It was risky. If Damian choked and didn't run, there wouldn't be much time for Matt. He might get stuck too close to the contaminated man.
If only he had more information on how the contamination process of the virus worked. It seemed like the virus might be transmitted through the air, through the respiratory system, but that was really nothing more than a guess.
How close could he safely get to the contaminated man?
He had no idea.
For all he knew, he was actually contaminated already.
It wasn't a pleasant thought. But it was realistic. After all, all it would take is one person at the office to have somehow run into someone from that plane from Beijing. Or to just have run into someone who'd run into someone who'd run into someone from the plane.
No point in worrying about it.
The contaminated man was closer. Not far away now.
The vehicle in front of them slammed once again into Matt's car, making it rock backwards.
Horns were blaring.
They had to go.
It was time.
Matt formed his hand into a fist and slammed it hard into Damian's arm. “You got this, Damian,” he said. “Now go!”
He basically screamed the words right into Damian's ear. Otherwise, his friend might just sit there and not move.
Damian moved. Matt breathed a mental sigh of relief.
Damian threw his door open and hopped out of the car.
Matt did the same. He didn't grab anything. There was nothing there that was useful to him.
The contaminated man was about ten feet away. Matt could see his face more clearly than ever before.
It was covered in blood.
The flow of blood wasn't slowing down. There was so much of it. It was completely disgusting. The sheer amount of the blood provoked a visceral response in Matt.
His body started moving as if he was about to throw up. He felt nauseous.
Damian was running. Fast. Very fast.
Matt didn't even know if he'd be able to catch up to him.
His fears about Damian's speed had been for nothing. Damian was plenty fast enough.
Matt turned on his heel, ignoring the strong urge to vomit. That was the way to deal with all the feelings. Just ignore them. Push through it.
Now Matt was running.
He was sprinting. Right next to the cars. Inches away from them.
His feet were pounding against the pavement. His arms were pumping at his sides.
His breathing was heavy and ragged.
He kept his head back, his chin tucked. He used all the techniques that he'd trained with, the ones that had become completely second nature to him.
He was catching up with Damian. Just a couple feet behind him.
Damian was coming up to an intersection.
“Take the left!” shouted Matt.
Damian made no indication that he'd heard him, but when he reached the intersection, he swerved between the cars, and made the left.
It seemed as if everyone was honking, and as if the cars were all moving, all slamming into each other. The traffic had turned into madness.
It was a relief to get onto the next street. There were no cars, except some that were parked. This street led nowhere, really. It seemed to be just a cross street.
Albuquerque was big, and Matt, while he knew his way around, certainly hadn't been everywhere.
He'd passed this street hundreds of times, but had never had reason to drive down it.
Damian was still running.
Matt had slowed his own pace after looking over his shoulder, seeing there was no one following them. The bleeding man had no chance of catching up to them. After all, he had looked as if he might collapse to the ground any moment, and he certainly wasn't going to be getting up and running.
Damian kept running and running, until he had gotten about halfway down the street.
Then he fell into a heap on someone's front lawn.
Matt caught up to him. He was exhausted. Out of breath.
Damian was breathing hard, doubled over, lying on his side.
Matt's mind was rushing almost as fast as he had been running.
Suddenly, everything seemed real. And serious.
He'd just left his car there in the middle of the road. The doors wide open. The engine on.
Not to mention all his work papers. He'd left those in the car.
The car wasn't even completely paid off yet.
But this was life or death.
It took them a full minute to catch their breath enough to really talk.
“What now?” said Damian, speaking first, breathing heavily through his words.
“Back to my place,” said Matt, without thinking.
“Your place? Why?”
“We're not that far. We can walk from here.”
“We should have just stayed in the car then.”
“Even if it hadn't been for the risk of infection, I doubt we would have gotten there in the car inside of several hours. We'll get there faster on foot.”
“And then what? Hole up in your place? I should check on my mom...”
“My apartment is in a building,” said Matt. “A big building. One of those complexes. I don't think it's going to be a good place to lie low. Too many neighbors. Not enough ways out.”
“Then why go there?”
“I've got some gear.”
“Like a gun?”
“Not 'like' a gun. A gun.”
“I didn't know you were like that.”
“You didn't know I was practical?”
“No, I just...”
“Forget it. It doesn't matter. But what does matter is that I'm going to feel a lot better when I have a gun in my hand.”
“Come on. Do you really need a gun? I mean, we're trying to avoid a virus here. Not rob a bank.”
“Is that what you think guns are for? Robbing banks?”
“I don't know,” said Damian, sounding stupid.
“There's going to be a lot more to worry about than just avoiding the virus,” said Matt. “What do you think is going to happen if a large percentage of the population dies?”
“I don't know.”
