CyberStorm Part 6

"What?" asked Lauren, her voice rising in alarm as she looked at my face.

"Honey, put Luke down for a second and go wash your hands."

The words coming out of my mouth sounded alien, like they were coming from some foreign being. My mind raced while my heart pounded in my chest. It's just a false alarm, it's just a cold. The irrational fear I'd felt running back from Whole Foods flooded my veins again.

"What do you mean, put Luke down?" demanded Lauren.

She could sense my fear.

"Mike! What are you talking about? What was in that message?"

Chuck appeared in our doorway, and Lauren looked up at him. I'd crossed over to Luke and Lauren by then, holding a blanket I'd picked up off the couch, and I was wrapping it around Luke, gently trying to take him from her.

"It's just a precaution," said Chuck softly, advancing slowly into the room with his hands held out in front of him. "I'm sure it's just a coincidence. We don't know what's happening."

"What don't you know is happening?"

Lauren looked up into my eyes and, trusting but not understanding, released Luke to me.

"Report of a bird flu outbreak," I said quietly.

"WHAT?"

"We haven't heard anything on the news-" Chuck started to say, and just then we heard the TV announcer's voice floating in from their apartment next door. "Breaking news-reports of an outbreak of bird flu virus have just been reported from Connecticut area hospitals-"

"Give Luke back to me!" said Lauren sharply, standing and taking him out of my arms.

I didn't resist. She glared at me, and I guiltily shrank back.

"He's right, Lauren," said Chuck, continuing to approach to her. "I'm sure this is nothing, but this isn't just about you or him. We're all at risk."

"Then stay away from us!"

She turned to me accusingly.

"So that was your first reaction? To quarantine your infant son?"

"-CDC in Atlanta cannot confirm or deny the outbreak, saying that they don't know where the warning originated but that local emergency workers-"

"That's not what I was doing. I was worried about you," I tried to explain, waving the blanket around in the air. "I don't know, what's the proper reaction when a deadly virus is announced?"

Lauren was about to unload a return salvo when Susie appeared behind Chuck. She was cradling Ellarose in one arm and holding out the other one, waving it back and forth to get our attention.

"Keep calm, y'all. This ain't no time for fighting with each other. I know it's been tough between you two lately, but that's gotta stop."

Susie walked into the middle of the room, holding her hand up high, palm outwards.

"Susie, I think you should take Ellarose back into-"

"No, no," she objected, waving her hand around. "If it's done it's done, and we're all in this together."

Ellarose saw Luke and squeaked and smiled. Luke, puffy and congested, looked over at her and attempted a grin in return.

"Let's not go making mountains out of molehills," continued Susie. "Luke's got a little cold is all. This is a strange day, so let's all calm down."

With her steady words, the tension began to evaporate.

"How about I just take Luke down to emergency to make sure," I said after a pause. "He is sick, and I don't mind going." I smiled at Lauren. "Just to be sure."

"Wait a minute, that could be about the worst thing to do," objected Chuck. "Hospitals are the worst place to be if there's really an outbreak."

"But what if he is infected?" I replied, my voice on edge. "I need to know, no matter what, get him taken care of."

"We'll go together," said Lauren quietly, returning the smallest of smiles.

"I'll go and get some masks from downstairs," said Chuck. "You should at least wear masks."

Susie gave him an evil look.

"I'm being practical. Bird flu is twice as deadly as bubonic plague."

"What's wrong with you?" said Susie, exasperated.

"It's a good idea," agreed Lauren, gripping Luke tightly. "Go get the masks."

7:00 p.m.

CHUCK WENT DOWNSTAIRS to raid his storage locker while we moved back into their place and watched CNN. He came back up loaded down with hockey bags stuffed with equipment and supplies.

After setting it all down in the middle of the room, he fished around, pulling out bags of freeze-dried food and camping equipment before finding the medical masks. They looked like the ones you'd wear if you were spray-painting something. He handed them out to us and then went out to distribute some to all the neighbors.

