Phobia: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by Jack Hunt

  He would expose him to anxiety provoking situations that would require him to react in a repetitive manner, and then get him to resist the urge to act upon it. In the first few months, progress was always slow as patients learned to process the thought of facing the very thing that ate away at them. But over time they would inch their way forward towards freedom. It was a long and arduous process and no two people were the same. Fortunately Frank wasn’t far from the point where the sessions would no longer be required.

  Sal set a cup on the coffee table in front of him and took a seat across from him. Frank’s eyes flicked back and forth from the cup to Sal before he reached for it only to retract his hand without touching the mug.

  There had been a time he wouldn’t have let anyone make him a cup of coffee but that had changed. Slowly but surely he got to the point that Sal would be allowed to make him coffee. At first he would leave it there to go cold. Then, he would get close to touching the mug, that was then followed by him picking it up and bringing it close to his lips, finally he would drink it. Months of work had paid off but today he was back to staring at it.

  “Go ahead, pick it up.”

  He shook his head.

  “Frank, what’s going on? Last week this was nothing. Now you are acting as though you have stepped back in time six months.”

  Frank shifted to the edge of his seat. His knee bobbed up and down repetitively as if he was nervous. He ran a hand around the back of his neck and then tapped on his leg.

  “Have you been keeping an eye on the news?”

  “You know me, I rarely have a moment of time to myself. Between running back and forth between patients and the kids, I’m lucky if I catch a ball game once in a blue moon.”

  “I’m talking about the news, not how you spend time with the family.”

  “I hope this isn’t about the presidential campaign. I don’t care who gets in. They praise them up on the way in, and tear them down the very next day.”

  “No, have you caught anything on the virus that is spreading?”

  “Oh, that’s why you are acting so jumpy. Remember what I told you about feeding your mind with news. It just creates anxious thoughts. The only way you are going to win this battle of the mind is to plant new thoughts, healthy ones. Ones that tell you that it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay, Sal. This one’s big. I got a call from Kate telling me that the CDC is having trouble reeling in this threat. It’s already spreading like wildfire.”

  Sal sat back in his seat and sipped at his coffee. “It happens. It’s going to happen. It will happen. They always contain it.”

  “Not this, Sal. They have fucked up this time. It’s entered the country on a plane full of people, and they didn’t manage to track down patient zero until people on that plane caught connecting flights. Some of them they still haven’t managed to trace.” He paused and glanced at him. “The conversation I just had with Ella was to get her to come to the cottage.”

  “Don’t you think you are jumping the gun?” Sal asked.

  “Not this time.”

  Sal leaned forward and set his cup on a side table. “This time, last time. Every time you have this reaction. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the news, or reported on a local website, it’s a trigger for you, Frank.”

  Frank stood up and went over to the kitchen to make himself another cup of coffee but Sal urged him to come back and try again with his cup.

  Frank sighed and returned.

  “Listen, Sal, you need to get your kids and family to safety. This is going to be out of control before we know it. By then it will be too late.”

  “How many years has it been since a pandemic swept across this country, Frank?”

  Frank began reeling them off by memory. His fear of germs combined with Kate’s work as an epidemiologist had made him very aware of outbreaks that had occurred throughout history. “Well let’s see, shall we? 1633 to 1634, smallpox killed over seventy percent of the Native American people. 1793, yellow fever wiped out 5,000 people and over 17,000 fled the city of Philadelphia. From 1832 to 1836 cholera in three waves did some serious damage and it’s still killing over 130,000 people worldwide to date, 1858 scarlet fever, 1906 to 1907 typhoid fever hit New York and still kills close to eleven thousand people every year, 1918 Spanish flu killed off 675,000 Americans and close to one-third of the human population…” He took a deep breath and finished off, “1981 to the present day, HIV, 1.2 million people have died.”

  “Okay, smart-ass. But if you look at the mortality rate chart that Kate gave you, you can see that it’s practically at zero now compared to how things were back in the early 1900s. Frank, we have better doctors, better health care and stronger medication to combat and prevent these things from spiraling out of control. Heck, the CDC and World Health Organization are on these things way before they ever hit the news. Trust me, you have nothing to worry about.”

  Frank was back up on his feet again pacing the room and tapping points on his body. It was one of the many types of therapies he was using to treat anxiety.

  “Do you remember the Justinian plague and the black plague?” Sal asked. “People died because there wasn’t prompt identification, treatment or management. Everything is now under control.”

  Frank chuckled. “Really, Sal. Including biological weapons? The news is full of terrorist attacks. How long do you think it will take before a plague becomes a national security threat?”

  “You are letting that military mind of yours get the better of you. Besides, look around you. How’s it going to reach you here? You have to be the only client I have that has an isolated cottage in the middle of a river.”

  “I’m not worried about me, Sal. I’m worried about my kid.”

  “She’s not a kid anymore.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said before heading out to the kitchen and wiping down the counter and the kettle using some paper towels and disinfectant. Sal got up and went over to the breakfast counter and took a seat while the kettle boiled.

