Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero

by James Abel

  • • •

  THE NIGHTMARE STARTED THE USUAL WAY BUT THEN THE FACES CHANGED. I was in a tunnel carved into a cave, it’s high ceiling shielded by steel netting strung up top to contain—rock. I stepped forward, hyperaware, carbine in hands. I had trouble drawing in air because of the protective mask over my face and the heat in my ears, in my throat. My Marine squad advanced behind me, down, down, in hell’s direction. Blue smoke curled from air vents in rock. Alarms screeched. The cave exited into a hallway. The hallway had a lab. Inside were medical cabinets. Surgical instruments. Steel manacles fixed to operating tables. No people at first . . . but then . . .

  Then the child-sized figure charged out of the smoke.

  Iraq. In memory. Eddie and I were first lieutenants, dispatched from the main thrust of invasion, patrolling outlying villages, making sure they were clear of ambushers. We found nothing until our Humvees and armored carrier stumbled onto a brand-new highway in the middle of nowhere. It led to a ratty abandoned village, except, when we entered the huts, we found they were mock-ups, a false town, a trick to fool reconnaisance. In one hut we found an iron door set into the rocky side of a mountain. We blew open the iron door. It led down into the cave.

  That brought us to Saddam’s hidden lab.

  As the child form rushed at me, through dream smoke, I knew what was coming next and I filled with dread. The dream came sporadically. That day changed my life and sent Eddie and me to med school on the Marine dime, made us hunters of different kinds of deadly weapons, the kind you can’t see, that float in air, seep into lungs, take a healthy person and twist them into a shrieking, burnt-up furnace. That rewires evolution and turns ten million years of anatomical progress into a contagious degenerating mush.

  The figures that usually burst through the smoke in my dream were monkeys, with pink faces and pink hands, as they’d had on that day in real life. Infected monkeys. But tonight they had human faces. I saw Kelley and Ted, Cathy and Clay, furried bodies, friends’ eyes, and the alarms ringing, as they shrieked like animals, rushing to attack.

  My hands rose by themselves. I squeezed the trigger. I screamed as bullets made my friends dance and fall back, their furry chests blossoming red.

  “Joe! Get up!” Karen was shaking me.

  I opened my eyes.

  The red digits on the nightstand read 3:50 A.M.

  “Christ.” My body was soaked with sweat, and I smelled ammonia. Sweat. Nightmare. Me.

  “The dream, right, honey? The monkeys?”

  She’d been with me once before when it happened, on a vacation. Now I lay inside a cone of night-table light. I still saw Kelley’s face, blowing apart. I went into the bathroom and washed my face, looked at myself in the mirror. Did the light bother me? Did it hurt? I saw blanched skin, saw a man who had just shot his friends. A man who had not answered his phone when Kelley tried to reach him.

  “Why them?” I asked when I came out. Rhetorical question. Either Karen or I uttered these words ten times a day.

  “It’s not your fault, Joe. If you’d answered that phone, nothing would be different.”

  “People have dreams for reasons.”

  “Joe. You take things on. That’s the reason.”

  “Maybe. Okay. I do. But maybe there’s more. Maybe we’ve all been trying to figure this out the wrong way.”

  Wide awake now, we weren’t going back to sleep. She looked for the coffee in the kitchenette. “Meaning what?”

  I sat at our little table and saw the white wall as a blank canvas and filled it with the dream to help me think. Dreams are clues. They’re always clues of something. The problem is figuring out what they mean. You think a dream means you should quit your job. But it means you should divorce your wife. You think a dream means you need to see the dentist. But deep inside, where you don’t want to look, you fear you have cancer.

  “Karen, I said it last night. What if Clay Qaqulik was right from the beginning? What if this all goes back to someone trying to stop the Harmons’ work?”

  She had a lovely frown, the way it deepened the gray in her eyes, softened it, added amber. Intensity became her. When you’re in love, even musculature becomes mystery, even at moments like these. “Joe, you’re thinking that someone infected them on purpose?”

