by Jack Hunt
“Why?”
“I want to get a better view of what we’re up against.”
“I don’t think you will see much at night.”
“Is there a way?”
“Yeah, follow me.”
Hal led them through a series of doors to a boiler room, where there was a dark staircase that went up 20 feet to a hatch. After unlocking it, he pushed it wide and peered out. Seeing no movement, they all climbed up onto a section of the roof filled with steel air vents. The roof was angled but the slope wasn’t as extreme as the gymnasium. It was hard to see much of anything except for areas where streetlights illuminated small patches of the parking lot and sidewalks.
“You work with insects,” Hal said, causing the others to look his way. “Does any of this make sense?”
“Some insects are known to carry diseases; mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, but you usually don’t see symptoms appear within twenty to forty-eight hours.” It had been almost seventy-two hours since Burning Man had started. “And you definitely don’t see aggression.”
As they squinted into the night, it was only then they saw the fate of Tom Daniels. His vehicle had made it to the T-junction between Sunset and Beechnut, not far from Bruno’s Country Club. Now it was turned over and a body lay hanging out of the driver’s side as though someone had dragged Tom out.
Upon seeing movement, Miles’ eyes flitted to Bruno’s roof. It was too dark to tell who it was but they figured if anyone could survive, it would be Frank. The guy was as tough as nails, and the roof would have probably been the safest place. In other areas, they saw people crouched over on the ground, moving ever so slowly as if waging a battle within themselves.
“Did you manage to call dispatch? Because when we found your vehicle we couldn’t get through,” Hal asked.
“No. No one was answering,” Abe replied.
“Great.” Hal glanced at Miles. “I have to go.”
“Hal.”
“I have to!”
Miles placed a hand on his shoulder. “You saw what they did. Look. Look!” he said louder, pointing to Tom’s vehicle, then Edwin’s. “The playa is roughly fifteen miles away by vehicle. Tom never made it farther than one street.”
“Then I go by foot.”
“Are you kidding me? Fifteen miles. It might as well be fifteen hundred with them out there. We don’t know how many there are.”
“One thing’s for sure, we need weapons, and I know where we can get some,” Wayne piped up.
“No one is killing anyone,” Abe said.
“Seems they already have, deputy.”
Abe scowled at him.
“No, Abe is right,” Grady spoke up. “Whatever is happening, those things out there are just infected. That woman might have been out of her mind but you heard her, you saw her. She was speaking to us. She knew she needed medical help. Self-aware. This is a virus plain and simple. Now you want to arm yourselves and paint the town red?” He looked over at Hal. “I know you want to make sure your daughter is safe but right now the safest thing we can do is stay put until help arrives.”
“Help arrives?” Wayne said. “China boy, if help was coming it would already be here.”
“I’m Korean, idiot. And the internet isn’t down. We can communicate with the outside by email or social media. We can get the word out. Tell them we’re here.”
“Yeah, and who do you think’s coming? You saw the news; America has its hands full. We’re just some blip on a map. Hell, most people would be pleased to see these burners die from a pandemic.” No one interrupted as there were no clear guidelines for dealing with something like this. Ebola, SARS, the coronavirus, the advice was always the same — wash hands frequently, maintain social distance, avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth, and seek out medical attention at the first sign of symptoms.
But these were no ordinary symptoms.
Seven - The Big Itch
No one else left that night. Miles knew he couldn’t convince Hal to change his mind so instead he told him he would go with him in the morning. In darkness it was hard to know how many were out there. In all truthfulness he hoped that by morning the military would arrive, or someone would come to their aid — no one did.
Communication was the first to go. It wasn’t that the power went down or that the networks were no longer operating, it was just that none of the calls got through. The networks weren’t built to handle such high demand.
Still, that didn’t stop everyone from trying to reach emergency services, relatives or loved ones.
“I’m just getting busy signals,” Miles said.
All the circuits were tied up as fear took hold of America.
How had it started?
What caused it to spread so fast?
Any other pandemic and the world would have continued on, strained but operating as best as they could. This was no ordinary pandemic — hyper aggression was at the core, driving those plagued by this mysterious sickness.
Miles had wracked his brain that night trying to connect the dots.
A swarm of bugs on the playa?
Sickness that had all the early symptoms of Lyme disease or the flu?
It was easy to connect transference but none of the news reports had mentioned insects. That was the part he couldn’t understand. If this was some kind of viral disease, at what point did it peak? Would it end in death? He became so tired of the questions that eventually he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
A few times Miles jolted awake from the sound of screams but they soon became less frequent as the evening wore on.
As the first rays of light peeked over the horizon, spreading warmth far and wide, Miles stirred. The world came back into view, and with it the terrifying memory of those he’d watched die. It seemed like a bad dream.
“Hey,” Jenna said as he pawed at his eyes. “I managed last night to contact my mother.”
“Mikey?”
“He’s okay at least from the one message I got back before the internet stopped working. It seems the communication lines aren’t the only thing overwhelmed.”
