Code Orange (22 page)

Oh, Mitty, thought Olivia. I want you to grow old. Don't don't don't die young.

“Remember the antiwar poem we read for Mrs. Abrams?” asked Derek.“By Wilfred Owen?”
In English, Mrs. Abrams skipped around. You'd be doing tenth-century stuff followed by nineteenth-century stuff, whip back to the sixteenth- and circle around to the early-twentieth. Mrs. Abrams loved World War One literature.

Don't tell your children the old lie,
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
, wrote Wilfred Owen, that it is sweet and wonderful to die for your country. Because it isn't. Dying for your country means choking on poison gas and rotting in a trench. “Mitty didn't think it was an old lie,” said Derek.“He thought it was an old truth: it is pleasing and proper to die for your country. He respected people who died for their country. Mitty wasn't a pacifist. He said our teachers want us to roll over and play dead, but he would go bear hunting with a stick before he let anybody get away with stuff against his city.”

The previous fall Olivia had not had a crush on Mitty, and since they were in different sections for English, she had not read his essay. She remembered her own, in which she mocked people who died for their country; called them suckers.

“Mitty loved heroes,” said Derek.

“What Is a Hero?” had been their next essay topic.

“Mitty said that a hero,” Derek told her,“is the guy who runs into the burning building to save the baby.”

“It's an okay definition if you save the baby,” said Olivia. “But what if you see the burning building and hear the baby crying and run as fast as you can, but you're not fast enough, and you can't get through the flames?”

“You could die trying. And that would count.”

“You can't be a hero unless people know,” said Olivia.

“
He'd know,” said Derek. I think that would be enough for Mitty.”

M
itty could no longer move his eyelids or his toes.

Not his fingers or even his tongue. The end was almost here.

He heard voices shouting; feet smashing on the stair treads. He felt himself turned over. Patted. Examined.

“Not enough light,” said someone clearly.

Mitty was hoisted into the air and carried like the sack of limp flesh that he was. The person going up first held Mitty around the chest and under the arms, and that person was strong. The person holding Mitty's feet was not strong and let his heels catch on the steps.

He was dropped. His skull clunked against the floor. He managed to open his eyes. His cheek was pressed on old speckled linoleum. The door to the outside had
been left open. Icy wind filled the kitchen above his prison.

Air. Blessed air.

But oxygen did not bring strength. Mitty could not lift his head or even pull his hands from under his twisted body.

A car had been backed up to that kitchen door. All its doors had also been left open. Ready, Mitty supposed, for everybody to leap in and drive on to their next destination. A destination, presumably, that Mitty would not like any better than this one.

He had thought that, like the passengers in the plane over Pennsylvania, he could bring down the murderers with their own weapon.

Well, he couldn't.

The people hovering over him now were dressed in street clothes. He knew the woman in brown by her boots. But she was not the one who spoke.

Since Mitty could not lift his head, the other person knelt beside him. Gloved hands patted Mitty's face and gloved hands pressed upward on his eyelids, forcing them open. From behind a mask, this time a surgical mask, white and clean, a man said, “So. You have it, the smallpox.”

Should've done your research, thought Mitty.

“I am impressed that you overcame your guards. But your victory lasts only a minute. You will kill your own people for us and we will dance in your streets.” He stood up. He was laughing.

The woman in brown and the man in the mask went back down into the cellar to get the guards.

No, thought Mitty Blake.

You will not dance in my streets.

Mitty Blake rolled over.

He kicked the cellar door shut.

The recorded low temperature on the night of February 14 and the dawn of February 15 in New York City was fifteen degrees.

The boy with no shirt on slept by an open door, the poison seeping out of his body.

His 911 call took place on Sunday, February 15, at 2:22 p.m.

Later, it was announced that the accidental deaths of four illegal aliens from carbon monoxide poisoning were due to a malfunctioning furnace.

Two laptops and three cellular phones were confiscated by the NYPD. Work began to find a money trail, a paper trail and links to terrorist groups. Fearing a general panic, the authorities did not publicize a terrorist attempt to acquire smallpox. The CDC made changes to their Web site, stating clearly and frequently that it was not possible to become infected with smallpox from old smallpox scabs and that if such a scab were found, viable virus could not be recovered from that scab.

Mitty Blake did not get smallpox.

His injuries did, however, require a hospital stay. Not many people received permission to visit. The few people who did visit were shaken to find guards at the door of Mitty's room; to find themselves asked to produce identification and to have the contents of their bags examined. His parents told most people—classmates and neighbors and friends from the building and friends from
the gym and friends from who knew where—that Mitty had been in a car accident, but he would be fine; right now he needed quiet.

Mitty personally hated quiet and was glad to have the FBI and the NYPD and his parents and his sister around, debriefing him.

Everybody wanted every detail. There were some details Mitty did not plan to share. He was pretty sure his father knew this and pretty sure his mother never suspected.

Emily had flown home from college and spent twenty-four hours a day—since they were all three sleepless with fear—promising their parents that Mitty would be found alive. All she said now was, “Mitty Blake, how could you make that many stupid decisions all in a row?”

His parents took turns sleeping in the chair next to Mitty's bed, and only when his sister or the FBI intervened would his mom and dad actually leave the room. Even then, his mother grilled the guard to make sure Mitty would be protected in her absence.

On the third day, Derek and Olivia were allowed in. Since Mitty's mother and father and sister and the guard and a stray CDC official were there too, greetings were stilted and conversation was awkward. Finally Emily took control and herded everybody out.

When the door shut behind them, Derek came right to the point. “So are you brain damaged? I read up on carbon monoxide poisoning. Are you functioning or are you a vegetable?”

“I am functioning at such a high level,” said Mitty, hurling his dinner tray at Derek,“that you will never attain it.”

Derek caught the tray like a Frisbee, slung it back and
then whipped Mitty with a thermal blanket, accidentally scattering dozens of get-well cards. Mitty reached for a heavy pottery vase of flowers.

“Stop it, Mitty,” commanded Olivia, “or this hospital room is going to look as awful as your bedroom.”

“You've been in my bedroom?” said Mitty, grinning in spite of his wired jaw. “What have I missed?”

“Me,” said Olivia. “You've missed me.”

That night, his father helped him get ready for sleep, and his mother actually agreed not to spend the night in the chair but to go on home and see him in the morning. Mitty knew it took courage for her to walk away. He knew his sister had worked to make it happen.

He didn't have to tell Emily that he owed her and she didn't have to tell him that it was okay. She just said, “I won't see you at breakfast, Mitty. I'm flying back to school.”

His eyes teared up, one of the many annoyances of being ill.

They all hugged, wordlessly exchanging farewells, except for his mother, who was never wordless, and at last Mitty was alone.

Mitty sat up in bed and looked out his window at New York City.

He couldn't see much. It was kind of a boring view, actually. It could have been any city.

But it's my city, thought Mitty Blake. And no bad guys are dancing in my streets.