Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  On the way back up to the house on the ridge road, Noah and Jacob stopped to inspect the detonator and the wires leading two hundred yards away to explosives, wrapped tightly in waterproof plastic, that were buried under the road. “Is this far enough away?” Jacob asked. Noah assured him, with false confidence, that it was. “Can I come when you set it off?”

  Noah put a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to know how to blow this all by yourself, just in case.” Jacob fell quiet. Noah pulled the detonator out of its weatherproof box hidden under some drying branches beside the road and explained how to connect the wires running to the explosives and the battery to its leads.

  Back at the house, Noah said nothing about the demolition instructions he’d given their thirteen-year-old son. Instead, he told Farmer Natalie about meeting the Cowboy Sheriff, but of course he wouldn’t be attending the town hall meeting.

  To his surprise, Natalie said, without catching his eye, “You should go.”

  “Did I mention the part about the Sheriff forming a local militia?”

  “Yes. I think that’s a great idea.”

  “But I thought we wanted to get away from everyone!”

  “You wanted to get away from everyone. I want to keep the kids safe. Being part of a community sounds a whole lot safer than being up here all on our own like the Swiss Family Robinson.”

  Noah didn’t agree. And even more offensively, it was a spur-of-the-moment major change of plans over which he’d obsessed, nearly sleeplessly, for an entire month. Only isolation, he had concluded, would keep them safe from the virus and the violence that accompanied it.

  After Noah agreed to go to the town meeting, he snapped that he was heading out to “do some patrollin’.” Natalie smirked as she poked seeds into moist soil filling paper cups. Her mood seemed improved by doing something productive. Maybe productive.

  Noah muttered to himself in mockery of his wife—“I think that’s a great idea”—before hesitating at the small side gate. He was sure the fence wasn’t electrified, but just in case he tapped the metal with his fingertips, wondering throughout whether that would help at all in preventing his electrocution. It was fine.

  Once outside, he chambered a round and set off uphill for the cabin. The whole way, he listened to the faint rustle of the breeze punctuated by the scrapes of his boots’ soles. He smelled nothing but the fresh air of the outdoors. He saw nothing move but a few birds in the trees. Crossing the last of the three ridges before the cabin, Noah got down on his belly and crawled.

  He peered over a rock outcropping. The cabin looked still and undisturbed. He pulled out his binoculars. Nothing stirred. No smoke rose from the chimney. No lantern light shone from within. No laundry on lines or plastic bags of trash piling up. The chair blocking the front door was right where he’d left it. He didn’t know why he had expected anything different. It would take a long time for anyone to find the secluded cabin unless they knew where to look for it.

  He headed back downhill, which was a much easier walk. If regular armies with tanks and bombers couldn’t stop the spread of Pandoravirus, what could some ragtag county militia do? But Natalie was right, of course, about the importance of good relations with their neighbors. And the Bishops at the store on the highway seemed like good…

  Chloe called out, “Dad!” from a distance, shattering his reverie. “Come quick!”

  Noah’s’ heart thumped like a bass drum. He unshouldered his rifle and sprinted toward the shipping-container-turned-garden. It must be that sheriff, back with a posse of twisted redneck deviants. Instead, he found Jacob, Chloe, and Natalie kneeling, watching a gray rabbit with a white tail nibble on grass. “Shh. Isn’t he cute?” Chloe said.

  Natalie eyed the rifle in her sweating and winded husband’s hands. “Jeez, Noah. Don’t shoot the li’l fella.” Noah put his rifle down. His blood pressure threatened to rupture blood vessels like popcorn. He was out of breath, not from the run but from forgetting to breathe. He flicked a cold bead of sweat off his brow. There was no one to kill. Yet.

  Chapter 7

  NORTHERN VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 42, 0630 GMT (2:30 a.m. Local)

  The college boy got sick in the middle of the night a few hours after he and Emma had sex. “It’s you!” he shouted, shivering inside his sleeping bag as Emma packed her gear in the light of the half moon. She needed to put distance between herself and the newly infected Freshman. “Where are you going?”

