Dead Reckoning (5 page)

             
“That sounds legit. Who would know that?” Jeff replied.

             
“Know what?” I asked. “Wouldn’t our radars have detected that?”

             
All three of them turned to me and gave a look of disgust that seemed to ask: don’t you work on this range?

             
Apparently remembering that I was not among the 90% of range workers with engineering backgrounds, Jeff said: “No they wouldn’t. The EMP signals that our radars can receive would be line-of-sight using a four-thirds earth model.”

             
I had no idea what the four-thirds earth model was, but I understood line of sight. Weather radars, for example, couldn’t “see” over the horizon unless the beam was being bent by a temperature inversion in the atmosphere.

             
“And most people wouldn’t know that you’d hear a burst of static on the lower frequencies.” “Have you actually talked with anyone?” Jeff asked, turning to Ned.

             
“We haven’t been able to get anyone to respond,” he replied. “Everything we’ve heard so far has either been a recorded message, the ramblings of religious nutjobs, or not English.”

             
“What about bases outside CONUS?”

             
“None so far. Some of the messages indicated that there may have been multiple pulses. Perhaps in many locations worldwide. We just don’t know. We’re listening for more now.”

             
Sal tuned the radio to another frequency to give us an example of one of the kooks. The guy slowly and steadily read the Bible. At the moment we tuned in, it sounded like he was in the middle of the book of Ezekiel.

             
I was shell shocked. I began to feel dizzy.

             
“Hey,” Sal exclaimed. “At least nobody’s talking about Nukes.”

             
“Nukes?” I repeated to nobody in particular. I sat down in an empty chair.

             
“Come on, let’s go,” Jeff said to me. He turned to Sal and Ned, “Are you guys going to keep at this?”

             
“Yeah,” Sal said with an incredulous look. “I wouldn’t know what else to do.”

             
Jeff and I rode silently to the housing area. It was a little out of his way, but Jeff escorted me to my quarters. I felt like I should make some parting comment as we approached my quarters, but just as I began to formulate a statement, Jeff peeled off and road quickly away.

5

10:30 A.M., TUESDAY MAY 29
TH
, BASE HOUSING, KWAJALEIN

After a few hours of fitful, practically useless sleep, I awakened feeling just as tense and restless as when I had gone to bed. I grabbed the phone and dialed 99 in hopes of getting a line off island. Nothing happened. I clicked on the TV and found nothing but the roller, and it looked like nothing new had been posted.

I grabbed a dirty shirt from the floor and pulled it on along with a pair of shorts that didn’t match. I ran my fingers through my hair
and wiggled my toes into my flip-flops as I hurried out the door.

A
t only 10:30 am, it was already sweltering under the tropical sun. In the tropics, day and night were almost evenly split year round, and since the sun was highest at noon, the period from late morning through early afternoon was always the hottest. That was the time when you’d usually find the Marshallese waiting out the heat under the shade of a palm tree. With our air conditioning and important jobs, we Americans hadn’t learned to appreciate a siesta like much of the rest of the world.

I was already
sweating profusely (a rolling boil, as I called it) as I peddled furiously past Jeff’s quarters; since his bike wasn’t in its rack, I didn’t even slow down. I blew by the EOC and made my way to the weather station. By the time I arrived, my shirt was soaked through.

A couple of forecasters and an electronics technician were sitting around chatting in the operations area when I walked in. They informed me that all of our equipment was running fine; satellite images continued to come in (meaning the satellites were operating normally), our radar was fine, and all of
our observational equipment was working nominally. We hadn’t received any weather model data from the national centers though, and the technicians had conducted tests on the communication lines and found them to be fine with the exception that no data flowed in from outside. Our data flowed out, to where we didn’t know, but nothing came back.

Satisfied that everything was fine at work, I headed back toward the EOC. The route from the weather station back to the EOC took me headlong into the stiff trade winds. Winds blow from high pressure over the mid-latitudes toward low pressure near the equator, and thanks to the spin of the earth, the winds turn toward the right in the northern hemisphere. This creates a nearly constant belt of easterly trade winds, so-called because early traders sought to ride these favorable winds to far-away lands. While the wind had a cooling effect, the effort required to overcome the extra resistance more than canceled any benefit.

