Graham slid the chrome chair from beneath the table across the low pile carpet. Tiny flecks of dirt and debris kicked up like excited fleas, jumping out of the pile. No one was going to vacuum any time soon. The glass panes of the windows were tilted open at an angle and had remained so night and day as long as Graham could remember since escaping the big fires in the west and moving to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Light and air were more important than a debris-less room. If it weren’t for the row of floor-to-ceiling windows, the room would have been pitch-dark. The filtered light, though, was mottled by the dust storm currently wending its way through the streets like a drunk on his way home after a bender. They still saw one another in the dim light, enough to notice the grime the dust left visible by the sweaty dirt tracks upon their necks, like muddy ski slopes. Rick’s wife Olivia took the chair next to his and smiled. People were making small talk. As if small talk were still a thing to do, as if they were in the waiting room of a local dentist. Even so, she smiled and asked, “Have you heard from Paige?”
Part of him cringed inside. Why did she always have to ask about Paige? She’d likely hear news of Paige through Rick before he ever heard.
Graham smiled but shook his head. “No. No one’s heard from her but I’m sure she’s fine. She knows how to take care of herself and Cheryl. They’re probably somewhere in Wyoming by now.”
Olivia clicked her tongue.
Graham wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Why don’t you guys live in the condo building with the rest of us anymore?”
“I…we, tried that.” Graham chuckled. “For about a week after we first arrived. I can’t breathe in there. There’s something about learning to live in nature again and then suddenly you’re cast into a closed room without windows that can’t fully open…seems too much like a trap. It’s so unnatural now. And I used to teach in buildings like that in downtown Seattle, ones without windows, all day. It never bothered me then not to see outside but now it’s a necessity. There’s no airflow. You can’t run far if you need to get away. No…I’m too acclimated to the land beneath my feet now and an open doorway to escape through. And the kids…they couldn’t handle it either. Tehya’s never lived like that in her life. For the whole week we gave it a try, she was climbing the walls…I was starting to think I needed to ask Clarisse to evaluate her for ADHD. And heck, Bang wouldn’t even come inside until nightfall. He and Sheriff stayed out way past dark. The funny thing was…we just couldn’t adjust. And then we ended up with Paige and Cheryl for a while, and it was pretty cramped. The house is still a bit small for the four of us, but we make it work.”
“The four of you?” Olivia asked.
Graham nodded, “Yes, counting Sheriff.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Olivia smiled and nodded again. “I like living in the building better. You can’t beat the commute to the diner. I know Rick gets claustrophobic too but it’s just him and me now. Bethany’s living upstairs with her family. We want to be close to her and the kids. They have their space and we have ours…it works out well for us.”
“It’s hard to believe our kids are having kids now,” Graham said despite the fact that he hated small talk.
“I know it. Macy and McCann have two. When is Marcy going to catch up?”
Especially this subject…he thought.
Graham shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Every week someone asked about the reproductive course and competition the twins were on, as if he was their father. They were his, he supposed, but the truth was, he felt like he was only ever their guardian. They were grown women now who made their own decisions and though they checked in with him, they weren’t as close as they once were. Perhaps that’s how it happened with even natural-born children. If so, it made him sad to think the same thing would happen with Bang and Tehya.
Olivia started to ask another question but then Dalton walked in, with Clarisse right behind him.
Good mornings were mumbled and then Graham took a good look at his old friend. Dalton stood at the front of the room. There was that old podium that Rick was trying to preserve to its dying breath. Dalton couldn’t hide behind that. His hands went from the sides of his hips to the front of his waist in a clasp and back again. He shook his head and stared at the ground with a wry smile upon his face, but his eyes were rimmed in red and filled with tears.
“I’m sorry.” He wiped them away and cleared his throat. “I, ah…I don’t know why it’s getting to me.”
Clarisse touched the back of his arm and rubbed up and down briefly.
Graham knew it was bad. They all did. They didn’t assemble formally like this if it weren’t for real.
“Why don’t you just go ahead and start, Clarisse?” Dalton said, “You’ve always been better at this than I am, anyway.”
Everyone chuckled at what was never going to be funny.