  “I’m just saying, maybe the way to crack this isn’t to track the outbreak, or analyze the bug. We go back to Clay. Restart his investigation. See? And we finish what Ted and Cathy started, do their work, complete their project. Maybe there’s a consequence of their work that no one is seeing. If you understand the consequence, you understand what is going on.”

  Her silver hair swooshed back and forth. “Algae? How would algae relate? Anyway, if it was intentional, murder, why kill people in town, too, who had nothing to do with the Harmons? Who didn’t even know the Harmons? Joe, you’re overthinking.”

  “If it’s contagious, it got out after.”

  “Murder, Joe? Listen to what you’re saying!”

  “People have been trying to weaponize rabies for three hundred years.”

  “You’re still halfway in your dream, Joe.”

  “Good. Helps me think.”

  “But why murder someone by using rabies?”

  “Because no one would think it was intentional. Look, maybe it’s not contagious. Contagious is logical but it’s also possible that someone wants it to look that way! See what I mean? So many explanations are still possible.”

  “You’re doing mind tricks on yourself.”

  “All the time.”

  “Give yourself time to wake up.”

  “I’m up. That’s the point.”

  She cocked her head. She smiled, but not with humor. “Well, Colonel, this would be one hell of a time to decide it’s not contagious. Listen!”

  I heard the droning—the big engines and propellers overhead—and went still. I moved the curtain aside, looked out. Was someone there, walking toward our hut in the snow?

  No. My vision must have played a trick on me. No one was there. Lights flicked on in the Longhorn hut.

  I looked up. The C-130 troop carriers, blotting out constellations, looked fearsome. Karen switched on the TV. I saw snow on screen and heard static. The satellite embargo must have begun. Barrow was closed off.

  “You don’t look surprised. So you knew, too,” Karen said, and sighed. “I figured you knew. They might need me on the sub. They called last night.”

  We stared at each other. I’d been warned not to tell her by Wayne Homza. She’d been warned not to tell me by Electric Boat. So at precisely the moment when man and woman need each other, probably reached for each other across the city, we’d been told to shut out our partners, to link ourselves to duty over love.

  We dressed swiftly, warmly. The thermometer outside read twenty-seven degrees. A dusting of snow covered the base, and parachutes bloomed above. We took go-cups filled with hot, sugar-sweetened Folgers.

  I started up the Ford, the heater roaring, Karen snug beside me. Our pathetic rebellion against the government. No using seat belts today. Mikael Grandy and Dr. Alan McDougal were exiting their huts, too. They looked up at the sky.

  “Someone should have told Merlin. Or the mayor,” Karen said.

  At four A.M., a few people were up normally, restaurant owners heading out to prepare breakfasts, hunters getting an early start on the day. More lights flickered in homes as we bounced toward the airport. People emerging from houses, staring at the sky, not yet understanding. Lights glowed inside the police station, where detectives on tonight’s rotation probably stared at corkboards, at results of investigation that had left us helpless; lines of infection stretching from homes to garages to airport; as we interviewed family, friends, and neighbors, filling in schedules, looking for intersection points, checking refrigerators for similar products, testing blood.

  “No roads ou
t of Barrow, but anyone could leave by snowmobile or SUV, use their GPS, and hit the tundra,” Karen said. Which was why the Rangers would cordon the town.

  The world closing in. We rounded a corner and saw, in an efficient show of force, at sea, the U.S.’s sole working icebreaker, the Coast Guard’s Wilmington. And the nuclear sub, the Virginia, a dark moray eel shape, risen through light slush. Barrow had no harbor. Neither ship would land.

  Karen said, “The Wilmington’s got a chopper, and Coast Guard snipers. The Virginia, drones. I’m on call if they have problems. They’re to block offshore.”

  “Thirty-six wasted hours,” I said, remembering General Homza telling me on the phone. I’ll head the task force, personally. When we land, I’ll call you. Stay put.

  Great. Can’t wait.