He groaned, swinging his legs off the chair and reaching for a bottle of water to rehydrate. They’d operated in shifts through the night, with a couple of them on top of the roof, and others watching the entry points like a hawk. With only Abe packing a gun, the rest of them had searched the school for anything they could use as a weapon. Eventually the rest tried to get some shut-eye with the expectation that the world would look different when they awoke.
It did, but not in the way they hoped.
Miles scanned the tired faces of those who’d had the good sense to stay.
He stretched and worked out the kinks in his neck. “Where’s Hal?”
“On the roof. He never slept last night.”
“Would you?”
Miles patted Jenna on the shoulder and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Across the room, squatting, bottle of water in hand, Molly met his gaze. She smiled and he returned the gesture as he walked out heading for the roof. He noticed Grady’s wife had her head in her husband’s lap and he was dead to the world. Wayne was standing by the main doors peering out.
Deputy Walker looked solemn, as if a heavy weight hung on his shoulders.
After a brisk walk through the corridors, he made his way up. The air felt cool and dry as he opened the hatch. Hal was seated near the lip, and Nate was at the far end holding Abe’s handgun. Miles made his way over and sat down beside him without saying a word.
In the light of day it was easier to see the devastation that had befallen the sleepy town. Vehicles turned over, some abandoned, a few bodies littering the ground with pools of dry blood nearby. Black smoke rose from businesses and homes, many reduced to nothing more than a charred mess. How many had died last night? Better question, how many were infected?
“You know, after Genene walked out, I kind of felt lost. I wanted to contact you but… it just didn’t feel right to unload my troubles on you. I blamed mysel
f, you know, for the way it played out, but I should have seen it coming. I mean, our relationship was doomed from day one, right?” Hal chuckled. “But I did learn a lesson. Never date a groupie.”
Miles was listening while scanning the streets. Hal continued, “But what bothered me the most was that she painted me as this unreliable father. Always touring, never home. She knew what she was getting when she said I do. I guess she left out the part about how she joined me on the road. Oh no, they wouldn’t believe she was there with me because her mother backed her up and said she was helping her with the family business. Crazy, right?”
“How did it end?” Miles asked.
“I guess that depends on who you ask. If you ask me, it occurred two years before we separated. When I found her in the sack with our lead singer…” He trailed off, then picked up the story. “She apologized, said it happened in the heat of the moment. She was drunk, drugged out.”
“You believed her?”
“Hell no, I was about to send her on her way but she told me she was pregnant.”
“With yours or his?”
Hal laughed. “He was fast leaping out of that bed; I’ll give him that but I don’t think his sperm was that fast.” Miles snorted. “She broke down, you know, flood works and all. I gave her another chance. She stuck around eight more years then gave me some shit about how she didn’t know what she wanted. I came home, found all her clothes gone and she’d taken Bailee.” He sucked in his lips. “Anyway the courts sided with her and she got full custody. Worst day of my life. The thought that I wouldn’t get to see Bailee almost drove me over the edge.”
“So that’s why you returned.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know Nate will say it was Vanessa but it was my kid.”
Miles patted Hal on the leg. “We’ll find her.”
“If she’s….”
“Hal, don’t. Don’t think that way.”
“I’m trying not to but barring the ones downstairs, I’ve yet to see any burners who aren’t infected.”
“I’m sure there’s many more. Eighty thousand. That’s a lot of people to be infected. For all we know she’s probably home.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “Do you think this is contagious?”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t a lot of information online as to how this occurred so…”
“But you work with insects, right?”
“Again, Hal, I don’t know how this started, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”
“But is it possible? I mean, you’re working for the Pentagon on insects carrying viruses.”
“Of course it’s possible. Operation Big Itch in 1954 was a series of tests they uh…” He paused.
“What is it?”
Miles stared into the distance, his mind running wild. “Dugway Proving Ground is east of here.”
“Yeah, about six hundred miles or so. Why?”
He thought back to what that media lady had queried him about. “Back in the ’50s the government was experimenting with biowarfare. A number of tests were conducted on the American public. Operation Big Itch was one of them. In 1954 they ran a field test taking uninfected fleas, placing them in munitions and dropping them from the air to determine coverage patterns and survivability. Once cluster bombs reached a certain altitude the bomblets would open and spread the vector.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes. It was successful. They not only survived but they attached themselves to hosts.”
“But they were uninfected.”
“Apparently. Anyway the insects were only active for about twenty-four hours.”
Hal looked at him. “You think…”
“It’s possible. For the purpose of control, the Insect Allies program has been developed to ensure the insects used in the program can’t breed or survive longer than two weeks.”
They were quiet, both of them contemplating.
“That burner, she said those bugs were dead when she arrived.”
He nodded. “Two days later. Big Itch was twenty-four hours. Could it be…?” He shook his head; he didn’t want to go there. It wasn’t a case of whether it was possible, only how, and why?
“Do you think they would use a live virus intentionally?”
“Intentionally? I don’t want to think that way but if the Dugway Sheep Incident is anything to go by, maybe, but that was back in the ’50s before Nixon announced the end of the U.S. offensive biological weapons program.”