  “Okay, as we’re not going to get anything done until we address this, let’s look at the worst-case scenario as that obviously is consuming your mind at the moment.” He took a deep breath. “Right. Let’s say some virus has entered the USA, a deadly virus that kills one hundred percent of those who get infected. How quickly do you imagine it’s going to spread across America?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Well, you’re the one with a wife who works for the CDC.”

  “Okay,” Frank bopped his head from side to side. “Let’s say this contagious virus takes twenty-four hours before symptoms appear. A flight from China to New York takes twelve hours. Now if you have two hundred people on a plane and patient zero is not exhibiting symptoms but sneezes, coughs or uses the bathroom even once, and then all of them get off and go in different directions, some maybe transferring to connecting flights, it could spread across the United States in a matter of twenty-four hours before anyone would know. Now let’s say it takes another twenty-four hours for the CDC to be alerted after the first person enters the hospital or dies, you now have forty-eight hours that those two hundred people could infect family, friends, co-workers and the public at large. In essence, there is absolutely shit the CDC can do. Like I’ve told Kate countless times, the CDC is there to give people a false sense of security. To make people think they are safe when in reality if they are going to school, work, or mixing anywhere with groups of people, a deadly virus can contaminate hundreds, maybe even thousands before hospitals and the CDC have managed to trace and track down the initial two hundred.” Frank poured out hot water into a new cup and began to stir the instant coffee.

  Sal looked at him blankly. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why? Because it hasn’t happened so far? Is that your logic? Cause oh god, Sal, if you take that approach, you might as well not buckle up when you get in a car.”

  He chuckled, making light of the situation. It wasn’t that he d
idn’t think it could happen. In many ways, Frank was right. A contagious flu could spread fast if more than one person was infected. Two hundred, and it could spiral out of control real fast. But the truth was he was trying to calm him down. This wasn’t helping the session. All Sal could see was all his hard work with Frank beginning to unravel before his very eyes.

  Sal groaned. “You know what I mean, Frank. Look, I’m just saying. You have two choices before you. You can get paranoid and lock yourself up for the rest of your life based on the idea that you might get infected with some deadly disease or you can live out your life and take minimal precautions. I’m not saying don’t wash your hands or cover up a public toilet seat with paper, I’m saying that things become a problem when you are washing your hands thirty or forty times a day for hours on end, or when you won’t touch a door except with your elbow, or you feel the need to keep washing the same laundry six times before you think it is clean.” He paused and stared out the window as waves lapped against the rocks. The wind had picked up and the trees were beginning to bend slightly.

  “So, is Ella coming here?”

  “Yeah. Thankfully.”

  “And what about Kate?”

  “She knows where to come but I doubt she’ll head here. You know her, she’ll put her nose to the grindstone and ride it out. It’s always been her way. And besides, she has a new guy in her life.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t know until today.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “It sucks but what can you do? She’s moving on with her life and—”

  “But you were hoping for a different outcome, right?”

  Frank looked like he was going to create a hole in the countertop with all the wiping he was doing. He had already cleaned it five times over the course of ten minutes.

  “She made her choice, Sal.”

  “But you do understand why, yes?”

  Frank stopped and looked at him. “I get it. If that’s what you’re asking. It’s me. It’s not like I was oblivious to it when we were married. I almost felt like I was having an out-of-body experience when I would nag at her about keeping things clean and whatnot. I knew it didn’t make any sense, the place was immaculate but in my mind, it was… just not right. If that makes sense?”

  Sal nodded. All his OCD patients were the same. It didn’t matter what they were dealing with, in their minds they would keep repeating a task until they felt that it was just right. Whereas anyone else might clean their hands once, turn off a tap once, or check that a door was locked once, his patients would keep doing it, once, twice, three times and even more until it felt just right. They would get a physical reaction. Most felt as if their skin was crawling when instructed to resist the urge to repeat a task. It was challenging but the method of exposure and response had worked for so many people.

  “So what time is she leaving?”

  “Um, I gather immediately.”

  Sal wished he hadn’t asked. A look of concern spread across Frank’s face and he fished into his pocket for the phone to text Ella again.

  As his visit that day required a great deal of effort, Sal combined the current week’s session into two and spent two hours with Frank. Over the course of that time, Frank kept looking at the clock. When Frank stepped outside to make another phone call, Sal flicked on the TV. Sal wasn’t panicked, and rarely ever did he get concerned about the mention of a flu outbreak. It just didn’t register on his radar, except for now and that was only because Frank had mentioned Kate had alerted him. He’d met Kate numerous times and spoke at great lengths about Frank’s OCD to better understand him, and she never struck him as someone that might react hastily. Like him, she conducted herself as a professional. She took her work seriously and rarely took it home with her. That’s why he couldn’t shift from his mind what Frank had said.

  His eyes darted between Frank outside and the TV. The last thing he wanted was to have Frank believe that he was buying into his fear. The moment he decided to come back inside he would turn the TV off and continue to act calm and relaxed. So far he was relaxed, just a little off-kilter.

