“Roger that, Benjamin. Real quick, though, how about those casualty numbers?”
“I’d say ninety percent casualties.” Benjamin took one little girl by the hand. Her eyes were wide and frightened as she looked between Benjamin and the intimidating helicopter. He couldn’t imagine the nightmares she’d be having in the days to come. “That’s assuming ten percent of the population holed up inside their homes. We won’t know more until we put more boots on the ground.”
“Got it. I’ll let you get back to work. Stay safe, Benjamin.”
“Will do, sir.” Benjamin tried to smile at the little girl as he led her to the waiting chopper, though he must have seemed like a monster to her in his bulky Tyvek coveralls and hood. The entire world must have seemed like a monster to her.
Chapter 16
Corporal Jeffreys, CDC Field Unit Two, Gainesville, Florida
“Jeffreys, take point.” The captain’s voice sounded close in Jeffreys’s earpiece as the pack of soldiers walked down the middle of the street.
“Aye, captain.” Corporal Jeffreys flipped on her helmet camera and jogged to the front of the line with her rifle held against her chest, barrel pointed down.
Despite the heavy Tyvek coveralls they all wore, they made good time moving through the Gainesville, Florida suburbs. Their mission was to guide the CDC field workers toward the University of Florida campus and search for survivors. A secondary part of the mission was to lay claim to the football stadium where they planned on setting up a FEMA camp.
The heavy suit made it difficult to turn just her head, so Jeffreys turned her whole body side to side as she walked. She swallowed down a lump of fear, marveling at the dead bodies scattered everywhere. It reminded her of a lake that had dried up and left all the fish to flounder, die, and rot in the sun.
It was hot inside the coveralls, and Jeffreys wanted to strip them off and feel the refreshing Florida breeze like she’d done back in college many years ago on spring break. However, doing that now would mean death by Asphyxia—the name of the affliction had come down to them earlier. Still, the thought of living in her coveralls for more than a day sounded like a nightmare. Jeffreys quelled a spike of anxiety and focused on doing her job.
“How’s it look up there, corporal?” the captain asked.
“Nothing but corpses, captain,” Jeffreys replied.
“Any signs of a spore cloud?”
“Nothing, captain.” She kept her voice steady and low-key. “It must have moved on.”
“Continue moving southwest and let me know when you see the stadium.”
Jeffreys replied in the affirmative and continued walking. They’d passed three burning orange tree fields already, and at least five homes were burning up ahead. Fire killed the fungus, but there wasn’t enough gasoline in the entire world to finish the job. The fungus grew everywhere, its angry red glow less noticeable in the afternoon light. But Jeffreys knew it was there. She’d seen it last night after taking off from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Eerie red light as far as the eye could see.
The corporal had just about given up on seeing signs of life when she spotted movement up ahead. “Captain, I see people. Living ones. Looks like looters.”
“Good work, Jeffreys,” the captain replied. “Hold your position. Team, spread out and approach but do not engage the looters. I don’t care about them stealing a few groceries. Understood?”
The soldiers replied that they understood, and Jeffreys held her position as a half-dozen of her squad mates jogged out ahead of her. She felt a presence at her side, and she turned her body to see the captain standing next to her.
“With me, Jeffreys.”
Jeffreys nodded and moved ahead with the captain.
As they drew closer, the soldiers took casual stances, ensuring the business ends of their rifles pointed down, though Jeffreys sensed the tension rising. The dozen looters had formed a line that started inside the store and ended at the back of a pickup truck. They handed groceries down the line to a man standing in the truck bed. He stacked cases of water and cans of soup at his feet.
“What’s covering their faces?” the captain asked.
“Looks like homemade gas masks,” Jeffreys replied. “I’m thinking two-liter bottles cut up, turned upside down, and duct-taped to their faces. Looks like they screwed filters onto the bottoms.”
“Ingenious,” the captain said, sounding impressed. “We should say hello.”
The captain strode forward with Jeffreys at his side. They left the protective ring of marines, approached the looters, and stopped thirty yards away. The looters were so focused on moving goods that they didn’t notice the marines right away. Waving his arms around for a good fifteen seconds, the captain finally got the attention of the man standing in the truck bed.
The man jumped, his gaze flashed over the weapons the soldiers carried, and he immediately tapped one of his buddies on the shoulder. That man turned and started at the sight of the soldiers, too. On down the line, the looters caught sight of the soldiers and panicked. Several of them ran off, and the man in the truck bed leapt to the concrete and dove into the driver’s seat. He slammed the door, started the truck, and tore off, squealing his tires as he careened around a bend and sped away. Where he drove over the mold, a cloud rose into the air, condensing into floating black tendrils.
“No, wait!” the captain called out, jogging after the looters until he realized it was futile.
Jeffreys ran after the captain, stopping beside him to share in his disappointment. “They must have thought we wanted to hurt them.”
“Can you blame them?” The captain turned his body back toward the other marines. “We look like aliens from another planet out here.”
“I can understand their reservations,” Jeffreys agreed.
“Oh, well,” the captain said after a moment. “Let’s get moving. Jeffreys, you’re back on point.”
