Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  After Noah survived his quarantine, he and Natalie went to bed and made love. Passionate. Energetic. Maybe it was the coffee. Or maybe it was the plan, or the prospect for survival that any plan promised. Noah now felt ready for the fight—for any fight—to protect his family, a fact he couldn’t help but think Natalie saw in him, and found every bit as satisfying as the sex.

  Chapter 10

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  Infection Date 44, 0500 GMT (1:00 a.m. Local)

  “This is weird,” Isabel whispered. “I don’t like it.” They stood outside the cyclone fencing that enclosed the Mass Open-Air Detention facility. What had to be upwards of 20,000 Infecteds stood on the other side, motionless, totally quiet, all staring toward the medical tent where they had been processed—the only way in, or out.

  “We’ve gotta get outta here,” Brandon said to Rick, not Isabel. “Now. Those detainees in quarantine are way overcrowded. They’re totally and completely charged. Hair trigger. One little disturbance, and…”

  They were spooky to Isabel. She wandered closer, staring at the statue-like frozen figures. All those people, and no coughs, no whispers, not a scratch of a nose by hands dangling forgotten at their sides. They focused only on the obstacle blocking their path to freedom—the soldiers guarding the processing tent—and nothing else.

  Over her shoulder, Mass General across the closed road already looked like a relic in a war zone. Most of its windows were gone. Smoke billowed from the seventh floor where National Guardsmen had used a few dozen hand grenades to “subdue the unrest,” as the public information officer had delicately described to the last two remaining members of the press. Someone tossed a bedsheet out of a high window, their now accepted means of biohazard disposal. The sheet fluttered down several stories, snagged on a jagged glass opening, then blew free and fell into the now dangerously contaminated parking lot.

  More Infecteds, at gunpoint, filed out of a bus outside the processing tent. “I thought they weren’t adding any more?” Rick said. “Did you explain…?”

  “Yes, I explained!” Brandon snapped. “The density passed thirty per square ten meters hours ago. It’s over forty now. I told them it’d be safer to let them roam the streets than to jam them all together.”

  The Infecteds nearest Isabel, Rick, and Brandon slowly, one-by-one, turned toward them. “Hey, guys,” Isabel said. Placid faces now stared their way. In tells, their fists were all clenched and their bodies were like coiled springs. More and more turned their way.

  “I think you oughta get back from that fence,” advised Sgt. Vasquez. His five men held their weapons pointed at the 20,000 Infecteds separated by the hastily erected and ultimately flimsy barrier.

  Brandon said, “Slowly. Slowly.”

  They backed away. Rick told Vasquez to call the Black Hawk.

  Brandon and Isabel continued their unnatural, slow-motion escape despite Isabel’s every instinct screaming at her to run. She felt the Infecteds’ stares in the prickling of her back. Rick and the soldiers walked backwards, holding their rifles at the ready. No one dared utter a word even after they passed the sandbagged machine gun positions at the hospital entrance. As they entered the lobby, the power went off for an instant, then came back on.

  Rick said, “Let’s take the stairs.”

  Easier said than done, at least for Isabel and Brandon. The industrial décor of the fire escapes—bare metal riveted to rough concrete streaked with white paint drippings—seemed never-ending. She was breathing hard, sweating, and adjusting her heavy backpack on her shoulders, her body armor chaffing her hipbones and underarms. Isabel removed her helmet briefly before concluding that carrying it was even harder.

  “It’s not much further,” Rick said as Isabel hopped to readjust her backpack’s position and blew sweat from her lips while aiming for a limp strand of stray hair.

  Just then, a roar arose. Not the automatic weapons, loud though they too were, but a cacophony of quasi-human sounding voices, which overwhelmed even the percussion of the guns. This wasn’t like Rouses Point Bridge. The huge numbers of Infecteds quickly extinguished much of the return gunfire. The next sounds they heard, much closer and louder, were a half dozen doors in the stairwell slamming against walls. People were storming emergency exits. “Let’s go!” Rick ordered, not panicked, but not patient either.

  When they made it onto the roof, the steady, cool breeze would have felt wonderful were it not for the clamor from the ground below and the total silence from the sky above.

