Code Orange (21 page)

He knew they had not brought a bed to give him comfort. They just didn't want to bend down to the floor when they needed to do something for Mitty. And keeping him alive for whatever time they required would take nursing care.

They crossed their arms across their chests. They weren't holding anything, having used their hands to carry the fold-a-bed. They waited, obviously hoping he would climb into his deathbed on his own. Mitty was
willing. He was desperate to rest his head on something soft. But he couldn't move. He wept instead, and this time real tears came, as hot as what must be boiling within him.

They got on either side of him, their paper layers scraping against his poor skin. Mitty's body was flaccid and heavy. He fell against the edge of the fold-a-bed, which rolled several feet into the darkness.

One guard stepped over to retrieve it while the second guy tried to steady Mitty Mitty flung himself sideways with every bit of strength he possessed, and the two of them hit the floor together. Mitty grabbed the guy's head and slammed it down into the cement, rolling away fast to avoid a kick from the other guard. He rolled around the column and leaped to his feet. The second guy's gloved fist caught Mitty in the cheek, splitting open the earlier wound, but Mitty hooked the bed with his foot and rammed it into them, giving himself a barrier and enough time to leap up the stairs.

They had left the door open. They always left it open.

Mitty scrambled for the door and they screamed in rage, vaulting on top of him. Fingers closed around his ankles. They weren't letting him get out of here.

But Mitty didn't want to get out.

He yanked the door shut, and automatically, it locked.

Mitty wiped himself down with his palms, smearing the little dots of coal dust he had so carefully put all over his skin. He looked down at the masks of his captors. “Fooled you, didn't I?” he said, grinning.

T
hey hauled him down the stairs by the feet. His bare chest and wounded cheek whapped against the rough edge of each tread. Then they kicked him aside so they could attack the door. The kick caught Mitty in the jaw, right where he had already taken two blows.

One of the guys began hitting the door, swearing at it in English. It wouldn't be hard to pull these two over the edge and make this a real fight.

But Mitty still had things to do, places to go, people to see. He put the furnace between himself and them.

Suddenly one guy calmed down. He laughed. He lifted his paper packaging, reached into his pants pocket, and took out a heavy, jangling ring of keys. He held it up for Mitty to see.

Mitty hardly noticed. He was fighting nausea. He had not expected that.

He had faked being sick. He had planned for two long empty boring days and nights exactly what it would take to convince the guys upstairs that they needed to be down here with him. He had gone on and on displaying one lousy symptom after another, until he thought he would be a lunatic before those two guys took any action.

To keep up his act, he had told himself lies, hour after hour—and now he didn't know if it had been an act. Had he forced himself to retch and whimper and moan? Or had it been happening anyway? Had he been kidding himself that he was faking it for a higher cause?

If he were to rest his head on his knees right now, he would never lift it again.

Because my jaw's broken, he said to himself. Not because I have smallpox.

He did not know why this mattered to him, under the circumstances.

At the top of the stairs, they were getting nowhere with their key. Their bodies blocked any ray of light given off by the bulb. Now they were probably yelling at each other because neither of them had brought the flashlight.

The key chain guy came back down the stairs, held his keys up to the lightbulb, carefully picked out the right key and went back to try again. No go. He yelled at the keys, yelled at the lock, yelled at his friend. Then he tried every key.

Give it up, thought Mitty. I jammed the keyway with a nail. His jaw was exploding with pain. He spit a tooth into his hand. So much for all that orthodonture.

They stared down at him, motionless in their blue paper clothes and their red masks, and then “Here Comes the Bride” rang out.

Mitty had assumed that the clunking sounds that preceded their every move upstairs were the emptying of pockets: the key ring, the cell phone, the whatever. He'd been wrong. They had their keys and they had their phone. Now they'd just summon backup.

But the phone rang on while the men pounded on the door. They had indeed left it in the kitchen.

Unfortunately,
not
answering the phone would also bring assistance. Whoever was calling must want to know how things were going. When they didn't get an answer, they'd try again, and then a third time, and then they'd get in their car and come investigate.

I have no hope, thought Mitty. My plan won't work.

He retreated to a corner of the cellar where they could not quite see him from their post at the top of the stairs. They descended a few steps so they could keep their eyes on him.

“I do have smallpox,” he told them quietly. “I faked the spots with coal dust, but the rest is real. This is day fourteen and I'm infectious. And no paper shirt is going to keep variola major from its work. You're dead men.”

He made his way to the faucet. He swirled cold water around his mouth and spit out the blood. Then he drank.

He wished he'd paid attention in history and English. If he had actually read his Shakespeare or Homer, if he actually knew the battles of the Revolutionary War or the World Wars, he could tell himself those stories and pretend that he was about to die a warrior's death.

But he wasn't.

The guards sat down, one on the second step from the bottom and the other several steps higher. Mitty was used to their ski masks now. He was glad he would never see their faces. It made things easier. He did not sit near the water supply, because eventually these two would want access to it. He needed his own corner of this very small space.

He headed for the furnace. He did not look at his goal. This was like basketball; you kept your eye on the person guarding you, not the person to whom you were going to pass. He was very close to his captors now. The stair rail was between them, but this was a visual barrier, not a real blockade.

He took another step.

The men did not seem to sense anything coming.

Mitty reached up fast and clapped his hands like cymbals, smashing the single lightbulb between his palms.

