Haven Days
5-Rising Concerns
(April-May 2012)
Couldn't anyone stop it?
The country reeled. At first people couldn't or wouldn't believe it: A pandemic, in this day and age? Just . . the flu.
Just . . . a conspiracy by Big Fat Pharma.
Just . . . the Other Party's trying to scare voters.
Just . . . why can't my wife get into a hospital room?
Just . . . why did my uncle die so suddenly at age 47?
The numbers went up, shockingly. Ten thousand new cases this week. Next week, fifteen. Next week, twenty-two, and the charts showed a rising curve.
Why won't it go away? When will it go away? Will it go away?
Questions, questions, too many of them. Infection rates crept up at first and then doubled. Then redoubled. Then the charts looked like the profile of a mountain no one would try to ski.
The Agency pushed through without too much internal trouble. Everyone used one of McGucket's test kits every morning. Those testing positive got a shot of nanomites. Even at that, they got sick for usually four to seven days and sometimes had to be hospitalized. They had one fatality, an Agent named Hammer, resident in Spain. It turned out he had a fear of needles and faked his injection certification. He fell ill on a Monday, supposedly got his nano injection that afternoon, went home, and rested. On Wednesday he checked into the Agency infirmary, spiking a temp of 105 Fahrenheit. On Thursday evening he was on a ventilator. On Saturday morning he died. No evidence of D.D., or Dimensional Delirium, as the med staff termed it.
They were a sophisticated group, the Agency, but—they had only so many personnel, and as an organization they were far too thin on the ground to offer much direct aid. Ford grew furious, and then depressed, when he could find no clear path to communicate the Agency's determinations to the mainstream government.
"They won't listen!" he yelled, balling his big hands into fists and pounding on the table. "I can't get anyone to listen!"
Lorena massaged his shoulders. "You're doing as much as any man can," she consoled him.
"It's not enough." He stretched up his arm to clasp her hand. "I—I've fought eldritch monstrosities. I've survived horrors that I can't even talk about. I've confronted and out-fought and out-thought enemies that are like creatures out of madness. Why can't I help the world now?" Why?"
"You are helping," his wife reassured him. "You're keeping us safe. All of us. Everyone in the Valley."
"But so many are going to die," he said quietly. "And I'm afraid we can't track down each and every case in which the mutant virus opens at least a psychic rift into other dimensions. It would only take one uncontrolled rift to—" he bit off his speculation with, "It would be unthinkable."
Billy Sheaffer was anxious. That morning his parents believed a vehicle from the Gravity Falls Department of Health, a modified large SUV, had come to pick him up just so he wouldn't have to risk an airplane journey. The driver had credentials and she had a set of tests. So far the Sheaffer family was not showing positive.
"Billy has his cell phone," Mrs. Sheaffer said as Billy, looking a little puffed up at his own importance, lugged his third suitcase from the house. "Remind him to call us along the way, and especially when he arrives."
"I will," the driver said with a smile. "He's in good hands."
"We may be coming up soon," Mr. Sheaffer said. He wore a perpetual look of worry these days. "The college administration has plans to move to online instruction by mid-April. We're already home-schooling the girls."
The Sheaffer twins were both seniors. They came out shyly and hugged their brother and then gave him a box. "This is his lunch," one of them explained.
"No fast food!" the other one cautioned.
"Aw," Billy said.
The driver patted his shoulder. "That's all right. Up in Gravity Falls you can have hamburgers straight from the Mystery Shack if you want to." To his parents, she said, "It's closed as an attraction, except just for locals these days, but Mr. Ramirez is keeping the snack bar open."
"The burgers are yummy," Billy explained.
They got underway. Billy strapped into the passenger seat, half-turned to wave to his family, and then said seriously, "I hope they'll be OK."
"So do we," the driver said. "Oh, I introduced myself to your parents, but not yet to you, sorry. I know who you are, Billy. My name is Amy Hazard. We'll be driving straight up. If you need a bathroom break, tell me. There's a bathroom back in the rear of the van."
"For real?"
"For real. And we won't stop for gas, either."
