Ring of Fire

by David Agranoff

  “What about North Park?”

  “I don’t know San Diego that well, but it was widespread.”

  Scott looked away slightly. “We agree. They’re letting the city burn.”

  “They failed every test I threw at them.” Annie took a deep breath. “So, how are you getting out of here?”

  Scott smiled a little. “You OK with that?”

  Annie shook her head. “Losing my best squad boss? No, I’m not OK with that, but you are not doing anything here.”

  “I am not sure they will be happy to see me, but I can’t live with myself if I don’t try to help my brother.”

  Annie held up a pair of motorcycle keys. “It ain’t quiet, but a scout bike is the best I can offer. Stop by the supply tent and get yourself a gas mask.”

  Scott stumbled on his words. “Annie I don’t how to thank—”

  Annie pulled him into an uncharacteristic hug. She whispered into his ear. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  ***

  Martin was tired of ringing his hands in the meeting. They were trying to use radios to communicate with techs and get the phone lines back up. All their energy was focused on getting any kind of internet. Until they did they were still as blind as if they were looking out the haze filled windows. He wasn’t doing anything and felt the walls closing in.

  He walked out of the meeting and went straight through the security doors to the front desk. Jessica was normally there when the crew showed up in the morning with coffee already brewed. She was such an underrated part of what happened in the office every day. He suddenly felt guilty for not even bothering to check in on her or his staff that were sick, quarantined one floor down in the city council chambers.

  Martin went to the stairwell and headed down the steps. He knew Lewis had posted a guard at the stairwell door on the tenth floor. He was on the middle landing and heard the scream. Muffled and desperate but he heard it. The guard was gone. Martin ran to the door, hearing more barking and struggles, like furniture was being overturned.

  He hit the door and pulled. It was locked but he had the master key in his pocket, one of the perks of being chief of staff. Martin fumbled the keys his first attempt didn’t fit in the door. The second one worked. Martin pulled the door open.

  There was too much happening to grasp it all. Jessica kicked and screamed. A solider dressed in full fatigues with a gas mask hanging off his pack dragged her. He had what looked like a rope in her mouth and pulled her by it. It looked painful but she struggled against it.

  A second soldier ran at him. “This is a quarantine zone!”

  Martin saw what he could as he pulled the door shut. Kevin Alvarez, the city councilman, was in the window of his office looking rabid and clawing at the window. Another soldier held down a third person who was violently struggling against them.

  The door shut and Martin backed up the stairs.

  “What the fuck?” Martin whispered.

  The screams were muffled, the same he had heard echo all day throughout the city. The madness had spread. Through the city, through the office. Martin felt panic growing. All the awful things were crowding in on them. His heart was racing faster. The panic was about to overtake him when he heard the door from the quarantine room opening.

  Martin turned and got back into the mayor’s office as fast as he could. He was out of breath, sweating. Shane Lewis came out of the bathroom at the same moment. He squirted hand sanitizer and rubbed his hands together.

  “You OK?” He asked.

  Martin tried to catch his breath. “No, I am very not OK, can we talk?”

  Lewis raised his eyebrow. “I need to get back to the meeting.” He pointed to the conference room.

  “Bullshit, fucking bullshit. We are cut the fuck off. Nothing is happening in there.”

  Lewis shrugged. He didn’t like being talked to that way but walked into Martin’s office. Martin shut the door and leaned against it. Lewis sat down and pointed at the empty desk chair.

  “Have a seat, please.”

  Martin thought about blocking the door. He went and sat down.

  “I think you know more about the prion infections than you’re telling me.”

  “I work for the government. Sometimes things are classified. I don’t make the rules.”

  Martin’s panic overcame him. He felt tears welling up. He shook his head struggling to find what he wanted to say.

  “Just stop bullshitting. I just saw two of my staff attacked by soldiers and being restrained violently. Jessica was sick a few hours ago and almost died in my arms. What the fuck is going on?”

  Lewis looked at the half-unpacked office. Martin wasn’t sure what he was looking for on his desk or if he was avoiding answering.

  “Is it true today is your first day on the job?”

  Martin didn’t answer, but his red-faced silence said it all.

  Lewis laughed. “That is some shitty luck.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Fine. How much science do you want? I am a scientist, first and foremost.”

  Martin shook his head. “The truth unfiltered.”

  “Tell me if anything goes over your head. You see in normal people, just like you and me, morality happens in the dorsal and ventral prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is where emotions, fear, and stress happen, and the angular gyrus that is the center of language and cognition. Those nasty little fuckers crawling in your water? They punch holes in the brain just about everywhere but they have a knack for finding those three areas of the brain.”

  “It is driving people crazy.”

  “More than that, it is turning them wild with rage.”

  “This can’t be coming from farms.”

  Lewis turned and looked back at the door, lowered his voice. “So what do you think is happening? Let’s consider your cancer cluster for a moment. I send a team of investigators into a cluster and we have to figure out if a type of cancer that has metastasized or spread to another site in the body. We start from the original tissue where the cancer began. If a cluster is confirmed, then I can rule out genetics. But to identify the cause. People move in and out of an area over time, which can make it difficult to identify potential carcinogens.”