I struggled slowly past a couple of women stopped on the roadside looking out over the ocean. I recognized one woman as the wife of the island chaplain, but I didn’t know the other. I overheard the chaplain’s wife comment about the need for prayer in times like these, how we need to pray for the plague to pass and spare our loved ones and how we also need to pray for the souls of those who’ve already died.

I had a brief argument with her in which I asked why a god who doesn’t already know that I would wish for the safety of my loved ones is worthy of being prayed to, and why we shouldn’t be overjoyed by all that had been happening, since it’s all
that god’s plan and, therefore, obviously perfect. We pissants are certainly not qualified to object to her god’s plan are we? Although the imaginary argument made me even more upset, I won, which I always do.

I arrived at the EOC at the same moment as the Medical Officer, Dr. Frank Pepperdine, or Doctor Pepper, as we called him. He was my personal physician, and while we frequently played basketball together, we maintained a relationship more likened to acquaintances than friends. For it always seemed
to me inappropriate to be friends with your doctor. A person simply does not want a friend to know his cholesterol number, weight, or what his colon looks like.

In his mid-fifties, Dr. Pepper was a fine physical specimen and did not look a day over thirty. He could be seen running around the island every evening, and he obviously ate right. He had a full head of medium-length brown hair that would have been otherwise unbelievable in fullness and color at his age, were it not for his tight, wrinkle-free, bronze skin and perfect complexion. He had the enviable tall, slender body that allowed him to jog, play basketball, or engage in any other activity outside shirtless, without making other people uncomfortable.

He went to UCLA, which, as part of my beloved Pac10, made him ok with me. After his wife died in a climbing accident, he took a job as a physician on Kwaj. Other than that, the only thing I knew about his career was that he had briefly worked at the CDC. He and his thirteen-year-old daughter arrived on the island on the same flight as Kate, the kids, and I had.

I timed it so that we would arrive at the door at the same time, and, after the obligatory cordial greeting, I jumped right to what was on my mind.

“Have you heard anything new about the plague? Any idea what’s going on?”

“I don’t have any magical lines of communication in my office. I know the same as you, Matt.”

“But what did you hear before?” I asked as we began to ascend the stairs. “Maybe all this is overblown.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, to my dismay. “I think this is the big one—the one we’ve always feared in the medical world—an extinction event—Armageddon.”

Normally, I appreciated his matter-of-fact approach. I could have used better bedside manner at that moment.

“It has long been feared that some sort of ‘super bug’ would come along and wipe out mankind,” he continued. “I mean think about it. You’re a scientist, so you must know that it’s just a matter of time before natural evolution brings us something we can’t deal with. Viruses are constantly combining in nature via re-assortment and creating new viruses, most of which are no worse than their predecessors and die without causing any harm. And we’ve generally been able to stay ahead of the ones that survive, thanks to the wonders of modern chemistry. We figured that a superbug would happen naturally all by itself one day, but we didn’t count on somebody intentionally speeding the process up.”

“What do you mean speeding up the process?” I asked as we reached the top of the stairs.

He held his hand on the door but didn’t open it. “I’m pretty sure it was engineered. Somebody created it.”

That bombshell left me speechless, so he answered a follow-up question that he must have come to expect. “I’m sure you’ve heard that it appears to be a combination of different viruses, one hemorrhagic and the other something like bird flu. We already knew that viruses can combine, and so this is not, in and of itself, exceptional. But what was not being said is that The Red Plague managed to retain the worst attributes of the component viruses. It is highly unlikely to have occurred naturally.”

I stepped back as someone opened the door, nearly hitting me with it. Obviously uninterested in our conversation, the man scampered down the stairs. Dr. Pepper grabbed the door before it closed, but we remained in the doorway to finish our conversation.

“What do you mean ‘worst attributes’?” I asked.

“I never learned the exact particulars of the disease before we were cut off,” he said. “But let’s imagine that the component viruses were Ebola and bird flu. Either of those would be sufficient to kill the host long before there could be sufficient
recombinations to produce a viable second supervirus. In other words, it’s practically unimaginable for any host to survive long enough with both viruses for them to be able to produce a third virus with the ability to spread. The Red Plague is as lethal and contagious as Ebola, but worst of all, it’s airborne like bird flu. It is just thought to be very unlikely to have occurred naturally. It must have been done in a laboratory.”

“By who, though?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Take your pick.”

He slipped through the door and began walking briskly down the hall.

