Greg Keyes - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Firestorm

“I get that, believe it or not. The whole thing is too hush-hush.” She looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I want to know what they’re really up to.”

“Yes, you do,” he told her. “You say you saw me back there, saw something missing in my eyes. But I also saw you. If you did not want to know, you would have already quit. You would be on your way home right now, to your boyfriend, no doubt.”

That actually drew a half-hearted laugh from her.

“You really think you have me pegged, don’t you?” she said.

“Am I wrong?”

She was silent for a long time, long enough that he thought she might be asleep.

“No,” she whispered.

Some things couldn’t be avoided, and the weekly dinner with her father was one of them. It wasn’t that Talia didn’t love him, but she knew what he was working up to, and she didn’t really want to deal with it at the moment.

But she was here, in a steakhouse where she couldn’t afford the entrees, feeling underdressed and very young. She might be almost thirty, but her father had a way of making Talia feel twelve.

“How’s your fish?” he asked, eying her seared Alaskan char with some suspicion.

“It’s delicious,” she said. “How’s your steak?” she countered, eyeing the massive Porterhouse.

“It’ll do,” he replied. He glanced back at her plate. “Your mother would order the fish, too,” he said. “I never understood that.”

“It’s good,” she said. “And it’s healthy. You’re the heart surgeon. You know this.”

“My heart is fine,” he said. “My heart is perfect. I’ll probably outlive my grandchildren. If I ever have any.”

“Okay, we’re not starting on this,” she cautioned.

“What happened to that fellow, the reporter?” he asked. “I see his articles all of the time.”

“That’s… that’s ancient history, Pop,” she said. “And none of your business anyway.”

“You’re my daughter,” he said. “Everything about you is my business.”

“Well, we’re going to have to disagree there,” she said, studying what was left of her fish.

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

“We‘ve been getting some strange cases in the ER,” she finally said, trying to break the ice, to remind him that she was a doctor, a woman with a profession. “It presents like a hemorrhagic fever of some kind, but it turns out it’s a retrovirus.”

“You’re a surgeon,” he grunted. “Why are you dealing with viruses?”

“God, you sound just like… Uh!” She paused and gathered herself. “I’m an ER doctor. I deal with lots of things. I splint broken fingers. I deal with drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning, with the flu, miscarriages, gunshot wounds—you name it, I’ve probably dealt with it on some level.”

“You trained a surgeon,” he pressed. “I didn’t pay for eight years of college for you to work yourself to death in an emergency room.”

“I’m paying you back—”

“Very slowly, Natalia,” he said. “But that’s not the point.”

“No, it is the point, Pop.”

He sighed.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve discussed it with the partners. We’re all agreed that you’d make a fine addition to our practice. It is a good practice, and I like the sound of Kosar, Kosar, Drayton, and Hamilton.”

“I love you, Dad,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “But no. It’s not what I want to do. I’m doing what I want to do, for now at least.” Then she shrugged. “In the future, who knows? But at the moment this is me.”

He sighed again, then went back to work on his steak.

“The retrovirus,” he said at length. “Is it dangerous?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes it is. In fact, it’s a nightmare. It appears to be airborne. The incubation period is incredibly rapid. Fever, bleeding from mucus membranes, especially in the sinuses, followed by rapid multiple-organ dysfunction. The time between onset of symptoms and death is a matter of days.”

“What’s the mortality rate?”

“Ten people have died of it in San Francisco that I know of and about a hundred have been diagnosed with it here. There are cases reported in other cities. So far no one has recovered.”

“No one?” He leaned back in his chair. “Really, Natalia. This sounds dangerous to me. Maybe you should take some time off.”

“By tomorrow, there are some predictions we could see a jump in mortality—a hundred or more. The more healthcare providers have to deal with that, the fewer there will be to deal with things I deal with. If I take off, I’ll leave them even more short-handed. I’m not prepared to do that.”

He shook his head.

“I’m very careful,” she said, heading him off. “Everything washed, everything sterilized.”

“Yes,” he said. “Even when you were a little girl, always washing the spoon and forks twice—once with soap, again with rubbing alcohol.”

“Drove Mom crazy,” she remembered.

“Yes, it did,” he agreed. Then he turned back to his steak.

“I don’t like this business,” he said. “This virus, or you in an emergency room, for that matter. And it really hurts me that you won’t join the old man in his practice.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Pop.”

“I’m not done,” he said. “All these things, I have some trouble understanding. But know this—I am proud of you, Natalia.”

She stared at him, feeling a slow smile grow on her face, even as her eyes threatened to tear up. He couldn’t look at her, of course. He was cutting his steak with deliberate strokes, as if he were opening up someone’s chest.

“Thanks, Pop,” she said. “That’s nice to hear.”

“Now that’s out of the way,” he said, “if you should change your mind…”

“Just eat, Pop,” she said.

Dreyfus cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and ran a hand over his shock of slightly shaggy, brown hair. Then he faced the reporters who had gathered in the lobby outside of his office. The steady murmur of conversation died down as they waited for him to speak.

“It’s good to see you all here today,” he said. “I appreciate you turning out. I’ll keep this brief, because there’s no big reveal coming, I think. Many of you speculated openly that when I stepped down as chief of police last year, my intention was to run for mayor. Today, I’m just here to confirm that.

“The financial assets and affairs of this city, frankly, have been badly mismanaged, and it’s going to take a steady hand and a lot of hard work to get us back to where we need to be. I’ve served San Francisco proudly for all of my adult life. As chief of police, I made our force leaner and more responsive, more effective than it has ever been. I can do the same for this city and this county. If the citizens of this community see fit to give me the opportunity, I will do so.”

He smiled. “That’s it,” he said. “Brief, as I promised. But I’m more than happy to answer any questions you might have.”

Hands shot up.

“Rick,” he said.

“You’re aware of the so-called ‘Monkeygate’ affair, Chief Dreyfus?”

“It’s just ‘Mr. Dreyfus’ at the moment, Rick. But sure, it’s hard not to be aware of it, given the media—if you’ll forgive me— circus surrounding the events that occurred.”

That drew a few chuckles.

“In a statement three days ago,” the reporter continued, “Mayor House cited the incident on the Golden Gate Bridge as a failure of your ‘leaner’ police force, and claimed that the late Chief Hamil of the San Bruno Police Department was a casualty of your policies.”