Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  “Probably all dead by now,” the younger airman said. “Or infected.”

  “To recap,” they heard on TV, “there are reported outbreaks in all regions of Vermont and New Hampshire. In Maine west of I-95 from Bangor to Houlton. In Massachusetts north and east of a line running from Springfield to Pittsfield. In Connecticut east and south of I-84 from Hartford to Danbury. In New York north of the Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse-Utica-Albany line, and down the Hudson River Valley from Albany all the way into New York City. There are pockets of outbreaks in Newark, Princeton, and Trenton, New Jersey, in eastern Pennsylvania principally clustered around Philadelphia, and overnight in Baltimore, Maryland, the greater D.C. metropolitan area, and further south in Virginia as far as Lynchburg. In addition, reports have just come in of vigilante fighting in a displaced persons camp along I-91 north of Greenfield in western Massachusetts, with estimates of, and this is what I’m being told, thousands of casualties.”

  “We oughta just nuke the whole lot of ’em,” the sergeant said.

  “You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” shot back the surly co-pilot, returning from the bathroom and heading for the food. Isabel joined her there. The Air Force officer’s eyes turned toward Isabel before swishing orange juice about her mouth, spitting it out, and rinsing it down the drain. Isabel got another coffee. The co-pilot poured herself a soda water.

  “Are you pregnant?” Isabel asked softly. By looking not at Isabel, but back over her shoulder toward her crewmates, the woman confirmed Isabel’s suspicion.

  “We gotta stop ’em somewhere!” the loadmaster persisted, ever more loudly.

  “What’s your plan?” Isabel asked.

  The co-pilot drew close to Isabel’s ear. “My plan?” She almost spat the “p” in her whisper. “My fuckin’ plan is to not get clawed to death by a rampaging mob of fuckin’ zombies. Not to get shot through and through by some chicken-shit Guardsmen tryin’ to quit the jobs they swore they’d do! Not to get breathed on by some infected motherfucker who lied her way past the Mickey Mouse medical checks at this base.”

  “Okay,” Isabel said. “Thanks for sharing.” She returned to her seat. The co-pilot took her place to Isabel’s right, but pointedly avoided looking her way.

  The TV anchor continued her inventory of approaching dread. “I-90 has been shut down east and south of Buffalo.” Full-screen video showed cars at a stand-still filling all four lanes and both shoulders of a highway, with chaos in the median, for as far as the camera could see. Angry drivers shouted at each other across safe, isolated distances.

  “Reports of panic, looting, and unprecedented disorder are pouring into CNN. Some as-yet unsubstantiated reports are that there have been military attacks on back roads used by refugees seeking to avoid checkpoints.”

  “They’re true,” said a gray-haired African-American man standing behind their plush seats. Isabel’s new friends all leapt to attention. Isabel, also in uniform, stole looks at them and aped their posture and bearing. They relaxed, but only slightly, when the older man said, “At ease.” He had a gold fabric star sewn onto the shoulders of his dull green flight suit, and he watched the news for a moment, sort of in spite of their presence, lost in thought. He then marched off with his cup of coffee without another word. Everyone settled back into their seats.

  “So-o-o, who was that?” Isabel asked.

  “Incoming Nightwatch commander,” the pilot replied. “General Grier. This must be the real deal.”

  The anchor on CNN said, “Hospitals in West Bloomfield, Troy, and Sterling Heights north of Detroit have been abandoned by authorities. But before cell service was cut, callers reported that those hospitals remained open with wards overflowing with the sick and manned by a skeleton staff. Hospitals all across Michigan are desperately begging for supplies…Just a moment. We’re getting breaking news.”

  “Maybe it’s good news,” the co-pilot mumbled sarcastically.

  “Could you repeat that?” A “Breaking News” graphic splashed onto the screen with the biohazard symbol CNN had adopted for the apocalypse. “This just in. CNN can report that Beaumont Hospital in Troy, Michigan…that Beaumont Hospital has been bombed by U.S. military aircraft earlier seen circling overhead. Dozens of bombs—large bombs—were dropped directly onto the hospital over a short span of a minute or two.”

