War Day

by Whitley Streiber; John Kunetka

  "Eat My Hat" Dobbs, collapsed and died of a stroke.

  The hats are in memory of him.

  We stood in the gallery, watching the wild action. By twelve-thirty the price of wheat had gone to fifty-six-and-a-quarter cents.

  As we left, it reached sixty cents. The dust storm had flattened hundreds of thousands of acres of wheat just on the point of being harvested, then buried it in dust.

  By the time this book is published, the consequences of the Great Dust Storm of 1993 will be old news. An Agriculture Department official at the Board said that it would lead to a tripling of bread prices by Christmas, and probably spot shortages until next year's harvest. As to the chances of another famine, he did not feel that the loss of a crop in just one grain would lead that far. But he couldn't be sure.

  Interview

  P. Chandler Gayle, NSD Specialist

  My name is Chandler Gayle. I am a medical doctor. I was educated at Ohio State University Medical School. I was licensed by the state of Ohio in 1980 and the state of Illinois in 1992. I engaged in the practice of medicine in Cincinnati until June of 1992. I lost my wife, brother, and four children in the flu of 1991, and after that I decided I was willing to accept a greater level of risk in my career.

  I had heard that there was a dearth of research specialists working on Nonspecific Sclerosing Disease, due to what was thought to be the contagious nature of the disease. I applied to the University of Chicago for a research fellowship in this field and was sent to London to study. I was confirmed by the Crown Medical Establishment in January of this year as an NSD specialist, after a six-month residency in war-related diseases at Middlesex Hospital in London.

  I will tell you what I know of NSD in layman's terms, but before I do that, I will outline for you my experiences during the flu epidemic.

  In November of 1991 we were sure the worst was over in our area. It was by then clear that we were not going to be affected much, if at all, by radiation. Our main war-related problems were malnutrition and economic disruption. Of course, we knew that the population was debilitated. We Cincinnati doctors had organized into teams and groups to attempt to cope with the tremendous de-264

  ACROSS AMERICA 265

  mand and the lack of communications. It was at a group meeting that I first heard of an unusual case of flu. We were very concerned. From the beginning, we saw a high potential for disaster.

  The etiology of the disease was suggestive of a produced, rather than a natural, factor. It occurred to us then that the Cincinnati Flu might have been released by enemy action or by an accident at a military facility in the area. It is also possible that there was a radiation-induced mutation of the common flu strain known as Influenza A. This is the sort of flu most often associated with pandemics. The serotype was unusual; usually each new serotype of this disease follows a pattern of extrapolation from the previous serotype. Only when a new serotype is radically different from the one previous can a pandemic occur, because only then is the entire population of the planet susceptible.

  The Cincinnati Flu was a radically different serotype, at least four generations removed from Delhi-A, the previous serotype. We still have no way to explain this. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was probably a similar radical serotype. It could be that the presence of large, weakened populations encourages the proliferation of new influenza serotypes. We just don't know.

  This influenza caused the most dramatic pneumonic infection we have observed. Infants and the elderly usually died within six hours. A strong, middle-aged adult might linger for three or four days. The mortality rate was about sixty percent in Cincinnati, and about three out of ten people contracted the disease. What that meant in human terms was that, during the six weeks that the vi-rus was active, we lost nearly eighty thousand people. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, about five thousand people died in Cincinnati in 1987, the year before the war. All of a sudden we were dealing with close to two thousand new cadavers a day, and they carried a highly contagious disease. To make matters worse, seven out of ten hospital personnel and half of all mor-tuary and graveyard workers contracted the disease. Eight out of ten doctors contracted it. We actually had to abandon the hospitals.

  The real heroes of the flu were the people who went in there on their own to help out, and not only in Cincinnati, but all over the country. All over the world, I suppose.

  I have always been sorry that the flu had to start in Cincinnati, 266 WARDAY

  I love that town. It was my home and it was where my children were born. I would have stayed there happily for the rest of my life, if it hadn't been for the war.

  But the flu's come and gone. We still have NSD with us. I'll turn to my work in this area unless you two have any more questions about the flu.

  J I M : I was there during the worst of it. I remember the bodies in Eden Park.

  D R . GAYLE: We were desperate. That wasn't the only public park in the world where cadavers were stored. Look, this is tough for me. I'd really prefer to go on to NSD.

  J I M : Sure. Thank you for sharing what you have with us. I know it's hard.

  D R . G A Y L E : NSD is one of a cluster of postwar illnesses, previously unknown, which now affect the North American population.

  The combination of the radical negative alteration of the environment and the extraordinary and ceaseless stress of postwar life is believed to have caused the appearance of these diseases, of which Nonspecific Sclerosing Disease is certainly the most serious. It is a central-nervous-system disorder and is apparently caused by unknown environmental factors. Current thinking is that contagion, if any, is limited to skin contact. NSD's early symptoms are dry, rigid skin occurring in patches, most often across the chest or abdomen. The development of massive cells leads to the "lumpy" appearance that is the familiar presenting complaint. The progress of the disease is accompanied by generalized organic deterioration.