  An hour later, Karen and I—in the crowd at the airport—watched white parka–clad troops hemming us in, as efficient as hindsight. I thought, A day and a half of passengers scattering from Barrow across Earth, while the CDC people ran tests, gasped over the results. Refused at first to believe that rabies killed five . . . And now, nine.

  Eddie—back from the field—pushed through the crowd, stood beside us, and put it more graphically. “Idiots.”

  The Rangers moved efficiently as the crowd grew more agitated. On the tundra, the last few feet of open view was sealed off by concertina wire—a razor wall. Oh, the city had known that rabies was loose. They’d been alerted by the mayor and Ranjay. But they’d been given an impression that the danger was smaller. They’d been told to watch for sick animals, to make sure their pets were inoculated. They’d not been told that rabies may have assumed a new form.

  Now the mayor looked like a fool before his own people. He was angry and—like anyone with family here—afraid.

  Rangers moved onlookers back, maintaining a thirty-foot buffer area inside the wire. In the airport they’d be double-checking hangars and offices. Our old Navy base to the north would return to its original function, housing military personnel. The huts were being gas-bombed right now, to kill germs. No one was allowed back in for the next few hours.

  In quarantine drills I’d practiced, soldiers set up tent cities outside the infected area. Impossible here. Too cold. In drills, supplies arrived on roads. Here there were none. In drills, medicine worked. And these troops had been vaccinated, but if we faced a new strain, we all risked infection. There were no good choices, I thought. Only degrees of danger.

  Standing atop the bank building, as Karen, Eddie, and I did with Merlin and the mayor ten minutes later, we got a complete view as Hercules aircraft disgorged more Humvees, .50-caliber machine guns on top, beginning patrols along the perimeter. Rangers toting M4 carbines stood on higher rooftops, setting up terrestrial jammers.

  “Full cooperation from communication companies,” Eddie said. “As pre-agreed for in a protocol four event.”

  No cell-phone calls or YouTube presentations would be leaving Barrow to go viral. No chance of millions of people in Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, and Mexico City watching minute-by-minute panic: American town quarantined!

  The crowd continued to swell.

  Guards opened a gap in the wire and a lone Humvee drove inside. A single officer got out and climbed onto the vehicle’s hood to face the crowd, now easily more than a thousand people.

  “Major General Wayne Homza,” Karen said.

  From a distance, he looked shorter, bullish, but size meant nothing. His voice was deep and resonant, containing the right mix of authority and respect for the audience. His posture was as straight in person as on screen. I liked that he exposed himself. My respect rose a notch. I hoped he was more than just a self-serving featherweight attack dog. I saw formidability. He’d need flexibility as well.

  He announced, voice clear in the silence, “We’re handing out free surgical masks and rubber gloves for anyone who wants them. Go home. Stay calm. Food will be distributed. Doctors will be at the hospital. Anyone experiencing headaches or fever, please go to the emergency room, at no charge.

  “In one hour I will meet with you at the high school. It’s too cold for all of us to stand around out here. I will answer all questions. We’ll talk, calmly and rationally. One hour.”

  A man’s voice cried out from the crowd, clear to us on the roof. “We need to hunt the bowheads now! They are here.”

  “Sorry, sir. No boats going out.”

  I recognized the man as a whaling captain. “We promise to come back. We need to hunt before they pass!”

  Homza nodded sympathetically, but answered, firmly, “We will supply all the food you need.”

  “I don’t want your food.”

  “Sir, I’m not partial to Army food, either, half the time.” He smiled. “But we’ll make do for the time being. For safety.”

  “Ours? Or yours? Once the whales pass they are gone until spring.”

  The mayor turned to me speculatively. I’d dreaded this moment. Protocol four calls for local authorities to be notified before quarantine, but Washington had decided that an unannounced arrival would be best in this case. I’d argued over it. I’d said, “General, if the town was New York, would you keep people in the dark?”

  “I won’t honor that insult with an answer.”

  Merlin asked me now, “Joe, did you know about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell us.”

