Escape the Virus

by Ryan Westfield

  The people, who were crowded together, were writhing around. It almost looked like they were dancing.

  They were vomiting. Almost all of them.

  Vomiting blood.

  There was blood everywhere.

  Blood on their faces. On their clothes.

  Blood on the floor.

  Blood coming from their noses. Their ears.

  “Shit,” muttered Matt, wanting to take his eyes off the video, but knowing that he needed to keep watching.

  The sound on the video, which had for some reason been off, suddenly cut on.

  The sound of the vomiting was intense.

  There was also the sound of screaming. Horrible screams.

  A gunshot. Clearly a gunshot.

  The person filming the video spun the camera around, probably about 180 degrees in the other direction.

  It was a little hard to see what was happening, but it seemed to be a shot of one of the exits.

  There were so many people that it was hard to tell exactly what was preventing the people from leaving, but what was clear was that people wanted to get out. But they couldn't.

  “I watched it twice,” said Jamie. “I think the doors are locked.”

  It was horrible. The whole scene was disgusting. People were punching each other. Tackling each other. Grabbing each other.

  It was chaos. Violent chaos.

  There was blood.

  Another gunshot off camera.

  But the bullet hit someone who was on camera. They collapsed. Then got trampled.

  Someone else vomited blood.

  “This isn't good,” said Matt, completely stunned. “They're all going to die.”

  “Yes,” said Jamie, her voice dead serious. It sounded far away. Sort of hollow. “They are all going to die. Keep watching.”

  Matt didn't have to be told. Despite the horror, his eyes were glued to the screen.

  The camera spun around once again. This time it landed on the cameraman's face. He was holding the phone as if he was going to take a selfie.

  His face was sweaty. Distraught. An expression of complete terror on his face.

  “If anyone's watching this,” he said, having to speak very loudly over the incredible noise in in the background. Occasionally his words were obscured by a gunshot or hideously loud scream. “Please we need... We're all stuck in here in Albuquerque... They won't let us out... We're all going to be infected... Die... My family... Two of us have it already... They were trying to quarantine the infected ones but it wasn't any good... Please, we need the National Guard or something...”

  Suddenly, the image went all blurry, as if the camera had been knocked out of his hand.

  There was a gunshot.

  A scream.

  “Did he die?” said Matt. “Wouldn't he have to upload the video afterwards?”

  “He was live streaming it,” said Jamie. “It was automatically uploaded...”

  Matt had been hoping there was some reason to mistrust the video. But he'd seen it all with his own eyes.

  The truth was evident.

  This was serious.

  Very serious.

  “If this is what's happening just in Albuquerque,” he said. “It means...”

  “That the virus is highly contagious,” said Jamie. “Just like they feared. And this is going to be happening all over the country.”

  Matt nodded. “It's more important now than ever before that we stay confined to this house,” he said. “We can't risk going out...”

  “And Damian?”

  “His mom's talking to him now.”

  As if on cue, a high-pitched wail of pain came from the other room.

  18

  Judy

  Judy had taken her son's arm and twisted it around behind his back.

  He'd screamed in pain.

  “You sound like a girl when you scream,” hissed Judy.

  She was mad. More mad than she'd been in a long, long time.

  “I can't believe you'd do this to us. I can't believe you'd do this to your friends. Forget about doing it to your own mother. What about your friends? You might have killed them all.”

  There were tears of pain in her son Damian's eyes. “I didn't mean to...”

  “Like hell you didn't,” hissed Judy. “I don't see how this can be seen as anything but a superbly cowardly act on your part. You wanted to maybe save your own skin, I guess. But that's not even going to work.”

  “But the virus isn't supposed to be contagious until the veins appear,” said Matt, in a pleading voice. “If anything happened, if my veins looked big, then I was going to get out of here quick and let everyone know...”

  “Sure you were,” hissed Judy. “If you weren't my son, why I'd just...”

  She trailed off. She wasn't really sure what she would have done.

  Not that it mattered.

  He was her son.

  And he very well might have been infected.

  She knew from experience that the anger, in some ways, was a mask for her other emotions. For instance, she was terrified that she'd lose her only son.

  It was easier to feel the anger than the fear.

  But she was also just furious with him for pulling this stunt.

  “OK,” she said, suddenly making up her mind, coming up with a plan on the spot. “We don't know exactly how this all works, the vectors of contamination and all that...”

  “But they had it all up on the internet,” said Damian. “No one's contagious until the veins are enlarged.. I think... It's been a while since I had my phone...”

  “You don't even know what you saw,” said Judy. “And you're talking about the internet anyway. How often is the internet right? Fifty percent of the time? We just don't know how this virus works... So here's what we're going to do. You're going to stay outside until late tomorrow.”

  “Outside? You mean out of the house?”

