He looked around the table, then went on.
“The short answer is that a lot more people are going to be dying over the next few days and I don’t have any way to help them. We can’t store the bodies. It’s hot as hell out there. Mosquitoes are everywhere. You put all that stuff together and you can expect a pretty huge die-off over the next few days. I say we start looking for a place to bury the dead. Temporarily maybe. The bodies can be moved to a proper cemetery later. But we need to find a grassy area now where we can dig some graves.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Schwab said. “How did this salmonella junk get started anyway?”
“I don’t think that’s really the issue we should be worrying about right now,” said Shaw, holding up his hands in frustration. “Doc, we’ll deal with the dead after we see what Mardel does to us. Right now, I just need the big picture. What else you got?”
Bailey nodded again.
“Okay. Big picture. Well, we’re out of food. We need fresh water, too. A lot of it. The people who aren’t busy shitting their guts out from the salmonella are starving and suffering from dehydration.”
“Okay,” Shaw said. “I’m supposed to be giving a press conference here in about thirty minutes. I’ll mention it then, and hopefully it’ll light a fire under Homeland Security’s ass. Anything else?”
“Well, yes. While you’re at it you might as well ask for a barge loaded down with antibiotics to be brought in here. On top of that I’ve got heart patients, diabetics, people with hypertension and about a hundred other chronic conditions. I don’t have medicines. I don’t have supplies. Even minor injuries are going to turn into something serious if I can’t treat them correctly.”
“I can’t read all that on the news,” Shaw said. “They’ll just cut me off. Do me a favor and write out a list of medicines and supplies you need, and I’ll see it gets forwarded. Anything else?”
“Yeah, I got a lot. You need to send those cameras into our shelters. If you want people to get motivated to help us, they need to see what’s really going on in there. It’s like walking through hell.”
“I know, Doc,” Shaw said tiredly. “Just put what you need on the list. I’ll see it gets to the news. That goes for the rest of you, too. Give me your lists before I go live.”
Shaw looked down at his notes and sighed.
“Okay, Joe, what have you got?”
“Um,” Schwab said. He coughed to clear his throat and then squirmed in his chair until he was sitting up straight. Eleanor had the distinct impression that speaking out loud at these meetings was a real torture for him, that he was much more comfortable out in the field. “Okay. Um, well, first I guess I got a problem with feral hogs.”
“What?” Eleanor said. “Did you say hogs?”
“Uh, yeah. I-I’ve had eight crews attacked so far.”
“I don’t understand,” Eleanor said. “You mean pigs, right? You’re men are being attacked by pigs. In the middle of the third-biggest city in the country?”
“Not exactly,” Shaw said. “Feral hogs are different. They’re pigs, but they’ve gone wild. Usually only takes a generation for it to happen. They grow as big as the pigs you’ve probably seen, but they’ve got tusks and they’re about the meanest critters on the planet. I remember last year Sugarland had a bad problem with them. They invade a subdivision and tear up yards and eat trash, that kind of thing. They even kill dogs and cats. They’ll eat anything they can catch. I imagine that includes your men.”
“That’s right,” Schwab said. “The floodwaters are driving them out of the woods where they usually hide, and my men are running into them when they go to some of these pump stations. One of them gored a man last night. Luckily he had some other guys with him and they were able to beat the thing away with wrenches.”
Schwab looked around the room, then settled his gaze on Shaw.
“Captain, I want some police protection for my men. The men would feel a whole lot better if they had somebody with a rifle going along with them.”
Shaw shook his head.
“Joe, I can’t spare an officer to go out with every crew. My people are stretched to the breaking point as it is. Tell you what, I’ll ask for more rifles. What I get, I’ll distribute to your people. I’m sure you’ve got some good country boys working for you who know how to shoot. How’s that?”
“Yeah,” Schwab said. “Yeah, that’d be okay.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Well, uh, I guess you know most of the problems I’m facing. None of that’s changed. But there is one thing.”
“Yeah?”
Schwab swallowed nervously. “Some of my guys have been telling me about survivors they’ve seen.”
