Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) (46 page)

Goat Lady’s jaw thrust forward as she focused on a gum pepperoni on the cement. “So the military is leaving the city?”

“Anyone who wants to live will need to evacuate.” Mavis glanced west, toward Palo Verde. Blue skies as far as she could see. Somehow she expected to see black clouds and ravens circling the nuclear power plant. The illness was affecting her more than she thought.

“But this is my home.” Goat Lady hugged the kid so tight it bleated. “I raised my children here.”

“It’s about to become a nuclear wasteland.” Mavis swallowed despite her dry mouth. “And the only things those who stay here will be raising are cancers and radiation sickness.”

“If that was true the government would have told us.”

“I’m the government and I’m telling you.” Mavis raised the handheld. The Rim country, with its iron filled mountains, seemed so far away.

“I’ve never heard of you before Doctor Spanner. So you’ll forgive my scepticism.” Goat Lady rubbed the kid’s back. “Sure, the President is ill and parts of the city are burning, but that’s not affecting us yet. And, no one said anything about leaving our homes.”

Sometimes anonymity was a bitch. She rolled her shoulders. Aches invaded her joints. Her fever must be spiking again. Aspirin. Tea with honey. A splash of brandy. Why couldn’t people just believe her? Life would be so much simpler. Of course, she could order the military to confiscate the animals, but that would only go so far.

And then there was the matter of their care.

She knew less about tending a horse than life on alien planets—which equated to a big fat zero. No, ordering people about wouldn’t work. They had to be convinced it was for their own good. Then Goat Lady would tell her neighbors and everyone would be on board. An idea popped through the fog. “Do you know what the Surgeon General looks like?”

“Of course.” Goat Lady arched a salt and pepper eyebrow. “He’s more important than the President right now.”

“Good. Come with me.” Turning, Mavis marched into her house, the camp’s temporary headquarters despite her and Sunnie’s illness.

Mr. Quartermain, his grandson Justin and the rest of her neighbors plus a handful of servicemen filled her living room getting a crash course on recording vitals on a handheld medical device from the lead doctor and two of his nurses.

Eighty-year old Nani separated from the pack and shuffled into the kitchen.

Acknowledging the training group with a nod, Mavis flopped down at her dining room table and grabbed her laptop. After making sure her fingerprints registered, she opened the computer and typed in her password.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Goat Lady had decided to follow.

Mavis stared at the screen’s reflection. And with the kid goat no less. After a moment, the operating system loaded, and she clicked on the video chat link.

Miles Arnez slept in his high back office chair. His mouth hung slightly open and a soft snore floated out.

Too bad she couldn’t record this. It would prove that the man snored once and for all. “Miles.”

The train of snores remained firmly linked.

“Miles.” Mavis raised her voice. The people in the great room hushed. Miles slept on. “Miles Arnez!”

He snorted up a snore then shook his head. Fever brightened his eyes. He blinked at the screen while his hands crawled over his desktop. “Mavis?”

“Yes and your glasses are on top of your head.” Was it sleep or the illness that had roughened his voice? Probably both.

After raking the readers off his nearly bald scalp, he perched them on his nose. He blinked again then leaned forward so the camera detailed every one of his pores. “Is that a goat? Or have I had one too many medicinal cocktails?”

“It’s a goat, but I wouldn’t rule out the cocktails if I were you.”

Nani set a mug of peppermint tea next to Mavis’s elbow before trudging over to the others. Not that they were continuing with their medical training. Every ear was on her and her conversation.

“Smart ass.” Miles shook his head. “So what did you wake me for? Not more bad news, I hope.”

Lately, it was always bad news. She didn’t want to burden her friend further. But this was one problem only he could solve. “I need you to confirm for the Goat Lady that I will be authorizing a full-scale evacuation of Phoenix within the next forty-eight hours.”

“Forty-eight hours? I’d say send the notice now, while the emergency alert system is still powered. With the last sims you sent, you’re going to need to leave before then. The call to abandon the East coast is supposed to go out tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the routes haven’t been nailed down so no supplies are waiting for the evacuees.”