  “Jesus,” the loadmaster said.

  “Yes!” replied some reporter on the scene as the picture switched to a Google Earth map that zoomed in on the hospital. “It’s impossible to find words to describe what we witnessed! We had just retreated to the Health and Wellness Center across South Boulevard from Beaumont Hospital after vigilantes attacked infected patients there, when all of a sudden there was a series of giant explosions that blew out all our windows and filled the building with smoke. We thought we were being bombed. The smoke is clearing and I can now see that the hospital across the street has almost completely collapsed, and there are fires raging throughout the complex.”

  The anchorwoman struggled to make herself heard. “Were there…were there people in the hospital?”

  “Yes! Yes! It was full of sick patients. And there were medical staff on duty, including, we were told by a nurse who’d fled the building, physicians who’d gotten sick yesterday, turned, and gone back to work treating the Infected.”

  “Wait,” the anchorwoman interrupted, “are you saying that, among the medical staff who remained on duty, some were doctors who had turned?”

  “Yes. Yes. The nurse said, and I’m just quoting her, that it didn’t even feel like her hospital any more. That two nurses had also turned and now cared for infected patients, but had sparked panic among the dwindling number of Uninfecteds.”

  The reporter suddenly began shouting over a roar of gunfire. “Heavy fighting has broken out! I’m taking cover.” Confusing sounds came from her jostled microphone.

  The anchorwoman kept repeating, “Who is fighting whom?”

  “…all along South Boulevard are being riddled with bullets! They’re flying into our room! I’m moving again. Crawling.”

  “Who is attacking you?” the anchorwoman asked for the fourth or fifth time.

  “Yes! Yes! We’re under attack! By the Infecteds! They have guns! There’s a small team of soldiers here—Green Berets—who are fighting back! They’re who called in the airstrike. I can see…I see what looks like policemen. Eight or nine. A lot of policemen. The people shooting at us are police officers. Many are wearing bullet-proof police vests over hospital gowns. They must have turned and are now attacking this command post.” Away from the phone, she shouted, “There! There-there-there!” Then back into her phone, she whispered, “Tell somebody we’re in…in the reception area…” the signal dropped, “…the cancer center…need help. We’re moving deeper inside…as soon as possible!”

  After that, there was silence as the anchorwoman futilely repeated, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

  Chapter 25

  THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 55, 1300 GMT (9:00 a.m. Local)

  Justin Kovic, on the other end of the line, whispered to Chloe, “My dad tried to join, but the Neighborhood Watch guy, this real asshole who used to yell at us to get off his lawn, told him he couldn’t go on patrol without a gun, and nobody would loan him theirs. My mom won’t let any of us go out after dark ’cause she’s afraid we could get shot.”

  Chloe sat in her favorite place in the whole compound. It was on the far side of the barn, with a tool shed to her right and two tall black water filtration thingies to her left. She had even dragged over one of the plastic stackable chairs, which her lame mother must’ve bought for parties or something. The WiFi signal was weak but still passable. A chicken, head bobbing, pecked at the dirt ever closer to Chloe, the source of all sustenance. She kicked at the bird. “That’s not food, Kim.” She’d named her chickens after the Karda
shians. The skinniest and cutest chicken was Khloé, with a K. “That’s dirt, Kim. It’s bad for you.”

  “Are you talking to your chickens again?” Justin asked, a smile evident in his voice.

  “Yeah. Kim’s on an all-dirt diet before bikini season. They’re really pretty dumb. So, Justin, what I don’t get is why you’d wanna go out after dark? I mean, you could run into one of them. An Infected.”

  “The army has ’em under control. But Chloe, you wouldn’t believe the kickass parties I’ve been to these last three nights. There are all these abandoned houses. And you remember Lardass—Billie Faign, that senior last year—who got kicked outta McLean?”

  “Yeah, hm, let’s see. Do…I…remember…him? Of course! Justin! The whole cheer team went to the principal and showed him that creep video. It was the most embarrassing moment of my entire life. Poor Mr. Sims had to call the school nurse in ’cause he felt weird watching it with us, but not half as weird as I felt.”