  Isabel, Brandon, and Rick descended from the elevated helipad to the railing along the edge of the roof. It was impossible to tell where the detention facility had been in the confusing swirl of violence. Fully-automatic rips of gunfire here and there forestalled the inevitable and added to the hundreds upon hundreds of bodies. The dead and dying lay in the roadway, draped across the flattened cyclone fencing, and scattered amid ambulances, buses, Humvees, and tank-like fighting vehicles, some of which were still trying to drive through the mob to safety. Many of the fallen were crawling wounded over barricades and climbing piles of corpses before being added to those piles by bursts of flame from soldiers’ muzzles. “My God!” came Isabel’s involuntary cry and shudder.

  The mob was winning. A police van ramming its way through got stuck atop a heap of bodies and was quickly toppled onto its side. Its occupants were extracted and dragged into the killing mounds, their screams unheard against the roar.

  The sound of gunfire now rose not just from the street, but also from the building, from several stories below, through the door that opened onto the roof. The thunder of approaching helicopter engines relieved Isabel until she saw that it wasn’t their Black Hawk. Streaks of fire sparkled off the Charles River and lit the night. A string of six explosions erupted in the heart of the MOAD and buffeted the air on the roof. In the flashes she glimpsed pieces of bodies flying skyward like in some teenage boy’s gory video game. Before the boiling orange flames cooled to billowing clouds, the helicopter gunships whirled and began indiscriminately raking the enclosure with automatic fire. Isabel watched hundreds, thousands of shell casings rain into the river with splashes that boiled the surface like a fish feeding frenzy.

  The gunship attack masked the approach of their Black Hawk. They climbed the stairs up onto the helipad and knelt to await its landing. The door at the top of the fire escape burst open and men and women in scrubs poured onto the roof.

  “Jesus Christ,” Vasquez said, tasking his men to turn their weapons on the door, stopping the frantic doctors and nurses with bracing shouts of, “Halt! Halt!”

  As soon as the Black Hawk’s wheels touched down, Rick led them on a stooped run through the rotors’ gale. The engines remained at high throttle, which thankfully muted the pleas of hospital staff, some of whom Isabel recognized from earlier—the nurse with the big smile drawn on her blue mask, the Indian-American intern who had handed a candy to every child diagnosed with SED until he’d run out, the pretty young nurse who’d hit on Rick. Again hands were clasped in prayer and fists shaken in anger—an awful repeat of the horrific scene on the bridge.

  When the last of Vasquez’s men scampered aboard, the door slid closed, and the Black Hawk lurched skyward. Isabel crawled across the hard metal deck while dragging her pack, unfolded a seat, and—shaking—buckled its harness as the aircraft pitched wildly from side to side.

  In a voice that quaked from the engine vibrating through the bulkhead at her back, she shouted to Rick, “Will there be other helicopters coming for them?”

  Rick couldn’t even muster a reply, and turned away. Isabel dipped her chin to her chest. Only a few loose strands of filthy hair fell to give her face cover. It was all too much. Her eyes sank closed of their own accord. She could stand no more sights. Sounds. Smells. And especially no thoughts or, God forbid, feelings. If only I were Emma now. None of this would bother me. She needed to gird herself f
or survival of the overwhelming trauma and tragedy to come. To climb into Emma’s uncaring skin. To shout, Shut up! every time a voice in her head recalled how horror-stricken the red-headed nurse had looked before they deserted her on that rooftop to the murderous mob below. Might as well get used to it, she thought. Because, for the very first time, Isabel realized that she probably, statistically, realistically wouldn’t survive, not uninfected at least. No one would. No one!

  Rick tried to put his arm around her. Isabel wriggled free. He wasn’t her salvation. He was her doom—the chink in her emotional armor—that could destroy her if she let him in. If she let herself love him. Isabel caught Brandon’s eye before looking away. She had to keep herself from caring for anyone else. She had to emulate her sister.

  Chapter 11

  NORTHERN, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 45, 1400 GMT (10:00 a.m. Local)

  Emma was now fairly well equipped. She’d gotten her backpack from the van guy. Her sleeping bag and ground sheet from a family that had only shouted complaints as she ran off with their stuff. A skillet from the kitchen of a farmhouse to go with the eggs she’d stolen from their henhouse. Water bottles from the unguarded flatbed of a pickup truck.