Goat Lady sucked in a breath. “It’s true?”

Miles pointed through cyberspace at her. “Consider yourself lucky. We’re looking at a near zero chance of survival for those on the Eastern Seaboard. Too damn many power plants.”

“I’ll get the word out. We’ll round up our supplies and every available animal and transport.” Goat Lady dumped the kid into Mavis’s arms then turned on her heel. “We’ll be back in thirty-six hours. Don’t leave without us.”

The kid goat nibbled on the ends of Mavis’s hair.

She tried to hold the creature away from her body but it wiggled and squirmed. Good Lord what if she dropped it?

Smiling, Nani held out her arms. “I’ll take him.”

“Thanks.” Mavis handed it over then wiped her hands on her pants. That was worse than a baby.

Miles’s laughter boomed through the laptop. “You should have seen your face, Mavis!” He took off his glasses to wipe his eyes. “Priceless. Absolutely priceless. However did you manage to take care of a baby?”

Her cheeks heated. “Jack took care of it.”

Babies were such fragile things; it was a wonder they survived. Her son might not have, if it hadn’t been for her husband.

But then, neither had outlived her.

She glanced toward their pictures on the mantel. She really wished they were here now, to help her through this.

Nani cleared her throat. “Well. That’s enough training. Let’s go put what we’ve learned into action.”

Her neighbors and the service men and women slipped out of the room.

Mavis sipped her tea. The peppermint and heat soothed her throat. She waited until the door snicked shut. “Something’s bothering me about the way this disease is spreading.”

“Tell me about it.” Miles scrubbed a hand down his face. “It seems to have popped up everywhere at once.”

“Exactly. Do you think it’s possible that the old strain mutated while it was inside us then resurfaced, like chicken pox returning as shingles?”

“We can’t find any sign that it’s changed enough to become a new strain.”

She blew the steam off her tea. “What if it’s something else?”

Miles rolled his eyes, coughed and then opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a lozenge. “The idiots below are spouting such nonsense as terrorist attacks.”

“They’d have to have some big money backers to infect so many people simultaneously.” She dismissed the thought but it surfaced again. Was it the fever making false connections or something else? “And we would have picked up on chatter if the cells embedded in the US were launching a coordinated attack.”

“The
minimum
intelligence agencies haven’t noticed anything.” He frowned, while twisting the lozenge free of its wrapper. “Hell according to them, the Redaction was on our side and wiped them all out.”

“No one quite knows where the influenza strain came from.” She shrugged and sipped from her mug.

“To launch something this deadly it would have to come from either Russia or China.” He popped the red oval in his mouth. “Both have had their military pretty much wiped out.”

“This makes biological warfare all the more attractive.” She rubbed her neck. The ache didn’t diminish. “Of course, there is the matter of delivery.”

“Exactly. And motive? What do they hope to gain?” Miles steepled his fingers. “Both countries are still quarantined and we haven’t received any new stuff. The merchandise from China that had been sitting on the dock for the last six months is just now being distributed.”

“So what have we missed?”

“I wish I knew.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked as it adjusted to his weight.

Mavis shivered. Damn, she’d forgotten to take an aspirin. “We’ll figure it out.”

Miles closed his eyes. “At the rate this disease is spreading, even if we knew what it was tomorrow, it would still be too late.”

Her sigh rippled across her tea. She had a feeling he was right.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“We did good today.” Henry yelled over the drone of the green ATV. His wheelchair rattled around the empty trailer attached to the back of the vehicle as he drove over the speed bump.

Manny jerked on the seat as he twisted the gas handle. Clenching his teeth, he eased up. Even after driving six of the ATV’s back to Connie’s, he still sped up and slowed down. How did the old man keep the pace steady? “We have enough vehicles and supplies, just not enough people to drive them.”

“Trust me.” Henry’s steel gray ponytail slipped over his shoulder when he looked over at Manny. “The people will come.”