“So how long do you think it will take before this thing runs its course?” I asked, following closely behind. He slowed so that I came nearly level with him.

“The bubonic plague took years to peter out, and we have many times the population now. We’ve also got the means to get from one place to anywhere else on the planet in less than a day. The incubation period of
The Red Plague may be up to thirty days. Can you imagine how far this could have gotten in thirty days just by random encounters? Imagine that somebody has been planting it in order to speed up that process, and it could easily be everywhere by now. It’s probably going to test the immunities of each and every one of us. Well, with the possible exception of us. Assuming it isn’t already here, we are so isolated that we might be able to avoid it altogether.”

“Yes, that’s wonderful,” I said sarcastically as he turned a corner and walked away from me.

I found neither Commander Blaine nor Jeff at the EOC nor at their respective offices, so I decided to go down to the terminal and wait for Continental to arrive with answers. I rounded the corner to the waiting area and found what seemed like half the island waiting there. Some people talked quietly, but most just sat in the grandstand and waited. Except for the large crowd, everything seemed normal. The ground crew busily finished their preparations by moving luggage carts, testing the generator, and repositioning the stair truck. The ubiquitous trades tugged on palm fronds, and waves breaking on the reef sent a fine, briny mist across the area. A small child of a couple I knew in passing darted from the grandstand toward the perimeter road only to be snatched up by his brother in mid stride.

I looked at my watch and it read 11:15 am, arrival time.  I stood in the shade of a lone palm tree and leaned against its trunk to wait.

I monitored my watch as it advanced through 11:30 and 11:45, and the crowd grew increasingly restless. At noon I sat down and leaned back against the tree. At 12:10, a breathless young guy announced to the crowd that his friend in the control tower told him that Continental wasn’t even on radar yet and they hadn’t been able to raise them on radio. The crowd began to trickle away.

At 12:30 a man began to sob loudly. By that time, the crowd had halved. I leaned back against the palm and closed my eyes. Continental never came.

6

5 A.M., WEDNESDAY MAY 30
TH
, BASE HOUSING, KWAJALEIN

I had not spoken to Kate in three days, I didn’t know if they were all right, and I had no way to find out. A plague was sweeping the planet. Our country may have been attacked. We couldn’t communicate with the outside world, I couldn’t leave, and I had no idea what to do.

             
I tossed and turned for hours as my subconscious worked noisily on the problem. In that fog between sleep and wakefulness, where the mind attempts to access the stream, wisps of thought float by like leaves in a breeze. It moves rapidly from one to another, constantly evaluating, landing on some, but bypassing most, like a honey bee across a field of flowers. Most of the time, we can sleep through the effort, but great problems, apparently, require our presence.

Suddenly, my mind landed on a promising thought and summoned me. I just stared at it at first, like a person you know but can’t quite recognize. Finally, consciousness stepped forward and lunged at the answer and took hold of it before it could slip by. Once in my grasp it felt heavy, but I recognized it as obvious—I don’t know what took me so long to think of it.

I snapped fully awake and sat up. I had to see Jeff.

. . .

I peddled furiously down the well-lit streets, and, not surprisingly given the time of morning, found them empty. A heavy, moisture-laden, head wind whipped down the street, probably in advance of some rain. It resisted my progress, made me pedal harder than I would have liked, and, despite the comfortable night-time temperature, caused me to perspire lightly. I found that annoying.

I pulled up to Jeff’s quarters, and after several failed attempts at deploying the kickstand, I cursed at the inanimate bicycle and threw it over onto its side as if to teach it a lesson. I looked around to see if anyone had seen.

I started for the front door when I was startled by the sound of someone coming through the bushes.

“Oh! I almost slipped,” the person grunted to no one in particular.

It was Randy, Jeff’s neighbor, and easily the most obnoxious person I had ever known.

I hurried up the sidewalk in an effort to avoid catching his attention. Randy was what we called “fluff” or an unemployed spouse on Kwaj. There was a lot of fluff on the island, but since most were women raising children, no one looked down on them. But a man who lived off the labors of his wife, especially an older, childless one like Randy, was widely disliked. This fact, however, had little to do with why no one liked Randy.

Dressed in a shiny, new jogging suit that was at least one size too small, he ran over and intercepted me on my way to the door.

“Did you see that? I almost slipped,” Randy said.