  “Well you have nothing to complain about. I mean, you looked really good.”

  Chloe lowered the phone and appealed to the jury of hens who wandered about her, instantly understood her look of disbelief, and supported her side one hundred percent.

  When Chloe raised the phone to vent her righteous indignation, it turned out Justin had moved on. “Anyway, he’s at Langley High this year, or was. And I think they call him Billie there, not Lardass, but whatever. Same guy. Anyway, he organizes these, like, flash raves. He cases a house, makes sure it’s empty, sneaks in, covers all the windows so you can’t see inside, rigs up a DJ station with these, like, wireless headphones that everybody wears so you can’t hear a sound outside. I mean, it’s freaky, but kinda cool. When you walk up, it’s all dark and quiet, but when you get inside everybody’s raving. All you gotta do to get in is either be a chick, or a guy with liquor, pot, or a hot girl. You’d be my freakin’ season pass, babe.” He laughed at his combination joke-compliment.

  Chloe was leaning forward, coiled, mouth agape. “You’re hanging out with that fucking perv Lardass? After what he did? To me, and to Janie? Your girlfriend, at the time, as I recall?” Justin remained silent, unprepared for this turn in the conversation. Chloe scoffed, intentionally and noisily, straight into the phone’s mic.

  “We’re not hanging out? He’s throwing these great parties, and I’m blowing off steam before, you know…Plus, everybody goes to his raves.”

  “Who?” Justin acted as if he didn’t understand her. “Who goes? You said everybody had left town. You said Janie and her family had finally bugged out.”

  “She did, but…” He acted frustrated.

  Chloe was boiling. Two steps ahead, she would watch Justin plummet into the pit he somehow failed to see before him. She took special care to lower her voice, and slow her roll. “But…what? Let me guess. Did Janie go to the party, too?”

  “Just the first one. They left the next day. I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, but you’re my bae. They went to their lake house in Ohio. The one where I learned to water ski that summer.” Water ski! Every picture Janie had posted was of her wearing a slutty thong and hugging her prize of a boyfriend.

  Chloe had to command her teeth to end their clench in order to force words past them. “So…you two…went together?” He could now sense the danger in general terms despite her seemingly calm demeanor. If he’d had any wits, he would’ve noticed that she was too calm. But not paying attention to his girlfriend was a specialty of Justin’s.

  “I didn’t have any pot or booze, so she was my way in.”

  Chloe emitted what sounded like a laugh, but wasn’t. “She was your hot girl? Janie? My former friend,” that bitch, “and your, I guess, now former ex-? What’d she wear? Was it that backless, sparkly, side-boob show-and-tell thing she wore to Trey’s end-of-the-world party?” Justin claimed he didn’t remember, which could’ve been true. “I guess a Lardass rave is a guaranteed lay, huh Justin? Like, like, senior prom?” She had resolved to do it no later than junior prom, but that deal with herself was now off. “And it’s a party in somebody’s house, their home, that you’ve broke into. The house of some poor family—mom, and dad, and little kids,” she was spending too much time on the point she cared least about, “who ran away from the city like anybody with half a brain would.” She tried to rein it back in. “A party thrown by a guy who took videos of our whole cheer team—of me, and of Janie—in the shower at school after practice?”

  “You could mainly just see your back and your butt,” Justin said, apparently imagining that to be some kind of defense.

  “You told me you hadn’t seen it!”

  “I hadn’t, I swear it, when I said that. But, Chloe, I mean, it’s all over the Internet.” Before she could speak, he said, “And it was mostly, like, you know, Janie, mostly. I mean, not because of it being her versus, you know, you or the others. It was just you could see more of her. With you, it was just a little boob. And-and I don’t mean your boobs are little, I meant…”

  “Are you fucking out of your mind!” Chloe squealed.

  “Everything okay?” her mom called out from the direction of the house.

  “I’m fine!” Chloe snapped, not even bothering to sound fine since all her mother wanted to know was that she wasn’t being eaten alive or held hostage. Chloe ignored whatever ignorant thing Justin was in the middle of saying. “What’s wrong with you?” she snarled. “You’ve changed. Breaking into houses to get fucked up. Hanging out with,” she didn’t say Janie, though that was what angered her most, “with convicted perverts.”