“Yes, sir.” Jeffreys jogged out ahead of the marines, heartened that there were survivors and wondering if they knew of any beautiful, uninfected beaches.
Chapter 17
Jessie Talby, CDC Field Unit Three, New York, NY
CDC field worker, Jessie Talby, quelled her nervous tension by counting backwards from one hundred to one, focusing on the moment and not the possibility of something bad happening: a hole in her Tyvek coveralls; a problem with her air filtration system; a simple fall that might spell disaster and even death for her.
It was all part of the job, though Jessie never expected to have to help save the world.
Walking in the center of twenty-five marines should have made her feel safe, but to a farm girl like Jessie, Brooklyn, New York might as well have been the Amazon jungle. They had been walking its dark alleys and endless streets ever since being dropped in by helicopter an hour ago.
And despite the dismal prospects of finding survivors, they’d had a bit of luck in that department. They had saved three families who heeded the emergency broadcast warnings and sealed their apartments tight using every bit of tape and cloth they could find.
Three families saved. Fifteen people—a counterpoint to the thousands of corpses lying in the streets.
A majority had suffocated when the spore cloud rolled through, although some had been the casualties of accidents or acts of random violence. Still others had decided there was nowhere to hide from the approaching death and that a leap from the top story of a building was a better way to go.
The fungus grew over everything. It crawled up the sides of buildings, spread down dark alleys, and had even taken root in the bloody corpses of the people who’d committed suicide.
Her coveralls were stuffy, though Jessie was glad to have them on. They not only protected her from the dangerous spores but also the stench of corpse rot that was sure to grow thick over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight...” Jessie counted. She rolled her shoulders to loosen them and peered up at
the buildings. She studied the bricks, the cracks in the bricks, and the windows that were over a hundred years old.
Her eyes passed over a window, moved on, and then flicked back. Had someone moved up there? She squinted harder. An air conditioning unit partially blocked her view, and the daylight glinted enough to make it difficult to tell. It could have been a person, or a cat. They’d rescued a dozen animals already.
“Or, it could have just been a trick of the light,” she murmured to herself. She was about to glance away when it happened again. The curtains had definitely moved, and she swore she saw someone looking down at them. Her heart leapt in her chest.
“I saw someone in that fourth-floor window,” she said, loudly. Then she realized she had her communications muted and pressed the button on her belt. There was a low beep, indicating she was off mute, and she blurted, “Hey, lieutenant. The building on the right. Fourth floor. I saw someone moving.”
The team’s hulking field lieutenant, Lieutenant Richards, strode back from the front of the line. “Show me,” he said.
Jessie pointed up where she’d seen the movement, and the lieutenant leaned back so his hood would afford him a view. Together, the two backed up to the opposite side of the street, their eyes never leaving the window. Sure enough, the shape of someone’s head was clearly visible.
Lieutenant Richards raised his hand, and Jessie followed suit, waving her own hand back and forth for good measure.
“Why don’t they wave back?” Jessie asked, curiously.
“It looks like a child.” The lieutenant’s tone grew more urgent. “They’re probably scared.” He called out for three soldiers to follow him inside and then nudged Jessie’s arm. “And you, too, Talby. You’re with us.”
“Yes, sir.” Jessie jumped in line behind the soldiers.
They pushed through the creaky front door and stepped into the foyer with their rifles pointed up the stairs. Asphyxia had not invaded too far into the foyer, yet. After looking around a moment, the lieutenant motioned the soldiers to go ahead, and the team hustled up the squeaking, groaning stairwell.
The four-story climb left Jessie dripping sweat and panting hard enough that the plastic faceplate of her hood fogged up. Jessie ignored it with the prospect of finding someone alive.
“I think this is the one,” said one soldier, nodding toward a door.
“I think you’re right,” Richards said, then he turned to Jessie. “Are you ready?”
Jessie pulled a plastic-wrapped air filtration mask out of her pack and held it up. “Ready.”
Richards turned back to the soldier. “Try it.”
The soldier reached down and turned the doorknob. It was locked tight, so she used the barrel of her rifle to give three gentle raps on the door. “Hello, in there!” she shouted. “This is the United States Armed Forces. We’re here looking for survivors of the toxic cloud. We have air filtration masks and can take you to safety. Please respond.”
Jessie mouthed the words along with the soldier. She knew the words by heart. Everyone did. The team had shouted them a hundred times that day.
When no one responded, the soldier turned back to the lieutenant for instructions.
“Force it,” Richards said. “Be careful.”
The soldier nodded and faced the door. “If anyone is on the other side, stand back! I’m going to break it down!”
They’d been told not to ram doors with their shoulder to avoid tearing their suits, so the soldier stepped back, lifted her big, heavy boot, and stomped it against the door. The old frame snapped like kindling, and the door flew open.
The soldiers rushed into the apartment and spread out, clearing each room with efficiency. Jessie heard the muted shout of a child, a soldier cursing, and the stomping of boots through the apartment. Jessie’s shoulders tensed up as she wondered what was going on.
There was a pause before the lieutenant spoke in a hushed tone. “Okay, Talby. You’re up. We cornered a live one in the living room.”