“Technically, you did slip,” I said, as Randy straightened his hair.

“What?”

He frowned and threw me a puzzled look. Even in the dark, his mustache looked fake, and his facelifts were noticeable. That’s what happens when an aging man tries to hold onto the only asset he had ever possessed—looks—even though it drained away naturally decades prior.

“Didn’t you actually slip on those wet leaves?” I pressed.

“Yeah,” he smirked.

“Then you didn’t almost slip. You did slip. What you almost did was fall.”

“Whatever!” Randy said, which was how he put an end to any conversation he didn’t understand—the percentage of which was likely large.

“I’m in a hurry,” I continued.

“At this hour?”

“I’ll see you later, Randy.”

Ever the pest, Randy took a step with me and put out his hand to block my way. “Hey, one more thing. Have you heard anything about the weather lately? I’m going fishing tomorrow.”

I could have ignored him and forced my way past, but Randy would just follow, and the last person I wanted around when I talked with Jeff was Randy.

“Randy, I don’t
hear
about the weather.”

“So what is it supposed to do?” he continued.

I didn’t even try to mask my annoyance any more.

“The weather is not
supposed
to do any….” I trailed off. “Look, I don’t want to talk about the weather. It will most likely do tomorrow what it does every day out here. How long have you lived here?”

“Well?”
he bellered. “Aren’t you a weatherman?”

“I am
a me-te-or-ol-o-gist…” I said, pronouncing each syllable slowly for his benefit, “…not a weather-
man
!”

“I’m just trying to make conversation.”

“It’s going to be mostly sunny with a chance of showers tomorrow,” I bluffed. “Now, do you mind?”

“Whatever,” he said as he turned and jogged off.

I banged on Jeff’s door, but he didn’t answer. I tried the knob, and it was unlocked. Few people locked their doors on Kwaj. I check his quarters, and he wasn’t there. His bed hadn’t even been slept in.

I rode
past his office, which was dark, and then I searched the EOC and failed to find him. As a last resort, I thought I’d try the only other place I ever saw him: his boathouse.  

             
Boat owners on Kwaj were allowed to have boathouses near the marina, which theoretically served as shops in which to work on their boats. What they turned into in practice, however, were private lagoon-side villas.

The Riggins’ boathouse was a veritable tropical paradise. It had a prime view, and rows of palm trees on the north and south sides provided ample shade from the intense afternoon sun. The primary structure was an old, white trailer, but the numerous additions that had been built over the years made the parent structure hardly discernible. Attached on the lagoon side was a sitting porch made almost entirely of driftwood and adorned with a variety of tropical-themed elements. A pair of flip flops, the quintessential footwear of the Marshall Islands, had been nailed over the entrance. Strings of little pineapple lights that crisscrossed the sitting area provided j
ust enough light to function at night while not disrupting the starry views. A fan with blades in the shape of palm fronds rattled continuously overhead as it probably had since its installation. No one ever turned off anything with moving parts in such a corrosive environment; otherwise, the humid, salty air would quickly ruin the device. The work area of the boathouse was on the upwind side, which provided the added benefit of a cool breeze by which to work.

Jeff did not hear me approach over the whine of metal grinding on metal. The wire knotted wheel attached to his drill scattered small bits of debris to the wind. Fragments of castoff stuck to his hair and grimy clothing, and sparks flickered through the dark and went out. As I dismounted my bike, he stepped back and lifted his face mask to inspect his work. Half the small propeller gleamed as if brand new. Jeff touched the fresh metal with a finger and then quickly withdrew it and stuck it in his mouth to cool. Seeing movement on his periphery, he turned and looked toward me.

Knowing he couldn’t see me through the dark, I announced myself.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” he asked.

“Nope. What are you doing?”

Jeff looked at all the parts on the workbench then to me and then away again.

“Oh, nothing. Just blowing off some steam…cleaning out the parts bin.”

“So, what’s up with you?” he asked nervously.

I suddenly had no idea what to say. I thought it would be easy. I was sure Jeff would be thinking the same thing as me, but I hadn’t thought it through at all.

“I, uh, just had something to ask you.”

“What is it?”

I suddenly felt uneasy with what I was about to ask him. He had family in the states too, so he was in the same boat as me. I settled on just coming straight out with it.

“I need to get off this island. No,
we
need to get off this island.”