Splinters of glass sliced his palms, meaningless compared to the pain in his jaw. In the dark, Mitty moved fast. These guys knew where they were on the stairs, but they wouldn't be able to find their way in the dark. They shouted pointlessly while Mitty slipped behind the furnace and grabbed the T-shirt he had put there.

This was a gas furnace. And Mitty knew that when gas combines with oxygen, it burns cleanly and produces colorless, odorless, tasteless carbon dioxide, which goes out a metal pipe and up the chimney. If the chimney is blocked, though, the waste gas does not leave the cellar but instead begins to fill the space left by the burned oxygen. Eventually the proportion of oxygen to gas changes: from then on, as the gas burns, the result is colorless, odorless, tasteless and very poisonous carbon
monoxide
.

The furnace in this old cellar was also old. Nobody had been maintaining it. Mitty considered the possibility that he felt this lousy because the flue was in bad shape already and he'd been breathing a low level of carbon monoxide for four days. But in the end, it didn't matter. Because this was the end.

Ignoring the glass splinters in his hand, Mitty felt along the length of the metal flue pipe. He located the Draft-O-Stat, with its small, round swinging door, shoved his T-shirt into the flue and plugged it.

By morning, they would all be asleep for good.

Quickly Mitty moved back to the washtub, his socks silent on the cement. He turned on the faucet again so they'd place him on that side of the room. He kept expecting them to pulverize him, but they didn't come after him. Maybe they still believed they wouldn't get smallpox if they just didn't touch him. Maybe they were afraid of spiders. Who knew?

Mitty prayed silently, but the wrong prayers came out. He bargained with God. Let me live and I'll be smart, hardworking, useful and generous. Is it a deal? I'll be the best student in the whole world. The best son. The best everything.

The Blakes went to church maybe four or five Sundays a year. Mitty remembered a lot of those Sundays individually. Different churches, different ministers, different states, but Mitty always felt the same: equal parts insider and outsider. “Don't go begging God for help in tight spots,” one minister had said, “when you didn't bother to thank him for the good ones.”

Mitty suddenly knew he was an insider after all. I didn't bother, Mitty said to God. But luckily it's you, and you
always bother. So here I am and I'll see you around pretty soon.

Time moved slowly.

Every now and then, the phone in the kitchen rang.

The guys had gotten cold. Mitty was used to it down here, but they weren't. They moved the bed next to the furnace. By the burner light, Mitty could see them in a ghostly sort of way. They didn't lie down but sat with their backs together, propping each other up, nice and close to the source of carbon monoxide.

One of the terrorists had a wristwatch that lit up when he pressed the little knob on the side. He lit it constantly. Mitty checked his own watch. Saturday night, February 14. The outer edge of the catch-smallpox-or-not schedule.

He stroked his skin, but since the first visible symptoms were not raised, he wouldn't ever know. On the other hand, if carbon monoxide got him first, his complexion would be turning cherry red, the outward sign of that kind of poisoning.

He felt awful. He was going to fade before they did. It would be so lame if they got through this and he didn't. If only he could be alive to make sure his plan worked.

Mitty needed to rest his head on something. Paper rustled as the men turned to watch him, but they didn't get off the mattress. Mitty curled up at the base of the stairs. With the bottom step supporting the weight of his head, he felt marginally less terrible.

He had not done much to save New York, but he had done something.

He thought of Olivia. This wasn't the Valentine's Day she had wanted.

He made his apologies to his parents. You gave me good genes and good rules and good love. I'm sorry this is going to be lousy for you.

To God he gave thanks. You gave me great parents and a great life, but I shrugged. Thank you for letting me have a few days when I didn't shrug.

Mitty's eyes closed.

He slumped down.

After a while, his head rolled onto the floor and his body blocked the stairs.

T
he sun was going down on Valentine's Day. As they had on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Derek and Olivia were walking in Riverside Park. They were going uptown, with the Hudson River on their left and the strip of trees and tennis courts and pretty little stone buildings on their right. It was getting cold and dark, but the sidewalk was still a promenade for lovers. There were old couples and young couples, scary couples and sweet couples.

Olivia and Mitty had stood on the edge of being a couple. But they hadn't quite become one.

Olivia stared at the river. She could not imagine the actual act of stepping off this sidewalk and into that water.

We're never going to know, she thought. He vanished
and we won't ever find out where he went or if somebody took him and what they did. How absurd Derek and I were to think we could print out his smallpox paper and come up with some knowledge that would guide us to a rescue plan. Of course we didn't learn a thing, except that Mitty did fine research without me and that smallpox is quite literally the last thing you want on earth.

The FBI and the CDC were in touch constantly with Mr. and Mrs. Blake, who were in touch constantly with Derek and Olivia. But if they had found out anything or gotten anywhere, they did not tell the Blakes. Everybody was too slow, thought Olivia. Mitty was gone a dozen hours before the search really began. Any scene on a sidewalk, any witness to an event, any clue dropped in the street was already forgotten. Solving a crime is impossible for slow people. It's probably impossible for fast people who get there late.

Ahead of them was a couple half dancing along as they held hands and leaned on each other with affection. Tied to the woman's wrist was a balloon bouquet and clasped in the man's other hand was their dog's leash. The dog was mutt shape and color: small, ratty and desert yellow. But the couple loved their dog; Olivia could tell because of the crisp Valentine's scarf tied so jauntily around its neck. The couple turned around and were now face to face with Olivia and Derek.

They were
old
. Wrinkled and gray and giggling with love.