Jessie stepped carefully but excitedly across the threshold, careful not to tear her suit on any loose nails or splinters in the door frame. She moved down a long hallway, glancing into each room. Old food containers and clothes lay around the messy apartment. Asphyxia had claimed almost every room, growing thickest around the food containers. In the last room on the left was a single corpse, although Jessie didn’t stop to investigate the conditions surrounding the death. She’d seen hundreds upon hundreds of dead bodies that day, and her mind had grown numb to it.
The end of the hall opened into a large living room with clothes and blankets strewn everywhere. The television and air conditioning unit still hummed along.
One soldier stood by the window. “They didn’t even bother shutting the air conditioning vents.”
“They may not have gotten the news to do it,” said another soldier.
The first soldier pointed to the television. “The news would have been on there.”
“Well, maybe they didn’t understand—”
“Over here, Talby.” Lieutenant Richards stepped back and gestured.
The chatter faded in Jessie’s mind as she stared at the only one thing in the room that mattered. Amidst six corpses, all of them twisted in Asphyxia death, sat a little girl of about five. She crouched in front of the television, panting, staring at the Tyvek-covered soldiers with sheer terror in her eyes.
Asphyxia streaked the carpet all around the girl and stained her clothing, yet she showed no signs of being afflicted; she wasn’t coughing or struggling to breathe.
Jessie’s cold professionalism melted away. She knelt a few feet from the girl, hard enough to launch spores from the carpet into the air. The dark tendrils danced around the little girl’s head, and she breathed them in as she stared back at Jessie.
Shoulders tensed, Jessie waited for the girl’s eyes to roll up into her head and her chest to heave. She waited for the girl’s throat to close and for her to start choking as she gripped her neck in death.
The little girl only wrinkled her nose in irritation, like she might sneeze.
With a wide grin, Jessie turned her external speaker on to be heard outside her hood. “Well, aren’t you the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day? My name is Jessie. What’s your name?” When the little girl didn’t answer, Jessie prodded her a bit more. “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. These guys...they’re just big teddy bears inside their weird suits.”
The soldiers shared an amused look at being called big teddy bears.
Richards spoke up. “Talby, we need to get a mask on that girl and exit.”
Jessie nodded inside her Tyvek hood and turned off her external speaker. “It might help if you guys wait in the hallway.”
Richards glanced around the room before agreeing. “Okay, Talby, but be careful.”
The soldiers left the living room, moving efficiently in their Tyvek coveralls, leaving Jessie alone with the little girl. After the soldiers exited, Jessie flashed her a knowing smile and turned her external speaker back on. “See, they’re harmless.”
“My mom says I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.” The girl’s eyes flashed to one corpse on Jessie’s left.
Jessie swallowed a lump in her throat. “Well, she must have been a smart—”
“They’re all dead.” The girl frowned.
“It’s terrible, I know.” Jessie made an apologetic face.
The little girl coughed twice, two small coughs, her eyes never leaving Jessie. Jessie’s heart skipped a beat, thinking she must have Asphyxia. Then the girl said, “That’s what happened to them.” She made the deliberate coughing sounds again, almost cute if not for the nightmare tapestry painted all around them. “They coughed a bunch and then died.”
Relieved, Jessie nodded. “It’s happening everywhere, to a lot of girls just like you. That’s why I think it might be best if you came with me. Those soldiers? They’re here to protect us, I swear.”
The girl looked around at the corpses
in the room and then back to Jessie, and it seemed there was a little less fear in her eyes. “Fiona,” she said. “My name’s Fiona.”
Jessie held out her hand. “Well, Fiona, are you hungry? We’ve got food. I think someone has some peanut butter back in camp. Do you like peanut butter?”
Fiona nodded and reached up to place her tiny hand into Jessie’s Tyvek-covered paw.
“Okay, it’s settled then.” Jessie said, marveling at the girl’s lack of respiratory protection. “There are so many people who can’t wait to talk to you.”
Jessie knew the CDC scientists would poke and prod the little girl as they studied her blood to determine what made Fiona different. It didn’t matter. Jessie would relish the pure moment of connection, and the discovery of the little girl who might be part of the answer.
It took some goading, but Fiona agreed to wear the child-sized air filtration mask Jessie offered. More because the lieutenant had ordered it than she needed it. Together, they exited the apartment, descended the creaky stairs, and entered the protection of the smiling, nodding soldiers.
Chapter 18
Randy and Jenny Tucker, Center Township, Indiana
“Do you think she suffered much?” Jenny asked with a sniff.
“I don’t think so.” Randy shook his head. “Only a minute or two.”
They stood by the access road that split their field, looking down at the corpse of their mother. Death discolored her, her body bloated in the normal way things do when they die. The only difference was the spots of BD at the edges of her mouth and beneath her nose. And the tendrils that had fallen on her since yesterday evening had stained her rotting flesh like tattoos.
“That’s good.” Jenny nodded. “Do you think we should dig a grave?”
Randy sighed into his air filtration mask, a significant improvement over the plastic bags and pieces of foam they’d been using the day before. “I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t want to touch that stuff, not even with our added protection.”
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