Pandemic: Level 6: A Post Apocalyptic Medical Thriller Fiction Series (The Pandemic Series Book 3)

by Bobby Akart

  “That’s good news,” said Hunter, adding, “I mean about the plague cases. It sounds like Sheriff Andrews secured the town early enough to avoid outsiders from infecting the local residents.”

  “Oh yeah. Terry and I’ve discussed this eventuality for a long time,” started Doc. “The world is a dangerous place and our country faces a lot of threats. A pandemic was one of our big three along with nuclear EMPs and cyber attacks. As soon as the early reports came out showing diseased patients in the Denver emergency rooms, we knew the alarm bells your daughter raised in Washington that day were justified. We’ve been gettin’ ready for pert near a month now.”

  Tommy looked toward the kitchen. “Where’s Mary? She doin’ all right?”

  “Physically, yes,” replied Doc. “Mentally, not so good. She’s mad about all of this. She thought the President could’ve done more to protect our country, but I tried to explain it isn’t that easy. We’ll have a hard enough time protectin’ our little town. Keepin’ the plague out of the U. S. of A. was dang near impossible. Try as I may, I can’t seem to get to her. Basically, I think her give a damn is busted.”

  “Doc,” started Hunter, “I’m glad the sheriff is on top of things. The threats to the community are going to be different from the big three you mentioned before. Of course, if the plague enters somehow, some tough decisions will have to be made concerning the infected individuals.”

  “Have you heard about this Level 6 deal?” asked Doc. “It was on CNN. The government gave the authority to the military and LEOs to kill anyone infected or suspected of being infected. That’s a pretty heavy burden to carry.”

  “Cast one out to protect the many,” said Tommy.

  “That’s a good way of putting it, Tommy,” added Hunter.

  Doc rendered his opinion. “It’s hard-core, but I think it would be the right decision to make. My missus asked why would they kill everyone? My answer was simple. Because they’re afraid. Fear feeds the worst in all of us. It drives the most despicable of our natures to the surface.”

  Doc stood up and walked over to the bar. He poured himself a whiskey and offered one to the guys. Tommy accepted a glass, but Hunter passed. While the men downed the first glass and then poured another, Hunter took a moment to look around the room. The interior design was very manly. Post and beam construction. Lots of woodwork. Hunting trophies were scattered on the walls.

  Doc continued. “As the sick die off, a new fight will emerge for survival and that’s starvation. Those folks down there are used to their Whole Foods and Safeway stores being fully stocked just waitin’ on them to show up every day. That’s over. All the stores are closed, emptied, or looted. Most people only have a few days of groceries in their pantry. When it runs out, they’ll become desperate.”

  “This situation won’t just be confined to the big cities like Denver,” added Hunter. “Breckenridge will have the same issues. Eventually, the town will be out of food and its residents will be looking to their neighbors for help. It will get ugly, Doc.”

  “We know and that’s why we have the guys patrolling twenty-four seven. I told Derek, never let your guard down.”

  “Good advice,” said Tommy as he lifted his glass to Doc.

  “One other thing, on a local level,” Doc said before he polished off his whiskey. “We hear through the grapevine they’ve established safe zones for uninfected people down in Colorado Springs. A lot of folks are heading down that way to seek refuge.”

  Hunter shook his head. “Here’s the thing, guys. In the course of societal and economic collapse, rumors will run rampant that there will be government-established safe zones—a proverbial oasis in the desert. I’d warn people against it. If you survive the trip, you might be disappointed in what you find.”

  Chapter 26

  Day Fifty-Eight

  Quandary Peak

  Hunter dropped Tommy and his gardening gear off at the house. They carried the greenhouse kit around back and Hunter retrieved the chain saw and bar oil. The activities of Doc Cooley and Sheriff Andrews reminded him that security starts from the center and works its way out. They’d taken steps to secure their borders; now Hunter needed to add another level of protection to his.

