The others were already drifting toward the gate. Stephanie walked down the row toward him, her forehead wrinkling with worry. “Something’s wrong,” she said as she reached him, “we should go find out. It might be a fire, they’ll need us. Grab your shoes and tools.” She walked past him and picked up her bundle. Henry sat on the unplowed turf at the edge of the field and brushed his feet off, slowly pulling his shoes on and watching the other farm workers as they began to hurry toward Amos. He took a minute to wipe his face, nervous and suddenly shy of the others.
The others were crowded around the iron fence watching as a string of military vehicles passed them. The City bells were still ringing and Amos pulled himself together first. “Okay folks,” he rumbled, “grab your buckets and follow those trucks.”
“Is it a fire?” asked one of the farmhands. Amos shrugged. Stephanie was squinting at the skyline again, her dusty hand making a shade.
“There’s no smoke,” she murmured.
“Maybe we just can’t see it,” said Henry.
“Maybe– but it’s not like it used to be. There’s no smog or traffic exhaust for it to get lost in. We can usually see fires for miles, even past the Barrier.”
“Maybe someone’s attacking the City.”
Stephanie shook her head and bent to pick up her bucket. “The soldiers would have stopped and told us to get home or to our stations. We used to do drills all the time.”
The iron gate clanged behind them and they started jogging down the road, following the convoy of trucks. Here and there someone would come out of a nearby house or business, joining the flow of people, but the street was still mostly empty.
“Where is everybody?” growled Amos. The big man was beginning to sweat though he hadn’t even started breathing heavy yet. Henry began to become nervous. If the foreman was getting scared then something must be very wrong.
“They’re at the courthouse,” called someone farther up.
Amos’s face split into a nasty grin. “Good. Maybe that Pazzo guy finally got what was coming to him.”
“No, that’s not it,” puffed Stephanie, “They wouldn’t send all those trucks just for one assassination.”
Their conjectures were interrupted by a wall of uniformed soldiers telling them to stay back. Henry remember Amos’s smile though, saved it for later like a secret note, just to him. Someone else in the City understood vengeance.
Thirty
“We came to help,” yelled Stephanie, holding up her bucket. The soldiers looked nervously at each other and at the small crowd that was forming around them. Henry guessed that it was a good thing almost everyone was inside. Otherwise the crowd would be much larger. But then he noticed the soldiers standing on the steps. They were facing the doors of the courthouse, not the crowd outside. They were dressed in plastic suits with breathing masks. As Henry watched, a soldier with a cart began handing more of the suits down the line of the soldiers closer to him and to the crowd. The panic was almost immediate. The crowd backed away, and some of the people shouted. There was a broad space between the soldiers and the crowd now. An officer stepped into the space, the hood of his suit still not on, his face still a human one. He held up a hand for quiet and Henry was shocked as the crowd fell silent.
“There has been an accident in the courthouse. A bacterium has been released– we don’t know what it is yet, but given the nature of the trial, we want to isolate it. We’re going to move the people inside to the hospital and we need you to go to your homes and stay inside until the Military Governor gives the all clear. There is nothing you can do to help. The work day is finished, please return to your homes. We will broadcast an update as soon as we can and give you information on friends and family as soon as it’s available. Please let us do our jobs and return home safely.” He pulled his suit on and stepped back through the perimeter of soldiers. The crowd began to disperse, fleeing farther into the City, scattering like ash.
“I guess we should go back to the All-Work Station and drop off our tools Henry,” said Stephanie, her eyes still wide, strands of hair slicked to her brow with sweat, “and then go home.”
“Forget that,” said Amos, “I’ll meet you at Margie’s in ten minutes. The ‘shine’s on me.” He wandered off, looking a little stunned and directionless.
“Margie’s?” asked Henry as they walked toward the All-Work Station.
“The only bar where Immunes and Cureds can drink together without any fistfights breaking out. And the only one not regularly raided. I think the Governor turns a blind eye to it as long as there’s no trouble.”
“Is Amos an Immune?”
“Yeah, but he’s one of the Immunes that refuses to treat us like crap. His wife and his kid were Infected.”
“Are they Cured?”
“No, they died in the Plague. I don’t know the whole story though. But he blames the people who made the bacteria, not the Infected. Or the Cured.”
