least three. A couple over on Second Avenue and another one down at the coffee shop.”
Nash swallowed hard. “I think—”
“How the hell haven’t you heard? You didn’t even know I sent for you?”
“I’ve been locked up in my office for hours. I think I know what’s going on here.”
Steele nodded. “It’s airborne now, isn’t it?”
Nash shook his head. “That’s extremely unlikely.”
Steele threw his hands up in the air. “How likely is anything that’s happened in the last couple of months? Go on, Nash. Tell me one thing that was likely.”
Nash cleared his throat. “Viruses mutate.”
“Obviously.”
“But they don’t change their method of transmission. Viruses that spread through bodily fluids remain viruses that spread through bodily fluids no matter how many times they mutate.” He’d already gone over all this with Annie and he resigned himself to saying it again and again. “Airborne viruses infect the lungs, which causes people to cough and sneeze and expel the virus into the air. This virus doesn’t go for the lungs. It goes for the nervous system and brain. So it’s spread by fluids. Blood, saliva and so on.”
“So how did these people catch it?”
“I think it’s coming up through the water system.”
Steele got very quiet. He didn’t move.
“I think it’s an extreme form of the rabies virus,” Nash said. “Rabies has always been transmitted mostly through bites. I don’t know of a case where an animal that shared a watering hole with a rabid animal contracted it, but we wouldn’t know about it, and in any case this isn’t your standard rabies virus.”
Steele just looked at him.
“We know some of the animals around here are infected and rabies has always been able to jump from species to species. This strain jumped from a fox to a human in Russia. If someone around here got infected and bit his dog, that dog could easily carry it back into the wild.”
“How would it jump from animals into the water supply?”
“Animals aren’t drinking bottled water. They drink the same water we drink. Their saliva gets into the water. Their urine and feces get into the water.” Steele made a face. “Their blood gets into the water if they’re injured or killed in it or near it.”
“And then it comes up through the pipes?”
“There are only three possibilities. The pathogen is either in our air, our food or our water. These people can’t have contracted it any other way if they weren’t bit. Of those three, water is most likely. You know how we have signs at swimming pools telling people with infectious diseases to stay out of the water?”
Steele rose from the couch and paced back and forth in the living room. He was going to say something, but stopped himself. “Are you sure?” he finally said.
“No. But it’s more likely than the virus suddenly going airborne. Anyway, we’re not entirely sure it’s even a virus. Cholera, which is bacteria, spreads through the water. So does Giardia, which is a parasite. SARS has been known to spread through water, and that’s caused by the Coronavirus.”
Steele blew out his breath.
“You should order everyone to boil their water before drinking it,” Nash said.
“That’d kill it, right?”
“If it’s boiled for a full minute, yes, it should kill anything. And everyone needs to cook everything thoroughly, especially meat but even vegetables.”
“We don’t have any fresh vegetables.”
“We will in the summer. No one is going to get sick from eating raw carrots in July, but we’ll need to be thorough in case I’m mistaken or we’re missing something. Milk needs to be boiled too.”
Steele nodded vigorously. He seemed to be feeling a little more confident now, maybe even relaxing a little. Nash relaxed a bit, too. Steele was a dangerous man. Nash hadn’t known the mayor to punish anyone just for delivering bad news, but he wasn’t the man he used to be either. Even though Nash never drove past or walked past the prison, it was never far from his thoughts.
“Why is this suddenly happening now?” Steele said.
Nash shrugged. “If it was going to happen, it would have to start at some point. The date would always be arbitrary. But my guess is it has been happening for a while and we just didn’t realize it.”
Steele froze again.
“We’ve been burning bodies,” Nash said. “We haven’t been doing autopsies. There hasn’t been any point. We assumed they’d all been bit. Most of them obviously were, but maybe not all of them. We don’t really know how long people have been getting it through the water.”
“Shit,” Steele said.
“Annie told me about her trip here from Seattle. She didn’t see a single infected person on the road for a thousand miles. They’ve all frozen to death.”
“You’ve been talking to Annie?”
“She heard—commotion in the hospital. When Walsh turned and had to be put down. She heard the guards talking. She knew he hadn’t been bit. I had to tell her something.”
“How’s she doing?”
“What do you want me to say?”
Steele raised his eyebrows.
“You’re keeping her prisoner. She isn’t happy about it.”
“I’m keeping her there for her protection.”
Nash said nothing.
Steele blew out his breath again. “You think this will work? Boiling water?”
“It’s not going to make anything worse,” Nash said. “This could get a lot worse if we don’t boil water. We had a new case two days ago. We had another new case yesterday. So far today, we’ve had four. That’s a big jump. We could have four more cases before bedtime tonight. We might have four more right now that we don’t even know about. Tomorrow we could have twelve. Or none.”
Steele nodded. “I’ll put my guys on it. They’ll go door to door. Tell everyone down at the hospital.”
“Of course,” Nash said.
Neither of them said anything for a couple of moments. Nash figured now was as good a time as any to mention the other thing. “How’s your son?”