  He loaded up the Jeep with an extra fuel can and a five-gallon bucket containing several nine millimeter handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The bucket would be the first weapons cache he planned to hide around the wooded hillsides on Blue Lakes Road. If their home was compromised, the group would have guns at their disposal.

  The chain saw and a shovel rounded out the gear for the project. Mac had just descended from her lab when he picked up the bar and chain oil from the basement.

  “Hey, stranger!” she exclaimed. “I saw more of you when you spent your days jettin’ around the world, chasing bad guys. What are you up to?”

  “Mac, I remember you,” said Hunter sarcastically. “You’re playin’ with mice all day, I hear.”

  She gave him a hug and he led her outside into the backyard. Mac had to pause for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the bright sun. She spent most of her waking hours in the lab, undertaking the modifications necessary to get the formula to her satisfaction. Her first three mice had been injected with the plague and were now symptomatic. She would inject them with the first experimental doses of antibodies tomorrow.

  “I’ve lost my tan,” she said with a laugh. Her skin was never overly tanned, but she was much lighter than Hunter, who had browned nicely at the higher elevation.

  “Do you feel like hanging out with me for an hour?” asked Hunter.

  Mac snuggled up close and whispered in his ear, “Whadya have in mind, big boy?”

  Hunter laughed and thrust the orange bottle of bar and chain oil in between their faces. “I’m gonna do some lumberjackin’.”

  “Cool. I’m in. Let me change clothes and grab my gun. I’ll meet you out front.”

  Hunter tried to smack her fanny as she bolted off, but he missed. He made his way to the Jeep and finished loading it. One of the other things he planned on doing before he blocked the road was taking the barbed wire from the house down the street. The home appeared abandoned, as there had been no signs of life in ten days. Hunter could enhance their security by stringing it around the perimeter.

  “Let’s go,” said Mac as she bounced down the stairs. “It’s my patrol shift next. When we’re done, I’ll relieve Janie and walk the road. You can join me if you want. If you don’t want to—”

  “I’ll want to,” said Hunter with a wink and a smile.

  They drove to the point where Hunter planned on dropping the trees across the road. There was a stand of pines on the uphill side of Blue Lakes Road. It was always easier to drop a tree on a downward slope than sending it uphill. He unloaded the chain saw and weapons bucket on the shoulder of the road. Then he and Mac drove to the first house on their right, where the shed was located.

  “Mac, I don’t know what to expect here, but I wanna do the right thing and ask first.”

  “I’ll come with you,” added Mac. “Sometimes the presence of a woman is less intimidating to a stranger. Us girls give a less menacing impression.”

  “Okay, let’s go see if anyone’s home.” Hunter approached the front door of the small white clapboard farmhouse. He knocked on the door and it popped open. Hunter immediately drew his sidearm and peered through the crack.

  “Hello,” he shouted. “Is anyone home?”

  The house was silent. He turned to Mac, who drew her pistol and nodded back. Slowly, Hunter pushed the door open to get a better view of the foyer and living room. The room had been ransacked.

  Hunter lowered himself and advised Mac to do the same to create a smaller target. With the door fully opened, the room became lighter and Hunter was able to see the damage. It appeared to have been looted. He instructed Mac to watch his back as he cleared the kitchen and then the dining room. They were also trashed. The kitchen cupboards had been emptied onto the floor and there
was evidence that some of the food had been eaten by the burglars while they were in the house.

  A hallway led from the living room to the other end of the house. The farther Hunter moved toward a closed door at the end, the worse the smell of death became. He reached into his pocket and placed his N95 mask over his face. Mac’s was still around her neck, so she quickly affixed it over her mouth and nose as well.

  She gave him a knowing look and nod. Both of them knew what death smelled and looked like. With his weapon trained on the center of the door, Hunter turned the knob to the master bedroom entry and kicked the door open.

  He quickly moved his gun from side to side, ready to shoot anything that moved. Except for the dead bodies thrown across the bed, the room was clear.