“It's going to be chaos, that's what,” said Matt. “And when there's chaos, there's violence. People aren't going to be able to help themselves. If enough people die, society isn't going to be able to hold itself together. It's going to break down. The rules are going to break down. And then people are going to go wild. Those who've been hemmed in by the rules, they're going to go wild. So that's why I want the gun.”
“How do you know all this? Where's the proof.”
“I don't need proof. It's just common sense. Stuff I've always known. Just kind of figured it out. What are you doing?”
“Checking my phone.”
“Right now? Come on, we've got to get a move on it.”
“Just a second. I think I found something here.”
“What site are you on?”
“Twitter.”
Matt scoffed. “Come on. Go to a real site. You're not going to find anything on there. That's just social media junk. Can't people get off that crap during something serious? I mean, really, a virus outbreak and you've got to check Twitter? This isn't a joke...”
“There's something good here, though.”
“What?”
“There's some hashtag... something about enlarged veins. Hang on...”
“We don't have time for this,” said Matt, standing up. He was still panting, but he knew it was time to go.
“Wait... there's a link...”
“Come on, Damian.”
Damian stood up and Matt started walking down the street. His own cell phone was still off and inside his pocket. He didn't need to use it to get home. He knew the way. It was simple enough.
“You coming?”
“Yeah,” muttered Damian, jogging to catch up with him, his eyes still glued to his cell phone.
“You're g
oing to drain the battery on that thing.”
“I know, I know, but listen... they're saying that there's actually a sign...”
“A sign of what?”
“A sign that you're infected.”
That got Matt's attention. To say that it had been on his mind would be an understatement.
“What do they say?”
“Those infected have enlarged veins... in the hands, forearms, in particular. Also, the neck, it looks like... maybe the forehead... I'm not sure... I'm not sure that they're sure”
“But where's this from? What's the source?”
“I saw it on Twitter... but wait... it's on every news outlet.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. All the main sites. There's even something on the CDC... it says that's the Center for Disease Control.”
“I know what the CDC is,” snapped Matt, grabbing the phone from Damian. “Here, let me see that.”
He didn't really care about being rude. After all, Damian didn't have the best reputation at the office for being prudent about things. And sometimes he had been known to get quite carried away on far-fetched tangents, rather than staying rooted in reality.
Matt needed to check it out for himself.
But it seemed that Damian's obsessive phone and social media habit had actually paid off, because it seemed as if it was true.
Matt made sure to check the URL in the browser. He knew that it was quite possible to set up fake news sites, and even fake CDC sites. The link would simply take the Twitter user to a fake site that looked identical to the real one.
But, no, these were the real sites. Unless the CDC and all the major news sites had been hacked, the news seemed legitimate.
Before he even handed the phone back to Damian, Matt looked down at the veins in his hand.
He breathed a sigh of relief. They looked a little large, but they always did. They certainly didn't look anything like the picture that the CDC page showed, with someone's veins at least three times as large as normal.
“You good?” said Damian.
Matt knew what he meant. He meant the veins.
“Yeah, I'm good. Clean. What about you?”
“Me too.”
“Let me see.”
There was a long pause.
It probably did seem like a weird thing to ask. It probably did seem as if he didn't trust him.
And he didn't.
He didn't really trust Damian. He'd felt that way all along, ever since the first day he'd met him at work, but now he actually realized it.
“You don't trust me?” Damian sounded hurt.
“This isn't the kind of thing you can trust someone on... Here, look at mine.”
They were stopped in the middle of the empty street. Matt held out the back of his hand for Damian to examine.
Then Damian did the same.
His veins looked normal. They were dilated even less than Matt's.
Matt just nodded at Damian, turned, and then started walking again.
Damian caught up to him, matching his quick pace, walking at his side.
“It's good we know about the veins,” said Damian. “Now we know who to avoid.”
“Yeah. Sometimes you can't see veins, though,” said Matt. “Better be on the safe side.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just avoid everyone.”
“Everyone? How are we going to do that.”
“I'm still working on it,” said Matt, pointing to his head, indicating that he was thinking about it. “Did it say anything else about the virus? Any more information? About the vectors of contamination? About how it works?”
“No, not really. Just the stuff about the veins. I don't think you saw it, because it was at the bottom of the page. But they said that the veins are the result of increased nitric oxide.”
“Some type of hormone or something, right?”
“I think so.”
“Doesn't do us much good to know that,” said Matt.
“I guess not.”
As they walked, they kept up a fast enough pace that they were actually breathing hard, as if they had been lightly jogging.
“How much battery you got left on your phone?” said Matt.
“Not much. About 20 percent.”
“You'd better turn it off.”
“But I want to see if there's any more news.”
“You can check it later.”
Damian mumbled something about his mother calling him, and it didn't seem like Matt was going to be able to make him turn the phone off, so he gave up.