  “Away from here.”

  “You’re leaving me?” he shouted. Luckily, they were all alone in the woods.

  “You’ll probably die. But if you don’t—if you turn—you’ll be pretty noticeable from your behavior and your popped pupils, so you’ll get caught and they’ll start contact tracing in an attempt to find me.” It would be safer to kill him now, came the silent voice with ever helpful practical advice.

  “But wait! If I turn—if I live—I…I’ll join you. We can, you know, partner up.”

  The boy was bigger and stronger than Emma, and could hurt her or worse in a fight. He’d also been a competent if too hurried a lover. She hoisted onto her shoulder the backpack she’d stolen the day before from the lanky guy, which contained all her belongings. But she paused to listen to Chaz, who was proposing some form of contract.

  “Why do I need you?” she asked, cocking her head. He could wear sunglasses, suggested the voice, ever nimble in its planning.

  “For…I dunno! We could have sex again, whenever you want.”

  “There are lots of men who’ll have sex.” She turned to leave.

  “Wait! I could…I’ll fight for you. I’ll protect you.” Emma looked back at him. There was that old problem again. If she stayed by his side, nursed him, helped keep him hydrated, maybe he would live. But what would ensure that he honored pledges like I’ll fight for you? What enforcement mechanism would bind him to his side of that bargain?

  She left him there. Chaz’s shouts at her—part repeated plea, part angry curses and threats—receded into the dark forest behind her. “You bi-i-itch!”

  The two-lane state highway was virtually empty at that early hour. The few times she saw headlights approach, she hid. She would appear out of place if seen walking alone down the dark road, and also vulnerable without a visible weapon. After a couple of hours, her fatigue could no longer be ignored. Emma climbed an embankment and found a flat piece of ground perched above the road and hidden by rocks, trees, and brush. She covered herself in her rough wool blanket and lay her head on her backpack. With no thoughts troubling her easy mind, she fell asleep in minutes.

  She woke on hearing a siren. The sun was high. The red ambulance raced toward where she had left Chaz. It could be unrelated, or it could be that he crawled out of the woods to the edge of the road and was spotted there.

  She emptied her bladder and opened a can of peas, which she ate cold, with a spoon, while drinking a lukewarm Red Bull. In the time that that took, the sirens of two county sheriffs and one highway patrol car raced past. It was definitely Chaz. They would be looking for her now. She should have resisted the urge to have sex with the boy. Or killed him.

  Where can I get a map?

  There! What was that? Her mind was racing from the caffeine. Where did that question about a map come from? And to whom was it posed? Emma was curious about the mysterious inner voice that arose periodically with questions, but also sometimes proposed solutions to problems. Was that what her sister Isabel referred to as a self? Maybe it was more than the myth or the delusion she had earlier concluded it to be. Maybe it was not just a metaphor or handy self-referencing methodology; it was something real. Or someone, from somewhere deep inside.

  She sat still and waited. Listening. There was only silence. She ignored the cars and trucks that by that hour trafficked the highway until her full attention was drawn to a pickup truck approaching slowly from the direction sh
e had come. Armed men on each side of the truck’s bed searched the roadway, presumably looking for her.

  You should have killed Chaz popped into her head out of nowhere. She hadn’t been thinking about Chaz, or about anything else for that matter, but maybe the voice had been. The thought—not exactly a voice, or even words as specific as those she had used to express it—was correct. She should have killed the boy.

  Emma resolved to listen for such voices in the future and give each observation due consideration. They seemed to have her best interests in mind. She packed and climbed farther up the hill through which the two-lane road had been cut. At the top of the rise, she saw a highway junction less than a mile to the south and plotted a course through the rough, wooded terrain toward it. She had no idea where the intersecting road led, but at least it was not the same highway that they were searching.

  I need a map. There it was again! It was insistent, and it was right.

