Code Orange

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “According to your headmaster, Olivia, the whole school says so.” Finelli was smiling in a nice way, as if he remembered being sixteen and in love. Or had lots of practice setting hostile witnesses at ease. “When did you last see Mitty, Olivia?”

  Olivia folded her arms. “Prior to a discussion, I want to know what the discussion is about.” Her arms and chin were trembling. She looked to Derek for help. He had none to give.

  “How do you do, Ms. Clark?” said the woman. “I'm Dr. Barb Graham. I'm an epidemiologist with the CDC. This has to do with your biology papers. Your biology teacher and your headmaster believe that the three of you have been inseparable during your research and that Mitty did most of his research, Ms. Clark, with your help.”

  Olivia stared at her blankly.

  “Did you do the smallpox research together?” asked Dr. Graham.

  Olivia was puzzled. “My project was typhoid fever, but I did do some work on smallpox. I was worried Mitty wouldn't bother, so I sort of preread books for him.”

  It struck Derek forcibly how polite Mitty had been about this. Derek would have been mental.

  “Did you preread any hundred-year-old medical texts?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did you do any online research with Mitty?”

  Olivia shook her head. “We used books. Current books. Useful books.”

  “Did you see or touch any hundred-year-old medical textbooks that Mitty's mother purchased for her decorating business? There were four all together.”

  “I don't even know about them.”

  “In one of those books, Mitty found an old envelope that was filled with scabs of smallpox from a 1902 epidemic. Did he discuss these scabs with you?”

  Olivia shook her head.

  “Did he show them to you?”

  “No.”

  “The scabs are infectious, aren't they?” said Derek, figuring it out.“Mitty's going to get smallpox, isn't he?”

  Olivia backed against the wall, pressing her spine to the plaster as if it would keep her upright.“That's impossible,” she whispered.

  “That's impossible,” agreed Dr. Graham calmly.

  The FBI agents were watching Dr. Graham as if they too wanted reassurance that it was impossible.“What are the odds that Mitty could get smallpox from those scabs?” Derek asked her.

  “Virtually one hundred percent impossible,” said Dr. Graham.

  “But not actually one hundred percent impossible? There's a chance?”

  Dr. Graham brushed away the thought with a hand gesture. “Infinitesimally small.”

  Then why were they here? Derek wanted to know. If the scabs were infectious, and Mitty could get sick, of course they'd round up anybody who had touched the scabs. But if the scabs were not infectious, and nobody could get sick, who cared? It was pretty heavy-duty to bring not one but two FBI agents into this—agents who had already coordinated their efforts with the CDC.

  “We need to find Mitty,” said McKay. “I'm going to let you read a letter he left on his laptop. It's written to his parents. His laptop was in his bedroom, not turned off, but sleeping, so when his mother touched a key, this material came up. We printed it out.”

  Olivia and Derek read together:

  So—Mom, Dad—this is a letter.

  Olivia could not even hold the pages. She hurt from the soles of her feet to the core of her heart.

  Mitty had been thinking of suicide when she stood in the park next to him?

  Mitty had been thinking of death when Olivia played with puppies? When she asked about Valentine's Day?

  The extent to which she had not known Mitty Blake hit Olivia so hard that she could not see the words on the pages. She did not want these people near her. She wanted to go home and bawl.

  He didn't trust me, she thought. He didn't think I could handle such serious topics. And I didn't trust him either. I thought he was kind of shallow. And here he's deeper than I've ever been, and thinking about more profound things than I ever have.

  Could she be in this stupid office, with these stupid strangers, talking about stupid things—when Mitty wasn't alive anymore?

  No, Mitty! Please say you didn't take your own life to save us. I would honor you forever, Mitty. But I don't want to honor your grave. I want you.

  “No,” said Derek flatly. “He's not out there killing himself. There was this suicide in school last year and we all had to write essays for English about teenage suicide. Mitty wrote that suicide is vicious. The teacher gave him a D. She said he was insensitive and if somebody got overwhelmed, Mitty had to be understanding. Mitty said he understood that this kid intentionally destroyed his parents. He said a person of courage stuck it out. Mitty's not going to off himself.”