  As it spreads throughout the body, the dense, massive cell tissue causes various types of problems, ranging from interruption of ducted flows to actual destruction of organs due to compression or constriction. Death occurs sometimes as a result of a particular functional problem, such as the interruption of the heart or irre-versible trachial constriction, but more often is caused by general collapse and exhaustion. The fatality rate is at present one hundred percent.

  At first the disease was approached by attempting surgical excision of the lesions. This was unsuccessful because of the broad-based nature of the disorder. A given patient at diagnosis will generally support two to three hundred lesions, most of them ACROSS AMERICA 2 6 7

  microscopic, spread throughout the body. Subsequently, chemotherapy and radiotherapy were tried, but the lesions were not responsive. Color therapy, utilizing so-called pink light, has tended to reduce speed of spread in early-diagnosed disease.

  The permissible treatment group has recently been revised by the Centers for Disease Control to include only patients under thirty years of age, employed, and with dependent children. These patients will be treated with thrice-weekly exposures to pink light and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which has proven effective in reducing itching in surface lesions. They will be allocated three hundred grains of aspirin per twenty-four hours. When they are declared in stage-three disease and unable to function, they will be offered the euthanasia option.

  Euthanasia is mandatory for NSD-diagnosed children under twelve years of age. Responsible resource allocation prohibits treatment of children for this disease because there is no chance whatsoever of recovery. The extreme discomfort associated with the progress of the disease makes euthanasia the only humane alternative in childhood cases.

  Patients over thirty are given the CDC publication Blessed Re-

  lief, which describes effective methods of euthanasia and explains how to stage the disease at home, so the patient can determine when further delay may lead to a non compos mentis situation developing, which would make it illegal to practice euthanasia and impossible for the patie
nt to do it himself. There are many different types of health-care professionals capable of carrying out this type of care in a humane and dignified manner.

  It is thus important that patients learn the symptoms of the third-stage preludium so that they can carry out their plans at the first sign.

  The burning sensation commonly known as firepox is the most common initial sign of stage-three disease. This means that there has been invasion of the organs extensive enough to cause a buildup of uric acid in the blood. The firepox sensation occurs when acid-laden blood enters open second-stage lesions. Double vision, the seeing of flashes, hearing loud noises without known source, feeling of elation alternating with deep depression, sudden bursts of intense sexual desire, inappropriate laughter, "Pell's sign," con-

  268 WARDAY

  tinuous vomiting, and the sloughing off of skin that had seemed healthy are signs that third-stage disease is fully developed. Euthanasia should be carried out without delay at this point.

  The British Relief has determined that N S D is moving through the North American population at a nonexponential rate, suggesting that the illness is induced from something in the environmental background and is not spread person to person. British Relief stat-isticians have found that initial outbreaks of disease may occur anywhere on the continent, without regard to the background radiation level. For example, 3.34 percent of the population of Greater Atlanta have NSD, even though G.A. enjoys a radlevel little higher than it was prewar. On the other hand, Houston, with its high radlevel, has only a 1.59-percent incidence of the disease. Chicago, with a higher radlevel than Houston, has a 5.61-percent incidence.

  The possibility of an artificially induced vector—such as a delayed-activation biochemical weapon—cannot be discounted in the case of NSD any more than it can with the flu, but the spottiness of the outbreaks, and their tendency to cluster around specific small areas within the affected regions, suggests that some other factor is at work.

  I guess that's all pretty technical, but it's the straight truth as I understand it. As yet, there is no central effort to determine the cause of Nonspecific Sclerosing Disease, because it affects a relatively small segment of the population and appears so intractable to even the most advanced attempts at analysis, much less cure.

  As I said at the beginning, I am a medical doctor. I am also a recent convert to Catholicism. I converted a week after His Holiness declared that officially sanctioned voluntary euthanasia was not murder in North America and the Russian states. The chief thing I have to say is that I believe America is going to get through this. There will come a day when we doctors do not have to routinely take life, when we can help all people in need and not worry about the triage. I look forward to that day.

  I have to stop now. I have a meeting with my Viral Particle Team now. Their job is to attempt to find a viral disease vector for NSD, but so far nothing has turned up.

  Interview

  Rita Mack, Professional Rememberer

  [ T H E A B S E N T . We met Rita Mack on a street-corner. If there is a truism about life in our times, it is that the poor die first. And in America that means, for the most part, the black.

  In 1987 there were approximately thirty million black people in the United States.

  I can remember walking the streets of Chicago a little earlier, in the autumn of 1983, and seeing black faces everywhere.

  And now? The Loop is not empty of people, but blacks are rare.

  There are stories of whole neighborhoods starving, and there are long, blank streets.

  We have no idea how many blacks remain alive in our country now. Their world was fragile because it was poor, and it obviously has not fared well. The loss of life among blacks must be much higher than among the rest of the population.

  We saw very few black people on our journey. Certainly not in California, where Hispanics and Asians represent the major visible minorities. And on the road, the absence of black people was eerie at first, and finally terrifying.

  By the time we reached Chicago we had come to feel an urgent need to seek out and interview someone who could effectively represent black experience.