  “That's my definition of 'outside,' yes,” said Judy coldly. “Here's the situation: Either you've got the virus or you don't. If you have it, then we've either already caught it or we haven't. The only way to make the most of all those possibilities is to keep you outside for a period of over twelve hours. If you're clean, we'll let you back in.”

  “And what if I have it?”

  “Then you'll die,” said Judy. It was strange and horrible speaking those words to her own son. But it was the truth. And she wasn't the sort to spin a web of nonsense. “And maybe we'll be dead too, since it you might have already infected us for all we know. Come on, let's get this over with.”

  “But, mom! You can't just throw me out! There's someone out there who wants to attack us... it's going to be night soon... what will I do?”

  “That's your problem,” said Judy. “If you'd been upfront with us, we would have set something up for you. We'll do what we can for you. But there isn't much time. Every minute you spend in here, the more likely we are to get infected. Come on.”

  “Come on, Mom, you can't!”

  “You're going to make this tough, aren't you?”

  Damian was crying. Just like back when he was a little boy and his toys had broken.

  It was tough.

  Tough being a mother.

  Her hand was still on her gun. She had the muzzle pointed at her son. Her only son.

  There were tears in her own eyes. But she managed to bark the commands.

  “Get moving,” she said. “Don't make this any harder on me. You've made this hard enough already.”

  He wasn't moving. Just crying.

  “Mom, you can't,” he begged, sinking down to his knees.

  She adjusted the gun's position, jamming the muzzle harder into his soft flesh. “I'm not kidding,” she said. “This isn't a joke. This isn't my fault. Every minute that you spend in here puts us all at risk. This is life or death. I have no choice.”

  She knew she had no choice. She knew that she was doing the right thing. She knew that she was acting rationally. But it didn't make it all a
ny easier.

  “You're not going to shoot me,” sobbed Damian, clutching at her legs.

  “I will shoot you, Damian,” she said, speaking sternly. “And you know it. Now get up before I have to shoot you.”

  He looked up at her, saw her face, and knew she was telling the truth.

  He stood up, and she walked behind him, the gun not leaving her hand as he shuffled through the house.

  “Back door,” she said.

  He took a turn, shuffling towards the back door.

  “You're not to come within ten feet of the house,” she said. “I suggest you spend the night in the shed,” referring to the shed in the back corner of the yard.

  “But, Mom!”

  “If you come too close to the house, we're going to have no choice. We'll have to shoot you.”

  “Mom!”

  He was crying now. Huge tears running down his cheeks. It was horrible to see. And horrible to have to be in Judy's position. But she had no choice. It wasn't just her own life she had to think about. It was the others. What kind of person would she be if she gave her son the ultimate pass and let him infect others who had a chance to live?

  “Open the door.”

  “Mom!”

  “Open it.”

  He opened the door.

  “Outside,” she said. It was clearly an order. There was no other way to interpret her tone.

  She had the gun in her hand.

  She'd use it if she had to.

  She knew she was doing the right thing. Sometimes the right thing was the hard thing. The seemingly impossible thing.

  He stepped out the door.

  “Remember: ten feet.”

  She slammed the door shut behind him. Locked it. Deadbolt and everything.

  It was all over.

  She breathed out a sigh of relief.

  She still felt the anger. The anger that had allowed her to act, allowed her to do the right thing.

  The anger was real. She felt it because her son had put her in this position. He was the one who'd done this. Not her.

  She watched her son through the window. He stood for a long, long moment, and for a second she worried that he wasn't going to leave the stoop.

  But he did. He didn't look back. He walked slowly across the yard towards the shed.

  He opened the door and disappeared into the shed, closing the door behind him.

  There was one small window in that shed. There'd be a little light in there for him.

  Hopefully he'd be OK. He'd acted horribly. He'd acted irresponsibly. It was definitely the most irresponsible thing she'd ever known him to do. She thought she'd raised him better.

  Judy watched to make sure that Damian didn't just immediately open the shed door and try to do something stupid.

  Now that he was in there, it seemed likely he'd stay there inside there, sulking by himself.

  She made her way back through the house.

  “How'd it go?” said Matt, at the window.

  “As well as it could.”

  “I heard most of it.”

  Judy filled him in on the details. “I figure he can stay out there until at least noon tomorrow... by then we'll know whether he was infected.”

  “And whether we were,” said Matt, holding up the back of his hand. “How do they look?”

  “The veins? Normal. Any sign of our friend outside?”

  “The dead man's friend? No. He's either fled or he's waiting for a more opportune moment.”

  “Like nightfall.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking. If I were him, and I wanted revenge, I'd wait until night. I've got the door jammed up here pretty good. Hope you don't have a problem with us using your furniture like this, but we needed more than just the dining room table.”

  He was leading the way into the other room where Jamie stood by the door. There was a pile of furniture pushed up against it.

  “I always knew there was a reason to have all that heavy furniture,” said Judy, trying to defuse the sadness of the situation with her son with a joke.