“That incident. What happened?”
Miles blew out his cheeks. He was all too familiar with it, especially after the media had been using it as a poster child for what could happen if the Insect Allies program got out of hand or was used for nefarious purposes. “1968. Skull Valley. Fifty miles north of Dugway Proving Ground. Six thousand sheep were killed on ranches, all of their deaths were connected to biological warfare programs running out of the base. In 1998 they released documents proving the Army was involved in using a nerve agent.”
“But why?”
“Well if you buy their story, they ran three different operations. One involved firing chemical artillery shells, another was burning gallons of this nerve agent in an open-air pot, and the third was spraying it from an aircraft over Skull Valley. The third was what was supposed to have caused the deaths.”
Miles thought back to the radio and the FBI raiding his friend’s home. Was he somehow responsible? Were the feds trying to stop something before it happened?
“We should tell the others.”
“It’s not going to matter right now. Besides, it’s nothing but hearsay.”
“What if you got a sample?”
He nodded. Miles could see he was reaching, desperate, looking for any smidgen of hope. Miles wanted it too but right now he was reaching himself, into the unknown, tying together incidents from the past. Could that reporter have been right? Could history repeat itself?
“Wayne says he has rifles and handguns at his mother’s. He said we’d head over there this morning then after that maybe we can…”
“Let’s speak with Abe first and—”
“Miles, with or without you, I’m heading out.”
Miles acknowledged with a nod but stayed silent.
He looked across the roof toward Nate who was squatting. “How’s he holding up?”
“Seems fine.”
Miles got up and patted Hal on the shoulder before pitching sideways and going up to the crest of the roof and over to him. Nate cast a glance over his shoulder. “Sleeping beauty,” Nate said. “Why does it not surprise me that you would sleep through this?”
“No point getting worried about what you can’t control, right?” Miles said. “You good?”
“Oh, just dandy. Just dandy,” Nate replied.
“Why don’t you head down to the showers and get out of that,” Miles said, pointing to the bloody shirt Nate still had on. “Might make you feel better.”
“And wear what?”
“I’m sure we can dig out something.”
He nodded and went to hand the gun to him. Miles put up his hands. “I don’t know how to fire one, not much use to me.”
“Well you better learn fast. Here, let me show you.”
He took Miles through some of the basics. Holding, finger placement, he couldn’t exactly show him stance on the roof but he tried his best. He then covered loading a magazine, putting one in the chamber, dealing with a jam, and grip. Equal height, equal sight, he said as he showed him how to use the gun’s sight.
“Feels awkward.”
“It soon becomes familiar.”
Miles handed it back to him. “Maybe I should leave the shooting to you.”
They headed down for the showers, Miles was keen to wash off some of the desert grit himself. He couldn’t recall feeling sand this much when he was a kid.
On the way down, Miles’ mind was spinning while Nate talked about how they would never forget this reunion. That was for sure. As they drew closer they could h
ear a commotion, it sounded like someone was struggling or being choked. They shot each other a glance. Nate kept the Glock low and finger on the outside of the trigger as they moved ahead. It was coming from the female washrooms, and what had started as muffled was now clear. “Lisa, please,” a croak that was muffled by a hand.
As they came around the corner, they looked upon two naked women writhing around on the tiled floor beneath the showers as steam billowed up around them.
One of them was covered in sores and rashes, and her veins were bulging, purple and red like the woman who’d smashed her head into the door last night.
Sandy, the burner from last night, was struggling to get her sister Lisa off. She had her hands wrapped around her throat and looked enraged. At the sound of them entering, Lisa shot them a wild-eyed look as Nate raised the handgun.
“No. No. Please. Don’t shoot,” Sandy cried out but it was too late.
Lisa released her grip on her sister and charged Nate, all spit and fury.
She made it four steps before he dropped her with a single shot to the chest.
Sandy scrambled over, wet, her naked body glistening with water. “What have you done? No. No. Lisa!” She slipped an arm beneath her sister’s neck and cradled her as Lisa looked on with glassy eyes and took her final breath.
“She was infected,” Nate said.
“She was confused,” Sandy shot back. “You killed my sister.”
Nate took a few steps back and Miles told him to go and get cleaned off while he went to get help to deal with the situation. He hadn’t made it twenty feet before the corridor was filled with others who’d heard the shot. They brushed past him to see for themselves. Miles walked on as gasps filled the air.
Eight - Wild West
It wasn’t a moral dilemma; it was common sense.
“There was no other choice,” Miles said to Deputy Walker who’d taken back his gun after hearing the fate of Lisa. “The woman was strangling her sister before attacking us. What was he supposed to do?” He paused waiting for an answer but the deputy never gave one. How could he? He wasn’t in a position to dictate a situation that he had no idea how to handle. Law enforcement was practically nonexistent barring him. Besides, Abe had already been forced to shoot a few. It wasn’t like they could subdue them, at least not at this point. There was no telling how contagious this was or how people got infected. They were dealing with unknowns. They had little to go on and until they knew more they couldn’t take chances. Keeping their distance was priority, staying alive even more so.
