The Roaming

by W J Hegarty

  Pepperbush’s remoteness helped keep trespassers away—until recently, when an epidemic of sorts was reported in Philadelphia, shortly followed by Baltimore and Washington DC. The talking heads would prattle on about the region’s homeless population coming down with some sort of sickness and that viewers should keep their distance. The warning was laughable at first, as most people in the broadcast area wouldn’t look twice at a homeless person, much less get close enough to touch one. Occasionally, one of these carriers—or “infected,” as the media referred to them in the earliest days of the crisis—would wander close to town. How extremely ill people could get lost and wander that far off the beaten path to find themselves at Pepperbush’s doorstep was a lie no one believed.

  Twenty-three days had passed since reports of a viral epidemic of unknown origin began flooding the TV. The news first broke online four days before government officials acknowledged that there was indeed a serious problem in a handful of East Coast cities. Stories of quarantine and martial law reaffirmed to many citizens of Pepperbush that they were indeed in the safest place to ride out whatever was happening in major cities all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

  Being so far out of the way didn’t exclude Pepperbush from the occasional passerby, even in quieter times. However, the current situation facing the region saw an influx of lost souls descending upon their quaint little town. These groups consisted mostly of handfuls of people who by mere happenstance stumbled across the quiet hamlet. They were weary travelers, most hoping to escape the big cities before they and theirs were exposed to whatever was afflicting the populace.

  Twenty-seven refugees, as the locals came to call them, had found themselves the newest residents of Pepperbush. The lot of them were welcomed with open arms and given rooms in the Pepperbush Bed and Breakfast, the town’s sole lodging. Having settled in for the duration of this pandemic, most of the refugees took up work around town to help pull their own weight. Jobs ranged from the mundane, like washing windows, to the vital, with town security firmly atop the list. Waste management, food preparation, and security were among the top jobs everyone living in Pepperbush was tasked with in those days. Volunteers from everyday citizens to the newest refugees worked twenty-four hours a day patrolling the perimeter of the town, always vigilant for the infected.

  As a precaution to stem the flow of the disease, all regional transportation was temporarily suspended from New York to Richmond and as far west as Louisville. Schools were closed and all state-run services were halted indefinitely; within the first week, the lack of trash collection became an issue.

  Fifteen days ago, Baltimore was officially declared a quarantine zone. No one except for FEMA, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, would be allowed to enter or leave the city indefinitely. The powers that be tried to hide the fact that Baltimore had been quarantined, but due to pressure from the media, stemming from thousands of first-hand reports coming in from the Internet, the government was forced to come clean.

  Yes, Baltimore was indeed under quarantine; the government finally admitted as much. Everyone knew that already; the people just wanted their leaders to acknowledge it. What Pepperbush and the rest of the country at large were not ready for was the admission that Richmond and Washington DC were also under strict quarantine and that Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta, and Raleigh would likely be added to the list in the coming days.

  The quarantines were one thing. After all, if hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people were catching some super-flu, then why not contain it? With admission of the quarantines came an explanation. FEMA was in complete control of the containment efforts by this point, and in an effort to quell public unrest, it released a breakdown of symptoms.

  FEMA claimed that within twelve to forty-eight hours after contracting this “super-flu,” those affected would in most cases turn on and violently attack those who were not infected—in most cases biting or scratching their victims. It was believed at the time that the virus was transmitted by the passing of bodily fluids.

  “Do not let these people touch you,” the media would warn ad nauseam. “Under no circumstance are you to approach the infected.” Infected was a term the media would stick with when referring to these cannibalistic attackers. The term was upgraded to carrier seemingly overnight. The disease’s new nomenclature brought with it a sort of foreboding among the populations in the quarantine zones. In the media’s effort to scare people into compliance, the name change acted as a catalyst for widespread panic, inducing rioting and outright attacks on government office buildings. Authorities were facing an attack on two fronts: the growing number of infected and a panic-stricken populace hellbent on escape.

  The first video footage broadcast nationwide of the infected indiscriminately attacking people was horrifying. There was no rhyme or reason behind the attacks. Men, women, children—no one was safe. The nation’s brightest minds were at a loss; no one knew what would cause otherwise normal people to resort to such random acts of violence and savagery. Unbeknownst to the public at large, the videos being shown on television were heavily censored. Their Internet counterparts, though, were another story altogether.

  A local news station out of Philadelphia was the first to show video of National Guard troops opening fire on a large group of infected citizens. The attempted media blackout was officially at an end. Public outcry over the government permitting such violence against its citizenry fell mostly on deaf ears, though. Firsthand accounts were pouring into online forums at breakneck speed. The first batches of video evidence came from the Eastern Seaboard and quickly spread across the country. The image painted by the media’s online counterpart told a far different story. Hundreds of reports with accompanying pictures and video couldn’t be denied. Groups of police working with the National Guard were burning bodies by the thousands. Entire apartment complexes were sealed off in an attempt to contain the virus.