Pain flashed across Steele’s face. “The same.” He didn’t sound anxious or angry any more. He sounded defeated.
“Let me come by tomorrow,” Nash said. “We will walk through this valley together.”
Steele nodded and looked away. Nash wondered if the mayor was going to cry.
“I should go,” Nash said.
Steele nodded again and said nothing.
Nash stood up to leave. “Tomorrow afternoon, okay?”
“Okay,” Steele said softly. He turned to look at Nash. His eyes were dry, but Nash could tell it took considerable effort to keep them that way.
Snow came to Lander that night. Soft wet flakes fell gently and quietly, and a great stillness settled over the land.
Hughes was always a little surprised to see snow. His hometown of Seattle was America’s northernmost city south of Alaska—it was, counter intuitively, farther north than most of the population of Canada—but snowfall was rare in the coastal Northwest. The Pacific Ocean and the Puget Sound moderated the climate year-round. Summers were cooler and winters were warmer than almost anywhere else in the country. If you headed east from Seattle, you wouldn’t find a climate as mild until you made it all the way to Ireland. On the rare occasions snow did actually fall, the ground was wet from earlier rain and snowflakes dissolved upon touchdown. Rain almost always
resumed within hours, disappointing children everywhere in the city.
In Wyoming, though, the snow blanketed the earth like it belonged there.
And it brought warmer air with it. According to the thermometer on Elias Sark’s wooden deck, the temperature ballooned from the low single digits to a relatively balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hughes watched the snow through the sliding glass door that opened onto the deck. He stood there with his boots off. He was comfortable in Elias’ house now, and the snow outside made him feel even more at ease while also making him feel trapped. He remarked on the strangeness of the weather, how he’d never seen warmer weather bring snow.
“Just wait until the Chinook winds,” Elias said. “They can warm this place up to 60 degrees even on Christmas.”
“Carter told me about them,” Hughes said. “How does that work, exactly?”
“Cold fronts off the Pacific dump their snow way to the west of here. I don’t completely understand the physics, but the dry air warms when it comes down the east slope of the mountains and heats this place up like a furnace. The most famous Chinook was in Montana in 1972. Raised the ambient air temperature almost a hundred degrees in just a couple of hours, from 48 degrees below zero to 48 degrees above. Hence the name. It’s the Salish word for ‘snow eater.’”
Hughes was truly in a place he did not understand. Temperatures in Seattle didn’t swing up or down a hundred degrees over the course of an entire year, let alone a couple of hours.
He, Elias and Carter spent the evening barbecuing venison steaks and sitting around the grand fireplace in the living room. They didn’t discuss local politics or anything else that was happening in or around Lander. They spoke only of the past, before the infection. Hughes could tell that Elias wanted it that way. It was his way of feeling Hughes out, getting a sense of what kind of man he was.
Hughes got a feel for Elias, too. The man owned a local construction company and did very well for himself, hence the big spread on the lower slope of the mountains. Hughes had no idea what Elias’ job was now or if he even had one aside from planning whatever it was he was planning against the mayor. He had executive experience, though. That much was clear.
“I can put you up here for a couple of nights,” Elias said. “You can stay in the guest house. Unless you’d rather go back to the motel.”
Hughes wasn’t going back to the motel except to pick up the Suburban. And he’d do that at 4:00 in the morning. He’d much rather stay in Elias’ guest house, not so much because it would be more comfortable, but because it would be safer. Nobody but Elias and Carter knew where he was.
“Thank you kindly,” Hughes said.
Elias nodded.
Hughes knew Elias wasn’t being generous. He wanted to keep his eye on Hughes. Hughes was still a question mark in Elias’ mind.
Elias was also a question mark in Hughes’ mind.
“Two of my guys took a little road trip to Cheyenne a couple weeks ago,” Elias said.
Carter perked up. He knew where Elias was going with this and seemed pleased to be finally getting down to business.
“It’s a five-hour drive from here,” Elias said. “Nobody on the roads. Nobody out there at all. Cheyenne is finished. A frightening thing to behold, to hear them tell it. Hard to imagine Denver is in any better shape than Cheyenne. We could be doing a lot worse here than we are. A whole lot worse.”
He paused for effect. Hughes knew a “but” was coming.
“But we could be doing a lot better, too.”
Carter nodded.
Hughes agreed, he supposed, but he didn’t much care how Lander’s story played out. It wasn’t his story. His only concern was getting Annie out of that hospital and both of them out of Lander. Getting Parker out of jail would be a nice bonus if it were possible, but he’d only be able to spring Parker if Elias and Carter succeeded, and they stood no chance.
“What were your guys doing in Cheyenne?” Hughes said.
“I sent them there on a run,” Elias said. “I used to make regular trips there and know a military surplus store on the randier side of town. They sold all kinds of equipment, including guns and ammunition. The guns and ammunition were all gone when they got there, of course, but I didn’t send them to Cheyenne for weapons. I sent them there for one thing in particular, and by God they found it.”
