“Okay, I’ve got some important updates. First, we’re adding six new supervisors.” He pointed to the video camera at the back of the room. “Like each of you, they’ll have twelve operators. Their folks will work in the auditorium. IT has worked double-time to get it set up. That should ease some of the excess call volume.
“Last watch recorded a sharp increase in X1-Mandera fatalities.” Stevens glanced at a page. “New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and DC all report over four thousand deaths each. All told, at cordon sites nationwide, we saw over sixty thousand deaths in the past eight hours. There were only twelve thousand deaths during the shift before that. So we’re looking at the start of a potentially rapidly increasing fatality rate.”
Stevens paused. “That, in addition to what I’m about to show you, requires us to change our current approach. In thirty minutes, at your own pre-shift meetings, you’re going to brief your staff on this decision. It may be the hardest conversation you’ll ever have to have. Some may refuse to carry out our orders. There’s a plan for that. The worst part is, you can’t tell them the full truth about why we’re doing what we’re about to do.
“The truth is this: we have suspected for several days that the X1-Mandera pandemic was an act of bioterrorism. We know now that it was. We know who did it, and we know what they want.”
Chapter 86
Elliott stood in his study, watching the BioShield convoy creep down the street. They usually came every afternoon and distributed food and medicine. Today they were early, and they weren’t distributing food. They were taking people with them, loading them on yellow school buses as they had before. The National Guard, Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force troops studied tablets outside the buses. They were apparently immune—they didn’t wear space suits, and they displayed no caution as they herded the people onto the bus, often touching and shoving them. Their warm breath came out in clouds of white steam as they worked.
Methodically, they moved down the street. Families weren’t taken together; they picked members seemingly at random. A father in his forties; a mother with gray-streaked dark hair who was slightly older than the man; a teenage girl; twin boys who were no older than twelve.
Elliott tried to see some pattern in it, but couldn’t. Had the genome sequencing revealed something? Were these people potential carriers of antibodies that might fight the virus? He wanted to be hopeful about what was happening, but he was far too rational to believe it.
Sam and Adam were still in the basement. They had been rounded up along with Ryan after Elliott and Rose had been taken. Only Sam and Adam had come back. Adam had developed a fever yesterday. He was infected, and Elliott feared that soon Sam would be too. They were all doing their best to maintain a quarantine in the home, but he doubted it would be enough to protect her.
The virus ebbed and flowed. For a few hours, Elliott would feel fine, or at least well enough to function, then it would hit him, overwhelming him and forcing him to lie down and rest until the fever and coughing passed. At the moment he felt pretty good—except for his nervousness.
He checked his cell phone. He had completed every one of the daily surveys on the Rook Quantum Sciences operating system. He’d had to: the phone beeped and buzzed incessantly until he filled them out. But there had been no survey today. What did it mean? And where were they taking everyone?
At the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, Elim Kibet sat in his office, listening to an official from the Ministry of Health. The man was sick. Elim thought he would probably die within five days. He coughed violently, and Elim stood, came around the desk, and offered him a bottle of ORS.
The man waved him off. “It’s wasted on me.” He stared with bloodshot eyes tinted yellow from the jaundice. “Will you do it, Elim?”
Elim leaned against the desk. “I will try. But it’s their choice.”
“That’s all we ask.”
“Will you stay?”
The sick man shook his head. “I must travel on.”
“And die by the road?”
“If I must. I am dead either way. I will not lie here and wait for it.”
Elim didn’t blame him. He had felt the same way; it was why he had gotten up from his hospital bed in Mandera.
He showed the man out, watched him climb into his four-wheel drive and turn back onto Habaswein-Dadaab Road.
Elim made his way into the Ifo II camp, which held all the surviving refugees. Three fires burned, the flames smaller than they had been. This morning, the camp-wide count had revealed 14,289 survivors. When the outbreak began, 287,423 people had lived in the camps; he had found the earlier counts in the camps’ records. The loss of life was staggering. And he was about to ask these people to see a lot more of it.
He asked one of the armed men to gather the camp’s residents—at least, everyone able to rise from their beds—then he set about trying to find a bullhorn. It took almost an hour to get everyone assembled, but when they were ready, Elim climbed to the top of a box truck and stared out at the crowd that stretched across the rocky desert landscape.
“My name is Elim Kibet. I am a doctor, and a Kenyan citizen. I was born in this country and educated here. I’ve worked here all my life.
“Like many of you, I grew up in a small village. My parents were poor, and many nights we didn’t have enough to eat. Thanks to this nation’s generosity, I got an education. I served the people in my community as best I could. Fate led me here, to help you.
“I know many of you are not natives of Kenya. You are refugees from neighboring countries. This nation took you in when you were in need, fed you, kept you safe, and put a roof over your head. Now the people of our nation need your help. We are the ones who are starving and dying. We are in need, and you can help.