"Huh?" Billy blinked. He wasn't an auto fanatic, but the kids in school talked about cars enough so he'd picked up on a few facts. Well, a great many facts. He was not stupid or inattentive. "What kind of mileage does this car get?"
"We don't know," Hazard said. "We've never had to refill it yet, and it's gone—" she glanced at the odometer—"twenty-two thousand miles so far. Still showing full."
"Whoa! Uh—what is it? I mean, I know it's like a van, kinda, but what's the make and model?"
"It's an AGT-S," she said. "A private brand." The initials stood for "Agency Ground Transportamobile-Special," and it had been manufactured under McGucket's supervision. It ran, somehow, on a tank of water which, somehow, was never used up but recycled.
One Agent, a car aficionado, had asked McGucket, "How can it even do that?"
Cheerfully, McGucket had replied, "Oh, it's probably quantum." As soon as he got time, McGucket was going to combine all the myriad patents (his) that he had used in designing the vehicle and patent the whole concept. But these days, as he put it, he was busier than a three-tailed skunk in a blizzard of coyotes.
Billy, in addition to his excellent memory and alert perception, knew weirdness when he saw it. The AGT-S sped along at the speed limit—no more, no less—constantly. When it came to traffic clogs, somehow Amy Hazard found space where there was none. At times Billy yawned—like one time just south of the exit to Mount Shasta—and when his yawn ended and he opened his eye, they were way farther along than they should have been. He blinked and asked Hazard, "Did we just pass the welcome sign to Oregon?"
"It says 'Oregon Welcomes You,' but yes, we did," she said.
"We went like seventy-five miles in a second?" he asked.
"What can I say?" she asked. "Mount Shasta is noted for weirdness."
"But—uh—"
"Or maybe you just dozed there for a little bit."
"Yeah," he said. "Or maybe this car has, uh, special modifications?"
"Maybe," she said with an infectious grin.
At least grinning was harmless.
She pulled off into a rest area for a few minutes to allow Billy a trip to the restroom. When he came back, he said, "I washed my hands."
"Good."
"That's like an airplane restroom."
"Sort of," she said. "Small but it has everything you need. Buckle up. We'll be there in about two hours, I think."
"Yay!" he said two hours and five minutes later as they made the turn to the Falls. "Uh—what's that? That's all new."
"The warehouse is where outside deliveries are collected. And right ahead there, with the swing-down gates and the guard house, that's the barrier," she said. "All vehicles coming in have to stop there and be cleared. This will take a few minutes."
Hazard went first, being checked by a young man wearing one of those science-fictiony-looking hazmat suits, yellow with a clear face shield, an inner respirator hiding his nose and chin, blue gloves, and even booties that covered his shoes. He ran something like a small handheld vacuum cleaner over her chin to feet, front and back, and waited until a green light flashed on it. "Now the ticklish part," he said, cracking open a clear plastic tube and pulling out a long swab. "Left." He put it up her left nostril. "Right." Then her right, and he opened another clear tube and inserted the swab into some clear liquid, then put the whole thing into an opening in a machine the size of an old-fashioned office typewriter.
"You next," Hazard said. "It won't hurt at all. Have you ever had a swab test?"
Billy shook his head.
"It may make you want to cough. Try not to."
While a second hazmat-suited person, hard to tell if it was a man or a woman, took air samples of the luggage in the van, the young man again ran the vacuum-thingy over Billy, who imitated Hazard and stood with both arms stretched straight out. Green light.
Then the young man said, "Tilt your head back. Left nostril. Attaboy. Now right . . . and we wait about ten minutes for both results. He put the sample in the machine with Hazard's and flipped a switch.
Meanwhile the second inspector reported, "Clean, Hank."
"Thank you, Deedee."
She went to speak to someone who was driving out—an older man in a black Miyazagi mid-size. She used a voice recorder to take down her questions and the man's answers. Then she motioned him out, and he drove away.
The analyzer buzzed, and the young man checked the readout. "All clear," he said cheerfully. "Have a good evening!"
He raised the gate and Hazard drove through.