She stepped forward and slid her glasses up the bridge of her nose again, as she always did, and smiled. “As you know, we’ve heard increasing news about the terrorists’ advances in small pockets here and there. We were never really sure over the past weeks if these pockets were part of a larger group or if they were just the leftover stragglers from before.” She nodded then, her lips in a thin line. “They’re coming again, mostly along the coastline. They’ve made it past the Seattle area. They’ve set fire to what hadn’t burned the first time in Seattle and north of there. People from different coastal communities are unreachable and presumed captured or dead.” She reached her hand out toward Graham. “We had to flee Cascade and come here with the majority of our community. We’re safe for now. But we have a problem. A big one. One that we need to solve quickly if we’re going to keep the upper hand here. They will advance east; we’re sure of that.”
A familiar voice broke in. Graham didn’t even need to turn around to know who spoke. “But we have the viruses we fought them with the last time. Why can’t we just do the same thing?” It was Sam, cutting to the heart of the matter, from near the back door. A natural woodsman from Montana, he’d never fully commit to an enclosed room in the old days, nor would he do it now. And Graham now knew why.
“Because that’s just the thing,” Clarisse said. “We don’t have the virus we used the last time. Nor do I think it will work so well a second time. They’re immune to it or they’re vaccinated against it. Just like you and Graham…many of those here now…I suspect we’re immune to the last one. It won’t work on them. And just as we developed a vaccine…they may have done the same thing.”
No one said anything for a minute, though there was a collective “huh” as that revelation sank in. Graham had leaned backward in his chair. “What you’re saying…is that this has truly become a biological war?”
She swallowed, nodded, and said, “Yes, it’s always been just that when we realized it was the only way to fight back.”
“What do we need then?” Sam asked, getting right to the matter.
“Need for what?” someone shouted. Graham didn’t know that person’s voice. They were from the town he now called home.
“What do we need for you to do again what you did the last time?” Sam clarified.
Clarisse put her hands up when the other person stood up and shouted out, “We’re not doing that here.” When he stood, Graham recognized him as the older guy who always wore a sneer. His name was Dale, if he remembered right.
“We know what you did the last time.” Dale pointed an accusing finger at Clarisse. “You’re no better than they are. If you’re going to do that, you’re not doing it here. We know all about your time in Canada.”
Dalton pushed himself away from the wall. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance, Dale? What in the hell do you propose we do then?”
Clarisse pressed her hand against Dalton’s chest.
“That’s genocide. We’re better than that,” Dale said. “You can’t just go around creating viruses that kill masses of people.”
“Again,” Dalton said, “what do you propose we do? Have you ever fought in a war, Dale? Do you have any suggestions on how to stop them from wiping out the next generation? Might I remind you that they came here, to our land…we didn’t seek them out. They started this…they developed the first one and committed mass genocide. They invaded, raped, pillaged and destroyed our country.”
“Calm down,” Clarisse said, rubbing the side of his arm.
“I’ll be in the hall,” Dalton said after trying to calm his own breathing. His red face resembled the inside of a rare steak.
Dale sheepishly sat down as everyone else quietly ignored him.
Without missing a beat, Sam repeated as if no one had heard him before the interruption. “What do you need and when do you need it, Clarisse?”
Her chest rose and fell with a heavy sigh as she watched Dalton walk away. “It’s not that easy. I’ll have to develop a new strain—a variation—and we need to be prepared for the same thing from them. Just as in nature, manmade viruses are highly mutable. It doesn’t take a lab to mutate a virus…just an animal transmission.”
“I don’t agree with this line of attack,” Dale said, less directly than before.
It was Graham who turned around in his chair this time and stared into Dale’s sour face as he enunciated each word. “Sit, sir.” Then he turned again and said, “Clarisse, like Sam said, what do we need and where do we get it? Let’s just get this over with.”
At the same time, behind him, he heard Dale knocking knees between the seats as he made his way through the crowded room to the exit.
Clarisse continued, “We need equipment, and I’ve located the nearest place we’re likely to find it.” In a quieter tone she said, “And we’ll also need to extract a few subjects again if it turns out that they’re here to annihilate us again with bio-weapons. We’re not sure that’s the case. So far…it’s just the invasion and destruction of communities we’ve recorded.”
