Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero

by James Abel

  “The White House needs to be on top of this,” Ng said.

  “Brave boy. Bring him back in three days, for the next shot,” I advised the boy’s mother, who looked about twenty-five.

  She regarded me disdainfully, zipping up her son’s parka. “You are not going to vaccinate all of us, are you?”

  “Ma’am, that just isn’t true. The supply comes in slowly. Ma’am, you were Clay Qaqulik’s next-door neighbor, I see. Did he ever talk to you about the Harmons?”

  “You,” she said, and I understood the word to include the soldiers, Homza, Eddie, “you killed Whynot.”

  She led the boy out the heavy swinging door. Outside the terminal, vehicles idled; cars, snowmobiles, a four-wheel ATV. Some families arrived with the kids in sleds pulled by snowmobile, breath frosting, in the cold.

  I asked the next family in line about Clay. I asked everyone. It was useless. Whynot’s death had thrown up a wall. The father growled at me, over his shoulder, as he left, “You people always ask, you never answer,” and opened the door, to let in a blast of Arctic air. I felt the eyes of the others in line. The silence grew deeper than the resentments. Rangers stood in the corners, in case force might be needed to control civilians. But this morning, at least, it was not.

  On my way home in the Ford I spotted two Iñupiat men with ice probes, long, thin iron poles, standing beyond the beach, on newly formed sea ice. They were probing thickness. Only later would the reason become clear.

  I checked in with the general via encrypted cell, and urged once again that we explain the truth about the vaccine shortage to the community.

  “Open your mouth, and the cell door in Leavenworth will close it,” Homza said.

  • • •

  THE NORTH SLOPE BOROUGH RESCUE SQUAD HANGAR HAD BEEN DESIGNATED one of three food distribution points. The squad’s Lear jet and copters had been moved to a different hangar, to provide more space. Each morning two big Hercules arrived from Fairbanks, carrying supplies, which were then forklifted into the hangar. Portable heaters hissed as soldiers took old ration coupons from people in line, and handed out new ones, freshly printed, good for three days.

  I filled my knapsack with Ronzoni spaghetti, Folgers coffee, white rice, and cans of Green Giant peas. I took a package of frozen hamburger stamped UNITED STATES ARMY. There were canned pears and Devil Dogs and Coca-Cola and cartons of Marlboros on another table. There was Heinz ketchup. There was Bumble Bee tuna. There was A&P brand white bread. People in line brought their own bags, cardboard boxes, or knapsacks to load.

  Someone behind me bumped me roughly. I turned and looked into the florid face of a man I recognized as one of the baggage handlers at the airport, that is, when the airport worked. He was a big white guy with long greasy hair jutting from his soiled stocking cap, bad teeth, bad breath, and bad posture. Stuffing spilled from a rip in his oil-stained parka, poked out from peeling duct tape he’d applied to cover the rip.

  He stared back at me, wanting to fight. He sneered. He said, smiling in challenge, “Must have tripped. Sorry.”

  I turned back and heard him snicker.

  You’re a lucky guy, I thought, considering what I could have done to him, what I wanted to do, but I recognized my own misplaced anger. I needed my anger for someone else.

  Don’t waste it on him.

  • • •

  THE REPORTER/PHOTOGRAPHER POOL ARRIVED BY HERCULES TRANSPORT. Pressure was growing in the rest of the country for the White House to prove that the city was getting humanitarian aid. The reporters stayed outside the wire. They milled about on the tundra in a group, like a herd of musk ox, staying close to one another. Fish do that to hide from predators. Reporters did it as if that might shield them from germs.

  They snapped photos from a distance. They interviewed soldiers two hundred yards off, where the disease was allegedly held at bay by thin wire. I took a break from vaccinating and watched them through a window, and saw the way their breath seemed to be absorbed into one mass of rising fog, mist the color of gauze-protective masks.

  What’s it like to be working the wire, soldier?

  Aren’t you scared that you might get sick?

  Do you have plans to handle a riot?

  What if you are ordered to fire on civilians?