  A news chopper captured what appeared to be hundreds of people on the roof of one of the sealed buildings. They were waving for help and flashing signs, attesting to the fact that they were not infected. The feed went live moments before dozens of carriers broke through to the roof in a mad dash for the people gathered there. Before the feed was cut off, many of the people pleading for help began jumping off the roof to avoid their attackers. All across the cutoff cities, countless people were shown to have been shot while trying to cross quarantine lines. Whether they were infected or not didn’t appear to be an issue for those involved. The people demanded the truth; they finally had it, and then some.

  The decision to pull the plug on the Internet was made shortly after footage showing units of National Guard and Army exchanging fire with each other was posted to the web. Apparently, a dispute over the treatment of civilians led to the altercation. The powers that be had finally had enough. Non-sanctioned reports and photography were hastening the spread of panic into otherwise safe zones. Until the outbreak was contained, and in the best interest of the citizenry, it was decided to pull the plug on the Internet.

  Raids on the nation’s major Internet service providers were conducted in hopes that most online communication would slow to a trickle. The few citizens that could still communicate via old channels were deemed irrelevant, as so-called experts concluded that less than five percent of the population was aware of the existence of such primitive computer programs. The deep web as well remained something even fewer people were aware of, much less knew how to access it.

  The tactic was a near-complete failure, as only a handful of raids were even carried out. The manpower was of better use elsewhere. Large swaths of the populace were without Internet service to be sure, but at least seventy percent of the country was still operational. The flow of non-sanitized reports was momentarily slowed, though, and the government spin doctors got to work, quickly putting the blame squarely on the infected. They even went so far as to reveal video proof of dozens of carriers storming a local ISP headquarters, inadve
rtently burning it to the ground. For the most part, the population bought it. After all, there were more important things to worry about. Infected were spilling out into the suburbs.

  Pepperbush had its first encounter with one of the infected seventeen days ago. Two miles from town, a local was hunting deer when he spotted a bloodied, naked man stumbling through the forest. Naturally, he thought the man was lost and in need of assistance, but when he approached, the man lunged at him. He swore the man was trying to bite him. The hunter claimed to have pushed the man down, hopped on his ATV, and hauled ass back to town. Rumor had it that he shot this stranger over fears of the infected, but no one would venture that far from town to verify.

  This incident worried the people of Pepperbush enough to demand that the mayor do something to protect them from any more of these carriers just wandering in. In an effort to placate his constituents, a plan was devised. A twenty-foot tall wall consisting of massive trees, abandoned vehicles, earth, and rock would be erected around the main body of the town’s primary living space. The cordoned-off area would contain most of Pepperbush’s homes and businesses. Standing trees were no different from felled, the town built right around them along with a few abandoned buildings as well. The earth and rock had to come from somewhere, though. On the outer side of this wall, the construction crew dug a fifteen-foot-deep by twelve-foot-wide trench that served as a makeshift dry moat.

  With the combined efforts of the locals and the refugees, it took eleven days to build their crude wall. The people of Pepperbush came to calling this makeshift defense “the berm.” Construction of an extension to the berm was underway. When finished, the new addition would allow Pepperbush’s single farm to be under the same protection as the rest of the town. Although the berm gave the residents of Pepperbush a much-needed morale boost in the security department, such a massive undertaking unfortunately cost them nearly all of their fuel reserves. In the aftermath of construction, the gas-hungry heavy equipment all sat on the outskirts of the farm, useless.

  Ten days ago, one of the newest refugees came down with a cough. At the time, no one thought much of it, and life continued as usual. Sometime during the following afternoon, infection set in and she was found wandering Main Street. The town’s sheriff happened to be one of the first on the scene. The infected woman was put down without much fanfare. This incident was enough to spur the people of Pepperbush into action. To protect the residents, it was decided that for the duration of this epidemic, no more refugees would be allowed to enter the town, with the added stipulation that anyone with so much as a persistent cough was to be placed under strict quarantine for an indeterminate amount of time. Everyone agreed and was eager to enforce this decision, including the refugees, who under differing circumstances would have found themselves on the receiving end of this new, harsh justice.

  The first group of people was turned away from town eight days ago. It was a group of seven, two of whom were young children. One of the women in the group was coughing quite a bit and looked terrible. The guards explained that they were sorry, but they were not letting anyone else into town and the best they could do was give them some food and water. The group went along their way with little argument. That scenario would play out the same way three more times over the next few days.

  Thirty-six hours ago, a group of eight bikers showed up at the gates, brandishing weapons and demanding to be let in. Lots of posturing from both sides mixed with an understandable fear of the unknown led to disaster. When the gunfire subsided, three of the bikers lay dead along with one of Pepperbush’s newly appointed deputies.

  In Pepperbush’s long, proud history, nothing more violent than a drunken bar fight had ever transpired to shake up the community. That night there were four murders.