  “Hunter, don’t touch anything,” warned Mac.

  “No problem. Do you think they had the disease?”

  “A logical question, but I don’t see any evidence of blood on the bedding or their clothing.”

  Hunter checked the bathroom and found it empty, but also looted. Satisfied they were safe, he set about opening the bedroom windows to allow some fresh air to flow through the house. Mac visually examined the bodies.

  After death, the rate of decay within the human body was generally split into two distinct processes. Initially, rigor mortis, or the stiffening of the body, set in about two to six hours after death. Rigor was part of the first stage of self-digestion, where the body’s enzymes went into a post-death meltdown. The process could be sped up by extreme heat and, likewise, slowed down by the cold.

  The next stage was known as putrefaction, or decomposition, in which the body literally began the process of melting down. Bacteria and enzymes within the body broke down their host. The body became discolored—first turning green, then purple, and finally black. As the bacteria attacked the body, it created a putrid-smelling gas, which caused the body to bloat, the eyes to bulge out of their sockets, and the tongue to swell and protrude. Eventually, by day five, this gas had created enough internal pressure to release through the body’s orifices.

  “How long have they been dead?” asked Hunter.

  “At least a week, maybe longer,” replied Mac. “There’s no evidence of dried blood around their faces or on the bedding. The fluids you see on the floor are part of the body’s natural decomposition. I don’t see any evidence of trauma in the form of broken bones, cracked skulls, etcetera.”

  “Are you sure it’s not the plague? I mean, it’s been ten days and the bacteria is likely dead, right?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it was the plague. Without further analysis, the cause of death could have been suicide.”

  Hunter looked around the room. The couple appeared to be elderly, but there were no prescription bottles to be found. “If they took an overdose, I’d think there might be a note and some evidence of their chosen method. Look at the bodies. They appear to be thrown onto the bed, almost as if they were dumped and discarded.”

  “I can see that. Without an autopsy, it’s difficult to say. But the whole scene seems off.”

  “Let’s go outside and breathe,” said Hunter.

  At the front of the house, they looked across the way at two more homes that appeared abandoned. The fourth home, located to their right, was set farther back in the woods.

  “Should we go check on the other neighbors?” asked Mac.

  “I’ve been debating this since we arrived. Part of me thought it would be a good idea to get to know the people who live here permanently. I was also concerned about getting too chummy with them. You know, avoid eye contact.”

  “Why?” asked Mac.

  “We don’t have enough food to share with the unprepared. I envisioned a scenario where they came knocking on our door, looking for something to eat. What do we say to them? If we feed them, they’ll just be back for more. If we don’t feed them, they might get mad. The next time they come around, they might bring friends and guns.”

  Mac walked toward the street and looked through the pines at the home next door. “What do you want to do? Nothing is fine by me.”

  “That’s my first inclination, but consider this. Since we’ve been here, we’ve come into contact with three human beings and all of them were dead. If something is going on up here resulting in people getting killed, I’d rather know about it and be ready than be unconcerned and dead.”

  Mac walked over to the Jeep and grabbed their rifles. She handed Hunter his and said, “Lead the way. I’ve got your six.”

  “Whoa,” Hunter started with a smile. “I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, I remember it from that movie Zero Dark Thirty. After we got back from Greece, I wanted to see what you did for a living. You’re nuts.”

  “Thanks,” said Hunter with a chuckle. “Let’s go.”

  They moved down the tree-lined driveway of the next house, using the large pines as cover. As Hunter reached a tree, he’d cover Mac as she advanced. Likewise, she’d cover him as he moved forward. In a short period of time, they were able to reach the house undetected.

  Hunter immediately noticed the front door was open. He decided to search the perimeter of the home first to look for other signs of forced entry. A barn with an old car parked in it was set to the rear of the property. The rear door was open and clothes littered the backyard.