  Someone in line said that the mayor had agreed to talk to reporters, along with General Homza. As you can see everything is under control. Meanwhile, a film crew in the chopper circled the town, hovered over the high school, and the icebreaker at sea, hovered above the hospital, so the camera operators could get steady shots.

  The reporters filed back into the Hercules and it took off, headed back for Anchorage, or Fairbanks.

  The rest of the world would see the film that evening.

  No civilians in Barrow would see it, as satellite reception was jammed. General Homza, who had access, didn’t care.

  I went back to vaccinating. Our supply of rabies serum ran out. We had over three thousand unvaccinated people in Barrow. I checked in with the general. I told him, nothing new.

  • • •

  “YOU’VE GOT FROSTBITE IN YOUR LUNGS.”

  The Ranger in front of me had to be all of twenty-three years old, a tall, fit-looking warrior whom I’d insisted on examining when I heard him wheezing, saw him wince with each breath. His voice had gone scratchy. His lungs sounded like cracking ice. He said he’d patrolled the wire for four hours last night, and the pain had started then.

  “In my lungs, sir?” He didn’t believe it.

  “I’ll write you a note. Take it to the hospital. Where are you from, soldier?”

  “Florida. People get frostbite in their lungs?”

  • • •

  THE CITY LAY SHEATHED IN COLD, ITS ANGLES SHARPER, ITS AIR CLEARER, any delineation between land and sea beginning to blur into white void. The ice out there starting to thicken. Light seemed dimmer, and lasted a few minutes less each day. The planet seemed to shrink.

  Up here, in the old days, this time of year, people would disappear into their sod houses or subterranean homes, bundle up, bunch up, live off body heat and stored animal meat and, like bears, begin the long hibernation. If winter lasted too long, they’d starve, eat pebbles to try to keep hunger at bay. If the sea ice moved the wrong way, it would suddenly sweep onto land, as fast-moving mountains that the Eskimos called ivus. A family could go to sleep at night and never wake up. The ivu would crush them, Merlin had told me only a few days back, when we were friends.

  Now we did not speak.

  Streetlights glowed beneath the thin, cold moon.

  Henry David Thoreau once said you can gauge the health of a society by the trust that its members have for each other, even if strangers. By that measure we were all sick. The country was sick. And it wasn’t a sickness that came from a germ.

  The “polar spa” was a joke of a slummy two-story building that stood a few blocks from Arctic Pizza, across the street from the beach. The white paint job was the only thing new about it. On its side were depicted three polar bears wearing Ray-Bans, sunning themselves on lounge chairs, on an ice floe, while orcas leaped at sea. Inside, the place was falling apart. In summers it functioned as bottom-of-the-barrel bunking for spillover researchers during weeks that scientists packed town; slept in cots at the community center, like hurricane victims, and tripled up in hotel rooms. Unlucky grad students ended up here.

  I lowered my binoculars, standing on the rickety roof. Out on the tundra, the weather had caught the Rangers by surprise. They were the Wehrmacht in Russia, 1942. Machinery stopped. Humvees needed to be plugged in when parked, but there were no electrical outlets there. No one had anticipated early winter. No one had provided proper equipment for sustained land-based winter Arctic ops.

  I watched Rangers tottering around. In the round binocular O, halos of freezing breath trailed men walking or stampin
g in the snow to keep warm.

  Come and get me.

  I went inside where it was only slightly warmer, made my way down stairs that seemed ready to collapse. The bunk room was designed to sleep fifteen in tiers of racks that ringed the walls. The saggy mattresses were assaulted by cross currents, drafts slipping through wall gaps and plastic sheeting stapled to sills. An ancient gas heater chugged away in a corner, coughing fitful bursts of lukewarm air against the steady assault of cold.

  I slept in a bunk farthest from the heater. It was warmer by the heater, but its chugging would mask the sound of an attack. I wore long underwear, a Marines sweatshirt and a stocking hat, even indoors. I removed my Beretta 92A1 pistol from the back holster and broke it down for cleaning. I pushed the right side button and rotated the breakdown lever and moved the slide forward and cleaned the gun. I made sure to rack it back when it was on the frame. It was a heavy pistol, with a Teflon-based black finish. It had a thick grip. The trigger needed extra pressure. It fired fifteen rounds.

