Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"I love these Bones!" shouted Arty. "I'm Superman!"

"Really?" asked Mingo. "Because you look like Elmer Fudd."

"Oh, right, a Chinese-American Elmer Fudd," said Arty.

Cole let them banter. All but Cole had their Bones and Noodles off, letting their chips download a software update from satellite. Meanwhile, Cole was monitoring the drones, which were staying high and out of sight and earshot, so the enemy would not know how easily they could have been destroyed at any time. They were halfway through dinner when he was able to announce, "Typhoid Mary is safely home with the babies."

"Too bad it'll spread to Niger," said Babe. "And Burkina Faso. They weren't off killing Ibos and Yorubas."

"There was never any hope of containing it within southern Nigeria," said Mingo. "Epidemics have their way."

"So what do you think? Will President Torrent's quarantine of Africa fail, too?" asked Cole.

"Don't know," said Mingo.

"You say it like you also don't care," said Cole.

"Do you really think Torrent wants to confine this epidemic to Africa?" asked Babe.

How deep was their hatred of Torrent? "Why else would he take the heat he's getting from everywhere?" said Cole. "'Heartless Americans,' 'the Butcher of Africa.'"

"Now everyone will believe that he tried to prevent it," said Babe, "even though he really wants it to spread."

"Why would anybody want that?" asked Cole.

"Oh, no," said Load Arnsbrach. "We've said bad things about his papa and he's getting mad."

Cole looked around at them, puzzled and angry. What was this about?

Then they broke out in laughter. It was all a joke.

Yet it had not been a joke at all, Cole knew that. But he laughed with them as if he didn't.

"Did they really think they could withdraw into the north, enforce a quarantine, and still rule the whole country?" asked Benny. "I mean, all the oil's in the south. These clowns move north, they got no source of new money."

"The epidemic shut down the oil wells anyway," said Drew, ever the professor. "And they have enough money stockpiled to run the government for years—if the fat cats are willing to dip into their Swiss-bank savings accounts. The epidemic dies down, dies out, they come back, take over the wells again. Who's in any condition to stop them?"

"They can still do that," said Mingo.

"Not really," said Drew. "By delaying the epidemic, it's hitting them later. It'll be peaking in the north after it's run its course in the south. If the southerners can get the oil wells running by themselves, get organized as a government, they could buy the weapons—or some helpful nation could give them some—and take their country back."

"Biafra," said Mingo. "So those villagers didn't die for nothing."

"War's an indiscriminate vampire," said Drew. "It sucks blood, it doesn't care whose."

"So is the epidemic in the south nearly over?" asked Cole.

"How long has it been going?" asked Drew.

Babe answered. "Six weeks since it broke out of the first villages," he said.

"Well, it took six months for the worst of the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 to run through its main killing force," said Drew.

"Isn't everybody already sick who's going to get it?" asked Arty.

"As soon as the news got out, most people went into hiding. It's not like they all went to the movies or kept showing up at work. But they have to eat. So they'll start going out into the countryside, scavenging. The only people who are safe are the ones who already had it and recovered. Everybody else is virgin territory."

"Including us," said Cat.