by Jan Coffey
This was the first sign of any disagreeable weather since they’d boarded the ship. Everything about this trip had been perfect. Everyone’s mood, especially the children’s, was riding high. The staff couldn’t be more helpful. There’d been no emergencies.
Once again, he wished that Sally, his wife, could be here. She would have loved to see this. David didn’t remember seeing Josh this happy and consumed by any activity…ever. The teenager was already campaigning to come on this trip again next year. David knew that Josh had been resisting any thoughts or planning about anything down the road since learning of his cancer. This was a huge breakthrough.
More than anyone, he thought wistfully, Sally should have been here to hear it.
“You got the word, I take it, that our esteemed program director wants to talk to us here,” Craig said, joining David at the railing.
“It’s going to be pouring any minute now.”
The other man looked out at the approaching storm. “Looks like it.” He shrugged. “He wants to keep us informed about the news, without bothering the kids.”
Parents were beginning to approach them. The kids were all below decks, busy doing lab work with the samples they’d dredged from a couple of test sites earlier this morning. David had a good idea what Philip Carver’s ‘talk’ was going to be about. No television, radios, or cell phones were allowed on this trip. In fact, no electronic equipment of any sort was to be brought on board Harmony.
A few times since the beginning of their trip, however, David and Craig had gone up onto the bridge to chat with the ship’s skipper. It was during one of those visits this morning that they’d heard a Coast Guard report warning all vessels, commercial and private, that river traffic on the Potomac and Anacostia was banned north of Alexandria, Virginia. Another weird case of flesh-eating disease had been discovered, apparently—this time in Washington, D.C. David had said nothing about it to Josh.
He looked out again at the water, watching the dark cloud moving in closer. It looked as if it was raining sideways.
Having worked in pharmaceuticals for his entire career, and with a background in chemistry, David wasn’t terrified by these kinds of things the way the average person might be. There were many instances of people dying across the country of unusual causes. This could be one of those. A rare disease that would have never caused a stir if the media hadn’t gotten hold of some pictures and blown the whole thing out of proportion.
David turned around to see the program director joining the group. All ten parents and caregivers had assembled on deck.
“I’m going to make this quick,” Philip announced as they all formed a circle around him. “I have just two things to say.” He took a handkerchief out of a pocket and blew his nose.
“I don’t want to create hysteria, but some of you might have already heard whispers. Now, I know nobody here is from Washington, but I want to keep you all up to date. So this is what we know…there’s been another outbreak of this flesh-eating disease, but this time it was just a few blocks from the White House. I just talked to the Coast Guard station at Indian River, and they said there’s been only one fatality. Now, I believe our young crew downstairs has been exposed to enough stress and bad news in their short lives, so that’s why I wanted to keep the news of this to the adults for the remainder of the trip. How you handle this with your children is, of course, your own business.”
There were some nods. No one seemed horribly shocked by the news. David figured word of what was happening had reached all the adults.
“Now, the reason for this get-together…” Philip paused. It sounded as if he was losing his voice. He took a long sip from a water bottle—blew his nose again.
David wondered if the young man had taken any of the medicine he and Craig had passed on to him. Although he kept his spirits up, every day Philip’s cold or flu or whatever it was seemed to be getting worse. It definitely wasn’t allergies. They were lucky none of the kids were showing similar symptoms.
“Where was I?” the program director asked.
“The reason for the get-together,” someone repeated.
“Oh, yeah. I wanted to get a feel from everyone as far as what our next step should be,” Philip explained. “My crew and I are perfectly content to continue with this excursion as originally planned. But if there is any consensus that we should get back to port right away, then I’d like to hear it. This is your trip.”
The members of the group were silent for a moment, and then a few people began to comment.
“This is probably the safest place we could be,” one of the parents noted.
“It’s not as if our families are infected with the disease. It seems to be rare,” was one woman’s opinion.
“And isolated,” someone added.
“My feeling exactly.” David had to put his two cents in. “There’s no epidemic to speak of. We don’t have entire communities of people coming down with this disease, as far as I know.”
“I can’t think of anything more stressful for our children than to have them exposed to the hoopla that the news people are creating about this,” a young mother told Philip. “I was glad to get away from the business in Arizona or New Mexico or wherever that was. My vote is to stay on course. I’m sure the crisis will have passed by the time we get back.”
There were many nods of agreement.
“Perhaps you could just continue to keep us in the loop of any other news that comes by the way of the radio,” Craig suggested.
Philip was fine with that.
Like a slap in the face, the first drops of rain hit them, carried on a sudden gust of wind.
“Then it seems that we do have a consensus,” Craig summarized, looking around at the circle of people. “So if you can tolerate your cold and put up with us for a couple of more days, we should continue the trip as we originally planned.”