  Eddie was on duty at the hospital at the moment. I was alone.

  There were four big bunk rooms, each equipped with the antique gas burners. The floors were concave plywood. Locker-room style showers ran rusty and cold. The kitchen looked as if it had been installed in 1920, and featured a vintage Maytag, four-burner stove, and metal cabinets filled with plastic glasses featuring logos from the 1964 world’s fair.

  I spent hours with Kelley’s diary files over the next two days. I ventured out for walks, advertising that I was alone. Once, outside, I noticed a North Slope police department SUV pull up across the road. The windows were up. Deputy Luther Oz sat inside. I nodded at him. I felt a glare through his sunglasses. Slowly, he pulled off.

  On the fourth morning—no vaccine supply that day—I ate Army-supplied oatmeal with cold water and raisins and powered up the computer for the hundredth time and inserted the memory stick and called up Kelley’s diary, the written parts. The bunk room smelled of mold. The words of a dead fifteen-year-old teen popped up. I scrolled back and forth, trolling, reading inanities written months before the Harmon deaths. I went over the same stuff for the twentieth time. Sometimes I concentrated on specific passages. Sometimes I skimmed. I chose random pages and started at the bottom, moving up, hoping that something I missed before would pop out.

  I had an argument with Mom about candy. She said I can’t bring Snickers bars along. So how come Dad can have his own ice cream and I can’t have a few bars of candy?

  I randomly chose another day.

  Mom got another parking ticket. She’s always leaving the car where she can get a ticket! Dad gets mad about the tickets, but she always thinks she’ll be out of the store before the cops see the car.

  I jumped forward. She was in Barrow now.

  I met the new guide today. His name is Clay and he seems pretty nice. He offered me pickled muktuk. It’s good!

  Dad’s birthday is coming. I want to play a joke on him.

  The diary told me about her crush on Leon Kavik. It told me that she feared acne was breaking out on her face. A girl named Jessica back home was making fun of Kelley on the Internet. It was useless. Maybe there was no answer here. Maybe the diary was just the ramblings of a teen.

  Someone was banging on the outer door. BAMBAMBAMBAM!

  I shoved the pistol in the rear holster. My breath frosted in the hall. The cunnychuck door was closed and the front door had no knob, just one of those four-digit punch-in codes, even to exit. It lacked a spy hole. I held the gun low, at my side.

  “It is Ranjay!”

  The little Indian stood stamping and freezing. He was growing a beard, probably because facial hair might raise warmth by a fraction of a degree. His Honda SUV was plugged into the electrical outlet outside; the only modern amenity the place offered. He was alone, a bundled up ball with legs, Humpty Dumpty style, wearing two hats, one pulled over the other, the whole effect pushing his nose down and his mouth up. Ranjay as Picasso painting. Arctic cubism. The white period.

  “Joe, for God’s sake, let me in. This is awful!”

  His hands were in his pockets. I smiled at his war-orphan look and backed up and he entered. He stood in the hallway, shivering. He had no tolerance for cold. Maybe there was something else in a pocket, not just hands. Maybe he’d pull it out.

  “Want some coffee?”

  “Anything hot will do!”

  I walked at his side to the large, cold kitchen. This room had been old when Khrushchev and Nixon held their kitchen debate in a mock-up U.S. home, at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, in 1959. I opened a metal cabinet and extracted a tin of Folgers. I measured out three heaping tablespoons for the Braun and poured in cold water. We sat at the chipped Formica table and smelled coffee brewing. The mug into which I poured Ranjay’s portion read, “Cleveland Indians” and showed a grinning comic-book Native American, with a red-faced leer. Mine read, “Yakutia! Come to Russia’s Arctic Diamond Week!”

  “No new cases for three days,” Ranjay said, cradling the mug. “People are getting angrier. Something will blow.”

  “It’s spreading slower than we feared.”

