“Pardon me?” Manny said. “Are you saying this is terrorism?”
“No. What I’m saying is if we don’t do something right away, Steph is going to look a hell of a lot worse than Bush did reading about a goddamned goat while planes flew into skyscrapers. You want to worry about how this looks to the press, well, those are the optics you need to worry about, Manny. Not some journalists figuring out we’re moving into crisis mode.” She took a step into the room and reached out to touch Stephanie’s arm. “Because you better believe we’re moving into crisis mode, Madam President. When we were looking at China we figured we could treat this like the flu or any other pandemic, right? Quarantines and using the National Guard to help out in areas particularly hard hit. And as with the flu or any other pandemic, we figured we’d see it coming.”
Alex took a deep breath and then turned back toward the door. “So, Manny, you can worry about the press all you want, but I’m worried about people dying. Come on. Let’s go, Manny. Situation Room.” Manny followed, not because he was summoned, but because he realized Alex was talking as much to the president as she was to him. And Alex was not that kind of person. Alex was well past caring about where her career ended up—she’d hinted about maybe an ambassadorship to Italy after she stepped down as national security advisor, because she was done with real politics after this—but she cared about the office of the president of the United States of America, and if Alex was basically calling the president in, it meant she was worried. Alex kept talking as they walked. “We figured we’d see it coming. Well, it’s not coming. It’s come. That’s the takeaway from India and China. They’ve got it, and they are already overwhelmed. Best-case scenario is it’s not already here and we can shut down flights and do our best to lock the country down. If it’s an overreaction, we’ll take a hit in the press.” Manny started to speak, but Alex kept talking. “Not my problem, Manny, and you can figure it out later, but Steph, Madam President, if I’m your national security advisor, I’m advising you to understand that if this is bad enough to get the Chinese dropping nuclear weapons and now it’s in India, we aren’t overreacting.”
Alex stopped walking and turned to look Steph and Manny full in the face. “I don’t think this is an ‘if’ situation anymore. I think it’s a ‘when’ kind of thing, and we’re only buying ourselves time until it hits our shores.”
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Agent Mike Rich wouldn’t have minded a few extra days in Washington if it had meant a chance to maybe take that scientist out to dinner. The hotel the agency had gotten for him was crappy, he hadn’t slept a wink, and he wasn’t crazy about the spiders, but Professor Guyer was a good-looking woman. She was tall enough to look him in the eye and had that lean, athletic look he favored. There was something weird going on there with her relationship to the president’s chief of staff, a schlumpy schlub of a man who nevertheless seemed pretty confident, but hell, there was something weird going on with everything. At the beginning of the week he was worried about homegrown Aryans and meth and drugs, and now suddenly it was cannibalistic spiders and President Stephanie Pilgrim and strict orders to keep his mouth shut. Wait. Cannibalistic? Was that right? Wouldn’t that mean they only ate one another? Were they cannibals if they ate humans instead of other spiders? Fuck it, Mike thought, it didn’t matter. What mattered was it was going to be a while before he could sleep without having nightmares.