Brendan DuBois - Final Winter

Adrianna’s mouth seemed dry. So many dead… She said, ‘Impossible. How could that many people have died without us knowing about it today? Something like that should be in all the history books.’

A sharp nod from Victor. ‘Of course. But something else was crowding out the news about the pandemic. The end of the First World War. Tens of millions had died in the trenches and elsewhere. What was another ten or fifty or a hundred million? Which is why the CDC back in ‘76 freaked, thinking that the swine flu that killed this soldier was just the tip of the iceberg. Old reports I saw, the estimate was that if there was a swine flu outbreak that year, by the end of 1976 there could be a million deaths in the United States alone. A million. So there was a crash program, announced by President Ford, to immunize everybody in the United States against swine flu.’

Brian said, ‘Sorry, doc, you’re gonna have to continue the history lesson here. I don’t remember this shit at all.’

‘Can’t see why you should — because it was a fiasco. It was supposed to be another Manhattan Project style of government management but those type of projects tend not to repeat themselves in terms of success, if you know what I mean. A global war against Nazis and Japanese militarists tends to focus one’s mind and efforts. Not the threat of a possible flu epidemic. Anyway, pharmaceutical companies were pressed into service to develop the vaccine. One company spent all their time developing the wrong vaccine and had to start over. Insurance companies said they wouldn’t pay out any claims against the pharmaceuticals. Congress had to step in to provide protection. The vaccine for children had to be administered in the two-dose system. Paperwork and administration was a nightmare. Then some elderly people started dying, the day they got the vaccine. And then it came out that people receiving the vaccine were at a greater risk of developing Guillain-Barre syndrome, a delightful and occasionally fatal form of paralysis. By the time it went down in flames, only a third of the population had been immunized, and the total cost reached almost a half-billion dollars. And there was no swine flu outbreak that year.’

‘Christ on a crutch,’ Monty said.

‘And another thing,’ Victor said, pressing on, ‘they had nine months to do it, and they still didn’t get it right. How in hell do you expect us to do the same thing in under a month?’

Adrianna was pleased at how calm her voice sounded, and felt a quick burst of pride — quickly suppressed- at how well she was doing. ‘Victor, what other choice do we have? Wait for the outbreaks to start in Chicago or Atlanta or DC? It will be too late by then. You know it.’

‘Another mass-immunization program… it can’t work,’ Victor said. ‘You know it can’t. Not in the space of time we have. Not to mention the media attention. Hell, the news medias’ focus on the program back in ‘76 crippled it. Back when there were only three major networks, no news cable channels. Can you imagine what it would be like now, today? With the cable news channels? The twenty-four/seven coverage? The cameras outside the clinics? The interviews with people who have a bad reaction from the immunization? The chat rooms? The weblogs? It would be a disaster before it even—’

Monty interrupted, ‘Not to mention that it would give the assholes with the anthrax an excuse to hit us now. Not wait until some special date on their fucked-up calendar. Now.’

Another pause in the conversations. It seemed like a moment had been reached, and Adrianna knew what it was. She had prepared for it, had practiced it, but still, it was hard, getting the words out.

‘Then…then what we’re talking about,’ she began, ‘is that perhaps the only option is to proceed with the immunization. But in private.’

There, she thought. It was out. From the looks on the faces of the other Tiger Team members, it was as though she had taken a baseball bat to the back of their heads. Darren, now looking even more pale, turned, stared at the other members, and said, ‘What do you mean, private? You’re talking nearly three hundred million people. How can something this huge be done in private?’

More voices, from Monty and Victor but not, she noted, from Brian. He seemed to be keeping his counsel, and Adrianna raised a hand and the voices quieted down for a moment. She said, ‘Perhaps “private” wasn’t the correct word. Secret, then. An immunization program in secret.’

Another blow to their heads. More silence. And now it was Brian’s turn.

‘You’re looking at hefty prison sentences for all of us, if this goes through,’ he said.

‘Perhaps. And perhaps hefty prison sentences will be a worthwhile price to pay for saving millions of lives, for saving this country, for saving civilization.’

Victor said, ‘Adrianna, we’re facing terrible choices, we all know it, but hyperbole and exaggeration isn’t going to help us—’

She let her voice rise. ‘What hyperbole? What exaggeration? Come on, Victor. You know your history. You know what we’re up against. Let’s say we do nothing about immunization. Let’s say that we depend on Monty and his bright young men and women to intercept the attack teams. I’m sure they’ll be successful in most cases. But they’re not perfect. Let’s say a handful get through…what next? You’re still looking at hundreds of thousands of deaths. Panic. Collapse of our economy. Perhaps even the end of us as a functioning superpower. What then? I’ll tell you what then. Meetings are held in Tokyo and Moscow and Paris and Berlin and even in poor London, and decisions are made. Compromises. Appeasement. Surrender. From the politicians in those nations who don’t want mass graves in football stadiums or wheatfields as a consequence of cooperating with us in our war on terror. And I know it’s a fucking cliche and all that, but by then the terrorists win. And how long before sharia — Islamic law — is imposed in Paris, in Amsterdam, in some of the Asian countries? How long?’

Underneath the table, Adriana could feel her legs begin to tremble. ‘You’re correct, Victor. There are terrible choices ahead for us. Quite terrible. But there are choices, nonetheless. One choice is to do nothing, and hope that our border security and other forces intercept the attack teams. The other choice is not to wait on hope. It’s to act, and I’m sorry, but that’s the only choice I think is available.’

She was about to continue speaking when the lights flickered.

Flickered again.

And then there was a loud thump, coming from above.

And in a moment, Monty and Brian were standing up, their hands now gripping pistols.

The trembling in Adrianna’s legs increased.

Hamad Suseel tried to ease the pain in his gut and the anxiety in his heart with the soothing thought that in a very few moments one of two wonderful things was about to occur. The first was that he was finally going to begin his jihad against the unbelievers, and if all went well he would be on his way home before the evening was out, thinking about the victory that he had achieved. And the second was that he was going to begin his jihad against the unbelievers, and if all didn’t go well he would still enter Paradise and meet his mother and father and older brother, and feel joy at such a reunion.

He drove his rental car carefully into the lot of what was called an office park. There were buildings of stone and glass, plain cubes that showed no beauty, no design. Not even that mongrel in this mongrel country, Frank Lloyd Wright, would have enjoyed seeing these pieces of crap built on such rich land. As a younger man, Hamad had dreamed of being an engineer or an architect, learning to construct better homes than those concrete pieces of shit that the UN built for his family and others outside Jenin, but the education he dreamed about never happened, of course. His education involved the endless intifadah, stealing copper wire and other metals for money, throwing rocks and paving stones at Israeli armored cars and tanks, and going to bed hungry at night while his father dozed in the corner and spoke dreamily during the day of the family farm that had been lost, back in 1948.