  “They didn’t convict him of anything. They just expelled him.”

  After a few deep breaths, Chloe said, “So,” wondering if now was the time to devise some loyalty test that she could administer, “are you done? The defense rests?”

  “Defense? Look, my dad isn’t some rich lawyer, okay? He’s just a working guy.”

  “He’s a tax accountant,” Chloe shot back. And also a perv, she thought, for letching on Chloe’s mom every time she was around.

  “Look, whatta you want me to say? Huh? I’ll say whatever you want me to, Chloe.”

  That did it. Fuck, On a scale of one-to-ten, how much did you love Janie, and how much do you love me? This was no longer eighth grade. The whole world was being turned upside down. Time to grow up and be mature. “All right. You’re free. We can break up.” She grimaced. The tears began, first a drop, then two, then a flood.

  He was shouting professions of love that she heard in tone, if not specific word, as she wiped her face with the back of the hand that held the phone. As his protestations petered out, she said, “I didn’t hear any of that. I wasn’t listening.” It was clear, as she heard her own voice, that her nose was heavily congested.

  “You’re crying?” Justin said. Finally, he got it. How much he had hurt her. “That’s typical! Instead of listening to me, to my explanation of everything, you just start crying and it’s game over. Now I’ve gotta apologize, sorry, there, for just having a little fun before my life ends or whatever, at sixteen, when some mob of fucking zombies….”

  Chloe hung up on him, finished drying her face, and rose. They might technically still be boyfriend and girlfriend even after she released him because he hadn’t officially exercised his option to end it. But she was moving on. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and said, “Oh shut up,” when Kourtney, who was boy crazy, clucked at Chloe for possibly ending the last chance Chloe had at having a boyfriend.

  Chloe emulated her charges by wandering about the compound, dwelling on her thoughts to the point that she managed to bore herself. At least, maybe, the P. would wipe out the Internet and all traces of Lardass’s video. Her walkabout ended with a sigh at the kitchen counter where her mother opened more cans of the same food she had already grown sick of. With her rifle still slung over her shoulder, Chloe slumped on the cool granite top with an even deeper
sigh that sounded like the air going out of a tire.

  “So, what’s up?” her mom asked with one of her annoying, all-knowing smiles.

  “Nothing,” came out muffled from behind Chloe’s crossed arms. “Everything. I dunno.” She sat up, but wouldn’t return her mom’s gaze. “That local hick boy living down the hill, he’s around my age, right? They, like, live behind that gas station on the highway?”

  “Margus Bishop,” her grinning mom replied.

  “Mar-gus?” Chloe slid off her stool. “Never mind.”

  “Why? Because of his name? It’s traditional, you know, European.”

  “I’ve never heard it before. And it sounds stupid. He’s probably some knuckle-dragging Neanderthal dunce.”

  “Well that sounds pretty prejudiced. Just because he didn’t grow up rich like you.”

  “We weren’t rich.”

  “Yes, we were. We are, I guess, still. For a little while longer. And you are spoiled rotten. Who the hell says a kid like Margus would want you? Don’t imagine that just being pretty is gonna get you as far as it used to. Pretty is a luxury. Good to have if you can afford it. But don’t expect to be taken care of by some guy just because of your looks. You need to contribute something more than that to surviving. Learn some skills. Provide, for yourself and for others. Make yourself useful, not just hot.”

  “That’s funny,” Chloe said, “coming from you.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No. No! You finish that thought, young lady. You think I was just your dad’s arm candy? Some gold-digging cheerleader he met while he was in law school?” Chloe’s dad walked in, heard her Mom, pivoted, and reversed course. “No, Noah. Come back in here.” He approached reluctantly, clearly anxious to bolt at the first opportunity. “Your daughter, here, thinks she can make it through the apocalypse the way she’s made it through life this far, which is to look real cute and get her stupid parents or, now, some stupid guy to give her everything she wants.”