  Chapter 8

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  Infection Date 42, 1900 GMT (3:00 p.m. Local)

  Isabel’s helicopter descended into Boston’s urban skyline along the Charles River bearing Rick, Brandon, Vasquez, and his five soldiers, plus the three-person crew. The gunner opened his door and unlimbered his weapon. Cambridge and MIT slid by to their left. On their right was their destination: Massachusetts General Hospital.

  After their ‘victory’ in the New York woods, a strange fatigue had settled over Isabel. She had slept on helicopter and truck rides with her head on Rick’s shoulder, lap, or backpack, periodically jolted awake by bullets whizzing by in her dreams. Each short trip was interrupted by another briefing or debriefing. Each farther south than the one before it.

  At the briefings, a numb Isabel had to rouse herself from emotional and physical exhaustion and try not to drone on as she repeated her now wearisome song and dance. “Telltale signs of pre-assault agitation include stiffness, clenched fists and jaws, visible muscle tensing or quivering, shallow or rapid breathing. Then, if unarmed, a lunge, usually for the eyes or throat.” The best way for her to keep from yawning was to force herself to make eye contact, for the second or two she could stand it, with the dismayed or cringing audience in the front row. Yes, I’m talking about your eyes and your throat.

  Some briefings were detailed. Civilian first responders in West Chazy, New York asked about personal protective equipment, isolation shelters, the recommended duration of quarantines, and basic care for people who contract SED. Other briefings were thinly disguised pep rallies. A platoon of National Guardsmen in a parking lot amid a much larger gathering of volunteer militiamen in Au Sable. The undisciplined shouts from the gallery at every mention of the use of force clearly amped up the young Guardsmen. Their gazes alternated between Brandon’s monotone description of crowd violence, and chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” that Isabel could still hear as the helicopter’s engines spun up.

  Interspersed with the briefings was their continuing research. There was the selfless school bus driver in Plattsburgh who had picked up everyone he passed until full, then driven south through heavy traffic. When night fell, most passengers slept despite a few stifled but alarming coughs. After a potty break took longer than expected, the driver thought he might have heard a moan quickly hushed in urgent whispers. When the child who had moaned retched, there was an instant riot. People literally pounded on the driver with their fists until he pulled over and the bus emptied in seconds just outside Wilmington, New York, except for a mother and her sick child, alone and wide-eyed in fear in the back. The driver, somehow, had not been infected, but eleven hours later all contact with Wilmington had been lost. That was how quickly it happened.

  It had been south of Lake Champlain, around midday, that the true scale of the strategic disaster came into focus. After a calm and uneventful briefing of local police in aptly named Lake Placid, they had aborted three successive landings in Lake George, Queensbury, and Glens Falls. When they touched down on the infield of the race track in Saratoga Springs, it wasn’t for a briefing. They were instructed to remain aboard their helicopter as they refueled from giant rubber bladders. Hot food on foam plates from the race track’s kitchen—bland baked chicken that you couldn’t cut with the accompanying plastic knife but which Rick’s black combat knife sliced into chewable pieces, waterlogged green beans, and what had to be instant mashed potatoes—was the best meal Isabel had eaten in her entire life. In between the roar of arriving or departing helicopters came the piercing, snapping sounds of fighting in the distance.

  They had next landed in Schenectady, but the briefing was called off just after assembling an army reserve transportation company—truck drivers—who were ordered back to their vehicles on the double. All Isabel could see as they ascended into the sky were a dozen columns of gray and black smoke. There was clearly no stopping the P. They were just its victims’ grief counselors, Isabel thought, helping soldiers deal with lives they were about to lose, or take, just like the hundreds of millions or billions worldwide, by now, who had already endured what they were about to face.

  Albany had only been a short hop, but Isabel woke when Rick went to the cockpit. He braced on the pilots’ seatbacks, his head between the helmeted and visored man and woman. He spoke loudly but, to Isabel, still inaudibly. Each time he pointed through the windshield, the deck pitched in a sudden change of direction.

