Outcome

OUTCOME

Edward W. Robertson

© 2012 Edward W. Robertson

Smashwords Edition

1

Across the table, Ellie Colson's bosses laughed what might be the last big laugh of their lives. She forgave them. They didn't know they were joking about the end of the world.

She smiled thinly. Rawlings, her direct superior, chuckled and swabbed his puffy hand across the table, as if he were working at an imaginary water spot. Dr. Armen laughed and clutched his gut, as if he were afraid it might bounce away. Jesper Mason just smiled. Like Ellie, he hadn't been introduced by rank—Rawlings hadn't even mentioned which org he belonged to, which meant he was a field hand, and a useful one. She recognized him vaguely. Might have seen him around the stacks once or twice. Mason had told the joke, something about Spanish flu. Ellie hadn't been listening. She'd been thinking about the transmission rate in Rawlings' printout.

The laughter stopped. Conversation resumed. The room was bare and windowless but their voices carried no echo, dying in the small space like lost moths. It wasn't that these men weren't smart; they had enough degrees between them to paper a den. It wasn't that they lacked dedication; she would soon prove herself least dedicated of any of them.

It was that they lacked imagination.

Ellie? Rawlings said. You're awfully quiet.

I think, she said, fairly certain it would do no good, this is going to wind up more serious than Spanish flu.

The old man frowned, hiding the disappointment in his eyes with parental skill. That was a joke.

She tapped the printout. Did you see the numbers?

The ones I hunt-and-pecked into the report? Rawlings leaned forward, tie wrinkling. Hey. What's in your head?

She met his eyes. We need to consider closing up shop.

His eyes crinkled, pained. Ellie.

Not for good. For the weekend.

The weekend?

Lock everything down for two weeks. Flights. Highways. Schools. Everything. Arrest and quarantine anyone who leaves their homes.

Rawlings drew back his chin, flesh wattling his neck. You're talking about the M-word.

I'm talking about containment.

The United States hasn't declared martial law since the Civil War. Rawlings glanced at his assistant, Gills. Is that right? The Civil War, yes?

Gills nodded, light reflecting from his glasses. Pretty sure, sir.

Rawlings turned back to her. The Civil War, Ellie.

Two weeks, she said. This thing is aggressive. Aggressive like a poked grizzly. If this thing is what it looks like, it needs civilization to spread—otherwise, it will kill its hosts before they have the chance to pass it along. If you keep all the current hosts isolated for two weeks, it might kill itself off.

And then what? Reevaluation?

Ellie stared at the table. Well, yes.

If you were right, of course, this thing would take a lot longer than two weeks to clear out. Rawlings tapped his thumbs against the table. Realistically, you're talking months before we begin to get back to normal. You lock the whole country in their houses for three months, six, you usher in a brand-new Great Depression.

The cure is worse than the disease, Armen said, low.

Rawlings raised a brow at the doctor, apologetic. His head was turned from her, but Ellie had seen him make the gesture too many times to miss it. The old man tapped the table some more.

We're trying to avert disaster, he said at last. Got anything along those lines?

She shrugged. I'll give it another think.

He smiled. Do.

They picked up the talk where they'd left off. Small-scale stuff. Likelihood of riots, a vaccine distribution schedule. Automatically, Ellie voiced support for starting in mass transit-oriented urban centers. Anything to decrease the rate of fresh infections. It wouldn't matter. There would be no time for a vaccine. Even if they had months—and she was thinking weeks were more likely—that was no guarantee. They still didn't have a vaccine for herpes.

During a pause, Rawlings mused idly where the illness had come from. Mason leapt on the topical fumble like a lineman and for twenty minutes they discussed the potential signs of whether it had been inflicted from outside, who were the most likely suspects, and what were the implications of such an attack. Ellie found the entire topic academic, masturbatory. It didn't matter where or why. All that mattered was is.

In the end, Rawlings and Dr. Armen decided to recommend a standard-aggressive outbreak protocol modified by a suite of draconian transportation restrictions to reflect the reality that the flu had already vectored well beyond its Northern Idaho ground zero. (And had done so with such efficacy Ellie had doubts there had been a true zero-point—which certainly suggested it was no accident. But enough of that.)

Rawlings reached across the table to consolidate his spread of printouts and tablets.

I'd like to be relocated to New York, she said.

The old man squinted at her with one eye. Hold your horses. You think this is a potential blank-slate event.

Yes.

And you would prefer to hide from the end of the world in remote ol' New York City.

She'd had ample time to prepare her lie. It will be worst there. If I can see it firsthand, I may be able to convince you to get serious.

Rawlings leaned back, his tight frown settling in for a lengthy stay. Let me ask you something. Say you're heading up New York. Say you had a whole lot less resources than you'd like and a directive to keep any and all panic gruesomely squashed under your heel. What would you do to stop it?

Get it off the streets, Ellie said. Offer free clinics to bring in the poor and spread a low-level scare about dying children to bring in the rich. Identify the incubators and nullify them—schools, hospitals, airports. Everyone in the subways may as well be kissing. You see someone sick, you pull them off the train. You sequester everyone you pick up until they reach an outcome.

You mean until they die.

She shrugged. Or don't.

Armen snorted. That's not going to stop the sort of outbreak you imagine. The city's too big.

He said limited resources, Ellie said. This is about slowing the rate of transmission. Buying time for a vaccine. Worst-case, the uninfected have time to see what's happening and isolate themselves. A fraction survives.

You're going to yank everyone with the sniffles off the C train? Mason said. Where do you plan to hold them all? The Meadowlands?

Ellie shrugged again. That's what I'd start with.

Rawlings nodded, still frowning. Request denied. I need you here. And safe. Not coughing into your falafel in the East Village.

Before she left, she returned to the observation room. Behind the glass, Timothy Rogers, 24, lay face-up on the exam table. They'd cleaned him up very nicely. Pale, sure, and the lividity on the left side of his chest and face wasn't classically attractive, but the blood had been scrubbed away from his mouth and neck. On the next table, Marilyn Mimi Rogers, 49, hadn't held up quite as well as her son. She'd been found in the tub. Patches of her skin were stained pink, and now that she'd dried out, her whole body had a shriveled quality that did her middle-aged figure no favors.

In the adjoining room, fifteen others were waiting for or presently in the process of examination. Ellie didn't need to see them again. Mimi Rogers, middle-aged but otherwise healthy. Her son, at the peak of his youth. It was a small sample size, but the fifteen in the next room was a little less small. The still-warm sample waiting in the hospital basement—and the next batch, currently occupying the quarantined hospital's beds, coughing and bleeding—was rather less small yet.

Ellie went home, got her getaway bag and a couple of extra passports, and booked the first flight to New York. She figured she had less than 48 hours to find