"He was wearing two pairs of gloves, one over the other," Billy said.
"You noticed. It's safer that way. This is a tight quarantine."
"Who was that who drove out of the Valley?"
"That's a man who works for Preston Northwest. He lives in a special quarantine house and takes care of necessary business."
"Oh. These are new, too," said Billy as they passed what looked like a housing development on both sides of the road.
"This is where your family will stay when they come up, at least for two weeks," Hazard said. "Then they'll be checked for infection and allowed to enter the town. Dr. McGucket has cleared a whole wing of his house for you and your family to live in."
"Oh. Do I have to stay in one of these for two weeks?"
"No," Amy said. "But you will have to have a virus check every morning for the next week. Think you can handle it?"
Billy thought for a moment. "It wasn't so bad."
She took him to the Shack, and down into the basement, where Stanford Pines himself admitted them one at a time into a very small enclosure that looked like a telephone booth from the 1950s. This time Billy went first. "Remove all of your clothing except for your underwear. Put them and your shoes in this container," he said, pointing toward a plastic cube.
"Uh—"
"I won't look," Hazard said, turning her back.
Billy stripped down to his white underpants, then at Ford's direction went into the booth. "Close your eyes," Ford said.
"Eye," Billy almost corrected, but didn't. He still felt a little nervous around Ford, though apart from one time, Ford had never treated him with anything but a kind of cool courtesy.
"That's fine," Ford said as he shut the booth door. "Now keep your eyes closed and hold your arms so your hands are each about one foot from your sides. That's good. Now hold it."
Billy had a sensation of a ring of bright light rising around him for a few seconds, and then it descended and faded. "Excellent," Ford said. "Now come out. Here's a robe for you to wear for a few minutes. It's a bit large, I'm sorry."
"That's OK," Billy said, putting on the white terrycloth robe.
"Now," Ford said, leading him to a second room, one with a table with three different computers on it and one high office chair, "Please just wait here until I've cleared Miss Hazard. Don't touch anything."
"OK," Billy said.
Ford didn't close the door, but Billy heard Amy say, "Ready."
Through the open doorway he saw the walls of the examination room, if that's what it was, illuminated by a sudden hard blue glow that lasted for a few seconds before going out. "Done," Stanford said. "I ran your clothes through the sterilizer already, so you may dress."
"I'll send Billy's clothes through."
"Be sure to wear—"
"I've already got the gloves on," Amy said reassuringly.
"Billy," Ford said. "You may return. I suppose you're wondering just what—"
"UV disinfection, right?" Billy asked.
Ford blinked. "Uh—yes, that's correct."
Billy nodded. "And that gets rid of the virus?"
"Of virtually all microbes," Ford said. "You didn't get enough to burn you—UV can give you a nasty sunburn if you're exposed too long—but nearly every virus and bacterium on your skin and in your hair has been wiped out. Your clothes are being treated now."
"And," said Hazard, "before you unpack, everything you brought inside your suitcases and the suitcases themselves will be treated. The team's taking care of that now. The process won't damage anything, and it's probably not even necessary, but we're trying to be super careful."
Billy frowned a little in thought. "It says on the news that the virus doesn't live on surfaces," he said.
Ford shrugged. "Yes and no. It may survive for a while, but as a rule, it goes inactive after a short period of time. It lives longer on skin—that's why washing your hands—"
Billy smiled. "For at least twenty seconds, with soap, under running water. That's long enough to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice."
Ford visibly relaxed a little, and his smile broadened. "And you're not just washing the virus away and into the sewers," he said. "Do you know how washing kills it?"
Billy nodded solemnly. "The virus has an outside coat of, uh, like fatty stuff. The soap molecules have a water-attracting head—"
"Hydrophilic," Ford murmured. "From Greek, meaning literally 'water-loving.'"
"Hydrophilic," Billy repeated. "The soap molecules have hydrophilic heads and, um, a string of water-repelling stuff like a kind of tail. The hydrophilic parts cluster together, and the water-repelling parts are on the inside . . ." he blinked. "That's why soap makes bubbles!"
"Very good," Ford said.
