William Johnstone - Fire in the Ashes

“But these are bigger rats. I haven’t seen them, Mr. President; only had reports of them. And I hope to God the reports are wrong. I can’t imagine a rat the size of a small poodle.”

“Are you serious?” Ben asked.

“One report said they spotted rats that stood maybe six to eight inches, weighing in at between five to eight pounds.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“The rats are only part of the problem, sir. It’s what they carry on them that worries me.”

“Fleas.”

“Yes, sir. One thing I have confirmed: they are carrying the plague.”

“What kind?” Ben felt a cold shiver race around the base of his spine. The nation had been lucky in that respect. Despite the millions and millions of dead bodies and animal carcasses that rotted under the summer sun of ‘88 immediately following the bombings, there had been no serious outbreaks of disease. No anthrax or airborne deadly viruses.

Yet.

Until now.

“We don’t know.”

“Again, I beg your pardon?”

“It’s… a type of black plague, sir. Bubonic… but it’s more. I wish to hell the CDC was bigger. When Logan relocated the people, the stupid bastard pulled out of Atlanta and left all that equipment to rot and rust.”

Ben smiled. “We have it.”

“Sir?”

“I ordered my personnel to go in and get it. It’s in Tri-States. Most of it safely hidden in concrete storage bunkers, deep underground.”

Harrison matched his smile. “Very good,” he said dryly. “Well, I have the microbiologists and epidemiologist in my department working on it. But… like I said, it’s more—much more. Hemorrhagic pneumonia.”

“Meaning every time they cough, they spread it.”

“Well… yes, you can put it that way.”

“And the blood they spit up—and the phlegm—is contagious?”

“God, yes!”

“I wrote a book about this sort of thing years ago,” Ben said. “In my book the hero wiped it out using… let me think. Yes. Tetracycline, streptomycin, and… I can’t recall the other drug.”

“Chloramphenicol,” the doctor finished it.

“Yes, that was it.”

“Tests indicate the… disease will respond to any of those drugs. But if the victim has already been exposed—already has the disease in his or her system, the success ratio is drastically reduced.”

“I see,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Suppose we initiated a crash program of inoculation—say, oh, tomorrow morning. How long would it take?”

“Weeks, if we’re lucky and have enough of the drugs. But… this is moving much too fast for any ordinary type of plague. Anyway we’re using streptomycin and chloramphenicol, together, in full therapeutic doses as the antibiotic. It isn’t stopping it if the victim has been exposed.”

“You saying that as if Jesus had suddenly lost the power to heal. What’s the matter with tetracycline?”

“Nothing. It’s a good antibiotic. It’s just that we wanted to really punch this disease out so we used the two I told you we were using. Should have stopped it cold. It didn’t. A hundred reported cases so far. Incredible!”

“In layman’s language, Harrison, please.”

The surgeon general rose from his seat to pace the carpet. He stopped, whirled around, and glared at Ben. “I’ll tell you what it means, Mr. President. It means we’ve got a stem-winding son of a bitch on our hands. If we had the drugs to pop everybody in America, and if we could somehow do it in a month—which is impossible. We’d still lose half the population—if we were lucky! One infected person can infect five hundred, a thousand others. One person on a bus, a plane, can infect 75 percent of the other passengers. They in turn infect everybody they come in contact with. And this is moving faster than anything I have ever seen. Three days from contact to death.”

Ben jumped to his feet. "Three days!"

“Three days, sir. First twelve hours brings a fever and coughing. Next twelve hours brings pneumonia, bloody phlegm spraying everybody close. Then huge sores in the groin and armpits, running with pus. High fever, blackouts. Unconsciousness—death.”

“You should have been a writer, doctor,” Ben told him. “I don’t recall anything quite so graphic.”

“Or deadly,” Harrison said.

Ben buzzed his secretary. “Cancel all appointments for the rest of the day. Tell the people I’m not feeling well. Get Cecil in here.”

“Mr. President? Where is the washroom? I’ve been up all night and my eyes feel like they are full of sand.”

Ben pointed. When the bathroom door had closed, he jerked up the phone and dialed the emergency number in the Tri-States. Somebody manned that constantly since Ben took over as president.

“Yes, sir?” the voice two thousand miles away said.

“This is General Raines. Don’t talk, just listen. Close the borders immediately. Start a rodent eradication program right now! But for God’s sake, be careful and don’t handle any of them. I don’t know how far a flea can jump, but I’m betting it’s two or three feet. I don’t want a panic; just tell Doctor Chase—within the hour—that the Middle Ages is upon us with all the blackness that period brought. You have ample supplies of vaccines in storage. He’ll know what to do. Tell him I’ll call him at 1800 hours, his time. You got all this?”

“On tape, sir.”

Ben hung up just as Doctor Lane walked into the room. Cecil opened the office door just as Lane was sitting down.

“Tell Cecil what you just told me,” Ben said. “I’ve got some calls to make from the outer office.”

The Joint Chiefs were meeting when Ben called. General Rimel was on the phone in seconds. “Yes, sir, Mr. President?”

Ben put it on the line for the men, knowing his voice was on the table speaker. “I want all airline flights canceled immediately. Ground every plane in America except military and emergency medical flights. Inoculate your people and have them cordon off the cities. Nobody gets through. Understood— nobody! I’ll have the state police in each state begin setting up roadblocks. I want the citizens to stay put. You people coordinate with the local police in this. I don’t want one word of this to leak out until your troops are in place. If we all pull together we can save maybe half the population—maybe more if we’re lucky. I want all interstate commerce halted by no later than 1200 hours today. No trucks, no buses, no cars, nothing. If I have to do it, I’ll impose martial law to keep people home.

“Get your people inoculated and have every available medic ready to go assist the private sector by 0600 in the morning.”

Then he told him about the bomb threat.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” General Franklin roared. “What kind of shit are these people trying to pull?”

“I don’t know what they want or what they represent,” Ben told the JCs. “And I don’t have time to worry about it. You people get rolling and stay in contact with this office.”

He hung up and walked back into his office. Cecil looked shaken by the news. Harrison looked up at Ben.

“I got a phone call, Mr. President. Six more cases confirmed in the past hour. So far it’s confined east of the Mississippi River.”

“Don’t count on it remaining so.”

“I’m not, sir.”

Ben told the men what he had ordered done.

“But…” Harrison sputtered. “I thought Congress had to be consulted before something like that was done?”

“I don’t have time to consult Congress and have them jaw about it for two weeks. Those people would blither and blather and waste precious time arguing about ten dozen things before they made up their minds to do anything about it.”