  The terrain was growing hillier. She was drawing closer to her destination.

  “Hey!” shouted a man a hundred yards away. He held a rifle, but it wasn’t pointed at her. He wore hunting gear and a camouflage baseball cap. Off to his side she saw a boy, maybe ten, also carrying a rifle. “You’re on our land!”

  “Sorry!” Emma replied. The effort of shouting raised the pitch of her voice, making her sound like a vulnerable young girl. That might help.

  The man slung his rifle over his shoulder and said something to the boy, who seemed more reluctant and skeptical than the adult. Both approached warily.

  You need a better weapon. She had a screwdriver. They had rifles, which was both a threat and an opportunity. The man didn’t look menacing, but you never knew for sure. He was, after all, a man. The boy, however, lagged behind and held with both hands the sling of his rifle on his shoulder. He might be the more dangerous of the two. He was, in appearance, a miniature version of the man, minus the height, protruding gut, and scraggly beard. They were probably hunters, but for this outing they had left their orange vests behind. So what, or who, were they hunting?

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said as he neared. He wore a smile, Emma guessed, to put her at ease or to ingratiate himself for whatever inner purpose he harbored. The boy settled in about twenty feet behind him, watching her and on guard. “Name’s Mike. Mike Barnwell.”

  He held out his hand, but the boy snapped, “Dad!”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” He withdrew his hand, wiped the imaginary germs onto his jacket, and turned to his son. “Ellis! Git over here!” The boy edged forward until, after repeated urgings, he stood only a step behind the adult. “This scaredy cat is Ellis, my boy.”

  Emma locked eyes on Ellis, who made no move to acknowledge her. He understood the risk that his father missed. Children, Emma reasoned, are less well socialized to the past and will adapt more quickly to the new world than their parents. But was that her thought, or had it come from that mysterious inner voice? Or was that a distinction without a difference? Increasingly, she was having trouble answering that question.

  “Don’t worry. We ain’t…” Mike didn’t finish. We ain’t what? He removed his baseball cap, and prodded his son, who did the same. “What’s your name, missy?”

  “Emma. Emma Miller.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Miller. We don’t get much company up here. We was just out lookin’ for deer. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Uh, no. I guess you’re not. Good. But what…what are you doin’ out here? I mean, ya know, don’cha, that there’s been a string of murders, the news said. It probably ain’t safe bein’ in the woods all by yerself. Bein’ a gal and all. A woman, I mean.”

  He underestimates you, came the voice, and again it was right. “I’m fine,” she said. But did he expect more than just pleasantries? Should she elaborate on her sore feet and back, itchy clothes, and possible yeast infection?

  But the elder Barnwell didn’t seem a particularly adept conversationalist. “Well, say. I hate just sendin’ a young lady off empty handed. These are tough times. How’s about we rustle you up some breakfast?”

  “Dad?” said the dangerous boy. Isabel’s hand snuck closer to the handle of the screw driver in her back pocket. She would need to get nearer, but when she took a step forward Ellis took a step back. His father gave the boy a lecture on the need to maintain traditions like hospitality, notwithstanding the ongoing total collapse of civilization. “Ma ain’t gonna like it,” came his son’s mumbled reply.

  And he was right. The sturdy woman blocked the doorway of their unpainted ramshackle house, really more of a hovel. Smoke rose from its crumbling chimney. Dingy clothes dried on lines. Small, skinned animals hung from the eaves of a tilted, dilapidated outbuilding. Chickens roamed freely all about, heads bobbing with each step. The only thing new about the place was the single black wire that descended into the house through a card-boarded and duct-taped opening in the wall.

  Mike returned from a hushed argument with his wife. “That’s Hazel,” he said with a jab of his thumb toward the surly woman before escorting Emma to a picnic table. “Hope you don’t mind eatin’ out here.” He glanced inexplicably toward the now empty doorway through which Hazel had disappeared. Emma felt a frisson of anxiety. Would the woman reappear holding a shotgun?