There was no one at the station when they got there. “I’d better leave a note, just in case,” said Stephanie, “I hope Bernice wasn’t in the courthouse. I have a feeling that she was though. And a lot of our guys were using some of their saved up tokens to take days off and see it too.” She suppressed a sob and against his will, Henry felt a pang of sympathy for her and a suffocating blanket of loneliness in the silent office. He tried not to think of the giant blackboard with its list of names. He touched her shoulder.
“Hey, don’t worry. We don’t know anything yet. Maybe it was a false alarm. Or maybe it was just one small part of the courthouse that was exposed. The officer said they didn’t know what it was, either. Maybe it’s just an experiment or something. Not a disease at all.”
Stephanie sniffed and nodded. “You’re right, I shouldn’t panic yet.” She wiped her eyes with a small clean spot on her sleeve and tacked the note to the door. “Let’s go meet Amos.”
Margie’s turned out to be a badly lit bakery with a banged up pool table and a few televisions. Someone had tried to add some style though, lining the top shelves with wildly colored jars of pickled vegetables interspersed with tangles of twinkle lights. The glass cases were filled with sandwiches wrapped in stained cloth napkins and lumpy loaves of bread. The whole place smelled of fermenting yeast. Henry found it comforting. He was relieved to see Rickey already losing to Vincent at pool. He wondered how they found the place, but the crowd that was quickly forming around them told him that pretty much everyone had naturally made their way here. Amos saw them and waved from a far table. Stephanie headed toward him while Henry stopped to let his friends know he was there.
“Hey,” said Vincent, looking concerned, “have you seen Melissa or Pam?”
“No, I’m just relieved to see you two. I think Pam went to the trial. And Molly is still at the hospital. Has the news been on yet?”
Rickey shook his head. “No, I think the chick that does the news was probably there too. She was there yesterday.” He twitched his head toward Stephanie and Amos. “Those people from your work?”
“Yeah. Well, at least for today’s work. Come over and meet them when you’re done.”
Henry moved away, uncomfortable with the way Vincent was staring at him. He hadn’t told them about his meeting with the Governor yet, and he didn’t really want to. But Vincent would be suspicious until he did. He’d try to stop Henry’s plan, and that was something Henry couldn’t allow. He retreated to the relative anonymity of Amos’s table. “Why a bakery?” he said, sitting on a cracked leather stool.
Amos grinned. “Beer.”
“What?”
“It’s the only place with beer. Wheat beer. Everyone else just has moonshine of various potencies. But I like beer.”
“Why doesn’t anyone else make it? Everyone gets a wheat ration right?”
“Yeah, but they’re the only ones who know how to make the right yeast. Margie’s husband was a microbiologist before. Kind of his thing. It’s a family secret now.”
Stephanie sat down with two cracked mugs. She handed Henry one. “Thought you better start with the beer,” she said, “the ‘shine still lays me out and I’ve been drinking it for a few years now.” She turned to Amos. “Hear anything yet?”
“Nope. But if they had to move everyone into the hospital it’ll be a few hours until everything is settled. Still, you’d think they’d warn people away or something.”
Henry looked around, losing the thread of the conversation in the gentle hum of the place. Every few seconds the string of bells on the door rattled as another group came in. Vincent and Rickey gave up the pool game as the bakery became more crowded and wandered over. The pool table was appropriated as seating. The smell of cooking food filled up the spaces between bodies and Henry was sure Margie’s was going to have a record sales day in both alcohol and food. The employees didn’t look any happier than the other people though. At last the televisions crackled loudly and the bakery fell dead silent. The screens stuttered and at last focused on a sparsely furnished cinderblock room where soldiers moved constantly around at various tasks, though none of them were in bio-hazard suits, which Henry took as a good sign. The Military Governor stood at a table strewn with papers talking to another soldier.
“Sir?” called someone from behind the camera, “We’re ready for you.”
The Governor looked up and nodded. He walked around the table toward the camera. The skin on Henry’s arm crawled with tiny sparks as the Governor came into sharp focus. The man looked exhausted. In the space of a day he seemed to have aged another ten years. Henry suddenly didn’t want to hear what was going to be said. He looked around for an exit but he was crammed in by motionless bodies, all eyes on the bakery’s two screens. He could see the panic on other faces too and he knew he wasn’t being irrational.
