Hot Zone by Sandy Holden

the local station, which wasn’t all that local, but was the best we had. I watched a commercial of plump puppies playing happy in the knowledge they would live long lives due to their dog food. I watched scrubbing lather clean the kitchen by itself ( need me some of that , I thought to myself. Mom would be furious if I trashed the house while they were gone), and finally, a commercial on insurance which assumed that if they played loud music, I would buy their product. Finally the program came on, and sure enough, it was another news program. Since so much of this was of local concern, the local stations had experienced a renaissance of viewership. Who wanted to watch reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” when they could find out if we were all going to die tomorrow?
    This one was on location, and at first I almost switched the channel, not wanting again to see how the bioweapons had affected the Twin Cities, which was a popular recurring theme. It was all just too sad. Then I recognized the post office, and let out a short scream that had Meri and Tucker running out of the kitchen.
    I pointed mutely at the screen, my hand over my mouth. There it was in living color—Catfish Lake’s downtown, or what was left of it. Much of the main few blocks of the city, the reporter said, had been destroyed by fire, and some sort of IED or improvised explosive device had been used as well. I felt a chill run over me as I stared at the TV screen, for on it was the rubble of Henry’s Bar, not to mention the burned remnants of our apartment. My ears roared and I missed most of the rest of the report, but Tucker and Meri filled me in on it later. There had been some kind of car bomb, and when emergency vehicles had been slow to respond because of decreased numbers and other emergencies, the entire block had caught. By the time the fire was extinguished, two full city blocks had burned. There had been a few survivors, but only a few. I thought about Mrs. Frisch and her daughter and felt like I couldn’t breathe.
    Tucker was shaking his head and telling Meri about my “story” the day before. I denied having any kind of precognition of what would happen, denied it strenuously, in fact. I insisted that it was all just an amazing coincidence, and we should just be glad it worked out the way it did.
    We watched this until the reporter said they were going to a Presidential news conference. The reporter looked young, inexperienced, and scared. There was a clumsy changing of feeds, accompanied by dead air, something I rarely saw before the bioweapons had come but which I was starting to get used to now. And there he was: our new President. He was markedly younger than the last one, and markedly more Caucasian. He looked a little nervous, and cleared his throat several times during the broadcast. Perhaps because of the sloppiness of the local station, we had come in after the news conference had begun, and the President was saying how difficult this decision was, but how he was relying on the advice from experts on contagious diseases and from his newly assembled cabinet.
    We all looked at each other, and barely noticed that Phil had drifted out of the bedroom and had joined us.
    The President finished, and asked if there were any questions. The reporters nearly jumped out of their chairs trying to get the first question. The lucky woman said, “Is this constitutional? Will the affected areas challenge it?”
    I looked over at Tucker, who looked tense. I felt a little like I did in dreams when I realized that things were falling apart. I wanted to wake up.
    The President said, “It is constitutional for our country to protect itself. I have agonized over this decision, but I think of it like this: can we afford to assure the Hot Zone’s right to freedom of movement if it means more senseless deaths? I don’t think so. We have precedence and we have the law behind us.” He pointed to another reporter, who asked, “When will it