  “Get to the point in English.”

  “The point is I don’t know what is in your air every day, your food or water. You may think a farm is an unlikely source, but we have to put beef in every fast food joint and grocery store in the country. Those same restaurants and stores want chicken too. These are biological beings we treat like products. They eat, breath and shit. Do you know how mad cow happened in the first place?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Cows are herbivores, but a thrifty farmer in the UK thought he was on to something when he threw his left over, inedible cow parts in the mix with his feed. Right down to their bones”

  “He fed the cows back to themselves.”

  “He did. Nature rebelled and in time a brand stinking new infectious protein was served into the food supply and passed on to consumers. Let’s not forget they shit forty times the amount of a human. That infected shit ends up in the groundwater or—”

  “Our water comes down the Colorado River.”

  “Exactly. Were you even listening when I told you before? The sources of pollution are in every aspect of life but what we eat, the production of it is actually more intense than our cars or what shopping bags we use.”

  “What can we do? I mean here today.”

  “For now we need to prevent panic. Trust the general. We need time to clean up the water. Put out the fire, by the time the phones and internet are back up we will work on a plan.”

  Martin didn’t believe him but prayed that he was correct.

  ***

  “No music, please,” Andrew asked when they got in the car.

  Jake put his phone on the dashboard holder out of habit. It was useless at this point without any kind of signal. He turned on the Subaru and it roared through the
parking garage still filled with cars owned by people who were following their boss’s orders.

  The radio came to life. It was still on 690. He knew it was the only station, so there was no point in changing it. Will sounded tired.

  “. . . in this station there is a graveyard for electronics. Big Al and I are looking more things to communicate with. Sat phones, fax machines . . . I mean, folks, we are one nose hair away from tin-cans on strings.”

  Jake turned it lower preferring to hear the outside sounds as they drove. The roads were littered here and there with cars that had been left behind. Some even had doors left ajar, others were on fire. They had to wiggle their way around cars until they circled the baseball stadium. To the west the sky cleared just a bit over the ocean. The sun dipped and it would be dark soon. The street lights were already coming on, the sensors triggered by the darkness. They passed the massive downtown library, the large windows were broken. You could see alarms flashing on each of the 11 levels. They could hear the ear piercing alarm even as they turned into the alley and headed east.

  The air cleared a little as they headed up the hill that took them out of downtown. Jake picked up the speed. The light faded in the sky and he could only see a few feet beyond the hood. It was a surreal feeling, driving without being able to see. Every block they would cross a street and Jake would tense up as they crossed. There was no way to know if traffic was coming the opposite way. Jake squeezed the steering wheel and pushed through each time, looking at the front of houses on the cross streets.

  Andrew cracked his window. The sound of the wild screams slipped in as much as the smoke. The desperate cries had the effect of playing with his nerves. He thought of home. The thought of those screams scaring Victoria, Tiff and Damian was the thing that kept him moving.

  “They never stop screaming.”

  “What direction is it coming from?”

  Andrew shrugged. “Everywhere.”

  “What happened to those people?”

  “I don’t care what happened, you heard Bingham.”

  Bingham had reported about the cops shooting the crazies downtown. He said the National Guard called them ferals at the checkpoint. He heard Bingham tell Kendra they were dangerous enough for a shoot-to-kill order.

  “Hey, Jake, I have seen these ferals. They are savage, if they attacks us you gotta act, okay?”

  “Yeah. Agreed.”

  “I mean no mercy, it is us or them.”

  Jake didn’t like the sound of that. There was one problem they didn’t predict when they turned on to this alley. With landmarks obscured and no street signs they had no idea how far they had gone.

  “Are we there yet?” Jake asked. Only meaning their turn on 25th Ave.

  “If we passed it, it will dead end at an over pass in a block.”

  In the rear view mirror Jake saw a flash of movement. He stared into the mirror and saw something emerge from the smoke. A man running and swinging his arms wildly.

  “Shit, behind us.”

  Andrew turned in time to see three more people come out of the smoke. They had to drive slowly to avoid hitting cars parked or left behind in the alley. The ferals ran fast enough to slam into the back of the car.

  Jake cursed. One of the ferals jumped on top of the car. Jake hit the brakes. The one on top slid forward and rolled onto the pavement in front of the car. Jake saw the three ferals engulf his view in the rear view mirror. It wasn’t just the war cries, it was the bloody hunger in their eyes. They were out to consume them. Jake put his disbelief aside, shifted the car into reverse and hit the gas. Bodies crunched and cracked under the pressure. They were already screaming but the sound changed from wild hunger to pain.

  Jake shifted the automatic back into drive. The feral before him stood up in the glare of his headlights, the smoke providing a back drop. His skin was pale, his clothes shredded, barely on his body. The feral held up its arms to block the glare. It was a human act blocking the light. Jake paused, his foot just above the gas pedal. Then it screamed and ran towards them.

  In the rear view he saw a dozen more feral humans. They ran out of the cover of smoke. Jake made eye contact with the feral in front of him. Inhumanly red eyes glared back. Jake hit the gas and ran straight into the feral. The creature bounced off the hood.