  “But he seems to address that very problem,” said Finelli. “He explains that his case is different. And presumably Mitty left his laptop open just so his parents would read this letter.”

  Derek didn't believe it. Not Mitty. Mitty had too much fun in the world. He wouldn't quit.

  He remembered with a certain horror that Mitty's favorite band was Widespread Panic, his favorite album Ain't Life Grand, his favorite song “Heroes.”

  Derek couldn't go there. He wouldn't. Mitty was alive, had to be alive.

  Wasn't there a movie where the guy vanished in the Rocky Mountains to live out his disease or die trying? That sounded like Mitty. If I were Mitty, thought Derek, where would I hole up?

  The agents wanted to know if either he or Olivia had seen Mitty after school the day before.

  “Mitty and I went for a walk in the park,” said Olivia. “I headed home around four.”

  “And what did Mitty do?”

  Olivia seemed to crumple.“I don't know.” She accepted a tissue from Dr. Graham, mopped her eyes and pulled herself together. “But I'll tell you my own conclusion. Nobody can get smallpox from century-old lesion material. And furthermore, the FBI and the CDC don't show up at a high school because a kid found useless dust. They don't come because a kid missed dinner or skipped class. They don't come because yet another teenager feels suicidal. You came because you think there's something to worry about. And you're federal agents, so you think it's a potential nationwide worry. What exactly is this nationwide worry?”

  They didn't answer.

  “A smallpox epidemic?” she asked.

  “Nonsense,” said Dr. Graham.

  Olivia closed her eyes, summoning facts from the depths of her mind.“As I recall, when mad cow disease appeared in Britain, the U.S. government made a decision not to allow a single American who had lived in Britain to donate blood, because they might have eaten contaminated meat and thus have bad blood, and so recipients of their blood might get sick. Yet there was not a single case of mad cow disease in the entire United States, let alone one transmitted from a person who had lived in Britain, let alone one from a blood donor. So in fact, the U.S. government in recent history made a huge decision to prevent a disease when there was not a scrap of evidence to verify that there was a scrap of risk. Is this the same thing? Contracting smallpox is virtually one hundred percent impossible, but you're still worried—in fact, desperate— and you've got to find the one person who might have it?”

  Derek was thinking in another direction, drawing on two years of studying the anthrax letters. He said, “When he went online, was Mitty offering his smallpox scabs for sale or asking for information or what?”

  “He stated that he had recently found them and was anybody interested in them.”

  A thrill of understanding raced through Derek Skorvanek. “This isn't about getting sick, is it? It's about getting on the Internet. Mitty got on the Internet. And everybody else is there too. Everybody—good and bad, sane and insane. Individuals, groups, cults, governments. You're shrugging about the virus, but you're not shrugging about people who might want that virus.”

  The FBI guys looked even more sober than they had to start with.

  “Some Al Qaeda type with a bankroll,�
�� Derek guessed. “Somebody somewhere has been demanding action from his friendly local terrorist cell. Find me an infectious disease I can spread and I'll pay you anything. And then Mitty Blake goes and writes to the world— guess what! I have some.”

  “You're dramatizing,” said Finelli.

  “We,” said Derek,“are plain old high school juniors. You are federal agents with an interest in some kid's school paper. You are the ones being dramatic. But here's my guess: what a terrorist could do is get hold of Mitty. He gets sick and they're golden. They launch the first successful bioterrorist attack on America.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was cold, but not the cold of outdoors. The chill was motionless. An unheated warehouse, maybe? But in February, a building without heat would be colder than this. Mitty thought it was around fifty-five degrees. Not toasty but not lying on an ice floe either.

  There was a humming sound, not the hum of a refrigerator motor or traffic on a distant turnpike but a windy murmur. There were unpleasant smells, musty and oily. And although it was very dark, when Mitty twisted around, he could see a faint glow behind him, like a distant candle.

  But mostly, Mitty could not move.

