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“Not so far, but these cops are really not happy about the idea of shooting anyone. There are kids in there.”
Underwood looked around, shouted, “Who’s in charge? Which one of you guys…”
A cop called, “Dascoe!”
A cop with a sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve jogged from the back side of the church, and Underwood said, “You gotta tell your guys that this is the worst. If they come in contact with any of those people, they’ll have to go into quarantine. They’ll likely die. And you need to back away from the church. Get your whole…platoon…back at least fifty yards.”
The cops began to move back, and then the MPs arrived in a dark blue bus, with Major Vincent.
Underwood told her what had happened, and she looked at Lucas, shook her head.
“You and Underwood have to figure this out. I’m out of it,” Lucas called.
Underwood, loud enough for Lucas to hear, said to Vincent, “We’ve got to get some fencing up. Some of that chain link, and tall, and get it up in a hurry. With concertina, if you can find it. You need to pull those tents of yours down and put them back up here in the courtyard so we can eventually start getting the people out of the church. Right now, get your MPs around the church, same circle you see with the Taos police officers, at least fifty yards back. More would be better. As far back as they can get and still see the church. I just hope to God that’s enough.”
“You don’t know?” Vincent asked.
“No. I don’t know,” Underwood snapped. “We’re dealing with the most infectious agent on earth and it can spread through the air. Fifty yards oughta be enough, but honestly, the best thing the Army could do, and maybe the kindest thing you could do, is drop a bomb on that church and then napalm it.”
Vincent took a step back. “You’re…”
“Not exaggerating,” Underwood said. “You have no idea of what’s about to happen in there.”
An SUV pulled up in the street, and Underwood stepped toward it and said, “Get your people spread around. All the way out to the edges of the plaza here…As far back as they can get and still see what’s going on at the church. And get some more guys here and start evacuating the buildings and houses out two blocks…get the townspeople out of here.”
And, he added, “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Vincent asked.
“Into the church.”
—
Lucas was surroundedby a wide-open space, mostly tan dirt with high-desert plants that he would have identified as weeds. The disease problem had begun to sink in with the cops, and they’d all moved well back away from him. The MPs had spread around the church, filling in gaps between the cops; they all had rifles in their hands. Shortly after they’d gotten into place, Lucas could hear Rae shouting from the back of the church but couldn’t tell what she was saying. A minute after that, she walked back around, saw Lucas, and walked up to him.
“We screwed? I mean, we, personally?”
“I don’t know.” He nodded toward the SUV, where Underwood was pulling on an isolation suit. “Underwood might be able to tell us a little more, but we really haven’t had any time to talk. He’s going into the church. Gotta hope they don’t pull him apart in there.”
“Gotta be a pressure cooker,” Rae said, gazing over at the church’s wooden door.
“Yeah. What were you yelling back there, a minute ago? I heard some gunfire. It sounded like you.”
“People tried to sneak out the back. I fired a half a mag into the portico, or whatever you call it, the roof over a porch, on the back of the church. Scared them back inside.”
A second man had gotten out of the late-arriving SUV and was suiting up with Underwood. Lucas recognized him as Danny Moscowitz, who’d searched Catton’s ski valley house with him. When they had the suits on, and sealed, Moscowitz picked up one of the virus-killer spray tanks, and they clumped toward Lucas and Rae.
“So how fucked are we?” Lucas asked Underwood.
Underwood looked at Catton’s body, then stooped and scratched up a little dust with a gloved hand, and threw it up in the air. It drifted toward Catton. “You’re probably okay, if the wind hasn’t changed. You need to back up more, though, and we’re gonna have to quarantine you for at least two weeks. We’ll figure out how to do that after we get out of the church.”
“Ah, man. You think…”
“The measles virus can infect through air contact. So, who knows?” Underwood said. He looked at the church. “I’m wondering if I should take a pistol in there.”
“Do you guys know how to shoot?” Rae asked.
Underwood and Moscowitz looked at each other, then Underwood said, “Not really.”