Chuck tried to get us to wear latex gloves, but Lauren refused, and I refused as well. The idea of holding our infant son in them, protecting ourselves by wearing rubber gloves like he was some kind of pariah, was too much to seriously consider. If he was sick from whatever they were talking about on the news, we were already infected, so there was no sense in it. Wearing the masks was more to protect other people around us.

But in the outside world, who knew? Luke probably just had a cold, and we might be walking into a ma.s.s of infected people in a hospital. It was impossible to say, but we had to be sure Luke was safe. I put some of the latex gloves into the pockets of my jeans.

Susie went down the hall to see if Pam, the nurse, was home yet. I was hoping she might take a look at Luke, or sneak us into the back entrance of a hospital somewhere, but no luck. She and Rory weren't home. We tried their phone numbers, but the cell networks were completely jammed.

While Chuck talked about how to recognize infectious diseases, dispensing advice about not touching or wiping our faces, I combed through a White Pages looking for addresses of nearby clinics and hospitals, scribbling the information on a piece of paper. I was relieved to even find the phone book, stuck in the bottom drawer of a kitchen cabinet. I hadn't seen one in years.

My first reaction was to search the map on my smartphone, but the map screen remained stubbornly blank. It was getting no incoming data feed. My usual stream of messages, after a brief flood of concerned e-mails from friends, had stopped as well.

I couldn't access the internet at all.

Neither my smartphone nor laptop would load any webpages, or at least not anything intelligible. When I tried Google, either nothing would load and a "Could not find DNS server" error message would pop onto the screen, or sometimes a random webpage would load about an African tourism site, or the next time a college student's blog would appear.

So I scribbled on paper.

As we left the apartment, half of our neighbors were out in the hallway, talking in quiet whispers with masks hanging around their necks. They spread away from us as we walked out, mostly away from Lauren, who held Luke. The Chinese family at the end of the hallway wisely stayed inside. Richard had called down for his car service to drive us, and I wanted to thank him, but as I held my hand out, he shrank away and put his mask on, muttering that we'd better hurry.

Outside, Richard's black Escalade and driver were waiting for us. The driver, Marko, was already wearing a mask. It was the first time I'd met him, but Lauren already seemed to know him quite well.

At first we tried the Presbyterian clinic just around the corner on Twenty-Fourth. It was listed as open, but when we arrived, people were streaming out and telling us it was closed. We circled around to the Beth Israel clinic nearby, but there was a line stretching onto the street already.

We didn't even stop.

Lauren gently cradled Luke in layers of blankets, quietly humming little lullabies to him. He'd been crying again, but had given up, and was now sniffling and squirming about. He could sense something was wrong, that we were scared.

The warmest things we could find in our closet for Lauren were a leather jacket and scarf, and I was wearing the thin, black jacket and sweater from earlier. It was warm inside the Escalade, but bitter cold outside.

I found myself worrying that Marko, the driver, would abandon us somewhere if it got too late. He must have a family somewhere he's worrying about too. It would be impossible to find a taxi, with all this going on, and Lauren had said that the subways weren't working either. I tried talking to Marko, but he just said not to worry, that everything was fine, that we could trust him.

I still worried.

The streets of New York had transformed from holiday festive to cold and desolate. Long lines of people snaked out of convenience and food stores, outside bank machines, and there were long lines of cars waiting for gas at the stations.

Memories of past storms and disasters pressed down heavily.

People hurried down the streets, loaded down with bags and packages, n.o.body speaking, everyone staring at the ground. None of the packages looked like Christmas gifts. New Yorkers always had the feeling that their city was a target, and now it seemed, from the hunched shoulders and furtive glances on the streets outside, that the monster was rearing its head again.

It was a collective wound that never quite healed, infecting anyone that came here. When Lauren and I had moved into the condo in Chelsea, she'd been concerned that we were too close to the Financial District. I'd told her not to be silly. Had I made a terrible mistake?

We stopped at the emergency clinic at the Greater New York on Ninth between Fifteenth and Sixteenth. The place was swarming with people, and not just sick-looking people, but crazy-looking ones. The woodwork of the city was opening up.

I got out and tried to talk to the police and EMTs at the entrance, but they shook their heads and said it was like this all over the city. Lauren waited inside the car, her eyes following me as I walked around trying to find someone to talk to, anyone that might be able to help. One of the cops suggested Saint Jude's Children's up at Penn Plaza on Thirty-Fourth.