That’s what he was afraid of. People. Not all of them could be trusted. He’d tried to convince the adults that they were enough, but it had come to
nada
. They didn’t believe him. Manny tightened his grip on the handles and the ATV leapt forward, pulling abreast of Henry. “What if the people are sick? Are we going to let them join us?”

“Yep.” Henry increased the distance between the two vehicles as they approached the corner.

“But they could get the rest of us sick.” Manny’s chest tightened and he struggled to suck in a breath. The
niños
could get sick. Slowing the ATV, he banked through the turn.

“That’s a possibility. But we could already be infected, just not showing signs of infection yet.”

God, he hoped not. Manny wiped the sweat beading his forehead on his sleeve.

“Those folks who are sick now will be able to nurse us back to health once they recover.” Henry eased up as the road straightened out.

Through the haze, Manny could barely make out the turn into their cul-de-sac. “That’s
if
they survive.”

A big if. The news had reported thousands of cases of Ash Pneumonia. And that was only one of the diseases coming his way. “What if they have the Plague? They said it could be passed from person-to-person by coughing.”

“We’ll just have to pray the masks protect us.”

Pray? Manny’s mouth opened. That was the old man’s solution? Manny had been down on his knees for weeks bargaining with God for his parents’ lives. Fat lot of good it had done him. “I—”

“Do you hear something?” Two houses away from the gate leading into the neighborhood, Henry stopped his ATV.

Manny nearly pitched over the handlebars of his ATV as he followed the older man’s lead. Killing the engine, he strained to pick up out the noise. Rats scratched at the piles of garbage. There. Fear drummed his chest. “Voices.”

People.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. What if it was the Aspero?

Henry scratched his chin then tilted his head. “Walking on the road.”

Manny stared down the street. If they tried to pass in front of the gate, whoever was on the other side of the fence would see them, know they were inside. If he or Henry started the engine, they would hear the motor. If they hadn’t already. “What do we do?”

“Wait.” Henry crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the turn in the road.

Manny licked his dry lips. Henry couldn’t do much from the top of the ATV except flee, but fleeing would lead the newcomers’ right to Rini, the
niños
and the women. He’d been stupid to leave the baseball bat behind. Hours of housebreaking and running the liberated goods back to Connie’s had made him relax his guard. Now they were helpless before whoever came through the gate. He glanced at the wheelchair and the leather pouch on its side.

Maybe they weren’t completely helpless.

“Do you want me to get your gun?”

Henry shook his head. “Took it out and locked it in the safe after Lucia found it while unloading the last batch of goodies.”

“Fuck!” Manny buried his face in his hands. Please God, don’t let the newcomers come into the neighborhood.

“I tell you I heard something.” A man’s voice came down hard on each word.

Manny straightened. The guy sounded pissed. Or desperate. Not a good sign.

Henry uncrossed his arms, pulled up the bottom of his jeans and stuck his hand in his boot. He pulled out a six-inch curved knife.

“We’ve been hearing cars leave all day.” A woman this time. “Look at how many we passed on the way here.”

“They might have gas to spare,” the man insisted.

“No one has gas to spare.” Another man spoke, with just the hint of a tremble in his voice. “Besides, we don’t even know where we’re going. Away from the fire isn’t exactly a good plan.”

“Grandpa, will...” coughing interrupted the question.

Niños
. There were
niños
outside the gate. Manny glanced at Henry. The old man stared back. They had to welcome the newcomers into the neighborhood. If something happened to him, he needed to know that his
niños
would be taken care of. How could he demand something, if he wasn’t willing to do the same for others? With a nod, Manny started the ATV and eased it forward.

Smiling, Henry did the same. As they neared the last house, he darted forward. “Hello! Hello. Who’s there?”

“I told you I heard something.” The first man spoke again.

Footsteps pounded on asphalt before the gate clanged.

Henry veered toward the gate; Manny followed closely behind him. Twenty faces stared back at them from between the bars. The little kids were in arms and on shoulders. Masks obliterated nearly all their features. A few young teenagers and adults had winter scarves wrapped around their noses and mouths. Backpacks hung in twos on some people’s backs. Others had luggage with wheels leaning against their legs.