Plague

CHAPTER 28

Ralph Wilson sat in an administrative office at the Queen’s Medical Center and stared out the window at the abandoned streets below. He pictured kids out here, people jogging, teenagers heading down to the bus stop to get to the beach for the day’s surfing. But there wasn’t any of that. There was fluttering garbage and stray dogs and every once in a while, a group of men out prowling the streets.

It reminded him of Kosovo when he was there supervising, unofficially, a NATO team providing medical assistance to civilians. He was a young man then and too stupid to know that he was expendable.

The Army Rangers had dropped him off without anything but the name of a contact and the clothes on his back, and that was the way he liked it. Or so he thought, until it started raining so hard it was as if the sky had opened a wound and was pouring its lifeblood out onto the crumbling city. He contracted pneumonia and survived only because a family in town took him in and nursed him back to health with soup and tea. Otherwise, he would’ve died alone underneath a bridge that he was using as shelter.

The family had been Muslim, and he remembered when the soldiers with the harsh Czech accents had come into the home by kicking in the door. They wanted to take the wife and the young daughter. The man of the house had not yet heard of the rape houses where they would be forced into sex acts with dozens, even hundreds of men a day. They would be forced to have sex with other women, including relatives. Mothers and daughters were especially prized.

The Serbs and Croats were no longer human. Ralph had seen their devastation in the mass graves in soccer fields and parks. As the two men were dragging away the wife and daughter, Ralph, still weak from his illness, rose from his bed, pulled out a.45 caliber from its holster, and shot three rounds, two entering one man’s head and the other finding its mark in the other man’s throat.

The family was grateful but shocked. They would certainly be marked for death now. Ralph helped them gather their belongings and they snuck in the dead of night to a NATO encampment almost a hundred miles away. The route was treacherous. The streets revealed nothing but decaying buildings with decaying souls looking out of them, their eyes blank. The war had taken what was human in them and crushed it.

Now, twenty years later, at night he would occasionally wake up and see the buildings before him. Monsters in the darkness that were slowly collapsing, consuming whatever was around them.

Looking out onto the streets of Honolulu, he saw that same evil here. Whatever it was, it was here. Not fully but a spark. It was beginning to take over and he knew that eventually, there would be nothing left.

“Ralph?”

Ralph looked up from the window and saw Duncan Adams standing by the door. “Yeah, Duncan. What can I do for you?”

“I was calling your name for a good ten seconds. You doin’ okay?”

“Yes, yes, I was, um, somewhere else. Have a seat.” Duncan sat down across from him and crossed his legs. “So where’s your sidekick?” Ralph said.

“Samantha?” Duncan said. “Why would you think she’s my sidekick?”

“You guys are always together and when you’re not, you’re calling each other.”

“I wouldn’t describe Sam as anybody’s sidekick. If anything, I’m hers.”

Ralph laughed softly. “She once punched one of her professors when he made a pass at her after class. She tell you that?”

“No.”

“Philosophy professor, I think. They’re all wackos anyway and this one was an aggressive wacko. I guess she belted him and nearly laid him out. She was almost kicked out of school but her father filed a lawsuit against the university and they backed down.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. And to answer your question, I’m not sure where she is. I know she’s been setting up the aid stations the past couple of days.”

“I spoke to her about an hour ago but I thought she would’ve been here by now. I have some news, Duncan, and eventually you’d hear it anyway so I thought I should share it with you.” He pulled out his iPad and passed it Duncan. “That’s Pushkin’s report on the infectiousness of Agent X.”

Duncan read for a moment. “This can’t be right.”

“It is.”

“That’s impossible,” he said quietly.

“It’s not. We’re gearing up for-”

The door opened and Ralph’s assistant Betty poked her head in. “Sorry, Dr. Wilson, there’s someone here to meet with you and I thought you might be interested in meeting with them.”

“Who is it?”

“Benjamin Cornell from the anti-vaccination people.”

“That son of a bitch. Gimmie a minute, Betty, and then let him back.”

“Not happy with him, I take it?”

“He’s the one that’s been attacking our vaccine shipments. I’ve dealt with him before. He targeted a meeting at the World Health Organization in Sweden a few years back and he started spraying animal blood on anybody walking in.”

The door opened and Betty led Benjamin inside. Ben smiled and nodded hello to both men before sitting down.

“Beautiful day, boys. We should be out enjoying nature, not stuck in an office.”

“Nature’s trying to kill us right now,” Duncan said.

“Cut the shit, Ben,” Ralph interjected. “I know you’re the one attacking my vaccine shipments.”

“They’re not your shipments, Ralph. And where’s your proof that I was even twenty miles near those shipments? Besides, that’s not my style.”

“You don’t have a style. You’re a terrorist.”

“I’m a patriot. What I do is no different than what the Founding Fathers did. I stand up to tyranny and arbitrary rules thrown at us from the government. You’re too deep in it now to see it, Ralph, but I protect people like you too.”

“Protect me from medicine? I don’t need your protection. And neither do these people. As far as proof goes, if I had any you’d be sitting in jail right now instead of in my office.”

“I don’t think there’s enough people manning the jails as it is,” he said with a grin. “Ralph, we’re getting off on the wrong foot. We’re really on the same side, you and I. You want to see people healthy and disease free and I want to see them healthy and disease free. Does it really matter that much that our methods of how to achieve those goals are different?”

Ralph stuck a finger near Benjamin’s face. “Keep the fuck away from my vaccines or you’re gonna be sorry. We’re now under martial law. I won’t be so inclined to follow procedure if another one of my shipments is attacked. I’ll just send some MPs down to arrest you and hold you in a brig until we get back to the mainland.”

“Don’t you mean if we get back to the mainland?”

Ralph was silent a while. “Who the hell told you?”

“Just an educated guess.”

Duncan looked from one man to the other. “What’re you two talking about?”

“You haven’t told him?” Benjamin said. He chuckled. “I think you should maybe tell the people who’ve risked their lives coming out here what you plan to do.”

“I don’t give a damn about what you think. And the only reason I asked you here is to give you one more chance. I have another shipment of vaccines tonight, which I’m sure you know about. They get touched, and you’re done.”

Benjamin smiled to himself and rose. “Pleasure as always, Ralph. Dr. Adams, nice seeing you as well.”

Duncan nodded and waited until he had left before speaking. “What was he talking about, Ralph?”

Ralph exhaled loudly and leaned back in his chair. Exhaustion permeated every muscle, bone, and sinew in his body. Even his skin felt numb and tired. He hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours and looked forward to the time when he could be back at his own home and in his own bed.

“Ralph, what was he talking about?”

“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room. Not yet. Understood?”

“Sure.”

“You better shut the door then and sit down.”