White Noise - Don Delillo [87]
27
I HAD MY SECOND MEDICAL CHECKUP since the toxic event. No startling numbers on the printout. This death was still too deep to be glimpsed. My doctor, Sundar Chakravarty, asked me about the sudden flurry of checkups. In the past I’d always been afraid to know.
I told him I was still afraid. He smiled broadly, waiting for the punch line. I shook his hand and headed out the door.
On the way home I drove down Elm intending to make a quick stop at the supermarket. The street was full of emergency vehicles. Farther down I saw bodies scattered about. A man with an armbandblew a whistle at me and stepped in front of my car. I glimpsed other men in Mylex suits. Stretcher-bearers ran across the street. When the man with the whistle drew closer, I was able to make out the letters on his armband: SIMUVAC.
“Back it out,” he said. “Street’s closed.”
“Are you people sure you’re ready for a simulation? You may want to wait for one more massive spill. Get your timing down.”
“Move it out, get it out. You’re in the exposure swath.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re dead,” he told me.
I backed out of the street and parked the car. Then I walked slowly back down Elm, trying to look as though I belonged. I kept close to storefronts, mingled with technicians and marshals, with uniformed personnel. There were buses, police cars, ambulettes. People with electronic equipment appeared to be trying to detect radiation or toxic fallout. In time I approached the volunteer victims. There were twenty or so, prone, supine, draped over curbstones, sitting in the street with woozy looks.
I was startled to see my daughter among them. She lay in the middle of the street, on her back, one arm flung out, her head tilted the other way. I could hardly bear to look. Is this how she thinks of herself at the age of nine—already a victim, trying to polish her skills? How natural she looked, how deeply imbued with the idea of a sweeping disaster. Is this the future she envisions?
I walked over there and squatted down.
“Steffie? Is that you?”
She opened her eyes.
“You’re not supposed to be here unless you’re a victim,” she said.
“I just want to be sure you’re okay.”
“I’ll get in trouble if they see you.”
“It’s cold. You’ll get sick. Does Baba know you’re here?”
“I signed up in school an hour ago.”
“They at least should hand out blankets,” I said.
She closed her eyes. I spoke to her a while longer but she wouldn’t answer. There was no trace of irritation or dismissal in her silence. Just conscientiousness. She had a history of being devout in her victimhood.
I went back to the sidewalk. A man’s amplified voice boomed across the street from somewhere inside the supermarket.
“I want to welcome all of you on behalf of Advanced Disaster Management, a private consulting firm that conceives and operates simulated evacuations. We are interfacing with twenty-two state bodies in carrying out this advanced disaster drill. The first, I trust, of many. The more we rehearse disaster, the safer we’ll be from the real thing. Life seems to work that way, doesn’t it? You take your umbrella to the office seventeen straight days, not a drop of rain. The first day you leave it at home, record-breaking downpour. Never fails, does it? This is the mechanism we hope to employ, among others. O-right, on to business. When the siren sounds three long blasts, thousands of hand-picked evacuees will leave their homes and places of employment, get into their vehicles and head for well-equipped emergency shelters. Traffic directors will race to their computerized stations. Updated instructions will be issued on the SIMUVAC broadcast system. Air-sampling people will deploy along the cloud