He knew what she meant, though. They were likely up to their old M.O. Was this just a clean-up or…were they in with a second wave of bioterrorism? They would need a few of the enemy subjects to run tests to find out, as they did last time. They would need to know if they carried a certain vaccine to the last virus. If they held those antibodies. And after knowing that, Clarisse would then be able to develop something they could spread. Without regard to the madness this imposed, Graham asked, “Where is that?”
“A few hours south of here. Umatilla Chemical Depot,” Clarisse said.
“I seem to remember the chemical weapons were mandated to be destroyed from there in the early 2000s. Are you sure they still exist? I worked as a math professor at Washington State back in the day, and I had to do some calculations for them. Later, I heard they never destroyed the compound. I thought at the time that was a myth,” Graham said. “That was before. When I thought governments didn’t lie.”
Up to this point, it was Rick who silently listened from the back of the room. He took his time strolling forward while quoting, “‘Myths which are believed in tend to become true.’ George Orwell.” Rick held a piece of paper by the corner. It’d been folded into a square once and then crumpled, laid flat and smoothed out a few times, so that now, it flapped like a well-worn sail as he walked between the aisles. No one was going to like what he had to say next, and Graham knew it.
“If you do this, you’re no better than they are! And they’ll come here and kill us all!” shouted Dale from the hallway.
“I’ve had about enough of you,” came Dalton’s voice next. There was scuffling and Clarisse shouted, “Don’t…Dalton.”
Graham cranked his head around and looked through the doorway as Dalton grabbed the little man by his collar and hauled him outside the building.
“That’s not going to help anything,” Clarisse said, increasing her stride in hopes of minimizing the damage.
“Helped me. I feel better already,” Dalton said.
Rick, without regard to the disturbance, cleared his throat as Clarisse and Dalton walked back inside the meeting room.
“We’re going to need a team.”
Rick’s eyes landed on Graham’s, knowing he wasn’t going to like what he said next. If he made it through the day without making enemies of old friends, he’d count himself lucky.
“We need our best marksmen. Clarisse will go, obviously. That means McCann will stay as head medical officer here. That also means Dalton will stay here. We don’t want to leave the next generation of our home base untended. As you can see, Dalton’s not very happy about that. That’s why he’s a little…edgy.”
Graham understood. Knowing McCann would remain there was a relief. These excursions were risky. He considered McCann his own son, just like the twins were his as well, and was thankful he was safe and out of harm’s way. But Graham wasn’t sure which marksmen Rick referred to as the best. That had him a little worried about his other son, and it wasn’t as if he’d referred to the best brewer…that would be Mark without question. Of course, Mark was the only brewer in town these days.
“I’m going as communications and defense. But I need to get Clarisse there and back in one piece and it can’t be just the two of us. I need a few more. I’ve thought really hard about this and we have to bring in some of the younger generation, folks. There’s no way around it. They need the experience. They need to know what they’re up against. They need the reference for days to come.”
Graham stiffened and sat up straight. He knew what was coming next. Rick’s words fell out of his mouth in a jumble, just as Graham feared.
“Our best marksman, the one who led this next generation in training consistently and without reproach, is Bang. He’ll choose the team. Addy…”
“No!” shouted Sam. “No…she’s not going without me. You can bet your ass…”
Graham said, “Why am I finding out about this in a goddamn meeting, Rick?” He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, cutting off both Rick and Sam’s outrage at once. Was he getting too old for this? Tired of seeing the people he loved dead? It didn’t matter now; the words were out there.
Rick swallowed without reply. In fact, no one said anything. He folded the flimsy paper into a square. Only after he had tucked the note into his shirt pocket did he speak. “I’m telling you now.”
It didn’t matter that Graham regretted his outburst; he saw the pain in Rick’s downcast eyes. “Christ,” Graham muttered and brushed his shaking hand over the stubble on his chin. He could really lose him. Bang could die…just like Tala, Steve, Dutch…it was unthinkable.
“Dad…he told me. I want to go. I’m ready.” Bang’s voice filtered up from the back of the room. Everyone turned in their seats to stare at the young man he called his son.
“Me too,” said Addy, by his side.