by Kate Morris
“Come with me, Tristan,” Avery implored and led him up the stairs off of the living room to her parents’ suite. She went through a set of pocket doors at the one end of the room and into a richly appointed and masculine office, obviously her father’s. There was an L-shaped desk, a large leather office chair on wheels, a leather sofa in a darker color than the first-floor living room furniture, and artwork on the burgundy walls. Another set of French doors flanked by six-foot glass panels on either side of them led out onto a small deck that had a nice view of the backyard and pool area. “This is my father’s office,” she explained. “We’re not really supposed to be in here messing around, but I figured we could use his office for a while. It’ll be quiet.”
She slid the doors behind him closed, which brought with them an immediate silence. Then she crossed the small room and opened the French doors, which actually folded backward all the way, clicked into place in the glass panels, and the whole unit slid like pocket doors into a recessed panel until the whole wall opened up to the outdoors.
“I thought we could open these since it’s so warm out this morning.”
“Sure,” he said, trying not to gawk with obvious amazement at the ingenuity and craftsmanship of their home. Or gawk at her standing in the streaming sunlight behind her.
Next, she unplugged a laptop and carried it over to the sofa and sat. Then she patted the sofa seat next to her as music came on. He sent her a questioning look.
“Oh, that’s the children,” she said of the classical music on the sound system.
“The children? They listen to this?”
“Of course,” she replied as he sat. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Most kids I know listen to rap.”
She smiled gently. “That’s not allowed in this house. My parents prefer we listen to the classics.”
He chuckled once. “Classics in my realm is Van Halen.”
She smiled. “I know who they were. Eddie Van Halen. My father much admired his talent. He just doesn’t approve of music like that, says it doesn’t enrich the soul or encourage learning.”
“With this many kids in one house, I’d want something slightly calmer, too,” he joked. “You all go listening to wild music, you might start breakin’ shit.”
She laughed, the sound more adorable than he would’ve thought. “I never thought of that before. You’re probably right. The boys do enough damage without wild music.”
Avery turned on the laptop and started searching for flu information.
“It seems so early in the fall season to have such high flu activity,” she said. “We don’t usually get the first big numbers in the flu until late December.”
“How do you know that?”
She sent him a lopsided grin and a jaunty tilt of her head. “I have a lot of younger siblings.”
He smirked. “Yeah, right. Makes sense.”
“Most of this seems bogus,” she said as her phone buzzed. “I’m trying the CDC site.”
It listed flu stats and strains out there but certainly didn’t seem like it was reporting what they were seeing. The site had the numbers of cases of flu A or B in the United States, but it wasn’t showing the weird strains that sheriff’s deputy was talking about.
“Doesn’t make sense,” he remarked. “We know something’s going on. It can’t just be this county.”
“No, it’s not. We already know that a flu has killed a lot of people in Africa. I mean, I work in the next county north mostly. I’ve seen things up there, too, in the city.”
He regarded her keenly. “What do you mean?”
She paused and looked at Tristan before biting the left side of her lower her lip. Then her phone rang in the form of violin music. Of course. His ring tone was Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. It was meant to symbolize how many people he and his unit had taken out that would’ve caused harm to innocent people, especially Americans. In light of current events, he probably needed to change it.
“Oh, that’s my dad! Here, take this.”
She shoved the laptop into his hands and stood.
“You can keep looking while I talk to him,” she offered and went out onto the deck.
Tristan did as she said, but he could still hear her talking to her father.
“Hey, Dad,” she greeted and paused a few moments as she paced and pressed her hand to the back of her bare neck where her hair was pulled up. “Yes, they’re sick. Have you talked to Mom yet?” Another pause. “At the Cleveland Clinic in Canton. Yes, Mom got them a room. They’re all sharing one. I know. This is crazy, right?” Avery paused for a lot longer, and Tristan watched her pace more. Then she was putting her fingertips to her forehead as if she were stressed. “What? I didn’t catch that. Dad? Hey, are you feeling okay?”
Tristan rose and went to her but stood back a way to give her space.
“Dad? Why are you coughing so hard?”
Her eyes jumped to his nervously. She nodded, then said, “Yes, I will. Get some rest. I love you, too.”
She disconnected and looked at Tristan with fear.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stepping closer as she leaned her hip against the railing of the deck.
“My father is sick,” she said and held her hand over her mouth. Tears were brimming in her eyes. “He said it’s nothing, but it didn’t sound like nothing. He sounded really sick.”
“It’s okay. People get sick. He travels a lot.”
She shook her head. “Not him. He’s never sick. What if he’s got this flu? What if he can’t get home? What…”
“Hey,” he said and touched her shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry, okay? Don’t worry until there’s something to worry about.”
She choked back the tears he knew she was about to let loose. Good. He wasn’t so great with this sort of thing. Women were delicate and fragile, sensitive. This one was no exception, but he didn’t want her to cry. It bothered him when she did that.
“Is he going to take a flight home?” he asked, trying to keep her brain from dwelling on things that would make her cry.