  “Maybe not spreading at all, Joe. Like Ebola. It broke out. It killed many. It went underground, disappeared.”

  “What about the monkeys that Dr. Morgan injected with rabies?”

  “Dead in three days.”

  I gasped, stunned. “That’s a huge increase in speed.”

  “Huge,” he said morosely.

  “But this also means,” I said, brightening a little, “that if there are no new cases in town, maybe it’s not airborne. Wait! Morgan and Cruz would have checked that, put sick monkeys with healthy ones, just like Constantine did with the coyotes in Texas. Any spread?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. They also inoculated sick monkeys, to see if the vaccine works. Any of those animals fall ill?”

  “So far, no. So far, the vaccine seems to work. So maybe the spread is point source. But, Joe, it’s only a few days since we started. The vaccine may just slow it down, not stop it. Too early. We need more time. But I don’t know how much time is left before the whole town blows up.”

  I sat back. It was too early to relax. He was right. There were no good options.

  If it just disappears, if the quarantine lifts, we may never find out what happened. If we stay, we’ll have a riot soon. If we leave, Karen’s killer may get away.

  Ranjay looked upset. His hands squeezed the mug. He changed subjects. “Joe, they made you a scapegoat. You are the reason we discovered the rabies. I myself pooh-poohed the notion, yet you were diligent. I do not like what they have done to you. It is not fair at all.”

  “Thanks, Ranjay.” I was moved. But I also did not trust him. It was nothing personal. I did not trust anyone except Eddie, and Eddie was elsewhere most of the time.

  Ranjay said, “I think that often in life, the man who sees things first is the one that others do not want to know, my friend.”

  “I wish I saw things better.”

  He drank. I drank. He added more sugar. We watched each other over china rims. He had not unzipped his parka yet. At least both of his hands were visible. I could move a lot faster than Ranjay. If Ranjay made a move for his pocket, I’d beat him, I knew.

  “Also,” he said at length, more quietly, “I’ve been round the clock at the hospital and did not have an adequate chance to say how sorry I am about Karen.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Joe. It is funny, in my country, we arrange marriages. I arranged my own marriage, you know. I was in London. I dated English girls. It did not work. You people believe that if you have a feeling, the logical parts will follow, after you marry. We believe that if the logical parts are there to start with, feeling will follow. But in your case, I would say that everything was there all along.”

  “
Very eloquent, Ranjay.”

  “What have you found out?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Ranjay’s eyes dipped toward his mug, and he lifted it, so I could not see his face. He said, lowering it, “You are a clever person. You would not have made only one copy of her files. You are asking everyone many questions. You are looking at other copies, aren’t you? You’ve not given up.”

  I considered, my heartbeat rising. “Yes.”

  “Find anything?” His brows were up.

  “Like what?”

  “Some clue. Some reason why they had the accidents.”

  “I think I found a thread,” I lied.

  We were interrupted by more knocking. Ranjay rose as I did, casually drifted beside me down the long hall. A bulb was out. The remaining glowing sixty watt, hanging from a loop-wire, seemed ready to expire. There were no windows in the hall. The knocking grew louder. I reached out, punched the code, opened the door.

  “Hi, Bruce.”

  Now I had two visitors. As we all went back into the kitchen, it struck me that although I’d seen Ranjay’s Honda outside, Bruce’s late-model Subaru Outback was not in sight. It was probably around the side of the house.

  “This place is a shithole,” Bruce said, looking around. “An igloo would be better than this.”

  “I don’t mind. Want coffee?”

  Bruce removed his gloves, rubbing his powerful hands. “Arthritis,” he said. “Coffee, yeah.”

  Bruce sat on my left, hat off, jacket on, but inside the polar spa, wearing extra layers made sense. Ranjay regained his seat, on the right. I couldn’t see them both at the same time but I relaxed a little bit. With two people here, one wouldn’t try something, I figured.

  Bruce told Ranjay, “I heard there’s no more vaccine coming.”

  “We’ve used all supply in the U.S. We’re trying to get more from Mexico.”