  “More looters,” mumbled Hunter as he waved Mac forward.

  He quickly crossed the overgrown lawn and slipped quietly into the kitchen. With his gun at the ready, he moved room to room, searching every corner and hiding spot to ensure that the house was empty.

  As in the prior house, they found a bedroom door closed, but this time there was not the rancid smell of death emanating down the hallway. Without hesitation, Hunter kicked the door in, hoping to startle anybody on the other side.

  The room was empty, but there was evidence of foul play. Blood had been smeared on the wall going into the bathroom. Both bloody handprints and blood splatter were found on the bathroom door and the frame.

  Hunter moved past Mac and approached the bathroom door. It was slightly ajar. He quickly pushed it open and was greeted with a rush of air. A patio door was slightly open into an enclosed porch.

  Propped up against the half wall of the screened porch was another dead body. This time, the corpse had not decayed as badly as the one next door. It appeared the person’s throat had been slit.

  Mac got closer to the corpse. She studied the man’s throat and neck. “Do you see how it’s been severed?”

  “Yeah, it’s deep enough to cut into the bone. I don’t see a murder weapon anywhere.”

  “I don’t either,” said Mac. “Hunter, we have to call the police. Something’s going on around here and it’s way too close for comfort.”

  Hunter led Mac out of the room. He loaded the barbed wire into the back of the Jeep. He would contact the sheriff’s office using the two-way radios, but he was going to beef up their security first. There was a murderer running around these mountains.

  Chapter 27

  Day Fifty-Nine

  Cheyenne Mountain

  Rolling blackouts had begun in major cities across the country over the last week to ten days. The primary cause of the outages was lack of personnel at all levels of the nation’s power grid. While it was true the nation’s power was largely computerized, people were still required to monitor the functionality of the system and make corrections or repairs when necessary.

  As Americans died from the plague pandemic, the employees of the major power companies were included in those numbers. As the President cautioned Americans against social interaction, employees refused to come to work. In effect, the nation’s critical infrastructure was on autopilot. It wasn’t damaged. It just wasn’t supervised.

  Within Cheyenne Mountain, a continuous supply of power wasn’t an issue, yet. There were fifteen buildings within the complex, all of which were freestanding and connected by hallways. Each building was designed to withstand an earthquake or nuclear blast
because they floated on thirteen hundred giant springs. In the event of a quake or a nuclear attack, the buildings would bounce on the springs and never touch the solid granite walls that protected them.

  Likewise, all the water, sewage, and electrical lines running between the buildings were made of flexible material, allowing them to move as the buildings move. Cheyenne Mountain was an engineering marvel designed to protect our government from the worst natural and man-made disasters envisioned by man.

  The complex was designed to receive its power from the City of Colorado Springs. Because Cheyenne Mountain arose out of the government’s fear of a nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulse, the design engineers also assumed the power grid servicing Colorado Springs might fail. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the foresight to harden the grid outside of the complex, nor did they envision that the failure of the interconnected grid could be long-lasting.

  With short-term power outages in mind, the engineers created five underground lakes inside the mountain. Four were large water reservoirs that were used for drinking, industrial, and cooling uses. The fifth man-made lake, which was sealed behind a closed wall, was filled with diesel fuel.

  If the complex had to be sealed off due to a nuclear attack, or during a power failure, the diesel was available to operate six underground, locomotive-size generators capable of powering a small city. Every system—water, power, and HVAC—was triple-redundant and built to achieve the five nines measure of reliability, which is 99.999%. These generators, supported by massive battery banks, could power the facility indefinitely in an emergency, as that term was defined in 1966 when Cheyenne Mountain opened.

  It had been eleven days since the President and the government had been evacuated into Cheyenne Mountain, but it had only been two days since the power failed in Colorado Springs. When the President demanded the military do whatever it takes to bring the grid back up, he was surprised to learn the interdependency of the entire system prevented one electric utility company from operating separately from the others.