Philip gave a satisfied nod before saying, hoarsely, “That’s all I needed to hear. Now we’d better get under cover before the rain really starts.”
Harmony rocked against the buffeting winds. As if taking its cue, the rain began to come down in sheets. People cut in front of one another in their rush to get out of the weather. Craig and David brought up the rear of the line with Philip.
“How are you feeling?” David asked the young researcher.
“Hanging in there.” He blew his nose. “I’m usually better at kicking this kind of thing but having to dive everyday doesn’t help.”
As one of the two divers on the research vessel, Philip went into the water every morning to collect samples and take photos of different sites. The other diver was also a grad student.
“Do you have enough medicine to get you through?” Craig asked.
“I used some of those throat lozenges you gave me. They taste horrible but they sure work.”
“My wife swears by them,” Craig told the young man.
Philip made no mention of the bag of stuff David had given him.
David started down the ladder ahead of the other two men, feeling very annoyed.
Don’t be defensive, he told himself, trying to shake it off. He should be used to this new wave of homeopathic, all-natural, tree hugging crap. It all went back to Al Gore and company. Synthetic drugs were bad. Drug companies were evil. Those who worked for them were the spawn of Satan. He should have known that Philip Carver, grad student and program director of the Ocean Research team, would be one of those. Go ahead, Philip, be a jerk. Go ahead and brew up some tree bark, he thought. There’s a reason why Americans are enjoying longer, healthier lives. And Josh and the other kids on this boat are a testament to the success of modern medicine, critics be damned.
He descended the steps and turned to watch the other two men come down. Craig was giving advice to Philip on some vitamin-packed powder he’d given him.
“Dad…Dad!” Josh ran over and gave him a big hug. “Hey, you’re wet.”
“It’s raining up there.” He hugged the twelve year old back,
happy that Josh still didn’t find anything wrong with showing affection, especially with him.
“Guess what?”
“Tell me.”
“My shrimp is pregnant,” Josh said excitedly.
“No kidding!” A hundred different options ran through David’s mind as to what the correct response should be.
Congratulations.
When will the joyous event take place?
Hasn’t anyone talked to you about using condoms?
Or something equally inappropriate. The almost comical thing was that, as the father of a nineteen-year-old and a twenty-two-year-old daughter, pregnancy was one of the announcements that he’d most worried about.
David’s mood was starting to improve.
“That’s wonderful news, Josh,” Philip said hoarsely, stepping down from the bottom rung of the ladder. “Do you know what this means?”
“That means the site isn’t dead,” Josh answered. “In fact, there’s going to be a tomorrow.”
“Exactly.” Philip put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and they started for the lab area. “We got the samples today from that ocean disposal site. Now, we’ll constantly monitor those areas to make sure humans aren’t destroying the…”
“I take it all back,” David whispered under his breath.
“Take what back?” Craig asked, standing next to him.
“The stuff I was thinking about Philip. He’s not a jerk. In fact, he’s okay.”
As David turned away, he realized Craig was looking at him as if he’d sprouted two heads.
Twenty-Three
The White House, Washington, D.C.
“I’m not sure, Mr. President, that it’s a good idea for us to be in the same room as you,” Faas said cautiously.
“Your people have investigated five sites now. Isn’t that correct, Director Hanlon?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what were they?”
“Moosehead Lake in Maine. Sedona, Arizona. The law firm here in Washington. The Grand Plaza incident in Chicago. The fifth was the two bodies found last night at the bakery in Boston’s South End.”
“And have any of your agents been infected?”
“We’ve taken every precaution, sir.”
“So none have been infected?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I consider myself safe.”
Faas Hanlon would not have wished this mess on John Penn. He was a decent man and a pretty good president. But if being the first African-American president wasn’t enough pressure in itself, Penn had taken office during a major scandal created by the former president, an election scam that had threatened both national security and the faith of the people in the whole electoral system. He’d quickly restored faith in the country’s leadership, and for that alone, Penn deserved four trouble-free years. Penn was popular with the people and with the elected officials in both Houses of Congress. As a result, for the first time in more than two decades, things were getting done in Washington. Congress was finally earning its salary, producing results for the people who’d voted the individual members into the office. The economy was on an upswing.
Unfortunately, not everything was going smoothly.
Troop reduction. Troop increase. Reduction again. Iraq had become a self-inflicted wound that wouldn’t heal. America was too deeply entrenched in the troubles, not only in that country, but in the entire Middle East. Aside from the ongoing civil war in the south of Iraq, Afghanistan had never been settled. The western world still depended on oil, and no one had an answer how to get out of the mess. There seemed to be no end in sight.
This outbreak, though, was potentially the greatest challenge John Penn’s administration would face.
