Code Orange

The kidnappers do have a key, but because Mitty previously jammed the nail in the lock when he tried to pick it, the key doesn’t work. Their cell phone rings upstairs, and Mitty worries someone will come to assist the men. Mitty warns them, “‘I do have smallpox […] 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” (183).

The men keep their distance from Mitty. As they sit in the dim basement, Mitty suddenly smashes the only lightbulb so the room is completely dark. Mitty is accustomed to the basement in the dark, since he has spent the past few days familiarizing himself with his environment, but the men have no such advantage. The sudden darkness blinds them. Mitty then uses his T-shirt to plug the metal flue pipe. He knows that a gas furnace produces carbon dioxide out the chimney as a waste gas, but he also knows that if that access is blocked, carbon dioxide will stay inside and will fill up the space left by the burned oxygen to form carbon monoxide, a deadly gas. The kidnappers, and Mitty, will be dead by morning.

He uses his remaining time to thank God for the many blessings in his life. Since his family goes to church only a few times a year, Mitty feels like he is part insider and part outsider when it comes to religion. Despite this inconsistent religious experience, “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” (186).

The men have gotten colder and sit back to back, right next to the furnace. Mitty can see by the illuminated watch of one of the men that it is Saturday night, February 14. Valentine’s Day. He struggles to stay awake, thinking of Olivia, his parents, and God. Finally, he falls asleep.

Olivia and Derek walk in Riverside Park and are frustrated because there is no progress in the investigation into where Mitty is and what has happened to him. It is Valentine’s Day. They see a happy old couple in the park with a balloon bouquet and a well-loved mutt. Olivia thinks of how she wants Mitty to have the chance to grow old as well.

They talk about an antiwar poem from their English class by Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Derek thinks that Mitty would have disagreed with the premise of the World War I poem. The poem says that the patriotic Latin phrase, translated as “It is sweet and wonderful to die for your country,” is a lie because the deaths that the soldiers suffered in World War I, often from poison gas, were not “sweet”(“dulce”) at all and that the adults had tricked the young with this lie to send them to war.

But Derek says Mitty would agree with the patriotic slogan because “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” (190).Mitty would define people who died for their country as heroes, not, as Olivia wrote in her essay, “suckers.” Even if they were not successful, even if they died trying, Mitty would believe that they are still heroes.

Back in the basement, the terrorists’ accomplices lift Mitty, weakened by the carbon monoxide, take him to the kitchen. He revives when he is able to breathe the fresh air coming in from the door. They tell him that he has not foiled their plans at all:“‘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’” (192).

But when they go down to get the other two men, Mitty summons all of his will and energy. He shuts the basement door, locking them in with the carbon monoxide. He gets outside and breathes fresh air, which releases the poison from his body. Eventually, he is able to call 9-1-1 and is taken to a hospital to be reunited with friends and family.

The four terrorists die in the basement, but no one ever learns about the attempted terrorist attack:“Later, it was announced that the accidental deaths of four illegal aliens from carbon monoxide poisoning were due to a malfunctioning furnace” (193). The authorities do not want to alarm the public with the any mention of the attack. No one learns what the terrorists attempted, and no one learns what Mitty did to save his city.

Mitty never gets smallpox, and the CDC makes sure to clarify on their website that it’s impossible to get smallpox from scabs. Mitty recovers in the hospital, grateful for the love and blessings he gets from his family, friends, and his beloved city, New York.