Sam looked around the space. There were clothes, food rations, jugs of water, and gasoline along with dishes piled next to a sink.
“Do you live here?”
“Good a place as any,” Papale said. “Got water, electricity when we need, we got each other. There’s the food court downstairs with enough stock to keep us fed for a year or two. Seemed as good a choice as my own house.”
“Food is being given away at aid stations, along with water and anything else you could need.”
He chuckled. “Young lady, the day the government does somethin’ right is the day I take up ballroom dancin’. There ain’t enough food to feed a preschool at them aid stations. The lines go on for blocks and by the time you get there, they outta everythin’ but flour and sugar. Soon they’ll be outta those too.”
“They get resupplied every other day.”
“If that’s true, I ain’t seen it. Once they run outta food, they close and they leave.”
“That has to be some kind of mistake.”
“Mistake or not, that’s what they’re doin’. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got some work to do thawing some chickens for tonight’s dinner. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like or you can have someone pick you up.”
“Thanks.” Samantha pulled out her cell phone. All the men in the office were staring at her and it became apparent that there were no women in the mall with them. She smiled a friendly smile to them and then walked out the doors to the corridor.
“Where have you been?” Wilson’s voice said on the other end.
“I was attacked, Ralph. A group of men chased me down the street when I was walking to the hospital.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I ran into the mall and there were other people here.”
“Whole damn city’s gone to hell. Did you know our vaccine shipments were attacked? They burned the crates. Two guards were injured.”
“Maybe they thought it was something valuable.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Ralph, how are the aid stations doing?”
“Fine. Why?”
“I heard that they’ve been closing and that there’s not enough food for everyone.”
Wilson was silent a while. “You better get to the hospital. I’m sending down a military escort for you. We need to talk.”
CHAPTER 28
Ralph Wilson sat in an administrative office at the Queen’s Medical Center and stared out the window at the abandoned streets below. He pictured kids out here, people jogging, teenagers heading down to the bus stop to get to the beach for the day’s surfing. But there wasn’t any of that. There was fluttering garbage and stray dogs and every once in a while, a group of men out prowling the streets.
It reminded him of Kosovo when he was there supervising, unofficially, a NATO team providing medical assistance to civilians. He was a young man then and too stupid to know that he was expendable.
The Army Rangers had dropped him off without anything but the name of a contact and the clothes on his back, and that was the way he liked it. Or so he thought, until it started raining so hard it was as if the sky had opened a wound and was pouring its lifeblood out onto the crumbling city. He contracted pneumonia and survived only because a family in town took him in and nursed him back to health with soup and tea. Otherwise, he would’ve died alone underneath a bridge that he was using as shelter.
The family had been Muslim, and he remembered when the soldiers with the harsh Czech accents had come into the home by kicking in the door. They wanted to take the wife and the young daughter. The man of the house had not yet heard of the rape houses where they would be forced into sex acts with dozens, even hundreds of men a day. They would be forced to have sex with other women, including relatives. Mothers and daughters were especially prized.
The Serbs and Croats were no longer human. Ralph had seen their devastation in the mass graves in soccer fields and parks. As the two men were dragging away the wife and daughter, Ralph, still weak from his illness, rose from his bed, pulled out a.45 caliber from its holster, and shot three rounds, two entering one man’s head and the other finding its mark in the other man’s throat.
The family was grateful but shocked. They would certainly be marked for death now. Ralph helped them gather their belongings and they snuck in the dead of night to a NATO encampment almost a hundred miles away. The route was treacherous. The streets revealed nothing but decaying buildings with decaying souls looking out of them, their eyes blank. The war had taken what was human in them and crushed it.
Now, twenty years later, at night he would occasionally wake up and see the buildings before him. Monsters in the darkness that were slowly collapsing, consuming whatever was around them.
Looking out onto the streets of Honolulu, he saw that same evil here. Whatever it was, it was here. Not fully but a spark. It was beginning to take over and he knew that eventually, there would be nothing left.
“Ralph?”
Ralph looked up from the window and saw Duncan Adams standing by the door. “Yeah, Duncan. What can I do for you?”
“I was calling your name for a good ten seconds. You doin’ okay?”
“Yes, yes, I was, um, somewhere else. Have a seat.” Duncan sat down across from him and crossed his legs. “So where’s your sidekick?” Ralph said.
“Samantha?” Duncan said. “Why would you think she’s my sidekick?”
“You guys are always together and when you’re not, you’re calling each other.”
“I wouldn’t describe Sam as anybody’s sidekick. If anything, I’m hers.”
Ralph laughed softly. “She once punched one of her professors when he made a pass at her after class. She tell you that?”
“No.”
“Philosophy professor, I think. They’re all wackos anyway and this one was an aggressive wacko. I guess she belted him and nearly laid him out. She was almost kicked out of school but her father filed a lawsuit against the university and they backed down.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. And to answer your question, I’m not sure where she is. I know she’s been setting up the aid stations the past couple of days.”
“I spoke to her about an hour ago but I thought she would’ve been here by now. I have some news, Duncan, and eventually you’d hear it anyway so I thought I should share it with you.” He pulled out his iPad and passed it Duncan. “That’s Pushkin’s report on the infectiousness of Agent X.”
Duncan read for a moment. “This can’t be right.”
“It is.”
“That’s impossible,” he said quietly.
“It’s not. We’re gearing up for-”
The door opened and Ralph’s assistant Betty poked her head in. “Sorry, Dr. Wilson, there’s someone here to meet with you and I thought you might be interested in meeting with them.”
“Who is it?”
“Benjamin Cornell from the anti-vaccination people.”
“That son of a bitch. Gimmie a minute, Betty, and then let him back.”
“Not happy with him, I take it?”
“He’s the one that’s been attacking our vaccine shipments. I’ve dealt with him before. He targeted a meeting at the World Health Organization in Sweden a few years back and he started spraying animal blood on anybody walking in.”
The door opened and Betty led Benjamin inside. Ben smiled and nodded hello to both men before sitting down.
“Beautiful day, boys. We should be out enjoying nature, not stuck in an office.”
“Nature’s trying to kill us right now,” Duncan said.
“Cut the shit, Ben,” Ralph interjected. “I know you’re the one attacking my vaccine shipments.”
“They’re not your shipments, Ralph. And where’s your proof that I was even twenty miles near those shipments? Besides, that’s not my style.”