To Eleanor, Shaw seemed to suddenly stiffen in his chair. “Yes?” Shaw said.
“Have you guys had any reports of people, you know, eating each other? Some of my men, they . . . they’ve heard from people they’ve pulled out of flooded houses that there are survivors out there eating each other. They break their way into homes and eat the people they find there. My men are scared.”
Ah, there it is
, Eleanor thought
. The genie’s out of the bottle now
.
For several days, they’d been hearing the same reports. Survivors wandering through the flooded ruins of South Houston, in such a deep state of shock that they act like zombies. And there had been multiple reports of cannibalism. That part wasn’t rumor. They’d confirmed that.
And though he wasn’t in on the intelligence, Dr. Bailey had as much as predicted it during one of their previous meetings. Many of the survivors, he had said, will be dealing with stress levels far beyond their tolerance. Anxiety over the survival of family and friends, over their homes and pets and cars, would be driving even emotionally stable people to the breaking point. Post-traumatic stress disorder would be about as common in the flooded remains of the city as mosquitoes, and that would lead to some pretty odd behaviors.
“Listen to me,” Shaw said. There was a hard note of warning in his voice. “That right there is gonna stop. We’re not gonna go around spreading a lot of wild-ass rumors about cannibals, you understand me? Tell your men there are no cannibals out there. There are survivors who are starving, yes. A lot of them are probably in shock, too. But they are not cannibals. Got it?”
Eleanor looked at him, her mouth agape in surprise.
What was he saying?
The two of them had had conversations on this very subject. What he had just said was the exact opposite of reports he himself had confirmed two days earlier.
He caught her eye and gave her a barely perceptible shake of his head. But the message was clear:
Quiet. Don’t say a word.
“I-I got it,” Schwab said. “I was just wondering . . .”
“There’s nothing to those rumors,” Shaw repeated. “Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Frank, how about the fire department?”
Eleanor was still looking at Shaw when Frank Clay started to speak.
“Big news for us is the nearly seven million 9-1-1 calls we’ve been unable to answer. By federal law, each one will have to be followed up on after Mardel. That’ll mean some have been holding for nearly two weeks.”
“Well, most of those will just have to wait, I guess,” said Shaw.
“Yeah, but the time lag isn’t the problem. The problem is what our men will encounter when they go into the areas where most of the calls are coming from. Rescue workers—that’s your people and mine, Mark—are going to be dealing with a lot of unknown contaminants in the water. Chemical, biological, rotting dead bodies, sewage—you name it. The floodwaters are gonna be the nastiest soup you’ve ever seen. Every time our people enter a house they’ll be dealing with mold and possible carbon monoxide poisoning. Buildings’ll be collapsing. At this point, I have no idea how we’re going to manage it. I guess we can hit up the military for some biohazard suits, but even then it’ll be risky for our people. And of course we haven’t even talked about what Hurricane Mardel is likely to do to us.”
Shaw nodded slowly.
“That’ll have to wait, Frank. Write me up a list of critical assets and we’ll get some people to work securing them.”
Shaw let out a sigh and stood up.
“All right,” he said, “that’s it for now. I want each of you to head back to your posts. Frank, send me anything you come up with to help us get ready for Mardel. The rest of you, batten down your hatches and pray for the best.”
And, just like that, the meeting was over. The others filed out in silence, leaving Eleanor and Shaw alone. Shaw gathered up his papers and maps and jammed them into a canvas attaché case embossed with the HPD’s logo on the side. He slid the strap over his shoulder and pulled out his pack of cigarettes.
They walked out of the room and down the library’s front steps together. It was a little after 10:00 A.M. On a normal Houston September morning the sun would have been beating down on them, but the sky was dark and overcast and a steady breeze from the south carried with it the smell of the sea mingled with smoke and chemicals and, underneath all of it, the sickeningly sweet odor of mud and rot. The air had not yet turned the eerie chemical green that announced a coming hurricane, but the smell of the breeze left little doubt that it was on the way, and it was going to be a killer.
“Captain?” Eleanor said. “You mind if I ask you something?”
“Depends. You mind if I smoke?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Good. Then ask away.”