Elias paused for effect.
“They brought back a case of night vision goggles. Mind you, these aren’t the cheap toys they sell to hunters at outdoor stores. These are military grade. They’re surplus from the Army. They cost thousands of dollars per pair. And we have twelve of them.”
That was Elias’ secret weapon? Night vision goggles?
Shit. Hughes had a night vision monocle in the Suburban. Yeah, it was the cheap kind sold to hunters and backpackers at outdoor stores, but it worked just fine and it was still only marginally useful. You can’t win a war with night vision alone.
Hughes just looked at Elias.
“You’re not impressed,” Elias said. “I can see that. But that’s not all we have up our sleeve.”
Carter smiled.
“We have twelve people,” Elias said, “counting me. Thirteen if we count you in. We come from all backgrounds. Carter worked for the post office. One of my men goes out with the deer hunting crew every day and brings fresh meat back to town. Another is in Steele’s militia.”
Hughes perked up a little at that.
“Best of all,” Elias said, “one of my men works at the electrical plant.”
Hughes felt a flush of energy. He had an idea now what Elias was up to.
Elias cracked a smile. Carter couldn’t stop grinning.
“You’re going to shut off the power,” Hughes said.
“We’re going to shut off the power,” Elias said.
“They won’t see us coming,” Carter said.
“They won’t see a goddamn thing, and our goggles work in extreme dark conditions. I’ve already tested them. Starlight is more than enough. They make the landscape look like it’s twilight. We can make out facial features from a hundred feet away when a normal person wouldn’t see anything.”
There was snow on the ground, though, and it brightened the landscape dramatically.
“So you want to kill the power and hit Steele in the dark,” Hughes said.
Elias nodded.
“How many of his men do you want to take down?”
“As many as it takes.”
And then what, Hughes wondered. Elias Sark becomes the new overlord?
He didn’t ask. Didn’t care. Didn’t matter. He was getting Annie out of that hospital and blowing Lander, Wyoming, forever.
Hughes knew Elias wouldn’t give him one of the night vision goggles. Not if he had thirteen men and twelve pair. Hughes wouldn’t need a pair. Hughes had night vision of his own. It wasn’t military grade, but it worked well enough. Elias wouldn’t know about it if Hughes didn’t tell him, and Hughes wasn’t going to tell him.
“What about the prisoners?” Hughes said. “In the jail?”
“They’re all coming out,” Elias said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re doing this. To get them out. And to make sure nobody else ever goes in.”
“I’m in,” Hughes said. “Count me in.”
“Outstanding,” Elias said.
“When do you want to do this?” Hughes said. “And what do you want me to do?”
“We have a window of opportunity coming up. A new moon is in three days.”
A new moon was the opposite of a full moon. There’d be no moonlight at all and no municipal power.
“There’s snow on the ground.”
“If the snow melts soon—and it might—we hit the sons of bitches three days from now.”
22
Parker shared his cell with four other men. Diaz, a mechanic from Cheyenne busted for auto theft. Bentley, a disgruntled City Hall clerk who threw rocks at his place of employment after Steele purged the police departm
ent. Wyatt, a truck driver serving what was supposed to be a short stint in lockup for purchasing meth. And Logan, a janitor at the local high school who had been jailed for reasons unknown.
Logan took a corner of the floor downstairs in the common area. Bentley camped out in the hallway in front of the cell. Wyatt and Diaz—the two criminals, if Wyatt could be fairly described as a criminal for purchasing a small dose of meth—had taken the beds. It was their turn.
Parker went ahead and crashed on the floor in the cell, not so much because he wanted to sleep there, but because he had to lay claim to some piece of real estate if he wanted a turn on one of the mattresses. Three nights from now he’d get the top bunk, and four nights from now he’d get the bottom. Then he’d be on the floor again for three nights.
The cell wouldn’t be too bad if he had the whole thing to himself. The mattresses were only an inch thick, but at least they were mattresses. Surely they beat sleeping in the Suburban and on the floor of that grocery store back in Washington.
The night passed in agonizing slowness. He just couldn’t get comfortable without a blanket or pillow and must have woken up at least a dozen times. When morning sunlight slanted into the cellblock through the tiny windows, there was no chance Parker was getting back to sleep. His back hurt like it had been kicked by a mule.
Diaz lay on his back with his mouth open while Wyatt snored in the top bunk. Half the cellblock was still snoring and snuffling, but a few people were awake and milling about down in the common area. Parker peeled himself off the floor and went down there to join them. He knew the pain in his back would subside after a few minutes of standing or even sitting up straight.
The place looked like a jail and functioned like a jail—hell, it was a jail—but it had no kind of jailhouse feel. A handful of people sat around the steel tables bolted into the floor and spoke in civilized tones of voice while others slept. Many of them were police officers. They didn’t seem to despair as much as the criminals and civilians on the second floor. They’d seen a lot, been through a lot. They weren’t content—that was for damn sure—but they clearly handled stress better.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 20
