“Fine.”
John walked into his office and left the two women, who went straight to what was now Tyler’s sickroom.
John took the Glock out from his belt, looked at it, then laid it on his desk. He noticed now that the smell of cordite hung heavy on it, and on him.
Reaching around to the back corner of the desk, he pulled out a dust-covered bottle. There had been several times in his life when drinking had damn near won out, the last time for several weeks after Mary died. The dust on the bottle was a reassurance. He poured a double scotch out into an empty coffee cup and drained it down in two gulps.
The thunderstorm that had been on the western horizon rolled in, rain slashing against the window… a soothing sound.
When Makala came into the room a half hour later to check his hand, he was fast asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
“John, you look like crap warmed over.”
He nodded, walking into the conference room for what had now become their daily meeting.
“Thanks, Tom. I needed that.”
In spite of Makala’s attention, John’s hand was still infected and he was running a fever of just over a hundred and a half.
He settled into what was now his chair at the middle of the table. Interesting how quickly habits form regarding a meeting: sit in a chair once and the following day that’s where you sit again, symbolism of who sits at the foot and head of the table the same. Kate still held that symbolic position at the head, but it was actually Charlie now, sitting to her right, who ran the morning briefing, Tom at the foot of the table. Doc Kellor had become part of the team as well, sitting across from John. Two more were present, he didn’t recognize either, one dressed in a police uniform, a Swannanoa Police Department patch stitched on his sleeve, the second man in jeans and T- shirt, both in their midforties.
John picked up the cup of coffee that was waiting for him with his left hand.
“Let me look at that,” Kellor said, getting out of his chair and coming around the table.
He eased back the surgical gauze that Makala had redressed the wound with the evening before.
“Good stitching job, couldn’t have done better myself.”
John said nothing. The dozen stitches Makala had sewed had been done without any painkiller other than a swig of a scotch, and he had sweated that out silently, though he had cursed a bit when she had dosed the wound with alcohol.
Kellor leaned over and sniffed the bandage and shook his head. “How did it get infected like this?”
“I think when I was carrying my father-in-law, at the nursing home.”
“Treatment?”
“Makala Turner, the nurse who volunteered to help run the nursing home, she put me on Cipro. Got some from the nursing home.”
“Most likely fecal contact,” Kellor said, nodding and looking at the wound. “But you can also get some pretty tough strains of bacteria and viruses growing even in the cleanest hospital or home, strep or staph.
“Let’s talk about this later,” Kellor said, and went back to his seat.
Kate cleared her throat.
“Ok, let’s get started. We got a new problem. Dr. Kellor, would you lead off?”
The old “town doc” nodded.
“We’ve got an outbreak of salmonella at the refugee center in the elementary school. It was bound to happen. I’ve got at least a hundred sick over there this morning. A mess, a damn mess.”
“How did it get started?” Kate asked.
Kellor looked at her with surprise.
“Hell, Kate. People are used to running water, hundreds of gallons a day. Food with dates stamped on it; one day over the limit and we used to throw it out. There’s six hundred people camped there. At least we still have enough water pressure for the toilets to flush, but no hot water and, to be blunt, no toilet paper or paper towels as well. It’s getting nasty.
“Come on, people. Think about it. Most of us haven’t bathed in ten days, toilet paper’s getting scarce, soup line meals twice a day at the refugee center, food now of real questionable safety, I’ll bet that damn near every person in there will be crapping their guts out and puking by the end of the day.”
He sighed.
“Seven dead this morning. I checked before coming over here. Two of them infants, the rest elderly. Dehydrated out and couldn’t get electrolytes into them fast enough. I’ll need more volunteers to go down there to help out, because it will be full-blown by the end of the day.”
No one spoke. The thought of a school building full of people in that condition… it left the rest in the room silent.
“Remember Katrina and that god-awful Superdome?” Charlie sighed. “Is that what we got?”
“Worse,” Kellor replied. “Screwed up as their administration was, ultimately help was on the way, even though a lot of people started to panic with insane reports of murder and rape. We don’t have that here at all, but on the other side, the cavalry is not going to come rushing in with helicopters loaded with supplies. We are on our own.
“We need to get some clean vats for sterile water; we can mix up an electrolyte batch like what is used in emergency relief in third-world countries.
“We are a frigging third-world country now,” the police officer from Swannanoa said softly.
“It’s simple enough. Just pure water, we still have that, don’t we, Charlie?”
“What is coming out, gravity fed, from the reservoir is still clean, at least as of the last time our water department people tested it yesterday.”
“I worry about that. All you need are some folks camping around the reservoir, one of them has a bug and relieves himself by the lake, and all of us are sick.”
Charlie looked over at Tom.
“We better get a few men up there patrolling the lake. No campers.”
The fishing in the lake was one of the more poorly guarded secrets of the community across the years. The reservoir, shared with Asheville, was supposedly strictly off-limits to everyone, even before all this had started. But many were the kids who would sneak in there with a rod and pull out a trophy brown trout of ten pounds or more. Until an activist type in Asheville had blown the whistle on it half a dozen years back, there was even a private fishing cabin in the woods just above the lake, a secret retreat for the higher-ups in Asheville and Black Mountain. A good-ole-boys club for a weekend of drinking and catching damn big trout on what they saw as their private lake.
Chances now were that people were already looking to that lake as a source of food, and it would have to be stopped.
“We need to mix up a batch of several hundred gallons of clean water, mixture of salt and sugar; it’ll keep the electrolyte balance. Then start pouring it down the throats of those poor people. In nine out of ten cases they’ll just be damn sick for a few days and then pull through.”
“And the tenth case?” Charlie asked.
Kellor sighed.
“Without IVs, the elderly, children under a year, people already weak from other diseases.” He paused and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “I’ll estimate thirty dead, maybe fifty by tomorrow night.”
Charlie folded and unfolded his hands.
“Who will organize the volunteers?” Charlie asked.
John sighed.
