“It’s actually Mayor Dreyfus now,” he said. “I’ll have one of my aides bring you up to speed. So you two are the experts they brought in to help them find the apes.”
“That is correct,” Malakai said.
“Good,” Dreyfus said. “So, for now, let me briefly explain that Anvil, the company that hired you, is under investigation for a number of illegal activities. Mr. Phillips is under arrest—we caught him trying to leave by helicopter. The rest of the crew here has been detained. That the two of you were being kept under lock and key suggests to me that Mr. Phillips might not have had your best interests in mind, at this point.”
“I surmised that, sir,” Malakai told him.
“What I need from you two is to know exactly what we’re dealing with here. In terms of the apes.”
Clancy glanced at Malakai before beginning, as if she wanted his approval… or complicity. He nodded again, and she turned to face the mayor.
“They’re smart,” she said. “They’re organized.”
“How many would you estimate?”
“Two hundred,” Malakai said. “Minimum. It could be more.”
“Have you had direct contact with them?” Dreyfus asked.
Taking turns, Clancy and Malakai gave a brief description of their encounter. Dreyfus took all of it in without expression.
“Now I want to ask you both this,” he said. “Are they dangerous?”
“I think they just want to be left alone,” Clancy said. “Even when we provoked them, even when one of them was shot, they never tried to hurt us.” Malakai heard the pleading in her voice as she went on. “They probably won’t survive the winter. Apes are native to the tropics. I don’t think there’s enough here for them to eat.”
“They’ve raided groceries already, right?” the mayor said. “Maybe when winter comes, as you say, they’ll become more aggressive. More desperate.”
“They deserve a chance.”
“Mr. Youmans?”
He felt Clancy’s gaze burning at him.
“I agree with her,” he said. “They probably will die in the winter. If they come into town to loot, shoot them then. Otherwise, I would not waste more man-hours on this.”
Dreyfus stared at them incredulously.
“You guys have really been completely out of the loop, haven’t you?” he said. “You have no idea what things are like back there, back in the city.”
“We heard something about an outbreak of some kind,” Clancy said. “But we haven’t been allowed to have television or the Internet or anything.”
“Well, suffice to say, a few hundred apes coming into town to raid for food might be a lot more trouble than you think by the time winter gets here.”
“But think of the scientific value,” Clancy said. “What’s happening here is amazing. Apes of different species, forming some sort of social group. What we could learn from this—”
“I’ll consider everything you’ve said,” Dreyfus said, cutting her off. But he didn’t say anything more. The conversation was clearly over.
“Are we free to go?” Malakai asked.
“Since you were in close contact with the apes, you’ll need to be held here in quarantine for a few days. You’ve been isolated out here—so far no one has shown up positive. If you didn’t catch it from the apes, you’re probably clean. If you don’t show any signs of the disease, then you can do as you please. Although once you understand the situation, I highly doubt you’ll want to go out.”
“We’ve missed a lot, it appears,” Malakai said.
Clancy was watching the news with a look of utter shock on her young face.
“Welcome to ‘C’ Hut,” Corbin said, popping open a beer and flopping into a chair.
It was the first time they had been in “C” hut, the building that had served as an entertainment center for the mercenaries. It contained two pool tables, some videogame consoles, and a large television. There was also a fridge that appeared to contain mostly beer.
The bulk of the mercenaries seemed to be here, including Corbin and his team. Like Clancy and Malakai, they were all now dressed in prison orange. The big difference was that the people now patrolling the compound were San Francisco PD, and the police were the only ones armed.
“What’s happening?” Clancy said, staring at the television, her voice trembling.
Corbin picked up a remote and turned up the volume.
“…rioters looting pharmacies, leaving ten dead and fifteen wounded. But our top story tonight comes from Alameda Point, where the site of the former Naval Air Station has been set up as a quarantine and treatment facility, one of many throughout the Bay Area.
“At around two in the morning, large sections of the tent city were set ablaze by masked individuals armed with improvised bombs filled with homemade napalm. So far the casualty count is uncertain, but is thought to be upwards of five hundred dead and hundreds more with severe burns. The crowded condition of the camp worsened a situation that would have been devastating under any circumstances.
“Police haven’t announced any suspects, but graffiti outside of the compound features the juxtaposed Greek letters Alpha and Omega. These same symbols were found two days ago near the site of a mass shooting at a clinic in Chinatown. A similar and perhaps related napalm attack was carried out about an hour ago at a quarantine facility maintained at a local hospital. The name and location of that facility is being withheld as police fight to get control of the situation.”
“How can people behave like this?” Clancy said.
“Welcome to my world,” Malakai said.
“I heard you were in some of that business in Rwanda,” Corbin said. “You must have seen some pretty nasty things there.”
“I suppose,” Malakai said, regretting he had said anything.
“I think if they’re scared and angry enough, people will do almost anything,” Corbin said.
“But this… This is San Fra—” Clancy began, and then she stopped abruptly.
“San Francisco,” Malakai continued for her. “San Francisco, in the USA, as opposed to some third-world hellhole where people eat gorillas.”
Corbin and the rest laughed.
Her face, pink from the industrial scrubbing, darkened.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” she said. “Some pretty awful things have happened in this country—slavery, genocide, riots, mass murders. It’s just… I was there a week ago, and everything was normal. How did it go from that to this so quickly?”
“Because in that less than a week, a total of more than 250,000 people have dropped dead of a plague that kills everyone that gets it,” Flores said. “And now they’re calling it the ‘Simian Flu’ because those monkeys out there are the ones that gave it to us.”
Clancy frowned.
“We were briefed after talking to the mayor,” she said. “My impression is that the virus was developed by Gen Sys.”
“Yeah. And spread by monkeys.”
“From what I’ve been told, the prime vector was probably a man that worked at the lab, not an ape.”
“Why is it called the Simian Flu, then?” Flores shot back.
“Just…” she sighed. “I’ve watched more of this than I can take. Is there a computer or a tablet or something around here I can use?”
“Right over there,” Corbin said.
Malakai continued watching, however. It wasn’t just San Francisco that was collapsing. Paris had descended into a similar purgatory. Mumbai had a death toll at almost half a million. Most major cities around the world had some share in the pandemic. Airlines were grounded over much of the globe, train and bus lines were shut down. Food was vanishing from grocery shelves and warehouses, and wasn’t being replaced due to the transportation stoppage. Healthcare systems were so swamped with victims of the Simian Flu that the death toll for every other malady had skyrocketed.