“What have you got for me?” Penn asked the group gathered before him.
Faas glanced at his boss, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who had okayed them bringing along Bea Devera. She was just back from Sedona and, having worked the site there, she was a perfect candidate to offer constructive feedback. But they weren’t the only ones on the hot seat. Cabinet Secretary James Abbott of Health and Human Services was there with the current NIH director, Rich Judson. NIH had been tasked with coordinating and interpreting all data on the victims. The EPA director had also been asked to attend this meeting, since every one of the sites where the disease had surfaced had to go through an equivalent of a toxic spill clean up. The press secretary had joined them a couple of minutes into the meeting, and assistants were hovering behind those at the conference table.
“It would not be inappropriate, Mr. President, to call this an epidemic, at this point,” Dr Judson admitted.
Faas and the NIH director had started this discussion on the phone before they all had arrived here. Including Chicago and Boston, the number of casualties had risen to twenty-four. Unlike the early outbreaks, though, when ten days had passed before there’d been another incidence of the disease, the outbreaks were coming at shorter intervals.
“I am sure that will make the American public feel much more secure. Maybe we should color code it, too. Make use of some of the millions we spent a few years ago after 9/11,” Penn said sarcastically. They were all used to his direct, no nonsense approach. He turned to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. “Do you agree with that, James?”
“It’s a mess, sir. I think that, at this point, it would be wise to put the fear of God in people.”
“The fear of God is already in them,” Penn commented.
“Not all of them, Mr. President,” Judson replied. “Look at both Chicago and Boston. The casualties should have been limited to one at each site, but instead we had multiple deaths because of people arriving on the scene, discovering the bodies, and not taking the correct precautionary measures. I think most people still treat this as some sort of media invention.”
The Secretary of Homeland Security chimed in. “A position that is understandable, concerning we lose more people than this every day to car wrecks and cancer. But this situation is far different, and I don’t know that finding the right words is enough to get this message across. Recent history has taught us to be wary of what is put in front of us. People have forgotten that they sometimes need to trust those in charge.”
Faas knew Penn understood where the Homeland Security Czar was coming from. During President Penn’s reorganization of Homeland Security, Faas had been privy to conversations between his boss and the president. Several of those conversations had focused on how to regain the public’s trust. For too many years, the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System had been used too carelessly and with motives other than national security. As a result, the general public had become numb to it. Several members of Congress had said publicly that the system had outlived its effectiveness. Faas agreed.
“I’m going to continue with my daily news conference until we have this situation under control,” Penn told the group. “We won’t keep any new incidents secret from the public. In fact, we’ll announce that the incident in Maine has now been connected to this same outbreak. We’ll increase the number of confirmed casualties, too.”
“That was our largest blow as far as deaths,” Judson reminded everyone.
“I don’t want the focus to be on fear,” Penn responded. “The truth is our best ally right now.”
No one was about to disagree.
“What’s happening with the DM8A production?” the president asked the HHS Secretary.
“The first production lots are out and distribution is going according to schedule,” Secretary Abbot replied.
“Is it doing anything for us?”
“We don’t know,” the NIH director jumped in. “We think so. We have all the people who have had any contact with the victims on the serum now. There haven’t been any more outbreaks. So we’d like to think the antibiotics are working, at least, as a preventive measure with those who have had direct contact.”
Faas knew it wasn’t like Judson to be so vague, but there was so much th
at they didn’t know about the disease and there’d been so little time for any serious research.
Penn rocked in his chair a few times, considering the situation. “Now, let’s get to a more important issue. What’s causing it?”
Faas felt as if he were back in high school. He didn’t know the answer. None of the people in the room knew the answer and they were trying not to make eye contact. For his part, he’d heard very little chatter in the terrorist circuits about the attacks. Just as the health guys were working blind, the investigative effort was also operating in the dark.
“You must have something to tell me,” Penn persisted. “How are these people contracting the disease?”
There was some shuffling of the papers. The president’s stare was directed at the NIH director.
Rich Judson shrugged. “We know they’re contracting it through something taken internally. At least, that’s the situation with the first victim on each site. But we don’t know what that substance is. We’ve ruled out any number of possible subst—”
“We know who the first victims were in each incident?”
“Yes, sir. From the autopsies, we’ve been able to determine the time of death and in each incident, one victim is clearly more severely decomposed than the others. Our conclusion is that the initial victim contracted the disease prior to passing it on.”
Faas saw Bea Devera take out a file and leaf through it.
“Also, there’s the destructive path of the disease,” Judson added. “It’s clear that the first individual had contracted it internally. In these individuals, there’s much more damage to the internal organs than to the external tissue.”
“Okay, so then we know the primary victim must have contracted the infection by eating, drinking, or inhaling the microbe,” Penn summarized.
