She told her truck to park next to City Hall in a spot marked for official vehicles. Most of the spots were empty, and besides, she was now official. She walked into the elaborate gray stone and red brick building and looked around. Was this a suicide mission? If so, she’d die for a good cause, not from stupid melodramatic personal negligence. Like Momma. Fuck. Remember what she did to protect you. She had plenty of fucks left for better targets.
City Hall rose in the shape of a narrow triangle with a massive brick clock tower at the southern, pointed end. Inside, it opened into a seven-story atrium like many modern buildings, but this building had been standing for about a century and a half. She’d visited it once as a teen on some sort of enrichment field trip. The patterned tile floor, wrought-iron railings, and carved wood had seemed formal and solid. She felt no trust for the government because she couldn’t trust anything, but at least it seemed like the City of Milwaukee wasn’t going anywhere, not with all those tons of fancy brickwork anchoring it in place.
The building bustled inside, unlike the empty streets—at least two dozen people in the lobby alone—and their voices echoed in a comforting human clamor. They stood farther apart than usual—they knew what to do. They wore surgical masks, and boxes of them stood by the door. She took a mask and put it on because if she was a carrier, she should protect other people. She found a marble stairway and climbed to the third floor and found a door labeled HEALTH DEPARTMENT. By the time she arrived she’d decided the mask might be necessary but this particular kind was a serious nuisance to wear, already damp from her breath.
No one waited behind the counter.
“Hello?” she called.
A woman came out of an office. “Oh, you’re Bern…”
“Berenike,” she answered, pronouncing all four syllables. No one ever got it right. “Berenike Woulfe. I’m here as a driver. I brought a truck, twelve hundred cubic feet and seats for two passengers. I know how to drive manually and I can adjust automatic controls. I just left work at AutoKar. The passenger and cargo spaces have been sterilized.”
Just left AutoKar. Oh, those words felt good. Maybe she’d never go back one way or another, maybe Summer’s god would grant her that little blessing. That would be enough. She tried not to get her hopes up.
The woman almost smiled behind her mask. “You’re a lifesaver. Or you will be. Seriously. Come with me and we’ll get you started. We’re starved for resources. We always have been,” she said as she turned to walk down a little hallway. According to the name tag clipped to a businesslike blazer, she was Elena King, the assistant health commissioner. “I won’t lie. This is going to be rough. Only someone clinically insane would try to hold back the tide.”
“Then you recruited the right person.”
She led Berenike past offices where, through the windows in the doors, she saw a couple of people glaring at screens or talking on phones, but most of the desks stood empty. “Some people are working from home,” she said. “Let me tell you what we need.”
The job would be simple: pick up supplies at warehouses or other sites and drop them off at places like clinics, community centers, and participating drug stores. Berenike was pleased to see a major homeless camp and a refugee shelter on the list.
“We have a plan for an epidemic on file. Every public health department does.” She wore her hair in tight gray knots and seemed old enough to retire and too busy to think about it. Her boss, she said quickly and quietly, as if she didn’t want to utter the words, had succumbed to the cold.
“And we were lied to.” Now she had a spark in her voice. “We were told the cold from a few days ago was attenuated and would act like a vaccine. We knew more than we could tell. I was just counting down the hours to let people know they were safe. Then something went horribly wrong, and I still don’t know what.” She paused and looked Berenike in the eyes. “I have never felt more ashamed in my life. I participated in this disaster.” She held her gaze for a long moment, maybe asking for absolution, maybe censure.
Berenike looked away. She had a list of people to blame, and King wasn’t on it. “None of us wanted any of this.” Perhaps that would satisfy her.
After a long pause, King said, “Most of the staff is out in the field. For all that we don’t know, what we do know is enough to tell us what needs to be done now. This is beyond prevention and control and maybe even mitigation. Now we care for the ill and try to protect the well. What we need are resources.” The spark returned to her voice. “This is the worst-case scenario. And we didn’t expect pushback on the federal level for a response. We’re getting nothing from them. We have a good plan. It’s come down to adaptation and implementation, which is the hard part. That’s where you come in.”
Berenike liked the woman’s attitude, urgent but in control, like a military officer in a movie, or like an assistant manager who was competent but not bitter and vindictive as she fielded calls from furious asshole customers.
The office at the end of the corridor contained two people, a man who seemed to be scowling behind his face mask, staring at a big screen and murmuring into a microphone, and a police officer in uniform, calmly studying a heavy-duty police phone. The officer looked up as they entered. Berenike thought she might have met him