She watched him shake a cigarette loose from the pack and light it with a brass-plated Zippo.
“You lied to Joe Schwab in there. Why?”
“You mean about the cannibalism?”
“That’s right. You know as well as I do those reports are accurate. What if Schwab’s crews end up dealing with those people? Don’t they have a right to know what we know?”
He didn’t answer her right away. He just stood there smoking, lost in thought.
Finally, he said, “Schwab’s people are working primarily inside the Loop. All the reports we’ve gotten have been down around the Deer Park and LaPorte areas. Texas City, Dickinson, Webster, those places. We haven’t seen any of that farther north.”
“So why not tell him the truth?”
Again, he hesitated before answering.
“Look, Eleanor, I’m about to go on national TV and issue a plea for help. I do not want to have to explain that the survivors I’m asking America to help are cannibals. Do you have any idea what a story like that would do to the rescue efforts? Can you imagine what it would do to the morale of this city? I have to think about that. That is my responsibility. It’s on my shoulders. It is my duty to make sure the people of this city get the help they need. I will not have them become pariahs.”
Eleanor glanced across the trash-strewn lawn between the library and the back of Hoffman Hall, where the camera crews were already massing for the press conference.
“And what about them?” she asked. “What if they ask you about it point-blank? What will you say?”
“I will tell them we’ve had our fair share of looters. I’ll say we’ve heard reports of people eating their pets. I’ll tell them we’ve found plenty of shell-shocked survivors. But I’ll deny any reports of cannibalism as unsubstantiated and just plain mean-spirited.”
“Mean-spirited?”
“Racist, in other words,” Shaw said. “Start calling the media racist and they’ll knee-jerk so fast it’ll make your head spin. Before you know it, they’ll make this cannibalism mess a non-issue. They’ll be afraid to mention it, and they’ll condemn anybody who does.”
Shaw finished his cigarette, dropped it to the sidewalk, and rubbed it out with the toe of his boot. Then he took his phone from his shirt pocket and checked it.
“Almost time,” he said. “Listen, Eleanor, I want you to go home to your family.”
“What? You mean right now?”
He nodded.
“Sir, I can’t do that,” she said. “Not with everything that’s going on.”
“Yes, you can. I’m telling you to.”
“Captain, I can’t just leave you like this. Not now. My duty is here.”
“Eleanor, don’t confuse your duty with what others expect you to do. We’re both parents, okay? We have a clear set of obligations—family, country, job. In that order. Go home to your family. Be with them. When the storm’s over, and they’re safe, come back here.”
“What about you, sir? What about your family? You’ve got two sons out there.”
He smiled faintly. The last two weeks had really aged him, she realized. She’d read books in which people went through something awful, and it seemed to age them ten years in as many hours, but she always thought that was a writer’s hyperbole. Real people didn’t age like that.
But he had. She could see it in the slump of his shoulders and in the nests of lines that spread out from the corners of his eyes like river deltas.
“I’ve already taken care of my family’s future,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. My sons will walk away from this with a future they can count on. Now it’s time for me to move on to my other obligations.”
She looked across the trash and mud-strewn yard, where the reporters waited like a pack of hungry hounds, and an awful feeling stirred in her.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m going to go over there and become a scapegoat for every act of mismanagement this city has done up to this point. I’ll take the blame so others can pick up the pieces when this is all done and lead the city forward. And when I’m done with that, I’m going to come right back here and see if I can’t help some of the people in our shelters.”
She started to object, but found she didn’t really have the words for it. What he was saying was awful, but it did make sense. As soon as conditions in the shelter hit the front page of the newspapers and scrolled across the home pages of every Internet provider the world over, the public would demand to know why it had all gone wrong. If Shaw took the blame, it would give the city’s leaders the public opinion mandate they would need to move Houston out of this crisis. If that was even possible.
“Go home, Eleanor,” he said, and turned and walked off toward Hoffman Hall.
She watched him go, a little stunned, and filled once again with awe for the man’s courage. The reporters closed on him, swarmed around him, and soon he was lost among the throng.