“Yes, he’s looking for a flight now. He said he’ll try to get on one later today.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
She sniffed and nodded.
“Come on,” he encouraged and moved his hand away. “Let’s see what we can find out.”
He led her to the sofa again and sat, handing her the computer to keep her mind off of her problems.
“Look for a dark site,” he instructed.
“Like banned stuff?”
He nodded, “Yeah, and alternative news source sites. The kind that gets them blacklisted on the web.”
She nodded, obviously not sure where to search first. Her long fingers hovered above the keyboard.
“Try ‘what they don’t want you to know dot com.’ I know that one’s always got some weird conspiracy theories and stuff going on.”
The site didn’t come up. A few others he knew also gave a white screen with a message of ‘website no longer available’.
“Interesting,” he commented.
His phone buzzed a text alert, so he took it out of his jeans pocket.
“It’s Spencer,” he told her. “The cops came by today and told him and Renee that the situation has been handled and that everything was fine now.”
“Wait, is he still at Renee’s? Did he spend the night?”
“I would assume so. She said her parents weren’t around. For the same reason I stayed here, I figure he stayed there. Or…well, I guess for whatever reason they had.”
She blushed and looked down at the laptop.
“But that’s a bullshit story,” he said, considering the text. “Those cops are covering something up. You don’t just get to kill civies and get away with it. Not without a trial.”
“Civies?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry. Civilians,” he explained patiently and sent a text back to his friend that he thought that whole situation stunk of lies. Spencer agree
d.
“Am I a civie?” she asked as if it were a bad thing.
He offered a lopsided grin. “Oh, yeah.”
“Hm,” she pouted.
Tristan shoved his sleeves back to his elbows, a nervous habit when he was stressed. He glanced at her to continue, but she was staring at his forearms. Then, she cleared her voice. “I should’ve been arrested. The police department should’ve sent detectives to study the crime scene and forensic investigators and a crime lab. This…none of this shit makes sense.”
“No, I agree with you,” she said and clicked on the link for the website.
“Avery, what did you mean you saw stuff in the city? What’d you see? And where?”
She frowned as if she didn’t want to talk about it, so he inclined his head, insinuating she should.
“It was probably nothing, but the day I had my…problem with Mr. Crane at the hospital, I hit the wrong button on the elevator by accident because I was…flustered,” she said and paused like she was embarrassed. It pissed Tristan off even more because he knew she wasn’t the kind of person to accidentally hit the wrong elevator button unless she was really upset and not thinking clearly. “I ended up near the Emergency Room instead of where I needed to be to get to the parking deck. I heard a nurse arguing with a police officer, a State Highway Patrolman. He wanted to have the man he’d arrested seen for a medical condition, and she blatantly told him no. She said something to the effect of the hospital not treating that kind in the hospital anymore, that he should take the person to jail instead. They argued about it, about who was supposed to be in charge of the person. She said those kinds kept getting loose and hurting other patients, that they couldn’t treat those ones anymore, those ones as if she were referring to a specific type of ill person. I thought it was strange. It’s a hospital. They treat everyone who’s sick. She said they sent out a memo about it. I don’t know what that meant, either. A memo. To who?”
She paused, and he considered what she’d just said. It was a lot to take in. If she understood the meaning behind the conversation, then Avery had overheard a deep state conspiracy. Secretive memos. Keeping information about a major health crisis under wraps. Not informing the public. It all stunk to high heaven.
“And then…” she said quietly and stopped herself. “We should just look some of this stuff up, okay?”
“Then what?” he urged, to which she shook her head.
“It’s probably nothing.”
He stared her down. “Then you don’t have to worry. Just tell me, and I’ll judge for myself.”
She took a deep breath and blew it out shakily before beginning. “A police officer came up to me and told me I should go out the doors, walk outside around the building to the parking deck instead of following the arrows inside leading to the right elevators I needed to take. He said it wasn’t a good idea for me to be in there.”
“That was probably a smart idea. I’m glad he told you that,” he said with relief. At least some of the cops out there were telling people the truth, or even just warning them away from danger zones. One glance at her and Tristan could tell that something else was wrong. “What else happened that you’re not telling me?”
She shook her head, biting her lower lip again. “It was really…I don’t know how to describe it. I’ve never been to a psychiatric ward or known anyone who was mentally unstable. But, as I was walking down the hospital sidewalk, I peeked in one of the windows. I think it might’ve been in the Emergency Room or a wing right off of the Emergency room. And this man was hitting his head against the window. Really hard, Tristan. I mean, he was making his head bleed. His hands were tied or handcuffed behind his back. He just kept slamming his head into the window. I think he was angry with me for something.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think that’s just the way some of them are. Did he seem sick?”
She nodded jerkily, remembering. “Yes, he seemed very sick. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him through the glass.” Avery shivered.
“Bloodshot. I think that’s gonna be one of the links in this.”
“And the police officer,” she said, touching her forehead. “He…he said something else…”
“What was it?”
