“A what? FEMA camp?” This time it was Rusty on the other end of the radio. “Dude, aren’t those a myth?”
“I’m telling you, it is not where you want to be. Turn around, now,” Shane insisted.
“We are blocked in. There is no way to turn around and I do not see any roads ahead so far. When you left, traffic went nuts and followed you up the sides of the road.” It was Cal this time.
Charlotte, who was now riding with Cal, was poring over the map, trying to find a route that would get them somewhere else.
“Stand by, we are looking at the map,” Cal said over the radio.
The radios went silent and everyone listening had the same feeling: nervous. Cal and Charlotte looked for some way out, but they were boxed in. There was no hope.
“Shane, we do not see any options on the map. Is there a way to get through without being stopped?” Cal asked.
“All I saw was some traffic being let past if they were showing symptoms, but I think they were guided into another containment area down the road,” Shane replied, with a radio beep.
“Well, I guess we will see what happens up ahead,” Cal replied.
Shane decided to head back the way he came and had an idea. The golf course sort of paralleled the road, so he went the other way to see if there was a way around the blockade. Driving down the long fairways, he made it to the east end of the course. There were houses that bordered the greens and he found himself plowing his four-wheel drive through the well-manicured landscaping between a couple of expensive homes until he wheeled out onto the street of a gated community. He saw a man come running out of his front door, yelling at him about driving through his yard as he spun mud ruts through a flower bed.
“You have bigger problems to worry about, ya arse!” Shane said, realizing his windows were rolled up.
He worked his way back toward the main road and found a gated entrance. There was a security car blocking the way into the community but only a PVC gate pole was blocking the exit. Shane crashed through it and hit the main road with no plan in mind.
He looked around and figured he must have bypassed the whole encampment.
“Cal, come in,” Shane said, pressing the radio button.
The radio beeped back. “Yes!” he said to himself, happy that there was a signal.
“I found a way through. You’ll never be able to make it with the big vehicles the way I went, but if you can get past the checkpoint, it is clear sailing further down the road.”
“That’s encouraging. We just need to find our way past this military blockade,” Cal replied. The convoy was now close to the checkpoint, and they were next to be searched and sent to the gate. He saw an opportunity to make a run for it between two Humvees and stay on the road ahead. He pressed the radio button.
“I think we can get through if we commit to it,” he said into the radio.
“I wish we had a diversion to draw their attention for a minute,” Rusty replied.
“Well, we don’t, and it is now or never. Everyone hold on tight, I’m going for it. Heidi, put the kids on the floor in the RV, please.”
“Already did,” she replied.
As Cal moved up to the checkpoint, he saw his opening and gunned it. The trooper with the clipboard stepped back quickly and several others raised their weapons to fire at the group of vehicles speeding through the checkpoint.
“HOLD FIRE!” a sergeant in charge yelled. “HOLD FIRE!”
“This is not the time to cause panic!” the sergeant wisely directed. “Let them go, we have more than enough problems right now.”
The small convoy quickly weaved through the opening in the Humvees. Everyone cleared the blockade fine, except the Deuce. Rusty managed to clip the brush guard on one of the Humvees and rip it off as he squeezed through.
“My bad!” he shouted with a smile to the young Humvee driver sitting behind the wheel, flipping him off.
28
Chapter 28
Saturday, January 12th
Wellington, Florida
CODE BLUE ROOM 706!
CODE BLUE ROOM 706!
ROOM 706 STAT!
The mechanical voice chimed over the public-address system with gloomy regularity. The moans echoing down the halls were constant now, always in the background behind the hurried footsteps and shouted orders coming from nearly every floor of the hospital, even the north wing, which had been under renovation. North, as it was called, had been cleared of the scaffolds and construction equipment to make room for the constant stream of patients.
The gutted rooms eerily resembled a tropical urgent care in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak, at least that’s what was on Mark’s mind.
He had to constantly remind himself that this was not some third-world country aid station.