"OK, OK, the clusters of soap molecules kind of grab onto the virus—"
"The clusters are called 'micelles,'" Ford said helpfully. "And the 'tails' are hydrophobic—meaning in Greek that they—"
"Repel water!" Billy, visibly excited, said. "The, um, micelles grab onto the outer layer of the virus, and the friction from hand-washing helps, and, um, the virus uh, capsule, I guess, gets ripped apart!"
"And the virus is killed within seconds," Ford said. "Billy, have you ever considered becoming a scientist?"
At the Shack, Billy had a great time playing with Tripper and DC. He admitted to Mabel that he was nervous around dogs. "A lot of times they don't seem to like me," he said. "But yours are friendly."
"They take after their mom. Me!" Mabel said, pointing two thumbs to herself. "Ha!"
Billy threw the ball, and both dogs scampered after it. Tripper still had the edge on his pup, and he got there first—then with a jerk of his head, he tossed the ball a little farther for DC to chase. While they were retrieving it, Billy asked quietly, "What are you worried about, Mabel?"
"Does it show?"
"Kind of," Billy said. "Is it your folks?"
"No, no, they're here, they're good, they're good. It's—well, it's Teek. He's off there in Georgia, and they say flying is dangerous now, and he won't be able to come home until June—and the airlines are canceling flights, and who knows how bad things will be by then?"
DC dropped the ball into Billy's hand. He held it up as if it were a crystal ball. "He'll be all right," he said in a far-away voice. "Stanford will help him get home safely. And he'll be home sooner than you think."
"Billy?" Mabel asked. "Are you OK?"
He blinked his good eye. "Uh, sure, Shooting Star. I can still get glimpses, you know. Go get it!" He threw the ball. Then in his normal tone, he said, "They sure do like chasing, don't they?"
"Yeah," Mabel said slowly. "What makes you think Teek will be OK?"
"Huh?" Billy asked. As the dogs went leaping and bounding, he shook his head. "I . . . did I say something? I don't remember."
"Did you call me Shooting Star?"
"Why would I?" he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. "Hey! What's that about?"
"I just felt like hugging you," Mabel said.
When they all had dinner together, Wendy said, "So, Billy, Ford tells us you're like a whiz at science!"
"You really impressed him," Dipper added.
Billy shrugged shyly. "I don't know. It wasn't all that much. We just, you know, talked about how hand-washing kills viruses and things."
"How'd you learn so much about it?" Mabel asked. "Grunkle Ford says you ought to go into biology or medicine."
"I learned about it from a cartoon," he said. "Really. I saw it on the educational TV station. It just showed how soap and friction tear the virus to pieces."
"Well, you really made an impression on him," Dipper said. "Congratulations."
They were in the Shack. Soos, Melody, and the kids were out at the park and planned to stop for pizza before coming home. For a late-April day, it was warm and sunny, and Dipper and Wendy had managed to cook a good meal, Wendy trying out a recipe for baked glazed chicken and Dipper contributing a big salad and roasted potatoes. Dessert was just so-so, an apple pie from the market, but they had vanilla ice cream to go with it. They had just finished cleaning up when the Ramirezes came in, the kids rushing to hug Wendy, Mabel, Dipper, and Billy in that order. Harmony wanted to show Billy the new doll house that Soos had made for her, and she led the way back to the kids' room.
Melody helped Wendy load the last of the dishes, and Soos sank into a chair at the table. "Dawgs," he said, but that was all.
"Everything OK?" Dipper asked the big guy.
Soos shrugged. "Abuelita," he said. "Not that she's like sick, dude, but you know, she's older, and now her granddaughter down in Mexico wants her to stay with them until travel is less, like, risky and junk, and—I guess I can't help but worry."
"We know how that is," Mabel said. "I hope everybody comes through this fine."
"We all do," Dipper said.
Soos nodded and smiled, but a tear leaked from his left eye, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. "Pollen never used to bother me," he said softly.
Melody stood behind him and leaned over to hug him. "I love you," she said.
"Love you, too," Soos said, leaning his head against her. "Love you so much."