“I’m trying to remember,” she said. “He called the man the hospital didn’t want to take by something. The nurse said they didn’t take any of those kinds anymore. They sent the memo. I can’t recall. It bothered me, though.”
“What did he call him?”
She snapped her thin fingers, remembering. “Crawler. He called him a crawler.”
Her soft, husky voice, coupled with the awful description of what a cop- most of whom were fairly level-headed- had called the person, sent a chill up his spine. Crawler. Now they had their first search word.
Chapter Eighteen
“The keyword ‘crawler’ is bringing up a lot of videos,” she observed. “People are really talking about it.”
“Click on that one there,” he instructed, pointing at the screen. She did as he said, and a video popped up. It didn’t go to the usual servers like YouTube or one similar. The server was from somewhere in the United Kingdom.
“Hello, from Edinburgh,” a young man said into what seemed like his phone. “My mum’s dead. My Uncle Joseph is, too. That was her brother, ya’ see. He-he tried to kill ‘er.”
“Oh, the poor child,” Avery said, although the kid was probably around eighteen or nineteen. His accent made the video difficult to understand in spots. That and his emotional breakdowns where he spoke through a haze of tears.
“My da’s gone to London to fetch my sis, but I don’t think he’s comin’ back,” he explained. “He’s been gone over a week, had the fevers when he left.”
“This is horrible,” she commented. “I don’t think we should be watching this.”
“Shh,” he shushed her and held up a finger. “Listen.”
“People ‘round here are callin’ ‘em night crawlers,” the boy said. “I’m locked inside. I don’t even wanna’ go to school. I don’t trust anyone now. Hold on. I’ll flip my phone and show you a video of my neighbor. I went to the hospital to visit him ‘cuz me mum was gone. She woulda’ done somethin’ like that. Figured he didn’t have any family around, so I should go and check on him. I found him the hospital tied to the bed, handcuffed like he was a common criminal. But then I saw why. He’d gone mad like Uncle Joseph. I took the video of him ‘cuz no one wants ta’ believe me.”
There was a scratching noise as he adjusted his phone and brought up the picture for the viewers. Sure enough, the kid’s neighbor was handcuffed to a bed in a hospital. He was raving, behaving like a madman as the boy described. The curse words weren’t just incoherent because he was using Scottish slang, though. They just weren’t words anymore. And his eyes were bloodshot. He was literally foaming at the mouth like an animal with rabies.
The video jumped back to the kid telling the story. “As soon as they saw me in there, they threw me out on my ear. I don’t know why. Never got tossed from a hospital before. I’m sendin’ out this video to warn everyone and…”
Tristan reached over and clicked it to stop. They found many more similar videos, most from other countries, some in languages they didn’t understand. One was a video from Sweden that she interpreted, surprising him that she spoke the language. Of course, that was probably where her dad was from. Some videos included hidden video footage of sick people. Most of them referred to the violent ones as crawlers or night crawlers.
“That young deputy said he had family in the healthcare industry who knew about this and said there were two strains. I didn’t see anyone talking about that in these videos, though.”
“No, me neither,” she agreed as the sliding doors to her father’s office opened.
Her sister, Kaia, came in. “We’re done with chores. Can we swim? I already checked. It’s warm. I turned on the pool heater, too.”
“I don�
��t care,” Avery said. “Just keep an eye on Finn. Is Ephraim going in, too?”
Kaia nodded. “Hear from Mom yet?”
“No, I’m trying not to disturb them in case the kids are sleeping,” she explained.
“Dad?”
“Um,” Avery paused. Then she surprised Tristan by lying, “No, he just sent a text. Said he’s trying to get a flight home.”
“All right. Let us know if you hear more.”
“Okay, just be careful.”
Her sister left, closing the doors after her. Avery hit him with a guilty expression.
“No judgment here,” he said, holding up a hand in supplication. “Let’s keep going.”
“I need a coffee. Want one?”
“Sure, just cream.”
She hit him with a coy smile. “I know.”
When she left, Tristan stood and stretched his legs. He was antsy and needed a workout. Instead, he went to the balcony and watched the kids jumping and playing in the pool. It was almost fall, the leaves were starting to drop. October was a few days away. Apparently, this family hadn’t gotten the memo because their pool was still open.
He sat again and pulled up more videos on night crawlers. After searching and searching, Tristan finally found one from America. It seemed more conspiracy theory, less fact-based, but he kept going anyway. It was two young men, probably in their early twenties, and they were talking about the Russian flu.
“They unleashed this shit on us on purpose,” the one on the right said, who looked like a blonde surfer boy with dreadlocks and a t-shirt with a pot leaf on it. “It’s called biological warfare, man.”
The other, a geek by any standards with thick, black-framed eyeglasses and a bad haircut said, “My aunt works for a missionary group in Africa. She said hundreds of thousands of Africans are dead from it. Remember the Ebola scare in 2038? She said it’s way friggin’ worse than that, and a lot o’ people died from that one.”