  Seeing Rita Mack, I experienced a kind of loneliness for the 269

  270 WARDAY

  past. A black woman was partner in my raising. My earliest memory is of her face, peering down into my crib. There is thus some deep solace for me in the presence of black people. And their absence is fearful. These streets and buildings, this country, belonged to them just as certainly as it did to the wealthier elements of the society. When I saw Rita Mack hurrying toward me I wanted to embrace her, to greet her and hear her tell me that all was well, that black Chicago, once so powerful, had emigrated en masse to Atlanta or Birmingham or Mobile.

  But she did not tell me that.

  I wouldn't say we were extinct. I wouldn't say that. But you look around this town and you see the worst emptiness in the black neighborhoods. There was a whole world here that is gone now. I mean, a way of thinking and being alive that you would call the black way. There was a certain way of talking, a way of acting, a special kind of love. And violence, there was that too—kids running around with the guns and the knives and whatnot. But the drugs were made in white factories—I refer here to the pills—and it was white capital in the form of Mafia money that brought in heroin from Asia. The black was the consumer. The black kid was the one they paid a dollar to let them mainline him out behind the school when he was fourteen years old. And why do they do this?

  They know that the black kid is strong, so the smack won't kill him before they get the profit, and the black kid is brave and smart, so he will be a good and cunning thief, and he is sad, wrapped up in that black skin of his, and he does not much like himself, so he will not be able to resist the smooth things the smack does to his body and mind.

  But that's over, that's all gone. You had them dying in the millions, weakest first, step right up, and they just piled them up and they put up ropes around the worst neighborhoods like the air itself had the infection, which I suppose it did. I looked at the way they treated the dead and I thought, "They act like these are cardboard people, but they aren't, so show some respect, show some grief. They might be cardboard to you, but they had long histories in their minds, just like you do."

  I am referring to the flu now. These are my subjective impres-

  ACROSS AMERICA 271

  sions, you see. I consider myself a poet. I am not educated in the sense of having degrees, but in life, boy, am I educated. I have a Ph.D. in starvation and an M.D. in Cinci Flu. I know how to sing. I am a rememberer of the old songs. I remember all the old blues, the songs of black people getting along somehow in the hot sun, the backs bent beneath the weight of work and the minds flashing with music, and also the songs of the urban street world, the songs that were like knives or like molten happiness. I want to say to you, we never had a chance. We were at the bottom of the list. The thirties saw a hell of a lot of black people starve. So did the forties and the fifties. We came out of the Depression only in the sixties.

  Then Martin Luther King said what was in our hearts. We knew

  how much we were worth, that we were sacred as all men of the earth are sacred, that we had in us the same spark of God any human being had, and we could lift up our hearts on high.

  I was raised in Gulfport, Mississippi, and I remember the color line very damn well. I'm fifty-six. They pulled down the color lines in the sixties. I am stained by those memories, though, and I'll never really believe that anybody who lived under segregation is truly free. We cooperated, black and white, in mutual humiliation. They imposed it and we endured it. Separate water fountains in the bus stations, and separate lunch counters and sitting in the back of the bus and the top of the movie theater. A thing like that stays with you. Sometimes I see lines where there aren't any lines. Sometimes I think it's still then. I could let it lie, but I owe this remembering to all black people who remain alive, and all human beings worth the title
.

  We moved to Chicago in '63, me and Henry. Let's see—'63 to

  '73, that's ten years. To '83 is another ten. Eighty-four, eighty-five . . . we lived together in this city for twenty-eight years. Lord, I was twenty-six when I came here with that man. Lord, I was a girl!

  My Henry was a fine and loyal man and he made a good living.

  He was a baker. But big time, a factory baker. Sure, there was trouble. Some people didn't like a black man in that job. Naturally—it was a good job! But Henry, he knew what he was doing, how to bake ten dozen loaves of bread in those giant ovens and never burn a one. He also knew how to hold a good job and not let it go.

  As a kid he was on the migrant circuit, this and that, digging beets 272 WARDAY

  here and peanuts there, and picking cotton. He knew the difference between a good job and a bad job.

  He got the flu, that man. He had lost forty pounds. We were living off roots and stuff. We would get some bread now and again from the city delivery. Bread and whatever else they had. Spinach one day. Collard greens another. Fried pork rind another. Then peas. You never knew. But thank the Lord for those trucks. There are good people in the world, black or white or you name it.

  I spend my time working to preserve black culture. You have to hold on to things these days. The little details, they're important. I don't have any numbers to back me up, but I'll bet way more than half the black people are dead and gone. Right here in Chicago, you see all these empty black neighborhoods. So many! Where are those people? They sure as hell didn't retire to the country!

  We were the poorest, we starved first and worst. Because we starved the worst, we were the weakest, so the flu hit us the hardest. Look, I lost my husband. I lost my children. But a lot of whites had the same thing happen. The difference is, I also lost everybody I knew, and everybody at work, and all but a few of the people who lived around me. So now my life is full of new faces, and not a lot of them are black. And that is certainly not the white experience.