It didn't take long to get to Matt's apartment building. They kept to the little side city streets as much as they could.
The major thoroughfares, normally not too crowded, were all stop-and-go traffic. Cars simply weren't moving. When Matt and Damian had to take these roads for brief periods, they kept on the far side of the sidewalks, and moved as quickly as they could.
They didn't see anything quite as crazy as what had prompted them to abandon Matt's vehicle, but they could tell that people were starting to lose their patience.
Here and there, there were minor fender benders. There were people yelling at each other out of windows. There were people laying on their horns.
But, perhaps because of fear of the virus, no one seemed to want to get out of their cars.
Matt and Damian were the only people on foot, out of a vehicle. They came across no one else, all the way back to Matt's apartment.
They stood outside the apartment building, in the parking lot, which was for the most part empty.
“I guess no one managed to get back from work yet,” said Matt, surveying the mostly empty parking lot.
“So what's wrong with staying here?” said Damian. “It's like abandoned. We're not going to get infected...”
“I thought you wanted to check on your mom? Her place isn't that far away, is it?”
“Yeah, I was thinking...”
“Thinking what?”
“I don't know. I was just thinking about that infected guy... blood all over his face... what if we don't make it to my mom's place? Without running into a guy like that, I mean. Anyone could be infected...”
“So you want to abandon your own mother and just stay put at my apartment? Is that it? Because you're scared.”
“Uh, basically,” said Damian, not meeting Matt's gaze, keeping his eyes fixed on the parking lot pavement. “I mean, I'll call her... make sure she's OK.”
Matt just shook his head vaguely at Damian's attitude about his own mother. “Don't you live with her?”
“Yeah, but what's that got to do with anything? Lots of people live with their parents...”
Damian had been made fun of a little bit at work in the last few months for living with his mother, and it seemed that he'd developed an automatic and defensive verbal response to anything he perceived as an attack.
“Well, I'm not staying here,” said Matt. “Eventually, someway or somehow, people will get home. We don't yet know how close you need to be to someone to get the virus... I'd rather be somewhere where I don't share a wall with anyone.”
“Then what's the plan?”
“How about this? You wait here. I'll be right back with my stuff.”
“You mean your gun?”
“Yes, my gun. At some point, you're going to be glad that I have it.”
Damian nodded vaguely. “Maybe...”
“I'll meet you back here. Then we'll go to your mom's house. It's a regular house, right?”
“Yeah, pretty normal...”
“It's not a duplex, right?”
“No, it stands on its own.”
“Decent-sized yard?”
“Pretty big for a city, I guess.”
“OK. So we'll go there. Hole up there. OK?”
“Uh, sounds good. Not sure how my mom's going to feel about it...”
“She's met me before. She likes me. I bet she'll be fine with it. Probably be glad to have someone
else around who knows how to use a gun.”
Damian nodded vaguely.
Matt left him there, standing near a tree in the nearly empty parking lot.
Matt hesitated only a moment at the front door of the apartment building, then he entered.
It was deathly quiet in the carpeted corridors.
But that was normal. Almost everyone who lived in the building worked a nine-to-five job.
Matt walked through the corridors to the stairwell.
He never took the elevator, and he wasn't going to start now. So he climbed up to the third floor, and walked down the long hallway.
His apartment was at the end of the hall.
The carpet muffled his quick footsteps.
Matt was anxious to have his Glock with him once again, and he was walking fast.
Why hadn't he taken it to work with him? He'd been meaning to figure out a way to carry it concealed without it “printing” on his work clothes at all, but hadn't yet figured out how to do it. The Glock was fairly large, and current male office fashion didn't allow for a lot of loose fabric.
Still, he should have had it in his car at least. Or a bag.
He shouldn't have just left it at home, where it did him no good at all.
He'd screwed up big time and he knew it.
But he was about to fix all that.
Matt arrived at the end of the hall. He'd reached his apartment door, which was closed. Just the way he'd left it.
He had his key in his hand already, and was about to put it into the lock, when for some reason, he decided to check the doorknob first.
It was something that he remembered his mom doing every time they'd come home from being away for a good while. She'd been the nervous sort, and always seemed to expect someone with bad intentions to be waiting for them inside.
The doorknob turned.
The door wasn't locked.
But he'd definitely left it locked.
Why was his door unlocked?
He wasn't a careless person. He'd never left his door unlocked before. Just like he'd never lost his keys or his cell phone. It just wasn't part of his personality.
Matt paused for a moment, trying to figure out what to do.
The way he saw it, he didn't have any choice but to enter his apartment. He needed his Glock. As the virus took hold of the city, things were only going to get worse. People were only going to get more violent. And desperate.
Escape the Virus Page 5