  Tink. The soldiers seated around Isabel suddenly stirred at the sharp sound, like a rock hitting a windshield. The helicopter heeled over onto its right side with a sickening downward tug of G forces, a popping of Isabel’s ears, and a thundering application of throttle. Tink. Soldiers one-by-one took helmets off their heads and put them on the cabin’s deck under their folding fabric seats.

  Someone on the ground was shooting at them! Although Isabel’s anatomy differed from the men’s, she nonetheless cared about it, so she put her own helmet beneath her seat. When Rick rejoined her, he didn’t object, though they heard no more strikes on their airframe. “What was that?” she had asked.

  “We’re diverting.” He looked at her as if his answer was significant. “To Boston.”

  Jesus. They were losing. Fast.

  The helicopter began a sweeping right turn toward Mass General. The roofs of most buildings were green from eco-friendly plantings, or black from solar panels tilted southward, or filled with the spinning fans of HVAC equipment. But on one was a huge white “H” painted on black asphalt—their destination.

  The baseball diamonds and outfields in the riverside park across the street were ringed in hastily erected fencing like a giant, open-air holding pen. At its fringes were green tents with large red crosses on their roofs. The city streets were all blocked in a semicircular perimeter hugging the Charles River and enclosing the hospital and its massive but as yet empty outdoor prison.

  Farther afield, cars jammed bridges as the city fled in what would certainly be total panic. They had gone from watching seemingly distant CNN reports of a pandemic in Asia to the virus showing up at their front doors days, weeks ahead of all predictions.

  The helicopter’s wheels bounced once on the hospital’s roof. When Isabel dragged her heavy pack into the hurricane-force winds at the opening, she saw a bullet hole in the fuselage beside her. Stooped under the weight, she lumbered through the gale with the soldiers toward an open door, and their helicopter roared as it left them there.

  Isabel stared back at their departing ride. “They’re just clearing the helipad,” Rick said. “They’ll refuel and stand by.” It was suddenly quiet save the natural breeze, which quickly cleared away the gasoline fumes. Isabel took a deep breath of fresh air. “Don’t worry,” Rick said. “We’re gonna get outta here. I’ll get you outta here. I promise.”

  She was putting an awful lot of trust in whatever Rick said. He seemed confident. Annapolis-grad Rick. Marine Captain Rick. Dairy farmer Rick from a red state who might possibly know the tricks
and cheats that would keep the overeducated blue state girl alive when there was no more helicopter and no place left to flee. And although it was his job to protect Brandon and her, she couldn’t help but think that he really did care…about her. He had made a promise, and guys like him, she felt sure, took those things seriously. Isabel nodded resolutely to herself. Her protector chuckled, white teeth gleaming, the corners of his green eyes crinkling, as he tightened her floppy helmet’s chinstrap.

  The hospital was a hive of activity. But the soldiers in Isabel’s detail—in camo, helmets, kneepads, their torsos thick with body armor and pouches bulging with ammo—were the only armed people in sight. They drew dark, nervous looks from the doctors and nurses in cheerful blue and green scrubs. “Any word?” asked an authoritative-sounding man whose gray hair peeked from beneath a surgical cap. No hands were proffered in greeting.

  “Nashua’s fallen,” Rick reported. “It’s broken out in Lowell. They’re isolating a whole neighborhood in Medford.”

  “Medford! That’s close.”

  “Everything north of the Massachusetts-New Hampshire-Vermont border extended, east of the mountains in upstate New York, and west of Augusta and Brunswick in Maine, is in some phase of outbreak.”

  Silent doctors and nurses now filled the brightly lit corridor. “How long do we have?” asked the senior physician.

  “If I had to guess?” Rick replied. “It’s probably already here. Someone, somewhere is coughing. Looking for a place to lie down. Probably already crossed paths with a handful of other people. Maybe they caught him as he stumbled, or held a door open as she passed. They’ll be throwing up in an hour or two. But we probably won’t see any evidence of mass infection for another six to twelve hours or so. Then, it’ll get obvious pretty quickly.”

  It turned out the gray-haired man had come there to greet them. “Dr. Lawrence Goldschmidt. Chief of Surgery.”