  He could turn his head but couldn't shrug. Could twitch his feet but not shift his legs and arms. Could flex his fingers but not his wrists. He was on his back on a sagging surface, but it was not soft like a mattress. Against his cheek was plastic, not cotton.

  His head ached more than any headache he'd ever had. The pain wasn't behind his eyes like a regular headache but in his left temple; in the bone. His stomach hurt and his bladder was full.

  These things were minor.

  What mattered to Mitty Blake was that he was afraid. He was afraid in every muscle and fiber, unable to throw off his fear because he was helpless.

  His breathing was ragged and jerky, as if he were a little kid trying not to cry.

  He strained and flailed against whatever held him down.

  Nothing came of this.

  He wet his lips. He was desperately thirsty. His struggling set off a shudder that rippled through his body. He swallowed hard to keep from vomiting.

  It was not rope or cord holding him down. The stickiness, the straight edges when he flexed against his bindings, must mean duct tape. Duct tape was supposed to be a joke, but it turned out to be stronger than Mitty.

  He was fully clothed, although without his shoes. He was lying on his back, and since there were no lumps where his pockets were, his wallet and cell phone must be gone. His watch might be under a layer of duct tape, because his right wrist felt different from his left. His iPod was definitely still in its armband. If he got the duct tape off, he had music.

  Mitty arched his neck to see, or at least identify, the glow behind him. It was oddly colorful, sort of blue. But his head exploded with pain when he twisted his spine.

  Ninety percent of patients had severe headache.

  He sank back down.

  The humming ceased. After a moment of silence came a series of awkward clanks, like medieval armor. And then more silence. As if the world had ended and Mitty had been abandoned.

  His teeth were chattering.

  Eighty-four percent of smallpox patients experienced intense shivering.

  Mitty wasn't gagged. He could break the silence, but he was afraid of what he would say if he did call out. He might beg.

  Whose silence? he thought. Who put me here? Why?

  The silence was awful. In New York City, did you ever hear nothing? Wasn't there always a purr of traffic and radios, machinery and people? He strained to hear voices or movement, and as if he had ordered something to happen, there was a sudden crash behind him, as if that suit of armor had fallen on a stone floor. Wrapped in his duct tape, he cringed, and hated himself for it.

  Immediately there was a whoosh of air. The next clank was easy to identify: pipes.

  It's just a furnace, thought Mitty. An old-fashioned oil or gas furnace. Steam heat making the pipes clank. The blue light is the pilot and the whoosh was the burner igniting. Furnaces are in basements. All these smells are basement smells.

  I'm alone in a basement.

  Immobilized with duct tape.

  Getting smallpox.

  Mitty's skin crawled. He could feel the virus forming little viral troops, gathering into viral armies and attacking the next essential organ inside him.

  He tried to climb past his headache and get to his memory. He had to figure out how he had gotten here.

  When Olivia had vanished around the curve of the path—Central Park was full of curves, first hiding and then revealing the next vista—Mitty had headed home. It wasn't fair to let his mother and father read that letter. He had to delete it and then change his plans. Mitty might not have a long life ahead of him, but they had plenty of years ahead, and how could they stand it if their son took his own life?

  He walked fast, as if keeping a steady rhythm led to better decisions than strolling.

  At Central Park West, the wide busy street dividing the park from all the buildings on the West Side, Mitty didn't wait for the walk light but crossed in the middle of traffic, a New York skill at which he excelled. He dashed between cars, arching his body to avoid collision, waving to acknowledge honks and pausing the exact right fraction of time to be missed by a taxi fender, all the while looking casual and leisurely.

  Just as he reached the far sidewalk, a woman's voice called, “Mr. Blake!”

  If the woman had called “Mitty!” he would have ignored her, since there wasn't anybody he wanted to talk to right then. But the “Mr. Blake” surprised him. Was his father in the neighborhood? But his dad's office was on Forty-fourth, and Mitty was now at Seventy-ninth. Puzzled, Mitty turned to see a woman on the far side of Central Park West, right where he had just been, waving both arms high in the air.“Mr. Blake, Mr. Blake!”