  3:30am - Shearburn Residence

  Vanessa kicked off her shoes and settled into the couch. Another long shift at the bar was over and she was left wondering about the futility of it all. The world around them seemed to be rapidly falling apart, but damned if that wasn’t going to get in the way of the locals getting drunk on a nightly basis. Whatever was happening in Philadelphia and Baltimore surely couldn’t happen here, right? Isolated incidents of infected traveling all the way to Pepperbush were becoming commonplace, not to mention last week’s shootout verified for her that things were rapidly deteriorating, no matter what positive spin a handful of the town’s officials wanted to put on it.

  A few of her favorite websites were still up and running, though whatever was really happening in the region put a massive strain on the network. Large chunks of the Internet were unreachable. Even with the authorities blaming the outages on random mobs of looters destroying everything in their paths, something about the reporting didn’t sit right with her and the few people she was still in contact with online. Vanessa had the opportunity to see one of these sick people up close. She didn’t look to have the strength to open a door, much less ransack a service hub. And why would the rioters even do that if claiming to only want out of the cities was their only goal? None of it made any sense.

  Long before this latest round of bullshit began, a friend got her involved in online gaming. It was called an MMORPG, specifically. She had no clue what that even meant and certainly no desire to try playing. Fast-forward five years later and she was a pro. Well, at least she was better than most of her friends, anyway. She would play for hours at a time, three or four nights a week. It was an addiction, some would say, but they didn’t know the first thing about it.

  Stay close-minded, she thought. See if I care. People lived to shit on things they didn’t understand; it was the way of the world.

  The game was Vanessa’s one true escape from a town she couldn’t stomach any longer, and she loved every second of it. Half of the fun of the game was the community and with that came the live chat always running in the bottom-left of the screen. They talked about everything and not just the gameplay. Real life, too. Movies, gossip, politics and religion, who’s having a baby—you name it, they discussed it. In some sense, her fellow players were more real than most of these assholes in town. At least the gamers understood her, related to her. She logged onto the game. It was still operating.

  Thank God, she thought. Please don’t deny me the one pleasure I have left.

  Vanessa sat back and watched the conversation unfold on her monitor. Hopping right in wasn’t her style. She would observe and get a feel for the night’s topics before commenting. Only a few weeks ago, when the first rumors of whatever this crisis was exploded across the net, the game was alive. The conversation moved so fast. Blink, and you were lost. Now the place was a ghost town. If a tumbleweed had blown past her screen, it wouldn’t have surprised her.

  Vanessa’s username wasn’t exactly thought-provoking. It was simply an abbreviation of Pepperbush, with the last two digits of her social security number added at the end. Easy enough. Besides, she wasn’t the only one in-game with a lame username. At least she didn’t slap a “69” at the end of it. Seventeen members were logged in, a shadow of the place’s former glory when the servers were handling hundreds of unique accounts at once. Gone were the days of carefree conversation. No one cared who you were dating anymore or what the last movie you saw was. No one even played the game anymore for that matter; people just came to talk about the Eastern Seaboard Crisis, as the twenty-four-hour news cycles had christened it.

  PprBsh84: Another day another one of those things near town yay

  1313: that sucks

  MandyLove: damn

  spArkLe: getting more frequent there too huh?

  PprBsh84: Yep 3rd one this week they say he was almost to the gates

  dpPro: scary stuff

  MonStar: my dad shot one last night he says were leaving soon but my mom doesn’t want to

  69kilr69: she probably sic 2 that’s why

  spArkLe: that was uncalled for

  1313: go fuck yourself 69kilr69

  MonStar: has logged out

  PprBs
h84: real nice

  MandyLove: see what you did

  69kilr69: just fucking around lighten up its getting bad here 2 you know

  spArkLe: has anyone heard from JaGerMr today

  SpaMMy: no

  Admin: I haven’t noticed him or Jennygurl logged in all day

  MandyLove: sad

  dpPro: fuck

  PprBsh84: that makes 7 in the last 3 days

  1313: they r probly ok

  69kilr69: dont kid yourself

  LukesMom: just stop it

  spArkLe: go away

  69kilr69: Im serious yall and so is this shit

  Admin: everyone just be careful out there

  dpPro: for real

  PprBsh84: thats enough for me tonight guys work in the am be safe

  LukesMom: goodnight

  MandyLove: make sure to lock up

  spArkLe: you’ll be in my prayers

  PprBsh84: has logged off

  69kilr69: see ya

  1313: take care

  Vanessa sat her laptop aside, her options weighed days ago. As uncomfortable and alone as she felt in Pepperbush, she knew it was safest to stay and just ride this out, whatever it was, for now. Hell, she could always bond with the newcomers if it came down to it. Queen of the refugees. She allowed herself the briefest of chuckles. The idea forced a smile, a small pleasure too often denied as of late. Time for bed, anyway, as the bar reopened at nine. Five hours of sleep would have to be enough. Besides, what else was there to do, anyway?