“Good evening. This afternoon, the prison uncovered a plot by Dr. Robert Pazzo to release a new strain of the December Plague into the public. Through hard work and quick thinking, Officer Stan Kembrey and his team were able to alert the officers of the court that Dr. Pazzo was likely using himself as the incubating host for this bacteria.”
There was a collective gasp around Henry. He could smell burning toast as someone forgot the oven.
“The team at the prison believes that we caught him in time to prevent transmission. As a precaution, however, we have isolated the potentially infected inside the hospital. It’s too soon to determine the length of the quarantine, but we will get that information both to those of you watching outside the hospital and to our people who are waiting inside.
“Since I took this office, I’ve prided myself on our transparency. I will not hide any information that we know from you. In a moment Dr. Lang will tell us what is known about this strain of bacteria and what we can expect in the next days and weeks. In return, I must ask you not to panic. The phones in the hospital have been turned on and will remain so throughout. Please use these to contact your loved ones. Do not try to break quarantine. There are soldiers stationed both inside and outside the hospital. The last thing anyone wants is to use force to keep the quarantine secure, but we will if we must. For those of you outside the hospital, we will need your help especially during this crisis. Please do not flee the City, your work is going to be vital to keep everything running. You are safe here, the bacteria has been contained. We all must work together to get past this. I’ll turn it over to Dr. Lang for the moment.”
There was a murmur around Henry as a short man in a patched lab coat fidgeted his way into view. “Margie!” someone yelled, “Bread’s burning.” Someone else opened the door and a cool breeze threaded it’s way in between the bodies, barely reaching Henry before it became a tepid splash of air. There was a little shifting, but then everyone was quiet again as the doctor began to speak.
“I was hoping that Dr. Carton would be willing to do this, but his health is failing, and he refused to speak on camera.” The doctor held up his hands in a calming gesture. “I want you to know he is working closely with us on this though. It will take time to verify our information– we have to be careful of course, but I will tell you what we know so far.” He pulled out a thick fold of papers from his oversized pocket. “Most of what we know so far comes from Dr. Pazzo’s attorney, Frank Courtlen, Officer Kembrey at the prison and a– Dr. Rider. They’ve apparently known about the bacteria for a short time and were working with the authorities to find it and stop its release.” Vincent nudged Henry.
“Think that’s why they couldn’t stay when they cured us?” he hissed.
“The lab that Dr. Pazzo worked for was responsible for the development and accidental release of the original December Plague, which was subsequently cured by Dr. Carton, of course. What only a few people knew though, was that another strain of the same bacteria was developed at the same time. This strain was more powerful because of a certain plasmid . . .” The doctor trailed off for a second as he saw the Governor shaking his head. “Anyway, you don’t need all that medical speak, the point is, the other strain was stronger because it is incurable. There is no antibiotic that can treat it, not now and not in the future. The bacteria were frozen in three vials and locked away in a vault. It’s unclear at this point how Dr. Pazzo got his hands on it, but he did and smuggled it into prison at his arrest. At some point in the past twenty-four to forty-eight hours, we believe that Dr. Pazzo infected himself with the bacteria and walked into the courthouse today, intending to infect as many people as possible.
“Fortunately for us and all the people in the courthouse, we probably caught him before he became widely contagious. Chances are very good that Dr. Pazzo himself is the only person infected. We also don’t know if this bacteria would have the same mutation as the last strain. It maybe as harmless as its creators originally meant it to be. However, it would be foolish not to keep an extra watchful eye on ourselves and our neighbors in the next few weeks in case the contagion has somehow escaped. If it follows a similar path to the December Plague, then symptoms would be very similar, and may not be apparent for some time. If you or a loved one is stumbling more than usual or seems clumsier than normal, is slurring their speech, acting drunk or impaired, has strange cravings or compulsions, or becomes unusually or inappropriately angry, please go to the dental clinic near St. Agricol church, it is being converted to an alternate quarantine station and there will be medical staff ready to help you. Please do not try to approach anyone displaying these symptoms or enter their house. If you were immune last time, do not assume you will be immune this time. It is highly unlikely that you are. We have yet to determine if this is airborne or not, we will let you know as soon as we do.”