  The lights changed; she got the walk light and hurried toward Mitty. Traffic relocated itself: a delivery van pulled out, a taxi pulled over, an ambulance paused, cars whipped around them.

  Mitty was at a loss. Who was she? How did she know him? How come she didn't know him as Mitty? She was wearing brown, a color Mitty's mother felt should be banned. Whenever Mom saw someone wearing a brown dress, she would moan,“Somebody help that woman, please.”

  It was a cold day and everybody was bundled up, but this lady was wrapped to the max: high boots, long coat, gloves, a knitted scarf and a hat. All brown. She had pulled her scarf over her nose and mouth to warm the icy air before she breathed. Literally no skin showed.

  She ground to a halt several feet away from Mitty. “Mr. Blake, my colleagues and I at the CDC received your e-mails, which were forwarded to us.”

  “The CDC?” repeated Mitty. He took a step closer to hear her better. She stepped back, holding up her gloved hand, flat, to keep him at bay.

  She's afraid of me, thought Mitty.

  “It is not likely you have contracted any illness,” she said. She spoke with a peculiar sort of British accent. Twice this year Mitty had ended up in an emergency room with a sports injury; each time his physician had had an accent like this. “But,” she said, “you have handled and inhaled lesion material. Within the last few days, this is right? It is necessary to follow up.”

  The CDC? From Atlanta? Tracked me through the park? Mitty thought. Followed me from school? Me and Olivia?

  At this very moment, in some remote corner of some very secure hospital, were doctors donning gowns and masks and gloves, preparing to probe and poke at Mitty Blake? Had they decided the chance of infectivity was not, after all, nil? That he was going to get smallpox?

  He was blind with fear. “Last Sunday,” he admitted.

  “There is a new procedure,” she said, “which allows us to test blood for buildup of virus.” She gestured toward a Lincoln Town Car, the kind used by private taxi services, which was currently breaking all traffic laws as it made a U-turn. Its windows were tinted so passengers couldn't be seen. The car
was too stained with the salty snowdebris of winter to be sure of its color.

  “We are ninety-nine point nine percent sure this will be a fuss over nothing,” she said,“but it was decided to run tests anyway. Please. We are ready for you now.”

  The back door of the Town Car began to open.

  Mitty knew about the fight-or-flight response. Mitty would have said that he personally was a fighter and would never run.

  Mitty was wrong. He ran.

  He moved faster than he had known his legs could move, his mind shooting ahead, already deciding he should avoid the apartment. He'd zigzag toward Columbus Circle, lose the car in the crowds, head for Times Square.

  Mitty sucked in air, circled a baby carriage, dodged a wheelchair, threaded between a construction crew and their project. He thought, This is how the disease will spread. Me. Running and breathing. Mitty Blake, hot agent. A threat to his country.

  Mitty stopped running.

  He had not gone half a block.

  He turned around and went back to the woman in brown.

  Now, in the dark of the cellar, Mitty struggled to free his hands. It wasn't an escape attempt. He needed to examine his skin. If I could get loose, he thought, I could pry off the front of the furnace and use the light of the fire to check for pox.

  He felt permeable, as if anything might penetrate his skin. Or had.

  He could not free himself.

  Mitty stared upward. It was too dark to see the ceiling. He couldn't guess what was happening. But one thing was clear: these people expected him to get smallpox.

  When Mitty had turned around and walked back to the woman in brown, he had been weirdly filled with relief. Whatever came next, he didn't have to make the decisions. All responsibility would lie with the doctors.

  In his new relaxed state, Mitty had thought about food.

  Other people often talked about priorities. Responsible people were supposed to have these. Mitty hardly ever had a priority, but now that his nightmare belonged to the CDC, he did have one.

  Pizza.

  Walking back to the Town Car, Mitty was starving to death. He'd have pizza delivered to his hospital room. He could actually picture his hospital room now, and it didn't seem too bad. It would be bright and light with a color television high on the wall, and his parents would be outside in the hall, waving to him through a little window in the door, telling him to be brave.