Jeff turned and with a furrowed brow, looked me square in the eye. His expression—a mixture of concern, skepticism, and perhaps even a bit of relief—spoke volumes. His face softened, and he sighed as he turned back to his work.

“I know,” he muttered under his breath.

I paused to let the obvious sink in as I moved in closer.

“Jeff, we need to get to the states. Your sailboat is the only way.”

He blinked and pinched off a tear that rolled half-way down his cheek. My emotions remained raw, and with the appearance of that tear, I felt myself nearing the point of no return. I desperately hoped he would hold it together because I knew if he melted down, so would I. He wiped his eyes with his dirty arm, leaving a gray smudge across his face. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, he cleared his throat, swallowed hard, and spoke without any hint of sorrow in his voice.

“I know. You’re right,” he said.

“So what do we need to do?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about this for days,” he said. “I didn’t want to admit to myself that things are really this bad, but there really is no other way.”

“I just can’t sit here while God knows what is happening to Kate and the kids.” I said, sensing the opportunity to seal the deal. “It’s driving me crazy.”

“This won’t be easy,” he said, his voice unsteady again. “There is no guarantee we’ll even make it. Crossing the Pacific is a hard trip under optimal circumstances with all the right gear. People spend months outfitting and training for this.”

“I don’t care.” I replied. “I would try to row across the ocean if I had to.”

“Me too.” Jeff squeaked.

We knew that things might fix themselves the second we left. We’d have felt awfully stupid if they had. But we both sensed that things were not right and not just because of the stuff we knew about. Sure, the plague was bad. But not being able to communicate at all, the bits of information Jeff’s friends in comms had been able to gather, C
ontinental not arriving; it all added up to a deep sense of dread. We held out hope that once we got back to the closest point of civilization, we could just hop a plane from there, or at least call our families.

Jeff and I spent the next hour hashing out a plan to cross the ocean on his sailboat. We talked about fuel, gear, food, and the weather. We worried what would happen if we got caught. We planned a route and decided no one should know about it unless it was absolutely necessary. But we realized that we couldn’t do it alone, and we agreed to ask Sonny to come with us. We trusted
no one more.

Jeff had one last thing on his mind.

“You know Bill pretty well, right?”

I nodded recognizing the rhetorical question.

“Do you trust him?”

I nodded.

“He’s the only one with access to guns, and we need one,” Jeff said. “I mean, chances are we won’t see a soul all the way to the CONUS, but we can’t take a chance. There will surely be pirates out. As soon as anything goes wrong those types come out. And God knows what we will find when we get there.”

I agreed, obviously. But I would be taking a real chance asking Bill to get me a gun.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I said, tentatively.

“Again, don’t say anything to anyone else,” Jeff said. “You haven’t talked with anyone about this, have you?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Oh, and although it’s summer, I don’t have to tell you that the North Pacific is still quite cold. You’ve got a coat, right? Rain gear?”

“Coat? I don’t have….” my statement trailed off.

I felt like an idiot. Over my objection, Kate had brought winter clothes with us when we moved to Kwaj saying: “You never know when you’ll need this.”

“Actually, I do have a coat,” I continued.

“Good. Me too. Wives, huh?” Jeff said with a smile.

Jeff ticked through a final list of things that needed to be accomplished and I wrote them down, divvying the list up between Jeff, Sonny, and I.

Satisfied that we had a workable plan, Jeff turned back to his workbench.

“It will probably take us until tomorrow night, to accumulate everything we need and be ready to go. I’ll talk to Sonny this morning. Let’s plan on bugging out middle of tomorrow night. If we slip away in the dark, nobody will see us.”

. . .

10 A.M., WEDNESDAY MAY 30TH, KWAJALEIN

I only intended to stop by my quarters briefly on the way to see Bill, but I woke up on the couch two hours later. It was the best sleep I’d had in days. It’s funny how much of a relief it can be to simply make a decision.

             
I checked my watch and decided that I would wait until lunch, since I knew exactly where Bill would be then. I chose instead to begin collecting the items I would need for the trip. Once I’d checked the essentials off my list, I rifled through drawers and cabinets in search of useful items that we hadn’t thought of. You could never have too many flashlights or batteries. Who knew when I might need that small pocket knife I found in a kitchen drawer? I emptied drawers on the floor and ripped out the contents of entire shelves in one pull, the way a burglar might have.