The patient lying lifeless on the bed was a 25-year-old from Wellington, Florida– a former polo star, no less. Just a week ago, he had been in peak condition. He found himself out of work when the virus took over because entertainment events such as polo were no longer authorized due to mandatory social-distancing restrictions put in place by Homeland Security.
In the room with the patient was the only nurse left on the floor, Clara. Clara really wanted to leave like everyone else, but wouldn’t. The triage tents outside were becoming another morgue, rather than a triage area, as they had been intended, and she found herself back inside trying to help Mark.
Even though there was little hope left, she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the people who counted on her as their last chance at comfort. When the athlete arrived originally, she had assured him that he just had a bad case of the seasonal flu, not the shadow flu so many others never recovered from. But she knew better.
All the other patients who had been admitted for other medical reasons had now contracted the virus and the mortality rate was 100%. In the last few days the mortalities had spiked as the virus took effect locally. The tide of patients coming into the hospital had begun to taper off as the public realized there was little reason to go there if it could be avoided. Most people preferred to take their chances at home. Especially if there was no cure.
“Mark!” Clara cried through the Tyvek hood of her protective suit as Dr. Welby raced into the room too late to help, “He’s already convulsed.”
Mark stopped at the bedside, took a glance through his fogging face shield, and dropped his shoulders. He knew Clara was right. There wasn’t anything for him to do but call the time of death. Not that these details mattered much; no one bothered keeping records anymore.
Standing there, amidst the drone of moans down the hall, he sighed. He no longer wore the crisp lab coat of a professional, but now lived in the white protective coveralls with double-layered gloves and yellow rubber boots. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had stopped to look at himself in a mirror. Even if he had tried to revive the patient, he had little to work with as the crash cart had long ago been pilfered of the critical supplies. The labeled drawers were now mostly empty except for the odd aspirin or random cotton swab.
He pulled the sheet over the cooling corpse and took Clara by the gloved hand as they left the room. Before they could even make it three steps down the hall, the mechanical voice chimed again, CODE BLUE ROOM 714! The automated voice in the hall was triggered by the telemetry wires monitoring the vital signs of the patient. The automated system was designed to reduce the need for live nurses, but today it was paying for itself because there were no nurses available.
The Body Snatchers, as they came to be known, would be back around soon to add to their bin. They gave up on single gurneys a while back, and now used the large laundry dump carts so they could carry more bodies at one time to the waiting dump truck down at the loading dock.
One of the body snatchers made his way back up to the 7th floor by himself with no cart.
“Dr. Welby,” he said, sheepishly.
“What’s wrong?” Mark replied.
“The dump trucks are no longer run
ning. The Pharmastat people have left,” he answered. “Mr. Greene said the hospital was no longer…”
The man was trying to remember the word Mr. Greene used, “Tanble, tanable…Ten…”
“Tenable?” Mark suggested.
“Yes, that was it. He just left on a helicopter with some security guys.”
“That son of a bitch!” Mark exclaimed.
“When the other guys heard that, they also left. I have no help to carry the bodies and nowhere to put them, anyway.”
“What about the National Guard outside?” Clara asked.
“They look like they are getting ready to leave too,” the man said.
Mark looked out the window trying to decide what to do.
“Is that the weasel getting into his car?” Mark said, squinting at the mostly-empty parking lot.
“It sure is,” Clara replied.
“Doctor Welby, the other floors are shutting down and everyone is leaving. Not that there were many people left,” the man said, as if hoping to be excused from his duties.
Mark felt the world closing in, but he knew the end was here. He looked at the nervous man before him and gave an approving nod.
“Thank you doctor, bless you,” he said as he quickly turned and left. The man wanted to get away before someone changed their mind.
“We can’t keep this up,” Mark said to Clara. “I think we might need to let this go. We are only prolonging the pain.”
“We can’t leave these people to fend for themselves. That is cruel,” Clara replied.
Mark looked her in the eye in a way that revealed the only solution he could think of.
“You can’t be serious,” she said, knowing full well he was considering euthanasia.