  At first the news was only reporting on a recent ball game, then it changed and a headline came up about the Agora virus having reached the East Coast. The Agora virus? He’d never even heard of it. Usually with other types of virus, he would hear about them long before they hit the USA. Sixteen more people reported dead? He leaned forward feeling a slight degree of anxiety. It wasn’t the fact that people had died; it was that those sixteen had been reported in Manhattan and across the country. The body count was going up. He’d lied to Frank. On his way up to the cottage he had tuned into a radio station that was talking about it. A few hours ago, the news was reporting that only two people had died, and that was in Atlanta. Now there were another sixteen dead? How many others were there that they didn’t even know about? Sal watched intently the images appearing before him. It was the report that came next that had him really worried. New York is the sixth state to confirm cases of death from the Agora virus. It then showed a graph that listed New York, Georgia, California, Florida, Texas and Ohio.

  He was so glued to the screen that he didn’t notice Frank approaching the patio door until it slid open. He clicked off and leaned back in his chair. Frank gave him a suspicious look, his eyes shot to the clicker beside him. Frank crossed the room and immediately went for the clicker.

  Sal grabbed it and rose to his feet.

  “Right, shall we continue?”

  He extended his hand. “Give me the clicker, Sal.”

  “Look we still have another ten minutes left.”

  “The clicker!”

  As much as he didn’t want to hand it over and cause further panic, he knew Frank could just switch the TV on manually. Frank took the remote from him, then went over to the counter and spent the next few minutes sanitizing it and cleaning his hands. Then he turned the TV on. Fortunately, the news had reverted back to sports.

  FIVE

  Sal might have been able to fool others but there was very little that got by Frank. Years in the military had taught him to have eyes in the back of his head, to get specifics when general details were given and to always follow up.

  As Frank stood before the TV waiting for the sports news to change back to the most important matter at hand, he commented on the conversation that he’d just had with Kate. He didn’t look at Sal when he said it because he didn’t care for his condescending looks.

  “They have instigated cordon sanitaire in Atlanta. Kate said they are going to close businesses and curfews are going to be in effect along with sanitation, isolation, price control, screening, testing and surveillance.”

  Confusion crossed Sal’s face. “What?”

  “They are already enforcing travel restrictions for the Atlanta area and it will only be a matter of time for each of those six affected states to follow the same steps they are taking in Atlanta.”

  “I’m not sure I follow. How could this happen so fast?”

  “Sal, you said it yourself. The CDC is proactive. They discovered the disease within the first forty-eight hours. It’s been a week since then. The announcement of the dead is coming days after the fact. These aren’t new deaths; they are old, if we’re to go by what Kate said. They are isolating those who are sick with this contagious disease from those who are not. They are quarantining those who have been exposed to see if they become sick.”

  Sal rubbed a hand over his face. “Can they do that?”

  “Of course they can! The authority comes from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, section 361 of the Public Health Service Act.”

  “In English please, Frank,” Sal asked.

  “It means the CDC is authorized to take measures to prevent contagious diseases from entering the USA or spreading between states.” He paused as he flicked through a few more stations.

  Sal was now the one pacing the room and becoming uncomfortable in what
had been Frank’s reality for years. He didn’t need to hear them announce it on the TV, or even hear it from his wife ahead of time. He had been preparing for the worst-case scenario for years and it had finally shown up.

  “No. No, this is ridiculous. There’s no way they can do this, right?”

  “You make it sound like a bad thing. This is good. Hell, if I had my way, we would all live in a bubble. I for one think that any steps they can take to ensure that this disease doesn’t end up on my doorstep is a good thing.”

  Finally he landed on a channel that was reporting on the current situation. “…health officials believe that Atlanta and several other cities will be at the center of what may turn into a global pandemic. A new strain of influenza and recent deaths has caused the state to instigate a cordon sanitaire in Atlanta. News is still coming in from other cities that may be affected by this. For now, the CDC is asking the public to avoid public areas, transit, workplaces and schools at all cost.”

  Clips from Atlanta were being shown as soldiers and police began working to shut down roads, bridges and public transit.

  “Health officials and soldiers are working together to isolate those infected with the strain which has already killed up to one hundred and eight people. The president is trying to reassure the American people that every measure is being taken to treat those infected. In the meantime the World Health Organization is calling for every country to take extra precautions to monitor, report and use strict surveillance measures in order to spot the virus.”

  More shots from airports were shown as travelers were now being screened for the initial flu symptoms. “A report has already come in from Canada of twelve people having the flu.”

  “A hundred and eight people dead already?”

  Frank felt his throat beginning to close up at the thought of it all. This went far beyond the thought of not having enough food or water on hand. How long would this last? How many more would die before riots would ignite? Of course some would think that the government wouldn’t lose control and that people wouldn’t immediately take to the streets and maybe they wouldn’t but how long before they did? A day, a week or a month? No two people were the same. One might react calmly under the situation whereas another might lose their mind. If they were anything like him, they were already beginning to feel anxiety building with each passing second.