Victor Methos - Plague

The Center for Anti-Vaccination Studies was a five-room suite in an office building occupied by middle-income lawyers and dentists. The first floor always smelled like popcorn and massage oil from a parlor that took up the first suite. They claimed to be licensed massage therapists, but Ben had never seen one degree or certificate on the wall. Plus, the men coming out of there seemed just a bit too happy.

He walked past it now and smiled to the receptionist at the front desk, a stack of files under his arm as he hit the up button on the elevator.

The fifth and top floor was much like the first except that it smelled a bit better. The CAVS’s five rooms were better decorated than most, with glass walls on the interior and exposed brick in the offices. The floor was a slick hardwood donated to CAVS from a contractor whose daughter had developed autism after a routine vaccination at the age of two.

Ben went through the office space, wondering where everybody was until he checked his phone: it was five in the afternoon on a Friday. He went straight to his office and shut the door. He placed the files down on his desk and sat in front of them a long time, just staring. There was a knock.

“Come in.”

Tate Buhler walked in, sipping a Mountain Dew Code Red. He saw the files on the desk and nearly spit up his drink. He shut the door. “You got them?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Tate sat down across from him at the desk and they both stared at the files. There were fifteen total. Fifteen medical records of research physicians that specialized in vaccinations. One of these physicians had recanted everything they had ever written about the safety of vaccination after one of their children developed a severe learning disability days after the MMR vaccine.

“You think it’s real?” Tate said. “I mean, I know the government does some crazy shit, but firing a doctor and then suing to keep him quiet just ‘cause he’s against vaccinations sounds extreme.”

Ben smirked. “Do you remember the serial killer from the eighties who supposedly poisoned bottles of Tylenol and half a dozen people died?”

“Yeah, that was in Chicago or somewhere.”

“Well one of the people that died bought their Tylenol from a pharmacy. The public doesn’t have access to medications in a pharmacy. That means the Tylenol was tainted when it left the factory and so Johnson amp; Johnson and the dim-witted law enforcement who investigated the case came up with this serial killer story. They dodged lawsuits, criminal liability, any repercussions at all just because money can buy you whatever you want. If they can cover up the murders of innocent people, they can certainly cover up firing one person.”

Tate shook his head. “What’re we even gonna do when we find this doctor? I mean he can’t talk about it, right? What good is he gonna be?”

Ben’s phone began to ring. He picked it up. “He’s a symbol, Tate. He’s a symbol of what we’re trying to do here. He doesn’t need to open his mouth at all. If he sits next to me on a stage with a name tag, that’s enough. People will Google him and find out the rest…Hello, this is Benjamin Cornell…yes…where?…when?…who else knows about this…okay…okay.”

Ben hung up the phone and sat quietly a few moments, staring at the desk.

“You okay?”

“I’m going to be gone for a while,” he said, standing up and heading out the door.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well where you going?” Tate yelled as Ben headed toward the elevators.

“Hawaii.”

Ele Henano sat in the back of Queen’s Medical Center with Tiffany Leath and smoked pot from a joint. The weed was freshly picked from his grandmother’s backyard and it had a purple tinge that you could see in the fading sunlight.

They smoked half the joint and then leaned back on the old lawn chairs they’d taken out of a patio storage closet. He’d found that if he smoked more than half a joint with another person, people could usually tell something was wrong. He’d been fired from one job previously because his boss, the head nurse, could instantly tell he was high. The smell, the red eyes, the greenish tongue, he could hide all of those. But he couldn’t hide his goofy personality or the giggles that pot gave him.

“What’d you do this weekend?” he said, passing a Gatorade to her.

“I met some guy at a bar and hung out with him.”

“Just hung out.”

“We fucked around, but nothin’ too hot. He got all limp ‘cause we smoked too much weed.”

Ele giggled. “That’s why you need a real man.”

“I don’t mess around with people I work with,” she said, taking a swig of the drink and handing it back. “I got fired from my last job doing that.”

“Where at?”

“It was a psychiatric hospital on the mainland. It was pretty fucked up. This one patient was a soldier in World War Two and he had a head injury. So to change his diaper, you had to play the national anthem ‘cause he would stand up and salute. And then you just had to hurry and change it ‘cause otherwise he’d fight you. Then there was this one dude that thought cats had filled his room. He thought he had like thirty cats in there and you had to be careful where you walked ‘cause if you stepped on one of his cats he’d attack you.”

“Man. That sounds fucked up, yo.”

“It wasn’t fun. But they paid good. ‘Cause you got your hair pulled and got gassed and shit. You know what gassing is?”

He shook his head.

“It’s where they shit or piss or both and then throw it at your face. Some a the patients gassed the staff all the time so with some of ‘em you had to wear gasmasks. If I ever get old, just fucking shoot me.”

Ele took a deep breath. “Ready to go back?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

They went inside and up to the locker rooms. Ele went into the men’s and changed into a fresh pair of scrubs. He brushed his teeth, used eyedrops, and washed his hands and his face. He ran some cold water through his hair-he knew the hair could hold the scent of marijuana as good as anything-and then dried off with some paper towels and headed into the corridor. Tiffany was already waiting for him.

He had hit her up at a party once when they first started hanging out, but she didn’t show any interest. She said it was because she didn’t date people she worked with but Ele didn’t believe that. She only dated white guys, never islanders. He wondered why she would move to Hawaii if she didn’t like Hawaiians but people were like that he guessed. They came out here for all sorts of reasons and few of them made any sense to him. Hawaii was expensive, you made less money, many of the locals didn’t like whites, and it was difficult to get all the conveniences of the mainland. But the grass was always greener. While people were trying to move in, he was desperately trying to move out, but money was always an issue.

“Where you gotta go?” Tiffany asked.

“Up to six.”

“Nuh uh. I thought no one was supposed to go up there?”

“Nah, they got barriers set up. You just can’t touch the people. What you think they’re sick with?”

“I heard it was AIDS.”

“That don’t make sense ‘cause I heard Dr. Hennessey saying that patients were getting infected faster than they thought they would. So AIDS wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t really care. I just wanna get outta here and chill with a bottle a wine at my house.”

They passed the elevators and Ele said goodbye and hopped on. He headed to six, where the patients were quarantined, and when he stepped off the elevator he grabbed some rubber gloves that were hanging in a box on the wall. Several nurses were up here but they wore facemasks and plastic suits over their scrubs. He didn’t get any of that because he was only here to empty the trash.