administration building. He wore a brown suit and stood six feet tall, with wheat-colored hair thinning at the crown, a bulbous nose, and almost no cheek bones. Two women, one large and one short, dressed in green medical scrubs, stood at the top of the steps. Their features were obscured by the shadow of a side wall that blocked the low sun.
Augustine opened the door and got out without waiting for the driver. The director dried his hands on his pants leg, then offered one to shake. “Dr. Augustine, it’s an honor.”
Augustine gave the man’s hand a quick grip. Dicken pushed his leg out, grasped the handle over the door, and climbed from the car. “Christopher Dicken, this is Geoffrey Trask,” Augustine introduced him.
Behind them, the two Secret Service cars made a V, blocking the drive. Two men stepped out and stood by the open car doors.
Trask mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “We’re certainly glad to have both of you,” he said. At six thirty in the evening, the heat was slowly retreating from a high of eighty-five degrees.
Trask flicked his head to one side and the two women descended the steps. “This is Yolanda Middleton, senior nurse and paramedic for the pediatric care center.”
Middleton was in her late forties, heavy-set, with classic Congolese features, short-cut wild hair, immense, sad eyes, and a bulldog expression. Her uniform was wrinkled and stained. She nodded at Dicken, then examined Augustine with blunt suspicion.
“And this is Diana DeWitt,” Trask continued. DeWitt was small and plump-faced with narrow gray eyes. Her green pants hung around her ankles and she had rolled up her sleeves. “A school counselor.”
“Consulting anthropologist, actually,” DeWitt said. “I travel and visit the schools. I arrived here three days ago.” She smiled sadly but with no hint that she felt put-upon. “Dr. Augustine, we have met once before. This would be a pleasure, Dr. Dicken, under other circumstances.”
“We should get back,” Middleton said abruptly. “We’re very short-staffed.”
“These people are essential, Ms. Middleton,” Trask admonished.
Middleton flared. “Jesus himself could visit, Mr. Trask, and I’d make him pitch in. You know how bad it is.”
Trask put on his most royal frown—a poor performance—and Dicken moved in to defuse the tension. “We don’t know,” he said. “How bad is it?”
“We shouldn’t talk out here,” Trask looked nervously at the small crowd of protesters beyond the fence, more than two hundred yards away. “They have those big ears, you know, listening dishes? Yolanda, Diana, could you accompany us? We’ll carry on our discussion inside.” He walked ahead through the false columns.
One agent joined them, following at a discreet distance.
All of the older buildings were a jarring shade of ocher. The architecture screamed prison, even with the bronze plate on the wall and the sign over the front gate insisting that this was a school.
“On orders from the governor, we have a press blackout,” Trask said. “Of course, we don’t allow cell phones or broadband in the school, and I’ve taken the central switchboard offline for now. I believe in a disciplined approach to getting out our message. We don’t want to make it seem worse than it is. Right now, my first priority is procuring medical supplies. Dr. Kelson, our lead physician, is working on that now.”
Inside the building, the corridors were cooler, though there was no air conditioning. “Our plant has been down, my apologies,” Trask said, looking back at Augustine. “We haven’t been able to get repair people in. Dr. Dicken, this is an honor. It truly is. If there’s anything I can explain—”
“Tell us how bad it is,” Augustine said.
“Bad,” Trask said. “On the verge of being out of control.”
“We’re losing our children,” Middleton said, her voice breaking. “How many today, Diane?”
“Fifty in the past couple of hours. A hundred and ninety today, total. And sixty last night.”
“Sick?” Augustine asked.
“Dead,” Middleton said.
“We haven’t had time for a formal count,” Trask said. “But it is serious.”
“I need to visit a sick ward as soon as possible,” Dicken said.
“The whole school is a sick ward,” Middleton said.
“It’s tragic,” DeWitt said. “They’re losing their social cohesion. They rely on each other so much, and nobody’s trained them how to get along when there’s a disaster. They’ve been both sheltered and neglected.”
“I think their physical health is our main concern now,” Trask said.
“I assume there’s some sort of medical center,” Dicken said. “I’d like to study samples from the sick children as quickly as possible.”
“I’ve already arranged for that,” Trask said. “You’ll work with Dr. Kelson.”
“Has the staff given specimens?”
“We took samples from the sick children,” Trask said, and smiled helpfully.
“But not from the staff?” Dicken blinked impatiently at Trask.
“No.” The director’s ears pinked. “Nobody saw the need. We’ve been hearing rumors of a full quarantine, a complete lockdown, everyone, no exceptions. Most of us have families…” He let them draw their own conclusions about why he did not want the staff tested. “It’s a tough choice.”
“You sent samples to the Ohio Department of Health and the CDC?”
“They’re waiting to go out now,” Trask said.
“You should have sent them as soon as the first child became ill,” Dicken said.
“There was complete confusion,” Trask explained, and smiled. Dicken could tell Trask was the sort of man who hid doubt and ignorance behind a mask of pleasantry. Nothing wrong here, friends. All is under control. As if expressing a confidence, Trask added, “We are used to them being so healthy.”
Dicken glanced at Augustine, hoping for some clue as to what was really going on here, what relationship or control Augustine had over a person like Trask, if any. What he saw frightened him. Augustine’s face was as calm as a colorless pool of water on a windless day.
This was not the Mark Augustine of old. And who this new man might become was not something Dicken wanted to worry about, not now.
They passed an elevator and a flight of stairs.
“My office is up there, along with the communications and command center,” Trask said. “Dr. Augustine, please feel free to use it. It’s on the second floor, with the best view of the school, well, besides the view from the guard towers, which we use mostly for storage now. First, we’ll visit the medical center. You can begin work there immediately—away from the confusion.”
“I’d