  Matt and Jamie didn't seem to understand that it was a joke, and the conversation just moved along.

  “I figure we'll need to take shifts throughout the night,” said Matt. “People are going to need to rest.”

  “I think Mia's already fallen asleep.”

  “Yeah, her screams died down.”

  “I put my ear to the door and I was pretty sure I heard some loud snores.”

  “She snores?”

  “Like crazy. Every night...” As she said this, Jamie's eyes glanced up at Judy.

  Maybe Judy was wrong, but it seemed like Jamie had caught herself starting to tell some sort of joke about her roommate and then had decided that it wasn't appropriate given the fact that Judy had just had to force her son at gunpoint out of the house.

  “Maybe she'll be sober when she wakes up,” said Matt.

  “I hope so,” said Judy. “Now that my loser son's not here, it's just the three of us now. We could use a fourth. Especially for the watch shifts. How do you want break it down?”

  “I'll take first shift,” said Matt. He glanced at his watch. “What do you say? Six hours on?”

  “Just one person on shift?”

  “If we have two people awake at at time, it means we're all going to be more tired. And we have no idea what kind of challenges tomorrow will throw at us.”

  “You're right,” said Judy. “We need to be well rested.”

  “I'm going to check the window again,” said Matt abruptly.

  He left the room, disappearing around a corner.

  It was starting to get dark outside. The sun was sinking down, and the light was fading.

  It'd be dark in half an hour. Maybe less.

  It had reached that point where it was about to get hard to see indoors.

  “Here, Judy, let me show you this,” said Jamie, pulling out a phone. “You've got to see this. I showed Matt the video and it's just crazy.”

  “I hope that's some kind of young people slang for 'everything's going fine and the authorities have figured out the virus.'“

  Jamie shook her head. “I wish,” she said. “No, it's bad. In the convention center... well, you just have to watch it...”

  Jamie tapped at her phones screen and held it up so that Judy could see it.

  But nothing happened.

  “It's not playing,” said Judy.

  “Here, just a second. Let me get this...”

  Jamie took the phone and started tapping at it.

  “What's wrong?”

  “It's weird... Let me reload this page... It's strange because it's like loading and then it won't play…”

  “Has it ever done that before?”

  Jamie shook her head. “Not that I can remember. Shit, yeah, it's just not going to play.”

  Jamie explained what was in the video.

  “I can't say I'm surprised, as horrific as it is.”

  “All those people are as good as dead.”

  Judy nodded. “And I think we've got another problem on our hands. Maybe one that's more severe.”

  “What's more severe than that? Than all those people dying?”

  “The fact that the social media networks are apparently going down.”

  “Why do you say that? Let me check another one...”

  A moment later, Judy was muttering to herself.

  “It's not working, right?”

  “No, it's not.”

  “And this doesn't happen?”

  “It just can't be down,” said Jamie. “It just can't. How are we going to know what's happening?”

  “The old-fashioned way,” said Judy.

  But Jamie didn't seem to hear her. Her eyes were glued to her phone. Her fingers were tapping away at the screen. But nothing seemed to be working. And it was evident from her cursing and muttering that none of the normal sites were working. Not just the social media sites. But also none of the internet sites.

  “It's
really weird. It seems like I can get online, but then the pages just don't load all the way now... And it's getting worse...”

  “They must be overloaded,” said Judy. “Either that or the people who maintain the networks are getting sick.”

  Judy didn't know much about technology, especially not the internet. But it was just common sense, as far as she could see.

  “Guys!” shouted Matt, from the other room. “We've got a problem!”

  19

  Matt

  “What is it?”

  Judy came rushing into the room.

  It was almost completely dark now

  They hadn't turned on any of the lights in the house, and Matt's eyes were adjusting to the growing darkness, so he could still see fairly well.

  But not as well as when the sun had been up.

  “People in the street,” he said.

  “Where? I don't see them?”

  “Come over here. Let me move out of the way for you. They're down at the end of the block.”

  They switched positions, and Judy peered out the window for a long moment before she said, “yeah, I see them now. Three of them?”

  “That's what it looks like to me,” said Matt.

  “You think we should be concerned?”

  “Let me put it this way,” said Matt. “I don't think you can see it now, but earlier I saw that one on the end carrying what looked like a baseball bat.”

  “You sure?”

  Matt nodded.

  “What do we do?”

  “Wait it out.”

  “What about the front door?”

  “It should look OK from the outside. We've got more furniture behind it. It should hold up. If they break through, we shoot them.”

  “Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Who's getting ahead of ourselves? We're just planning.”

  Matt continued to watch the group of people out in the street. A minute passed, then another. Then another.

  The people looked like they were adults. Hard to tell if they were men or women. But they were probably men, just judging by their size.

  The men in the street didn't seem to be doing much at all. Just milling around. Standing there.

  Matt glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. Hardly anyone had spoken, and the group of men at the end of the street had barely moved.