I jumped back in the car.

On the drive to Saint Jude's, Luke began crying again, wailing, his face red and apoplectic with each shrill scream. Lauren trembled and began crying as well. I put my arm around the two of them, telling her it would be okay. Finally, reaching Saint Jude's, we saw there was no crowd of people outside the emergency room, so we jumped out and ran in, only to be confronted by a ma.s.s of people on the inside.

A triage nurse gave us a quick inspection, replacing our masks with N95s, and we were immediately cordoned off into a set of rooms that were crammed with other parents and their children. I found a chair for Lauren in one corner, next to a leaking water fountain and beneath yellowing posters about the importance of the food pyramid for young children's health. We waited for hours. Finally, another nurse appeared and led us into an examination room, saying that seeing a doctor wouldn't be possible, but that she'd have a look.

She said it looked like a cold and that there had been no cases of bird flu in their hospital. She promised us that they had no idea what the news was talking about and gave us some Children's Tylenol, asking politely but firmly if we could go home. There was nothing else we could do.

I felt powerless.

True to his word, Marko was waiting outside when we came out. The cold was intense. On the short walk to the car, opening the door for Lauren and Luke, my hands became numb. The wind cut through my thin jacket, and long plumes of vapor spun into the air with each tired breath.

A few tiny snowflakes had begun to fall. The idea of a white Christmas usually excited me, but now it felt ominous.

On the drive back, New York was as quiet as a morgue.

3:35 a.m.

"I AM NOT leaving them here!" I heard Susie loudly saying through the doorway.

"That's not what I was saying," I heard Chuck reply in a quieter voice.

Hanging back in the hallway, I hesitated but then knocked. Footsteps padded toward me and the door opened, spilling bright light into the hallway. Squinting, I smiled.

"Ah, hey," said Chuck awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "I guess you heard all that?"

"Not really."

He smiled. "Uh-huh. You okay? You want a cup of tea? Chamomile or something?"

I shook my head and walked in. "No thanks."

Their place, a two-bedroom apartment only slightly larger than ours, was filled with boxes and bags. Susie was sitting on the couch, an oasis in the middle of the confusion piled around her, looking embarra.s.sed. They weren't wearing their masks, so I took mine off.

"You get a new mask?" asked Chuck.

"They gave us N95s or something," I replied. "I don't know what that means."

Chuck snorted. "N95, ha, the one I gave you was way better than ninety-five percent. You shouldn't have let them take it. I'll get you some more."

"It's like he's preparing for World War Three," Susie laughed. "You sure you don't want a cup of something hot?"

"Not hot, but maybe something strong."

"Ah, yes," said Chuck, moving off toward the kitchen. He quickly produced a bottle of scotch and two tumblers from a cupboard. "Ice, no ice?"

"Neat is fine."

He poured a generous dose into both gla.s.ses.

"So how's Luke?" asked Susie. "What did the doctors say?"

"We didn't manage to see one. A nurse looked at him and didn't say much except it didn't look like bird flu. He's got a fever of a hundred and three. Lauren's curled up with him under a blanket. They're sleeping for now."

"That's good news, right? Pam came back when you were out, said we can wake her up if you want. She has a degree in tropical medicine, I think."

I wasn't sure how tropical medicine might help in this situation, but I knew Chuck was trying to be comforting. It was rea.s.suring that Pam was nearby.

"It can wait till the morning."

"So what would you think of a little vacation in Virginia?" asked Chuck as he handed my drink over.

"Virginia?"

"Yeah, you know, our old family place in the hills near the Shenandoah? It's in the national park, only a few cabins on the whole mountain."

"Ahhh," I replied, the light dawning. "Time to bug out?"

He motioned toward the TV, still on but with the sound muted. The CNN headline scrolling across the top was about a bird flu outbreak being reported in California.

"n.o.body knows what the h.e.l.l is going on. Half the country thinks it's terrorists, the other half an attack by the Chinese, and another half thinks it's nothing at all."

"That's a lot of halves."