  “No.”

  Eddie looked from my face to Merlin’s. “He was ordered not to. He was threatened.”

  The mayor made a disgusted sound, spun on his insulated boots, and headed for the rooftop doorway. Merlin looked sad. “Who’s side are you on, Joe?”

  Eddie said. “You know the answer. Uno, tell him. Say something, man!”

  Karen said, “How can you ask that, Merlin?”

  The point was, I hadn’t told them.

  Merlin turned to leave.

  • • •

  PANIC RIPPED THROUGH THE HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM. CLASSES WERE suspended: No gatherings of more than five to form in public for the time being, General Homza said, but since there had been no advance warning of the quarantine, the auditorium was filled with one last community meeting, people who wanted answers; angry, yelling, fearful parents, whole families, old and young, everyone shouting at the same time:

  —Why are troops here?

  —This is the United States of America! You can’t do this to us!

  —You’re treating us like criminals!

  —We are French tourists. You must let us go!

  The big room seemed smaller, and I could sense that razor wire outside, a half mile off, as if it had drawn town boundaries in, constricted even the air supply. A half dozen Rangers stood in front of the stage like security guards at a rock concert, hands at belts, sidearms conspicuous, but no M4s in sight. Gutsy call, General.

  Karen whispered, “In this town there are probably as many firearms as people.”

  On stage, Homza, floodlit, looked out at the standing-room crowd, people shoulder to shoulder, packing exit doors, sitting on steps, in aisles, spilling out into hallways, glued to intercom boxes overhead. More like firewood waiting to ignite than people. A cross-section of America: Eskimos and whites, blacks, Samoans, Cambodians, Pakistanis. I saw elders with walkers, guaranteed front row seats. I saw community college students. The handful of neighbors from the base were grouped together.

  I saw, in all eyes, fear.

  “I am Major General Wayne Homza, heading the task force charged with protecting you, and keeping any disease here from spreading. You’re afraid, I know. Angry that we’ve shut you in. I’d feel the same way. It’s no fun to make sacrifices. God chooses us for different challenges and gave this one to you. But by keeping whatever has happened here local, we may save lives. Yours. And others.”

  The president, I knew, would probably be on TV, te
lling the nation that a U.S. town had been quarantined, “An unprecedented act for the safety of its citizens and all villages on the North Slope.” That hopefully the situation would be temporary. The rabies would disappear. That the disease might not be contagious. That nations which had received travelers from Barrow had been notified. That his difficult decision had been based on a CDC recommendation to protect four hundred million Americans. That his heart was heavy.

  The general acted more diplomatically with civilians than I’d thought him capable. He said, “I hope that we will, together, defeat a danger. I’ve brought along top epidemiologists to pinpoint the illness’s origin. And special agents from the Army’s investigative units to coordinate the investigation with your officials, determine whether a crime or terrorist attack has occurred.”

  Eddie whispered, “Coordinate? Or take over?”

  Homza was no fool. Safety aside, he had to realize that the outcome of this quarantine would determine his professional future. The last thing he needed was a riot. He said, “I want our stay to be brief. We will do everything possible to make you comfortable. I will take questions now. Please line up at the microphone and identify yourself before speaking. Remember, our precautions are for your own good.”

  “No, they are for your good. Martha Nukinek died yesterday and my neighbor, Mr. Kunisakera, is in the hospital,” said the first questioner, a slim woman with a moon face, long black hair, and wearing a thigh-length snow shirt. She carried her infant in a sling.

  The general nodded sympathetically. “No one wants this thing to spread. You must see that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I must do! You people have wanted to kill us ever since you tried to blow up Point Hope.”

  The place erupted with shouting.

  “Why can’t I use my cell phone!”

  “You’re working for the oil companies!”

  Homza, by the fifth question, was drowned out. What would he do? He was used to people following his orders. I saw him pause, unrattled. His eyes calmly found me, third row up, right side. He’d known I was there all along, I realized. His head flicked. It was a summons.