“I am open to any better ideas. I truly am. Help is not coming and the only chance we had at a medical solution just flew away in a helicopter, leaving us to fend for ourselves,” he said. “It is only a matter of time before we make one small mistake and become infected. We are out of PPE and every surface in the building is crawling with pathogens of some type.”
They walked down the hall, glancing in the rooms, trying to get a rough headcount of where they really stood as they talked.
“How did it come to this?” Clara asked rhetorically. “I just don’t know if I can do it, there has to be another way.”
“This is not like Hurricane Katrina where the staff of the assisted living facility made the choice to euthanize viable patients only to have rescue helicopters arrive hours later. Who is coming?” They stopped at the end of the hall and looked out over the ER lot where the tents were placed.
“I cannot believe we are having this conversation,” she replied.
Mark and Clara continued to look on as the few National Guard troops who were still alive began to pull away in their Humvees. There were still various military vehicles left parked around the lot but there was no one to drive them away.
The sight of the protectors withdrawing was a crushing emotional blow that would seal their decision to leave.
About an hour later, Mark and Clara made their way out of the hospital through a fire exit door that opened to the dark lot where their cars were still parked. They chose to leave her car behind and took Mark’s Chevy Tahoe. Mark took one last look at the hospital in the looming darkness before he settled behind the wheel. Clara could not bring herself to look back.
“We’ll go to the house and load up everything we can and try to link up with the group,” Mark said.
“Do you remember where they said they were headed?” Clara asked between sobs.
“I have it written down in my pocket. If all goes well, we should meet them at the cabin in north Georgia by late tomorrow sometime.”
Clara did not acknowledge the timetable; she was preoccupied, staring out the car window at the strange landscape of cars pulled over along the roads, some with doors hanging open. There were little groups of people that looked like refugees shambling in the darkness on sidewalks and even in the street as they tried to keep their distance from strangers. “I wonder where they are going?” she said quietly. She saw more than one body on the ground before she passed out against the window, exhausted.
Mark weaved the Tahoe around various stalled cars and other debris in the road as he drove in the darkness. The clouds had moved in again, blotting out the little moonlight which made things even darker since the power had failed again. There were no lights of any kind other than the occasional flashlight held by a walker. Every few minutes another car would be moving around in the area with its headlights flooding the bleak landscape. Off in the distance, beyond the trees to his left, Mark saw the glow he suspected was a house fire, but larger than seemed normal.
The sound of gunfire would erupt every few minutes then go silent out in the darkness.
Mark and Clara’s home was usually about fifteen minutes from the hospital, but tonight’s ride was slow due to the obstacles and darkness.
He made his way through a large intersection and wheeled left onto the wide state road that would lead them out toward their gated community. After a couple minutes, Mark saw a long line of cars haphazardly stopped along the shoulder and people milling around. He slammed on the brakes at the sight before him.
The sudden jolt woke Clara and she looked quickly to Mark.
“What happened?” she asked, but got no answer. Mark seemed pale and confused.
“Are we at the lake?” she asked, looking through the windshield as the headlights beamed over the brown water, as far as the eye could see, toward the sunken sun on the horizon.
“No, I think the lake came to us.” Mark replied pensively. They stepped out of the SUV and looked west over the water. There were various cars submerged up to their windows and a strange mix of debris floating on what was State Road 80, a six-lane divided highway. That highway now resembled a war-torn boat ramp.
“What are we going to do? We don’t have anything with us, no food, no water, no clothes, no medical supplies…” She trailed off in realization of the distress they found themselves in.
“I don’t know. All I do know is we have each other,” Mark replied, a knot forming in his stomach.
They walked back to the SUV and climbed in. The weight of the hospital collapsing was bad enough, but this capped it off. Clara looked as if this was the end of the road as she stared out over the flooded highway.
Mark reached over and took her face in his hand. “Our story doesn’t end here, darling. We have most of a tank of gas and a plan to meet the group. Everything else we will figure out along the way.”
Clara felt a renewed fire in her belly. “Then let’s get to it.”
The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series Page 28