  “Go! Go!” Andrew yelled.

  Jake looked into the rear view mirror. The feral he just hit tried to stand and chase but was left behind with a leg twisted in an unnatural direction. The other ferals kept chasing. Jake sped up to almost 35 MPH to get ahead of them. He almost smashed them into a car left in the alley. The bumper smacked the abandoned car.

  The ferals kept coming. He wanted to slow down but couldn’t until he saw a bridge in their way. He slammed on the brakes. They had passed 26th and almost ran into the concrete base of a bridge that supported the 94 freeway.

  “Turn around!” Andrew yelled the obvious. Jake turned to look back. The ferals were almost caught up to them. Jake hit reverse and plowed through them. The back window cracked as they crashed through. The car bounced over them, causing Andrew and Jake to rock in their seats.

  Jake spun the wheel when they were on 26th. They were free of ferals for the moment but they heard screams growing closer in all directions, as he straightened the wheel and drove them toward the golf course. They tore up the greens crossing like a golf cart. It was not the fastest path to their neighborhood but a smart way to avoid the checkpoints.

  ***

  “Honestly, I am pretty tired. We have been on the air all day and frankly being on in a crisis is not my thing. I am not a news guy, never was.”

  Will tugged at this headphones. The sweat was building under them and he was sure they smelled awful. Alex watched him from the booth. Will gave him the signal to talk. Alex tugged his microphone in closer.

  “Yeah, maybe we should ask for medical help again.”

  “Right.” Will nodded and pointed at his producer, as if to thank him for the reminder. “Jeff of the Dave and Jeff show in the morning is sick as hell in our back office. So, if anyone out there listening is a medical doctor, EMT or hell, it’s Jeff, we’ll take a vet. If you can get to our station in Kearny Mesa Jeff could you use your help.”

  “Will, if anyone comes down to help we have four tickets to the Big Boys Toys car show at the convention center.”

  As soon as it was out of Alex’s mouth he wished he could pull it back. Will rolled his eyes at his young producer.

  “Honestly, guys, if you brave the state of emergency and come down here we will give you every ticket we give away for a year.” The sarcasm was thick. Will tried to get serious but he was feeling angry. “I am sure you are thinking why risk it? I mean, everyone else in our office had the brains to leave. Not Jeff, no, his show was done and for some reason this dope hung around.”

  “He had a blog piece to write about the Padres.”

  “During a natural freaking disaster.”

  Alex laughed, filling Billy’s co-hosting role as human laugh track. Busting each other’s balls was something the two shows did constantly. Jeff was a world class smart ass with almost no filter. It was locker room style humor that they were told helped boost ratings and got their listeners to take sides on social media. For a moment, Will felt normal. Making fun of Jeff was routine, part of normal life. That seemed far away now. It would be a long time before normality would return.

  Then he heard Jeff scream in pain. He heard it through Alex’s open microphone in the control room over his headphones. Alex turned to look. In Will’s head he thought of a joke. Normally he would make fun of him for what he ate or that he had disgusting gas that filled the office, a gag that he used several times on the air.

  “Big Al, I think it is time to take a break.”

  A pre-recorded sounder played, “AM 690 San Diego’s sports leader.”

  Will took off his headphones and heard the yelling. It was muffled by the studio walls that normally blocked all sound. It was wild and out of
control. Jeff was down the hall in his office, apparently feeling well enough to throw things and scream his guts out. Will stepped out of the studio and Alex out of the control booth.

  “Alex, get a water bottle for him.”

  “You taking it in there? Cause he sounds pissed, dude.”

  Jeff pounded on the door violently like he was trying to get out. For brief second, he thought the man was listening and finally got pissed. They heaped mountains of abuse on each other over the airwaves and Twitter and no one took it personally. They both knew that wasn’t it.

  “Will, he sounds really, really pissed.”

  Will nodded. The screams increased.

  “I don’t think we should ignore him. Those are going to be heard in the studio.”

  Will was still silent as he walked toward the office door. All the banging and the door handle never turned. The door bounced slightly like Jeff was hitting it. Finally, Will turned to look back at Alex. “You got weapon, dude?”

  Alex looked offended. “What because I’m Mexican?”

  Will rolled his eyes. “You’re more likely than me.”

  Alex pointed at his boss. “That is fucked up, dude. Fucked up.”

  “I don’t have time to deal with you being annoyed.”

  “Offended.”

  “Whatever, I am going to open that door if we can’t get Jeff to shut his pie hole or calm down. We might need a weapon.”

  “You gonna knock him out?” Alex asked.

  “Just get something, anything.”

  Alex stepped in Scott’s office and walked back out holding his SCB broadcaster of the year award from 2008. It was heavy and had marble on the bottom.

  “My Scabbie? Oh, hell no. Darren plays softball after his show sometimes. He has a mitt and bat in his office.”

  The banging increased in intensity as Alex opened the office door next to Jeff’s office. He came out with a bat and offered it to Will.

  Will pointed at him. He expected Alex to swing when the door opened. Will’s hand hovered over the handle. It shook violently as they inched closer.

  “If he doesn’t chill, Big Al, I’m counting on you. Whack his ass, you understand?”