  Mike leaned his hunting rifle against the table next to where he sat, but rose back to his feet and held out his hand, beckoning Emma to take a seat across from him. The boy perched with his rifle atop a wood pile just outside the leaning, carcass-draped structure.

  Emma started when the cabin’s screen door slammed behind Hazel, hands full but unarmed. She wore a faded print dress over her shapeless and unattractive figure, and dusty brown boots left untied and loose. Her graying and unwashed hair was pulled back messily into a blue rubber band. A scratched and dented metal plate and a fork bounced on the table in front of Emma. “Hazel!” her husband said for reasons unknown. She scraped a heap of eggs onto the plate with a splat. Emma gobbled up the food, which was gone in seconds.

  “See?” Mike said. “She didn’t even wait for the blessin’. She was starvin’.”

  “We’ll all be starvin’ soon enough,” Hazel replied, retrieving the empty plate and utensil as Emma wiped her mouth and started her silent clock. Whatever she did with the Barnwells—left them alone, slept with the husband in exchange for provisions, or killed them all—she would have to do it in the next two hours. They would still be ambulatory through first symptoms, and still have ready access to their guns. Unless… The voice, however, offered no helpful solutions to the Barnwell problem. Emma could kill Mike then Hazel, or Hazel then Mike, but Ellis killed her in both permutations.

  “I feel like I’ve seen you somewheres,” Mike said. Emma’s anxiety skyrocketed. She began measuring and deepening her breathing. She slowly lowered her hands and pinned them to the wooden planks beneath her thighs.

  “Mike!” came Hazel’s call from the door. She stared down at an open laptop, whose screen illuminated her creased and splotchy face. “Mike!” Emma quivered and shook from a rush of adrenaline. Her anxiety was a weakness, much like Uninfecteds’ emotions, and she struggled to overcome it. The sagging new wire that rose from the house looked jury-rigged, running to a tree, not a telephone pole, and on down the hill. But if they had phone service, they had Internet.

  Mike headed for their hovel. As an afterthought, he reached back for his rifle. The boy gripped his own rifle with both hands.

  Emma let the adrenaline do its thing. She snatched her backpack and ran. “Dad!” Emma weaved through trees, rocks, and brush
as she flew down the hill expecting at any moment to hear and possibly feel rifle shots at her back. At the bottom of the hill, she leapt over a muddy swale and landed hard, bloodying both hands and knees. Her heart was racing and her muscles were aquiver, but she began climbing in a frenzied assault of the far slope. Sweat poured from every pore. Her lungs burned. She barely contained the primal scream that fought to escape her clenched jaws. By the time she crested the ridge, her fingernails bled from grasping at branches and jagged outcroppings.

  She lay behind a tree, breathing hard, watching, and listening. She went from overheated to chilled in damp clothing as it grew darker. No one followed. No one shot at her. They probably were burying her plate and utensils and obsessively washing their hands, and most likely wouldn’t fall ill. But they knew who she was.

  Double back and cut the wires. If they were going to call the cops, she argued with the voice in her thoughts, they would have done it already. And maybe they’d fear being quarantined if they reported their exposure. Or they could want to keep their location secret. Or, they could be out hunting me like a deer.

  Chapter 12

  THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 46, 2400 GMT (8:00 p.m. Local)

  The news on the Millers’ TV was unrelentingly bad. Every day brought new towns and cities in which the infection had just broken out. And every day, the cities infected in preceding days yielded some version of the same report. “Authorities in Boston have imposed a twenty-four-hour curfew, although it remains to be seen who will be enforcing it. Police units have barricaded themselves into a handful of precinct stations. The few clinics and firehouses still in contact with the outside world are denying refuge to panicked masses trapped inside the quarantined city. Terrifying reports of roving bands of rampaging Infecteds are too numerous to recount, but CNN is unable to confirm any of the accounts firsthand as all contact with our correspondents on the ground has been lost.” The pictures from a high-speed, low-altitude overflight were of a city in flames. Black smoke rose through a gray haze lit by occasional flashes, presumably from guns. Try as he might, Noah couldn’t visualize trying to protect his family in the middle of a hell like that.